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- Herausgeber: DigiCat
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
Bolesław Prus's "The Pharaoh and the Priest" intricately weaves a narrative set against the backdrop of ancient Egypt, exploring the cosmic and societal tensions between divine authority and mortal governance. The novel captures the essence of Prus's literary style, characterized by rich symbolism and detailed characterizations, while employing a blend of historical fiction and philosophical discourse. Set during the reign of the Pharaoh Ramses XIII, the work offers critical commentary on power, civilization, and religious belief, reflecting the author's keen interest in the interplay of culture and ethics, which resonates amid contemporary debates about the nature of leadership. Bolesław Prus, a significant figure in Polish literature, was deeply influenced by his experiences in the tumultuous socio-political landscape of 19th-century Poland, as well as his extensive travels in Europe and the Middle East. His background as a journalist and social critic imbues "The Pharaoh and the Priest" with a profound understanding of human nature and societal structures, guiding readers through the philosophical inquiries that shaped his worldview. Prus's engagement with themes of fate and doctrine reflects his fascination with the historical continuity of power dynamics. This novel is highly recommended for readers interested in historical narratives that challenge contemporary moral dilemmas. Prus's blend of engaging storytelling and insightful social critique elevates "The Pharaoh and the Priest" beyond mere entertainment, inviting readers to reflect on the timeless struggles between individual ambition and collective responsibility. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
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The Pharaoh and the Priest
Table of Contents
Introduction
At the heart of The Pharaoh and the Priest lies a fiercely modern contest in ancient dress: the battle between a youthful crown seeking decisive action and a seasoned priesthood guarding the levers of knowledge, wealth, and belief, a struggle waged not only in council chambers and sanctuaries but across floodplains, storehouses, and star charts, where control of grain and calendars, omens and taxation, armies and irrigation, narratives and secrecy determines whose vision will animate the state, and where the stakes are nothing less than the survival of a civilization that must balance revelation, reason, and power under an unforgiving sun.
The novel is a panoramic historical fiction set in ancient Egypt near the close of the New Kingdom, and it was written by the Polish realist Bolesław Prus in the late nineteenth century, when it appeared in serial form before book publication soon after. English-language readers often encounter it as The Pharaoh and the Priest. Prus designs the court, temples, and countryside with scrupulous research and a social-scientific eye, fusing a political novel's structural curiosity with the sensory detail of a classical adventure. The result situates palace intrigue within a meticulously reconstructed world whose institutions feel both distant and recognizable.
At its outset, the story follows a brilliant but impetuous heir preparing for rule, already measuring his ambitions against the entrenched authority of the priestly estate and the sprawling bureaucracy that ensures the Nile's bounty reaches the granaries. Border tensions flicker at the edges, financiers and merchants press their interests, and the army seeks clarity of purpose. Prus narrates in an omniscient, calmly analytical voice, alternating sweeping tableaux with tightly reasoned debates and intimate scenes. The tone is sober yet vivid, balancing spectacle with inquiry, so that political calculation, ritual, and everyday labor cohere into a single, steadily gathering momentum.
The reading experience is immersive rather than breathless: chapters dwell on ceremonies, audits, and councils, but also on patrols, workshops, and river journeys, giving the sense of a living system whose parts grind together. Architecture, logistics, calendars, and legal customs appear not as ornament but as engines of the plot, and the spectacle of processions and festivals is matched by the austere drama of accounting tablets and command chains. Dialogue carries strategic thinking without sacrificing character, and descriptive passages reveal how environment shapes policy. The novel's breadth invites reflection while maintaining the tension of a chess match played in sunlight.
Central themes include the rivalry between secular authority and religious institutions, the politics of information and secrecy, and the economics of empire built on grain, labor, and credit. Prus probes how expertise can legitimize power or restrain it, how ideology clothes fiscal necessity, and how myths are forged into policy. He treats science and divination as competing methods for taming uncertainty, showing how calendars, archives, and ceremonies become instruments of governance. Equally important are questions of ethical leadership, social responsibility, and the costs of ambition, which appear not as abstract theses but through decisions that bind rulers to ordinary lives.
For contemporary readers, the book resonates as a study of institutional friction under conditions of geopolitical pressure, economic strain, and environmental variability. Its depiction of elite competition over narratives and data feels current in an era of media saturation and algorithmic authority. The dilemmas it stages - technocratic expertise versus charismatic urgency, security versus openness, short-term mobilization versus long-term stewardship - mirror ongoing debates in public life. Prus's attention to infrastructure, finance, and administrative capacity also highlights the unglamorous foundations of power. By dramatizing how civilizations coordinate knowledge, resources, and belief, the novel illuminates the vulnerabilities and possibilities of complex societies today.
Approached as a political novel, a historical panorama, or a meditation on systems, The Pharaoh and the Priest rewards patient attention with clarity and force. Without revealing turns that deserve discovery, it suffices to note that every negotiation, procession, and edict compounds the stakes, and that character is revealed most sharply at the intersection of ritual and necessity. Prus offers neither cynicism nor idolatry; he observes how power works and how people try to use it for ends both noble and narrow. The result is a compelling, lucidly constructed narrative that still speaks to readers seeking insight into leadership and society.
Synopsis
Bolesław Prus’s The Pharaoh and the Priest (serialized 1895–1896) is a historical novel set in ancient Egypt at the waning of the New Kingdom. It follows a young heir, Ramses XIII, whose ascent places him in confrontation with a powerful priestly hierarchy. The narrative opens with a kingdom burdened by debt, foreign pressures, and the competing authorities of the royal court and the temples. Prus frames the story as a study of power: a monarch-in-waiting determined to revitalize the state, and a clerical establishment, led by seasoned hierarchs, guarding religious prestige, economic resources, and scientific knowledge that underpins their influence over the populace.
Assigned administrative and military responsibilities before full accession, Ramses tours provinces, garrisons, and canal works, discovering how taxation, irrigation, and grain storage tie the state’s survival to the rhythms of the Nile. He envisions reforms to strengthen the army, reclaim royal revenues, and invigorate trade. At each step, he encounters the temples’ fiscal autonomy and their command of scribes, archives, and astronomy. The prince’s impatience clashes with the priests’ deliberate procedures, and minor disputes over budgets and rituals foreshadow a structural struggle. Prus juxtaposes the prince’s direct, sometimes impetuous energy with the institutional memory and covert reach of the sanctuaries.
Seeking leverage, the prince cultivates allies among officers and courtiers, and opens channels to foreign merchants and Greek mercenaries who promise credit and military skill. He tests policies that would redistribute burdens from peasants, curb tax farming, and limit the accumulation of temple estates. The priestly leaders, notably Herhor and Mefres, respond with quiet coordination, summoning tradition, legal precedent, and religious authority to block or dilute royal measures. Within their ranks, an empathetic priest, Pentuer, voices concern for the poor and recognizes the prince’s aims, yet remains bound to the hierarchy. The novel balances competing programs without endorsing simple heroes.
The political chess grows entangled with personal strands. The prince’s affections—drawn to a foreign-born woman of humble status, and later to a cosmopolitan priestess—become vulnerabilities that adversaries can amplify into scandal. A charismatic court favorite flatters and distracts him, while a Greek adventurer’s resemblance to the prince introduces the possibility of impersonation and confusion. These threads do not dominate the statecraft plot, but they sharpen questions of legitimacy, lineage, and public image. Prus shows how private desires, when observed by watchful rivals, can be converted into instruments in a wider contest for authority.
As tensions mount, the temples deploy their core strengths: ritual spectacle, control of granaries and credit, and mastery of predictive knowledge. Public ceremonies rally devotion; the timing of celestial events is used to impress, reasserting that the gods favor priestly intercession. Administrative pressure tightens through audits and edicts framed as piety. The prince counters with displays of military readiness, promises of public works, and appeals to national pride. Each side cultivates popular support while probing the other’s cohesion. Prus interlaces scenes of market squares, workshops, and barracks to show how policy debates ripple through the lives of common people.
With succession imminent, a grand religious festival and formal gatherings in the great temple centers bring the rivalry into the open. The army’s loyalty, the bureaucracy’s obedience, and the nomarchs’ calculations become decisive variables. Messages, spies, and rumors multiply, and episodes of street unrest hint at how fragile legitimacy can be. Legal and ceremonial proceedings are prepared that could either elevate the prince or bind him within priestly terms. Through carefully staged confrontations and negotiations, the narrative moves toward a resolution, yet withholds definitive disclosures, emphasizing that in such systems, victory depends on timing, perception, and the ability to claim continuity.
Beneath its page-turning intrigue, the novel probes enduring problems: the concentration of knowledge, the ethics of governance, and equilibrium between reform and stability. Prus’s late‑nineteenth‑century perspective lends the ancient tableau a modern resonance, inviting reflection on bureaucratic power, media of persuasion, and the costs of centralization. The Pharaoh and the Priest avoids caricature, presenting both royal and clerical camps as driven by blends of conviction and self‑interest. Without revealing its final turns, the book leaves readers considering how states change, who pays for grand designs, and why institutions resist abrupt remedies, a set of questions that remain timely.
Historical Context
The Pharaoh and the Priest (Polish: Faraon) by Bolesław Prus, serialized in Warsaw's Tygodnik Ilustrowany in 1895–1896 and published in book form soon after, is set in ancient Egypt near the end of the New Kingdom, in the late eleventh century BCE. Prus, a leading Polish positivist writer living under Russian rule, built the story on contemporary Egyptological research to examine power, administration, and social change. The narrative operates within a centralized monarchy, a wealthy temple establishment, and an extensive scribal bureaucracy. That historically attested friction among throne, priesthood, and officials provides the novel's political climate while keeping the ancient setting anchored in verifiable institutions.
Late Ramesside Egypt combined a royal court in the Delta with a powerful religious center at Thebes. The pharaoh claimed divine authority, but the cult of Amun at Karnak commanded immense landholdings, workshops, ships, and granaries. Temple treasuries and a professional priesthood, organized in ranks and colleges, influenced policy through oracles and control of resources. A trained class of scribes kept accounts, collected taxes, and recorded decrees in hieratic script. This administrative machinery, supported by corvée labor and Nile irrigation, forms the institutional frame of Prus's setting, where legitimacy, ritual, and logistics intersect in ways documented by inscriptions, papyri, and archaeology.
After the strong reign of Ramesses III, Egypt faced fiscal strain, labor unrest, and regional fragmentation. The strike of Deir el-Medina artisans in 1155 BCE, prompted by delayed rations, is the earliest well-documented labor strike and signals disrupted state provisioning. In the later Twentieth Dynasty, High Priests of Amun such as Herihor accumulated military and administrative authority at Thebes, while royal power in the north weakened. By the early Third Intermediate Period, Egypt was effectively divided between northern and southern regimes. Prus situates his story amid this historical convergence of temple influence and a faltering monarchy, a tension visible in surviving sources.
Temples in the late New Kingdom owned substantial tracts of land, employed large workforces, and held tax privileges that shifted wealth away from the crown. Their granaries stabilized supplies yet also gave priestly administrators leverage during shortages. Agriculture depended on the Nile's inundation and on coordinated canal maintenance, making logistics—and those who managed them—politically consequential. Provincial officials and estate managers mediated local labor and deliveries to royal and temple stores. Prus draws on this documented economic ecology to portray contests over revenue, storage, and access to labor, illustrating how control of material flows could determine policy without departing from historical practice.
Internationally, Egypt's empire in the Levant contracted in the late Ramesside era, and influence over Canaan diminished. Maritime disruptions associated with the Sea Peoples earlier in the century altered coastal polities, while Phoenician cities expanded trade networks across the Mediterranean. To the west, Libyan groups settled in the Delta and would later produce ruling houses; to the south, Kush remained an enduring neighbor on the Nile. Assyria persisted in Mesopotamia but was not yet an immediate military rival to Egypt. Prus places domestic struggles against this wider background of shifting trade, migration, and diplomacy, conditions attested in textual and archaeological records.
Religion structured authority through ritual, processions, and oracles, with the god Amun's will publicly consulted to legitimize decisions. Temples possessed libraries and astronomical-ritual expertise used to regulate calendars, festivals, and construction. Scribes trained in hieratic copybooks formed a technical elite whose command of accounts and archives underpinned governance. Nineteenth-century breakthroughs—such as Champollion's decipherment of hieroglyphs in 1822 and subsequent scholarship by Brugsch, Maspero, and Petrie—made these systems legible to modern readers. Prus drew on this research to depict how control of knowledge and ritual could shape policy, aligning narrative conflicts with documented mechanisms of religious-political influence.
Military and administrative structures also framed decision-making. Chariotry and infantry units guarded borders and trade routes, while garrisons and officials oversaw storehouses, quarries, and canal works. Courts, with scribes recording testimony and verdicts, appear in papyri alongside audits of deliveries and tallies of labor days. Taxation in kind supplied both royal and temple domains, creating overlapping jurisdictions that invited negotiation and rivalry. Prus integrates these verifiable mechanisms—muster rolls, ration lists, and inspections—into scenes of planning and contention. The result grounds political maneuvering in the practical constraints of logistics and law rather than in purely romanticized images of ancient absolutism.
Prus wrote under the partitions of Poland, in a climate shaped by the failed 1863 January Uprising, censorship, and a positivist program of "organic work." Debates about modernization, fiscal reform, and the social role of the Church were prominent in late nineteenth-century Polish public life. By staging a documented struggle between monarchy, priesthood, army, and bureaucracy in pharaonic Egypt, The Pharaoh and the Priest offers a historically grounded parable about governance, expertise, and entrenched interests. Its critique targets opaque power, monopolies over knowledge, and short-term politics that exhaust the state—concerns legible in both the ancient record and Prus's contemporary Poland.
The Pharaoh and the Priest
INTRODUCTION
IN the northeastern corner of Africa lies Egypt, that land of most ancient civilization. Three, four, and even five thousand years ago, when the savages of Central Europe wore untanned skins for clothing and were cave-dwellers, Egypt had a high social organization, agriculture, crafts, and literature. Above all, it carried out engineering works and reared immense buildings, the remnants of which rouse admiration in specialists of our day.
Egypt is that rich ravine between the Libyan sands and the Arabian desert. Its depth is several hundred metres, its length six hundred and fifty miles, its average width barely five. On the west the gently sloping but naked Libyan hills, on the east the steep and broken cliffs of Arabia form the sides of a corridor on the bottom of which flows the river Nile.
With the course of the river northward the walls of the corridor decrease in height, while a hundred and twenty-five miles from the sea they expand on a sudden, and the river, instead of flowing through a narrow passage, spreads in various arms over a broad level plain which is shaped like a triangle. This triangle, called the Delta of the Nile[1], has for its base the shore of the Mediterranean; at its apex, where the river issues from the corridor, stands the city of Cairo, and near by are the ruins of Memphis, the ancient capital.
Could a man rise one hundred miles in the air and gaze thence upon Egypt, he would see the strange outlines of that country and the peculiar changes in its color. From that elevation, on the background of white and orange colored sands, Egypt would look like a serpent pushing with energetic twists through a desert to the sea, in which it has dipped already its triangular head, which has two eyes,—the left Alexandria, the right Damietta.
In October, when the Nile inundates Egypt, that long serpent would be blue, like water. In February, when spring vegetation takes the place of the decreasing river, the serpent would be green, with a blue line along its body and a multitude of blue veins on its head; these are canals which cut through the Delta. In March the blue line would be narrower, and the body of the serpent, because of ripening grain, would seem golden. Finally, in the first days of June the line of the Nile would be very narrow and the serpent’s body gray from dust and drought. The chief climatic feature in Egypt is heat. During January it is 57° above zero, in July 99½°; sometimes the heat reaches 149° which answers to the temperature of a Roman bath. Moreover, in the neighborhood of the Mediterranean, on the Delta, rain falls barely ten times a year; in Upper Egypt it falls once during ten years.
In these conditions Egypt, instead of being the cradle of civilization, would have been a desert ravine like one of those which compose the Sahara, if the waters of the sacred Nile had not brought life to it annually. From the last days of June till the end of September the Nile swells and inundates almost all Egypt; from the end of October to the last days in May the year following it falls and exposes gradually lower and lower platforms of land. The waters of the river are so permeated with mineral and organic matter that their color becomes brownish; hence, as the waters decrease, on inundated lands is deposited fruitful mud which takes the place of the best fertilizer. Owing to this mud and to heat, Egyptian earth-tillers, fenced in between deserts, have three harvests yearly and from one grain of seed receive back about three hundred.
Egypt, however, is not a flat plain, but a rolling country; some portions of its land drink the blessed waters during two or three months only; others do not see it every year, as the overflow does not reach certain points annually. Besides, seasons of scant water occur, and then a part of Egypt fails to receive the enriching deposit. Finally, because of heat the earth dries up quickly, and then man has to irrigate out of vessels.
In view of all these conditions people inhabiting the Nile valley had to perish if they were weak, or regulate the water if they had genius. The ancient Egyptians had genius, hence they created civilization.
Six thousand years ago they observed that the Nile rose when the sun appeared under Sirius, and began to fall when it neared the constellation Libra. This impelled them to make astronomical observations and to measure time.
To preserve water for the whole year, they dug throughout their country a network of canals many thousand miles in length. To guard against excessive waste of water, they built mighty dams and dug reservoirs, among which the artificial lake Moeris[2] occupied three hundred square kilometres of surface and was fifty-four metres deep. Finally, along the Nile and the canals they set up a multitude of simple but practical hydraulic works; through the aid of these they raised water and poured it out upon the fields; these machines were placed one or two stories higher than the water. To complete all, there was need to clear the choked canals yearly, repair the dams and build lofty roads for the army, which had to march at all seasons.
These gigantic works demanded knowledge of astronomy, geometry, mechanics, and architecture, besides a perfect organization. Whether the task was the strengthening of dams or the clearing of canals, it had to be done and finished within a certain period over a great area. Hence arose the need of forming an army of laborers, tens of thousands in number, acting with a definite purpose and under uniform direction,—an army which demanded many provisions, much means, and great auxiliary forces.
Egypt established such an army of laborers, and to them were due works renowned during ages. It seems that Egyptian priests or sages created this army and then drew out plans for it, while the kings, or pharaohs, commanded. In consequence of this the Egyptians in the days of their greatness formed as it were one person, in which the priestly order performed the rôle of mind, the pharaoh was the will, the people formed the body, and obedience gave cohesion.
In this way nature, striving in Egypt for a work great, continuous, and ordered, created the skeleton of a social organism for that country as follows: the people labored, the pharaoh commanded, the priests made the plans. While these three elements worked unitedly toward the objects indicated by nature, society had strength to flourish and complete immortal labors.
The mild, gladsome, and by no means warlike Egyptians were divided into two classes,—earth-tillers and artisans. Among earth-tillers there must have been owners of small bits of land, but generally earth-tillers were tenants on lands belonging to the pharaohs, the priests, and the aristocracy. The artisans, the people who made clothing, furniture, vessels, and tools, were independent; those who worked at great edifices formed, as it were, an army.
Each of those specialties, and particularly architecture, demanded power of hauling and moving; some men had to draw water all day from canals, or transport stones from the quarries to where they were needed. These, the most arduous mechanical occupations, and above all work in the quarries were carried on by criminals condemned by the courts, or by prisoners seized in battle.
The genuine Egyptians had a bronze-colored skin, of which they were very proud, despising the black Ethiopian, the yellow Semite, and the white European. This color of skin, which enabled them to distinguish their own people from strangers, helped to keep up the nation’s unity more strictly than religion, which a man may accept, or language, which he may appropriate.
But in time, when the edifice of the state began to weaken, foreign elements appeared in growing numbers. They lessened cohesion, they split apart society, they flooded Egypt and absorbed the original inhabitants.
The pharaohs governed the state by the help of a standing army and a militia or police, also by a multitude of officials, from whom was formed by degrees an aristocracy of family. By his office the pharaoh was lawgiver, supreme king, highest judge, chief priest; he was the son of a god, a god himself even. He accepted divine honors, not only from officials and the people, but sometimes he raised altars to his own person, and burnt incense before images of himself.
At the side of the pharaoh and very often above him were priests, an order of sages who directed the destinies of the country.
In our day it is almost impossible to imagine the extraordinary rôle which the priests played in Egypt. They were instructors of rising generations, also soothsayers, hence the advisers of mature people, judges of the dead, to whom their will and their knowledge guaranteed immortality. They not only performed the minute ceremonies of religion for the gods and the pharaohs, but they healed the sick as physicians, they influenced the course of public works as engineers, and also politics as astrologers, but above all they knew their own country and its neighbors.
In Egyptian history the first place is occupied by the relations which existed between the priests and the pharaohs. Most frequently the pharaoh laid rich offerings before the gods and built temples. Then he lived long, and his name, with his images cut out on monuments, passed from generation to generation, full of glory. But many pharaohs reigned for a short period only, and of some not merely the deeds, but the names disappeared from record. A couple of times it happened that a dynasty fell, and straightway the cap of the pharaohs, encircled with a serpent, was taken by a priest.
Egypt continued to develop while a people of one composition, energetic kings, and wise priests co-operated for the common weal. But a time came when the people, in consequence of wars, decreased in number and lost their strength through oppression and extortion; the intrusion of foreign elements at this period undermined Egyptian race unity. And when the energy of pharaohs and the wisdom of priests sank in the flood of Asiatic luxury, and these two powers began to struggle with each other for undivided authority to plunder the toiling people, then Egypt fell under foreign control, and the light of civilized life, which had burnt on the Nile for millenniums, was extinguished.
The following narrative relates to the eleventh century before Christ, when the twentieth dynasty fell, and after the offspring of the sun, the eternally living Rameses XIII., San-Amen-Herhor, the high priest of Amon and ever-living offspring of the sun, forced his way to the throne and adorned his head with the ureus[3].
CHAPTER I
IN the thirty-third year of the happy reign of Rameses XII., Egypt celebrated two festivals which filled all its faithful inhabitants with pride and delight.
In the month of Mechir—that is, during January—the god Khonsu returned to Thebes covered with costly gifts. For three years and nine months he had travelled in the country of Buchten, where he restored health to the king’s daughter, Bentres, and expelled an evil spirit not only from the royal family, but even from the fortress.
So in the month Farmuti (February) Mer-Amen-Rameses XII., the lord of Upper and Lower Egypt, the ruler of Phœnicia and nine nations, after consultation with the gods to whom he was equal, named as erpatr, or heir to the throne, his son, aged twenty years, Cham-Sem-Merer-Amen-Rameses.
This choice delighted the pious priests, the worthy nomarchs, the valiant army, the faithful people, and every creature living in Egypt, because the older sons of the pharaoh, who were born of a Hittite princess, had been visited by an evil spirit through enchantments which no one had the power to investigate. One son of twenty-seven years was unable to walk after reaching maturity; the second opened his veins and died; the third, through poisoned wine, which he would not cease drinking, fell into madness, and believing himself a monkey, passed whole days among tree branches.
But the fourth son, Rameses, born of Queen Nikotris, daughter of the priest Amenhôtep, was as strong as the bull Apis, as brave as a lion, and as wise as the priests. From childhood he surrounded himself with warriors, and while still a common prince, used to say,—
“If the gods, instead of making me the youngest son of his holiness, had made me a pharaoh, like Rameses the Great, I would conquer nine nations, of which people in Egypt have never heard mention; I would build a temple larger than all Thebes, and rear for myself a pyramid near which the tomb of Cheops would be like a rosebush at the side of a full-grown palm-tree.”
On receiving the much desired title of heir, the young prince begged his father to be gracious and appoint him to command the army corps of Memphis. To this his holiness, Rameses XII., after consultation with the gods, to whom he was equal, answered that he would do so in case the heir could give proof that he had skill to direct a mass of troops arrayed for battle.
A council was called under the presidency of the minister of war, San-Amen-Herhor, high priest of the great sanctuary of Amon in Thebes.
The council decided in this way: “The heir to the throne, in the middle of the month Mesore, will take ten regiments, disposed along the line which connects Memphis with the city of Pi-Uto, situated on the Bay of Sebenico.
“With this corps of ten thousand men prepared for battle, provided with a camp and with military engines, the heir will betake himself eastward along the highroad from Memphis toward Hittite regions, which road lies on the boundary between the land of Goshen and the wilderness. At this time General Nitager, commander of the army which guards the gates of Egypt from attacks of Asiatic people, will move from the Bitter Lakes against the heir, Prince Rameses.
“Both armies, the Asiatic and the Western, are to meet near Pi-Bailos, but in the wilderness, so that industrious husbandmen in the land of Goshen be not hindered in their labors.
“The heir will be victorious if he does not let himself be surprised by Nitager, that is, if he concentrates all his forces and succeeds in putting them in order of battle to meet the enemy.
“His worthiness Herhor, the minister of war, will be present in the camp of Prince Rameses, and will report to the pharaoh.”
Two ways of communication formed the boundary between the land of Goshen and the desert. One was the transport canal from Memphis to Lake Timrah; the other was the highroad. The canal was in the land of Goshen, the highroad in the desert which both ways bounded with a half circle.
The canal was visible from almost every point upon the highroad. Whatever artificial boundaries might be, these neighboring regions differed in all regards. The land of Goshen, though a rolling country, seemed a plain; the desert was composed of limestone hills and sandy valleys. The land of Goshen seemed a gigantic chessboard the green and yellow squares of which were indicated by the color of grain and by palms growing on their boundaries; but on the ruddy sand of the desert and its white hills a patch of green or a clump of trees and bushes seemed like a lost traveller.
On the fertile land of Goshen from each hill shot up a dark grove of acacias, sycamores, and tamarinds which from a distance looked like our lime-trees; among these were concealed villas with rows of short columns, or the yellow mud huts of earth-tillers. Sometimes near the grove was a white village with flat-roofed houses, or above the trees rose the pyramidal gates of a temple, like double cliffs, many-colored with strange characters. From the desert beyond the first row of hills, which were a little green, stared naked elevations covered with blocks of stone. It seemed as if the western region, sated with excess of life, hurled with regal generosity to the other side flowers and vegetables, but the desert in eternal hunger devoured them in the following year and turned them into ashes.
The stunted vegetation, exiled to cliffs and sands, clung to the lower places until, by means of ditches made in the sides of the raised highroad, men conducted water from the canals to it. In fact, hidden oases between naked hills along that highway drank in the divine water. In these oases grew wheat, barley, grapes, palms, and tamarinds. The whole of such an oasis was sometimes occupied by one family, which when it met another like itself at the market in Pi-Bailos might not even know that they were neighbors in the desert.
On the fifteenth of Mesore the concentration of troops was almost finished. The regiments of Prince Rameses, which were to meet the Asiatic forces of Nitager, had assembled on the road above the city of Pi-Bailos with their camp and with some military engines.
The heir himself directed all the movements. He had organized two parties of scouts. Of these the first had to watch the enemy, the other to guard its own army from attack, which was possible in a hilly region with many ravines. Rameses, in the course of a week, rode around and examined all the regiments, marching by various roads, looking carefully to see if the soldiers had good weapons and warm mantles for the night hours, if in the camps there was dried bread in sufficiency as well as meat and dried fish. He commanded, besides, that the wives, children, and slaves of warriors marching to the eastern boundary should be conveyed by canal; this diminished the number of chariots and eased the movements of the army.
The oldest generals admired the zeal, knowledge, and caution of the heir, and, above all, his simplicity and love of labor. His court, which was numerous, his splendid tent, chariots, and litters were left in the capital, and, dressed as a simple officer, he hurried from regiment to regiment on horseback, in Assyrian fashion, attended by two adjutants.
Thanks to this concentration, the corps itself went forward very swiftly, and the army was near Pi-Bailos at the time appointed.
It was different with the prince’s staff, and the Greek regiment accompanying it, and with some who moved military engines.
The staff, collected in Memphis, had the shortest road to travel; hence it moved latest, bringing an immense camp with it. Nearly every officer, and they were young lords of great families, had a litter with four negroes, a two-wheeled military chariot, a rich tent, and a multitude of boxes with food and clothing, also jars full of beer and wine. Besides, a numerous troop of singers and dancers, with music, had betaken themselves to journey behind the officers; each woman must, in the manner of a great lady, have a car drawn by one or two pair of oxen, and must have also a litter.
When this throng poured out of Memphis, it occupied more space on the highway than the army of Prince Rameses. The march was so slow that the military engines which were left at the rear moved twenty-four hours later than was ordered. To complete every evil the female dancers and singers, on seeing the desert not at all dreadful in that place, were terrified and fell to weeping. To calm these women it was necessary to hasten with the night camp, pitch tents, arrange a spectacle, and a feast afterward.
The night amusement in the cool, under the starry sky, with wild nature for a background, pleased dancers and singers exceedingly; they declared that they would travel thenceforth only through the desert. Meanwhile Prince Rameses sent an order to turn all women back to Memphis at the earliest and urge the march forward.
His dignity Herhor, minister of war, was with the staff, but only as a spectator. He had not brought singers himself, but he made no remarks to officers. He gave command to carry his litter at the head of the column, and accommodating himself to its movements, advanced or rested under the immense fan with which his adjutant shaded him.
Herhor was a man of forty and some years of age, strongly built, concentrated in character. He spoke rarely, and looked at people as rarely from under his drooping eyelids. He went with arms and legs bare, like every Egyptian, his breast exposed; he had sandals on his feet, a short skirt about his hips, an apron with blue and white stripes. As a priest, he shaved his beard and hair and wore a panther skin hanging from his left shoulder. As a soldier, he covered his head with a small helmet of the guard; from under this helmet hung a kerchief, also in blue and white stripes; this reached his shoulders. Around his neck was a triple gold chain, and under his left arm a short sword in a costly scabbard. His litter, borne by six black slaves, was attended always by three persons: one carried his fan, another the mace of the minister, and the third a box for papyrus. This third man was Pentuer, a priest, and the secretary of Herhor. He was a lean ascetic who in the greatest heat never covered his shaven head. He came of the people, but in spite of low birth he occupied a high position in the state; this was due to exceptional abilities.
Though the minister with his officials preceded the staff and held himself apart from its movements, it could not be said that he was unconscious of what was happening behind him. Every hour, at times every half hour, some one approached Herhor’s litter,—now a priest of lower rank, an ordinary “servant of the gods,” a marauding soldier, a freedman, or a slave, who, passing as it were indifferently the silent retinue of the minister, threw out a word. That word Pentuer recorded sometimes, but more frequently he remembered it, for his memory was amazing.
No one in the noisy throng of the staff paid attention to these details. The officers, sons of great lords, were too much occupied by running, by noisy conversation, or by singing, to notice who approached the minister; all the more since a multitude of people were pushing along the highway.
On the sixteenth of Mesore the staff of Prince Rameses, together with his dignity the minister, passed the night under the open sky at the distance of five miles from the regiments which were arranged in battle order across the highway beyond the city of Pi-Bailos.
In that early morning which precedes our six o’clock, the hills grew violet, and from behind them came forth the sun. A rosy light flowed over the land of Goshen. Villages, temples, palaces of magnates, and huts of earth-tillers looked like sparks and flames which flashed up in one moment from the midst of green spaces. Soon the western horizon was flooded with a golden hue, and the green land of Goshen seemed melting into gold, and the numberless canals seemed filled with molten silver. But the desert hills grew still more marked with violet, and cast long shadows on the sands, and darkness on the plant world.
The guards who stood along that highway could see with the utmost clearness fields, edged with palms, beyond the canal. Some fields were green with flax, wheat, clover; others were gilded with ripening barley of the second growth. Now earth-tillers began to come out to field labor, from huts concealed among trees; they were naked and bronze-hued; their whole dress was a short skirt and a cap. Some turned to canals to clear them of mud, or to draw water. Others dispersing among the trees gathered grapes and ripe figs. Many naked children stirred about, and women were busy in white, yellow, or red shirts which were sleeveless.
There was great movement in that region. In the sky birds of prey from the desert pursued pigeons and daws in the land of Goshen. Along the canal squeaking sweeps moved up and down, with buckets of fertilizing water; fruit-gatherers appeared and disappeared among the trees, like colored butterflies. But in the desert, on the highway, swarmed the army and its servants. A division of mounted lancers shot past. Behind them marched bowmen in caps and petticoats; they had bows in their hands, quivers on their shoulders, and broadswords at their right sides. The archers were accompanied by slingers who carried bags with missiles and were armed with short swords.
A hundred yards behind them advanced two small divisions of footmen, one division armed with darts, the other with spears. Both carried rectangular shields; on their breasts they had thick coats, as it were armor, and on their heads caps with kerchiefs behind to ward off the sun-rays. The caps and coats had blue and white stripes or yellow and black stripes, which made those soldiers seem immense hornets.
Behind the advance guard, surrounded by a retinue of mace-bearers, pushed on the litter of the minister, and behind it, with bronze helmets and breastplates, the Greek companies, whose measured tread called to mind blows of heavy hammers. In the rear was heard the creaking of vehicles, and from the side of the highway slipped along the bearded Phœnician merchant in his litter borne between two asses. Above all this rose a cloud of golden dust, and heat also.
Suddenly from the vanguard galloped up a mounted soldier and informed Herhor that Prince Rameses, the heir to the throne, was approaching. His worthiness descended from the litter, and at that moment appeared a mounted party of men who halted and sprang from their horses. One man of this party and the minister began to approach each other, halting every few steps and bowing.
“Be greeted, O son of the pharaoh; may he live through eternity!” said the minister.
“Be greeted and live long, O holy father!” answered Rameses; then he added,—
“Ye advance as slowly as if your legs were sawn off, while Nitager will stand before our division in two hours at the latest.”
“Thou hast told truth. Thy staff marches very slowly.”
“Eunana tells me also,” here Rameses indicated an officer standing behind him who was covered with amulets, “that ye have not sent scouts to search ravines. But in case of real war an enemy might attack from that side.”
“I am not the leader, I am only a judge,” replied the minister, quietly.
“But what can Patrokles be doing?”
“Patrokles is bringing up the military engines with his Greek regiment.”
“But my relative and adjutant, Tutmosis?”
“He is sleeping yet, I suppose.”
Rameses stamped impatiently, and was silent. He was a beautiful youth, with a face almost feminine, to which anger and sunburn added charm. He wore a close-fitting coat with blue and white stripes, a kerchief of the same color behind his helmet, a gold chain around his neck, and a costly sword beneath his left arm.
“I see,” said the prince, “that thou alone, Eunana, art mindful of my honor.”
The officer covered with amulets bent to the earth.
“Tutmosis is indolent,” said the heir. “Return to thy place, Eunana. Let the vanguard at least have a leader.”
Then, looking at the suite which now surrounded him as if it had sprung from under the earth on a sudden, he added,—
“Bring my litter. I am as tired as a quarryman.”
“Can the gods grow tired?” whispered Eunana, still standing behind him.
“Go to thy place!” said Rameses.
“But perhaps thou wilt command me, O image of the moon, to search the ravines?” asked the officer, in a low voice. “Command, I beg thee, for wherever I am my heart is chasing after thee to divine thy will and accomplish it.”
“I know that thou art watchful,” answered Rameses. “Go now and look after everything.”
“Holy father,” said Eunana, turning to the minister, “I commend my most obedient service to thy worthiness.”
Barely had Eunana gone when at the end of the marching column rose a still greater tumult. They looked for the heir’s litter, but it was gone. Then appeared, making his way through the Greek warriors, a youth of strange exterior. He wore a muslin tunic, a richly embroidered apron, and a golden scarf across his shoulder. But he was distinguished above all by an immense wig with a multitude of tresses, and an artificial beard like cats’ tails.
That was Tutmosis, the first exquisite in Memphis, who dressed and perfumed himself even during marches.
“Be greeted, Rameses!” exclaimed the exquisite, pushing aside officers quickly. “Imagine thy litter is lost somewhere; thou must sit in mine, which really is not fit for thee, but it is not the worst.”
“Thou hast angered me,” answered the prince. “Thou sleepest instead of watching the army.”
The astonished exquisite stopped.
“I sleep?” cried he. “May the man’s tongue wither up who invented that calumny! I, knowing that thou wouldst come, have been ready this hour past, and am preparing a bath for thee and perfumes.”
“While thus engaged, the regiment is without a commander.”
“Am I to command a detachment where his worthiness the minister of war is, and such a leader is present as Patrokles?”
Rameses was silent; meanwhile Tutmosis, approaching him, whispered,—
“In what a plight thou art, O son of the pharaoh! Without a wig, thy hair and dress full of dust, thy skin black and cracked, like the earth in summer. The queen, most deserving of honor, would drive me from the court were she to look at thy wretchedness.”
“I am only tired.”
“Then take a seat in my litter. In it are fresh garlands of roses, roast birds, and a jug of wine from Cyprus. I have kept also hidden in the camp,” added he in a lower voice, “Senura.”
“Is she here?” asked the prince; and his eyes, glittering a moment before, were now mist covered.
“Let the army move on,” said Tutmosis; “we will wait here for her.”
Rameses recovered himself.
“Leave me, tempter! The battle will come in two hours.”
“What! a battle?”
“At least the decision as to my leadership.”
“Oh, laugh at it!” smiled the exquisite. “I would swear that the minister of war sent a report of it yesterday, and with it the petition to give thee the corps of Memphis.”
“No matter if he did. To-day I have no thought for anything but the army.”
“In thee this wish for war is dreadful, war during which a man does not wash for a whole month, so as to die in—Brr! But if thou couldst see Senura, only glance at her—”
“For that very reason I shall not glance at her,” answered Rameses, decisively.
At the moment when eight men were bringing from beyond the Greek ranks the immense litter of Tutmosis for the use of Rameses, a horseman raced in from the vanguard. He dropped from his horse and ran so quickly that on his breast the images of the gods or the tablets with their names rattled loudly. This was Eunana in great excitement.
All turned to him, and this gave him pleasure apparently.
“Erpatr, the loftiest lips,” cried Eunana, bending before Rameses. “When, in accordance with thy divine command, I rode at the head of a detachment, looking carefully at all things, I noticed on the highroad two beautiful scarabs. Each of these sacred beetles was rolling an earth ball toward the sands near the roadside—”
“What of that?” interrupted Rameses.
“Of course,” continued Eunana, glancing toward Herhor, “I and my people, as piety enjoins, rendered homage to the golden symbols of the sun, and halted. That augury is of such import that no man of us would make a step forward unless commanded.”
“I see that thou art a pious Egyptian, though thou hast the features of a Hittite,” answered the worthy Herhor; and turning to certain dignitaries standing near, he added,—
“We will not advance farther by the highway, for we might crush the sacred beetles. Pentuer, can we go around the road by that ravine on the right?”
“We can,” answered the secretary. “That ravine is five miles long, and comes out again almost in front of Pi-Bailos.”
“An immense loss of time!” interrupted Rameses, in anger.
“I would swear that those are not scarabs, but the spirits of my Phœnician usurers,” said Tutmosis the exquisite. “Not being able, because of their death, to receive money from me, they will force me now to march through the desert in punishment!”
The suite of the prince awaited the decision with fear; so Rameses turned to Herhor,—
“What dost thou think of this, holy father?”
“Look at the officers,” answered the priest, “and thou wilt understand that we must go by the ravine.”
Now Patrokles, leader of the Greeks, pushed forward and said to the heir,—
“If the prince permit, my regiment will advance by the highway. My soldiers have no fear of beetles!”
“Your soldiers have no fear of royal tombs even,” added the minister. “Still it cannot be safe in them since no one has ever returned.”
The Greek pushed back to the suite confounded.
“Confess, holy father,” hissed the heir, with the greatest anger, “that such a hindrance would not stop even an ass on his journey.”
“True, but no ass will ever be pharaoh,” retorted the minister, calmly.
“In that case thou, O minister, wilt lead the division through the ravine!” exclaimed Rameses. “I am unacquainted with priestly tactics; besides, I must rest. Come with me, cousin,” said he to Tutmosis; and he turned toward some naked hills.
CHAPTER II
STRAIGHTWAY his worthiness Herhor directed his adjutant who carried the mace to take charge of the vanguard in place of Eunana. Then he commanded that the military engines for hurling great stones leave the road, and that the Greek soldiers facilitate passage for those engines in difficult places. All vehicles and litters of staff-officers were to move in the rear.
When Herhor issued commands, the adjutant bearing the fan approached Pentuer and asked,—
“Will it be possible to go by this highway again?”
“Why not?” answered the young priest. “But since two sacred beetles have barred the way now, we must not go farther; some misfortune might happen.”
“As it is, a misfortune has happened. Or hast thou not noticed that Prince Rameses is angry at the minister? and our lord is not forgetful.”
“It is not the prince who is offended with our lord, but our lord with the prince, and he has reproached him. He has done well; for it seems to the young prince, at present, that he is to be a second Menes[4].”
“Or a Rameses the Great,” put in the adjutant.
“Rameses the Great obeyed the gods; for this cause there are inscriptions praising him in all the temples. But Menes, the first pharaoh of Egypt, was a destroyer of order, and thanks only to the fatherly kindness of the priests that his name is still remembered,—though I would not give one brass uten on this, that the mummy of Menes exists.”
“My Pentuer,” added the adjutant, “thou art a sage, hence knowest that it is all one to us whether we have ten lords or eleven.”
“But it is not all one to the people whether they have to find every year a mountain of gold for the priests, or two mountains of gold for the priests and the pharaoh,” answered Pentuer, while his eyes flashed.
“Thou art thinking of dangerous things,” said the adjutant, in a whisper.
“But how often hast thou thyself grieved over the luxuries of the pharaoh’s court and of the nomarchs?” inquired the priest in astonishment.
“Quiet, quiet! We will talk of this, but not now.”
In spite of the sand the military engines, drawn each by two bullocks, moved in the desert more speedily than along the highway. With the first of them marched Eunana, anxiously. “Why has the minister deprived me of leadership over the vanguard? Does he wish to give me a higher position?” asked he in his own mind.
Thinking out then a new career, and perhaps to dull the fears which made his heart quiver, he seized a pole and, where the sands were deeper, propped the balista, or urged on the Greeks with an outcry.
They, however, paid slight attention to this officer.
The retinue had pushed on a good half hour through a winding ravine with steep naked walls, when the vanguard halted a second time. At this point another ravine crossed the first; in the middle of it extended a rather broad canal.
The courier sent to the minister of war with notice of the obstacle brought back a command to fill the canal immediately.
About a hundred soldiers with pickaxes and shovels rushed to the work. Some knocked out stones from the cliff; others threw them into the ditch and covered them with sand.
Meanwhile from the depth of the ravine came a man with a pickaxe shaped like a stork’s neck with the bill on it. He was an Egyptian slave, old and entirely naked. He looked for a while with the utmost amazement at the work of the soldiers; then, springing between them on a sudden, he shouted,—
“What are ye doing, vile people? This is a canal.”
“But how darest thou use evil words against the warriors of his holiness?” asked Eunana, who stood there.
“Thou must be an Egyptian and a great person, I see that,” said the slave; “so I answer thee that this canal belongs to a mighty lord; he is the manager and secretary of one who bears the fan for his worthiness the nomarch of Memphis. Be on thy guard or misfortune will strike thee!”
“Do your work,” said Eunana, with a patronizing tone, to the Greek soldiers who began to look at the slave.
They did not understand his speech, but the tone of it arrested them.
“They are filling in all the time!” said the slave, with rising fear. “Woe to thee!” cried he, rushing at one of the Greeks with his pickaxe.
The Greek pulled it from the man, struck him on the mouth, and brought blood to his lips; then he threw sand into the canal again.
The slave, stunned by the blow, lost courage and fell to imploring.
“Lord,” said he, “I dug this canal alone for ten years, in the night time and during festivals! My master promised that if I should bring water to this little valley he would make me a servant in it, give me one fifth of the harvests, and grant me freedom—do you hear? Freedom to me and my three children!—O gods!”
He raised his hands and turned again to Eunana,—
“They do not understand me, these vagrants from beyond the sea, descendants of dogs, brothers to Jews and Phœnicians! But listen, lord, to me! For ten years, while other men went to fairs and dances or sacred processions, I stole out into this dreary ravine. I did not go to the grave of my mother, I only dug; I forgot the dead so as to give freedom with laud to my children, and to myself even one free day before death. Ye, O gods, be my witnesses how many times has night found me here! how many times have I heard the wailing cries of hyenas in this place, and seen the green eyes of wolves! But I did not flee, for whither was I, the unfortunate, to flee, when at every path terror was lurking, and in this canal freedom held me back by the feet? Once, beyond that turn there, a lion came out against me, the pharaoh of beasts. The pickaxe dropped from my hands, I knelt down before him, and I, as ye see me, said these words: ‘O lord! is it thy pleasure to eat me? I am only a slave.’ But the lion took pity, the wolf also passed by; even the treacherous bats spared my poor head; but thou, O Egyptian—”
The man stopped; he saw the retinue of Herhor approaching. By the fan he knew him to be a great personage, and by the panther skin, a priest. He ran to the litter, therefore, knelt down, and struck the sand with his forehead.
“What dost thou wish, man?” asked the dignitary.
“O light of the sun, listen to me!” cried the slave. “May there be no groans in thy chamber, may no misfortune follow thee! May thy works continue, and may the current not be interrupted when thou shalt sail by the Nile to the other shore—”
“I ask what thy wish is,” repeated Herhor.
“Kind lord,” said the man, “leader without caprice, who conquerest the false and createst the true, who art the father of the poor, the husband of the widow, clothing for the motherless, permit me to spread thy name as the equal of justice, most noble of the nobles.”[1]
[1] Authentic speech of a slave.
“He wishes that this canal be not filled in,” said Eunana[1q].
Herhor shrugged his shoulders and pushed toward the place where they were filling the canal. Then the despairing man seized his feet.
“Away with this creature!” cried his worthiness, pushing back as before the bite of a reptile.
The secretary, Pentuer, turned his head; his lean face had a grayish color. Eunana seized the man by the shoulders and pulled, but, unable to drag him away from the minister’s feet, he summoned warriors. After a while Herhor, now liberated, passed to the other bank of the canal, and the warriors tore away the earth-worker, almost carrying him to the end of the detachment. There they gave the man some tens of blows of fists, and subalterns who always carried canes gave him some tens of blows of sticks, and at last threw him down at the entrance to the ravine.
Beaten, bloody, and above all terrified, the wretched slave sat on the sand for a while, rubbed his eyes, then sprang up suddenly and ran groaning toward the highway,—
“Swallow me, O earth! Cursed be the day in which I saw the light, and the night in which it was said, ‘A man is born!’ In the mantle of justice there is not the smallest shred for a slave. The gods themselves regard not a creature whose hands are for labor, whose mouth was made only for weeping, and whose back is for clubs. O death, rub my body into ashes, so that there, beyond on the fields of Osiris, I be not born into slavery a second time.”
CHAPTER III
PANTING with anger, Prince Rameses rushed up the hill, while behind him followed Tutmosis. The wig of the exquisite had turned on his head, his false beard had slipped down, and he carried it in his hand. In spite of exertion he would have been pale had it not been for the layers of rouge on his face.
At last Rameses halted at the summit. From the ravine came the outcry of warriors and the rattle of the onrolling balistas; before the two men stretched the immense plain of Goshen[5], bathed continually in sun-rays. That did not seem land, but a golden cloud, on which the mind painted a landscape in colors of silver, ruby, pearl, and topaz.
“Look,” cried the heir to Tutmosis, stretching out his hand, “those are to be my lands, and here is my army. Over there the loftiest edifices are palaces of priests, and here the supreme chief of the troops is a priest! Can anything like this be suffered?”
“It has always been so,” replied Tutmosis, glancing around with timidity.
“That is not true! I know the history of this country, which is hidden to thee. The leaders of armies and the masters of officials were the pharaohs alone, or at least the most energetic among them. Those rulers did not pass their days in making offerings and prayers, but in managing the state.”
“If it is the desire of his holiness to pass his days that way?” said Tutmosis.
“It is not my father’s wish that nomarch[6]s should govern as they please in the capitals of provinces. Why, the governor of Ethiopia considered himself as almost equal to the king of kings. And it cannot be my father’s wish that his army should march around two golden beetles because the minister of war is a high priest.”
“He is a great warrior,” whispered Tutmosis, with increasing timidity.
“He a great warrior? Because he dispersed a handful of Libyan robbers ready to flee at the mere sight of Egyptians. But see what our neighbors are doing. Israel delays in paying tribute and pays less and less of it. The cunning Phœnician[7] steals a number of ships from our fleet every year. On the east we are forced to keep up a great army against the Hittites, while around Babylon and Nineveh there is such a movement that it is felt throughout all Mesopotamia.
