Series 03: John Brady Nash letters, January 1914-December 1915 - Page 133
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[Page 133]
Never has a shadow of doubt dimmed my consciousness in this regard. But so far I have not been able to see the end. In each of his letters to me Dr. Paton has written:– "The war will soon be over & you will be on your way back to Australia". Time will tell. Ere this letter reaches you, mayhap you will be in a position, if you read the morning papers, to form a judgment as to what may happen during the summer period of 1915.
This afternoon I paid a visit to the Museum of Antiquities on the other side the Nile from here. It is full of the products in statuary, toombs, coffins, mummies, ornaments, clothing, figures, boats, and such like, which tell the story of this land adown the thousands of years during which human beings have lived, worked, and died upon its fertile lands, and been buried midst its sandy wastes. The size, the crudeness, and the variety of the collected specimens, bespeak a simple and numerous people, who during ample food from the fertile areas devoted their surplus energies to the preparing themselves, at differing epochs in various ways, for the future which each expected after death. The eyes in many of the figures suggest the glass eye of our time, but an instructor told me that they were made of crystal, and that they were placed in the figure when the artist shaped it out of stone. This is one of the many impressions which could not be conveyed to one's mind by a picture. A curious point, about the various coffins, is that on one side two eyes, with intervening space, are painted, the face of the corpse was turned towards these, on burial, with the idea that through them sight might be obtained beyond its limits. Much time must have been devoted to the painting & decoration of the coffins. The custom survives