"Where are you going?" he asked them.
"To Ieket-Chufu, to hear the prophet," they answered.
He followed them. Walking ankle-deep in sand along a trade between sharp, projecting rocks, they climbed on to the flat top of the hill Ieket-Chufu, facing the Great Pyramid of the same name. In the shadow the grass was still white with hoar-frost, but in the sun it had melted and fell in drops clear and bright as tears.
The expanse seen from the top of the hill was boundless: sands, yellow as the lion's hair, stretching to the edge of the horizon; bluish-green meadows and palm groves by the river; golden points of the Heliopolis obelisks, sparkling against the bare parched rocks of the Arabian hills purple as amethyst and yellow as topaz; and close by, opposite the hill, the huge pale phantom of Cheops' pyramid glimmering in the rosy sunlit mist. The perfect triangles rising from the earth to one point in the sky proclaimed to men the mystery of Three: "I began to be as one God but three Gods were in me."
The people crowding on the flat top of the hill surrounded the prophet so closely that Issachar could not squeeze his way to him. The lame, the halt, the dumb, the blind were among the crowd, as well as lepers, paralytics and men possessed by the devil. Neser-Bata laid his hands upon them with prayer and they were healed. Then he stood on a hillock in the middle of the plateau. The sun rising behind him surrounded the prophet with dazzling brilliance that seemed to come from his body. Issachar could not see his face. "Thy flesh is the flesh of the Sun; thy limbs are beautiful rays. In truth thou dost proceed from the Sun as the child from its mother's womb," he recalled the words of the service to Aton.
The prophet's voice was heard and the crowd grew so still that one could hear the drops of melting hoar-frost falling to the ground. The sound of that voice was so familiar that Issachar's heart throbbed with an incredible presentiment. He looked down: he was afraid of seeing and recognizing him.
Neser-Bata was speaking of the second Osiris, of the Son who was to come, of Him Whom the prophets of Israel called the Messiah.
Issachar raised his eyes, saw and recognized: "it is he!" and covered his face with his hands as though blinded by the sun. Yet he did not believe his eyes and looked once more, but by that time the prophet had gone down from the hillock and could not be seen for the crowd.
Issachar went up to Yubra and said:
"I want to speak to Neser-Bata."