The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sisters, Complete, by Georg Ebers

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Title: The Sisters, Complete

Author: Georg Ebers

Last Updated: March 9, 2009
Release Date: October 16, 2006 [EBook #5466]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SISTERS, COMPLETE ***

Produced by David Widger

THE SISTERS, Complete

By Georg Ebers

Translated from the German by Clara Bell

DEDICATION TO HERR EDUARD von HALLBERGER

Allow me, my dear friend, to dedicate these pages to you. I present them
to you at the close of a period of twenty years during which a warm and
fast friendship has subsisted between us, unbroken by any disagreement.
Four of my works have first seen the light under your care and have
wandered all over the world under the protection of your name. This, my
fifth book, I desire to make especially your own; it was partly written
in your beautiful home at Tutzing, under your hospitable roof, and I
desire to prove to you by some visible token that I know how to value
your affection and friendship and the many happy hours we have passed
together, refreshing and encouraging each other by a full and perfect
interchange of thought and sentiment.

PREFACE.

By a marvellous combination of circumstances a number of fragments of
the Royal Archives of Memphis have been preserved from destruction with
the rest, containing petitions written on papyrus in the Greek language;
these were composed by a recluse of Macedonian birth, living in the
Serapeum, in behalf of two sisters, twins, who served the god as
"Pourers out of the libations."

At a first glance these petitions seem scarcely worthy of serious
consideration; but a closer study of their contents shows us that
we possess in them documents of the greatest value in the history
of manners. They prove that the great Monastic Idea--which under the
influence of Christianity grew to be of such vast moral and historical
significance--first struck root in one of the centres of heathen
religious practices; besides affording us a quite unexpected insight
into the internal life of the temple of Serapis, whose ruined walls
have, in our own day, be