James Joyce's "The Sisters": chalices and umbrellas, ptolemaic Memphis and Victorian Dublin

Studies in Short Fiction, Summer, 1995 by Susan Swartzlander

These descriptions of ancient Egypt come astonishingly close to Joyce's own descriptions of the Ireland he knew, a country characterized by "paralysis" from nationalism rooted in blind reverence for romantic versions of a glorious Irish past and blind obedience to a religious institution that choked individual freedom. Both Joyce's story and Ebers's novel show us individuals enslaved in moribund institutions. Ironically, there is no hope, no revival, for these institutions built on the very premise of resurrection.(3)

Ebers wrote, his novel as a tribute to two sisters whose plight he found movingly, recorded in the Sarapieion archive. The sisters served in the temple as detainees subject to a system called katoche. Those bound to the temple found themselves there for a variety of reasons. Some were petty criminals seeking sanctuary; others were debtors; many were devout anchorites following an omen or portent decreeing that they dedicate themselves to Sarapis. Retaining little personal freedom, these enkatochoi were confined to the Serapeum grounds (Thompson 218-19).

Economics combined with difficult family circumstances drove the sisters to the temple. Thaues and Taus -- Irene and Klea in the novel -- play roles as official mourners at funerals. Reenacting the roles of Isis and Nephthys, the two offered lamentations and libations to the deceased, and by extension, to the dead god Osiris. In return for their service, which included fetching "water in cracked jars from the Nile ... for the three hundred and sixty daily libations at the altar of Serapis," the sisters were supposed to receive "three cakes of bread a day, with an annual bounty of wheat and kiki-oil." However, as Ebers records in his travel book, although the supplicants worked tirelessly, they lived in abject poverty, forced to plead for the most basic sustenance. Their "doles were so irregularly paid that, in order not to die of hunger, they were forced to ask help" in a series of petitions (Ebers 159).

"The Sisters" of Joyce's story, Nannie and Eliza, do not carry water in cracked jugs from the Nile (nor from the Liffey for that matter), but they do carry associations of libations and lamentation. As Eliza discusses the "beautiful corpse" (15) of their deceased brother, Nannie presses sherry and cream crackers on the guest mourners in a ritualistic presentation: "Nannie went to the sideboard and brought out a decanter of sherry and some wineglasses. She set these on the table and invited us to take a little glass of wine. Then, at her sister's bidding, she poured out the sherry into the glasses and passed them to us" (15). As the sisters enact their own roles in this Dublin funerary drama, they assume the same roles Klea and Irene emulate, the Egyptian goddesses Isis and Nephthys. Isis sports a seat or throne as a headdress, associating her with the royal throne (Watterson 89). From the moment Eliza appears in the story, and for its duration, she appears enthroned in her deceased brother's place: "In the little room downstairs we found Eliza seated in his arm-chair in state." The added phrase "in state" implies more than we might expect to find in the dreary "little room" (14). Nephthys (whose headdress is the more pedestrian basket) is designated "The Lady of the House," and appears subservient to Isis. Nannie does her sister's bidding, escorting the visitors to "he dead-room," and then serving her sister and the guests. When Eliza sees Nannie "about to fall asleep" and says, "There's poor Nannie . . . she's wore out. All the work we had . . ." the reader has little doubt about who does the work and who sits "in state" (14, 16). The Dublin sisters' lamentations, like those preserved in the Egyptian papyri, represent a traditional formula of trite phrases: "Ah, well, he's gone to a better world. . . . He had a beautiful death, God be praised. . . . such a beautiful corpse" (15). The funerary lamentations of Isis and Nephthys, published in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century works of archaeology, seem no less trite, invoking the deceased as "Oh beautiful" and "Oh beauteous."