Very tenderly the great monster addressed him. "Fare thee well, little one," he said "Fare thee well to thy house. Mayest thou see thy children and raise up a good name in thy city. Behold, such are my wishes for thee."
"Then," continued the sailor, "I laid me on my stomach, my arms were bended before him. And he gave me a freight of frankincense, perfume and myrrh, sweet-scented woods and antimony, giraffes' tails, great heaps of incense, elephant tusks, dogs, apes and baboons, and all manner of valuable things. And I loaded them in that ship, and I laid myself on my stomach to make thanksgiving to him. Then he said to me: 'Behold, thou shalt come home in two months, and shalt press thy children to thy bosom, and shalt flourish in their midst; and there thou shalt be buried.'"
| [Photo by E. Bird. |
| A Nile boat passing the hills of Thebes. |
| Pl. xv. |
To appreciate the significance of these last words it is necessary to remember what an important matter it was to an Egyptian that he should be buried in his native city. In our own case the position upon the map of the place where we lay down our discarded bones is generally not of first-rate importance, and the thought of being buried in foreign lands does not frighten us. Whether our body is to be packed away in the necropolis of our city, or shovelled into a hole on the outskirts of Timbuctoo, is not a matter of vital interest. There is a certain sentiment that leads us to desire interment amidst familiar scenes, but it is subordinated with ease to other considerations. To the Egyptian, however, it was a matter of paramount importance. "What is a greater thing," says Sinuhe in the tale of his adventures in Asia, "than that I should be buried in the land in which I was born?" "Thou shalt not die in a foreign land; Asiatics shall not conduct thee to the tomb," says the Pharaoh to him; and again, "It is no little thing that thou shalt be buried without Asiatics conducting thee."[1] There is a stela now preserved in Stuttgart, in which the deceased man asks those who pass his tomb to say a prayer for his soul; and he adjures them in these words: "So truly as ye wish that your native gods should praise you, and that ye should be established in your seats, and that ye should hand down your offices to your children: that ye should reach your homes in safety, and recount your travels to your wives;—then say a prayer," &c.[2]
[1] Sinuhe, B. 159, 197, 258.
[2] Zeit. Aeg. Spr., 39 (1901), p. 118.
The serpent was thus giving the castaway a promise which meant more to him than all the other blessings, and it was with a light heart indeed that he ran down to the beach to greet his countrymen. "I went down to the shore where the ship was," he continued, "and I called to the soldiers which were in that ship, and I gave praises upon the shore to the lord of this island, and likewise did they which were in the ship."
Then he stepped on board, the gangway was drawn up, and, with a great sweep of the oars, the ship passed out on to the open sea. Standing on deck amongst the new cargo, the officers and their rescued friend bowed low to the great serpent who towered above the trees at the water's edge, gleaming in the sunshine. "Fare thee well, little one," his deep voice rolled across the water; and again they bowed in obeisance to him. The main-sail was unfurled to the wind, and the vessel scudded bravely across the Great Green Sea; but for some time yet they must have kept their eyes upon the fair shape of the phantom island, as the trees blended into the hills and the hills at last into the haze; and their vision must have been focussed upon that one gleaming point where the golden serpent, alone once more with his memories, watched the ship moving over the fairy seas.