The Temple Of The Pharaoh

'Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.’—Plato

It is in the paradoxical brevity of brief moments that we first encounter the ethereal presence of the afterlife. Thereafter, we remain oblivious to the faint, unrecognisable footfalls and whispered voices that may haunt or visit us silently. This yearning—an impulse we hold within the vicissitudes of fortune—is often attributed to serendipity. Those who believe seldom achieve, through mere osmosis, the response they seek, and they fail to uncover the primal truth.

Thus, we are adrift within the immanent nature of such considerations, and the solace we seek becomes forever the image of an elusive paradise—ambiguous, unattainable, and metaphysical. In consequence, our mortality fades, but our essence will traverse the uncharted space and vortex at the very heart of the universe. It is in those vast spheres of the cosmos that man's ultimate journey—the culmination of his existence—will unfold, if not in the moment, then in the breath of eternity. It is incumbent upon us to discover whether our fate lies in the despair of a hellish doom or the serenity of an idyllic heaven—both abstract opposites, forever in balance.

The preternatural event I now recount is tied to the factual accounts of my encounters with the ancient Egyptians, later chronicled in my journal. I shall herewith offer an account with the clarity I possess, so that you, the reader, may come to understand the true nature of the experience which occurred within the sacred walls of the Pharaoh’s temple.

In this, we find the essence of man’s eternal search for justification through the means of religion; yet it is neither religious nor scientific in nature, but a convergence of both. The soul, from the moment of our birth, is in a constant state of evolution—a natural process, just as the movement of the heavens above is constant and orderly, superior to all else.

There are, of course, countless sceptics who will brand me a solipsistic idealist, but heed the illuminating words I now impart. They are my personal reflections, subject to the philosophical ideals of an esoteric nature, and may, to some, seem beyond the ordinary realm of human understanding.

I am Cecil Lester, and in this account you shall read of my genuine encounters with the ancient Egyptians and the ominous death which befell me. Know that the entirety of my life was dedicated to the pursuit of the ultimate discovery—that of the afterlife.

My studies, particularly those concerning death and the soul, were to take me on a journey fraught with unforeseen consequences, brought about by the capricious forces of fate. My research would lead me from England to the timeless land of the pharaohs, Egypt, where the ancient mysteries awaited my discovery.

The ominous event that I shall recount was not one I sought, but one to which I was drawn, unwittingly and inexorably. I did not willingly partake in the great force that seemed to direct my fate; rather, I succumbed to it—as though by some predestined command that I could neither foresee nor resist.

It was in the year 1918 that I found myself in the great Cenotaph temple of Ramesses II at Abydos, Egypt. At the time, I was deeply engaged in my research on the ancient conceptions of the soul, particularly those of Pe and Nekhen, as mentioned in the Pyramid Texts at Saqqara during the 5th and 6th Dynasties of the Old Kingdom. It was there, standing in the Second Hypostyle Hall of Seti I, that a strange vision unfolded before me. I saw, as if in a waking dream, the figure of the pharaoh, Ramesses II, walking solemnly with his entourage of servants, as though emerging from another time.

I was an archaeologist who had devoted much of my life to the study of Egyptology, particularly the work of Jean-François Champollion in deciphering the cartouches of Egypt. I had studied the ancient Egyptian views on the afterlife with great diligence, but never had I encountered the sensation that now gripped me. These cartouches were unique, and the towering pillars of the hall loomed over me like giants. A beam of sunlight pierced through an upper crevice in the temple, momentarily blinding me as I advanced, before illuminating the cartouches with an otherworldly glow.

It was then that I began to witness flashes of the ancient Egyptians, their forms materialising before me in spectral images. Their presence, inexplicable yet undeniably real, seemed to carry a weight of meaning beyond anything I had ever encountered. The ancient Egyptian concept of the individual—believed to be composed of various elements of both physical and spiritual characteristics—resonated with me far more profoundly than any of the biblical teachings with which I had been raised.

During my time in Egypt, I began to experience unsettling visions. These brief flashes were harbingers of the inevitable, a series of disturbing events that appeared far beyond mere coincidence. The encounters I had with the Egyptians—whose forms appeared to me with increasing frequency—caused me to question whether the spectres I had once seen only in dreams had, in some inexplicable manner, materialised into my waking reality.

I had often heard that the Orphic wraiths—the souls of the dead who wander the earth—are the eternal guardians of sacred spaces, visible only to those few destined to witness them. I had long pondered the afterlife as conceived by the ancient Egyptians and considered much about the nature of such a fate—a fate that, once realised, is lost in the abyss of nothingness. Death, the final cessation of life, is but the threshold to an eternity, the consequences of which are irreversible. And I, it seemed, had stepped into the intrinsic domain of that destiny.

The essence of my soul felt intricately bound to the mysterious presence of the existential Egyptians, whom I perceived as immaterial beings, encountered metempirically. Is the soul truly incompatible with death, as it is with life? Is it not, rather, a mere continuation—a seity of eternal energy, manifesting in a form that our society has sorely misunderstood?

I do not present my views on the matter of the soul and death in alignment with established scientific or religious doctrines. Instead, I offer them through a zetetic lens, constructing my analogy upon the firm foundations of critical enquiry, whilst embracing the grand pantosophy of universal knowledge. Death—that horripilating fear which we instinctively seek to avoid or dismiss—is nonetheless an intrinsic part of human nature. It has developed through a gradual yet intricate evolution, perceived by most as an inscrutable enigma.

We have learnt the significance of this concept by rote, through ordalium, and remain forever troubled by the aspect of the phenomenon we are reluctant to accept as inconsequential. I had studied the five components of the Egyptian soul: Ren, Ka, Ib, Ba, and Sheut, and I knew well that Anubis was revered as the god of souls.

The ancients, particularly the Greeks, believed the soul to be incorporeal—a spiritual breath that animated the body. Plato, too, posited that the soul consisted of three parts: the logos (reason), thymos (spirit), and eros (desire)—all fundamental to its basic function and understanding. We, in turn, confer both spirit and soul upon the earthly vessel that is our bodily form, and remain obsessed with the singular thought of the soul's passage to the afterlife.

It was in the throes of this belief that I experienced the phenomena of transmigration—or metempsychosis—which came to define my ongoing struggle with the question of life and death.

I had not anticipated the turning point, the peripeteia, that would radically transform my understanding of these events. The abundant signs—the wandering dead depicted in the Egyptian symbols, the vivid hypotyposis of their forms—became increasingly present. The prolific images of my encounters were faithfully recorded in the pages of my journal, as I sought to capture their inexplicable nature within the context of this, my unimaginative account.

Thus, when my body reached the finality of its expiry—when pallor and mortis set in—I felt only indifference: listless and detached. It was in that last, gasping breath that my mortal existence ceased. But my immortal soul? That, I soon realised, had only just begun its journey, its true existence, to burgeon.

I shall not offer grand declarations on the facts of death; for such arguments are, as I now know, fundamentally untenable. My words were not rooted in doxastic belief but rather in a logical approach, which, though it may seem alien or unconventional, holds the essence of truth. My vision of death did not accord with modern interpretations. There was no sententious Atticism—no ancient wisdom—that I could offer to the immutable fact of death, for it is as inveterate as the shape of the Earth itself.

The realisation of my fate was a sobering and experimental sensation, one which perplexed me at first. However, my mind soon adapted to the effects—those imperant and psychagogic forces that surrounded me. I began to discern the voices of the Egyptians, now audible to my hearing, their unique echoes reverberating mysteriously. The spectacular sequence of the latent dimension, which had previously existed only in the realm of thought and conjecture, was now manifesting before me.

I had always been drawn to the universal entity that connected the unseen beings I had glimpsed in childhood—their forms now inexplicably associated with the mysterious realm I had entered. Outside the temple, I often observed a peculiar formation of clouds, a strange conglomeration of towering cumuli, each day assuming an almost deliberate shape. Birds with fluttering wings cast an indelible impression upon my mind, as though they were extraordinary avatars—representatives of some higher power.

If there is indeed a culpable force behind the chain of events that led to my demise, know that it was far more than a mere unfortunate outcome. As a child, I had pondered the incomprehensible nature of death, but it was only upon reaching the pinnacle of wisdom and anamnesis—in the sacred halls of the temple—that I truly began to understand its reality.

Do not hastily judge my theory based on any perceived akrasia, for there is, I now know, a spiritual anabiosis after death. The soul, in some form, may indeed traverse the vast, inordinate boundaries of the wondrous universe in a spectral state. Do not dismiss me as a foolish archaeologist; my thoughts were not rooted in arrogance or whimsy, but in the unsettling reflections of my final days.

The eicastic Egyptians that I began to discern were unnameable and alien in origin, appearing more frequently as I sensed the pharaoh’s presence drawing near. They were imperceptible to most—those who could not see them—but to me, who beheld them clearly, they were unquestionably real, though at first they had seemed shapeless and indistinct.

I became consumed with the pursuit of uncovering the primordial origin of the soul. In the final three years of my life—those years of ceaseless torment—I was never, in any sense, free from the burden of my suffering, nor from the gnawing inability to fully comprehend the profound significance of both the soul and death. Know, however, that the sole object of my relentless inquiry was the supreme appeasement I had long sought but never truly attained in life.

It was only in the eventual embrace of death that I found the release I so desperately sought—only then was my soul truly unbound. For there exist certain mysteries, inscrutable and beyond reproach, which cannot be reasoned into submission. The inevitable need I felt did not merely epitomise the course of my existence; it defined the entirety of my being. Thus, in a candid admission of my deepest reflections, I confess that my futile attempts to bring logic to bear on the notion of death itself were merely steps towards the realisation of the necessity of my journey.

The vast cosmos to which I so frequently referred holds an intimate connection with the invisible realms—those components of reality that remain forever divisible and elusive. The preconception that death is akin to a societal construct, a belief grounded in the educations of culture and religion, was, to my mind, a notion unworthy of full acceptance. I wondered—if indeed the soul, once liberated from its corporeal prison, traverses the latent spectrum of the universe, can we not surmise that its essence remains an enduring force, one that exists independently of the body?

It is not unfathomable to suggest that this energy, this essence of the soul, might exist beyond the physical realm, manifesting as an intangible yet potent force. The concept of anima mundi—the “world soul,” which unites all living beings—had long held sway over the minds of the learnt. However, I questioned whether the Earth, though it might serve as a temporary abode, truly captures the soul’s full nature. The state of the soul, once released from its mortal coil, is not immutable; it shifts in ways not yet understood by our science or philosophy.

Our intellect, our nous, is the guiding force that enables us to navigate the complexities of existence. It is, after all, through the agency of the soul that we perceive and understand the world around us. The soul, I assert, is the essential source of all mortal life, and through its bond with the body, it attains sentience.

I came to realise that even after the body expires, the soul does not perish. It continues to exist—no longer constrained by the physical form—and manifests beyond the boundaries of human understanding, perhaps even as a spectre, a lingering presence. I reflected on the thoughts of Ibn Sina, the great Middle Eastern philosopher, whose conception of the soul suggested its immortality as a gradual unfolding, an absorption into the greater cosmic order. Yet, in my own musings, I could not help but question the veracity of this notion.

The eminent Augustine of Hippo, one of the foundational minds of Western Christianity, described the soul as a distinct substance endowed with reason, meant to govern the body with wisdom and coherence. His vision of the soul’s capacity to engage with the physical world was something I found both enlightening and troubling, as I sought to reconcile it with the enigmas that beset me.

I delved into the concept of jiva, the soul in Hinduism, believed to transmigrate through countless cycles of birth and death. In these considerations, I began to doubt whether the soul’s inherent nature was truly comprehended—or if it, too, was simply caught in a cycle of which it had no true perception. I also grappled with the conclusions of neuroscience, which ascribe human thought and behaviour solely to physical processes within the brain, reducing the mind to mere neurological function. This stark reductionism struck me as profoundly inadequate in explaining the depth and mystery of human consciousness.

Theories from physics, such as those proposing that spiritual forces cannot interact with ordinary matter, left me unconvinced. I found myself drawn instead to the enigmas of quantum mechanics, where consciousness appears to influence the outcome of events. This led me to wonder whether the soul’s energy might indeed transcend the physical boundaries we currently comprehend. Could its essence belong to a broader, unseen framework of the cosmos—an energy intricately woven into the same quantum reality that governs material existence?

The theological notion of traducianism—asserting that the soul is not divinely created at each birth but inherited through the lineage of humanity—troubled me deeply. It opened unsettling questions regarding the soul’s origins, its authenticity, and its eternal nature. Yet I came to see that the critical point lies in the soul’s departure from the body, for in that moment, its ultimate destiny is unveiled.

For years, I have wrestled with the question of what becomes of consciousness after death. Does it truly vanish with the cessation of bodily life? Science insists that mind and consciousness are inextricably bound to the physiological state of the brain, yet my meditations led me to believe there may be more to our existence than mere biological function. Could it be that, beyond death, the soul persists—somehow, somewhere—in a form that defies our current understanding?

The image of the soul adrift in an abyss of forgetfulness, forever severed from the conscious world of the living, is undeniably disquieting. Yet if the soul is indeed more precious than transient cherubs—those ephemeral and capricious beings—then surely the quintessence of our soul’s energy must surpass all earthly animation. In that belief, however fragile or uncertain, I find the faintest glimmer of hope.

In the final year of my life, the onset of doubt compelled me to scrutinise the confounding signs of death that increasingly encroached upon my existence. I endeavoured to interpret the strange formations of clouds, the discernible voices of ancient Egyptians, the restless flocks of birds, the rhythms of the sidereal period, and the troubling ambiguity of my own perceptions. My enquiries, persistent and exacting, led me deep into the annals of Egyptian lore, where I unearthed profound insights into the soul’s ceaseless voyage to the otherworld—beyond even the imagined reaches of interstellar travel.

The concept of infinity, ever elusive and ambiguous, seemed to mirror the universe itself: expanding, unfolding, and becoming more intricate with each passing day. I became convinced that the Egyptians and the Mayans, with their ancient and enigmatic wisdom, had glimpsed truths long before modern science dared to grasp them. The persistent ringing in my ears—an unyielding, intrusive sound—grew into an obsession, something I could not easily dismiss as natural. It struck me as extramundane, a harbinger of forces not of this world.

These strange phenomena, which I documented with fastidious care in voluminous notebooks, filled me with a dual sense of awe and dread. I dared not reveal them to others, wary that they might be hastily dismissed as the ravings of a mind worn thin by fatigue and obsession.

As these events unfolded, I discerned a pattern, a chronology that seemed to affirm my deepest suspicions, though I was not blind to the possibility of madness whispering at the edges of my thoughts. My mind remained keen, and the vivid visions of ancient Egypt—the Peristyle Court, the Portico, the dim Hypostyle Halls—haunted me with relentless precision.

Death pressed its full weight upon my soul, and for many months, my dreams became nightmares, their substance vivid and unrelenting. My body grew pale, frail, and debilitated, yet paradoxically, my mind sharpened, and my perceptions intensified. I felt a profound awareness of the energy radiating from those ancient beings—the Egyptians—and my understanding of their connection to the energies of the cosmos deepened into something I can only describe as a grim enlightenment.

Returning to my home outside Cairo, I began to experiment earnestly with Nikola Tesla’s theories of wireless power, attuning myself to frequencies on the radio that, at first, seemed like nothing more than static noise. With patience, these signals began to unfold, revealing themselves as emanations of an energy beyond ordinary human comprehension—an energy I came to believe was intrinsically linked to the ancient Egyptians’ esoteric knowledge.

Through these profound experiences, I felt a strange, almost unearthly communion with them. Though impossible to articulate in the language of the living, these encounters left me irrevocably transformed. The precise hours of my encounters with these ancient beings remain a blur, yet their presence was palpable during moments of profound significance. Their voices—neither fully human nor wholly other—resounded within me, a haunting chorus reminding me of my ephemeral place in this vast, unfathomable cosmos.

There are those who insist that the soul is inextricably bound to the body, but I remain unconvinced. The soul’s architecture and its profound, energetic essence defy such reductive explanations. I must confess: I never fully comprehended the reason for my own imminent death, except to sense that it was to serve as a threshold—a confirmation of my passage to the other realm, the realm I had long sought to penetrate. Destiny, I have found, is a murky and often deceptive guide, especially when the matter at hand is as inscrutable as the nature of the soul.

In time, I came to reflect on Einstein’s theory of general relativity, that grand conception of the interplay between mass, space, and time. It struck me that within its elegant framework lay a possible glimpse into the soul’s nature. If Einstein’s theory holds, then perhaps the soul, as an entity of pure energy, might manifest within the same continuum as the gravitational forces that govern the cosmos. In this light, death is no longer mere cessation; it becomes a prelude to the liberation of the soul—a necessary, perhaps even glorious, step in its ceaseless odyssey through the boundless reaches of existence.

It is written in the Holy Qur’an that Allah takes the rûh at death. If, as I have long suspected, the rûh is indeed the soul, then it follows that the soul, upon death, is released from its mortal vessel, returning to the vast cosmos from which it originated. Could it be, then, that the strange phenomena I encountered—the disembodied voices, the fleeting apparitions—were not the mere byproducts of a fevered mind, but genuine manifestations of the soul’s true essence?

The enduring dichotomy between science and mysticism has ever been a source of my deepest contemplation. I have come to believe that the soul is not a theoretical abstraction, but a vital, integrative force within the universe—a force that transcends corporeal confines and endures in ways that remain, for now, beyond the grasp of human understanding. Until my final breath, I am resolved to continue the search for that elusive truth which lies beyond this mortal veil.

Often, I envisioned Polaris, the steadfast star, as my silent guide, leading me towards that distant realm of the cosmos—the sublime cosmogyral wanderings among the perennial galaxies that have forever ensnared my imagination with their ineffable allure. The persistent uncertainty that tormented me remained unassuaged, and those ethereal voices—so unlike any earthly utterance—resounded once again within my consciousness. They came not as ostentatious symptoms of an insufferable pathomania, but as signals—resonances from the beyond, too profound, too coherent, to be dismissed.

Thus it is that my experience required no elaborate psychology to rationalise the events that had so indelibly marked my life. I had, in the end, become reconciled to the inexorable curse of death, my soul fated to wander the vast expanses of the cosmos as a spectral presence, lost within its immeasurable void. My pallor deepened by the day, and the incessant ringing in my ears and skull—a maddening, ceaseless hymn—refused to relent.

I struggled to preserve my mental equilibrium as I grappled with the enigma of when and where these mysterious entities—those inscrutable beings seeking contact—might manifest. Relentlessly, I transcribed the details of these recurring occurrences into my notes and recorded, using an apparatus of my own design, the eerie sounds of the ancient Egyptians. The haunting images of the pharaohs seemed to rise, resplendent and undeniable, before my eyes. I returned to the temple with a firm conviction that what I was witnessing was no mere pareidolia but a genuine encounter grounded in an unshakable reality.

One blistering afternoon, beneath a sky blanched by relentless sun, I wandered into a sector of the necropolis whispered of in dread—a forbidden expanse where the air itself seemed reluctant to stir. The Bedouins who had guided me there pleaded that I turn back, yet something—an invisible hand of fate—drew me onwards. Beyond a weatherworn statue of Anubis, I discovered a jagged fissure in the ground, partially concealed beneath drifting sands. Without hesitation, I descended, compelled by forces I could not name.

The temperature plummeted as I ventured deeper, the walls of the passage trembling faintly with an unseen pulse. The narrow descent gave way to a vast chamber, the air heavy with centuries of dust and the scent of ancient incense. Above me, the vaulted ceiling glittered with lapis lazuli and onyx, stars in a firmament long forgotten. At the heart of the room lay a sarcophagus of impossible grandeur, its surface etched with glyphs so old they seemed to writhe under my gaze.

Suddenly, the room pulsed with a cold radiance. Wisps of spectral energy coalesced into robed figures, priests and priestesses of a bygone era, their forms translucent yet terrifyingly present. They began to chant, low and resonant, shaking the chamber to its foundations. As their voices rose, the sarcophagus shuddered open, and from within, a churning darkness spilled forth—a void, endless and consuming. I stepped back in horror, but my feet found no purchase; I was frozen, a mere observer to forces beyond comprehension.

A clawed, shadowy hand reached from the abyss, brushing the rim of the sarcophagus. In that instant, an explosion of blinding light hurled me against the chamber wall. When I regained consciousness, the fissure had vanished, the chamber sealed as though my trespass had never occurred. Yet something inside me had irrevocably changed.

In the days that followed, visions plagued me relentlessly—whispers in forgotten tongues, flashes of cosmic realms where mortal souls were but fleeting sparks. I became consumed, knowing that my end was inextricably bound to the temple and its spectral inhabitants.

I had a particular vision; an unexpected storm struck the desert, forcing me to seek shelter in a dilapidated outpost near the Valley of the Kings. Alone, by the flickering glow of an oil lamp, I pored over the hieroglyphic transcripts and sketches I had collected—pages brimming with cryptic symbols, many of which no scholar had successfully interpreted.

As the wind shrieked against the thin walls, I became aware of a sound—low at first, like distant drums, then rising steadily in pitch. It wasn’t the storm. I turned to see the shadows lengthen unnaturally, twisting and writhing across the room, forming outlines I dared not name. My breath caught as, from the darkened corner, a figure began to materialize: a woman, robed in linen, her head crowned with the horns and sun disk of Hathor. Her eyes were obsidian voids, fixed upon me with an unsettling intimacy.

She spoke—not with words, but with a voice that echoed inside my skull: 'You trespass not upon stone, but upon eternity. You seek what no mortal should see'.

I wanted to cry out, to flee, but my limbs refused to obey. The walls of the outpost seemed to dissolve around us, replaced by endless dunes under a midnight sky. In that terrible silence, visions cascaded across my mind: endless funerary processions; the weighing of the heart in the Hall of Ma’at; celestial barges floating through the Duat, the Egyptian underworld. I saw the gods themselves—silent arbiters of fate—watching, judging.

Then as suddenly as it began, the vision receded. I found myself once more in the outpost, gasping for breath, sweat soaking my clothes despite the chill. The woman was gone, but her parting words rang through my mind like a curse: 'The door you seek is open, but know this: once crossed, it may never be shut'.

I knew then that my fate was sealed. Whatever lay within the temple was not just history or myth—it was my destiny, inescapable and final.

Shaken yet resolute, I gathered my scattered notes and secured them within my satchel, the weight of their knowledge now heavier than before. Though every instinct cried out for retreat, something greater—an inexorable pull—compelled me onwards. I realised then that discovery and doom had become indistinguishable, bound together in a fate I was powerless to resist.

On a cold, tempestuous night, as I stood within the sacred walls of the temple, I was irresistibly drawn by the voices of the ancient Egyptians and the echoing winds of the desert, whilst birds fell silently from the sky in eerie descent. The darkened, foreboding clouds did not seem to arise by natural means; something unnatural had surely triggered the unfolding events.

The desert wind howled, and the moon hung low and heavy, casting a pallid glow over the ancient stones. I carried with me a staff inscribed with protective glyphs, though in my heart, I knew no earthly artifact could shield me from what awaited.

Upon entering the sanctuary, I was met not with silence but with a sonorous hum—a deep, bone-rattling frequency that seemed to emanate from the stones themselves. Then I saw him: Seti I, immense and luminous, his eyes twin furnaces of ancient fire. Without a word, he gestured, and a hidden doorway materialized before me, glowing faintly as if lit from within by stars.

Inside the temple, I made my way to the Second Hypostyle Hall of Seti I, where a portal—shimmering with an otherworldly glow—opened before me, allowing the mystical Egyptians to pass into our world. They appeared as radiant, ethereal masses of energy, their forms surpassing the comprehension of mortal perception. There was no physical mechanism through which I could interact; only the appearance of a stranger—a being of intense, radiant luminosity—emerged before me. In that moment, I realised it was the hour of my death, the appointed time for my soul to depart from its corporeal vessel. The walls shimmered with moving constellations, and at the centre floated a radiant orb, pulsating as though alive.

At first, the scintillating light flooded my senses, followed by ethereal visions of the ancient Egyptians, who swept past me like gusts of wind—swift, undulating, and unmistakable. Then, the image of the pharaoh appeared—a vision so vivid, so crystalline, that all doubt fled from my mind. What had appeared before me on that stormy night were indeed the unmistakable figures of the ancient Egyptians. But was this a hypnagogic dream, a fleeting hallucination, or would I awaken in the morning as though nothing had transpired?

The movement of my arms grew numb, and my heartbeat slowed, its rhythmic pulse fading as though in resignation. My mind remained sharp, fixated wholly on the singular notion of my soul’s existence. The sui generis being who had first appeared to me returned—its presence unmistakable. Slowly, I felt my soul, like a glowing orb, lift gently from my body. It rose like the mist from a dying flame. I saw my own form crumple to the floor, lifeless, eyes wide with the last vision of eternity. The light enveloped me, and I crossed the threshold—no longer of this world but part of the eternal breath of souls that weave through time and space.

I looked upon my own lifeless form, motionless and cold on the temple floor. Darkness briefly enveloped me, and yet, I felt no fear. Soon, a glaring light emerged—an unfathomable portal opening to the boundless cosmos. My final mortal breath escaped me, its psychomachy dissolving into nothingness, and I lay placidly on the ground as the great portal to the other world closed, sealing my fate. I became forever bound to that ancient temple, where my lifeless body was discovered the next day by the Bedouins who had long aided me.

Before my departure, I had left a letter for my esteemed colleague and fellow archaeologist, Mahmoud Al Bashir, recounting the experience and the events of that fateful night. My request was simple: to be buried with a humble headstone bearing only my name, accompanied by a sonnet—my final testament—engraved upon it.

The account you have read of my encounters with the ancient Egyptians, I trust, has shed light on a path of introspective enlightenment. I ask only that you understand: I have become one of those unknowable souls—immortal, invisible to earthly eyes, now travelling eternally through the aeonian infinity of the universe, until I reach the distant, heavenly paradise the ancient Egyptians called Aaru. Do not pity me, for I am far beyond your pity. Instead, envy my freedom, for I am transpicuous—forever immortal.

The temple of the pharaoh was but one of many insurmountable portals between death and the afterlife. Countless others remain, untold and undiscovered by humankind. We stand merely at the threshold of an ancient mystery, awaiting those bold enough to uncover its depths.

Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.

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