Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 214, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 September 1918 — TOPROTECTWIDOW [ARTICLE]

TOPROTECTWIDOW

Egyptian Wrote First Will of Which There Is Record — - . - • - Papyrus on Which the Desires of Utah Wore Recorded Has Recently Been Discovered in a Good State of Preservation. Utah, the Egyptian, looked out from beneath his shaggy eyebrows across the Nile, where the eternal Pyramids shimmered In the - heat against the cloudless sky. Gods of Egypt I How dim were those piles of stone I In the bright light of the sun god, Ra, he should have seen those man-made mountains clearly. Shades of his ancestors! His eyes were dimming fast! He was getting old—very old, so he suddenly realized. He looked into the basin o$ the fountain in the courtyard. The image reflected made him conscious, so» .the first time, of his swiftly approaching end. He sank down upon the fountain’s rim and mused upon the shortness of life, its varying fortunes and the prospects as the future life-—ac-cording to the beliefs of himself and his fathers. Ah, well, he was ready to die. He did not fear after death to take the journey with the sun god, Ra, in the Boat of a Million Years to the Fields of Peace. No, by Amen, the god of Thebes! Had not Utah led a good life? Yes, he had always been just, merciful and kind to his servants and his household. They had lacked nothing while he lived, nor had his wife, Sheftu, the daughter of Sat Sepdu. But, after he was gone—ah, Pharaoh, the great one who gives life to his people—would his memory be sufficient to keep her from want or mistreatment? Would she ever be set out of the great stone house as the widows of others had been In the past? A chill, sharper even than the chill of old age, shook him. It was the Chill of fear for his beloved. Then a happy thought warmed his veins again. The people of his household and Ms city ever had listened and obeyed his spoken and written word during his life. His words by voice or writing were considered authority and wholesomely respected. Doubtless, then, would his written words be followed when he was in the Fields of Peace. Strange, neither he nor anyone else had thought of such a thing before. So with reeds, fluid and papyrus he wrote in beautiful picture writing. That happened more than 1,500 years ago. However, the papyrus has kept In a good state of preservation all those centuries and was recently dlscovered by excavators. Translated, it proved to be the will or legacy of Utah, allowing his wife, “Sheftu. daughter of Sat Sepdu of Gesab, four Eastern slaved and “the right to dwell in my house without allowing her to be put forth on the ground by any person.** The “will” is considered by authorities to be the first ever drawn.