Produced by David Widger
JOSHUA, Complete
By Georg Ebers
Translated from the German by Mary J. Safford
PREFACE.
Last winter I resolved to complete this book, and while giving it
the form in which it now goes forth into the world, I was constantly
reminded of the dear friend to whom I intended to dedicate it. Now I am
permitted to offer it only to the manes of Gustav Baur; for a few months
ago death snatched him from us.
Every one who was allowed to be on terms of intimacy with this man feels
his departure from earth as an unspeakably heavy loss, not only because
his sunny, cheerful nature and brilliant intellect brightened the
souls of his friends; not only because he poured generously from the
overflowing cornucopia of his rich knowledge precious gifts to those
with whom he stood in intellectual relations, but above all because of
the loving heart which beamed through his clear eyes, and enabled him to
share the joys and sorrows of others, and enter into their thoughts and
feelings.
To my life’s end I shall not forget that during the last few years,
himself physically disabled and overburdened by the duties imposed by
the office of professor and counsellor of the Consistory, he so
often found his way to me, a still greater invalid. The hours he then
permitted me to spend in animated conversation with him are among those
which, according to old Horace, whom he know so thoroughly and loved
so well, must be numbered among the ‘good ones’. I have done so, and
whenever I gratefully recall them, in my ear rings my friend’s question:
“What of the story of the Exodus?”
After I had told him that in the midst of the desert, while following
the traces of the departing Hebrews, the idea had occurred to me of
treating their wanderings in the form of a romance, he expressed his
approval in the eager, enthusiastic manner natural to him. When I
finally entered farther into the details of the sketch outlined on the
back of a camel, he never ceased to encourage me, though he thoroughly
understood my scruples and fully appreciated the difficulties which
attended the fulfilment of my task.
So in a certain degree this book is his, and the inability to offer it
to the living man and hear his acute judgment is one of the griefs which
render it hard to reconcile oneself to the advancing years which in
other respects bring many a joy.
Himself one of the most renowned, acute and learned students and
interpreters of the Bible, he was perfectly familiar with the critical
works the last five years have brought to light in the domain of Old
Testament criticism. He had taken a firm stand against the views of
the younger school, who seek to banish the Exodus of the Jews from
the province of history and represent it as a later production of the
myth-making popular mind; a theory we both believed untenable. One of
his remarks on this subject has lingered in my memory and ran nearly as
follows:
“If the events recorded in the Second Book of Moses--which I believe
are true--really never occurred, then nowhere and at no period has a
historical event of equally momentous result taken place. For thousands
of years the story of the Exodus has lived in the minds of numberless
people as something actual, and it still retains its vitality. Therefore
it belongs to history no less certainty than the French Revolution and
its consequences.”
Notwithstanding such encouragement, for a long series of years I
lacked courage to finish the story of the Exodus until last winter an
unexpected appeal from abroad induced me to resume it. After this I
worked uninterruptedly with fresh zeal and I may say renewed pleasure at
the perilous yet fascinating task until its completion.
The locality of the romance, the scenery as we say of the drama, I have
copied as faithfully as possible from the landscapes I beheld in Goshen
and on the Sinai peninsula. It will agree with the conception of many of
the readers of “Joshua.”
The case will be different with those portions of the story which I
have interwoven upon the ground of ancient Egyptian records. They will
surprise the laymen; for few have probably asked themselves how the
events related in the Bible from the standpoint of the Jews affected the
Egyptians, and what political conditions existed in the realm of Pharaoh
when the Hebrews left it. I have endeavored to represent these relations
with the utmost fidelity to the testimony of the monuments. For the
description of the Hebrews, which is mentioned in the Scriptures, the
Bible itself offers the best authority. The character of the “Pharaoh of
the Exodus” I also copied from the Biblical narrative, and the portraits
of the weak King Menephtah, which have been preserved, harmonize
admirably with it. What we have learned of later times induced me to
weave into the romance the conspiracy of Siptah, the accession to the
throne of Seti II., and the person of the Syrian Aarsu who, according to
the London Papyrus Harris I., after Siptah had become king, seized the
government.
The Naville excavations have fixed the location of Pithom-Succoth beyond
question, and have also brought to light the fortified store-house of
Pithom (Succoth) mentioned in the Bible; and as the scripture says the
Hebrews rested in this place and thence moved farther on, it must be
supposed that they overpowered the garrison of the strong building and
seized the contents of the spacious granaries, which are in existence at
the present day.
In my “Egypt and the Books of Moses” which appeared in 1868, I stated
that the Biblical Etham was the same as the Egyptian Chetam, that is,
the line of fortresses which protected the isthmus of Suez from the
attacks of the nations of the East, and my statement has long since
found universal acceptance. Through it, the turning back of the Hebrews
before Etham is intelligible.
The mount where the laws were given I believe was the majestic Serbal,
not the Sinai of the monks; the reasons for which I explained fully
in my work “Through Goshen to Sinai.” I have also--in the same
volume--attempted to show that the halting-place of the tribes called in
the Bible “Dophkah” was the deserted mines of the modern Wadi Maghara.
By the aid of the mental and external experiences of the characters,
whose acts have in part been freely guided by the author’s imagination,
he has endeavored to bring nearer to the sympathizing reader the human
side of the mighty destiny of the nation which it was incumbent on him
to describe. If he has succeeded in doing so, without belittling the
magnificent Biblical narrative, he has accomplished his desire; if he
has failed, he must content himself with the remembrance of the pleasure
and mental exaltation he experienced during the creation of this work.
Tutzing on the Starnberger See, September 20th, 1889.
GEORG EBERS.
JOSHUA.
CHAPTER I.
“Go down, grandfather: I will watch.”
But the old man to whom the entreaty was addressed shook his shaven
head.
“Yet you can get no rest here....
“And the stars? And the tumult below? Who can think of rest in hours
like these? Throw my cloak around me! Rest--on such a night of horror!”
“You are shivering. And how your hand and the instrument are shaking.”
“Then support my arm.”
The youth dutifully obeyed the request; but in a short time he
exclaimed: “Vain, all is vain; star after star is shrouded by the murky
clouds. Alas, hear the wailing from the city. Ah, it rises from our own
house too. I am so anxious, grandfather, feel how my head burns! Come
down, perhaps they need help.”
“Their fate is in the hands of the gods--my place is here.
“But there--there! Look northward across the lake. No, farther to the
west. They are coming from the city of the dead.”
“Oh, grandfather! Father--there!” cried the youth, a grandson of
the astrologer of Amon-Ra, to whom he was lending his aid. They were
standing in the observatory of the temple of this god in Tanis, the
Pharaoh’s capital in the north of the land of Goshen. He moved away,
depriving the old man of the support of his shoulder, as he continued:
“There, there! Is the sea sweeping over the land? Have the clouds
dropped on the earth to heave to and fro? Oh, grandfather, look yonder!
May the Immortals have pity on us! The under-world is yawning, and the
giant serpent Apep has come forth from the realm of the dead. It is
moving past the temple. I see, I hear it. The great Hebrew’s menace is
approaching fulfilment. Our race will be effaced from the earth. The
serpent! Its head is turned toward the southeast. It will devour the sun
when it rises in the morning.”
The old man’s eyes followed the youth’s finger, and he, too, perceived
a huge, dark mass, whose outlines blended with the dusky night, come
surging through the gloom; he, too, heard, with a thrill of terror, the
monster’s loud roar.
Both stood straining their eyes and ears to pierce the darkness; but
instead of gazing upward the star-reader’s eye was bent upon the city,
the distant sea, and the level plain. Deep silence, yet no peace reigned
above them: the high wind now piled the dark clouds into shapeless
masses, anon severed that grey veil and drove the torn fragments far
asunder. The moon was invisible to mortal eyes, but the clouds were
toying with the bright Southern stars, sometimes hiding them, sometimes
affording a free course for their beams. Sky and earth alike showed a
constant interchange of pallid light and intense darkness. Sometimes
the sheen of the heavenly bodies flashed brightly from sea and bay, the
smooth granite surfaces of the obelisks in the precincts of the temple,
and the gilded copper roof of the airy royal palace, anon sea and river,
the sails in the harbor, the sanctuaries, the streets of the city, and
the palm-grown plain which surrounded it vanished in gloom. Eye and ear
failed to retain the impression of the objects they sought to discern;
for sometimes the silence was so profound that all life, far and near,
seemed hushed and dead, then a shrill shriek of anguish pierced the
silence of the night, followed at longer or shorter intervals by the
loud roar the youthful priest had mistaken for the voice of the serpent
of the nether-world, and to which grandfather and grandson listened with
increasing suspense.
The dark shape, whose incessant motion could be clearly perceived
whenever the starlight broke through the clouds, appeared first near the
city of the dead and the strangers’ quarter. Both the youth and the old
man had been seized with terror, but the latter was the first to regain
his self-control, and his keen eye, trained to watch the stars, speedily
discovered that it was not a single giant form emerging from the city of
the dead upon the plain, but a multitude of moving shapes that seemed to
be swaying hither and thither over the meadow lands. The bellowing and
bleating, too, did not proceed from one special place, but came now
nearer and now farther away. Sometimes it seemed to issue from the
bowels of the earth, and at others to float from some airy height.
Fresh horror seized upon the old man. Grasping his grandson’s right
hand in his, he pointed with his left to the necropolis, exclaiming in
tremulous tones: “The dead are too great a multitude. The under-world is
overflowing, as the river does when its bed is not wide enough for the
waters from the south. How they swarm and surge and roll onward! How
they scatter and sway to and fro. They are the souls of the thousands
whom grim death has snatched away, laden with the curse of the Hebrew,
unburied, unshielded from corruption, to descend the rounds of the
ladder leading to the eternal world.”
“Yes, yes, those are their wandering ghosts,” shrieked the youth in
absolute faith, snatching his hand from the grey-beard’s grasp and
striking his burning brow, exclaiming, almost incapable of speech in his
horror: “Ay, those are the souls of the damned. The wind has swept them
into the sea, whose waters cast them forth again upon the land, but the
sacred earth spurns them and flings them into the air. The pure ether
of Shu hurls them back to the ground and now--oh look, listen--they are
seeking the way to the wilderness.”
“To the fire!” cried the old astrologer. “Purify them, ye flames;
cleanse them, water.”
The youth joined his grandfather’s form of exorcism, and while still
chanting together, the trap-door leading to this observatory on the top
of the highest gate of the temple was opened, and a priest of inferior
rank called: “Cease thy toil. Who cares to question the stars when the
light of life is departing from all the denizens of earth!”
The old man listened silently till the priest, in faltering accents,
added that the astrologer’s wife had sent him, then he stammered:
“Hora? Has my son, too, been stricken?”
The messenger bent his head, and the two listeners wept bitterly, for
the astrologer had lost his first-born son and the youth a beloved
father.
But as the lad, shivering with the chill of fever, sank ill and
powerless on the old man’s breast, the latter hastily released himself
from his embrace and hurried to the trap-door. Though the priest had
announced himself to be the herald of death, a father’s heart needs more
than the mere words of another ere resigning all hope of the life of his
child.
Down the stone stairs, through the lofty halls and wide courts of the
temple he hurried, closely followed by the youth, though his trembling
limbs could scarcely support his fevered body. The blow that had fallen
upon his own little circle had made the old man forget the awful vision
which perchance menaced the whole universe with destruction; but
his grandson could not banish the sight and, when he had passed the
fore-court and was approaching the outermost pylons his imagination,
under the tension of anxiety and grief, made the shadows of the obelisks
appear to be dancing, while the two stone statues of King Rameses, on
the corner pillars of the lofty gate, beat time with the crook they held
in their hands.
Then the fever struck the youth to the ground. His face was distorted
by the convulsions which tossed his limbs to and fro, and the old man,
failing on his knees, strove to protect the beautiful head, covered
with clustering curls, from striking the stone flags, moaning under his
breath “Now fate has overtaken him too.”
Then calming himself, he shouted again and again for help, but in vain.
At last, as he lowered his tones to seek comfort in prayer, he heard the
sound of voices in the avenue of sphinxes beyond the pylons, and fresh
hope animated his heart.
Who was coming at so late an hour?
Loud wails of grief blended with the songs of the priests, the clinking
and tinkling of the metal sistrums, shaken by the holy women in the
service of the god, and the measured tread of men praying as they
marched in the procession which was approaching the temple.
Faithful to the habits of a long life, the astrologer raised his eyes
and, after a glance at the double row of granite pillars, the colossal
statues and obelisks in the fore-court, fixed them on the starlit skies.
Even amid his grief a bitter smile hovered around his sunken lips;
to-night the gods themselves were deprived of the honors which were
their due.
For on this, the first night after the new moon in the month of
Pharmuthi, the sanctuary in bygone years was always adorned with
flowers. As soon as the darkness of this moonless night passed away, the
high festival of the spring equinox and the harvest celebration would
begin.
A grand procession in honor of the great goddess Neith, of Rennut, who
bestows the blessings of the fields, and of Horus at whose sign
the seeds begin to germinate, passed, in accordance with the rules
prescribed by the Book of the Divine Birth of the Sun, through the
city to the river and harbor; but to-day the silence of death reigned
throughout the sanctuary, whose courts at this hour were usually
thronged with men, women, and children, bringing offerings to lay on the
very spot where death’s finger had now touched his grandson’s heart.
A flood of light streamed into the vast space, hitherto but dimly
illumined by a few lamps. Could the throng be so frenzied as to imagine
that the joyous festival might be celebrated, spite of the unspeakable
horrors of the night.
Yet, the evening before, the council of priests had resolved that, on
account of the rage of the merciless pestilence, the temple should not
be adorned nor the procession be marshalled. In the afternoon many whose
houses had been visited by the plague had remained absent, and now while
he, the astrologer, had been watching the course of the stars, the pest
had made its way into this sanctuary, else why had it been forsaken
by the watchers and the other astrologers who had entered with him at
sunset, and whose duty it was to watch through the night?
He again turned with tender solicitude to the sufferer, but instantly
started to his feet, for the gates were flung wide open and the light of
torches and lanterns streamed into the court. A swift glance at the sky
told him that it was a little after midnight, yet his fears seemed to
have been true--the priests were crowding into the temples to prepare
for the harvest festival to-morrow.
But he was wrong. When had they ever entered the sanctuary for this
purpose in orderly procession, solemnly chanting hymns? Nor was the
train composed only of servants of the deity. The population had joined
them, for the shrill lamentations of women and wild cries of despair,
such as he had never heard before in all his long life within these
sacred walls, blended in the solemn litany.
Or were his senses playing him false? Was the groaning throng of
restless spirits which his grandson had pointed out to him from the
observatory, pouring into the sanctuary of the gods?
New horror seized upon him; with arms flung upward to bid the specters
avaunt he muttered the exorcism against the wiles of evil spirits. But
he soon let his hands fall again; for among the throng he noted some of
his friends who yesterday, at least, had still walked among living men.
First, the tall form of the second prophet of the god, then the women
consecrated to the service of Amon-Ra, the singers and the holy fathers
and, when he perceived behind the singers, astrologers, and pastophori
his own brother-in-law, whose house had yesterday been spared by the
plague, he summoned fresh courage and spoke to him. But his voice was
smothered by the shouts of the advancing multitude.
The courtyard was now lighted, but each individual was so engrossed
by his own sorrows that no one noticed the old astrologer. Tearing the
cloak from his shivering limbs to make a pillow for the lad’s tossing
head, he heard, while tending him with fatherly affection, fierce
imprecations on the Hebrews who had brought this woe on Pharaoh and his
people, mingling with the chants and shouts of the approaching crowd
and, recurring again and again, the name of Prince Rameses, the heir
to the throne, while the tone in which it was uttered, the formulas of
lamentation associated with it, announced the tidings that the eyes of
the monarch’s first-born son were closed in death.
The astrologer gazed at his grandson’s wan features with increasing
anxiety, and even while the wailing for the prince rose louder and
louder a slight touch of gratification stirred his soul at the thought
of the impartial justice Death metes out alike to the sovereign on his
throne and the beggar by the roadside. He now realized what had brought
the noisy multitude to the temple!
With as much swiftness as his aged limbs would permit, he hastened
forward to meet the mourners; but ere he reached them he saw the
gate-keeper and his wife come out of their house, carrying between them
on a mat the dead body of a boy. The husband held one end, his fragile
little wife the other, and the gigantic warder was forced to stoop low
to keep the rigid form in a horizontal position and not let it slip
toward the woman. Three children, preceded by a little girl carrying a
lantern, closed the mournful procession.
Perhaps no one would have noticed the group, had not the gate-keeper’s
little wife shrieked so wildly and piteously that no one could help
hearing her lamentations. The second prophet of Amon, and then his
companions, turned toward them. The procession halted, and as some of
the priests approached the corpse the gate-keeper shouted loudly: “Away,
away from the plague! It has stricken our first-born son.”
The wife meantime had snatched the lantern from her little girl’s hand
and casting its light full on the dead boy’s rigid face, she screamed:
“The god hath suffered it to happen. Ay, he permitted the horror to
enter beneath his own roof. Not his will, but the curse of the stranger
rules us and our lives. Look, this was our first-born son, and the
plague has also stricken two of the temple-servants. One already lies
dead in our room, and there lies Kamus, grandson of the astrologer
Rameri. We heard the old man call, and saw what was happening; but who
can prop another’s house when his own is falling? Take heed while there
is time; for the gods have opened their own sanctuaries to the horror.
If the whole world crumbles into ruin, I shall neither marvel nor
grieve. My lord priests, I am only a poor lowly woman, but am I not
right when I ask: Do our gods sleep, or has some one paralyzed them, or
what are they doing that they leave us and our children in the power of
the base Hebrew brood?”
“Overthrow them! Down with the foreigners! Death to the sorcerer
Mesu,--[Mesu is the Egyptian name of Moses]--hurl him into the sea.”
Such were the imprecations that followed the woman’s curse, as an echo
follows a shout, and the aged astrologer’s brother-in-law Hornecht,
captain of the archers, whose hot blood seethed in his veins at the
sight of the dying form of his beloved nephew, waved his short sword,
crying frantically: “Let all men who have hearts follow me. Upon them!
A life for a life! Ten Hebrews for each Egyptian whom the sorcerer has
slain!”
As a flock rushes into a fire when the ram leads the way, the warrior’s
summons fired the throng. Women forced themselves in front of the men,
pressing after him into the gateway, and when the servants of the temple
lingered to await the verdict of the prophet of Amon, the latter drew
his stately figure to its full height, and said calmly: “Let all who
wear priestly garments remain and pray with me. The populace is heaven’s
instrument to mete out vengeance. We will remain here to pray for their
success.”