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.

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