Bille Brown 1952 - 2013

Sunday the 13th of January 2013 we lost the actor, playwright, mentor and director Bille Brown to cancer at the young age of 61. Over some decades I had a small passing interaction with Bille. We nodded at cafe's, chatted at the cinema smiled at the opera and had several wonderful friends in common. Once I extolled the brilliance of his portrayal of Oscar Wilde and also found myself presumptuous enough to criticise his direction of the Opera Don Giovanni. We did have some chuckles over that via email. In his international career he was amongst many things an artist in residence and visiting Professor at the University of New York. He performed in London's West End and made his Broadway debut in 1986.

This video below of The Ages on Man is the last time I saw him on television a few weeks ago and the last time I saw him in person was back in September when we both in attendance at a concert opera with another great Queenslander Lisa Gasteen. He was wearing the same flamboyant red jacket he wore at the Helpmann Awards that same month. Bille stood out. He smiled and was charming and all the theatre people in our fine city will miss him.

Sir Ian McKellen's tribute to Bille Brown

  

Goodbye Gore Vidal

I grew up with this man as a provocative hero.

Remember Hiroshima

 6th. August 1945

 

140,000 died
I do not have to show the horrific images of destroyed fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, the old and the young. I have a firm belief echoed elsewhere - 
I will not kill.
To me that means anyone, ever, and under any circumstances.
Remember.

SLEEP

Below is reproduced an article sent to me by Prof. Stefano D'Anna which he wrote recently for the Italian magazine IQuality. We have been corresponding a little of late and this is printed with Stefano's kind permission. Originally in Italian. Images can be enlarged.

Sleep

By Stefano E. D’Anna

The invitation to write on such an interesting theme, so close to our existence and yet so misterious and in many ways still unexplored, has received my immediate assent. In fact it has been for me a precious pretext to compress in the few pages of one article the ideas and the material that since many years I am gathering on this wonder of our life, on this amazing phenomenon.

From the first draft of this article, and procedeeng with the iconographic search and selection of the images that could illustrate my ideas about sleep, I realised the extent of the subject, its multi-faceted nature and complexity. My first choice then has been to limit the investigation to some aspects of sleep as an intimate, individual phenomenon, and to some reflections which cannot commonly be found in the existing literature on this theme.

Keeping in mind the final development of this work, my excursus moves from the apology and praise of sleep - in a vision which considers it a pleasure, a phisiological function and a natural right given for granted - to the exploration of more misterious sides of sleep, depicting it as rather an uneasy, unquiet state, till the consideration of some disturbing aspects of it.

Beauty, Eros and Sleep

An aspect of sleep, as part of its collective imagery, is certainly the sensual sleep. The sleeping Venus, one of the last works by the Italian renaissance Master Giorgione is an extremely influential painting. It portrays a nude woman whose profile seems to follow that of the hills in the background. This painting, also known as the Dresden Venus, is an hymn to beauty, sleep and eros. Erotic implications are made by the placement of her left hand on her groin and Venus's raised arm. To show one’s armpit for a woman still today, in many cultures, is considered an indecent gesture.

The choice of a nude woman marked a revolution in art, and is considered one of the starting points of modern art. The painting was unfinished at the time of Giorgione’s death (1510). The landscape and sky were later finished by Titian, who later painted the similar Venus of Urbino.

Sleeping Venus
Giorgione, c. 1510

Sleep after sex

In 1866 a Turkish Diplomat Khalil Bey ordered a painting to the French artist Gustave Coubet, the foremost realist painter of mid-19th-century. The image of a pair of entwined sleeping female bodies far from being a purely erotic painting has undeniably an element of transgressive sensuality which cannot be lacking in a short but comprehensive research on sleep.

Coubet’s work also gives the cue for a quick note on how fundamental has been the transgression in art to push further the frontiers of our freedom and intelligence, which are one and the same thing.

Gustave Coubet  Sleep (Le sommeil)

The tight connection between sleep, sex and death is more visible in some masterpieces that represent the human condition (especially man’s) of unguarded sleep after sex. Botticelli’s Mars and Venus shows through the face of Mars how deep is the intuition built in the French language which names the condition post coitus ‘la petite mort’, the French expression for orgasm.

Botticelli - Mars and Venus

Ascetic, meditative, prophetic sleep

A very rilevant observation is that sleep is in time. An ordinary person who is sleeping is fully immersed in time and has a very limited control, if any at all, on his body, on his life. As I will try to dimostrate at the end, this unguarded condition of limited awareness is not very different from what happens in men’s (so called) waking state. Nevertheless there is a dimension of sleep which opens the doors to timelessness. Intentional day dreaming, divinatory and meditative states are somehow induced by sleep but do not imply a loss of control on oneself. Just the opposit. And yet they are intimately connected to sleep and carried by it.

This timeless condition of sleep is well expressed by this image of sleeping Budda, carved in one inestimable block of white Jada, which I have captured in a visit to Hufo temple in Shanghai. It is the rappresentation of wide open eyes sleep of a timeless, alert being.

In the Greek mithology there has been just one man, Endymion, who was given by Hypnos the privilege to sleep with open eyes.

White Jada Budda
Hufo Temple - Shanghai

Sleep as flight

In Georgia, in his modest studio of Tiblisi, I met Koka Tsikhelashvili and his extraordinary art. This painting in particular I brought with me to exhibit at the Aria Gallery in Pietrasanta, Tuscany. It is named ‘the Flight’.

I found it a very poetic, fairy-tale representation of sleep as an escape from the so called reality. Men turn their impotente and sadness into sleep and entrust themelves to its wings when life becomes too painful, suffocating and one doesn’t know how to deal with it, how to transform it.

Ordinary men wake up and as first thing they meet with their inner song of unceasing sorrow. They do not want to listen to it nor want to face that pain they bring deep inside. Men drown their sorrow in a coffee, plunge into their daily worries and same worn-out routines; they let themselves be caught by their laborious existence, because they do not want to know.

But their flight in sleep reveals to be ephemeral and that neglected pain becomes more and more acute. One day we will discover that that dark corner of our being we never lighted is the very source of all the difficulties and failures that then we meet in our life.

The Monster of Sleep

"I have often imagined the monster of sleep as a heavy, giant head with a tapering body held up by the crutches of reality. When the crutches break we have the sensation of falling" - Salvador Dali

This pulpy head looks very ugly and restless.., It depicts sleep as rather an uneasy, unquiet state. The body is useless and almost dead (hanging on just one crutch), the head is loaded and functioning, though not fully capable of feeding awareness (eyes and ears are closed). It has indeed no control on reality, thus desperately depends upon thin and short crutches which hardly manage to keep the head from totally collapsing.

Moreover, it seems there is a tremendous struggle going on. The loaded, heavy head pushes downwards, uncomfortable with the interference of the crutches...yearning to fall into the dark (might be interpreted as night or maybe forgetfulness and death).

Dali's Sleep

Hypnos

In your next visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art you can admire a rare 1st century Roman bronze statue of Hypnos. Classical mythology represents him, the personification of sleep, as a gorgeous young man neked, with wings attached to his head. Son of goddess Nyx (Night), his power was such that not only men but even gods couldn’t resist him. According to one story, Hypnos lived in a cave underneath a Greek island; through this cave flowed Lethe, the river of forgetfulness.

But the part of Hypnos’ myth which is more interesting for the purpose of this article is that he has not just a brother but a twin brother: Thanatos, personification of death and mortality.

Sleep and Death
somnus mortis imago

The School for Gods

To go deeper into this important, disquieting vision of “somnus imago mortis”, sleep as representation of death, I shall introduce you to the work of an ancient School and to the ideas of a peculiar figure of a philosopher-monk called Lupelius, a free spirit of the Dark Ages, and a native of Ireland - in those years a refuge for learned men, a land at the crossroads of cultures and traditions, tormented by every war and conflict imaginable.

At a crucial point of my life I met an extraordinary being, a timeless man.

In my Book: The School for Gods, I called Him the Dreamer.

I wish all of you, readers of this article, to meet Him soon in your life. He changed my destiny. Among other difficult undertakings of my apprentship, He pushed me to a disperate, hopeless quest for an original manuscript 1.000 year old, written by Lupelius in the ninth century and whose traces had been lost for centuries.

After indescribable vicissitudes, bringing my quest in three continents, I found the Lupelius’ manuscript in Everan, Armenia, at the Institute of Ancient Manuscripts.

What follow are splinters of wisdom, extracts from the content of this priceless masterpiece.

Sleeping is a bad habit

With his inimitable black humour, universal jester and master of disguises that he was, Lupelius claimed that every night men play out the dress rehearsal for their own final exit from the scene. Persevering in their ‘bad habit’ of sleeping, half the planet goes to bed, its inhabitants bidding each other good night without even realising what a macabre ritual they are performing....

“When you know that sleep is the representation of death, you can no longer approach it as you did before…In any case, whatever precautions or methods you adopt, you must never let anyone, not even your woman, see you sleeping…Exercise the art of staying awake!...A warrior knows that to be caught napping is to expose his vulnerability…it is like inviting the world to attack and strike us to death.”

Fall asleep awake

People fall asleep in the same way as they hope to die…suddenly…But, whatever time it is, however long your day has been and however hard your battle, make sure you ‘fall asleep awake’…Those who do not know how to manage their energy, fall into bed exhausted at the end of the day, more dead than alive…If you really have to sleep for a few minutes, then you must approach sleep from a state of wakefulness. This will prevent you from falling  into the infernal depths.”

Why are we awake?

Antropologists, sociologists, experts of customs and usages, scientists above all, have tried to discover the mechanism which oversees and regulates sleep, so scattering the mist around the enigmatic cause of sleep. But up to now there is no concrete answer to this question: why we sleep?

It is my belief that following a less travelled scientific path the comprehension of sleep becomes deeper and reveals unsuspected secrets if we move the focus of our inquiry from the sleep to the waking state and we ask: why are we awake? Or more simply: what is the real difference between beeng asleep and being awake?

The Endymion Syndrom

What if we found out that the sleeping condition is not limited to the night sleep but were a life time condition? What if we would discover that in reality an ordinary man never wakes up; that what he calls wake were in reality the natural continuation of a state of continuous sleep through which his entire life runs out?

The myth-theme of Endymion being not dead but endlessly asleep, by Zeus’ decree, and who received from Hypnos the special capacity to sleep with open eyes, can well become the crucial symbol of ordinary man’s condition.

The final thesis I am bringing forth is that an hypnotic sleep tyrannically rules every man’s existence. The ordinary man, plunged in a hypnotic sleep, lulled by a song of pain, will keep on lying to himself. No matter how terrible his life may be, he will continue to indulge in it, and will never ever find the will and enough energy to escape.

I will try to go into this matter thoroughly in this last part of the article.

Hypnotic Sleep

The hypothesis of a planetary population of 7 billions of “sleepwalkers”

who work, teach, pollute, riproduce, and above all get in each other’s way and fight, in a state of drowsiness if not of hypnotism, without a real will, driven by strings like puppets, is shocking but has the very fascination of all great pre-scientific hypothesis, of those powerful heresies that later in time have been recognised as corner stones of the history of ideas and of scientific thought.

“Men meet each other in a somnambulistic state, troubled by worries, clouded by doubts and fears, lost in daily discord. They meet so as to pursue insignificant objectives and external, vain advantages.” – says the Dreamer.

The discovery that we do not just sleep at night but that, with the exception of few fleeting moments of lucidità, of real waking, we spend our entire life in a state of unconsciousness, could change our vison forever, and with it our destiny. No political, religious or philosophical system can change society from the outside. Only an individual revolution, a psychological rebirth, a healing of the being, man by man, cell by cell, will free us from an hypnotic vision of the world, from a self-created prison. It will lead us towards a more intelligent civilization, truer, richer, more happy”. For this we need a School, schools of responsibility, schools of wakening. In them the cells of a new humanity will learn the art of dreaming. Dreaming means to be awaken, alert, to keep out of any hypnotism. It means stopping self-sabotage, any self-distructive activity. It means stopping to be in fear, in uncertainty, indulging in any negative mood or emotion. The Art of Dreaming is to realize to be the creator of your reality, that life is as you dream it. It means to stop being a victim of the worls, a victim of your own creation. And if the schools and universities which we know are for men, then we need Schools for Gods. Now we can understand the deep meaning of the Greek mith of Hypnos twin brother of Tanathos.  Hypnotic sleep is moral, psychological death. The opposite of a sleeping state is not to be sleepwalkers, sort of zombies, but to be really alive, alert, aware. It means to lead and not to be led, it means to have a will. Ulysses orders his crew to tie him to the mainmast so as not to obey to the sirens’ song and abandon, not to fall in “mare magnum” of the planetary hypnotic sleep. The ropes bind him to his principles. His decision is the act of a real heros, of a ‘man of the School’. He emblematically shows the way to a new humanity to persue lucidity and freedom. Their motto, has been coined long ago for the worrior-monks of Lupelius: sleep less, die less, dream more. 

Herbert James Draper
Ulysses and Sirens

Mortality

Death. Do We Really Care ? 

(written some years ago)

I once thought I was going to die during the evening. I had worked myself into a state of depression and thought I had overdone it. I have a lousy heart that is was not supposed to last much longer. The only thing I could think of was someone I loved. I left a hastily scribbled note on the desk so that if I died someone would find it eventually and know of my last thoughts.

Surprise! I survived.

I have known a lot of death, all Grandparents; Parents, Uncles; Aunts; Cousins; Siblings; work mates; many, many friends, and several lovers. They have died through illness, car accidents, plane crashes, suicides, murders, and drug overdoses. It is not a stranger, but unlike the late and great author Marguerite Yourcenar, I would not look upon Death as a friend. The ugliness with which so many I have known have died is far from anything I could look upon kindly.

When I contemplate my own death I see nothing but fear. In moments of desperation when suicide seems an option it is not with comfort that I approach it, but with deranged panic, and total terror. On the other hand if I am meditating on some future easy and eventual passing away, fear still lurks beneath this inevitable realisation.

My Father feared his own death, although he had known it to be soon. He took no comfort in the fact that he has survived two near misses because of his heart. He was old and hated it. He passed away with his wife, my mother, holding his hand. I washed him and dressed him with relief that no more would he require the morphine, undergo the fear and the pain and the humiliation. A slow process, an inevitable progression, the end and a beginning for us all.

Age is like death. A line in a favourite Michael Nyman song, appropriately named "I Am An Unusual Thing", never fails to leap out at me. It invades my consciousness whenever it is played, no matter what I am doing. The words are from a riddle by Mozart- "And my life is of short duration, for I die almost at the moment I am born" - the answer is Music, but the words, death following birth so closely, are true. Life is short. As you age, it progresses at a frightening rate. This is one of the compelling reasons to make every moment count and live now, not always for tomorrow, for you may not be here. Hope and plan for tomorrow, but live today to the full. This is why I insist on my life being perfect, and insist that others do likewise. I realise that it is unjust and harsh to expect this of others, but I love them and fear for their eventual fulfilment. Age does not do much except allow you to say you have been around for a certain length of time, and will eventually decay and die. Maturity, whatever that is, experience, growing up, are all rather feeble, meaningless words that are associated with longevity. We change rather little and each of us succeeds or fails with each individual event because of many reasons. Years being the least important. The old can not pull rank because of their age, and the young can not use their youth as an excuse. Once we can walk and talk we have to start taking responsibility for our actions. Some of us did not have the advantage of successful training, but if we care, we should have taken over our own training when we began to experience the first taste of independence. If you have not started yet, don't delay. Remember you will soon be made worms meat.

Yes, I do care.

Click to enlarge and see the Stunning grave of Rudolf Vureyev  and that of Oscar Wilde which is covered in the lipstick marks of hundreds of pilgrim kisses.

For the Curious


Do you need to see what Rudolf Nureyev grave looks like or where Oscar Wilde is buried and other details? Go to Find a Grave site and search something like 51 million records. Right Click link below. It is a fascinating resource for those interested in history and who rests where.


Find a Grave

Some very early personal and true memories of death integrated into my fictional novel 'Dance With the Sun'

......Between the ages of ten and twelve, what would normally be described as a series of somewhat dramatic events happened. An older red headed girl he had gone to primary school with, convinced him to show her and a friend his private parts and to kiss hers. Under her house, which was in retrospect fraught with the danger of discovery they entered into the game, secret, at the insistence of the girls, to all but themselves. Although he had seen Annie undressed plenty of times he was intrigued by the little fleshy mound with a tiny cut in it, that with excitement the adventurer was able to taste and smell for the first time. Guiltlessly he saw nothing terribly wrong with this. It turned out to be quite a lot of fun, but when she and her entire family were killed by a car some time later he often dreamed that, because of their 'sin', her scalped and bloodied body might be burning in Hell. It seemed unreasonable, but that is what middle class Australia was attempting to brainwash him into thinking. Teachers and priests insisted that the flesh he found so natural and beautiful was in fact wicked, and instead of celebrating the human body as he had always done, he must find it shameful. The temptation to touch or admire one another was worse than the destruction of the body, it was the destruction of the soul. He resisted the implication that it was better to kill than to love, but was that not what they were saying?

A short time after this the family and grandparents were driving to the sea shore, when in a moment of sudden horror the car in front of them was smashed in the side by another vehicle speeding from a side street. What must have taken but a few moments became a distant slow motion picture of a woman and her baby flying through the window of the car. As she lay on the road with her child cushioned under her body the vehicle rolled once, twice and on the third impact its bonnet smashed heavily onto the woman and continued to bounce to the side of the bitumen where it finally came to rest. The boy looked at the woman who lay still where she had landed. The shock of the vision erased much of what happened, but he recalls his Grandfather jumping from the car and running to the accident. He would never forget the report the old man gave of the bones that protruded from the young woman's limbs as she lay on the road subject to the indignity of the stares of the crowd gathered to see her in the most private moment of her life; her death. At first the boy thought how suddenly without warning, and when least expected, life can be stilled. Do we see it happening? Is there a moment when we realise that it has finished, or is it simply as if someone has turned off the switch and in an instant we cease to be? For those who do not believe in a future life, this must be the conclusion, or is it possible to see our death as it happens, and then look back on it? How can it be comprehended? Surely the spirit, if strong, will continue to roam.

Having seen death extinguish another soul before his eyes, he tried to contemplate just what had happened to the girl with whom he had played those secret explorations, but the sights his mind gathered up became too horrific for him to capture and hold, and it fled from his thoughts. He found he could not, would not, see the ugliness of the world, and this the greatest of imperfections, was the ugliest of all. To him all things were, or could be, and in the end must be beautiful. Running from the ugly was something that remained with him and something with which he could never come to terms. It was not for him. Life to be worth living, had to be wonderful. There was no room for the evil side. It had to be avoided. It did not exist.......

Museum of Cycladic Art - Funerary Rites in Ancient Greece from x-rated Greece on Vimeo.

Death In Egypt

Death and Mummification in Egypt

It is apparent that the ancient Egyptians suffered from many of the same diseases that we are familiar with today. Like today death could come from illness, accident, animal attack, war and murder. They appear to have had a good, highly developed system of medication and surgery, which was available to all. Although the life expectancy averaged around 40 the 'ideal' lifespan was said to be 110 with notable figures like Ramsis II living into his 90's and Pepi II lived to the age of 100.

From a great 1966 Polish film Faraon (Pharaoh).

The Ancient Egyptians belief in an afterlife was paramount in the conduct of the daily life and the religious ritual of the nation. Death was but a temporary interruption, and eternal life could be ensured by piety, preservation of the body, sacred statuary and the use of funerary incantations, symbolic items and offerings. The 'book of the dead' which had been the collected holy words inscribed on the walls of a tomb were also written on a papyrus and buried with the mummy and could be used to assist the deceased with prayers and directions as he navigated his way through the trials and judgement of the underworld. Not only was it an obligation to prepare oneself for the afterlife, but the descendants also had a responsibility to ensure their success in eternity as was shown in such inscriptions of a son for his father. 

By his eldest son, the chief priest and scribe, Ptah: 'I came that I might do this for him, when he was buried in the beautiful west, according to that which he spake about, while he was upon his two feet.' (from the 4thh Dynasty)

It is often assumed that the natural desiccation of a body left in the hot drying sands suggested the process of mummification, however new discoveries in the Sahara challenge this idea. A five thousand year old mummy of a boy has been discovered (a thousand years older than Egyptian mummies) and although most evidence has been covered by the sands, other influences on Egyptian culture have been found. During a climatic change the monsoons moved north and rain fell in the North African area and a wide civilisation flourished there. Signs of art of men with animal heads like the Anubis mask used for the priests in mummification also have been found. These habits appear to have pre-dated and possibly filtered to the Nile Valley as Egyptian culture began to arise. Whatever the origins, mummification became the norm of the wealthy and those who could scrape together the money or the favours necessary. This observation of the body remaining after death may have even led to the belief that the person (soul - ka) also lived on after death. Mummification was performed by the Chief Embalmer dressed in the role of Anubis,  the God’s Seal Bearer, a Lector Priest who read spells, the Paraschites who removed the internal organs and minor priests for bandaging and other duties. In all it took seventy days which was also the period the Decans ( or groups of stars which controlled the calendar) travelled the underworld. The body was washed with water containing natron (a drying agent) and then taken to the Wabet or place of Embalming.  An incision was made in the side of the body and the lungs, stomach, intestines and liver were removed and the space filled with a temporary stuffing. A hole was made through the nostril and the brain was mashed and drained out through the nose. The face was then coated with resin. The liver was left as it was considered unimportant and the heart was also left in place as it was essential for the weighing of one's life against Ma'at at the last judgement (left). By about the 16th day the body was placed in a bath of dry natron (Sodium Carbonate, Sodium Bicarbonate with some Sodium Sulphate and Sodium Chloride) and the internal cavity was also packed with natron. After 40 days all moisture had been removed, and the body was now safe from decay. In some periods the mummies were also covered with hot resin for further protection against decay and linen packing used to give a lifelike appearance, or in the case of Ramsis II the nose was packed with peppercorns to maintain the shape. The same process was done for the organs which were even individually wrapped in linen and placed either in Canopic jars, back in the body, or between the legs of the mummy. 
After desiccation the body was taken to Per Nefer (the house of Beauty). Perfumes and oils were used to soften the skin. The body was re-stuffedwith linen soaked in resin, lichen, onions, mud or sawdust, the incision was covered  with wax, or a metal (gold) plate decorated with magical symbols. Occasionally make-up was applied or gold leaf, men were painted red and women yellow with henna rubbed onto the hands and feet. A false penis or nipples were also added on occasions to enable the dead to enjoy sex in the afterlife. It took at least fifteen days of prayer and ritual to wrap the body. The body was then completely wrapped from head to toe with many layers of linen and the final being a single large sheet of linen which was secured by linen bands. A mask made from cartonnage, or gold and precious stones in the case of royal burials was sometimes placed over the head and shoulders of the mummy.Resin was then poured over the mummy as well as perfumes and unguents and the mummy was then placed in the coffin. After death Anubis weighs the dead persons heart against the feather of Ma'at. If the heart is heavy with evil deeds Ammit devours the heart, condemning the deceased to eternal oblivion, but if the heart is light with righteousness he is presented by Horus to Osiris to join the afterlife. The tomb was packed with real or models of clothes, wigs, make-up, perfumes, tools, food and wine, in fact everything required to continue life. What items and how much, of course, depended on the wealth of the deceased. On occasions the items were merely represented in the wall paintings. Also included was the boat for transport trough the waters of the underworld. The last ritual was the "opening the mouth," which enabled the dead to recite the magic spells to enable them to live invisibly forever among their descendants on earth. A ka-statue of the deceased was present to hold the person's spirit. Images usually depicted the person as youthful and perfect as he hoped to be in the afterlife. Also included in the tomb were shabtis or answerers; small statues to act as servants and do any tasks required of the deceased.

The word Mummy comes from the Persian word mummeia which means 'pitch' or 'asphalt,' a naturally occurring crude oil that oozed to the surface. Mummeia was a prized medicine in Europe, but was in limited supply. So they took resin from mummies and sold it as mummeia. Eventually the entire body was ground up as medicine so the term grew to mean the whole wrapped corpse.

The Book Of the Dead was a collection of spells and instructions to help as a guide through the underworld. It enabled the dead to find their way and overcome obstacles with passwords and clues; enabled them to be identified and answer questions so that they could arrive at the Fields of Reeds. Questions posed for the deceased related to whether they had embraced life enough to be able to live again? did they develop enough character to continue their personality?  was the heart truly open spiritually?  how many seeds of eternity had they planted in life?  had the invested sufficient effort in surpassing physical limits?  had they made sufficient effort in gaining possessions for their eternal soul?  had the made truth reality in life?

In one papyrus of a royal woman, the so called 'negative confessions' list in reply to various forms of address:- "I have not committed sins: I have not robbed: I have not stolen: I have not acted with violence: I have not killed humans: I have not stolen offerings: I have not caused destruction: I have not plundered the divine property of the temple: I have not committed falsehood: I have not plundered grain: I have not cursed: I have not transgressed: I have not slaughtered the divine cattle of the temple: I have not done evil: I have not plundered cultivated land: I have not acted in lust:  I have not cursed anyone: I have not been angry without just cause: I have not slept with the husband of any woman: I have not polluted myself: I have not acted with terror against any man: I have not plundered: I have not acted with anger: I have not turned a deaf ear to the words of righteousness and truth: I have not stirred up strife: I have not caused anyone to weep: I have not fornicated: I have not eaten my heart: I have not exaggerated: I have not judged anyone hastily: I have not cut the hair and skin of divine animals: I have not raised my voice in speech: I have not committed a sin and have not done wrong: I have not cursed royalty: I have not spoiled running water: I have not acted with arrogance: I have not cursed divinity: I have not acted with false pride: I have not acted scornfully: I have not increased my wealth except by means of my own possessions: I have not scorned the principle of my city."

Many of the above have more symbolic meaning than is apparent and also it could be noted that it is a more detailed list of denial of what was later forbidden in the Ten Commandments.

Herodotus on Mummification 

"...As regards mourning and funerals, when a distinguished man dies all the women of the household plaster their heads and faces with mud, then, leaving the body indoors, perambulate the town with the dead man's female relatives, their dresses fastened with a girdle, and beat their bared breasts. The men too, for their part, follow the same procedure, wearing a girdle and beating themselves like the women. The ceremony over, they take the body to be mummified. Mummification is a distinct profession. The embalmers, when a body is brought to them, produce specimen models in wood, painted to resemble nature, and graded in quality; the best and most expensive kind is said to represent a being whose name I shrink from mentioning in this connection; the next best is somewhat inferior and cheaper while the third sort is cheapest of all. After pointing out these differences in quality, they ask which of the three is required, and the kinsmen of the dead man, having agreed upon a price, go away and leave the embalmers to their work. The most perfect process is as follows: as much as possible of the brain is extracted through the nostrils with an iron hook, and what the hook cannot reach is rinsed out with drugs; next the flank is laid open with a flint knife and the whole contents of the abdomen removed; the cavity is then thoroughly cleansed and washed out, first with palm wine and again with an infusion of pounded spices. After that it is filled with pure bruised myrrh, cassia, and every other aromatic substance with the exception of frankincense, and sewn up again, after which the body ;s placed in natrum, covered entirely over, for seventy days - never longer. When this period, which must not be exceeded, is over, the body is washed and then wrapped from head to foot in linen cut into strips and smeared on the under side with gum, which is commonly used by the Egyptians instead of glue. In this condition the body is given back to the family, who have a wooden case made, shaped like the human figure, into which it is put. The case is then sealed up and stored in a sepulchral chamber, upright against the wall. When, for reasons of expense, the second quality is called for, the treatment is different: no incision is made and the intestines are not removed, but oil of cedar is injected with a syringe into the body through the anus which is afterwards stopped up to prevent the liquid from escaping. The body is then pickled in natrum for the prescribed number of days, on the last of which the oil is drained o£ The effect of it is so powerful that as it leaves the body it brings with it the stomach and intestines in a liquid state, and as the flesh, too, is dissolved by the natrum, nothing of the body is left but the bones and skin. After this treatment it is returned to the family without further fuss. The third method, used for embalming the bodies of the poor, is simply to clear out the intestines with a purge and keep the body seventy days in natrum. It is then given back to the family to be taken away. When the wife of a distinguished man dies, or any woman who happens to be beautiful or well known, her body is not given to the embalmers immediately, but only after the lapse of three or four days. This is a precautionary measure to prevent the embalmers from violating the corpse, a thing which is said actually to have happened in the case of a woman who had just died. The culprit was given away by one of his fellow workmen. If anyone, either an Egyptian or a foreigner, is found drowned in the river or killed by a crocodile, there is the strongest obligation upon the people of the nearest town to have the body embalmed in the most elaborate manner and buried in a consecrated burial-place; no one is allowed to touch it except the priests of the Nile - not even relatives or friends; the priests alone prepare it for burial with their own hands and place it in the tomb, as if it were something more sacred than the body of a man."

We shall meet the Ferryman

From the Pyramid Texts of Egypt's Pepi I (around 2300 BC)

The king addresses the Ferryman Aken

"O Boatman of the boatless just, Ferryman of the Field of Rushes! Pepi is just before heaven and earth, Pepi is just before this isle of earth, To which he has swum, to which he has come, Which is between the thighs of Nut! He is that pygmy of the dances of god, Bringer of joy before his great throne! This is what you heard in the houses, What you overheard in the streets On the day Pepi was called to life, To hear what had been ordained. Lo, the two on the great god's throne Who summon Pepi to life, eternal, They are Well-being and Health! Ferry this Pepi to the Field, The great god's beautiful throne, That he may do what is done with the revered: He commends them to the ka's, He assigns them to the bird-catch; Pepi is such a one: He will assign Pepi to the ka's, He will assign Pepi to the bird-catch."

 In Greek and Roman mythology the river Styx was the boundary between life and the underworld. Charon the ferryman would guide the dead for payment of a coin. This became used in many burial rituals by either placing a coin on the tongue or eyes to pay for the ride. The opposite bank was guarded by the vicious three-headed dog Cerabus. The underworld was ruled by Hades (right), who was also known by the Roman name (Pluto). He was the son of Cronus and Rhea and brother to Zeus (Jupiter) and Poseidon (Neptune). His wife was Persephone (Proserpina), the daughter of Demeter (Ceres). The dead were judged by Minos, Rhadamanthus and Aeacus. Hades came to mean the underworld itself and not just the god who presided there.