"What do you mean to do?"
"To prepare to obey the commands of the king," answered Ameni, "and to
call the heads of the temples of the city of Anion here without delay to
hold a council. Each must first in his holy of holies seek good counsel
of the Celestials. When we have come to a conclusion, we must next win
the Viceroy over to our side. Who yesterday assisted at his prayers?"
"It was my turn," said the chief of the haruspices.
"Follow me to my abode, when the meal is over." commanded 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."
"His father is a homely gardener," said the highpriest, "who indeed
tills the land apportioned to him with industry and prudence, but is
of humble birth and rough exterior. 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."
"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 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
loveable 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," 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 unruliness, 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 enquire 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 indulgence. I encourage freedom and merriment," he continued
turning to the priests from Cheraw, "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 extirpated than in their wild games. The school-boy is the
school-boy's best tutor."
"But Paaker," said the priest Meriapu, "was not improved 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 were intrusted to my
care," said Ameni, "and I believe I know why,--he never had a childlike
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."
[The severe duties of the Mohar are well known from the papyrus of
Anastasi I. in the Brit. Mus., which has been ably treated by F.
Chabas, Voyage d'un Egyptien.]
"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,
[Corresponding to our minister of war. A person of the highest
importance even in the earliest times.]
so that the march of the troops may be guided by them."
"The Mohar then must be equally skilled as a warrior and as a Scribe."
"As thou sayest; 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 travelled 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 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 haruspex, "and he therefore, after he
himself had attained the highest consideration and vast wealth, escorted
home the niece of the King Hor-em-lieb, who would have had a claim to
the throne, as well as the Regent, if the grandfather of the present
Rameses had not seized it from the old family by violence."
"Be careful of your words," said Ameni, interrupting the rash old man.
"Rameses I. was and is the grandfather 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 haruspex 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 grey, 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 feasting, my
lords; but I would request you to speak no more this evening of the king
and his new decree. You, Pentaur, fulfil 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," interrupted Gagabu. "The son 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 indefatigable 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 geese, 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, 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 treasurer, "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 so 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, interrupting the indignant
old man.
"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, annihilated--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, 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 industry, sensual appetites may beget noble
fruit, but hatred is a devastator, and in the soul that it occupies all
that is noble grows not upwards and towards the light, but downwards 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
for 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 sordid
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 roses would please thee, haruspex, in
which scorpions, centipedes, and venomous snakes were swimming. 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 fore
fathers 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 was born under a lucky sign,
the Hathors denied him all that makes youth happy. The enemy for whose
destruction he prays is Mena, the king's 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."
[In the demotic papyrus preserved at Bulaq (novel by Setnau) first
treated by H. Brugsch, the following words occur: "Is it not the
law, which unites one to another?" Betrothed brides are mentioned,
for instance on the sarcophagus of Unnefer at Bulaq.]
"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
accompanied 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 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 reconnoitre 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 desires;
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 hundreds."
"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 fiends for a reward. But the omniscient Spirit, that rules
the world in accordance with eternal laws, knows nothing of these
sacrifices, which only tickle the nostrils of the evil one. The
treasurer rejoices when a beautiful spotless heifer is driven in among
our herds. But Seth rubs his red hands
[Red was the color of Seth and Typhon. The evil one is named the
Red, as for instance in the papyrus of fibers. Red-haired men were
typhonic.]
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 heartache 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 remonstrances 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 life, has passed only a few weeks with her wandering husband,
and remains childless. It is hard to me to understand how you, Gagabu,
who so often absolve where we condemn, can so relentlessly judge so
great a benefactor to our temple."
"And I fail to comprehend," exclaimed the old man, "how you--you who so
willingly condemn, can so weakly excuse this--this--call him what you
will."
"He is indispensable to us at this time," said the haruspex.
"Granted," said Gagabu, lowering his tone. "And I think still to make
use of him, as the high-priest has done in past years with the best
effect when dangers have threatened us; and a dirty road serves when it
makes for the goal. 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 imaginings 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 Divinity. Above all," and the voice of the old man had
a heart-felt impressiveness, "Above all, do not flatter the 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 vault 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 enclosed 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 the evening had
now withdrawn into their lurking places; only man defied the heat of the
summer day. Undisturbed 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 clock where those landed who crossed from eastern Thebes
was crowded with 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 towards 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 in eager games at morra.
[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 Minutoli, in the
Leipziger Illustrirte Zeitung, 1852.]
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 those 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 conveyed 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,
[The Syene of the Greeks, non, called Assouan at the first
cataract.]
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 working men 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.
Thick clouds of gnats followed these tormented gangs, 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 around the slaughter houses, cooks'
shops, stalls of fried fish, and booths of meat, vegetable, 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 north-west 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 day, a small but
brilliant troop of the men was passing.
Four slender youths as staff bearers led the procession, each clothed
only with an apron and a flowing head-cloth of gold brocade; the mid-day
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 whose lightest word they pricked their ears, and
whose little hand guided them with a scarcely perceptible touch.
Two young men dressed like the other runners followed 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 first time in daylight, were of
remarkable but altogether different beauty.
The wife of Mena had preserved the appearance of a maiden; her large
almond-shaped eyes had a dreamy surprised 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 foreign
blood flowed in her veins, as could be seen in the color of her skin,
which was of that fresh and equal line which holds a medium between
golden yellow and bronze brown--and which to this day is so charming in
the maidens of Abyssinia--in her straight nose, her well-formed brow,
in her smooth but thick black hair, and in the fineness 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 stature 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,
[Many portraits have come down to us of Rameses: the finest is the
noble statue preserved at Turin. A likeness has been detected
between its profile, with its slightly aquiline nose, and that of
Napoleon I.]
as well as the slightly waving abundance of her brown hair, over which
she wore a blue and white striped silk kerchief; its carefully-pleated
folds were held in place by a gold ring, from which in front a horned
urarus
[A venomous Egyptian serpent which was adopted as the symbol of
sovereign power, in consequence of its swift effects for life or
death. It is never wanting to the diadem of the Pharaohs.]
raised its head crowned with a disk of rubies. From her left temple a
large tress, plaited with gold thread, hung down to her waist, the sign
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.
Behind the princess stood her charioteer, an old officer of noble birth.
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 axe
in his right hand, and in his left; in token of his peaceful 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 princess pitied the poor horses, who were tormented as they ran,
by annoying gadflies; 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 mid-day sun in the
service of their masters, till their sinews threatened to crack and
their lungs to burst their bodies.
At a spot where the road widened, and where, to the right, lay the steep
cross-valley where the last kings of the dethroned race were interred,
the procession stopped at a sign from Paaker, who preceded the princess,
and who drove 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 charioteer and sprang to
the ground, the wife of Mena and the courtiers left their litters, and
the fan-bearers and chamberlains 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 go with me."
The princess hastened forward into the gorge, which was oppressive with
the noon-tide 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
was perfectly still and deserted; on the highest pinnacles of the cliff,
which rose perpendicularly to the right, sat a long row of vultures, as
motionless as if the mid-day heat had taken all strength out of their
wings.
Paaker bowed before them as being the sacred animals of the Great
Goddess of Thebes,
[She formed a triad with Anion and Chunsu under the name of Muth.
The great "Sanctuary of the kingdom"--the temple of Karnak--was
dedicated to them.]
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 towards the solitary hovel with a beating heart; Paaker
let the ladies go first. A few steps brought them to an ill-constructed
fence of canestalks, palm-branches, briars and straw, roughly thrown
together. 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 companion, whose beating heart she seemed to hear.
Both stood a few minutes as if spellbound, then the princess called
Paaker, and said:
"You go first into the house."
Paaker bowed to the ground.
"I will call the man out," he said, "but how dare we step over his
threshold. Thou knowest such a proceeding 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 splendor--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 herself 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 not conceal
from herself that misery and external meanness 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 hideous, 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 but, 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 might not tread the dusty
floor of this wretched hovel but in all humility, and to crave a pardon.
The 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 long been grey. Her
black-blue cotton shirt was open over her withered bosom, and showed a
blue star tattooed upon it.
In her lap she supported with her hands the head of a girl, whose
slender body lay motionless on a narrow, ragged mat. The little white
feet of the sick girl almost touched the threshold. Near to them
squatted a benevolent-looking old man, who wore only a coarse apron, and
sitting all in a heap, bent forward now and then, rubbing the child's
feet with his lean hands and muttering a few words to himself.
The sufferer wore nothing but a short petticoat of coarse light-blue
stuff. Her face, half resting on the lap of the old woman, was graceful
and regular in form, her eyes were half shut-like those of a child,
whose soul is wrapped in some sweet dream-but from her finely chiselled
lips there escaped from time to time a painful, almost convulsive sob.
An abundance of soft, but disordered reddish fair hair, 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 wheel, or
when she lifted her slender arm, it was seen that she had the shining
fairness 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 sympathy 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 longer interval,
and turned them at first in surprise, and then with gentle reverence,
towards 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, Pentaur 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 handsome
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 immediately raised his hand, and
half-mechanically, in a low voice, uttered the words of blessing; and
then once more fixed his gaze on the dingy floor, and pursued his own
reflections.
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 presumptuous; 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 haughtiness 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
artizan--the peasant, nay even the warrior, as far beneath the godly
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.--[Diodorus I, 91]--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 deprived 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 of the
under-world.
Pentaur had crossed the threshold of the man he despised with aversion;
the man himself, sitting at the feet of the suffering girl, had
exclaimed as he saw the priest approaching the hovel:
"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.
"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 stand-still--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 every thing 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 paraschites.
He saw her dark face as she turned it away from the sick girl. She had
felt her breathe, and a smile of happiness lighted up her old features;
she nodded first to the surgeon, and then with a deep sigh of relief to
her husband, 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 parents' 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. |
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