LEONTOPOLIS
A caravan was encamped on a height eastward of the ancient Egyptian town Heliopolis. There were many people in it, but all were Hebrews. They had come on camels and asses from Palestine through the desert—the same desert which the Israelites had passed through thousands of years before.
In the evening twilight, by the faint light of the half-moon, hundreds of camp-fires were to be seen, and by them sat the women with their little children while the men carried water.
Never yet had the desert beheld so many little children, and, as they were now being put to bed for the night, the camp echoed with their cries. It was like an enormous nursery. But when the washing was over, and the little ones were laid to their mothers’ breasts, the cries one after the other ceased, and there was complete silence. Under a sycamore tree sat a woman, and suckled her child; close by stood a Hebrew, feeding his ass with branches of the broom plant; when he had done that, he went higher up the hill, and looked towards the north. A foreigner—a Roman, to judge by his dress—passed, and regarded the woman with the child closely, as though he were counting them.
The Hebrew showed signs of uneasiness, and began a conversation with the Roman, in order to divert his attention from the woman.
“Say, traveller, is that the City of the Sun there in the west?”
“You see it!” answered the Roman.
“Then it is Bethshemesh.”