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now withdrawn into their lurking places; only man defied the heat of the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.
“How piously submissive and thankful are these unclean ones!” thought
Pentaur; and repugnance for the old laws began to take root in his
heart. “Maternal love may exist in the hyaena, 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 innocently and brightly as this woman who
has grown grey 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 worshipped, 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, imprisoned in doubts, and for strength to
fulfil 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 conduct he must observe towards the
princess.
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 advance 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 towards
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 surroundings. 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.
Pentaur’s glance flew round the one low, over-filled 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 chattering courtiers would follow her, and how the
women by the walls, the physicians by the side of the sick girl, the
sleek white cat from the chest where she sat, would rise and throng
round her. There must be frightful confusion. 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
“mind’s 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 goodness of heart spoken of by the people. If a little misfortune
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, of the impending desecration by the princess of the holy
feelings astir in this silent room.
Excited as he was to fanaticism, his condemning lips could not fail to
find vigorous and impressive words.
He stood drawn to his full height and drawing his 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 physicians 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 movement of the princess, now
whispered, “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 paraschites. “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 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--forgive, 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 when 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 supports life by
collecting the feet and feathers of the fowls that are slaughtered for
sacrifice, I would not only forgive 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. Aye--I would comfort her; and yet I am not very
sensitive. Ye holy three of Thebes!--[The triad of Thebes: Anion, Muth
and Chunsu.]--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 paraschites, with an Ethiopian knife, cuts the flesh of the
corpse as deeply as the law requires: but instantly takes to flight,
while the relatives of the deceased pursue him with stones, and
curses, as if they wished to throw the blame on him.]
“The fulfilment of duty--which brings a living to 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 Pentaur, while he
replied: “Poor man! aye, 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.
“May the avenging 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 the Tenat,
[Literally the “cutting” which, under Seti I., the father of
Rameses, was the first Suez Canal; a representation of it is found
on the northern outer wall of the temple of Karnak. It followed
nearly the same direction as the Fresh-water canal of Lesseps, and
fertilized the land of Goshen.]
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 hyaenas of the north.”
At these words the old woman, in whose 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.
“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 coming for you. The gold ring that he gave me I was
fastening 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
[The Egyptian mestem, that is stibium or antimony, which was
introduced into Egypt by the Asiatics at a very early period and
universally used.]
for yourself, and sticks of mastic,
[At the present day the Egyptian women are fond of chewing them, on
account of their pleasant taste. The ancient Egyptians used various
pills. Receipts for such things are found in the Ebers Papyrus.]
which you have so long lead 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 sank 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 remained 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, towards 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 Pentaur left the hut with him.