A moment later, the pharaoh saw with astonishment flocks of silvery birds over the earth everywhere. They were flying up out of palaces, temples streets, workshops, Nile barges, country huts, even from the quarries. At first each of them shot upward like an arrow, but soon it met in the sky another silvery feathered bird, which stopped its way, striking it with all force and both fell to the earth lifeless.
Those were the unworthy prayers of men, which prevented each other from reaching the throne of Him who existed before the ages.
The pharaoh strained his hearing. At first only the rustle of wings reached him, but soon he distinguished words also.
And now he heard a sick man praying for the return of his health, and also the physician, who begged that that same patient might be sick as long as possible. The landowner prayed Amon to watch over his granary and cow-house, the thief stretched his hands heavenward so that he might lead forth another man's cow without hindrance, and fill his own bags from another man's harvest.
Their prayers knocked each other down like stones which had been hurled from slings and had met in the air.
The wanderer in the desert fell on the sand and begged for a north wind, to bring a drop of rain to him, the sailor on the sea beat the deck with his forehead and prayed that wind might blow from the east a week longer. The earth-worker wished that swamps might dry up quickly after inundation; the needy fisherman begged that the swamps might not dry up at any time.
Their prayers killed each other and never reached the divine ears of
Amon.
The greatest uproar reigned above the quarries where criminals, lashed together in chain gangs, split enormous rocks with wedges, wetted with water. There a party of day convicts prayed for the night, so that they might lie down to slumber; while parties of night toilers, roused by their overseers, beat their breasts, asking that the sun might not set at any hour. Merchants who purchased quarried and dressed stones prayed that there might be as many criminals in the quarries as possible, while provision contractors lay on their stomachs, sighing for the plague to kill laborers, and make their own profits as large as they might be.
So the prayers of men from the quarries did not reach the sky in any case.
On the western boundary the pharaoh saw two armies preparing for battle. Both were prostrate on the sand, calling on Amon to rub out the other side. The Libyans wished shame and death to Egyptians; the Egyptians hurled curses on the Libyans.