V
After the mutiny at Thebes, Issachar went to Akhetaton, the City of the Sun, to see his brother Eliav and to carry out a behest of Ptamose so secret and terrible that he was afraid even to think of it, to say nothing of discussing it with anyone.
At the bottom of a deep cauldron-shaped hollow among the rocks of the Arabian hills, east of the City and within half an hour's walk from it, lay the penal settlement of the Israelites sentenced to work in the neighbouring quarries of Hat-Nub. The Egyptians called it the Dirty Jews' Village and the Israelite's name for it was Sheol—Hell.
Some ten days after Aton's nativity, Issachar walked to Sheol to see his brother Eliav.
An old man of seventy, looking like Abraham, with a fine, deeply lined, dark-skinned face and a long white beard, was walking beside him; he was Issachar's uncle, Ahiram, son of Halev, a rich merchant from the town of Tanis. They were climbing by a narrow goat's path one of the hills west of Sheol.
The sun was setting in the red mist, as in a pool of blood, and the bare rocks of yellow sandstone, covered in places with waves of loose sand, glowed with a red hot glow.
"I suppose you took part in the Nut-Amon rising, my boy, didn't you?" Ahiram asked.
"I? Oh, no. I am a peaceful man. And besides the holy father does not allow us to fight," Issachar answered. By 'holy father' he meant Ptamose.
The old man shook his head doubtfully.