A History of Religious Ideas, Volume 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries

by Mircea Eliade

One kind of vandalism had particularly horrified the Egyptians: men destroyed the ancestral tombs, threw out the bodies, and carried off the stones for their own tombs. As Ipu-wer said: “Many dead are buried in the river. The stream is a tomb.” And the king advised his son Meri-ka-Re: “Harm not the tomb of another…. Build not thy tomb from ruins!” The Song of the Harper describes the pillage and destruction of tombs, but for entirely different reasons. “The gods who lived formerly (i.e., the kings) rest in their pyramids, the beatified dead (i.e., the nobles) also, buried in their pyramids—their places are not. See what has been made of them! … Their walls are broken apart, and their places are not—as though they had never been!” For the author of the poem, however, these iniquities only confirm once more the impenetrable mystery of death. “There is none who comes back from (over) there, that he may tell their state, that he may tell their needs, that he may still our hearts until we too (may) travel to the place where they have gone.” And so the Harper concludes: “Make holiday, and weary not therein!”