Interview with Sons of Horus
[An anonymous source mailed Shmoop a copy of the transcripts from a family therapy session with Dr. Khebyt. Evidently life isn't perfect in the land of the dead.]
Dr. Khebyt: Come in, all of you. There's room for everyone.
[Sounds of thumping and chairs being moved around, then silence]
Dr. Khebyt: Good, good. You're comfortable?
Imsety: As comfortable as you can be in a shrink's office.
Dr. Khebyt: I understand that none of you want to be here. But it's important for us to begin on good footing.
Qebhsenuef: Kind of hard to do that, when you haven't got any feet.
Dr. Khebyt: Hm. You don't have feet?
Duamutef: Of course we don't have feet.
Hapy: We're jars. Are you even looking at us?
Dr. Khebyt: Of course I am looking at you. I suppose I did not think that you were confined to your jars, but only that these jars were symbols of your… holding yourselves to impossible standards.
Imsety: What do you mean?
Dr. Khebyt: Do you always speak first?
Imsety: Well, I am the one most people take seriously.
Dr. Khebyt: Why do you think that is?
Hapy: He's got a man's head. Everybody thinks men are smarter than anything else. Look at me. I've got a monkey face. Who's going to take me seriously?
Dr. Khebyt: I see. And why do you have a monkey face?
Hapy: Huh?
Dr. Khebyt: Did you choose it for yourself? I saw your photographs from the Middle Kingdom. Seems you all used to have faces like Imsety. But now you don't.
Duamutef: That's what my brother's trying to say, doctor. We used to be carved like that. By men. It wasn't true, though.
Imsety: Maybe they liked my face best.
Qebhsenuef: You shut up.
[The recording slowly fills with arguing. The doctor lets it go on for a minute, then clears his throat and the room quiets again.]
Dr. Khebyt: This is a sore spot with you.
All of the sons: Yes.
Dr. Khebyt: Have you talked to anyone about it?
Qebhsenuef: Well, we tried talking to Anubis, and to Horus, our dad.
Dr. Khebyt: And?
Duamutef: Anubis has a jackal head, and dad's got a falcon head. What do they know about it?
Dr. Khebyt: Do mortals take them seriously?
Duamutef: Of course they do.
Dr. Khebyt: Then why wouldn't they take you seriously?
Qebhsenuef: Arms. And legs. And height. We're only a foot tall!
Dr. Khebyt: Has it ever occurred to any of you to think outside the jar?
Hapy: What do you mean?
Dr. Khebyt: You are not your occupations. Just because you hold mummy organs in your jars, does not mean that your jars or your jobs are the sum totals of your existences. Perhaps you are limited by your jars because you yourselves have permitted that limitation?
Imsety: Whoa, that's deep.
Hapy: You mean, we could just… quit being jars?
Duamutef: You mean we could have arms and legs? And maybe be able to be tall enough to see over the palace step?
Qebhsenuef: …do you think maybe that's why they started making fake jars for the tombs? Like they don't need us to be in the jars anymore?
Dr. Khebyt: Keep thinking. Gentlemen, perhaps it is time to get out of the canopic chest and live a little. What would you like to do? If you could be anything you liked, what would you do?
Duamutef: I'd go to the beach. Watch some girls, play some volleyball, take a swim….
Qebhsenuef: I want to get a fast car and go driving across the Sahara!
Imsety: I could get a new wardrobe if I had arms.
Hapy: I'm a baboon. What am I going to do that I'm not doing already?
Duamutef: Hapy, you're so emo. Must be because you spend all your time with Nephthys.
Hapy: You'd be emo, too, if you had my face.
[More arguing begins]
Dr. Khebyt: Now, now. Enough of that. It's a start. I want you to come back next week with some concrete ideas about what you'd like to do with your lives out of the jar. That's all for today.