Lashed To The Slave Stick


[Lyrics by Karl Sanders, Music by Dallas Toler-Wade]

Asfetiu.
Asfetiu.

Fiends, Criminals, Slaves, Blasphemers.
The Word of Ra is Against Ye.
Ye are Fettered and Bound with Leather Straps.
Helpless, Doomed, Wailing in Unendurable Torment.
Lashed to the Forked Slave Stick By the Neck.

Lashed to the Slave Stick.
Abata Ankh t Khet.
Neba t Steb Tcha.
Lashed to the Slave Stick.

Ra Pronounceth the Formulae Against Thee.
The Eye of Horus is Prepared to Attack Thee.
Sekhmet Uttereth Words of Flame Against Thee and Pierceth Thy Breast.

Your Evil Deeds Have Turned Against You.
Your Plottings Have Come upon You.
Your Abominable Acts
You shall be lashed to the Slave Stick.

Abui, The Gods Who Burns the Dead.
Shall Leave You Smoldering in Exile from the Netherworld.
Abati.
The Gorer.
Causes You to Howl like a Jackal in Anguish.

Your Doom Hath been Decreed by Ra.
Your Unjust and Perverse Judgments are upon Yourselves.
The Wickedness of Your Words of Cursing are upon You.
It is You Who Hath Committed the Unutterable and Wrought Iniquity in the Great Hall.

Your Corruptible Bodies Shall be Cut to Pieces.
Your Souls Shall have No Existence.
Ye Shall Never Again See Ra as He Journeyeth in the Hidden Land.
The Doom of Ra is upon You.

Lashed to the Slave Stick.
Abata Ankh t Khet.
Neba t Steb Tcha.

Lashed to the Slave Stick.
Abata Ankh t Khet.
Neba t Steb Tcha.
Asfetiu.

[Dallas and I collaborated once again to create "Lashed to the Slave Stick". Dallas wrote the music, building it into an amazing piece. This piece started from a riff Dallas and I had played backstage on the "Darkened Shrines" tours. Dallas took that riff, and came up with the melody and a doom-laden chord section, building upon the rest of the riffs, which brought the essence of the words to musical realization.

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."]