He agreed, and arose and recited the terms of the compact to his Chief of Harvests, charging him to carry it out, and to cause to be engraved a small stone cylinder as a permanent record of its provisions, as it was their custom to do in such cases. Then filling three goblets with rich spiced wine, he exclaimed,—
"For thy sake, O most generous youth, may the Nasr-Nil fondly nurse every harvest, and may the gentle Snowless Month ripen them in such abundance as they have never shown before! And may Hotep's mules grow old and weary bearing the plenty to thy storehouses!"
CHAPTER X
Humanity on Ptah
The magnificent abundance of the seventh great harvest, which ripened late in the year of our arrival, attracted a multitude of both men and animals from all the out-lying countries into Kem to assist in gathering it, and many of them remained to spend their gains in the luxuries of the great city. It was an unparalleled period of prosperity and plenty; and though the rich wasted everything with a careless hand, the poor were better provided for than they had ever been.
Like an endless caravan Hotep's mules trailed across the city day by day, and emptied their cargoes into the bottomless pits of the Gnomons. And Hotep's thousand cattle tramped his threshing-floors during the long winter, and until the later nightly snows signalled the coming of a tardy spring; and yet the patient mules streamed through the city, and wore deeper paths into the sides of the Gnomons, until one by one the great chambers were filled and sealed.
Late in the spring the toiling cattle left the threshing-floors, and traversed the fields in long procession, two and two, lashed together by a bar across the horns instead of a yoke, and dragging heavy stone ploughs slowly after them to prepare the soil for a new planting. But while the whole left bank of the Nasr-Nil swarmed with Hotep's patient teams and their busy drivers, the right bank was deserted, idle, and lifeless. Every one wondered why the Pharaoh's planting was being delayed; no one knew why the Pharaoh's men and cattle were idle; and the old men shook their heads and muttered that the river would overflow its banks long before the Pharaoh's seed was in. After a while Zaphnath sent for me, and when I came before him he said,—
"The Pharaoh is sick with the plenty of the land, weary of the sight of grain-laden mules and ploughing cattle, and so cumbered about with mountains of wheat that he desireth not to plant his fields. Thou art not one to see his lands lie idle. If thou hast aught with which to tempt him, I can persuade him to let unto thee all his land and to hire unto thee all his men and mules and cattle. For hath he not acquired all his riches in seven years' harvests? and in another seven thou mayest be as rich as he."