Life as a God

Physical Description: Poorly bound in scarred human skin over wood, numbering 150 pages in duodecimo format. No title on the cover, but the frontispiece features a low-quality faux-Egyptian styling opposite the handwritten title page. The content is handwritten in a brown-black scrawl that occasionally fades out.
Author: Montgomery Crompton, an English soldier and amateur artist, who travelled to Egypt in 1805 and became a minor priest in the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh. Originally from a prominent English family, he served in the military and became interested in Egyptian history and art. Research into Crompton while in London (Library Use) can be revealing. Originally born in 1780 and raised in Gloucester, the son of a minor noble, he served as a Lieutenant according to family expectations but returned home after charges of abuse and abhorrent behaviour. A black sheep, he made a pass at university and became interested in painting and sculpture, but was documented by his teachers as a fair-to-middling talent. After an unnamed lascivious scandal, he departed London for Cairo. At the time of this diary, Crompton had already descended into degenerate lunacy. He perished in a Cairo asylum in 1811.
Publication History: Single copy of Crompton’s diary, which functions more as a reflective autobiography on his experiences as an initiate and priest in the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh.

Initial Reading

Skimming through the contents of the work reveals a catalogue of horrific deeds performed by Crompton and his “Brothers.” in Cairo. The content and handwriting become increasingly incomprehensible as the diary nears its end, where he reveals he has been reconstructing his megalomaniacal beliefs and vicious atrocities from the cell in an asylum. At initial glance, the reader will note reverent praise to a Black Pharaoh, or Nephren Ka, interspersed between his sadistic ramblings. The work concludes by emphatically stating that he expects an imminent full ascent to god-hood followed by unholy vengeance upon his pathetic captors.

Complete Reading

This work records the insane words of Montgomery Crompton, an English soldier, artist, and devoted member of the so-called Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh. Crompton briefly details his life before he went to Egypt as part of General Abercrombie’s army. The youngest son of a minor member of the nobility and part of an extended, but well regarded Lancashire family, Crompton was a poor student, sent down from the University of Edinburgh for his habitual drinking and gambling, as well as violent outbursts in public. Against his family’s wishes Crompton elected to pursue a career as a painter but instead squandered his small allowance on liquor and gambling. Rather than disown him, Crompton’s mother persuaded his father to purchase a commission in the army for their son in the hope that he would see it as an opportunity to make something of himself. Crompton took up the commission begrudgingly and, except for the fact that it eventually brought him into contact with his new master, the author heaps boundless scorn upon his time in the army. Sent to Egypt along with his regiment, the 28th Gloucestershire, Crompton was struck in the head by a French cavalry sabre at the battle of Alexandria. For several weeks Crompton languished near death, a time during which he claims he first had visions of the being he would come to know as the Black Pharaoh. It spoke to him and told Crompton that he was the only true God and that all other gods were false gods or reflections of his glory.
Upon his recuperation, Crompton journeyed to Cairo where he indulged in copious amounts of opium in an attempt to reconnect with this new god. Instead, he somehow (Crompton credits dream visions) came into contact with a group of like-minded British and European expatriates (and some Egyptians) who initiated him into the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh via a series of orgies and murderous rituals. Crompton expounds at great length about the wonder, beauty, and truth of his new faith — though mostly what he recounts are rites and rituals that shock and turn the stomach of even the most hardened reader. Specific details of the group’s rituals are recounted (such as the sacral nature of the new moon, which Crompton likens to, “the face of the Pharaoh of Darkness watching over the world”), as well as regular orgiastic rites and monthly rites of human sacrifice. Fearful beasts (including sulfurous bat-horse things, sinuous winged serpents, and even more loathsome amorphous and indescribable flautists) are also discussed as bearing witness to and, shockingly, taking part in both types of rite. The symbols of the cult, including the inverted ankh and the spiked club are also described. No record is made of the group’s specific prayers or invocation, but the text is littered with rhapsodic paeans giving praise to the greatness of the Black Pharaoh, including many honorific titles as well as apparently his Egyptian name Nevrin Ka (alternately Nefrin or Nephrin Ka, Crompton’s spelling is irregular).
While Crompton acknowledges that he and a number of his fellow members of the Brotherhood returned to England some time in 1805 for the purpose of expanding the worship of their dark god, he refuses to give much detail on this topic, stating cryptically, “the night air knows best those rites and praises that were voiced by our lips, and the ever waxing crimson flow knows our offerings, but no cunning art will compel me to betray my Brothers still free to reap harvest of Britain’s uncleared fields.”
On several occasions Crompton is granted visions of the time of the Dark Pharaoh’s reign, including a personal audience with the god himself in his throne-room. Crompton proclaims passionately and often that he is both sane and yet destined for immortal godhood, for example in a short space a paragraph stating that he is “more right of mind than any man” and “will walk with his Lord as a god over the ashes of the Empires of Men when even the Sky is brought to heel and the Moon made void.” Crompton is unquestionably mad.