Within the lyrics are the (surprise!) torture and various torments applied to one of the damned and doomed enemies of Osiris, lashed to a "Slave Stick". This song was jointly inspired by several pages in the "Book of Gates", as well as from a passage in the book "Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection" by Sir Wallis Budge, in which he describes an instrument of torture employed by the Ancient Egyptians. To paraphrase Sir Budge:
"Whilst various batches of the enemies of Osiris were awaiting their turn at the block of Slaughter, they were kept tightly fettered and bound. One Terrible instrument of Torture was the Y (a hieroglyph in a shape of a forked tree branch is pictured); the modern equivalent of which is the "Goree Stick".
The "Slave Stick" is a tree branch, forked at one end, by which, with the help of a strip of leather, it is fastered around a man's neck. It hangs down in front of the wretched creature doomed to carry it. If the branch is thick, the weight is considerable, and if to the end a block of stone or so be fastened, its effectiveness as an instrument of torture can be well imagined. In some cases the hands were also fastened to the stick. Prussian archaeologist Richard Lespius, who saw them in use, wrote:
"Each captive carried before him the stem of a tree as thick as a man's arm, about 5 or 6 feet long, which terminated in a fork, into which the neck was fixed. The prongs of this fork were bound together by a cross piece of wood, fastened with a strap. Some of their hands, also, were tied fast to the handle of the fork, and in this condition they remained day and night - it can be driven into the ground firmly, and then the prisoner is tied to it, with the arms tied in this position to the stick the pain is said to be unbearable."
"The hieroglyphs also cast light on the use of the stick", continues Budge. "We see a captive with his arms tied behind him to the stick. In another glyph we see a captive tied to the stick by the neck, and his arms tied behind his back; in this attitude the head was cut off, as we see from the next hieroglyph."
Within the lyrics are the (surprise!) torture and various torments applied to one of the damned and doomed enemies of Osiris, lashed to a "Slave Stick". This song was jointly inspired by several pages in the "Book of Gates", as well as from a passage in the book "Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection" by Sir Wallis Budge, in which he describes an instrument of torture employed by the Ancient Egyptians. To paraphrase Sir Budge:
"Whilst various batches of the enemies of Osiris were awaiting their turn at the block of Slaughter, they were kept tightly fettered and bound. One Terrible instrument of Torture was the Y (a hieroglyph in a shape of a forked tree branch is pictured); the modern equivalent of which is the "Goree Stick".
The "Slave Stick" is a tree branch, forked at one end, by which, with the help of a strip of leather, it is fastered around a man's neck. It hangs down in front of the wretched creature doomed to carry it. If the branch is thick, the weight is considerable, and if to the end a block of stone or so be fastened, its effectiveness as an instrument of torture can be well imagined. In some cases the hands were also fastened to the stick. Prussian archaeologist Richard Lespius, who saw them in use, wrote:
"Each captive carried before him the stem of a tree as thick as a man's arm, about 5 or 6 feet long, which terminated in a fork, into which the neck was fixed. The prongs of this fork were bound together by a cross piece of wood, fastened with a strap. Some of their hands, also, were tied fast to the handle of the fork, and in this condition they remained day and night - it can be driven into the ground firmly, and then the prisoner is tied to it, with the arms tied in this position to the stick the pain is said to be unbearable."
"The hieroglyphs also cast light on the use of the stick", continues Budge. "We see a captive with his arms tied behind him to the stick. In another glyph we see a captive tied to the stick by the neck, and his arms tied behind his back; in this attitude the head was cut off, as we see from the next hieroglyph."