On week days Nibituia was busy with housekeeping from morning till night, looking after the weaving, the mat-making, the cooking and the washing, but on holidays, such as that day—the day of Khonsu, the god of the Moon, she gave herself a rest, engaging in a light and at the same time pious occupation. Two little pots and two baskets stood before her on a low round table: out of one of them she took dead beetles, scarabees, butterflies, bees, grasshoppers, ripped them open with a flint knife, and taking with a bone spoon a drop of Arabian gum out of one pot and a drop of Lebanon cedar resin out of another, embalmed the dead creatures; then she wrapped them up in tiny white linen bandages, like real little mummies, and put them into the other basket. She did all this quickly and neatly as a work she was accustomed to do. In the garden there was a sandhill of Amenti—Eternal West—a cemetery for these little mummies.
A middle aged man with a sly and merry face, Inioteph or Ini, was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of Khnum; he was a clerk in the Surveying Department, managed Khnum's estates and transacted legal business for him. Bare to his waist, he wore nothing but an apron; there was an inkpot on his belt and a writing reed behind his ear, and in his hand he held a roll of papyrus with the account of sacks of grain which had just been brought down the river in barges from Miuer.
"When was the decree received?" Khnum asked.
"In the night and it must be carried out to-day, that the sun may not set on disobedience to the king," Ini answered.
"Quite, quite, quite," Khnum rapped out like a woodpecker tapping, as was his habit. "They persecuted the Father, they persecuted the Mother, and now it is the turn of the Son!"
The Son was Khonsu—the Osiris of Thebes, born of the Father Amon and the Mother Mut.
"But how is he to be destroyed? He is made of gold," Khnum said.
"They will throw him into the furnace, melt him, make coins out of the gold, buy bread and give it to the starving: eat the god and praise the king!" Inioteph explained.
"Surely this is very wrong? Uhuh have mercy upon us!" Nibituia said with a sigh.
Uhuh was a very ancient god forgotten by everyone; he had no idols, no temples, no sacrifices, no priests—nothing was left of him but a name. People remembered merely that there had been a god Uhuh, but they had long forgotten what he ruled over and what he looked like. And this was the very reason why Nibituia liked him and pitied him and at difficult moments called not upon the great Amon, but upon the obscure Uhuh. "No one prays to him, poor Uhuh, but I will pray and he will have mercy upon me," the old lady used to say.