CHAPTER LXIV
ON the eighteenth day of Paofi chaos had begun. Communication was interrupted between Lower and Upper Egypt; commerce had ceased; on the Nile moved only boats on guard, the roads were occupied by troops marching toward those cities which contained the most famous temples.
Only the laborers of the priests were at work in the fields. On the estates of nobles and nomarchs, but especially of the pharaoh, flax was unpulled, clover uncut; there was no one to gather in grapes. The common people did nothing but prowl about in bands; they sang, ate, drank, and threatened either priests or Phoenicians. In the cities all shops were closed, and the artisans who had lost their occupation counseled whole days over the reconstruction of Egypt. This offensive spectacle was no novelty, but it appeared in such threatening proportions that the tax-gatherers, and even the judges began to hide, especially as the police treated all offences of common men very mildly.
One thing more deserved attention: the abundance of food and wine. In dramshops and cook houses, especially of the Phoenicians, as well in Memphis as in the provinces, whoso wished might eat and drink what he pleased at a very low price, or for nothing. It was said that his holiness was giving his people a feast which would continue a whole month in every case.
Because of difficult and even interrupted communication the cities were not aware of what was happening in neighboring places. Only the pharaoh, or still better the priests, knew the general condition of the country.
The position was distinguished, first of all, by a break between Upper, or Theban, and Lower, or Memphian Egypt. In Thebes partisans of the priesthood were stronger, in Memphis adherents of the pharaoh. In Thebes people said that Ramses XIII had gone mad, and wished to sell Egypt to Phoenicians; in Memphis they explained that the priests wished to poison the pharaoh and bring in Assyrians. The common people, as well in the north as the south, felt an instinctive attraction toward the pharaoh. But the force of the people was passive and tottering. When an agitator of the government spoke, the people were ready to attack a temple and beat priests, but when a procession appeared they fell on their faces and were timid while listening to accounts of disasters which threatened Egypt in that very month of Paofi.
The terrified nobles and nomarchs had assembled at Memphis to implore the pharaoh for rescue from the rebelling multitude. But since Ramses enjoined on them patience, and did not attack the rabble, the magnates began to take counsel with the adherents of the priesthood.
It is true that Herhor was silent, or enjoined patience also; but other high priests proved to the nobles that Ramses was a maniac, and hinted at the need of deposing him.
In Memphis itself two parties were facing each other. The godless who drank, made an uproar, threw mud at temples and even at statues, and the pious, mainly old men and women who prayed on the streets, prophesied misfortune aloud and implored all the divinities for rescue. The godless committed outrages daily; each day among the pious health returned to some sick man or cripple. But for a wonder neither party, in spite of roused passions, worked harm on the other, and still greater wonder neither party resorted to violence, which came from this, that each was disturbed by direction, and according to plans framed in higher circles.
The pharaoh, not having collected all his troops and all his proofs against the priests, did not give the order yet for a final attack on the temples; the priests seemed waiting for something. It was evident, however, that they did not feel so weak as in the first moments after the voting by delegates. Ramses himself became thoughtful when men reported from every side that people on the lands of the priests did not mix in disturbances at all, but were working.