the university <5fTllinois LIBRARY Presented in 1916 by President Idarand J. Jame in memory of Amanda K. Casad Ou.Zb 168- UARDA A ROMANCE OF ANCIENT EGYPT BY GEORGE EBERS TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN kY CLARA BELL CHICAGO: DONOHUE, HENNEBERRY & CO., 407-425 Dearborn Street. Return this book on or before the Latest Date stamped below. A charge is made on all overdue books. University of Illinois Library M32 3 ~> h v o PREF ACE. In the winter of 1875 I spent some weeks in one of the tombs of the Necropolis of Thebes in order to study the monuments of that solemn city of the dead ; and during my long rides in the silent desert the germ was developed whence this book has since grown. The leisure of mind and body required to write it was given me through a long but not disabling illness. In the first instance I intended to elucidate this story — like my " Egyptian Princess" — with numerous and exten- sive notes placed at the end ; but I was led to give up this plan from finding that it would lead me to the repetition of much that I had written in the notes to that earlier work. The numerous notes to the former novel had a threefold purpose. In the first place they served to explain the text ; in the second they were a guarantee of the care with which I had striven to depict the archaeological details in all their individuality from the records of the monuments and of classic authors ; and thirdly I hoped to supply the reader who desired further knowledge of the period with some guide to his studies. In the present work I shall venture to content myself with the simple statement that I have introduced nothing as proper to Egypt and to the period of Ramesesthat can- not be proved by some authority ; the numerous monu- ments which have descended to us from the time of the Jlameses, in fact enable the inquirer to understand much 400544 6 PREFACE. of the aspect and arrangement of Egyptian life, and to follow it step by step through the details of religious, public and private life, even of particular individuals. Every part of this book is intelligible without the aid of notes ; but, for the reader who seeks for further enlighten- ment, I have added some foot-notes, and have not neglected to mention such works as afford more detailed information on the subjects mentioned in the narrative. The reader who wishes to follow the mind of the author in this work should not trouble himself with the notes as he reads, but merely at the beginning of each chapter read over the notes which belong to the foregoing one. Every glance at the foot-notes must necessarily disturb and injure the development of the tale as a work of art. The story stands here as it flowed from one fount, and was supplied with notes only after its completion. A narrative of Herodotus combined with the Epos of Pentaur, of which so many copies have been handed down to us, forms the foundation of the story.^ The treason of the regent related by the Father of His- tory is referable perhaps to the reign of the third and not of the second Rameses. But it is by no means certain that the Halicarnassian writer was in this case misin- formed, and in this fiction no history will be inculcated ; only as a background shall I offer a sketch of the time of Sesostris, from a picturesque point of view, but with the nearest possible approach to truth. It is true that to this end nothing has been neglected that could be learned from the monuments or the papyri ; still the book is only a romance, a poeu\ fiction, in which I wish all the facts derived from history and all the costumes drawn from the monuments to be regarded as incidental, and the emo- tions of the actors in the story as what I attach import- ance to. But I must be allowed to make one observation. preface. y Prom studying the conventional mode of execution of ancient Egyptian art — which was strictly subject to the hieratic laws of type and proportion — we have accustomed ourselves to imagine the inhabitants of the Nile-valley in the time of the Pharaohs as tall and haggard men with little distinction of individual physiognomy, and recently a great painter has sought to represent them under this aspect in a modern picture. This is an error ; the Egyptians, in spite of their aver- sion to foreigners and their strong attachment to their native soil, were one of the most intellectual and active peoples of antiquity ; and he who would represent them as they lived, and to that end copies the forms which remain painted on the walls of the temples and sepulchres, is the accomplice of those priestly corrupters of art who com- pelled the painters and sculptors of the Pharaonic era to abandon truth to nature in favor of their sacred laws of proportion. He who desires to paint the ancient Egyptians with truth and fidelity, must regard it in some sort as an act of enfranchisement; that is to say, he must release the con- ventional forms from those fetters which were peculiar to their art and altogether foreign to their real life. Indeed, works of sculpture remain to us of the time of the first pyramid, which represent men with the truth of nature, unfettered by the sacred canon. We can recall the so-called "Village Judge " of Bulaq, the "Scribe/' now in Paris, and a few figures in bronze in different museums, as well as the noble and characteristic busts of all epochs, which amply prove how great the variety of individual phys- iognomy, and, with that, of individual character, was among the Egyptians. Alma Tadema in London and Gustav Richter in Berlin, have, as painters, treated Egyp- tian subjects, in a manner which the poet recognizes and accepts with delight. 8 PREFACE. Many earlier witnesses than the late writer flaviuS Vopiscus might be referred to who show us the Egyptians as an industrious and peaceful people, passionately de- voted, it is true, to all that pertains to the other world, but also enjoying the gifts of life to the fullest extent, nay sometimes to excess. Real men, such as we see around us in actual life, not silhouettes constructed to the old priestly scale such as the monuments show us — real living men dwelt by the old Nile-stream ; and the poet who would represent them must courageously seize on types out of the daily life of modern men that surround him, without fear of deviating too far from reality, and, placing them in their own long- past time, color them only and clothe them to correspond with it. I have discussed the authorities for the conception of love which I have ascribed to the ancients in the preface to the second edition of the " Egyptian Princess/' With these lines I send Uarda into the world ; and in them I add my thanks to those dear friends in whose beautiful home, embowered in green, bird-haunted woods I have so often refreshed my spirit and recovered my strength, where I now write the last words of this book. Georg Ebers. Rheinbollerhutte, September 22, 1876. UARDA CHAPTER I. By the walls of Thebes— the old city of a hundred gates —the Nile spreads to a broad river ; the heights, which follow the stream on both sides, here take a more decided outline ; solitary, almost cone-shaped peaks stand out sharply from the level background of the many-colored limestone hills, on which no palm-tree flourishes and in which no humble desert-plant can strike root. _ Rocky crevasses and gorges cut more or less deeply into the mountain range, and up to its ridge extends the desert, destructive of all life, with sand and stones, with rocky cliffs and reef-like, desert hills. Behind the eastern range the desert spreads to the Red &3a ; behind the western it stretches without limit, into infinity. In the Relief of the Egyptians beyond it lay the region of the dead. Between these two ranges of hills, which serve as walls or ramparts to keep back the desert-sand, flows the fresh and bounteous Nile, bestowing blessing and abundance ; at once the father and the cradle of millions of beings. On each shore spreads the wide plain of black and fruitful soil, and in the depths many-shaped creatures, in coats of mail or scales, swarm and find subsistence. The lotus floats on the mirror of the waters, and among the papyrus reeds by the shore water-fowl innumerable build their nests. Between the river and the mountain range lie fields, which after the seed-time are of a shining blue-green, and toward the time of harvest glow like gold. Near the brooks and water-wheels here and there stands a IO UARDA. shady sycamore ; and date-palms, carefully tended, group themselves in groves. The fruitful plain, watered and manured every year by the inundation, lies at the foot of the sandy desert-hills behind it, and stands out like a garden flower-bed from the gravel path. In the fourteenth century before Christ— for to so remote a date we must direct the thoughts of the reader— impass- able limits had been set by the hand of man, in many places in Thebes, to the inroads of the water ; high dykes of stone and embankments protected the streets and squares, the temples and the palaces, from the overflow. Canals that could be tightly closed up led from the dykes to the land within, and smaller branch-cuttings to the gardens of Thebes. On the right, the eastern, bank of the Nile rose the buildings of the far-famed residence of the Pharaohs. Close by the river stood the immense and gaudy temples of the city of Amon ; behind these and at a short distance from the Eastern hills— indeed at their very foot and partly even on the soil of the desert— were the palaces of the king and nobles, and the shady streets in which the high narrow houses of the citizens stood in close rows. < Life was gay and busy in the streets of the capital of the Pharaohs. The western shore of the Nile showed a quite ditterent scene Here too there was no lack of stately buildings or thronging men ; but while on the further side of the river there was a compact mass of houses, antfthe citizens went cheerfully and openly about their day's work, on this side there were solitary splendid structures, round which little houses and huts seemed to cling as children cling to the protection of a mother. And these buildings lay in de- tached groups. . " , Anyone climbing the hill and looking down would form the notion that there lay below him a number of neigh- boring villages, each with its lordly manor-house. Look- ing from the plain up to the precipice of the western hills, hundreds of closed portals could be seen, some solitary, others closely ranged in rows ; a great number of them toward the foot of the slope, yet more half-way up, and a few at a considerable height. . And even more dissimilar were the slow-moving, solemn UARDA. II groups in the road-ways on this side, and the cheerful, con- fused throng yonder There, on the eastern shore, all were in eager pursuit of labor or recreation, stirred by pleasure or by grief, active in deed and speech ; here, in the west, little was spoken, a spell seemed to check the footstep of the wanderer, a pale hand to sadden the bright glance of every eye, and to banish the smile from every lip. And yet many a gayly-dressed bark stopped at the shore, there was no lack of minstrel bands, grand proces- sions passed on to the western heights ; but the Nile boats bore the dead, the songs sung here were songs of lamen- tation, and the processions consisted of mourners follow- ing the sarcophagus. We are standing on the soil of the City of the Dead of Thebes. Nevertheless even here nothing is wanting for return and revival, for to the Egyptian his dead died not. He closed his eyes, he bore him to the Necropolis, to the house of the embalmer, or Kolchytes, and then to the grave ; but he knew that the souls of the departed lived on ; that the justified absorbed into Osiris floated over the Heavens in the vessel of the Sun ; that they appeared on earth in the form they chose to take upon them, and that they might exert influence on the current of the lives of the survivors. So he took care to give a worthy interment to his dead, above all to have the body embalmed so as to endure long ; and had fixed times to bring fresh offerings for the dead, of flesh and fowl, with drink-offerings and sweet-smelling essences, and vegetables and flowers. Neither at the obsequies nor at the offerings might the ministers of the gods be absent, and the silent City of the Dead was regarded as a favored sanctuary in which to es- tablish schools and dwellings for the learned. So it came to pass that in the temples and on the site of the Necropolis, large communities of priests dwelt to- gether, and close to the extensive embalming houses lived numerous Kolchytes, who handed down the secrets of their art from father to son. Besides these there were other manufactories and shops. In the former, sarcophagi of stone and of wood, linen bands for enveloping mummies, and amulets for decorat- ing them, were made ; in the latter, merchants kept spices 12 UARDA. and essences, flowers, fruits, vegetables and pastry tot sale. Calves, gazelles, goats, geese and other fowl were fed on inclosed meadow-plats, and the mourners betook themselves thitherto select what they needed from among the beasts pronounced by the priests to be clean for sacri- fice, and to have them sealed with the sacred seal. Many bought only a part of a victim at the shambles — the poor could not even do this. They bought only colored cakes in the shape of beasts, which symbolically took the place of the calves and geese which their means were unable to procure. In the handsomest shops sat servants of the priests, who received forms written on rolls of papyrus which were filled up in the writing-room of the temple with those sacred verses which the departed spirit must know and repeat to ward off the evil genius of the deep, to open the gate of the under-world, and to be held righteous before Osiris and the forty-two assessors of the subterranean court of justice. What took place within the temples was concealed from view, for each was surrounded by a high inclosing wall with lofty, carefully-closed portals, which were only opened when a chorus of priests came out to sing a pious hymn, in the morning to Horus the rising god, and in the evening to Turn the descending god.* As soon as the evening hymn of the priests was heard, the Necropolis was deserted, for the mourners and those who were visiting the graves were required by this time to return to their boats and to quit the City of the Dead. Crowds of men who had marched in the processions of the west bank hastened in disorder to the shore, driven on by the body of watchmen who took it in turns to do this duty and to protect the graves against robbers. The mer- chants closed their booths, the embalmers and workmen ended their day's work and retired to their houses, the priests returned to the temples, and the inns were filled with guests, who had come hither on long pilgrimages from a distance, and who preferred passing the night in *The course of the Sun was compared to that of the life of Man. He rose as the child Horus, grew by midday to the hero Ra, who con- quered the Urseus snake for his diadem, and by evening was an old Man, Turn. Light had been born of darkness, hence Turn was regarded as older than Horus and the other gods of light. UARDA. *3 the vicinity of the dead whom they had come to visit, to gotj across to the bustling noisy city on the further shore S The voices of the singers and of the wailing women were hushed even the son| of the sailors on the numberless ferry-boats from the western shore to Thebes died away, its faint echo was now and then borne across on the even- ing air, and at last all was still. A cloudless sky spread over the silent City of the Dead, now and then darkened for an instant by the swiftly pass- ing shade of a bat returning to its home in a cave or clett ofAe rock after flying the whole evening-near the Nile to catch flies, to drink, and so prepare itself for the next day's sleep. From time to time black forms with long shadows glided over the still illuminated plam-the jack- als who It this hour frequented the shore to slake their thirst and often fearlessly showed themselves m troops in the vicinity of the pens of geese and goats. It was forbidden to hunt these robbers as they were ac- counted sacred to the god Anubis,* the tutelary of sepul- chers, and indeed they did little misch.ef, for they found abundant food in the tombs. The remnants of the meat-offerings from the altars were consumed by them ; to the perfect satisfaction of the devo- tees who, when they found that by the fol owing day he meat had disappeared, believed that it had been accepted and taken away by the spirits of the under-world They also did the duty of trusty watchers for they were a dangerous foe for any intruder who, under the shadow of the night, might attempt to violate a grave. Thus— on that summer evening of the year 1352 b. c, when we invite the reader to accompany us to the Necrop- olis of Thebes— after the priests' hymn had died away, all was still in the City of the Dead. _ The soldiers on guard were already returning from their first round when suddenly, on the north side of the Necrop- olis, a dog barked loudly ; soon a second took up the cry, *The iackal-headed god Anubis was the son of Osiris and Nephthys, and he acka was sacred to him. In the earliest ages even he is promi- nent in the nether world. He conducts the mummifying process, pre- serves "the corpse guards the Necropolis, and, as Hermes Psychopompos (Hlrmanubi S ) P ope g ns the way for the souls According to Plutarch •< H™s the watch of the gods, as the dog is the watch of men. UARDA. a third, a fourth. The captain of the watch called to his men to halt, and, as the cry of the dogs spread and grew louder every minute, commanded them to march toward the north. The little troop had reached the high dyke which divided the west bank of the Nile from a branch canal, and looked from thence over the plain as far as the river and to the north of the Necropolis. Once more the word to "halt" was given, and as the guard perceived the glare of torches in the direction where the dogs were barking loudest, they hurried forward and came up with the author of the dis- turbance near the Pylon* of the temple erected by Seti I, the deceased father of the reigning King Rameses II. The moon was up, and her pale light flooded the stately structure, while the walls glowed with the ruddy smoky light of the torches which flared in the hands of black attendants. A man of sturdy build, in sumptuous dress, was knock- ing at the brass-covered temple door with the metal handle of a whip, so violently that the blows rang far and loud through the night. Near him stood a litter, and a chariot, to which were harnessed two fine horses. In the litter sat a young woman, and in the carriage, next to the driver, was the tall figure of a lady. Several men of the upper classes and many servants stood round the litter and the chariot. Few words were exchanged ; the whole atten- tion of the strangely lighted group seemed concentrated on the temple gate. The darkness concealed the features of individuals, but the mingled light of the moon and the torches was enough to reveal to the gate-keeper, who looked down on the party from a tower of the Pylon, that it was composed of persons of the highest rank ; nay, perhaps of the royal family. He called aloud to the one who knocked, and asked him what was his will. He looked up, and in a voice so rough and imperious, that the lady in the litter shrank in horror as its tones suddenly violated the place of the dead, he cried out : " How long are we to wait here for you, you dirty hound ? Come down and open the door and then ask questions. *The two pyramidal towers joined by a gateway which formed the en- trance to an Egyptian temple were called the Pylon. UARDA. 15 If the torch-light is not bright enough to show you who is waiting, I will score our name on your shoulders with my whip and teach you how to receive princely visitors. While the porter muttered an unintelligible answer and came down the steps within to open the door, the lady in the chariot turned to her impatient companion and said, in a pleasant but yet decided voice: "You forget, Paaker, that you are back again in Egypt, and that here you have to deal not with the wild schasu,* but with friendly priests of whom we have to solicit a favor. We have always had to lament your roughness, which seems to me very ill- suited to be the unusual circumstances under which we approach this sanctuary/' Although these words were spoken m a tone rather ol regret than of blame, they wounded the sensibilities of the person addressed ; his wide nostrils began to twitch omi- nously, he clenched his right hand over the handle of his whip, and while he seemed to be bowing humbly, he struck such a heavy blow on the bare leg of a slave who was stand- ing near to him, an old Ethiopian, that he shuddered as if from sudden cold, though— knowing his lord only too we ll— heletno cry of pain escape him. Meanwhile the gate-keeper had opened the door, and with him a tall young priest stepped out into the open air to ask the will of the intruders. . Paaker would have seized the opportunity of speaking, but the lady in the chariot interposed and said : "I am Bent-Anat, the daughter of the King, and this lady in the litter is Nefert, the wife of the noble Mena, the charioteer of my father. We were going in company with these gentlemen to the north-west valley of the Necropolis to see the new works there. You know the narrow pass in the rocks which leads up the gorge. On the way home I myself held the reins and I had the misfortune to drive over a girl who sat by the road with a basket full of flowers, and tohurt her— to hurt her very badly I am afraid. The wife of Mena with her own hands bound up the child, and then we carried her to her father's house— he is a paras- chitesf— Pinem is his name. I know not whether he is known to you." * A Semitic race of robbers in the east of Egypt. t t One who opened the bodies of the dead to prepare them for being embalmed. i6 UARDA. "Thou hast been into his house, princess?" " Indeed, I was obliged, holy father, '' she replied. "I know of course that IJiave defiled myself by crossing the threshold of these people, but " "But," cried the wife of Mena, raising herself in her litter, " Bent-Anat can in a day be purified by thee or by her house-priest, while she can hardly — or perhaps never — restore the child whole and sound again to the unhappy father." 4 'Still the den of a paraschites is above everything un- clean/' interrupted the chamberlain Penbesa, master of the ceremonies to the princess, the wife of Mena, " and I did not conceal my opinion when Bent-Anat announced her intention of visiting the accursed hole in person. I sug- gested," he continued, turning to the priest, " that she should let the girl be taken home, and send a royal present to the father." " And the princess ? " asked the priest. " She acted, as she always does, on her own judgment," replied the master of the ceremonies. "And that always hits on the right course," cried the wife of Mena. "Would to God it were so ! " said the princess in a sub- dued voice.' Then she continued, addressing the priest, "Thou knowest the will of the gods and the hearts of men, holy father, and I myself know that I give alms willingly and help the poor even when there is none to plead for them but their poverty. But after what has oc- curred here, and to these unhappy people, it is I who come as a suppliant." " Thou ? " said the chamberlain. "I," answered the princess, with decision. The priest, who up to this moment had remained a silent witness of the scene, raised his right hand as in blessing and spoke. "Thou hast done well. The Hathors, fashioned thy heart* and the Lady of Truth guides it. Thou hast * Hathor was Isis under a substantial form. She is the goddess of the pure, light heaven, and bears the Sun-disk between cow-horns on a cow's head, or on a human head with cow's ears. She was named the Fair, and all the pure joys of life are in her gift. Later she was re- garded as a muse who beautifies life with enjoyment, love, song, and the dance. She appears as a good fairy by the cradle of children and UARDA. I? broken in on our night-prayers to request us to send a doctor to the injured girl?" "Thou hast said." "I will ask the high-priest to send the best leech for outward wounds immediately to the child. But where is the house of the paraschites Pinem ? I do not know it." ' ' Northward from the terrace of Hatasu, close to But I will charge one of my attendants to conduct the leech. Besides, I want to know early in the morning how the child is doing. Paaker." The rough visitor, whom we already know, thus called upon, bowed to the earth, his arms hanging by his sides, and asked : "What dost thou command? " "I appoint you guide to the physician," said the prin- cess. " It will be easy to the king's pioneer * to find the little half-hidden house again — besides, you share my guilt, for/' she added, turning to the priest, "I confess that the misfortune happened because I would try with my horse to overtake Paakers Syrian racer, which he declared to be swifter than the Egyptian horses. It was a mad race." "And Amon be praised that it ended as it did," ex- claimed the master of the ceremonies. " Paaker's chariot lies dashed in pieces in the valley, and his best horse is badly hurt." " He will see to him when he has taken the physician to the house of the paraschites," said the princess. " Dost thou know, Penbesa — thou anxious guardian of a thought- less girl — that to-day for the first time I am glad that my father is at the war in distant Satiland ? "f " He would not have welcomed us kindly ! " said the master of the ceremonies, laughing. * ' But the leech, the leech ! " cried Bent-Anat. * ' Paaker, it is settled then. You will conduct him, and bring us to-morrow morning news of the wounded girl." decides their lot in life. She bears many names; and several, generally seven, Hathors were represented, who personified the attributes and in- fluence of the goddess. *The title here rendered pioneer was that of an officer whose duties were those at once of a scout and of a Quartermaster-General. In un- known and comparatively savage countries it was an onerous post.— Translator* Asia. 2 jg UARDA. Paaker bowed ; the princess bowed her head ; the priest and his companions, who meanwhile had come out of the temple and joined him, raised their hands in blessing, and the belated procession moved toward the Nile. Paaker remained alone with his two slaves; the com- mission with which the princess had charged him greatly displeased him. So long as the moonlight enabled him to distinguish the litter of Mena's wife, he gazed after it ; then he endeavored to recollect the position of the hut of the paraschites. The captain of the watch still stood with the guard at the gate of the temple. " Do you know the dwelling of Pinem the paraschites i asked Paaker. ' < What do you want with him ? ' " That is no concern of yours," retorted Paaker. " Lout!" exclaimed the captain; < 'left face and for- ward, my men." . , "Halt!" cried Paaker, in a rage. "I am the kings chief pioneer." , ■ "Then you will all the more easily find the way back by which you came. March." . The words were followed by a peal of many-voiced laughter ; the re-echoing insult so confounded Paaker that he dropped his whip on the ground. The slave, whom a short time since he had struck with it, humbly picked it up and then followed his lord into the forecourt of the temple. Both attributed the titter, which they still could hear without being able to detect its origin, to wandering spirits. But the mocking tones had been heard too by the old gate-keeper, and the laughers were better known to him than to the king s pioneer ; he strode with heavy steps up to the door of the temple through the black shadow ot the Pylon, and striking blindly before him called out : << Ah, you good-for-nothing brood of Seth.* You gal- lows-birds and brood of hell— I am coming." The giggling ceased ; a few youthful figures appeared in the moonlight ; the old man pursued them panting, and, after a short chase, a troop of youths fled back through the temple gate. * The Tvphon of the Greeks. The enemy of Osiris, of truth, good and purity Discord and strife in nature. Horus, who fights against him for his father Osiris, can throw him and stun him, but never annihi- late him. UARDA. 19 The door-keeper had succeeded in catching one mis- creant, a boy of thirteen, and held him so tight by the ear that his pretty head seemed to have grown in a horizontal direction from his shoulders. " I will take you before the school-master, you plague- of-locusts, you swarm of bats ! " cried the old man, out of breath. But the dozen of school-boys, who had availed themselves of the opportunity to break out of bounds, gathered coaxing round him, with words of repentance, though every eye sparkled with delight at the fun they had had, and of which no one could deprive them ; and when the biggest of them took the old man's chin, and promised to give him the wine which his mother was to send him next day for the week's use, the porter let go his prisoner — who tried to rub the pain out of his burning ear — and cried out in harsher tones than before : " You will pay me, will you, to let you off ! Do you think I will let your tricks pass? You little know this old man. I will complain to the gods, not to the school- master ; and as for your wine, youngster, I will offer it as a libation, that heaven may forgive you." CHAPTER II. The temple where, in the forecourt, Paaker was waiting, and where the priest had disappeared to call the leech, was called the " House of Seti," * and was one of the largest in the City of the Dead. Only that magnificent building of the time of the deposed royal race of the reigning king's grandfather — that temple which had been founded by Thotmes III., and whose gateway Amenophis III. had adorned with immense colossal statues | — exceeded it in the extent of its plan ; in every other respect it held the pre-eminence among the sanctuaries of the Necropolis. Rameses I. had founded it shortly after his accession, the * It is still standing, and known as the temple of Qurnah. t The well-known colossal statues, of which that which stands to the north is the famous musical statue, or Pillar of Memnon. 20 UARDA. better to secure his possession of the throne of Egypt ; and his yet greater son Seti carried on the erection, in which the service of the dead for the Manes of the members of the new royal family was conducted, and the high festi- vals held in honor of the gods of the under-world. Great sums had been expended for its establishment, for the maintenance of the priesthood of its sanctuary, and the support of the institutions connected with it. These were intended to be equal to the great original foundations of priestly learning at Heliopolis and Memphis ; they were regulated on the same pattern, and with the object of rais- ing the new royal residence of upper Egypt, namely Thebes, above the capitals of lower Egypt in regard to" philosophical distinction. One of the most important of these foundations was a very celebrated school of learning. First there was the high school, in wjiich priests, physicians, judges, mathe- maticians, astronomers, grammarians, and other learned men, not only had the benefit of instruction, but, subse- quently, when they had won admission to the highest ranks of learning, and attained the dignity of "Scribes," were maintained at the cost of the king, and enabled to pursue their philosophical speculations and researches, in freedom from all care, and in the society of fellow-workers of equal birth and identical interests. An extensive library, in which thousands of papyrus- rolls were preserved, and to which a manufactory of papy- rus was attached, was at the disposal of the learned ; and some of them were intrusted with the education of the younger disciples, who had been prepared in the element- ary school, which was also dependent on the House— or university— of Seti. The lower school was open to every son of a free citizen, and was often frequented by several hundred boys, who also found night-quarters there. The parents were of course required either to pay for their maintenance, or to send due supplies of provisions for the keep of their children at school. In a separate building lived the temple-boarders, a few sons of the noblest families, who were brought up by the priests at a great expense to their parents. s Seti I, the founder of this establishment, had had his ~~ two son, and successor, Rameses, educated here. UaRDA. Jt The elementary schools were strictly ruled, and the rod played so large a part in them that a pedagogue could record this saying : " The scholars ears are at his back • when he is flogged then he hears. " Those youths who wished to pass up from the lower to the high school had to undergo an examination. The student, when he had passed it, could choose a master from among the learned of the higher grades, who under- took to be his philosophical guide, and to whom he re- mained attached all his life through, as a client to his- patron. He could obtain the degree of " Scribe'' and qualify for public office by a second examination. Near to these schools of learning there stood also a school of art, in which instruction was given to students who desired to devote themselves to architecture, sculpt- ure, or painting ; in these also the learner might choose his master. Every teacher in these institutions belonged to the priesthood of the House of Seti. It consisted of more than eight hundred members, divided into five classes, and con- ducted by three so-called prophets. The first prophet was the high-priest of the House of Seti, and at the same time the superior of all the thousands of upper and under servants of the divinities which be- longed to the City of the Dead of Thebes. The temple of Seti proper was a massive structure of limestone. A row of Sphinxes led from the Nile to the surrounding wall, and to the first vast pro-pylon, which formed the entrance to a broad forecourt inclosed on the two sides by colonnades, and beyond which stood a second gateway. When he had passed through this door, which stood between two towers, in shape like truncated pyra- mids, the stranger came to a second court resembling the first, closed at the farther end by a noble row of pillars, which formed part of the central temple itself. The innermost and last was dimly lighted by a few lamps. Behind the temple of Seti stood large square structures of brick of the Nile mud, which, however, had a hand- some and decorative effect, as the humble material of which they were constructed was plastered with lime, and that again was painted with colored pictures and hiero- glyphic inscriptions. 22 UARDA. The internal arrangement of all these houses was the same. In the midst was an open court, on to which opened the doors of the rooms of the priests and philosophers. On each side of the court w T as a shady, covered colonnade of wood, and in the midst a tank gay with ornamental plants. In the upper story were the apartments for the scholars ; and instruction was usually given in the paved courtyard strewn with mats. The most imposing was the house of the chief prophets ; it was distinguished by its waving standards, and stood about a hundred paces behind the temple of Seti, between a well-kept grove and a clear lake, the sacred tank of the temple ; but they only occupied it while fulfilling their office, while the splendid houses which they lived in with their wives and children lay on the other side of the river, in Thebes proper. The untimely visit to the temple could not remain unob- served by the colony of sages. Just as ants, when a hand breaks in on their dwelling, hurry restlessly hither and thither, so an unwonted stir had agitated, not the school- boys only, but the teachers and the priests. They collected in groups near the outer walls, asking questions and hazard- ing guesses. A messenger from the king had arrived — the Princess Bent-Anat had been attacked by the Kolchytes — and a wag among the school-boys, who had got out, de- clared that Paaker, the king s pioneer, had been brought info the temple by force to be made to learn to write better. As the subject of the joke had formerly been a pupil of the House of Seti, and many delectable stories of his errors in penmanship still survived in the memory of the later gen- eration of scholars, this information was received with joy- ful applause ; and it seemed to have a glimmer of proba- bility, in spite of the apparent contradiction that Paaker filled one of the highest offices near the king, when a grave young priest declared that he had seen the pioneer in the forecourt of the temple. The lively discussion, the laughter and shouting of the boys at such an unwonted hour, was not unobserved by the chief priest. This remarkable prelate, Ameni, the son of Nebket, a scion of an old and noble family, was far more than merely the independent head of the temple-brotherhood, among UARDA. 23 whom he was prominent for his power and wisdom ; for all the priesthood in the length and breadth of the land acknowledged his supremacy, asked his advice in difficult cases, and never resisted the decisions in spiritual matters which emanated from the House of Seti — that is to say, from Ameni. He was the embodiment of the priestly idea ; and if at times he made heavy — nay extraordinary — demands on individual fraternities, they were submitted to, for it was known by experience that the indirect roads which he ordered them to follow all converged on one goal, namely, the exaltation of the power and dignity of the hierarchy. The king appreciated this remarkable man, and had long endeavored to attach him to the court, as keeper of the royal seal ; but Ameni was not to be induced to give up his apparently modest position ; for he con- temned all outward show and ostentatious titles ; he ven- tured sometimes to oppose a decided resistance to the measures of the Pharaoh,* and was not minded to give up his unlimited control of the priests for the sake of a lim- ited dominion over what seemed to him petty external concerns, in the service of a king who was only too inde- pendent and hard to influence. He regularly arranged his mode and habits of life in an exceptional way. Eight days out of ten he remained in the temple in- trusted to his charge ; two he devoted to his family, who lived on the^other bank of the Nile ; but he let no one, not even those nearest to him, know what portion of the ten days he gave up to recreation. He required only four hours of sleep. This he usually took in a dark room which no sound could reach, and in the middle of the day ; never at night, when the coolness and quiet seemed to add to his powers of work, and when from time to time he could give himself up to the study of the starry heavens. All the ceremonials that his position required of him, the cleansing, purification, shaving, and fasting, he ful- filled with painful exactitude, and the outer bespoke the inner man. * Pharaoh is the Hebrew form of the Egyptian Peraa — or Phrah. " The great house," "sublime house," or "high gate," is the literal meaning. — A uthor. A remnant of the idea seems to survive in the title, " The Sublime Porte.' Translator. UARDA. Ameni was entering on his fiftieth year ; his figure was tall, and had escaped altogether the stoutness to which at that age the Oriental is liable. The shape of his smoothly- shaven head was symmetrical and of a long oval ; his fore- head was neither broad nor high, but his profile was unu- sually delicate, and his face striking ; his lips were thin and dry, and his large and piercing eyes, though neither fiery nor brilliant, and usually cast down to the ground under his thick eyebrows, were raised with a full, clear, dispas- sionate gaze when it was necessary to see and to examine. The poet of the House of Seti, the young Pentaur, who knew these eyes, had celebrated them in song, and had likened them to a well-disciplined army which the general allows to rest before and after the battle, so that they may march in full strength to victory in the fight. The refined deliberateness of his nature had in it much that was royal as well as priestly ; it was partly intrinsic and born with him, partly the result of his own mental self-control. He had many enemies, but calumny seldom dared to attack the high character of Ameni. The high-priest looked up in astonishment as the disturbance in the court of his temple broke in on his studies. The room in which he was sitting was spacious and cool ; the lower part of the walls was lined with earthen- ware tiles, the upper half plastered and painted. But little was visible of the masterpieces of the artists of the establishment, for almost everywhere they were concealed by wooden closets and shelves, in which were papyrus-rolls and wax tablets. A large table, a couch covered with a panther s skin, a footstool in front of it, and on it a cres- cent-shaped support for the head, made of ivory,* several seats, a stand with beakers and jugs, and another with flasks of all sizes, saucers, and boxes, composed the furni- ture of the room, which was lighted by three lamps, shaped like birds and filled with kiki oil.f Ameni wore a fine pleated robe of snow-white linen, * A support of crescent form on which the Egyptians rested their heads. Many specimens were found in the catacombs, and similai objects are still used in Nubia. t Castor oil, which was used in the lamps. UARDA. Which reached to his ankles ; round his hips was a scar:! adorned with fringes, which in front formed an apron, with broad, stiffened ends which fell to his knees ; a wide belt of white and silver brocade confined the drapery of his robe. Round his throat and far down on his bare breast hung a necklace more than a span deep, composed of pearls and agates, and his upper arm was covered with broad gold bracelets. He rose from the ebony seat with lion's feet, on which he sat, and beckoned to a servant who squatted by one of the walls of the sitting-room. He rose, and without any word of command from his master, silently and carefully placed on the high-priest s bare head a long and thick curled wig, and threw a leopard skin, with its head and claws overlaid with gold-leaf, over his shoulders. A second servant held a metal mirror before Ameni, in which he cast a look as he settled the panther- skin and head-gear, A third servant was handing him the crosier, the in- signia of his dignity as a prelate, when a priest entered and announced the scribe Pentaur. Ameni nodded, and the young priest, who had talked with the Princess Bent-Anat at the temple gate came into the room. Pentaur knelt and kissed the hand of the prelate, who gave him his blessing, and in a clear, sweet voice, and rather formal and unfamiliar language — as if he were read- ing rather than speaking, said : "Rise, my son ; your visit will save me a walk at this untimely hour, since you can inform me of what disturbs the disciples in our temple. Speak." "Little of consequence has occurred, holy father," re- plied Pentaur. " Nor would I have disturbed thee at this- hour, but that a quite unnecessary tumult has been raised by the youths ; and that the Princess Bent-Anat appeared in person to request the aid of a physician. The unusual hour and the retinue that followed her " "Is the daughter of the Pharaoh sick?" asked the prelate. "No, father. She is well — even to wantonness, since - — wishing to prove the swiftness of her horse — she ran over the daughter of the paraschites Pinem. Noble-hearted as she is, she herself carried the sorely-wounded girl to her house." 26 UARDA. "She entered the dwelling of the unclean f w "Thou hast said." " And she now asks to be purified ? " "I thought I might venture to absolve her, father, for the purest humanity led her to the act, which was no doubt a breach of discipline, but " "But?" asked the high-priest in a grave voice, and he raised his eyes which he had hitherto kept fixed on the ground. "But," said the young priest, and now his eyes fell, " which can surely be no crime. When Ra in his golden bark sails across the heavens, his light falls as freely and as bountifully on the hut of the despised poor as on the palace of the Pharaohs ; and shall the tender human heart withhold its pure light — which is benevolence — from the wretched, only because they are base ? " " It is the poet Pentaur that speaks," said the prelate, "and not the priest to whom the privilege was given to be initiated into the highest grade of the sages, and whom I call my brother and my equal. I have no advantage over you, young man, but perishable learning, which the past has won for you as much as for me — nothing but cer- tain perceptions and experiences that offer nothing new to the world, but teach us, indeed, that it is our part to maintain all that is ancient in living efficacy and practice. That which you promised a few weeks since, I many years ago vowed to the gods ; to guard knowledge as the exclusive possession of the initiated. Like fire, it serves those who know its uses to the noblest ends, but in the hands of chil- dren — and the people, the mob, can never ripen into man- hood—it is a destroying brand, raging and inextinguish- able, devouring'' "all around it, and destroying all that has been built and beautified by the past. And how can we remain ' the Sages ' and continue to develop and absorb all learning within the shelter of our temples, not only with- out endangering the weak, but for their benefit? You know and have sworn to act after that knowledge. To bind the crowd to the faith and the institutions of the fathers is your duty— is the duty of every priest. Times have changed, my son ; under the old kings the fire, of which I spoke figuratively to you— the poet — was inclosed in brazen walls which the people passed stupidly by. Now UARDA. 27 I see breaches in the old fortifications ; the eyes of the un- initiated have been sharpened, and one tells the other what he fancies he has spied, though half-blinded, through the glowing rifts. " A slight emotion had given energy to the tones of the speaker, and while he held the poet spell-bound with his piercing glance he continued : " We curse and expel any one of the initiated who en- larges these breaches ; we punish even the friend who idly neglects to repair and close them with beaten brass ! " " My father ! " cried Pentaur, raising his head in aston- ishment while the blood mounted to his cheeks. The high-priest went up to him and laid both hands on his shoulders. They were of equal height and of equally symmetrical build ; even the outline of their features was similar. Nevertheless no one would have taken them to be even distantly related; their countenances were so infinitely unlike in expression. On the face of one were stamped a strong will and the power of firmly guiding his life and commanding himself ; on the other, an amiable desire to overlook the faults and defects of the world, and to contemplate life as it painted itself in the transfiguring magic-mirror of his poet s soul. Frankness and enjoyment spoke in his sparkling eye, but the subtle smile on his lips when he was engaged in a dis- cussion, or when his soul was stirred, betrayed that Pen- taur, far from childlike carelessness, had fought many a severe mental battle, and had tasted the dark waters of doubt. At this moment mingled feelings were struggling in his soul. He felt as if he must withstand the speaker ; and yet the powerful presence of the other exercised so strong an influence over his mind, long trained to submission, that he was silent, and a pious thrill passed through him when Ameni's hands were laid on his shoulders. " I blame you," said the high-priest, while he firmly held the young man, " nay, to my sorrow I must chastise you ; and yet," he said, stepping back and taking his right hand, " I rejoice in the necessity ; for I love you and honor you, as one whom the Unnameable has blessed with high gifts and destined to great things. Man leaves a weed to 28 UARDA. grow unheeded or roots it up ; but you are a noble tree, and I am like the gardener who has forgotten to provide it with a prop, and who is now thankful to have detected a bend that reminds him of his neglect. You look at me inquir- ingly, and I can see in your eyes that I seem to you a severe judge. Of what are you accused ?— You have suf- fered an institution of the past to be set aside. It does not matter— so the short-sighted and heedless think; but I say to you : You have doubly transgressed, because the wrong-doer was the kings daughter, whom all look up to, great and small, and whose actions may serve as an ex- ample to the people. On whom then must a breach of the ancient institutions lie with the darkest stain if not on the highest in rank ? In a few days it will be said the paraschites are men even as we are, and the old law to avoid them as unclean is folly. And will the reflections of the people, think you, end there, when it is so easy for them to say that he who errs in one point may as well fail in all ? In questions of faith, my son, nothing is insignificant. If we open one tower to the enemy he is master of the whole fortress. In these unsettled times our sacred lore is like a chariot on the declivity of a precipice, and under the wheels thereof a stone. A child takes away the stone, and the chariot rolls down into the abyss and is dashed in pieces. Imagine the princess to be that child, and the stone a loaf that she would fain give to feed a beggar. Would you then give it to her if your father and your mother and all that is dear and precious to you were in the chariot? Answer not ! the princess will visit the paraschites again to morrow. You must await her in the man's hut, and there inform her that she has transgressed and must crave to be puri- fied by us. For this time you are excused from any further punishment Heaven has bestowed on you a gifted soul. Strive for that which is wanting to you— the strength to subdue, to crush for One— and you know that One— all things else— even the misguiding voice of your heart, the treacherous voice of your judgment. But stay! send leeches to the house of the paraschites, and desire them to treat the injured girl as though she were the queen her- self. Who knows where the man dwells ? " "The princess," replied Pentaur, "has left Paaker, the king s pioneer, behind in the temple to conduct the leeches, to the house of Pinern. " UARDA. 2 9 The grave high-priest smilecL and said, Paaker ! to attend the daughter of a paraschites. " Pentaur half beseechingly and half in fun raised his eyes which he had kept cast down. " And Pentaur/' he murmured, 4 'the gardeners son ! who is to refuse absolu- tion to the king's daughter ! " " Pentaur, the minister of the gods — Pentaur, the priest —has not to do with the daughter of the king, but with the transgressor of the sacred institutions," replied Ameni, gravely. "Let Paaker know I wish to speak with him." The poet bowed low and quitted the room, the high- priest muttered to himself : " He is not yet what he should be, and speech is of no effect with him." For a while he was silent, walking to and fro in medita- tion ; then he said half aloud : "And the boy is destined to great things. What gift of the gods does he lack? He has the faculty of learning, of thinking, of feeling, of winning all hearts, even mine. He keeps himself unde- fined and separate " suddenly the prelate paused and struck his hand on the back of a chair that stood by him. " I have it ; he has not yet felt the fire of ambition. We will light it, for his profit and our own." CHAPTER III. Pentaur hastened to execute the commands of the high- priest. He sent a servant to escort Paaker, who was wait- ing in the forecourt, into the presence of Ameni, while he himself repaired to the physicians to impress on them the most watchful care of the unfortunate girl. Many proficients in the healing arts * were brought up in the House of Seti, but few used to remain after passing the examination for the degree of Scribe. The most gifted * What is here stated with regard to the medical schools is principally derived from the medical writings of the Egyptians themselves, among which the " Ebers Papyrus " holds the first place, " Medical Papyrus I," of Berlin the second, and a hieratic MS. in London which, like the first mentioned, has come down to us from the 18th dynasty, takes the third &\so se§ Herodotus II. 84. Diodorus J. 82. 3° UARDA. were sent to Heliopolis, where flourished, in the great " Hall of the Ancients," the most celebrated medical fac- ulty of the whole country, whence they returned to Thebes, endowed with the highest honors in surgery, in ocular treatment, or in any other branch of their profession, and became physicans to the king or made a living by impart- ing their learning and by being called in to consult on serious cases. Naturally most of the doctors lived on the east bank of the Nile, in Thebes proper, and even in private houses with their families ; but each was attached to a priestly college. Whoever required a physician sent for him, not to his own house, but to a temple. There a statement was re- quired of the complaint from which the sick person was suffering, and it was left to the principal of the medical staff of the sanctuary to select that master of the healing art whose special knowledge appeared to him to be suited for the treatment of the case. Like all priests, the physicians lived on the income which came to them from their landed property, from the gifts of the king, the contributions of the laity, and the share which was given them of the state-revenues ; they expected no honorarium from their patients, but the re- stored sick seldom neglected making a present to the sanc- tuary whence a physician had come to them, and it was not unusual for the priestly leech to make the recovery of the sufferer conditional on certain gifts to be offered to the temple. The medical knowledge of the Egyptians was, according to every indication, very considerable ; but it was natural that physicians, who stood by the bed of sickness as " ordained servants pf the Divinity," should not be satis- fied with a rational treatment of the sufferer, and should rather think that they could not dispense with the mys- tical effects of prayers and vows. Among the professors of medicine in the House of Seti there were men of the most different gifts and bent of mind ; but Pentaur was not for a moment in doubt as to which should be intrusted with the treatment of the girl who had been run over, and for whom he felt the greatest sympathy. UARDA. The one he chose was the grandson of a celebrated leech, long since dead, whose name of Nebsecht he had inherited, and a beloved school-friend and old comrade of Pentaur. This young man had from his earliest years shown high and hereditary talent for the profession to which he had devoted himself ; he had selected surgery* for his special province at Heliopolis, and would certainly have attained the dignity of teacher there if an impediment in his speech had not debarred him from the viva voce recitation of formulas and prayers. This circumstance, which was deeply lamented by his parents and tutors, was in fact, in the best opinions, an advantage to him ; for it often happens that apparent superiority does us damage, and that from apparent defect springs the saving of our life. Thus while the companions of Nebsecht were employed in declaiming or in singing, he, thanks to his fettered tongue, could give himself up to his inherited and almost passionate love of observing organic life ; and his teachers indulged up to a certain point his innate spirit of investi- gation, and derived benefit from his knowledge of the human and animal structures, and from the dexterity of his handling. His deep aversion to the magical part of his profession would have brought him heavy punishment, nay very likely would have cost him expulsion from the craft, if he had ever given it expression in any form. But Neb- secht's was the silent and reserved nature of the learned man, who, free from all desire of external recognition, finds a rich satisfaction in the delights of investigation ; and he regarded every demand on him to give proof of his capacity as a vexatious but unavoidable intrusion on his unassuming but laborious and fruitful investigations. Nebsecht was nearer and dearer to Pentaur than any other of his associates. He admired his learning and skill ; and when the slightly-built surgeon, who was indefatigable in his wan- * Among the six hermetic books of medicine mentioned by Clement, of Alexandria, was one devoted to surgical instruments; otherwise the very badly-set fractures found in some of the mummies do little honor to the Egyptian surgeons. 3* derings, roved through the thickets of the Nile, the desert, or the mountain range, the young poet-priest accompanied him with pleasure and with great benefit to himself, for his compani >n observed a thousand things to which without him ne would have remained forever blind ; and the ob- jects around him, which were known to him only by their shapes, derived connection and significance from the explanations of the naturalist, whose intractable tongue moved freely when it was required to expound to his friend the peculiarities of organic beings whose development he had been the first to detect. The poet was dear in the sight of Nebsecht, and he loved Pentaur, who possessed all the gifts he lacked; manly beauty, childlike lightness of heart, the frankest openness, artistic power, and the gift of expressing in vord and song every emotion that stirred his soul. The poet was as a novice in the order in which Nebsecht was master, but quite capable of understanding its most difficult points ; so it happened that Nebsecht attached greater value to his judgment than to that of his own colleagues, who showed themselves fettered by prejudice, while Pentaur s decision always was free and unbiased. The naturalist's room lay on the ground floor, and had no living rooms above it, being under one of the granaries attached to the temple. It was as large as a public hall, and yet Pentaur, making his way toward the silent owner of the room, found it everywhere strewed with thick bun- dles of every variety of plant, with cages of palm-twigs piled four or five feet high, and a number of jars, large and small, covered with perforated paper. Within these prisons moved all sorts of living creatures, from the jerboa, the lizard of the Nile, and a light-colored species of owl, to numerous specimens of frogs, snakes, scorpions and beetles. On the solitary table in the middle of the room, near to a writing-stand, lay bones of animals, with various sharp flints and bronze knives. In a corner of this room lay a mat, on which stood a wooden head-prop, indicating that the naturalist was in the habit of sleeping on it. When Pentaur's step was heard on the threshold of this strange abode, its owner pushed a rather large object UARDA. 33 under the table, threw a cover over it, and hid a sharp flint scalpel* fixed into a wooden handle, which he had just been using, in the folds of his robe — as a school-boy might hide some forbidden game from his master. Then he crossed his arms, to give himself the aspect of a man who is dreaming in harmless idleness. The solitary lamp, which was fixed on a high stand near his chair, shed a scanty light, which, however, sufficed to show him his trusted friend Pentaur, who had disturbed Nebsecht in his prohibited occupations. Nebsecht nodded to him as he entered, and, when he had seen who it was, said : 4 'You need not have frightened me so!" Then he drew out from under the table the object he had hidden — a living rabbit fastened down to a board — and continued his interrupted observations on the body, which he had opened and fastened back with wooden pins while the heart continued to beat. He took no further notice of Pentaur, who for some time silently watched the investigator ; then he laid his hand on his shoulder and said : '' Lock your door more carefully when you are busy with forbidden things." "They took — they took away the bar of the door lately," stammered the naturalist, "when they caught me dissecting the hand of the forger Ptahmes. " "The mummy of the poor man will find its right hand wanting," answered the poet. " He will not want it out there." " Did you bury the least bit of an image in his grave ? " " Nonsense ! " "You go very far, Nebsecht, and are not foreseeing. ' He who needlessly hurts an innocent animal shall be served in the same way by the spirits of the nether-world/ says the law ; but I see what you will say. You hold it lawful to put a beast to pain, when you can thereby in- crease that knowledge by which you alleviate the suffer- ings of man, and enrich " * The Egyptians seem to have preferred to use flint instruments foi surgical purposes, at any rate for the opening of bodies and for circum- cision. Many flint instruments have been found and preserved in museums. 3 34 UARDA. " And do not you ? " A gentle smile passed over Pentaur's face ; he leaned over the animal and said : " How curious ! the little beast still lives and breathes ; a man would have long been dead under such treatment. His organism is perhaps of a more precious, subtle, and so more fragile nature ? " Nebsecht shrugged his shoulders. " Perhaps ! " he said. " I thought you must know." "I — how should I?" asked the leech. "I have told you — they would not even let me try to find out how the hand of a forger moves." " Consider, the Scripture tells us the passage of the soul depends on the preservation of the body." Nebsecht looked up with his cunning little eyes, and shrugging his shoulders, said : ' 'Then no doubt it is so ; however, these things do not concern me. Do what you like with the souls of men ; I seek to know something of their bodies, and patch them when they are damaged as well as may be." "Nay— Toth* be praised, at least you need not deny that you are master in that art." "Who is master," asked Nebsecht, "excepting God? I can do nothing, nothing at all, and guide my instruments with hardly more certainty than a sculptor condemned to work in the dark. " " Something like the blind Resu then," said Pentaur, smiling, "who understood painting better than all the painters who could see." " In my operations there is a 'better' and a 'worse ; said Nebsecht, " but there is nothing ' good/ " "Then we must be satisfied with the ' better,' and I have come to claim it," said Pentaur. * Toth is the god of the learned and of physicians. The Ibis was sacred to him, and he was usually represented as Ibis-headed. Ra created him " a beautiful light to show the name of his evil enemy." Originally the Moon-god, he became the lord of time and measure. lie is the weigher, the philosopher among the gods, the lord of writing, of art and of learning. The Greeks called him Hermes Trismegistos, i, e.> threefold or " very great," which was, in fact, in imitation of the Egypt- ians, whose name Toth or Techuti signified twofold, in the same way " very great." UARDA. 35 " Are you ill? 99 " Isis be praised, I feel so well that I could uproot a palm-tree, but I would ask you to visit a sick girl. The Princess Bent-Anat " "The royal family has its own physicians. " "Let me speak ! the Princess Bent-Anat has run over a young girl, and the poor child is seriously hurt." " Indeed," said the student, reflectively. " Is she over there in the city, or here in the Necropolis ? " "Here. She is in fact the daughter of a paraschites. " "Of a paraschites ? " exclaimed Nebsecht, once more slipping the rabbit under the table, "then I will go." "You strange fellow. I believe you expect to find something strange among the unclean folk." " That is my affair ; but I will go. What is the man's name ? " " Pin em." "There will be nothing to be done with him," muttered the student, " however — who knows ? " With these words he rose, and opening a tightly closed flask he dropped some strychnine* on the nose and in the mouth of the rabbit, which immediately ceased to breathe. Then he laid it in a box and said, " I am ready." "But you cannot go out of doors in this stained dress." The physician nodded assent, and took from a chest a clean robe, which he was about to throw on over the other ; but Pentaur hindered him. " First take off your work- ing dress," he said, laughing. " I will help you. But by Besa, f you have as many coats as an onion." Pentaur was known as a mighty laugher among his com- panions, and his loud voice rung in the quiet room, when he discovered that his friend was about to put a third clean robe over two dirty ones, and wear no less than three dresses at once. Nebsecht laughed too, and said, " Now I know why my clothes were so heavy, and felt so intolerably hot at noon. While I get rid of my superfluous clothing, will you go and ask the high-priest if I have leave to quit the temple." * Strychnine was a poison well known to the Egyptians. t The god of the toilet of the Egyptians. He was represented as a deformed pigmy. He led the women to conquest in love, and the men in war. He was probably of Arab origin. UARDA. 36 " He commissioned me to send a leech to the paraschites, and added that the girl was to be treated like a queen. " " Ameni ! and did he know that we have to do with a paraschites ? 99 "Certainly." "Then I shall begin to believe that broken limbs may be set with vows — ay, vows ! You know I cannot go alone to the sick, because my leather tongue is unable to recite the sentences or to wring rich offerings for the temple from the dying. Go, while I undress, to the prophet Gagabu and beg "him to send the pastophorus Teta, who usually accompanies me." "I would seek a young assistant rather than that blind old man." < £ Not at all. I should be glad if he would stay at home, and only let his tongue creep after me like an eel or a slug. Head and heart have nothing to do with his wordy opera- tions, and they go on like an ox treading out corn."* "It is true," said Pentaur ; "just lately I saw the old man singing out his litanies by a sick bed, and all the time quietly counting the dates, of which they had given him. a whole sack-full." "He will be unwilling to go to the paraschites, who is poor, and he would sooner seize the whole brood of scor- pions yonder than take a piece of bread from the hand of the unclean. Tell him to come and fetch me, and drink some wine. There stands three days' allowance ; in this hot weather it dims my sight. Does the paraschites live to the north or south of the Necropolis? " "I think to the north. Paaker, the kings pioneer, will show you the way." " He ! " exclaimed the student, laughing. " What day in the calendar is this, then ? f The child of a paraschites is to be tended like a princess, and a leech have a noble to * In Egypt, as in Palestine, beasts trod out the corn, as we learn from many pictures in the catacombs, even in the remotest ages; often with the addition of a weighted sledge, to the runners of which rollers are attached. It is now called noreg. Q „iw t Calendars have been preserved; the completestis the papyrus Sallier IV. which has been admirably treated by F. Chabas. Many days are noted as lucky, unlucky, etc. In the temples many Calendars of feasts have been found, the most perfect at Medinet Abu, deciphered by Diimich. UARDA. 37 guide him, like the Pharaoh himself ! I ought to have kept on my three robes ! " "The mght is warm," said Pentaur. "But Paaker has strange ways with him. Only the day before yesterday I was called to a poor boy whose collar- bone he had simply smashed with a stick. If I had been the princess horse I would rather have trodden him down than a poor little girl." "So would I," said Pentaur, laughing, and left the room to request the second prophet Gagabu, who was also the head of the medical staff of the House of Seti, to send the blind pastophorus * Teta, with his friend, as singer of the litany. CHAPTER IV. Pentaur knew where to seek Gagabu, for he himself had been invited to the banquet which the prophet had pre- pared in honor of two sages who had lately come to the House of Seti from the university of Chennu.f In an open court, surrounded by gayly-painted wooden pillars, and lighted by many lamps, sat the feasting priests in two long rows on comfortable arm-chairs. Before each s/:ood a little table, and servants were occupied in supply- ing them with the dishes and drinks, which were laid out on a splendid table in the middle of the court. Joints of gazelle, % roast geese and ducks, meat pasties, artichokes, asparagus and other vegetables, and various cakes and sweetmeats were carried to the guests, and their beakers well filled with the choice wines of which there was never any lack in the lofts of the House of Seti. § In the * The Pastophori were an order of priests to which the physicians be- longed. t Chennu was situated on a bend of the Nile, not far from the Nubian frontier; it is now called Gebel Silsileh; it was in very ancient times the seat of a celebrated seminary. | Gazelles were tamed for domestic animals; we find them in the re- presentations of the herds of the wealthy Egyptians and as slaughtered for food. The banquet is described from the pictures of feasts which h*ve been found in the tombs. § Cellars maintain the mean temperature of the climate, and in Egypt are hot. Wine is best preserved in shadv and airy lofts. 3* UARDA. spaces between the guests stood servants with metal bowls, in which they might wash their hands, and towels of fine linen. ; ' When their hunger was appeased, the wine flowed more freely, and each guest was decked with sweetly-smelling flowers, whose odor was supposed to add to the vivacity of the conversation. Many of the sharers in this feast wore long, snow-white garments, and were of the class of the Initiated into the mysteries of the faith, as well as chiefs of the different orders of priests of the House of Seti. The second prophet, Gagabu, who was to-day charged with the conduct of the feast by Ameni— who on such oc- casions only showed himself for a few minutes— was a short, stout man with a bald and almost spherical head. His features were those of a man of advancing years, but well formed, and his smoothly-shaven, plump cheeks were well rounded. His gray eyes looked out cheerfully and observantly, but had a vivid sparkle when he was excited, and began to twitch his thick, sensual mouth. Close by him stood the vacant, highly-ornamented chair of the high-priest, and next to him sat the priests arrived from Chennu, two tall, dark-colored old men. The re- mainder of the company was arranged in the order of precedency, which they held in the priests' colleges, and which bore no relation to their respective ages. But strictly as the guests were divided with reference to their rank, they mixed without distinction in the conver- sation. „ "We know how to value our call to Thebes, said the elder of the strangers from Chennu, Tuauf, whose essays were frequently used in the schools; "for while, on one hand, it brings us into the neighborhood of the Pharaoh, where life, happiness, and safety flourish, on the other it procures us the honor of counting ourselves among your number ; for, though the university of Chennu in former times was so happy as to bring up many great men, whom she could call her own, she can no longer compare with the House of Seti. . Even Heliopolis and Memphis are behind you ; and if I, my humble self, nevertheless ven- ture boldly among you, it is because I ascribe your suc- cess as much to the active influence of the Divinity in UARDA. 39 your temple, which may promote my acquirements and achievements, as to your great gifts and your industry, in which I will not be behind you. I have already seen your high-priest Ameni — what a man ! And who does not know thy name, Gagabu, or thine, Meriapu ? " ' ' And which of you, " asked the other new-comer, ' ' may we greet as the author of the most beautiful hymn to Amon, which was ever sung in the land of the Sycamore ? Which of you is Pentaur ? " ''The empty chair yonder," answered Gagabu, pointing to a seat at the lower end of the table, "is his. He is the youngest of us all, but a great future awaits him/' "And his songs," added the elder of the strangers. "Without doubt," replied the chief of the haruspices, an old man with a large gray curly head, that seemed too heavy for his thin neck, which stretched forward — per- haps from the habit of constantly watching for signs — while his prominent eyes glowed with a fanatical gleam. ' ' With- out doubt the gods have granted great gifts to our young friend ; but it remains to be proved how he will use them. I perceive a certain freedom of thought in the youth, which pains me deeply. Although in his poems his flexi- ble style certainly follows the prescribed forms, his ideas transcend all tradition, and even in the hymns intended for the ears of the people I find turns of thought, which might well be called treason to the mysteries which only a few months ago he swore to keep secret. For instance he says — and we sing — and the laity hear — " One only art Thou, Thou Creator of beings ; And Thou only makest all that is created. And again — " He is one only, Alone, without equal; Dwelling alone in the holiest of holies." * " Such passages as these ought not to be sung in public, at least in times like ours, when new ideas come in upon us from abroad, like the swarms of locusts from the East." " Spoken to my very soul ! " cried the treasurer of the temple; "Ameni initiated this boy tpo early into the mysteries. " * Hymn to Anion preserved in a papyrus-roll at Bulaq, and deciphered by Grebaut'and L. Stern. 40 UARDA. "In my opinion, and I am his teacher," said Gagabu, "our brotherhood may be proud of a member who acids so brilliantly to the fame of our temple. The people hear the hymns without looking closely at the meaning of the words. I never saw the congregation more devout than when the beautiful and deeply-feit song of praise was sung at the feast of the stairs. * "Pentaur was always thy favorite," said the former speaker. "Thou wouldst not permit in any one else many things that are allowed to him. His hymns are nevertheless to me and to many others a dangerous per- formance, and canst thou dispute the fact that we have grounds for grave anxiety, and that things happen and circumstances grow up around us which hinder us, and at last may perhaps crush us, if we do not, while there is yet time, inflexibly oppose them ? " "Thou bringest sand to the desert, and sugar to sprinkle over honey," exclaimed Gagabu, and his lips began to twitch. ' ' Nothing is now as it ought to be, and there will be a hard battle to fight ; not with the sword, but with this —and this. " And the impatient man touched his forehead and his lips. "And who is there more competent than my disciple ? There is the champion of our cause, a secon d cap of Hor, that overthrew the evil one with winged sun- beams, and you come and would clip his wings and biuret his claws ! Alas, alas, my lords ! will you never understand that a lion roars louder than a cat, and the sun shines brighter than an oil-lamp ? Let Pentaur alone, I say ; or you will do as the man did, who, for fear of the toothache?, had his sound teeth drawn. Alas, alas ! in the years to come we shall have to bite deep into the flesh, till the blood flows, if we wish to escape being eaten up our- selves ! "The enemy is not unknown to us also," said the elder priest from Chennu, " although we, on the remote southern frontier of the kingdom, have escaped many evils that in the north have eaten into our body like a cancer. Here foreigners are now hardly looked upon at all as unclean and devilish." f * A particularly solemn festival in honor of Amon-Chem, held in the temple of Meclinet-Abu. t " Typhonisch," belonging to Typhon or Seth.— rramlato^ UARDA. 41 " Hardly ? " exclaimed the chief of theharuspices ; " they are invited, caressed, and honored. Like dust, when the simoon blows through the chinks of a wooden house, they crowd into the houses and temples, taint our manners and language ; nay, on the throne of the successors of Ra sits a descendant " ' 1 Presumptuous man ! " cried the voice of the high- priest, who at this instant entered the hall. " Hold your tongue, and be not so bold as to wag it against him who is our king, and wields the scepter in this kingdom as the Vicar of Ra." The speaker bowed and was silent ; then he and all the company rose to greet Ameni, who bowed to them all with polite dignity, took his seat, and turning to Gagabu asked him carelessly : "I find you all in most unpriestly excitement ; what has disturbed your equanimity ? " "We were discussing the overwhelming influx of for- eigners into Egypt, and the necessity of opposing some resistance to them." "You will find me one of the foremost in the attempt," replied Ameni. "We have endured much already, and news has arrived from the north which grieves me deeply. " " Have our troops sustained a defeat ? " "They continue to be victorious, but thousands of our countrymen have fallen victims in the fight or on the march. Rameses demands fresh reinforcements. The pioneer, Paaker, has brought me a letter from our brethren who accompany the king, and delivered a document from him to the Regent, which contains the order to send to him fifty thousand fighting men ; and as' the whole of the soldier-caste and all the auxiliaries are already under arms, the bondsmen of the temple, who till our acres, are to be levied, and sent into Asia." A murmur of disapproval arose at these words. The chief of the haruspices stamped his foot, and Gagabu asked : "What do you mean to do ? " "To prepare to obey the commands of the king," an- swered Ameni, " and to call the heads of the temples of the city of Amon here without delay to hold a council. Each must first in his holy of holies seek good counsel of 42 UARDA. the Celestials. When we have come to a conclusion, we must next win the Viceroy over to our side. Who yester- day assisted at his prayers ? " " It was my turn/' said the chief -of the haruspices. " Follow me to my abode when the meal is over," com- manded Ameni. " But why is our poet missing from our circle ? " At this moment Pentaur came into the hall, and while he bowed easily and with dignity to the company and low before Ameni, he prayed him to grant that the pastophorus Teta should accompany the leech Nebsecht to visit the daughter of the paraschites. Ameni nodded consent and exclaimed: " They must make haste. Paaker waits for them at the great gate, and will accompany them in my chariot. " As soon as Pentaur had left the party of feasters, the old priest from Chennu exclaimed, as he turned to Ameni : "Indeed, holy father, just such a one and no other had I pictured your poet. He is like the Sun-god, and his demeanor is that of a prince. He is no doubt of noble birth." f .' . " His father is a homely gardener, "said the high-priest, "who indeed tills the land apportioned to him with in- dustry and prudence, but is of humble birth and rough ex- terior. He sent Pentaur to the school * at an early age, and we have brought up the wonderfully gifted boy to be what he now is." n " What office does he fill here in the temple ? " He instructs the elder pupils of the high-school in grammar and eloquence ; he is also an excellent observer of the starry heavens, and a most skilled interpreter of dreams," replied Gagabu. " But here he is again. To whom is Paaker conducting our stammering physician and his assistant ? " " To the daughter of the paraschites, who has been run over," answered Pentaur. " But what a rough fellow this pioneer is. His voice hurts my ears ; and he spoke to our leeches as if they had been his slaves. " " He was vexed with the commission the princess had *It is certain from the papyri that people of the lower orders could be received into the priesthood. Separate castes like those of the Hindoos were unknown to the Egyptians. UARDA. 43 devolved on him," said the high priest benevolently, " and his unamiable disposition is hardly mitigated by his real piety." "And yet," said an old priest, "his brother, who left us some years ago, and who had chosen me for his guide and teacher, was a particularly lovable and docile youth." " And his father/' said Ameni, "was one of the most superior, energetic, and withal subtle-minded of men." "Then he has derived his bad peculiarities from his mother ? " " By no means. She is a timid, amiable, soft-hearted woman." " But must the child always resemble its parents ? " asked Pentaur. " Among the sons of the sacred bull, sometimes not one bears the distinguishing mark of his father." "And if Paaker's father were indeed an Apis," said Gagabu, laughing, "according to your view the pioneer himself belongs, alas ! to the peasant's stable." Pentaur did not contradict him, but said with a smile : " Since he left the school-bench, where his school- fellows called him the wild ass on account of his unruli- ness, he has remained always the same. He was stronger than most of them, and yet they knew no greater pleasure than putting him in a rage." "Children are so cruel!" said Ameni. " They judge only by appearances, and never inquire into the causes of them. The deficient are as guilty in their eyes as the idle, and Paaker could put forward small claims to their in- dulgence. I encourage freedom and merriment," he con- tinued, turning to the priests from Chennu, "among our disciples, for in fettering the fresh enjoyment of youth we lame our best assistant. The excrescences on the natural growth of boys cannot be more surely or painlessly extir- pated than in their wild games. The school-boy is the school-boy's best tutor. " " But Paaker," said the priest Meriapu, "was not im- proved by the provocations of his companions. Constant contests with them increased that roughness which now makes him the terror of his subordinates and alienates all affection." " He is the most unhappy of all the many youths who 44 UAkDA. were intrusted to my care/' said Ameni, "and I believe I know why — he never had a child-like disposition, even when in years he was still a child, and the gods had denied him the heavenly gift of good-humor. Youth should be modest, and he was assertive from his childhood. He took the sport of his companions for earnest, and his father, who was unwise only as a tutor, encouraged him to resistance instead of to forbearance, in the idea that he thus would be steeled to-the hard life of a Mohar." * y I have often heard the deeds of the Mohar spoken of," said the old priest from Chennu, "yet I do not exactly know what his office requires of him." " He has to wander among the ignorant and insolent people of hostile provinces/ and to inform himself of the kind and number of the population, to investigate the direction of the mountains, valleys, and rivers, to set forth his observations, and to deliver them to the house of war, f so that the march of the troops may be guided by them." " The Mohar, then, must be equally skilled as a war- rior and as a scribe. " " As thou say est ; and Paaker's father was not a hero only, but at the same time a writer, whose close and clear information depicted the country through which he had . traveled as plainly as if it were seen from a mountain height. He was the first who took the title of Mohar. The king held him in such high esteem that he was the inferior to no one but the king himself, and the minister of the house of war. " " Was he of noble race? " "Of one of the oldest and noblest in the country. His father was the noble warrior Assa," answered the harus- pex, "and he therefore, after he himself had attained the highest consideration and vast wealth, escorted home the niece of the King Hor-em-heb, who would have had a claim to the throne, as well as the Regent, if the grand- father of the present Rameses had not seized it from the old family by violence." * The severe duties of the Mohar are well known from the papyrus of Anastasi I. in the British Museum, which has been ably treated by F. Chabas, Voyage d'un Egyptien. t Corresponding to our minister of war. A person of the highest im- portance even in the earliest times. UARDA. "Be careful of your words, " said Ameni, interrupting the rash old man. " Rameses I. was and is the grand- father of our sovereign, and in the king's veins, from his mother's side, flows the blood of the legitimate descendants of the Sun-god." "But fuller and purer in those of the Regent/' the har- uspex ventured to retort. "But Rameses wears the crown," cried Ameni, "and will continue to wear it so long as it pleases the gods. Reflect ! — your hairs are gray, and seditious words are like sparks, which are borne by the wind, but which, if they fall, may set our home in a blaze. Continue your feast- ing, my lords ; but I would request you to speak no more this evening of the king and his new decree. You, Pen- taur, fulfill my orders to-morrow morning with energy and prudence." The high-priest bowed and left the feast. As soon as the door was shut behind him, the old priest from Chennu spoke. "What we have learned concerning the pioneer of the king, a man who holds so high an office, surprises me. Does he distinguish himself by a special acuteness ? " " He was a steady learner, but of moderate ability." " Is the rank of Mohar then as high as that of a prince of the empire ? " " By no means." "How then is it ?" "It is, as it is," interrupled Gagabu. "The sun of the vine-dresser has his mouth full of grapes, and the child of the door-keeper opens the lock with words." " Never mind, "said an old priest who had hitherto kept silence. " Paaker earned for himself the post of Mohar, and possesses many praiseworthy qualities. He is inde- fatigable and faithful, quails before no danger, and has always been earnestly devout from his boyhood. When the other scholars carried their pocket-money to the fruit- sellers and confectioners at the temple gates, he would buy £eese, and, when his mother sent him a handsome sum, young gazelles, to offer to the gods on the altars. No noble in the land owns a greater treasure of charms and images of the gods than he. To the present time he is the most pious of men, and the offerings for the dead, 46 UARDA. which he brings in the name of his late father, may be said to be positively kingly/' " We owe him gratitude for these gifts," said the treas- urer, " and the high honor he pays his father even after his death is exceptional and far-famed." "He emulates him in every respect," sneered Gagabu ; "and though he does not resemble him in any feature' grows more and more like him. But unfortunately it is as the goose resembles the swan, or the owl resembles the eagle. For his father's noble pride he has overbearing haughtiness ; for kindly severity, rude harshness ; for dignity, conceit; for perseverance, obstinacy. Devout he is, and we profit by his gifts. The treasurer may rejoice over them, and the dates off a crooked tree taste as well as those off a straight one. But if I were the Divinity I should prize them no higher than a hoopoe s crest ; for He, who sees into the heart of the giver— alas ! what does He see ! Storms and darkness are of the dominion of Seth, and in there—in there," and the old man struck his broad breast, " all is wrath and tumult, and there is not a gleam of the calm blue heaven of Ra that shines soft and pure in the soul of the pious ; no, not a spot as large as this wheaten-cake." "Hast thou then sounded to the depths of his soul?" asked the haruspex. "As this beaker ! " exclaimed Gagabu, and he touched the rim of an empty drinking-vessel. ' ' For fifteen years without ceasing. The man has been of service to us, is 90 still, and will continue to be. Our leeches extract salves from bitter gall and deadly poisons ; and folks like these " • " Hatred speaks in thee," said the haruspex, interrupt- ing the indignant old man. ( 1 Hatred ! " he retorted, and his lips quivered. ' < Hatred ? " and he struck his breast with his clenched hand. " It is true, it is no stranger to this old heart. But open thine ears, O haruspex, and all you others too shall hear. I recognize two sorts of hatred. The one is between man and man ; that I have gagged, smothered, killed, annihi- lated—with what efforts, the gods know. In past years I have certainly tasted its bitterness, and served it like a wasp, which, though it knows that in stinging it must die, UARDA. 47 yet uses its sting. But now I am old in years, that is in knowledge, and I know that of all the powerful impulses which stir our hearts, one only comes solely from Seth, one only belongs wholly to the Evil one — and that is hatred between man and man. Covetousness may lead to in- dustry, sensual appetites may beget noble fruit, but hatred is a devastator, and in the soul that it occupies all that is noble grows not upward and toward the light, but down- ward to the earth and to darkness. Everything may be forgiven by the gods, save only hatred between man and man. But there is another sort of hatred that is pleasing to the gods, and which you must cherish if you would not miss their presence in your souls ; that is, hatred for all that hinders the growth of light and goodness and purity —the hatred of Horus of Seth. The gods would punish me if I hated Paaker, whose father was dear to me ; but the spirits of darkness would possess the old heart in my breast if it were devoid of horror for the covetous and sor- did devotee, who would fain buy earthly joys of the gods with gifts of beasts and wine, as men exchange an ass for a robe, in whose soul seethe dark promptings. Paaker's gifts can no more be pleasing to the Celestials than a cask of attar of rose would please thee, haruspex, in which scorpions, centipedes, and venomous snakes were swim- ming. I have long led this man's prayers, and never have I heard him crave for noble gifts, but a thousand times for the injury of the men he hates." ' ' In the holiest prayers that come down to us from the past/ said the haruspex, ' ' the gods are entreated to throw our enemies under our feet ; and, besides, I have often heard Paaker pray fervently for the bliss of his parents. " "You are a priest and one of the initiated," cried Gagabu, " and you know not — or will not seem to know ■ — that by the enemies for whose overthrow we pray, are meant only the demons of darkness and the outlandish peoples by whom Egypt is endangered ! Paaker prayed for his parents? Ay, and so will 'he for his children, for they will be his future as his forefathers are his past. If he had a wife, his offerings would be for her too, for she would be the half of his own present." " In spite of all this," said the haruspex Septah, "you are too hard in your judgment of Paaker, for although he 43 UARDA. was born under a lucky sign, the Hathors denied him all that makes youth happy. . The enemy for whose de- struction he prays is Mena, the kings charioteer, and. indeed, he must have been of superhuman magnanimity, or of unmanly feebleness, if he could have wished well to the man who robbed him of the beautiful wife who was destined for him." "How could that happen?" asked the priest from Chennu. "A betrothal is sacred." " Paaker," replied Septah, "was attached with all the strength of his ungoverned but passionate and faithful heart to his cousin Nefert, the sweetest maid in Thebes, the daughter of Katuti, his mother's sister ; and she was promised to him to wife. Then his father, whom he ac- companied on his marches, was mortally wounded in Syria. The king stood by his death-bed, and granting his last request, invested his son with his rank and office. Paaker brought the mummy of his father home to Thebes, gave him a princely interment, and then before the time of mourning was over, hastened back to Syria, where, while the king returned to Egypt, it was his duty to re- connoiter the new possessions. At last he could quit the scene of war with the hope of marrying Nefert. He rode his horse to death the sooner to reach the goal of his de- sires ; but when he reached Tanis, the city of Rameses, the news met him that his affianced cousin had been given to another, the handsomest and bravest man in Thebes — the noble Mena. The more precious a thing is that we hope to possess, the more we are justified in complaining of him who contests our claim, and can win it from us. Paaker's blood must have been as cold as a frog s if he could have forgiven Mena instead of hating him, and the cattle he has offered to the gods to bring down their wrath on the head of the traitor may be counted by hun- dreds. " ' ' And if you accept them, knowing why they are offered, - you do unwisely and wrongly," exclaimed Gagabu. " If I were a layman, I would take good care not to worship a Divinity who condescends to serve the foulest human ends for a reward. But the Omniscient Spirit, that rules the world in accordance with the eternal laws, knows nothing of these sacrifices, which only tickle the nostrils UARDA. 4<> of the Evil one. The treasurer rejoices when a beautiful spotless heifer is driven in among our herds. But beth rubs his red hands* with delight that he accepts it. My friends I have heard the vows which Paaker has poured out over our pure altars, like hogwash that men set before swine Pestilence and boils has he called down on Mena, and barrenness and heart-ache on the poor sweet woman ; and I really cannot blame her for preferring a battle-horse to a hippopotamus— a Mena to a Paaker." _ "Yet the Immortals must have thought his remon- strances less unjustifiable, and have stricter views as to the inviolable nature of a betrothal than you, said the treasurer, "for Nefert, during four years of married lite, has passed only a few weeks with her wandering husband, and remains childless. It is hard to me to understand how vou Gagabu, who so often absolve where we condemn, can' so relentlessly judge so great a benefactor to our tW " And I fail to comprehend," exclaimed the old man, < how you— you whoso willingly condemn^ can so weakly excuse this— this— call him what you will. ' "He is indispensable to us at this time, said the haruspex. . . , T "Granted," said Gagabu, lowering his tone. And t think still to make use of him, as the high-priest has done in past years with the best effect when dangers have threat- ened us ; and a dirty road serves when he makes for the eoal The gods themselves often permit safety to come from what is evil ; but shall we therefore call evil good- or say the hideous is beautiful ? Make use of the king s pioneer as you will, but do not, because you are indebted to him for gifts, neglect to judge him according to his im- aginings and deeds, if you would deserve your title of the Initiated and the Enlightened. Let him bring his cattle into our temple and pour his gold into our treasury, but do not defile your souls with the thought that the offerings of such a heart and such a hand are pleasing to the Divin- ity. Above all," and the voice of the old man had a heartfelt impressiveness, "Above all, do not flatter the * Red was the color of Seth and Typhon. The evil one is named the Red as for instance in the papyrus of Ebers. Red-haured men wera ty phonic. 4 5° UARDA. erring- man— and this is what you do — with the idea that he is walking in the right way ; for your, for our first duty, O my friends, is always this — to guide the souls of those who trust in us to goodness and truth/' " Oh, my master ! " cried Pentaur, " how tender is thy severity." "I have shown the hideous sores of this man's soul," said the old man, as he rose to quit the hall. "Your praise will aggravate them, your blame will tend to heal them. Nay, if you are not content to do your duty, old Gagabu will come some day with his knife, and will throw the sick man down and cut out the canker." During this speech the haruspex had frequently shrugged his shoulders. Now he said, turning to the priests from Chennu : "Gagabu is a foolish, hot-headed old man, and you have heard from his lips just such a sermon as the young scribes keep by them when they enter on the duties of the care of souls. His sentiments are excellent, but he easily overlooks small things for the sake of great ones. Ameni, would tell you that ten souls, no, nor a hundred, do not matter when the safety of the whole is in question." CHAPTER V. The night during which the Princess Bent-Anat and her followers had knocked at the gate of the House of Seti was past. The fruitful freshness of the dawn gave way to the heat, which began to pour down from the deep-blue cloudless 7/ault of heaven. The eye could no longer gaze at the mighty globe of light whose rays pierced the fine white dust which hung over the declivity of the hills that inclosed the City of the Dead on the- west. The limestone rocks showed with blinding clearness ; the atmosphere quivered as if heated over a flame ; each minute the shadows grew shorter and their outlines sharper. All the beasts which we saw peopling the Necropolis in UARDA. the evening- had now withdrawn into their lurking places; only man defied the heat of the summer day. Undis- turbed he accomplished his daily work, and only laid his tools aside for a moment, with a sigh, when a cooling breath blew across the overflowing stream and fanned his brow. The harbor or dock, where those landed who had crossed from eastern Thebes, was crowded with gay barks and boats waiting to return. The crews of rowers and steersmen who were attached to priestly brotherhoods or noble houses, were enjoying a rest till the parties they had brought across the Nile drew toward them again in long processions. Under a wide-spreading sycamore a vendor of eatables, spirituous drinks, and acids for cooling the water, had set up his stall, and close to him, a crowd of boatmen and drivers shouted and disputed as they passed the time m eager games at morra. * Many sailors lay on the decks of the vessels, others on the shore; here in the thin shade of a palm-tree, there in the full blaze of the sun, from whose burning rays they protected themselves by spreading the cotton cloths, which served them for cloaks, over their faces. Between the sleepers passed bondmen and slaves, brown and black, in long files one behind the other, bending under the weight of heavy burdens which had to be con- veyed to their destination at the temples for sacrifice, or to the dealers in various wares. Builders dragged blocks of stone, which had come from the quarries of Chennu and Suan, on sledges to the site of a new temple; laborers poured water under the runners, that the heavily loaded and dried wood should not take fire. All these workingmen were driven with sticks by their overseers, and sang at their labor ; but the voices of the leaders sounded muffled and hoarse, though, when after their frugal meal they enjoyed an hour of repose, they might be heard loud enough. Their parched throats refused to sing in the noontide of their labor. *In Latin "micare digitis." A game still constantly played in the south of Europe, and frequently represented by the Egyptians. The games depicted in the monuments are collected by Minutoh, in the Leipziger Illustrirte Zeitung, 1852. 52 UARDA. Thick clouds of gnats followed these tormented gang*, who with dull and spirit-broken endurance suffered alike the stings of the insects and the blows of their driver. The gnats pursued them to the very heart of the City of the Dead, where they joined themselves to the flies and wasps, which swarmed in countless crowds round the slaughter-houses, cooks' shops, stalls of fried fish, and booths of meat, vegetables, honey, cakes and drinks, which were doing a brisk business in spite of the noontide heat and the oppressive atmosphere heated and filled with a mixture of odors. The nearer one got to the Libyan frontier, the quieter it became, and the silence of death reigned in the broad northwest valley, where in the southern slope the father of the reigning king had caused his tomb to be hewn, and where the stone-mason of the Pharaoh had prepared a rock tomb for him. A newly-made road led into this rocky gorge, whose steep yellow and brown walls seemed scorched by the sun in many blackened spots, and looked like a ghostly array of shades that had risen from the tombs in the night and remained there. At the entrance of this valley some blocks of stone formed a sort of doorway, and through this, indifferent to the heat of the day, a small but brilliant troop of men was passing. Four slender youths as staff bearers led the processior/, each clothed only with an apron and a flowing head-cloth of gold brocade ; the midday sun played on their smooth, moist, red-brown skins, and their supple naked feet hardly stirred the stones on the road. Behind them followed an elegant, two-wheeled chariot with two prancing, brown horses, bearing tufts of red and blue feathers on their noble heads, and seeming by the bearing of their arched necks and flowing tails to express their pride in the gorgeous housings, richly embroidered in silver, purple, and blue and golden ornaments, which they wore — and even more in their beautiful, royal charioteer, Bent-Anat, the daughter of Rameses, at whoe^ lightest word they pricked their ears, and whose little hand gukled them wi*h a scarcely perceptible touch. _ :.<> young men dressed like the other runners followed tJARDA. S3 the chariot, and kept the rays of the sun off the face of their mistress with large fans of snow-white ostrich feathers fastened to long wands. By the side of Bent-Anat, so long as the road was wide enough to allow of it, was carried Nefert, the wife of Mena, in her gilt litter, borne by eight tawny bearers, who, running with a swift and equally measured step, did not remain far behind the trotting horses of the princess and her fan-bearers. Both the women, whom we now see for the tirst time in daylight, were of remarkable but altogether different beauty. - , c The wife of Mena had preserved the appearance ot a maiden ; her large almond-shaped eyes had a dreamy sur- prised look out from under her long eyelashes, and her figure of hardly the middle-height had acquired a little stoutness without losing its youthful grace. No drop of Egyptian blood flowed in her veins, as could be seen in the color of her skin, which was of that fresh and equal hue which holds a medium between golden-yellow and bronze- brown, and which to this day is so charming m the maidens of Abyssinia, in her straight nose, her well-formed brow, in her smooth but thick black hair, and in the fine- ness of her hands and feet, which were ornamented with circles of gold. , - The maiden princess next to her had hardly reached her nineteenth year, and yet something of a womanly self- consciousness betrayed itself in her demeanor. Her stat- ure was by almost a head taller than that of her friend, her skin was fairer, her blue eyes kind and frank, without tricks of glance, but clear and honest, her profile was noble but sharply cut, and resembled that of her father, as a landscape in the mild and softening light of the moon resembles the same landscape in the broad clear light of day The scarcely perceptible aquiline of her nose, she inherited from her Semitic ancestors,* as well as the slightly waving abundance of her brown hair, over which she wore a blue and white striped silk kerchief ^ its care- fully pleated folds were held in place by a gold ring, from * Many portraits have come down to us of Rar eses; the finest is the noble statue preserved at Turin. A likeness ,ias been detected be- tween its profile, with its slightly aquiline nose, and that of Kapoleon i. 54 UARDA. which in front a horned uraeus * raised its head crowned with a disk of rubies. From her left temple a laree tress pleated with gold thread, hung down to her waist, the si™ of her royal birth. She wore a purple dress of fine, almost transparent stuff, that was confined with a gold belt and straps. Round her throat was fastened a necklace like a collar, made of pearls and costly stones, and hanging low down on her well-formed bosom. of noblelbirth PrinC6SS St °° d her charioteer > a « old officer Three litters followed the chariot of the princess, and in each sat two officers of the court ; then came a dozen of slaves ready for any service, and lastly, a crowd of wand- bearers to drive off the idle populace, and of lightly armed soldiers, who— dressed only in the apron and head-cloth— each bore a dagger-shaped sword in his girdle, an ax in his right hand, and in his left, in token of free service, a palm-branch. ' Like dolphins round a ship, little girls in long shirt- shaped garments swarmed round the whole length of the advancing procession, bearing water-jars on their steady heads, and at a sign from any one who was thirsty were ready to give him a drink. With steps as light as the gazelle they often outran the horses, and nothing could be more graceful than the action with which the taller ones bent over with the water-jars held in both arms to the drinker. The courtiers, cooled and shaded by waving fans, and hardly perceiving the noontide heat, conversed at their ease about indifferent matters, and the princesses pitied the poor horses, who were tormented as they went by annoying gad-flies : while the runners and soldiers the litter-bearers and fan-bearers, the girls with their jars and the panting slaves, were compelled to exert themselves under the rays of the midday sun in the service of their masters, till their sinews threatened to crack and their lungs to burst their bodies. . ^ a s P ot where the road widened, and where, to the right, lay the steep cross-valley where the last kings of the *A venomous Egyptian serpent which was adopted as the symbol of sovereign power, m consequence of its swift effects for life or death It is never wanting to the diadem of the Pharaohs. UARDA. 55 dethroned race were interred, the procession stopped at a sfgn Tom Paaker, who preceded the princess, and who clrove his fiery black Syrian horses with so heavy a hand that the bloody foam fell from their bits. When the Mohar had given the reins into the hand of a servant, he sprang from" his chariot, and after the usual form of obeisance, said to the princess : " In this valley lies the loathsome den of the people, to whom thou, O princess, dost deign to do such high honor. Permit me to go forward as guide to thy party. "We will go on foot," said the princess, « and leave our followers behind here." . , , , Paaker bowed, Bent-Anat threw the reins to her char- ioteer and sprang to the ground, the wife of Mena and the courtiers left their litters? and the fan-bearers and cham- berlains were about to accompany their mistress on foot into the little valley, when she turned round and ordered - Remain behind, all of you. Only Paaker and Nefert need sro with me. , , • u The princess hastened forward into the gorge which was oppressive with the noontide heat ; but she moderated her steps as soon as she observed that the frailer Nefert found it difficult to follow her. At a bend in the road Paaker stood still, and with him Bent-Anat and Nefert. Neither of them had spoken a word during their walk. The valley w^ perfectly sU and deserted ; on the highest pinnacles of the cliff, which rose perpendicularly to the right, sat a long row of vult- ures, as motionless as if the midday heat had taken all strength out of their wings. , . , D Paaker bowed before them as being the sacred animals of the Great Goddess of Thebes,* and the two women silently followed his example. , . ■ , "There," said the Mohar, pointing to two huts close to the left cliff of the valley, built of bricks made of dried Nile mud, "there, the neatest, next the cave in the rock " Bent-Anat went toward the solitary hovel with a beat- ing heart. Paaker let the ladies go first. A few steps *She formed a triad with Amon and Chunsu i under the name of MuA The great " Sanctuary of the kingdom "-the temple of Karnak —was dedicated to them. UARDA. brought them to an ill-constructed fence of reeds, palm- branches, briars, and maize haulms, roughly thrown to- gether. A heart-rending cry of pain from within the hut trembled in the air and arrested the steps of the two women. Nefert staggered and clung to her stronger com- panion, whose beating heart she seemed to hear. Both stood a few minutes as if spell-bound, then the princess called Paaker, and said : " You go first into the house. n Paaker bowed to the ground. "1 will call the man out," he said, "but how dare we step over his threshold ? Thou knowest such a proceed- ing will defile us." Nefert looked pleadingly at Bent-Anat, but the princess repeated her command. " Go before me ; I have no fear of defilement." The Mohar still hesitated. "Wilt thou provoke the gods, and defile thyself? " But the princess let him say no more ; she signed to Nefert, who raised her hands in horror and aversion ; so, with a shrug of her shoulders, she left her companion behind with the Mohar, and stepped through an opening in the hedge into a little court, where lay two brown goats ; a donkey with his forelegs tied together stood by, and a few hens were scattering the dust about in a vain search for food. Soon she stood, alone, before the door of the paraschites' hovel. No one perceived her, but she could not take her eyes — accustomed only to scenes of order and splen- dor — from the gloomy but wonderfully strange picture which riveted her attention and her sympathy. At last she went up to the doorway, which was too low for her tall figure. Her heart shrunk painfully within her, and she would have wished to grow smaller, and, instead of shining in splendor, to have found hejself wrapped in a beggar s robe. Could she step into this hovel decked with gold and jewels as if in mockery ? — like a tyrant who should feast at a groaning table and compel the starving to look on at the banquet. Her delicate perception made her feel what trenchant discord her appearance offered to all that surrounded her, and the discord pained her ; for she could UARDA. S7 not conceal from herself that misery and eternal mean- ness were here entitled to give the key-note and that her magnificence derived no especial grandeur from contrast with all these modest accessories, amid dust gloom, and suffering, but rather became disproportionate and hid- eous like a giant among pigmies. . She had already gone too far to turn back, or she would willingly have done so. The longer she gazed into the hut the more deeply she felt the impotence of her princely power, the nothingness of the splendid gifts with which she approached it, and that she mighty not re ad the dusty floor of this wretched hovel but in all humility, and t0 ThT room into" which she looked was low but not very small, and obtained from two cross lights a strange and unequal illumination ; on one side the light came through the door and on the other through an opening in the time-worn ceiling of the room, which had never before harbored so many and such different guests. All attention was concentrated on a group, which was clearly lighted up from the doorway. On the dusty floor of the room cowered an old woman with dark weather-beaten features and tangled hair that had lomr been eray. Her black-blue cotton shirt was opl ovi he " withered bosom, and showed a blue star tattooed upon it. , „ , , » In her lap she supported with her hands the head of a eirl, whose slender body lay motionless on a narrow ra^red mat. The little white feet of the sick girl almost touched the threshold. Near to them squatted a benevo- lent-looking old man, who wore only a coarse apron and sittine all in a heap, bent forward now and then, rubbing the child's feet with his lean hands and muttermg a few words to himself. , The sufferer wore nothing but a short petticoat ot coarse light-blue stuff. Her face, half resting on the lap of the old woman, was graceful and regular m form, her eyes were halfshut-like those of a child whose soul is wrapped in some sweet dream-but from her finely chis- elled lips there escaped from time to time a painful, almost convulsive sob. | . . An abundance of soft, but disordered, reddish fair hair, UARDA. in which clung a few withered flowers, fell over the lap of the old woman and on to the mat where she lay. Her cheeks were white and rosy-red, and when the young surgeon Nebsecht — who sat by her side, near his blind, stupid companion, the litany-singer — lifted the ragged cloth that had been thrown over her bosom, which had been crushed by the chariot wheels, or when she lifted her slender arm, it was seen that she had the shining fair- ness of those daughters of the north who not unfrequently came to Thebes, among the king's prisoners of war. The two physicians sent hither from the House of Seti sat on the left side of the maiden on a little carpet. From time to time one or the other laid his hand over the heart of the sufferer, or listened to her breathing, or opened his case of medicaments, and moistened the compress on her wounded breast with a white ointment. In a wide circle close to the wall of the room crouched several women, young and old, friends of the paraschites, who from time to time gave expression to their deep sym- pathy by a piercing cry of lamentation. One of them rose at regular intervals to fill the earthen bowl by the side of the physician with fresh water. As often as the sudden coolness of a fresh compress on her hot bosom startled the sick girl, she opened her eyes, but always soon to close them again for a longer interval, and turned them at first in surprise, and then with gentle reverence, toward a particular spot. These glances had hitherto been unobserved by him to whom they were directed. Leaning against the wall on the right hand side of the room, dressed in his long, snow-white priest's robe, Pen- taur stood awaiting the princess. His head-dress touched the ceiling, and the narrow streak of light, which fell through the opening in the roof, streamed on his hand- some head and his breast, while all around him was veiled in twilight gloom. Once more the suffering girl looked up, and her glance this time met the eye of the young priest, who im- mediately raised his hand, and half-mechanically, in alow voice, uttered the words of blessing ; and then once more fixed his gaze on the dingy floor, and pursued his own reflections. UARDA. 59 Some hours since he had come hither, obedient to the orders of Ameni, to impress on the princess that she had defiled herself by touching a paraschites, and could only be cleansed again by the hand of the priests. He had crossed the threshold of the paraschites most reluctantly, and the thought that he, of all men, had been selected to censure a deed of the noblest humanity, and to bring her who had done it to judgment, weighed upon him as a calamity. In his intercourse with his friend Nebsecht, Pentaur had thrown off many fetters, and given place to many thoughts that his master would have held sinful and pre- sumptuous ; but at the same time he acknowledged the sanctity of the old institutions, which were upheld by those whom he had learned to regard as the divinely appointed guardians of the spiritual possessions of God's people ; nor was he wholly free from the pride of caste and the haugh- tiness which, with prudent intent, were inculcated in the priests. He held the common man, who put forth his strength to win a maintenance for his belongings by honest bodily labor— the merchant— the artisan— the peasant, nay even the warrior, as far beneath the goodly brotherhood who strove for only spiritual ends ; and most of all he scorned the idler, given up to sensual enjoyments. He held him unclean who had been branded by the law ; and how should it have been otherwise ? These people, who at the embalming of the dead opened the body of the deceased, had become despised for their office of mutilating the sacred temple of the soul ; but no paraschites chose his calling of his own free will. It was handed down from father to son, and he who was born a paraschites— so he was taught — had to expiate an old guilt with which his soul had long ago burdened itself in a former existence, within another body, and which had de- prived it of absolution in the nether-world. It had passed through various animal forms ; and now began a new human course in the body of a paraschites, once more to stand after death in the presence of the judges ofthe under- world. Pentaur had crossed the threshold of the man he de- spised with aversion ; the man himself, sitting at the feet of the suffering girl, had exclaimed as he saw the priest approaching the hovel ; 6o UARDA. " Yet another white robe ! Does misfortune cleanse the unclean ? " Pentaur had not answered the old man, who on his part took no further notice of him, while he rubbed the girl's feet by order of the leech, and his hands impelled by tender anxiety untiringly continued the same movement, as the water-wheel in the Nile keeps up without intermission its steady motion in the stream. 4 ' Does misfortune cleanse the unclean ? " Pentaur asked himself. ' ' Does it indeed possess a purifying efficacy, and is it possible that the gods, who gave to fire the power of refining metals and to the winds power to sweep the clouds from the sky, should desire that a man made in their own image — that a man should be tainted from his birth to his death with an indelible stain ? " He looked at the face of the paraschites, and it seemed to him to resemble that of his father. This startled him ! And when he noticed how the woman, in whose lap the girl's head was resting, bent over the injured bosom of the child to catch her breathing, which she feared had come to a standstill — with the anguish of a dove that is struck down by a hawk — he remembered a moment in his own childhood when he had lain trembling with fever on his little bed. What then had happened to him, or had gone on around him, he had long forgotten, but one image was deeply imprinted on his soul, that of the face of his mother bending over him in deadly anguish, but who had gazed on her sick boy not more tenderly, or more anxiously, than this despised woman on her suffering child. ' 'There. is only one utterly unselfish, utterly pure and utterly divine love," said he to himself, " and that is the love of Isis for Horus — the love of a mother for her child. If these people were indeed so foul as to defile everything they touch, how would this pure, this tender, holy impulse show itself even in them in all its beauty and perfection." " Still," he continued, "the Celestials have implanted maternal love in the breast of the lioness, of the typhonic river-horse of the Nile." He looked compassionately at the wife of the paras- chites. He saw her dark face as she turned it away from the UARDA. 6 1 sick girl She had felt her breathe, and a smile of hap- piness lighted up her old features ; she nodded first to the surgeon, and then with a deep sigh of relief to her hus- band who, while he did not cease the movement of his left hand, held up his right hand in prayer to heaven, and his wife did the same. It seemed to Pentaur that he could see the souls of these two floating above the youthful creature in holy union as they joined their hands, and again he thought of his par- ents house, of the hour when his sweet only sister died. His mother had thrown herself weeping on the pale form but his father had stamped his foot and had thrown back his head, sobbing and striking his forehead with his fist. " How piously submissive and thankful are these un- clean ones ! " thought Pentaur, and repugnance for the old laws began to take root in his heart. ' ' Maternal love may exist in the hyena, but to seek and find God pertains only to man, who has a noble aim. Up to the limits of eternity —and God is eternal— thought is denied to animals ; they cannot even smile. Even men cannot smile at first, for only physical life— an animal soul— dwells in them ; but soon a share of the world's soul— beaming intelligence- works within them, and first shows itself in the smile of a child which is as pure as the light and the truth from which it comes. The child of the paraschites smiles like any other creature born of woman, but how few aged men there are, even among the initiated, who can smile as in- nocently and brightly as this woman who has grown gray under open ill-treatment/' Deep sympathy began to fill his heart, and he knelt down by the side of the poor child, raised her arm and prayed fervently to that One, who had created the heavens and who rules the world— to that One, whom the mysteries of faith forbade him to name ; and not to the innumerable gods, whom the people worshiped, and who to him were nothing but incarnations of the attributes of the One and only God of the initiated— of whom he was one— who was thus brought down to the comprehension of the laity. He raised his soul to God in passionate emotion ; but he prayed, not for the child before him and for her recovery, but rather for the whole despised race, and for its release from the old ban for the enlightenment of his own soul, 62 UARDA. imprisoned in doubts, and for strength to fulfill his hard task with discretion. The gaze of the sufferer followed him as he took up his former position. The prayer had refreshed his soul and restored him to cheerfulness of spirit. He began to reflect what in the princess' conduct he would have to comment on. He had not met Bent-Anat for the first time yesterday ; on the contrary, he had frequently seen her in holiday processions, and at the high festivals in the Necropolis, and like all his young companions had admired her proud beauty — admired it as the distant light of the stars, or the evening-glow on the horizon. Now he must approach this lady with words of reproof. He pictured to himself the moment when he must ad- vance to meet her, and could not help thinking of his little tutor Chufu, above whom he towered by two heads while he was- still a boy, and who used to call up his admonitions to him from below. It was true, he himself was tall and slim, but he felt as if to-day he were to play the part toward Bent-Anat of the much-laughed-at little tutor. ^ His sense of the comic was touched, and asserted itself at this serious moment, and with such melancholy sur- roundings. Life is rich in contrasts, and a susceptible and highly-strung human soul would break down like a bridge under the measured tread of soldiers, if it were allowed to let the burden of the heaviest thoughts and strongest feelings work upon it in undisturbed monotony ; but just as in music every key-note has its harmonies, so when we cause one chord of our heart to vibrate for long, all sorts of strange notes respond and clang, often those which we least expect. Pentaurs glance flew round the one low, overfilled room of the paraschites' hut, and like a lightning flash the thought, " How will the princess and her train find room here ? " flew through his mind. His fancy was lively, and vividly brought before him how the daughter of the Pharaoh with a crown on her proud head would bustle into the silent chamber, how the chap- tering courtiers would follow her, and how the women bv the walls, the physicians by the side of the sick girl, the sleek white cat from the chest where she sat, would rise UARDA. 63 and throng; round her. There must be frightful confu- sion. Then he imagined how the smart lords and ladies would keep themselves far from the unclean, hold their slender hands over their mouths and noses, and suggest to the old folks how they ought to behave to the princess who condescended to bless them with her presence. ^ The old woman must lay down the head that rested in her bosom, the paraschites must drop the feet he so anxiously rubbed, on the floor, to rise and kiss the dust before Bent- Anat. Whereupon— the " minds eye" of the young priest seemed to see it all— the courtiers fled before him, pushing each other, and all crowded together into a corner, and at last the princess threw a few silver or gold rings into the laps of the father and mother, and perhaps to the girl too, and he seemed to hear the courtiers all cry out : ' ' Hail to the gracious daughter of the Sun ! " — to hear the joyful exclamations of the crowd of women— to see the gorgeous apparition leave the hut of the despised people, and then to see, instead of the lovely sick child who still breathed audibly, a silent corpse on the crumpled mat, and in the place of the two tender nurses at her head and feet, two heart-broken, loud-lamenting wretches. Pentaur s hot spirit was full of wrath. As soon as the noisy cortege appeared actually in sight he would place himself in the doorway, forbid the princess to enter, and receive her with strong words. She could hardly come hither out of human kindness. " She wants variety," said he to himself, " something new at court ; for there is little going on there now the king tarries with the troops in a distant country ; it tickles the vanity of the great to find themselves once in a while in contact with the small, and it is well to have your good- ness of heart spoken of by the people. If a little misfor- tune opportunely happens, it is not worth the trouble to inquire whether the form of our benevolence does more good or mischief to such wretched people." He ground his teeth angrily, and thought no more of the defilement which might threaten Bent-Anat from the paraschites, but exclusively, on the contrary, on the initia- tion which she might derive from the holy feelings that were astir in this silent room. Excited as he was to fanaticism, his condemning lips could not fail to find vigorous and impressive words. 64 UARDA. He stood drawn to his full height and drawing h;,s breath deeply, like a spirit of light who holds his weapon raised to annihilate a demon of darkness, and he looked out into the valley to perceive from afar the cry of the runners, and the rattle of the wheels of the gay train he expected. And he saw the doorway darkened by a lowly, bending figure, who, with folded arms, glided into the room and sank down silently by the side of the sick girl. The phy- sicians and the old people moved as if to rise ; but she signed to them without opening her lips, and with moist, expressive eyes, to keep their places ; she looked long and lovingly in the face of the wounded girl, stroked her white arm, and turning to the old woman softly whispered to her : " How pretty she is ! " The paraschites' wife nodded assent, and the girl smiled and moved her lips as though she had caught the words and wished to speak. Bent-Anat took a rose from her hair and laid it on her bosom. The paraschites, who had not taken his hands from the feet of the sick child, but who had followed every move- ment of the princess, now whispered, 4 'May Hathor requite thee, who gave thee thy beauty." The princess turned to him and said, " Forgive the sorrow I have caused you." The old man stood up, letting the feet of the, sick girl fall, and asked in a clear, loud voice : "Art thou Bent-Anat?" "Yes, I am," replied the princess, bowing her head low, and in so gentle a voice that it seemed as though she were ashamed of her proud name. The eyes of the old man flashed. Then he said softly but decisively : " Leave my hut then, it will defile thee." "Not till you have forgiven me for that which I did unintentionally." "Unintentionally! I believe thee," replied the para schites. "The hoofs of thy horse became unclean when they trod on this white breast. Look here " and he lifted the cloth from the girl's bosom, and showed her the UARDA. 65 deep red wound. " Look here — here is the first rose you laid on my grandchild's bosom, and the second — there it goes/' The paraschites raised his arm to fling the flower through the door of his hut. But Pentaur had approached him, and with a grasp of iron held the old man's hand. " Stay," he cried, in an eager tone, moderated, however, for the sake of the sick girl. " "The third rose, which this noble hand has offered you, your sick heart and silly head have not even perceived. And yet you must know it if only from your need, your longing for it. The fair blossom of pure benevolence is laid on your child's heart, and at your very feet by this proud princess. Not with gold, but with humility. And whoever the daughter of Rameses approaches as her equal, bows before her even if he were the first prince in the land of Egypt. Indeed, the gods shall not forget this deed of Bent-Anat. And you — for- give, if you desire to be forgiven that guilt which you bear as an inheritance from your fathers, and for your own sins." The paraschites bowed his head at these words, and v/hen he raised it the anger had vanished from his well- cut features. He rubbed his wrist, which had been squeezed by Pentaur's iron fingers, and said in a tone which betrayed all the bitterness of his feelings : "Thy hand is hard, priest, and thy words hit like the strokes of a hammer. This fair lady is good and loving, and I know that she did not drive her horse intentionally over this poor girl, who is my grandchild and not my daughter. If she were thy wife or the wife of the leech there, or the child of the poor woman yonder, who sup- ports life by collecting the feet and feathers of the fowls that are slaughtered for sacrifice, I would not only for- give her, but console her for having made herself like to me ; fate would have made her a murderess without any fault of her own, just as it stamped me as unclean while I was still at my mother's breast. Ay — I would comfort her ; and yet I am not very sensitive. Ye holy three of Thebes ! how should I be ? Great and small get out of my way that I may not touch them, and every day when I have done what it is my business to do they throw stones at me. The fulfillment of duty — which brings a living to 5 60 UARDA. other men, which makes their happiness, and at the same time earns them honor, brings me every day fresh disgrace and painful sores. But I complain to no man, and must forgive— forgive— forgive, till at last all that men do to me seems quite natural and unavoidable, and I take it all like the scorching of the sun in summer, and the dust that the west wind blows into my face. It does not make me happy, but what can I do ? I forgive all " The voice of the paraschites had softened, and Bent- Anat, who looked down on him with emotion, interrupted him, exclaiming with deep feeling : "And so you will forgive me? — poor man ! " The old man looked steadily, not at her, but at Pen- taur, while he replied : 11 Poor man ! ay, truly, poor man. You have driven me out of the world in which you live, and so I made a world for myself in this hut. I do not belong to you, and if I forget it you drive me out as an intruder — nay, as a wolf, who breaks into your fold; but you belong just as little to me, only when you play the wolf and fall upon me, I must bear it ! " "The princess came to your hut as a suppliant, and with the wish of doing you some good," said Pentaur. a 7 tne av enging gods reckon it to her, when they visit on her the crimes of her father against me ! Perhaps it may bring me to prison, but it must come out. Seven sons were mine, and Rameses took them all from me and sent them to death ; the child of the youngest, this girl, the light of my eyes, his daughter has brought to her death. Three of my boys the king left to die of thirst by me Tenat,* which is to join the Nile to the Red Sea, three were killed by the Ethiopians, and the last, the star of my hopes, by this time is eaten by the hyenas of the north." At these words the old woman, in wnose lap the head of the girl rested, broke out into a loud cry, in which she was joined by all the other women. The sufferer started up frightened, and opened her eyes. * Literally the "cutting" which, under Seti I, the father of Rameses, was the first " Suez canal : " a representation of it is found on the north- ern outer wall of the temple of Karnack. It followed nearly the same direction as the South-water canal of Lesseps, and fertilized the land of Goshen. UARDA. 67 "For whom are you wailing? " she asked, feebly. " For your poor father," said the old woman. The girl smiled like a child who detects some well- meant deceit, and said : " Was not my father here, with you? He is here, in Thebes, and looked at me, and kissed me, and said that he is bringing home plunder, "and that a good time is com- ing for you. The gold ring that he gave me I was fasten- ing into my dress, when the chariot passed over me. I was just pulling the knots, when all grew black before my eyes, and I saw and heard nothing more. Undo it, grandmother, the ring is for you ; I meant to bring it to you. You must buy a beast for sacrifice with it, and wine for grandfather, and eye-salve for yourself, and sticks of mastic, which you have so long had to do without." The paraschites seemed to drink these words from the mouth of his grandchild. Again he lifted his hand in prayer, again Pentaur observed that his glance met that of his wife, and a large, warm tear fell from his old eyes on to his callous hand. Then he sunk down, for he thought the sick child was deluded by a dream. But there were the knots in her dress. With a trembling hand he untied them, and a gold ring rolled out on the floor. Bent-Anat picked it up and gave it to the paraschites. " I came here in a lucky hour," she said, ' ' for you have recovered your son and your child will live. " " She will live," repeated the surgeon, who had re- mained a silent witness of all that had occurred. " She will stay with us," murmured the old man, and then said, as he approached the princess on his knees, and looked up at her beseechingly with tearful eyes : " Pardon me as I pardon thee ; and if a pious wish may not turn to a curse from the lips of the unclean, let me bless thee." " I thank you," said Bent-Anat, toward whom the old man raised his hand in blessing. Then she turned to Nebsecht and ordered him to take anxious care of the sick girl ; she bent over her, kissed her forehead, laid her gold bracelet by her side, and signing to Pentmir, left the hut with him, UARDA. CHAPTER VI. During the occurrence we have described, the king's pioneer and the young wife*of Mena were obliged to wait for the princess. The sun stood in the meridian when Bent-Anat had gone into the hovel of the paraschites. The bare limestone rocks on each side of the valley and the sandy soil between shone with a vivid whiteness that hurt the eyes ; not a hand's breadth of shade was any- where to be seen, and the fan-bearers of the two, who were waiting there, had, by command of the princess, stayed behind with the chariot and litters. For a time they stood silently near each other ; then the fair Nefert said, wearily closing her almond-shaped eyes : " How long Bent-Anat stays in the hut of the unclean ! I am perishing here. What shall we do ? " " Stay ! " said Paaker, turning his back on the lady ; and mounting a block of stone by the side of the gorge, he cast a practiced glance all around, and returned to Nefert : " I have found a shady spot," he said, " out there." Mena's wife followed with her eyes the indication of his hand and shook her head. The gold ornaments on her head-dress rattled gently as she did so, and a cold shiver passed over her slim body in spite of the midday heat. "Sechet* is raging in the sky," said Paaker. " Let us avail ourselves of the shady spot, small though it be. At this hour of the day many are struck with sickness." "I know it," said Nefert, covering her neck with her hand. Then she went toward two blocks of stone which leaned against each other, and between them afforded the spot of shade, not many feet wide, which Paaker had pointed out as a shelter from the sun. * A goddess with the head of a lioness or a cat, over which the Sun disk is usually found. She was the daughter of Ra, and in the form of the Uraeus on her father's crown personified the murdeous heat of the star of clay. She incites man to the hot and wild passion of love, and as a cat or lioness tears burning wounds in the limbs of the guilty in the nether-world; drunkenness and pleasure are her gifts. She was also named Bast and Astarte after her sister-divinity among the Phoenicians. UARDA. 6 9 Paaker preceded her, and rolled a flat piece of limestone, inlaid by nature with nodules of flint, under the stone pavilion, crushed a few scorpions which had taken refuge there, spread his head-cloth over the hard seat, and said, ' * Here you are sheltered. " Nefert sank down on the stone and watched the Mohar, who slowly and silently paced backward and forward in front of her. This incessant to and fro of her companion at last became unendurable to her sensitive and irritated nerves, and suddenly raising her head from her hand, on which she had rested it, she exclaimed : ' < Pray stand still." The pioneer obeyed instantly, and looked, as he stood with his back to her, toward the hovel of the paraschites. After a short time Nefert said : "Say something to me ! " The Mohar turned his face full toward her, and she was frightened at the wild fire that glowed in the glance with which he gazed at her. Nefert's eyes fell, and Paaker, saying : " I would rather remain silent," recommenced his walk, till Nefert called to him again and said : "I know you are angry with me; but I was but a child when I was betrothed to you. I liked - ou too, and when in our games your mother called me your little wife, I was really glad, and used to think how fine it would be when I might call all your possessions mine, the house you would have so splendidly restored for me after your father's death, the noble gardens, the fine horses in their stables, and all the male and female slaves." Paaker laughed, but the laugh sounded so forced and scornful that it cut Nefert to the heart, and she went on, as if begging for indulgence : " It was said that you were angry with us ; and now you will take my words as if I had cared only for your wealth ; but I said I liked you. Do you no longer re- member how I cried with you over your tales of the bad boys in the school, and over your father's severity ? Then my uncle died— then you went to Asia." „ "And you," interrupted Paaker, hardly and dryly, "you broke your betrothal vows, and became the wife of the charioteer Mena. I know it all ; of what use is talking ! 7° UARDA. " Because it grieves me that you should be angry, and your good mother avoid our house. If only you could know what it is when love seizes one, and one can no longer even think alone, but only near, and with, and in the very arms of another ; when one's beating heartthrobs in one's very temples, and even in one's dreams one sees nothing — but one only." " And do I not know it ? " cried Paaker,' placing himself close before her with his arms crossed. "Do I not know it ? and you it was who taught me to know it. When I thought of you, not blood, but burning fire, coursed in my veins, and now you have filled them with poison ; and here in this breast, in which your image dwelt, as lovely as that of Hathor in her holy of holies all is like that sea in Syria which is called the Dead Sea, in which everything that tries to live presently dies and perishes." Paaker's eyes rolled as he spoke, and his voice sounded hoarsely as he went on. "But Men a was near to the king — nearer than I, anfc your mother " "My mother!" Nefert interrupted the angry Mohar. " My mother did not choose my husband. I saw him driving the chariot, and to me he resembled the Sun-god, and he observed me, and looked at me, and his glance pierced deep into my heart like a spear ; and when, at the festival of the king's birthday, he spoke to me, it was just as if Hathor had thrown round me a web of sweet, sound- ing sunbeams. And it was the same with Mena ; he him- self has told me so since I have been his wife. For your sake my mother rejected his suit, but I grew pale and dull with longing for him, and he lost his bright spirit, and was so melancholy that the king remarked it, and asked what weighed on his heart — for Rameses loves him as his own son. Then Mena confessed to the Pharaoh that it was love that dimmed his eye and weakened his strong hand ; and then the king himself courted me for his faith- ful servant, and my mother gave way, and we were made man and wife, and all the joys of the justified in the fields Of Aalu * are shallow and feeble by the side of the bliss * The fields of the blest, which were opened to glorified souls. In the Book of the Dead it is shown that in them men linger, and sow and reap by cool waters. UARDA. 7* which we two have known — not like mortal men, but like the celestial gods. " Up to this point Nefert had fixed her large eyes on the sky, like a glorified soul ; but now her gaze fell, and she said softly : " But the Cheta * disturbed our happiness, for the king took Mena with him to the war. Fifteen times did the moon rise upon our happiness, and then " "And then the gods heard my prayer, and accepted my offerings/' said Paaker, with a trembling voice, " and tore the robber of my joys from you, and scorched your heart and his with desire. Do you think you can tell me any- thing I do not know ? Once again for fifteen days was Mena yours, and now he has not returned again from the war which is raging hotly in Asia." "But he will return," cried the young wife. ' ' Or possibly not, " laughed Paaker. ' ' The Cheta carry sharp weapons, and there are many vultures in Lebanon, who perhaps at this hour are tearing his flesh as he tore my heart. " Nefert rose at these words, her sensitive spirit bruised as with stones thrown by a brutal hand, and attempted to leave her shady refuge to follow the princess into the house of the paraschites ; but her feet refused to bear her, and she sank back trembling on her stone seat. She tried to find words, but her tongue was powerless. Her powers of resistance forsook her in her unutterable and soul-felt distress — heart-wrung, forsaken and provoked. A variety of painful sensations raised a hot, vehement storm in her bosom, which checked her breath, and at last found relief in a passionate and convulsive weeping that shook her whole body. She saw nothing more, she heard nothing more, she only shed tears and felt herself miser- able. Paaker stood over her in silence. There are trees in the tropics on which white blossoms hang close by the withered fruit ; there are days when the pale moon shows itself near the clear bright sun ; and it * An Aramaean race, according to Schrader's excellent judgment. At the time of our story the peoples of western Asia had allied themselves to them- UAkfaA. is given to the soul of man to feel love and hatred both at the same time, and to direct both to the same end. Nefert's tears fell as dew, her sobs as manna on the soul of Paaker, which hungered and thirsted for revenge. Her pain was joy to him, and yet the sight of her beauty filled him with passion ; his gaze lingered spell-bound on her graceful form ; he would have given all the bliss of Heaven once, only once, to hold her in his arms — once, only once, to hear a word of love from her lips. After some minutes Nefert's tears grew less violent. With a weary, almost indifferent gaze she looked at the Mohar, still standing before her, and said in a soft tone of entreaty : "My tongue is parched, fetch me a little water." " The princess may come out at any moment," replied Paaker. "But I am fainting," said Nefert, and began again to cry gently. Paaker shrugged his shoulders, and went further into the valley, which he knew as well as his father's house ; for in it was the tomb of his mother's ancestors, in which as a boy he had put up prayers at every full and new moon and laid gifts on the altar. The hut of the paraschites was prohibited to him, but he knew that scarcely a hundred paces from the spot where Nefert was sitting lived an old woman of evil repute, in whose hole in the rock he could not fail to find a drink of water. He hastened forward, half intoxicated with all he had seen and felt within the last few minutes. The door, which at night closed the cave against the in- trusions of the plunder-seeking jackals, was wide open and the old woman sat outside under a ragged piece of brown sail-cloth, fastened at one end to the rock and at the other to two posts of rough wood. She was sorting a heap of dark and light-colored roots, which lay in her lap. Near her was a wheel, which turned in a high wooden fork. A wryneck was made fast to it by a little chain, and by springing from spoke to spoke kept it in continual motion. A large black cat crouched beside her, and smelt at some ravens' and owls' heads, from which the eyes had not long since been extn ^ f ed UARDA. 73 Two sparrow-hawks sat huddled up over the door of the cave, out of which came the sharp odor of burning juniper berries ; this was intended to render the various emaiia* tions rising from the different strange substances, which were collected and preserved there, innocuous. As Paaker approached the cavern the old woman called out to some one within : " Is the wax cooking ? " An unintelligible murmur was heard in answer. ' 'Then throw in the apes eyes,* and the ibis-feathers, and the scraps of linen with the black signs on them. Stir it all a little ; now put out the fire. Take the jug and fetch some water — make haste, here comes a stranger/' A sooty-black negro woman, with a piece of torn color- less stuff hanging round her hips, set a large clay jar on her gray woolly matted hair, and without looking at him went past Paaker, who was now close to the cave. The old woman, a tall figure bent with years, with a sharply-cut and wrinkled face that might once have been handsome, made her preparations for receiving the visitor by tying a gaudy kerchief over her head, fastening her blue cotton garment round her throat, and flinging a fiber mat over the birds' heads. Paaker called out to her, but she feigned to be deaf and not to hear his voice. Only when he stood quite close to her did she raise her shrewd, twinkling eyes and cried out : " A lucky day ! a white day that brings a noble guest and high honor." "Get up," commanded Paaker, not giving her any greeting, but throwing a silver ringf among the roots that lay in her lap, " and give me in exchange for good money some water in a clean vessel." "Fine pure silver," said the old woman, while she held the ring, which she had quickly picked out from the roots, close to her eyes ; " it is too much for mere water, and too little for my good liquors." *The sentences and mediums employed by the witches, according to papyrus-rolls which remain. I have availed myself of the magic papyrus of Harris, and of two in the Berlin collection, one of which is in Greek. t The Egyptians had no coins before Alexander of Ptolemais, but used metals for exchange, usually in the form of rings. 7* UARDA. 1 ' Don't chatter, hussy, but make haste," cried Paaker, taking another ring from his money-bag and throwing it into her lap. "Thou hast an open hand," said the old woman, speak- ing in the dialect of the upper classes ; " many doors must be open to thee, for money is a pass-key that turns any lock. Wouldst thou have water for thy good money? Shall it protect thee against noxious beasts ? Shall it help thee to reach down a star? Shall it guide thee to secret paths ? It is thy duty to lead the way. Shall it make heat cold, or cold warm ? Shall it give thee the power of read- ing hearts, or shall it beget beautiful dreams ? Wilt thou drink of the water of knowledge and see whether thy friend or thine enemy— ha ! if thine enemy shall die? Wouldst thou a drink to strengthen thy memory? Shall the water make thee invisible? or remove the sixth toe from thy left foot ? " "You know me? " asked Paaker. " How should I ? " said the old woman, " but my eyes are sharp, and I can prepare good waters for great and small." "Mere babble ! " exclaimed Paaker, impatiently, clutch- ing at the whip in his girdle. " Make haste, for the lady for whom " " Dost thou want the water for a lady ? " interrupted the old woman. " Who would have thought it? Old men certainly ask for my philters much oftener than young ones ; but I can serve thee, I can serve thee." With these words the old woman went into the cave, and soon returned with a thin cylindrical flask of alabaster in her hand. "This is the drink," she said, giving the phial to Paaker. "Pour half into water, and offer it to the lady. If it does not succeed at first it is certain the second time. _ A child may drink the water and it will not hurt him, or if an old man takes it, it makes him gay. Ah, I know the taste of it ! " and she moistened her lips with the white fluid. " It can hurt no one, but I will take no more of it, or old Hekt will be tormented with love and longing for thee • and that would ill please the rich young lord, ha ! ha ! If the drink is in vain I am paid enough; if it takes effect thou shalt bring me three more gold rings ; and thou wilt return, I know it well." UARDA. 75 Paaker had listened motionless to the old woman, and seized the flask eagerly, as if bidding defiance to some ad- versary ; he put it in his money-bag, threw a few more rings at the feet of the witch, and once more hastily de- manded a bowl of Nile water. ' ' Is my lord in such a hurry ? " muttered the old woman, once more going into the cave. " He asks if I know him ? him, certainly I do ; but the darling? who can it be here- abouts? perhaps little Uarda at the paraschites yonder. She is pretty enough ; but she is lying on a mat, run over and dying. We must see what my lord means. He would have pleased me well enough, if I were young ; but he will reach the goal, for he is resolute and spares no one. " While she muttered these and similar words, she filled a graceful cup of glazed earthenware with filtered Nile water which she poured out of a large porous clay jar, and laid a laurel leaf, on which was scratched two hearts linked together by seven strokes, on the surface of the limpid fluid. Then she stepped out into the air again. As Paaker took the vessel from her hand, and looked at the laurel leaf, she said : ' 1 This indeed binds hearts ; three is the husband, four is the wife, seven is the indivisible. Chaach, chachach, charcharachacha." * The old woman sang this spell not without skill ; but the Mohar appeared not to listen to her jargon. He de- scended carefully into the valley, and directed his steps to the resting-place of the wife of Mena. By the side of a rock, which hid him from Nefert, he paused, set the cup on aflat block of stone, and drew the flask with the philter out of his girdle. His fingers trembled, but a thousand voices within seemed to surge up and cry : " Take it ! do it ! put in the drink ! Now or never !" He felt like a solitary traveler who finds on his road the last will of a relation whose possessions he had hoped for, but which disinherits him. Shall he surrender it to the judge, or shall he destroy it? Paaker was not merely outwardly devout ; hitherto he had in everything intended to act according to the pre- * This jargon is found in a magic papyrus at Berlin. 7 6 UARDA. scriptions of the religion of his fathers. Adultery was a heavy sin ; but had not he an older right to Nefert than the kings charioteer? He who followed the black arts of magic, should, ac- cording to the law, be punished by death, and the old woman had a bad name for her evil arts ; but he had not sought her for the sake of the philter. Was it not possible that the Manes of his forefathers, that the gods themselves, moved by his prayers and offerings, had put him in pos- session, by an accident — which was almost a miracle — of the magic potion whose efficacy he never for an instant doubted ? Paaker's associates held him to be a man of quick de- cision, and, in fact, in difficult cases he could act with unusual rapidity, but what guided him in these cases, was not the swift-winged judgment of a prepared and well- schooled brain, but usually only resulted from the out- come of a play of question and answer. Amulets of the most various kinds hung round his neck, and from his girdle, all consecrated by priests, and of special sanctity or the highest efficacy. There was the lapis lazuli eye, which hung to his girdle by a gold chain ; when he threw it on the ground, so as to lie on the earth, if its engraved side turned to heaven and its smooth side lay on the ground, he said, " yes ; " in the other case, on the contrary, ' c no;" In his purse lay always a statuette of the god Apheru,* who opened roads ; this he threw down at cross-roads, and followed the direction which the pointed snout of the image indicated. He fre- quently called into council the seal-ring of his deceased father, an old family possession, which the chief-priest of Abydos had laid upon the holiest of the fourteen graves of Osiris, and endowed with miraculous power, f It consisted of a gold ring with a broad signet, on which could be read the name of Thotmes III. , who had long since been deified, and from whom Paaker s ancestors had derived it. If it * A particular form of Anubis — as was the jackal-headed local divinity of Lykopolis, the modern Sint t Typhon cut the body of Osiris into fourteen pieces, and then strewed them in Kgypt. When Isis found one of them she erected a monument to her husband. In later times none of these was reckoned more holy that of Abydos, whither also Egyptians of rank had their mummies con- veyed to rest in the vicinity of Osiris. UARDA. 77 were desirable to consult the ring, the Mohar touched with the point of his bronze dagger the engraved sign of the name, below which were represented three objects sacred to the gods, and three that were, on the contrary, profane. If he hit one of the former, he concluded that his father— who was gone to Osiris— concurred in his design ; in the contrary case he was careful to postpone it. Often he pressed the ring to his heart and awaited the first living creature that he might meet, regarding it as a messenger from his father ; if it came to him from the right hand as an encouragement, if from the left as a warning. By degrees he had reduced these questionings to a sys- tem. All that he found in nature he referred to himself and the current of his life. It was at once touching and pitiful to see how closely he lived with the Manes of his dead. His lively but not exalted fancy, whenever he gave it play, presented to the eye of his soul the image of his father and of an elder brother who had died early, always in the same spot, and almost tangibly distinct. But he never conjured up the remembrance of the be- loved dead in order to think of them with silent melan- choly—that sweet blossom of the thorny wreath of sorrow ; only for selfish ends. The appeal to the Manes of his father.hehad found especially efficacious in certain desires and difficulties ; calling on the Manes of his brother was potent in certain others ; and so he turned from one to the other with the precision of a carpenter, who rarely doubts whether he should give the preference to a hatchet or a saw. These doings he held to be well-pleasing to the gods, and as he was convinced that the spirits of his dead had, after their justification, passed into Osiris— that is to say, as atoms forming part of the great world-soul, at this time had a share in the direction of the universe— he sacrificed to them not only in the family catacomb, but also in the temples of the Necropolis dedicated to the worship of ancestors, and with special preference in the House of Seti. . , He accepted advice, nay, even blame, from Ameni and the other priests under his direction ; and so lived full of a virtuous pride in being one of the most zealous devotees in the land, and one of the most pleasing to the gods, a belief on which his pastors never threw any doubt. 7 8 UARDA. Attended and guided at every step by supernatural powers, he wanted no friend and no confidant. In the held, as m Thebes, he stood apart and passed among- his comrades for a reserved man, rough and proud, but with a strong will. He had the power of calling up the image of his lost love with as much vividness as the forms of the dead and indulged m this magic not only through a hundred' still nights, but m long rides and drives through silent wastes Such visions were commonly followed by a vehement and boiling overflow of his hatred against the charioteer and a whole series of fervent prayers for his destruction ' When Paaker set the cup of water for Nefert on the flat stone and felt for the philter, his soul was so full of desire that there was no room for hatred ; still he could not altogether exclude the idea that he would commit a great crime by making use of a magic drink. Before pouring the fateful drops into the water he would consult the oracle of the ring. The dagger touched none of the holy symbols of the inscription on the signet, and in other circumstances he would, without going any further have given up his project. But this time he unwillingly returned it to its sheath pressed the gold ring to his heart, muttered the name of his brother m Osiris, and awaited the first living- creature that might come toward him. He had not long to wait ; from the mountain slope op- posite to him rose, with heavy, slow wing-strokes, two light colored vultures. .In anxious suspense he followed their flight as they rose higher and higher. For a moment they poised motion- less, borne up by the air, circled round each other, then wheeled to the left and vanished behind the mountains denying him the fulfillment of his desire. He hastily grasped the phial to fling it from him, but the surging passion in his veins had deprived him of his self-control. Neferfs image stood before him as if beck- oning him ; a mysterious power clinched his fingers close and yet closer round the phial, and with the same defiance which he showed to his associates, he poured half of the philter into the cup and approached his victim. Nefert had meanwhile left her shady retreat and came toward him. UARDA. 79 She silently accepted the water he offered her, and drank it with delight to the very dregs. " Thank you/ 7 she said, when she had recovered breath after her eager draught. ' ' That has done me good ! How fresh and acid the water tastes ; but your hand shakes^ and you are heated by your quick run for me— poor man." With these words she looked at him v/ith a peculiar ex- pressive glance of her large eyes, and gave him her right hand which he pressed wildly to his lips. " That will do,' ; she said, smiling; 4 'here comes the princess with a priest, out of the hovel of the unclean. With what frightful words you terrified me just now. It is true I gave you just cause to be angry with me ; but now you are kind again— do you hear? — and will bring your mother again to see mine. Not a word. ^ I shall see, whether cousin Paaker refuses me obedience." She threatened him playfully with her finger and then growing grave she added, with a look that pierced Paaker s heart with pain and yet with ecstasy, " Let us leave off quarreling. It is so much better when people are kind to each other." After these words she walked toward the house of the paraschites, while Paaker pressed his hands to his breast, and murmured : " The drink is working and she will be mine. I thank ye — ye immortals ! " But this thanksgiving, which hitherto he had never failed to utter when any good fortune had befallen him, to-day died on his lips. Close before him he saw the goal of his desires ; there, under his eyes, lay the magic spring longed for for years. A few steps further, and he might slake at its copious stream his thirst both for love and for revenge. While he followed the wife of Mena, and replaced the phial carefully in his girdle, so as to lose no drop of the precious fluid which, according to the prescription of the old woman, he needed to use again, warning voices spoke in his breast, to which he usually listened as to a fatherly admonition ; but at this moment he mocked at them, and even gave outward expression to the mood that ruled him — for he flung up his right hand like a drunken man, who turns away from the preacher of morality on his way to the wine-cask ; and yet passion held him so closely en- 8o UARDA. snared that the thought that he should live through the swift moments which would change him from an honest man into a criminal hardly dawned darkly on his soul He had hitherto dared to indulge his desire for love and revenge in thought only, and had left it to the gods to act for themselves ; now he had taken his cause out of the hand of the Celestials, and gone into action without them and in spite of them. The sorceress Hekt passed him ; she wanted to see the woman for whom, she had given him the phdlter. He perceived her and shuddered, but soon the old woman vanished among the rocks muttering : ' 'Look at the fellow with six toes. He makes himself comfortable with the heritage of Assa." In the middle of the valley walked Nefert and the pioneer, with the Princess Bent-Anat and Pentaur, who accompanied her. When these two had come out of the hut of the paras- chites they stood opposite each other in silence. . Tne royal maiden pressed her hand to her heart, and, like one who is thirsty, drank in the pure air of the mount- ain valley with deeply drawn breath ; she felt as if released from some overwhelming burden, as if delivered from some frightful danger. At last she turned to her companion, who gazed earnestly at the ground. " What an hour ! " she said. Pentaur s tall figure did not move, but he bowed his head in assent, as if he were in a dream. . Bent-Anat now saw him for the first time in full day- light ; her large eyes rested on him with admiration, and she asked : " Art thou the priest, who, yesterday after my first visit to this house, so readily restored me to cleanness ? " "lam he," replied Pentaur. " I recognized thy voice, and I am grateful to thee, for it was thou that didst strengthen my courage to follow the impulse of my heart in spite of my spiritual guides, and to come here again. Thou wilt defend me if others blame me." " I came here to pronounce thee unclean/' " Then thou hast changed thy mind ? " asked Bent-Anat, and a smile of contempt curled her lips. UARDA. 81 " I follow a high injunction, that commands us to keep the old institutions sacred. If touching a paraschites, it is said, does not defile a princess, whom then can rt defile I for whose garment is more spotless than hers ? ; << But this is a good man with all his meanness, inter- rupted Bent-Anat, ' ' and in spite of the disgrace, which is the bread of life to him as honor is to us. May the nine great Gods forgive me ! but he who is m there is loving, pious and brave, and pleases me- and thou, thou, who didst think yesterday to purge away the taint of his touch with a word— what prompts thee to-day to cast him with the lepers ? " " The admonition of an enlightened man, never to give up any link of the old institutions ; because thereby the already weakened chain may be broken, and fall rattling to the ground/' " Then thou condemnestme to uncleanness tor the sake of an old superstition, and of the populace, but not for my actions ? Thou art silent ? Answer me now, if thou art such a one as I took thee for, freely and sincerely ; for it concerns the peace of my soul." - Pentaur breathed hard ; and then from the depths ot his soul, tormented by doubts, these deeply-felt words forced themselves as if wrung from him ; at first softly, but louder as he went on. I ,.•*, « Thou dost compel me to say what I had better not even think ; but rather will I sin against t obedience than against truth, the pure daughter of the Sun, whose aspect, Bent-Anat, thou dost wear. Whether the paraschites is unclean by birth or not, who am I that I should decide ? But to me this man appeared— as to thee— as one moved by the same pure and holy emotions as stir and bless me and mine, and thee and every soul born of woman ; and 1 believe that the impressions of this hour have touched thy soul as well as mine, not to taint but to purify. If I am wrong may the many-named Gods forgive me, Whose breath lives and works in the paraschites as well as m thee and me, in Whom I believe, and to Whom I will ever address my humble songs louder and more joyfully as 1 learn that all that lives and breathes, that weeps and re- joices, is the image of thefr sublime nature, and born to equal joy and equal sorrow." 6 82 UARDA. Pentaur had raised his eyes to heaven ; now they met the proud and joyful radiance of the princess' glance, while she frankly offered him her hand. He humbly kissed her robe, but she said : " Nay — not so. Lay thy hand in blessing on mine. Thou art a man and a true priest. Now I can be satisfied to be regarded as unclean, for my father also desires that by us especially the institutions of the past that have so long continued should be respected, for the sake of the people. Let us pray in common to the gods, that these poor people may be released from the old ban. How beautiful the world might be, if men would but let man remain what the Celestials have made him. But Paaker and poor Nefert are waiting in the scorching sun — come, follow me." She went forward, but after a few steps she turned round to him, and asked : "What is thy name?" " Pentaur." " Thou, then, art the poet of the house of Seti ? " "They call me so." Bent-Anat stood still a moment, gazing full at him as at a kinsman whom we meet for the first time face to face, and said : <£ The gods have given thee great gifts, for thy glance reaches further and pierces deeper than that of other men ; and thou canst say in words what we can only feel — I follow thee willingly ! " Pentaur blushed like a boy, and said, while Paaker and Nefert came nearer to them : ''Till to-day life lay before me as if in twilight; but this moment shows it to me in another light. I have seen its deepest shadows ; and," he added in a low tone, " how glorious its light can be." CHAPTER VII. An hour later, Bent-Anat and her train of followers stood before the gate of the House of Seti. Swift as a ball thrown from a man's hand, a runner had UARDA. S3 sprung forward and hurried on to announce the approach of the princess to the chief priest. She stood alone in her chariot in advance of all her companions, for Pentaur had found a place with Paaker. At the gate of the temple they were met by the head of the haruspices. The great doors of the Pylon were wide open, and afforded a view into the forecourt of the sanctuary, paved with polished squares of stone, and surrounded on three sides with colonnades. The walls and architraves, the pillars and the fluted cornice, which slightly curved in over the court, were gorgeous with many-colored figures and painted decorations. In the middle stood a great sacrificial altar, on which burned logs of cedar wood, while fragrant balls of Kyphi* were consumed by the flames, filling the wide space with their heavy perfume. Around, in semicircular array, stood more than a hundred white-robed priests, who all turned to face the approach- ing princess, and sang heart-rending songs of lamenta- tion. Many of the inhabitants of the Necropolis had collected on either side of the lines of sphinxes, between which the princess drove up to the sanctuary. But none asked what these songs of lamentation might signify, for about this sacred place lamentation and mystery forever lingered. "Hail to the child of Rameses ! " "All hail to the daughter of the Sun ! " rang from a thousand throats ; and the assembled multitude bowed almost to the earth at the approach of the royal maiden. At the Pylon, the princess descended from her chariot, and preceded by the chief of the haruspices, who had gravely and silently greeted her, passed on to the door of the temple. But as she prepared to cross the forecourt, suddenly, without warning, the priests' chant swelled to a terrible, almost thundering loudness, the clear, shrill voices of the Temple scholars rising in passionate lament, supported by the deep and threatening roll of the basses. * Kyphi was a celebrated Egyptian incense. Recipes for its prepara- tion have been preserved in the papyrus of Ebers, in the laboratories of the temples, and elsewhere. Parthey had three different varieties pre- pared by the chemist, L. Voigt, in Berlin. Kyphi, after the formula of Dioskorides, was the best. It consisted of rosin, wine, Rad, Galangae, juniper-berries, the root of the aromatic rush, asphalt, mastic, myrrh, Burgundy grapes, and honey. 84 UARDA. Bent-Anat started and checked her steps. Then she walked on a