The Pharaoh and the Priest: An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt

by Bolesław Prus

"Perhaps Thou wouldst come to me for service? Who knows, wouldst Thou be sorry to work for me?"

"With permission, worthiness, I noticed that Thou couldst lead a regiment in spite of thy young face. But I enter the service of no man. I am a free fisherman; my grandfather was, with permission, a shepherd in Lower Egypt, our family comes of the Hyksos people. It is true that dull Egyptian earth-tillers revile us, but I laugh at them. The earth- tillers and the Hyksos, I say, worthiness, are like an ox and a bull. The earth-tiller may go behind the plough or before it, but the Hyksos will not serve any man, unless in the army of his holiness, that is warrior life."

The boatman was in the vein and talked continually, but the prince heard no longer. In his soul very painful questions grew louder and louder, for they were new altogether. Were those mounds, then, around which he had been sailing, on his property? A marvelous thing, he knew not at all where his lands were nor what they looked like. So in his name Dagon had imposed new rents on the people, and the active movement on which he had been looking while moving along the shores was the extortion of rents. It was clear that the man whom they had been beating on the shore had nothing to pay with. The children who were crying bitterly in the boat were sold at a drachma per head for a twelvemonth, and that woman who was wading in the water to her waist and weeping was their mother.

"Women are very unquiet," said the prince to himself. "Sarah is the quietest woman; but others love to talk much, to cry and raise an uproar."

He remembered the man who was pacifying his wife's excitement. They had been plunging him into the water and he was not angry; they did nothing to her, and still she made an uproar.

"Women are very unquiet!" repeated be. "Yes, even my mother, who is worthy of honor. What a difference between her and my father! His holiness does not wish to know at all that I left the army for a girl, but the queen likes to occupy herself even with this, that I took into my house a Jewess. Sarah is the quietest of women whom I know; but Tafet cries and makes an uproar for four persons."

Then the prince recalled the words of the man's wife, that for a month they had not eaten wheat, only seeds and roots of lotus. Lotus and poppy seeds are similar; the roots are poor. He could not eat them for three days in succession. Moreover, the priests who were occupied in medicine advised change of diet. While in school they told him that a man ought to eat flesh with fish, dates with wheat bread, figs with barley. But for a whole month to live on lotus seeds! Well, cows and horses? Cows and horses like hay, but barley straw must be shoved into their throats by force. Surely then earth-workers prefer lotus seeds as food, while wheat or barley cakes, fish and flesh they do not relish. For that matter, the most pious priests, wonderworkers, never touch flesh or fish. Evidently magnates and king's sons need flesh, just as lions and eagles do; but earth-tillers grass, like an ox.

"Only that plunging into the water to pay rent. Ei! but didn't he once in bathing with his comrades put them under water, and even dive himself? What laughing they had in those days! Diving was fun. And as to beating with a cane, how many times had they beaten him in school? It is painful, but evidently not for every creature. A beaten dog howls and bites; a beaten ox does not even look around. So beating may pain a great lord, but a common man cries only so as to cry when the chance comes. Not all cry; soldiers and officers sing while belabored."

But these wise reflections could not drown the small but annoying disquiet in the heart of Ramses. So his tenant Dagon had imposed an unjust rent which the tenants could not pay!

At this moment the prince was not concerned about the tenants, but his mother. His mother must know of this Phoenician management. What would she say about it to her son? How she would look at him! How sneeringly she would laugh! And she would not be a woman if she did not speak to him as follows: "I told thee, Ramses, that Phoenicians would desolate thy property."