[2] Murket—the royal architect, an exalted office usually held by princes of the realm.
Meanwhile the scribe of the "double house of life," and the son of the royal sculptor were taking comfort on the palace-top beneath the subdued light of a hooded lamp.
The pair had spoken of all Memphis and its gossip; had given account of themselves and had caught up with the present time in the succession of events.
"Hotep, at thy lofty notch of favor, one must have the wisdom of Toth," Kenkenes observed, adding with a laugh, "mark thou, I have compared thee with no mortal."
Hotep shook his head.
"Nay, any man may fill my position so he but knows when to hold his tongue and what to say when he wags it."
"O, aye," the sculptor admitted in good-natured irony. "Those be simple qualifications and easy to combine."
The scribe smiled.
"Mine is no arduous labor now. During my years of apprenticeship I was sorely put to it, but now I have only to wait upon the king and look to it that mine underlings are not idle. If another war should come—if any manner of difficulty should arise in matters of state, I doubt not mine would be a heavy lot."
The young man spoke of war and fellowship with a monarch as if he had been a lady's page and gossiped of fans and new perfumes.
Kenkenes looked at him with a full realization of the incongruity of the youth of the man and the weight of the office that was his.
But at close range the scribe's face was young only in feature and tint. He was born of an Egyptian and a Danaid, and the blond alien mother had impressed her own characteristics very strongly on her son.
He had a plump figure with handsome curves, waving, chestnut hair and a fair complexion. Nose and forehead were in line. The eyes were of that type of gray that varies in shade with the mental state. His temper displayed itself only in their sudden hardening into the hue of steel; content and happiness made them blue. They were always steady and comprehending, so that whoever entered his presence for the first time said to himself: "Here is a man that discovers my very soul."
Whatever other blunder Meneptah might have made, he had redeemed himself in the wisdom he displayed in choosing his scribe. Kenkenes had been led to ask how Hotep had come to his place.
"My superior, Pinem, died without a son," the scribe had explained; "and as my record was clean, and the princes had ever been my patrons, the Pharaoh exalted me to the scribeship."
Kenkenes had then set down a mark in favor of the princes.
"I doubt not," the scribe observed at last, "that my time of ease is short-lived."
The sculptor looked at him with inquiry in his eyes.
"When sedition arises and defies the Pharaoh in his audience chamber," Hotep went on, "it has reached the stage of a single alternative—success or death. Dost know the Lady Miriam?"
"The Israelite?"
"Even so."
"I saw her this day."
"Good. Now, look upon the scene. Thou knowest she is the sister of Prince Mesu, and the favorite waiting-woman of the good Queen Thermuthis. She has lived in obscurity for forty years, but this morning she swept into the audience chamber, did majestic obeisance and besought a word 'with him who was an infant in her maturity,' she said. The council chamber was filled with those gathered to welcome Har-hat. Meneptah bade her speak. Hast thou ever heard an Israelitish harangue?" he broke off suddenly.
Kenkenes shook his head.
"Ah, theirs is pristine oratory—occult eloquence," the scribe said earnestly, "and she is mistress of the art. She told the history of Israel and catalogued its wrongs in a manner that lacked only measure and music to make it a song. But, Kenkenes, she did not move us to compunction and pity. When she had done, we had not looked on a picture of suffering and oppression, but of insulted pride and rebellion. Instead of compunction, she awakened admiration, instead of pity, respect. For the moment she represented, not a multitude of complaining slaves, but a race of indignant peers.
"Meneptah—ah! the good king," the scribe went on, "was impressed like the rest of us. But finally he showed her that the Israelites were what they were by the consent of the gods; that their unwillingness but increased the burden. He pointed out the example of his illustrious sires as justification for his course; enumerated some of their privileges,—the fertile country given them by Egypt, and the freedom that was theirs to worship their own God,—and summarily refused to indulge them further.
"Then she became ominous. She bade him have a care for the welfare of Egypt before he refused her. Her words were dark and full of evil portent. The air seemed to winnow with bat-wings and to reek with vapors from witch-potions and murmur with mystic formulas. Every man of us crept, and drew near to his neighbor. When she paused for an answer, the king hesitated. She had menaced Egypt and it stirreth the heart of the father when the child is threatened. He turned to Har-hat in his perplexity and craved his counsel. The fan-bearer laughed good-naturedly and begged the Pharaoh's permission to send her to the mines before she bewitched his cattle and troubled him with visions. Har-hat's unconcern made men of us all once more, but Meneptah shook his head. 'The name of Neferari Thermuthis defends her,' he said; 'let her go hence'."
"'And I take no amelioration to my people?' she demanded. 'Nay,' he replied, 'not in the smallest part shall their labor be lessened.'
"Holy Isis, thou shouldst have seen her then, Kenkenes!
"She approached the very dais of the throne and, throwing up her arms, flung her defiance into the face of her sovereign. It were treason to utter her words again. I have seen men white and shaking from rage, but Meneptah never hath so much of temper to display. Far be it from me to say that the king was afraid, but I tell you, Kenkenes, mine own hair is not yet content to lie flat. She concentrated all the denunciatory bitterness of the tongue and pronounced and gloried in the doom of the dynasty, heaping the blame of its destruction upon the head of Meneptah!"
The scribe finished his story in a whisper. Kenkenes was by this time sitting up, his eyes shining with interest and wonder.
"Gods! Hotep, thou dost make me creep."
"Creep!" the scribe responded heartily, "never in my life have I so wanted to flee a royal audience. When she had done, she turned and swept from the presence and no man lifted a finger to stay her."
For a moment there was an expressive silence between the two young men.At last Kenkenes broke it in a voice of intense admiration.
"What an intrepid spirit! Small wonder that she did not heed the condemnation of the rabble at mid-day—she who was fresh from a triumph over the Pharaoh!"
Hotep's eyes widened warningly and he shook his head.
"Nay, hush me not, Hotep," Kenkenes went on in a reckless whisper. "I must say it. Would to the gods I had been there to copy it in stone!"
"Hush! babbler!" the scribe exclaimed, his eyes twinkling nevertheless, "thine art will make an untimely mummy of thee yet."
Kenkenes poured out his first glass of wine and set it down untasted.The contemplated sacrilege in stone opposite Memphis confronted him.
"If Egypt's lack of art does not kill me first," he added in defense.
"Nay," Hotep protested, "why wouldst thou perpetuate the affront to thePharaoh?"
"Because it is history and a better delineation of the Israelitish character than all the wordy chronicles of the historians could depict," was the spirited reply.
"But the ritual," Hotep began, with the assurance of a man that feels he is armed with unanswerable argument.
"Sing me no song of the ritual," Kenkenes broke in impatiently. "The ritual offends mine ears—my sight, my sense. We have quarreled beyond any treaty-making—ever."
The other looked at him with amazement and much consternation.
"Art thou mad?" he exclaimed.
"Nay, but I am rebellious—as rebellious as the Israelite, for I have already shaken my fist in the face of the sculptor's canons. And the time will come when the world will call my revolt just. I would there were a chronicler, here, now, to write me down, since I would be remembered as the pioneer. I shall win no justification, in these days, perhaps only persecution, but I would reap my reward of honor, though it be a thousand years in coming."
"Thou hast a grudge against the conventional forms and the rules of the ritual?" Hotep asked, after a thoughtful silence.
"I have a distaste for the horrors it compels and am ignorant of their use," Kenkenes answered stubbornly.
"Kenkenes," the scribe began, "Law is a most inexorable thing. It is the governor of the Infinite. It is a tyrant, which, good or bad, can demand and enforce obedience to its fiats. It is a capricious thing and it drags its vassal—the whole created world—after it in its mutations, or stamps the rebel into the dust while the time-serving obedient ones applaud. So thou hast set up resistance against a thing greater than gods and men and I can not see thee undone. I love thee, but I should be an untrue friend did I abet thee in thy lawlessness. Submit gracefully and thy cause shall have an audience with Law some day—if it have merit."
The young sculptor's face was passive, but his eyes were fixed sadly on the remote stars strewn above him. He felt inexpressibly solitary. His zest in his convictions did not flag, but it seemed that the whole world and the heavens had receded and left him alone with them.
Again Hotep spoke.
"There is more court gossip," he began cheerily, as if no word had been said that could depress the tone of the conversation.
Kenkenes accepted the new subject gladly.
"Out with it," he said. "Within the four walls of my world I hear naught but the clink of mallet and falling stone."
"The breach between Meneptah and Amon-meses, his mutinous brother, may be healed by a wedding."
"So?"
"Of a surety—nay, and not of a surety, either, but mayhap. A match between the niece of Amon-meses, the Princess Ta-user, and the heir, Rameses."
Kenkenes sat up again in his earnestness. "Nay," he exclaimed. "Never!"
"Wherefore, I pray thee?" Hotep asked with a deprecating smile.
"There is no mating between the lion and the eagle; the stag and the asp!They could not love."
"Thou dreamy idealist!" Hotep laughed. "The half of great marriages are moves of strategy, attended more by Set[1] than Athor.[2] Ta-user is mad for the crown, Rameses for undisputed power. Each has one of these two desirable things to give the other."
"And how shall they appease Athor?" Kenkenes demanded warmly. "Ta-user loves Siptah, the son of Amon-meses, and Rameses will crown whom he loves though he had a thousand other crown-loving, treaty-dowered wives!"
Hotep smiled. "I thought the four walls of thy world hedged thee, but it seems thou art right well acquainted with royalty."
"Scoff!" Kenkenes cried. "But I can tell thee this: Rameses will put his foot on the neck of Amon-meses if the pretender trouble him, and will wed with a slave-girl if she break the armor over his iron heart."
Hotep laughed again and suggested another subject.
"The new fan-bearer," he began.
"Nay, what of him?" Kenkenes broke in at once.
"And shall we quarrel about him, also?"
"Dost thou know him?" Hotep queried.
"Right well—from afar and by hearsay."
"Do thou express thyself first concerning him, and I shall treat thee to the courtier's diplomacy if I agree not."
"I like him not," Kenkenes responded bluntly.
Hotep leaned toward him, with the smile gone from his face, the jest from his manner, and laid his hand on the sculptor's. The pressure spoke eloquently of hearty concord. "But he has a charming daughter," he said.
Kenkenes inspected his friend's face critically, but there was nothing to be read thereon.
A palace attendant approached across the paved roof and bent before the scribe.
"A summons from the Son of Ptah, my Lord," he said.
"At this hour?" Hotep said in some surprise as he arose. "I shall return immediately," he told Kenkenes.
"Nay," the sculptor observed, "my time is nearly gone. Let me depart now."
"Not so. I would go with thee. This will be no more than a note. If it be more I shall put mine underlings to the task."
He disappeared in the dark. Kenkenes lay back on the divan and thought on the many things that the scribe had told him. But chiefly he pondered on Har-hat and the Israelite.
When Hotep returned he carried his cowl and mantle, and a scroll. "I too, am become a messenger," he said, "but I am self-appointed. This note was to go by a palace courier, but I relieved him of the task."
The pair made ready and departed through the still populous streets ofThebes to the Nile. There they were ferried over to the wharves of Luxor.
At the temple the porter conducted them into the chamber in which the ancient prelate spent his shortening hours of labor. He was there now, at his table, and greeted the young men with a nod. But taking a second look at Hotep, he beckoned him with a shaking finger.
"Didst bring me aught, my son?" he asked as the scribe bent over him.
"Aye, holy Father; this message to the taskmaster over Pa-Ramesu."
"Ah," the old man said. "Is that not yet gone?"
"Nay, the Pharaoh asks that thou insert the name of him whom thou didst recommend for Atsu's place. The Son of Ptah had forgotten him."
The old man pushed several scrolls aside and prepared to make the addition..
"But thou art weary, holy Father; let me do it," Hotep protested gently.
"Nay, nay, I can do it," the old man insisted. "See!" drawing forth a scroll unaddressed, "I have written all this in an hour. O aye, I can write with the young men yet." He made the interlineation, rolled the scroll and sealed it. "I am sturdy, still." At that moment, he dropped his pen on the floor and bent to pick it up, but was forestalled by Hotep. Then he addressed the scrolls, carefully dried the ink with a sprinkling of sand and delivered one to Hotep, the other to Kenkenes. "This to the king, and that to Snofru. The gods give thee safe journey," he continued to Kenkenes. "Who art thou, my son?"
"I am the son of Mentu, holy Father. My name is Kenkenes," the young man answered.
"Mentu, the royal sculptor?"
Kenkenes bowed.
"Nay, but I am glad. I knew thy father, and since thou art of his blood, thou art faithful. Let neither death nor fear overtake thee, for thou hast the peace of Egypt in thy very hands. Fail not, I charge thee!"
After a reverent farewell, the two young men went forth.
A slender Egyptian youth went with them to the wharves and awakened the sleeping crew of a bari.
Hotep they carried across and set ashore on the western side.
"May the same favoring god that brought thee hither, grant thee a safe journey home, my friend. The court comes to Memphis shortly. Till then, farewell," said Hotep.
"All Memphis will hail her illustrious son, O Hotep. Farewell."
It was not long until the sculptor was drifting down toward Memphis under a starry sky—the shadowy temples of Thebes hidden by the sudden closing-in of the river-hills about her.
[1] Set—the war-god.
[2] Athor—the Egyptian Venus; the feminine love-deity.
At sunrise the morning after his return from On, Kenkenes appeared at the Nile, attended by a burden-bearing slave.
The first lean, brown boatman who touched his knee and offered his bari for hire, Kenkenes patronized. The slave had eased his load into the boat and Kenkenes was on the point of embarking when a four-oared bari, which had passed them like the wind a moment before, put about several rods above them and returned to the group on shore.
A bent and withered servitor was standing in the bow of the boat, wildly gesticulating, as if he feared Kenkenes would insist on pulling away despite his efforts. The young man recognized the servant of Snofru, old Ranas.
The large bari was beached and the servitor alighted with agility and, beckoning to Kenkenes, took him aside.
"There has been an error—a grave error, concerning the message," the old man began in excitement; "but thou art in no wise at fault. Yet mayhap thou canst aid us in unraveling the tangle. See!"
He displayed the linen-wrapped roll, the covering split where Snofru had opened it, but the wavering hieratic characters of the address in Loi's hand, still intact.
When the young sculptor had gazed, the old servant nervously undid the roll, and showed within a letter to the commander over Pa-Ramesu, written in the strong epistolary symbols of the royal scribe.
Kenkenes frowned with vexation. Innocent and efficient though he had been, the miscarriage of his mission stung him nevertheless. The blunder was not long a mystery to him.
Summoning all the patience at his command, he recounted the events in the apartments of the ancient hierarch of Amen.
"There were two Scrolls," he explained; "one to the Servant of Ra at On, the other to Atsu. The holy father sealed them both before he addressed them and confused the directions. The one which I should have brought to thine august master, hath gone to the taskmaster over Pa-Ramesu."
"Thou madest all speed?" the servant demanded, trembling with eagerness.
"A half-day's journey less than the usual time I made in returning. I doubt much, if the messenger with the other scroll hath passed Memphis yet, since he may not have been despatched in such hot haste. Furthermore, because of the festivities in Tape, it would have been well-nigh impossible for him to hire a boat until the next day."
This information kindled a light of hope on the old servant's face.
"Thou givest me life again," he exclaimed. "The blessings of Ra be upon thee!"
Without further words he ran back to the boat, and the last Kenkenes saw of him, he was frantically urging his boatmen to greater speed, back to On.
Kenkenes had come to the Nile that morning, rejoicing in the propitiousness of his opportunity. Mentu was at that moment in On, seeing to the decoration of the second obelisk reared by Meneptah to the sun. The great artist had prepared to be absent a month, and had left no work for his son to do. But the coming of Ranas with the news of his mission's failure had filled Kenkenes with angry discomfiture.
He dismissed his slave and rowed down-stream toward Masaarah.
As he approached the abandoned wharf, a glance showed him that some effort toward restoring it had been made. The overgrowth of vines had been cut away and the level of the top had been raised by several fragments of rough stone.
The tracks of heavy sledges had crushed the young grain across the field toward the cliffs.
Kenkenes stood up and looked toward the terraced front of the hills, in which were the quarries.
There were dust, smoke, stir and moving figures.
The stone-pits were active again after the lapse of half a century.
"By the grace of the mutable Hathors," the young man muttered as he dropped back into his seat, "my father may yet decorate a temple to Set, but by the same favor, it seems that I shall be snatched from the brink of a sacrilege."
He permitted his boat to drift while he contemplated his predicament.Suddenly he smote his hands together.
"Grant me pardon, ye Seven Sisters!" he exclaimed.
"I misread your decree. Ye have but covered my tracks toward transgression."
After a little thought he resumed his felicitations.
"Who of Memphis will think I come to Masaarah, save to look after the taking out of stone? Is it not part of my craft? Nay, but I shall make offering in the temple for this. And need any of these unhappy creatures in Masaarah see me except as it pleases me to show myself?"
He seized his oars and rowed down the river another furlong. Leaving the craft fixed in the tangle of herbage at the water's edge, he shouldered his cargo and crossed the narrow plain to the cliffs below Masaarah. There he made a difficult ascent of the fronts facing the Nile and reached his block of stone without approaching the hamlet of laborers.
Depositing his burden, he set forth to reconnoiter. He descended again into the Nile valley by the way he had come and wandered toward the mouth of the gorge. From a little distance he looked upon a scene of great activity. In the shadow of one of the dilapidated hovels, four humped oxen stood, their heavy harness still hanging upon them, though the sledges they drew, covered with stone dust and broken pieces, were some distance away from them. A company of half a score of children were ascending in single file, along a slanting plane of planks, into the hollow in the cliff upon which work had been renewed. Along the rock-wall ahead of them a scaffold had been erected and here were men drilling holes in the stone, or driving wooden wedges into the holes already made, or pouring water on the wedges as the skins the children bore were passed up to them.
Kenkenes picked his way through the debris of sticks, stones, dust and cast-off water-skins, and serenely disregarding the stare of the laborers, went up to the edge of the stone-pit and watched the work with interest. A constant stream of broken stone rattled down under the scaffold and long runlets of water fed an ever increasing pool in the depression before the cliff. A single slab of irregular dimensions lay on the sand at the base of a wooden chute, down which it had descended from the hollow in the cliff the evening before. The cavity it left bade fair to enlarge by nightfall, for the swelling wedges were rending another slab from its bedding with loud reports and the sudden etching of fissures.
The young sculptor noted with some wonder that the laborers wereIsraelites.
After a time Kenkenes turned away and addressed one of the bearded men at that moment, ascending the wooden plane.
"What do ye here?" he asked.
The man answered in unready Egyptian, but, for an inferior, in a manner curiously collected.
"The Pharaoh addeth to the burden of the chosen people. We dig stone for a temple to the war-god."
"The chosen people!" Kenkenes repeated inquiringly.
"The children of Israel," the Hebrew explained. Kenkenes lifted one eyebrow quizzically and went his way. As he leaped up into the gorge he vaguely realized that he had seen no trace of an encampment near the hamlet, which he knew to be uninhabitable.
"Of a truth, the chosen people seem to follow me of late," he said to himself as he rambled up the valley. "Meneptah must have scattered them out of Goshen into all the corners of Egypt."
As he turned the last winding of the gorge he came upon a cluster of some threescore tents, spread over the level pocket at the valley's end. Almost against the northern wall the house of the commander had been built to receive the earliest shadow of the afternoon. The military standard was raised upon its roof and a scribe, making entries on a roll of linen, sat cross-legged on a mat before the door. In one of the narrow ways between the tents an old woman, very bowed and voluminously clad, prepared a great hamper of lentils and another of papyrus root for the noonday meal. One or two children sitting on the earth beside her rendered her assistance, and a third kept the turf fire glowing under a huge bubbling caldron. Kenkenes passed through the camp by this narrow way and paused to look with much curiosity at the ancient Israelite. Never had he seen any old person so active or a slave so wrapped in covering. He hoped she would lift her head that he might see her face; and even as he wished, she pierced him with a look which, from her midnight eyes, seemed like lightning from a thunder-cloud.
"Gods!" he exclaimed as he retreated up the slope behind the camp. And a moment later he continued his soliloquy in a voice that struggled between mirth and amazement: "Have I never seen an Israelite until I beheld these twain, the Lady Miriam and that bent dart of lightning in the valley? If these be Israelites I never saw one before. If those cowed shepherds that have strayed now and again out of Goshen be Hebrews, then these are not. And the gods shield me from the disfavor of them, be they slaves or sibyls!"
When he reached his block of stone he unrolled his load of equipments and set to work without delay. He was remote from any possible interruption from Memphis, and the slaves in the gorge and in the stone-pits had no opportunity to come upon his sacrilege in idle hours. They would be held like prisoners within the limits of the quarries. His sense of security had been strengthened by the renewed activities in Masaarah.
With a shovel of tamarisk he cleared the slab of its drift of sand. He found that the block broadened at the base and was separate from the sheet of rock on which it stood. Among his supplies was a roll of reed matting, and with this cut into proper lengths, he carpeted a considerable space about the block. Precaution rather than luxury had prompted this procedure, since the chipped stone falling on the covering could be carried cleanly and at once from the spot.
Pausing long enough to eat a thin slice of white bread and gazelle-meat, and to drink a draft from the porous and ever cooling water bottle, he turned to the protection and concealment of his statue.
The place was strewn with tolerably regular fragments, and the building of a segment of wall to the north at the edge of the matting required more time than strength or skill. He built solidly against the penetrative sand, and as high as his head. The early afternoon blazed upon him and passed into the mellower hours of the later day before he had finished. He hid his shovel and two cylindrical billets of wood, such as were used to roll great weights, under the edge of his reed carpet, and his preparations were complete. He wiped his brow, congratulating himself on the snugness of his retreat and the auspicious beginning of his transgression.
Weary and happy, he rowed himself back to Memphis and slept soundly on the eve of a great offense against the laws of Egypt.
But the next day, when the young sculptor faced the moment of actual creation, he realized that his goddess must take form from an unembodied idea. The ritual had been his guide before, and his genius, set free to soar as it would, fluttered wildly without direction. His visions were troubled with glamours of the old conventional forms; his idea tantalized him with glimpses of its perfect self too fleeting for him to grasp. The sensation was not new to him. During his maturer years he had tried to remember his mother's face with the same yearning and heart-hurting disappointment. But this time he groped after attributes which should shape the features—he had spirit, not form, in mind; and the odds against which his unguided genius must battle were too heroic for it to succeed without aid. The young sculptor realized that he was in need of a model. Stoically, he admitted that such a thing was as impossible as it was indispensable. It seemed that he had met complete bafflement.
He took up his tools and returned to Memphis. But each succeeding morning found him in the desert again, desperately hopeful—each succeeding evening, in the city disheartened and silent.
So it followed for several days.
On the sixth of January the festival in honor of the return of Isis from Phenicia was celebrated in Memphis. Kenkenes left the revel in mid-afternoon and crossed the Nile to the hills. He found no content away from his block of stone—no happiness before it. But he wandered back to the seclusion of the niche that he might be moody and sad of eye in all security.
The stone-pits were deserted. The festivities in Memphis had extended their holiday to the dreary camp at Masaarah. Kenkenes climbed up to his retreat and remained there only a little time. The unhewn rock mocked him.
He descended through the gorge and found that the Hebrews were but nominally idle. A rope-walk had been constructed and the men were twisting cables of tough fiber. The Egyptians lounged in the long shadows of the late afternoon and directed the work with no effort and little concern. The young sculptor overlooked the scene as long as it interested him and continued down the valley toward the Nile.
Presently a little company of Hebrew children approached, their bare feet making velvety sounds in the silence of the ravine. Each balanced a skin of water on his head. The little line obsequiously curved outward to let the nobleman pass, and one by one the sturdy children turned their luminous eyes up to him, some with a flash of white teeth, some with a downward dip of a bashful head. One of them disengaged a hand from his burden and swept a tangle of moist black curls away from his eyes. The sun of the desert had not penetrated that pretty thatch and the forehead was as fair as a lotus flower.
Kenkenes caught himself looking sharply at each face as he passed, for it contained somewhat of that for which he sought. As he walked along looking after them he became aware that some one was near him, He turned his head and stopped in his tracks.
He confronted his idea embodied—Athor, the Golden!
It was an Israelitish maiden, barely sixteen years old, but in all his life he had never looked upon such beauty. He had gazed with pleased eyes on the slender blush-tinted throats and wrists of the Egyptian beauties, but never had he beheld such whiteness of flesh as this. He had sunk himself in the depths of the dusky, amorous eyes of high-born women of Memphis, but here were fathomless profundities of azure that abashed the heavens. He had been very near to loveliest hair of Egypt, so close that its odorous filaments had blown across his face and his artist senses had been caught and tangled in its ebon sorcery. But down each side this broad brow was a rippling wave of gold, over each shoulder a heavy braid of gold that fell, straightened by its own weight, a span below the waist. The winds of the desert had roughened it and the bright threads made a nimbus about the head. Its glory overreached his senses and besieged his soul. Here was not witchery, but exaltation.
Enraptured with her beauty, her perfect fulfilment of his needs, he realized last the unlovely features of her presence. She balanced a heavy water pitcher on her head and wore a rough surplice, more decorous than the dress of the average bondwoman, but the habit of a slave, nevertheless. He had halted directly in her path, and after a moment's hesitancy she passed around him and went on.
Immediately Kenkenes recovered himself and with a few steps overtook her. Without ceremony he transferred the heavy pitcher to his own shoulder. The girl turned her perfect face, full of amazement, to him, and a wave of color dyed it swiftly.
"Thy burden is heavy, maiden," was all he said.
The bulk of the jar on the farther shoulder made it necessary for him to turn his face toward her, but she was uneasy under the intent gaze of his level black eyes. She dropped behind him, but he slackened his pace and kept beside her. For the moment he was no longer the man of pulse and susceptibility but the artist. Therefore her thoughts and sensations were apart from his concern. The unfamiliar perfection of the Semitic countenance bewildered him. He took up his panegyric. Never was a mortal countenance so near divine. And the sumptuousness of her figure—its faultless curves and lines, its lissome roundness, its young grace, the beauty of arm and neck and ankle! Ah! never did anything entirely earthly dwell in so fair, so splendid a form.
As they neared the camp the girl spoke to him for the first time. He recognized in her voice the same serene tone he had noted in his talk with the Hebrew some days before.
"Give me my burden now," she said. "Thou hast affronted thy rank for me, and I thank thee many times."
The sculptor paused and for a moment stood embarrassed. It went sorely against his gallantry to lay the burden again upon her and he said as much.
"Nay, Egypt has no qualms against loading the Hebrew," she said quietly. "Wouldst thou put thy nation to shame?"
Kenkenes opened his eyes in some astonishment.
"Now am I even more loath," he declared. "What art thou called?"
"Rachel."
"It hath an intrepid sound, but Athor would become thee better. Now I am a sculptor from the city, come to study thy women for a frieze," he continued unblushingly, "and I would go no farther in my search. Rachel repeated will be beauty multiplied. Let me see thee once in a while,—to-morrow."
A sudden flush swept over her face and her eyes darkened.
"It shall not keep thee from thy labor," he added persuasively.
The color deepened and she made a motion of dissent.
"Nay! thou dost not refuse me!" he exclaimed, his astonishment evident in his voice.
"Of a surety," she replied. "Give me my burden, I pray thee."
Dumb with amazement, too genuine to contain any anger, Kenkenes obeyed. As she went up the shady gorge, walking unsteadily under the heavy pitcher, he stood looking after her in eloquent silence.
And in eloquent silence he turned at last and continued down the valley. There was nothing to be said. His appreciation of his own discomfiture was too large for any expression.
In a few steps he met the short captain who governed the quarries. Kenkenes guessed his office by his dress. He was adorned in festal trappings, for he had spent most of the day in revel across the Nile.
"Dost thou know Rachel, the Israelitish maiden?" Kenkenes asked, planting himself in the man's way.
"The yellow-haired Judahite?" the man inquired, a little surprised.
"Even so," was the reply.
The soldier nodded.
"Look to it that she is put to light labor," the sculptor continued, gazing loftily down into the narrow eyes. The soldier squared off and inspected the nobleman. It did not take him long to acknowledge the young sculptor's right to command.
"It does not pay to be tender with an Israelite," the man answered sourly.
Kenkenes thrust his hand into the folds of his tunic over his breast and, drawing forth a number of golden rings strung on a cord, jingled them musically.
The soldier grinned.
"That will coax a man out of his dearest prejudice. I will put her over the children."
Kenkenes dropped the money into the man's palm.
"I shall have an eye to thee," he said warningly. "Cheat me not."
He went his way. The incident restored to him the power of speech.
"Now, by Horus," he began, "am I to be denied by an Israelite that which the favoring Hathors designed I should have? Not while the arts of strategy abide within me. The children, I take it, will come here with the water," he cogitated, stamping upon the wet and deserted ledge which he had reached, "and here will she be, also."
He raised his eyes to the ragged line of rocks topping the northern wall of the gorge.
"I shall perch myself there like a sacred hawk and filch her likeness. Nay, now that I come to ponder on it, it is doubtless better that she know naught about it. She might drop certain things to the Egyptians hereabout that would lead to mine undoing. The gods are with me, of a truth."
He descended into the larger valley and went singing toward the Nile.
One late afternoon, in the streets of Pa-Ramesu, a curious new-comer bowed before Atsu, the commander of Israel of the treasure city. The visitor was old and tremulous from fatigue, and the stains of hard travel were evident upon him.
"Greeting, Atsu. The peace of the divine Mother attend thee," he said."Snofru, the beloved of Ra at On, sends thee greeting by his servant,Ranas."
"Greeting," the taskmaster replied, after he had inspected the white-browed servant. "The shelter of my roof and the bread of my board are thine;" adding after a little pause, "and in truth thou seemest to need these things."
The old man smiled an odd wry smile and followed lamely after the long swinging stride of the commander toward the headquarters on the knoll.
Within the house of Atsu, Ranas delivered into the hands of the soldier the message that Kenkenes had brought to Snofru. While Atsu undid the roll the old servant made voluble apologies for the broken seal. The commander stepped to the doorway for better light and read the writing.
The old servant back in the dusk of the interior saw the stern face harden, the heavy brows knit blackly, the dusky red fade from the cheek. Ranas knew what the soldier read, for he had had the roll with its broken seal, from On to Memphis and from Memphis back to On again. But with all his astuteness he could not have guessed what extremes of wrath and grief the insulted taskmaster suffered. The sheet rolled itself together again and was broken and crushed in the iron fingers that gripped it. Presently he tossed it aside. Hardly had it left his hand before he hastened to pick it up, straightened it out and re-read it feverishly. He forgot the old servant; but had he remembered the man's curious gaze, no resolution could have hidden that joy which slowly wrote itself upon his face. There was balm in the barb for all the wound it made. This is what he read:
"To Atsu, Commander over the Builders of Pa-Ramesu, These: To mine ears hath come report of mutiny and idleness through thy weak government of my bond-people. Also that thou hast enforced my commands but feebly, and so defeated my purposes, which were my sire's, after whose illustrious example I reign.
"For these and kindred inefficiencies art thou removed from the government over Pa-Ramesu.
"I hereby bestow upon thee another office within the limits of thy capacity. Thou wilt take up the flagellum over Masaarah when thou hast surrendered Pa-Ramesu to thy successor.
"By this thou shalt learn that the Pharaohs will be ably served.
"Horemheb of Bubastis, thy successor, accompanieth these.
"Give him honor. MENEPTAH."
The diction was manifestly the king's. None other of high estate would have inspired so spiteful a letter. But the appointment to Masaarah made Atsu forget the sting in the second reading. To Masaarah! To Masaarah and Rachel! He folded the broken sheet and thrust it into his bosom. Meeting the keen eye of his guest, the color rushed back to the taskmaster's face and he summoned two attendant Hebrews to wait upon the old man while he went forth to gain composure in the air.
After the old man had been fed and given such other comfort as the soldier's house afforded, the taskmaster returned. Then Ranas shifted his position so that he might watch his host's face most intelligently, and turned to the real purpose of his visit.
"Thou canst see, my master, that if thy message bore the wrapping for the epistle to Snofru, the message to the holy father must have borne thy name. Thou hast received no letter as yet which was not intended for thee?"
The question was delivered politely, but the old man thrust his curious face forward and shook his head with a combination of interrogation and dissent, which was highly insincere.
"I have received naught which was not intended for me," the taskmaster replied warmly.
After a moment's intent contemplation of Atsu's face the courier went on: "Nay, so had I thought. The messenger came to Snofru with all speed and out-stripped the courier bound for Pa-Ramesu. It is even as I had thought. He may arrive shortly, but I must tarry till he comes."
Atsu assented bluntly, and after that if they talked it was of impersonal things and in a desultory manner. When night came Atsu called his attendants and had the weary old man put to bed in a curtained corner of the house. For himself there was no sleep.
At midnight there came the beat of hoofs on the dust-muffled ways of Pa-Ramesu. A sentry knocked at the door of the commander and announced a visitor. Atsu, who still sat under the unextinguished reed light, greeted the new-comer with an exclamation of concern. The man was covered with dust, his dress was torn and bloody, his right hand swathed in cloths, and his lip, right cheek and eye were swollen and discolored.
"By Horus, friend, thou lookest ill-used," the taskmaster exclaimed."What has befallen thee?"
"Naught—naught of any lasting hurt," the newcomer replied carelessly."We were set upon by a troop of murdering Bedouins this side ofBubastis and had a pretty fight."
"Aye, thou hast the stamp of its beauty upon thy face. A slave, here, with some balsam," Atsu continued, addressing the sentry, "and a captain of the constabulary next. We will cure these Bedouins and their hurt at once."
"Nay," the visitor protested. "It is only a spear-slit in my hand, and a flying stirrup marred my face. I am well. Look to the Bedouins, however; they ran our messenger through—Set consume them!"
"Doubt not, we shall look to them. They grow strangely insolent of late."
"Small wonder," the other responded heartily. "Is not the whole north a seething pot of lawlessness; and by the demons of Amenti, is not the Israelite the fire under the caldron? Nay, but I shall have especial joy in damping him!"
The man laughed and dropped into the chair Atsu had offered him.
"Then thou art Horemheb, the new taskmaster over Pa-Ramesu?"
"So! has my news outridden me?" the man exclaimed in very evident amazement.
Ranas, indifferently clad in a hastily donned kamis, at this moment parted the curtains of his retreat and came forth with an apologetic courtesy.
"And thy messenger, sir? What of him?" he asked eagerly.
"Dead, and left at a wayside house."
"And the message?" the old man persisted.
Horemheb surveyed him with increasing astonishment.
"Where hast thou these tidings?" he demanded. "They are scarce three hours old. Who reached thee with them before me?"
Atsu interposed and explained the interchange of letters.
"Oh," said Horemheb. "So the correct message came to thee, nevertheless, good Atsu. But I can not tell thee aught of the other. It is lost."
"Lost!" Ranas shrieked.
"Gods! old man. It was only pigment and papyrus, not gold or jewels. A kindly disposed Hebrew came to our help with some of his people, and we put the Bedouins to flight. But after the struggle, search as we might with torches which the Hebrew brought, the message was not to be found. A Bedouin made off with it, I doubt not."
Ranas stood speechless for an instant, and then he rushed up to the new taskmaster.
"His name?" he demanded fiercely. "The Hebrew! What was he like?Where does he dwell?"
"A murrain on the maniac!" Horemheb exploded.
"He called himself Aaron!"
Ranas staggered against the wall for support and beat the air with his arms.
"Aaron, the brother of Mesu! O ye inscrutable Hathors!" he babbled."A Bedouin made off with it! Oh! Oh! What idiocy!"
The next morning after his meeting with the golden-haired Israelite, Kenkenes came early to the line of rocks that topped the north wall of the gorge and, ensconced between the gray fragments, looked down unseen on her whenever she came to the valley's mouth. All day long the children came staggering up from the Nile, laden with dripping hides, or returned in a free and ragged line down the green slope of the field to the river again.
Vastly more simple and time-saving would have been one of the capacious water carts. But what would have employed these ten youthful Hebrews in the event of such improvement? There was to be no labor-saving in the quarries. Therefore, through the dust, up the weary slanting plane, again and again till the day's work amounted to a journey of miles, the Hebrew children toiled with their captain and co-laborer, Rachel.
At the summit of the wooden slope the beautiful Israelite, who had preceded her charges, passed up the burden of each one to the Hebrews on the scaffold. From his aery Kenkenes watched this particular phase of her tasks with interest. She was not too far from him for the details of her movements to be distinguishable, and the posture of the outstretched arms and lifted face fulfilled his requirements. He abandoned the modeling of her features for that day and copied the attitude. Once in the morning and once in the afternoon a countryman of hers, strong, young and but lightly bearded, stepped down from his place on the scaffold and relieved her. The sculptor noted the act with some degree of disquiet, hoping that the graceful protests of the girl might prevail. When the stalwart Hebrew overrode her remonstrances, and motioned her toward a place at the side of the frame-work where she might rest, the young sculptor frowned impatiently. But his humane heart chid him and he waited with some assumption of grace till she should take up her burden again.
At sunset he retired cautiously, but several dawns found him among the rocks, with reed pen, papyri and molds of clay. When he climbed to his retreat within the walls of stone, on the hillside in the late afternoon, he hid several studies of the girl's head and statuettes of clay under the matting.
At last he began the creation of Athor the Golden. For days he labored feverishly, forgetting to eat, fretting because the sun set and the darkness held sway for so long. Having overstepped the law, he placed no limit to the extent of his artistic transgression.
After choosing nature as his model, he followed it slavishly. On the occasion of his initial departure from the accepted rules, he had never dreamed it possible to disregard ritualistic commandments so absolutely. He even ignored the passive and meditative repose, immemorial on the carven countenances of Egypt.
The face of Athor, as she put forth her arms to receive the sun, must show love, submission, eagerness and great appeal.
As Kenkenes said this thing to himself, he lowered chisel and mallet and paused. Posture and form would avail nothing without these emotions written on the face. He began to wonder if he might carve them, unaided. He had not found them in the Israelite, and he confessed to himself, with a little laugh, a doubt that he should ever see them on her countenance.
Then a vagabond impulse presented itself unbidden in his mind and was frowned down with a blush of apology to himself. And yet he remembered his coquetry with the Lady Ta-meri as some small defense in the form of precedent.
"Nay," he replied to this evidence, "it is a different woman. Between myself and Ta-meri it is even odds, and the vanquished will have deserved his defeat."
That evening—it was several days after the face of the goddess had begun to emerge from the block of stone—he went to the upper end of the gorge and passed through the camp on his way home, that he might meet his model.
The laborers had not returned from the quarries, though the evening meal bubbled and fumed over the fires in the narrow avenue between the tents. Kenkenes passed by on the outskirts of the encampment and went on.
Deep shadow lay on the stone-pits when Kenkenes reached the mouth of the gorge, and a cool wind from the Nile swept across the grain. The day's work had been prolonged in the lowering of a huge slab from its position in its native bed. The monolith was already on the brink of the wooden incline, and every man was at the windlasses by which the cables controlling its descent were paid out. Kenkenes saw at a glance that none of the water-bearers was present, and he knew the lovely Israelite was with them. He did not pause.
Before the sound of the quarry stir had been left behind he heard a sharp report, the frightened shrieks of women and shouts of warning. He looked back in time to see the huge stone turn part way round on the chute and rush, end first, earthward. Expectant silence fell, broken only by the vicious snarl of a flying windlass crank. But in an instant the great slab struck the earth with a thunderous sound that reverberated again and again from the barren hills about. A vast all-enveloping cloud of dust and earth filled the hollow quarry like smoke from an explosion. But there was no further outcry, and through the outskirts of the lifting cloud men were seen making deliberate preparations to repair the parted cable. Assured that no calamity had occurred, Kenkenes went on.
In a few steps he met the children water-bearers flying to the scene of the accident. Not one of them bore a water-skin. The excited young Hebrews did not stop to question the sculptor, but ran on, and were swallowed up in dust.
Half-way to the Nile he came upon her whom he sought. She was standing alone in the midst of ten sheepskins, and the grain was wetted with the spilled water. He pointed to the discarded hides about her.
"The camp will go thirsty if the runaways do not return," he said."Thy burden is too heavy for even me to-night."
"They will return," she answered.
"Aye, it was naught but a parting cable and a falling rock. I was near and saw no evidence of disaster. Had the children asked me, I should have told them as much."
"They will return," she repeated, and Kenkenes fancied that there was a dismissal in this quiet repetition. But he did not mean to see it. He went on, with a smile.
"I am glad they did not stop, for I wanted to see thee, with that frightened longing of a man who hath resolved on confession and meeteth his confessor on a sudden. Now that the moment hath arrived I marvel how I shall make my peace with Athor, whose command I most deliberately broke."
She raised her beautiful eyes to his face and waited for him to proceed. The pose of the head was exactly what he wanted. Rapidly he compared every detail of her face with his memory of the statue of Athor, noting with satisfaction that his studies had been happily faithful. His scrutiny was so swift and skilful that there seemed to be nothing unusual in his gaze.
"I am culpable but impenitent," he continued. "I shall not forswear mine offense. Neither is there any need of a plea to justify myself, for my very sin is its own justification. Behold me! I perched myself like a sacred hawk at the mouth of the valley and filched thy likeness. Do with me as thou wilt, but I shall die reiterating approval of my deed."
His extravagant speech wrought an interesting change on the face before him. There was a pronounced curve of her mouth, a slight tension in the chiseled nostril—in fact, an indefinable disdain that had not been there before. It would become Athor well. Kenkenes understood the look but he did not flinch. Instead he let his head drop slowly until he looked at her from under his brows. Then he summoned into his eyes all the wounded feeling, pathos, soft reproach and appeal, of which his graceless young heart was capable, and gazed at her.
Khufu might have been as easily melted by the twinkle of a rain drop. Never in his life had he faced such comprehensive contemplation. Calm, monumental and icy disdain deepened on every feature.
Kenkenes stood motionless and suffered her to look at him. Being a man of fine soul, the eloquent gaze spoke well-deserved rebuke. He knew that his color had risen, and his eyes fell in spite of heroic efforts to keep them steady. His sensations were unique; never had he experienced the like. When he recovered himself her blue eyes were fixed absently on the distant quarries.
Every impulse urged him to set himself right in the eyes of this most discerning slave.
"Wilt thou forgive me?" he asked earnestly. "I would I could make thee know I crave thy good will."
There was no mistaking the honesty in these words.
Her face relaxed instantly.
"But I fear I have not set about it wisely," he added. "Let me give thee a peace-offering to prove my contrition."
He slipped from about his neck the collar of golden rings and moved forward to put it about her throat.
She drew back, her face flushing hotly under an expression of positive pain.
Kenkenes dropped his hands to his sides with a limpness highly suggestive of desperate perplexity. Was not this a slave? And yet here was the fine feeling of a princess. He stood, for once in his life, at a loss what to do. He could not depart without the greatest awkwardness, and yet, if he lingered, he sacrificed his comfort. Presently he exclaimed helplessly:
"Rachel, do thou tell me what to say or do. It seems that I but sink myself the deeper in the quicksand of thy disapproval at every struggle to escape. Do thou lead me out."
He had met a slave, justed with an equal and flung up his hands in surrender to his better. He did not confess this to himself, but his words were admission enough. Never would his high-born spirit have permitted him to make such a declaration to one slavish in soul.
The straightforward acknowledgment of defeat and the genuine concern in his voice were irresistible. She answered him at once, distantly and calmly.
"Thou, as an Egyptian, hast honored me, a Hebrew, with thy notice. I have deserved neither gift nor fee."
"Nay, but let us put it differently," he replied. "I, as a man, have given thee, a maiden, offense, and having repented, would appease thee with a peace-offering. Believe me, I do not jest. By the gentle goddesses, I fear to speak," he added breathlessly.
The Israelite's blue eyes were veiled quickly, but the Egyptian guessed aright that she had hidden a smile in them.
"Am I forgiven?" he persisted.
"So thou wilt offend no further," she said without raising her eyes.
"I promise. And now, since the goddess hath refused mine offering, I may not take it back. What shall I do with this?" he asked, holding up the collar of gold.
"Put it about thy statue's neck," she said softly.
Kenkenes gasped and retreated a step. Instantly she was imploring his pardon.
"It was a forward spirit in me that made me say it. I pray thee, forgive me."
"Thou hast given no offense, but how dost thou know of this—tell me that."
"I came upon it by accident three days ago. Several of the children had gone fowling for the taskmaster's meal, and were so long absent that I was sent to look for them. The path down the valley is old, and I have followed it with the idea of labor ever in my mind. And this was a moment of freedom, so I thought to spend it where I had not been a slave, I went across the hills, and, being unfamiliar with them, lost my way. When I climbed upon one of the great rocks to overlook the labyrinth, lo! at my feet was the statue. I knew myself the moment I looked, and it was not hard to guess whose work it was."
She paused and looked at him with appeal on her face.
"Thou hast told no one?"
"Nay," was the quick and earnest answer.
"Thou hast caught me in a falsehood," he said. The statement was almost brutal in its directness.
But the question that came back swiftly was not less pointed.
"There was no frieze of bondmaidens—naught of anything thou hast told me?"
"Nay, not anything. I am carving a statue against the canons of the sculptor's ritual for the sake of my love of beauty. Until thou didst come upon it, I alone possessed the secret. Thou knowest the punishment which will overtake me?"
"Aye, I know right well. Yet fear not. The statue is right cunningly concealed and none will ever find it, for the children were unsuccessful and the meals for the overseer will be brought him from the city hereafter. And I will not betray thee—I give thee my word."
Her tone was soft and earnest; her assurances were spoken so confidently, her interest was so genuine, that a queer and unaccountable satisfaction possessed the young artist at once.
At this moment the runaway water-bearers came in sight and in obedience to very evident dismissal in the Israelite's eyes, Kenkenes bade her farewell and left her.
But he had not gone two paces before she overtook him.
"Approach thy work from various directions," she cautioned, "else thou wilt wear a path which may spy on thee one day."
The moment the words passed her lips, Kenkenes, who still held the collar, put it about her neck, passing his hands under the thick plaits, and snapped the clasp accurately.
The act was done instantly, and with but a single movement. He was gone, laughing on his way, before she had realized what he had done.
There was revel in the young man's veins that evening, but the great house of his father was silent and lonely. If he would find a companion he must leave its heavy walls. His resolution was not long in making nor his instinct slow in directing him. An hour after the evening meal, when he entered the chariot that waited, he had laid aside the simple tunic, and in festal attire was, every inch of his many inches, the son of the king's favorite artist. His charioteer drove in the direction of the nomarch's house.
The portress conducted him into the faintly lighted chamber of guests and went forth silently. Kenkenes interpreted her behavior at once.
"There is another guest," he thought with a smile, "and I can name him as promptly as any chanting sorcerer might." When the serving woman returned she bade him follow her and led the way to the house-top.
There, under the subdued light of a single lamp, was the Lady Ta-meri; at her feet, Nechutes.
"I should wear the symbol-broidered robe of a soothsayer," the sculptor told himself.
"You made a longer sojourn of your visit to Tape than you had intended," the lady said, after the greetings.
"Nay, I have been in Memphis twenty days at least."
"So?" queried Nechutes. "Where dost thou keep thyself?"
"In the garb of labor among the ink-pots and papyri of the sculptor class," the lady answered. "I warrant there are pigment marks on his fingers even now."
Kenkenes extended his long right hand to her for inspection. She received it across her pink palm and scrutinized it laughingly.
"Nay, I take it back. Here is naught but henna and a suspicion of attar. He has been idle these days."
"Hast thou forgotten the efficacy of the lemon in the removal of stains?" the sculptor asked with a smile.
The lady frowned.
"Give us thy news from Tape, then," she demanded, putting his hand away.
"The court is coming to Memphis sooner. That is all. O, aye, I had well-nigh forgot. There is also talk of a marriage between Rameses and Ta-user."
"Fie!" the lady scoffed. "Nechutes hath more to tell than that, and he hath stayed in Memphis."
"Thou wilt come to realize some day, Ta-meri, that I am fitted to the yoke of labor, when I fail thee in all the nicer walks thou wouldst have me tread. Come, out with thy gossip, Nechutes."
"I had a letter from Hotep to-day—a budget of news, included with official matters with which the king would acquaint me. Ta-user, with Amon-meses and Siptah, hath joined the court at Tape—"
"And Siptah, she brought with her—" the sculptor interrupted softly.
Nechutes cast an expressive look at Kenkenes and went on.
"And the courting hath begun."
Silence fell, and the lady looked at the two young men with wonder in her eyes.
"Nay, but that is interesting," Kenkenes admitted, recovering himself."Tell me more."
"The offices of cup-bearer and murket are to be bestowed in Memphis,"Nechutes continued.
"And the one falls to Nechutes," the lady declared triumphantly.
"Of a truth thou hast a downy lot before thee, Nechutes," the young sculptor said heartily. "And never one so deserving of it. I give thee joy."
"And the other goes to the noble Mentu," Nechutes added in a meek voice.
"Sphinx!" Ta-meri cried, tapping him on the head. "You did not tell me that."
The surprised delight of Kenkenes was not so bewildering as to blind him to the reason why Nechutes had withheld this news from Ta-meri. The blunt Egyptian was not anxious to speed his rival's cause.
"Does my father know of this?" he asked.
"I doubt not. The same messenger that brought me news of mine own appointment departed for On when he learned that Mentu was there."
"Nay, but that will be wine in his veins," Kenkenes mused happily. "It will make him young again. His late inactivity hath chafed him sorely."
"You have come honestly by your labor-loving," Nechutes commented. "Hotep adds further that Mentu is the only one of the king's new ministers that is no longer a young man."
"It is Rameses who counsels him, I doubt not," the sculptor replied. "He hath great faith in the powers of youth. And behold what a cabinet he hath built up for his father. First," Kenkenes continued, enumerating on his fingers, "there is Nechutes—"
The new cup-bearer waved his hand, and Kenkenes went on.
"There is my father, the murket. He needs no further praise than the utterance of his name. There is Hotep, on whose lips Toth abideth. There is Seneferu, the faithful, whom the Rebu dreads. Next is Kephren, the mohar,[1] who would outshine his father, the right hand of the great Rameses, had he but nations to conquer. After him, Har-hat—"
"Hold! He is not appointed of the prince. He was Meneptah's choice—and his alone," Nechutes interrupted. "It is rumored that Rameses is not over-fond of him."
"He will be put to it to hold his high place in the face of the prince's disfavor," Kenkenes cogitated.
"Nay, but he presses the prince hard for generalship. It must be so, since he could win the king's good will over the protest of Rameses. So I doubt not he can hold his own at court by prudence and strategy."