It could revisit the body in the
tomb ... and could reincarnate it and hold converse with it.’  Again
there was the ‘Khu’, the ‘spiritual intelligence’, or spirit. It took
the form of ‘a shining, luminous, intangible shape of the body.’...
Then, again, there was the ‘Sekhem’, or ‘power’ of a man, his strength
or vital force personified. These were the ‘Khaibit’, or ‘shadow’, the
‘Ren’, or ‘name’, the ‘Khat’, or ‘physical body’, and ‘Ab’, the
‘heart’, in which life was seated, went to the full making up of a man. “Thus you will see, that if this division of functions, spiritual and
bodily, ethereal and corporeal, ideal and actual, be accepted as exact,
there are all the possibilities and capabilities of corporeal
transference, guided always by an unimprisonable will or intelligence.”
As he paused I murmured the lines from Shelley’s “Prometheus Unbound”:

     “‘The Magnus Zoroaster....
     Met his own image walking in the garden.’”

Mr. Trelawny was not displeased. “Quite so!” he said, in his quiet
way. “Shelley had a better conception of ancient beliefs than any of
our poets.”  With a voice changed again he resumed his lecture, for so
it was to some of us:

“There is another belief of the ancient Egyptian which you must bear in
mind; that regarding the ushaptiu figures of Osiris, which were placed
with the dead to its work in the Under World. The enlargement of this
idea came to a belief that it was possible to transmit, by magical
formulae, the soul and qualities of any living creature to a figure
made in its image. This would give a terrible extension of power to
one who held the gift of magic. “It is from a union of these various beliefs, and their natural
corollaries, that I have come to the conclusion that Queen Tera
expected to be able to effect her own resurrection, when, and where,
and how, she would. That she may have held before her a definite time
for making her effort is not only possible but likely. I shall not
stop now to explain it, but shall enter upon the subject later on. With a soul with the Gods, a spirit which could wander the earth at
will, and a power of corporeal transference, or an astral body, there
need be no bounds or limits to her ambition. The belief is forced upon
us that for these forty or fifty centuries she lay dormant in her
tomb—waiting. Waiting with that ‘patience’ which could rule the Gods
of the Under World, for that ‘love’ which could command those of the
Upper World. What she may have dreamt we know not; but her dream must
have been broken when the Dutch explorer entered her sculptured cavern,
and his follower violated the sacred privacy of her tomb by his rude
outrage in the theft of her hand. “That theft, with all that followed, proved to us one thing, however:
that each part of her body, though separated from the rest, can be a
central point or rallying place for the items or particles of her
astral body. That hand in my room could ensure her instantaneous
presence in the flesh, and its equally rapid dissolution. “Now comes the crown of my argument. The purpose of the attack on me
was to get the safe open, so that the sacred Jewel of Seven Stars could
be extracted. That immense door of the safe could not keep out her
astral body, which, or any part of it, could gather itself as well
within as without the safe. And I doubt not that in the darkness of
the night that mummied hand sought often the Talisman Jewel, and drew
new inspiration from its touch. But despite all its power, the astral
body could not remove the Jewel through the chinks of the safe. The
Ruby is not astral; and it could only be moved in the ordinary way by
the opening of the doors. To this end, the Queen used her astral body
and the fierce force of her Familiar, to bring to the keyhole of the
safe the master key which debarred her wish. For years I have
suspected, nay, have believed as much; and I, too, guarded myself
against powers of the Nether World. I, too, waited in patience till I
should have gathered together all the factors required for the opening
of the Magic Coffer and the resurrection of the mummied Queen!”  He
paused, and his daughter’s voice came out sweet and clear, and full of
intense feeling:

“Father, in the Egyptian belief, was the power of resurrection of a
mummied body a general one, or was it limited? That is:  could it
achieve resurrection many times in the course of ages; or only once,
and that one final?”

“There was but one resurrection,” he answered. “There were some who
believed that this was to be a definite resurrection of the body into
the real world. But in the common belief, the Spirit found joy in the
Elysian Fields, where there was plenty of food and no fear of famine. Where there was moisture and deep-rooted reeds, and all the joys that
are to be expected by the people of an arid land and burning clime.”

Then Margaret spoke with an earnestness which showed the conviction of
her inmost soul:

“To me, then, it is given to understand what was the dream of this
great and far-thinking and high-souled lady of old; the dream that held
her soul in patient waiting for its realisation through the passing of
all those tens of centuries. The dream of a love that might be; a love
that she felt she might, even under new conditions, herself evoke. The
love that is the dream of every woman’s life; of the Old and of the
New; Pagan or Christian; under whatever sun; in whatever rank or
calling; however may have been the joy or pain of her life in other
ways. Oh! I know it! I know it! I am a woman, and I know a woman’s
heart. What were the lack of food or the plenitude of it; what were
feast or famine to this woman, born in a palace, with the shadow of the
Crown of the Two Egypts on her brows! What were reedy morasses or the
tinkle of running water to her whose barges could sweep the great Nile
from the mountains to the sea. What were petty joys and absence of
petty fears to her, the raising of whose hand could hurl armies, or
draw to the water-stairs of her palaces the commerce of the world! At
whose word rose temples filled with all the artistic beauty of the
Times of Old which it was her aim and pleasure to restore! Under whose
guidance the solid rock yawned into the sepulchre that she designed! “Surely, surely, such a one had nobler dreams! I can feel them in my
heart; I can see them with my sleeping eyes!”

As she spoke she seemed to be inspired; and her eyes had a far-away
look as though they saw something beyond mortal sight. And then the
deep eyes filled up with unshed tears of great emotion. The very soul
of the woman seemed to speak in her voice; whilst we who listened sat
entranced. “I can see her in her loneliness and in the silence of her mighty
pride, dreaming her own dream of things far different from those around
her. Of some other land, far, far away under the canopy of the silent
night, lit by the cool, beautiful light of the stars.