UNCANNY POWERS OF EVIL.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 8100, 27 August 1904, Page 2

UNCANNY POWERS OF EVIL.

Inanimate ' Objects That Apparently Possess Malef-oont Eatlaeace. » (By EX-ATTACHE, in- tbe New Orleans "Times-Democrat.") London newspapars have recently been calling attention to the uncanny history of the mummy of the priestess of the College of Amen Ea, which, figuring as No. 22,542 in the catalogue of the British Museum, is preserved in the first Egyptian room of that world-famed institution. Found at Thebes during explorations there carrisd on in 1869, in the presence of the late Lady Duff Gordon and some friends, and acquired by them, its possession seems to havo brought misfortune on every one of the party. Lady Duff Gordon died. very. suddenly at Cairo almost, immediately after her return down the river. Another member of the party bad his. gun explode, injuring his arm in such a. manner as to necessitate amputation ; a third committed suicide ; a fourth found on his arrival at Cairo that his bankers had failed and that he was a ruined man ; .while the man who conveyed the mummy to England with him was overtaken by a succession of misfortunes, including loss of children, fortune and good name before he died. His widow sent it to the British Museum, where, as it- was in a splendid state of preservation and the case a magnificent specimen of old Egyptian art, ifc was gladly accepted. But the carrier who transported it tq the Museum died within a week, and a similar fate overtook the well-known Baker Street photographer who had made a picture of it before its transfer, for the purpose of being submitted to the Museum authorities. Since the arrival of the mummy and mummy case at the Museum no further misfortunes are known to have occurred in connection with the remains of this Theban priestess, who lived and flourished some 1700 years before the Christian era. Perhaps she is more satisfied with her present environment, surrounded as she is with the mummies of Pharaohs, of princesses and high priests, than when "CSKD AS A DIXIITG-BOOM OHXAMEST. Scoff as one may at the idea of an inanimate object such as a mummy nearly three thousand years old being able to exercise any influence either for food or for evil, the belief in the existence of powers of this kind will persist, despite reasoning and logic, especially when ifc is borne in mind that the instance above stated is by no means unique. Thus there is the case of Walter Ingram, younger brother of Sir William Ingram, the proprietor of the " Illustrated London News." While spending a few weeks at Luxor, be purchased a particularly fine mummy that had been found during the course of excavations carried on in his presence at Thebes. He carried it back with him to England and sent it to the British Museum for the purpose of having ifc unrolled and examined. When this was done papyri were found showing tbat the mummy was that of one of the high priests of ancient Theb.es, and containing a blood-curdling curse upon whomsoever .hould disturb the remains, the malediction appealing to the powers above to deny burial to tha remains of the sacrilegious ghoul who should interfere with the eternal sleep of the prelate, entreating tliat not one bone should remain with another, but that they should be swept to the sea so as to render the reconstitution of the bocly impossible. Walter Ingram made fun bf the curse at the time. But he probably thought of ifc more seriously when a year later he was being trampled to death by an infuriated elephant which he had only wounded instead of killing. His corpse was interred near the scene of his death, in what seemed to be a sort of stony valley. But when, soma montbs afterward, a properly equipped expedition was sent by Sir William Ingram from the coast to bring home his brother's remains, . NOT A VESTIGE Oi* THEM COT*X"D BE _* OTJ_"T> save a single bone and a few buttons of ; his garments scattered among the stones near the place where the body had been interred. ' The face was that the valley was nothing more nor less than the bed of a river, dry during the hot season, but a raging torrent during the rainy months. Thus had the curse of the Egyptian high priest been accomplished. For the bone.* of poor Walter Ingram must lie &trewn along the bed of that' river to this day, if they have not been, as it is firmly believed, carried out to sea by the mighty rush of the waters. A Western Africa Juju is believed by many . of the. relatives and friends of the lata President Sadi Oarnot of France to have exercised an influence upon his destiny quite as fatal as that of the mummied high priest upon "the Idfc of Walter Ingram. These Jujus are wooden or stone monstrosities, which are believed by the natives along the west coast of Africa and far away into the interior of the Dark Contient to be possessed of supernatural powers of evil. Even white people who have lived on the west coast are unable to divest themselves of a certain ill-defined, uncanny feeling with regard to these hideous idols, and have hair-raising and bloodcurdling stories to toll of the mysterious maleficence with which- they seem to be endowed, insisting that whereas they may be destroyed with impunity, any white person who carries them off, retains possession thereof, or merely mutilates them, will surely be overtaken by disaster. The traveller and explorer, Le Bon, ridiculed these tales, and on returning to France took along with him A PAKTICTLAHLT I-EDKOrS WOODEN"" JT/JtT, as a souvenir of his wanderings for his friend, President Camot. The latter set ifc up in his workroom afc the Elysee Palace, and twt> months afterward was assassinated by C-esario at Lyons. His widow, the late Mdme Camot, was one of the most learned, level-headed acd sensible women that I have ever known, the last woman in the world, in fact, whom one would have imagined capable of accord in -any attention to superstitions concerning ' ; inanimate objects. Yet so imbued did she become with, the conviction that the possession of thisAfrican Juju had in some way contributed to the tragic death of her husband that she insisted on its being destroyed a considerable rime before her demise. Stories such as {he ono told of. President Carnot's Juju have their -counterpart afc almost every court of Europe. Thus the widowed Empress of Russia, when toward the closa of 1897 ehe was looking through the drawers of a desk that had only occasionally been used by her husband, happened to find a peculiar looking ring, consisting of a heavy band of gold, _in the centre of which was' set an extraordinary beautiful opal flanked by two diamonds of the finest, water. .It .was contained in au envelope on which Alexander 111. had written that the ring was one whioh had been worn by his father on the little finger of his left hand. When rHAT rNTORTTrs-ATB SOVZP.srS-I IWAS 81/OTTCf TO riECES by the n_-i'<y-glye-?in* bombs of the Nihilists in 1881 his entire left hand-was shattered with the exception of the little finger, which- remained intact with this ring on it, ihe rings worn on the third finger being :ompletely destroyed. Alexander Eft. took it from his father's torn amd mangled hand, placed ifc in the envelope and hid it away In the drawer, whore it was found by his widow after his death. Empress Marie, not linking that there was any ill-luck attach- ' :d to the ring, took it with her to Copen- ' lagen on tihe occasion of her next visit to 3erunark in the spring of 1898L<ahd left ifc j ihere in charge of her mother, who -died n the same yeaT. Finding it among the : rffeot- of the dead Queen of (Donmark, the ' .impress took it back with her to Russia . md presented it to her second son George, - vhose sudden death a short time afterwards 1 [uite alone by a road-ide near Tiflis, in the i Caucasus, created such a s-ensation. Curi- s >u3ly enough, this ring has disappeared l ince that time,«and was not found among " he Grand Duke's belongings after his de- 5 aise. 1 Another opal" ring has played an anala- ] ;ous role in the history of the reigning * louse of Spain. Ifc was giv,eh by the late t Sang "Alfonso XII. to 'his counn Mercedes 8 riren he was betrothed to her. She wore t fc throughout her short married life as a i*ies*_U On her death he removed it _rb__.]g

her finger and presented it to bis grandmother* old Queen Christina, who died snorfcly afterward Then it paesed to thf King's favourite sister, the Infanta Pili»4 who AT OUCE BEGAN TO SICKEN. and in a few days breathed her last. Al» fonso thereupon handed ifc to ihis sisfcer-in* law, the beautiful Infanta Christina, youngest daughter of the late Duke of Montpensier and a eiister of the Comtesse of Paris.. In three months she, . too, waa dead. The King now resolved to retain the baneful jewe] in his own possession. But he a-so soon fell a victim to its mysterious malignancy, and died with almost tragic suddexf ness after only a few hours sickness at his shooting lodge near Madrid> in 1835. Hiwidow, Queen Christina, determined, ta place the ring beyond the. pow^r of doing any more harm, and accordingly has had ifc hung to the neck of the statue of the Virgin of Almudena, . the patron saint of Madrid, in the grand old church of tiiw Atocca. __* Empress Eugenic, superstitious, like most Spaniards, both of high and low degree, manifested throughout her husband's reign a dread of opals, and was only persuaded with difficulty by the Emperor to wear, a. superb opal parure, with which he had presented her' on Easter Day in lEf/0, as her ceuf de Paques^ She most reluctantly don^ ned ifc at a grand fete given in the month of June at fhe Palace of St Cloud, and. i* proved th© last entertainment over Whio-t * she ever had occasion to preside as Empress of the French, for immediately afterward war with Germany broke out, which swept the throne of Napoleon IH. out ol existence, and that DROVE THE HOtrSE OT BONATABTE INTO EXILE. Many more storiea of the same charactei could be told. But those just noted, while they may fail td convinoe, will at anyrate serve to account for the existence of the superstition attaching to the mysterioo_ ann apparently supernatural property pertaining to certain inanimate articles, amd I may add that so widespread is the belief, even in this country, that books printed here dealing with the cult of occultism, which has so many followers in tihe.Unitied States, actually insist- that evil is derived from the consumption of those onions and other agricultural products that are manured with powdered Egyptian mummies.