"Rebellion?" Dio asked.
"Yes, there's a rising on the other side of the river. It seems the Lybian mercenaries have joined the rebels." His face was sad, but joy was shining through the sadness.
Dio understood: the rising was the beginning and the end was the throne.
He got up and turning to the couch took up his staff, untied the sandals from it, put them on and said:
"Well, there is nothing for it, let us go and put down the rising!"
VI
There will be a great rebellion and the earth will be turned upside down like the potter's wheel." Recalling these words of the ancient prophet Ipuver, Yubra eagerly awaited the fulfilment of the prophecy. "What if it begins without me!" he thought, sitting in the pit. And when Khnum turned him out of the house he took a staff, slung a wallet behind his back and set off at random, looking as though he had been a homeless wanderer all his life.
He remembered his old friend Nebra, the boatman, and decided to go and see him at the Risit Harbour. But at the harbour he was told that Nebra had finished work and was having supper in a tavern next door, in the Hittite Square.