Unis was supposed to know the past; he could foretell the future. He could “see” one who had tampered with his neighbor’s landmarks or altered the flow of water in his neighbor’s dykes. He could forewarn of an approaching sandstorm—that nine days’ terror of the traveler. He could provide the necessary amulets against the bite of snake or scorpion. He could tell the whereabouts of lost cattle or name that man or woman who had made off with the offerings to the dead.
Thus, a timid maiden, desirous of a love-charm, was advised to drink the ashes of a lizard dissolved in water and to swallow it, with a prayer to Hathor, some auspicious evening when Aah, the silver moon, shone at her brightest.
Consulted by some young gallant of the city, on similar, though less wholesome lines, Unis would draw a circle in the sand. A circle, a gold bangle! Money can open many a door!
The circle might be readily understood, but the outline of the jackal above it—death’s emblem, spiritual and physical—was generally beyond the young man’s powers of comprehension.
To the aged Teta, desirous of a potion which would assure to him the wished for one hundred and ten years, Unis replied: “I see the ba-bird poised above thy tomb.” Teta was found dead upon his couch the following morning.
To Benta the ambitious Unis had taught the value of patience by pointing to Auta hard at work upon his granite statue of the Princess Bekit-aton.
Six months of cutting, chiseling, rubbing and burnishing had the persevering Auta lavished upon his masterpiece, and, throughout those weary months, but three simple implements had served him for his difficult task—a wooden mallet, a bronze chisel and a flint burnisher. Apart from this, sand, water and emery-dust were Auta’s only helpers.
Though Unis was consulted by peasant and petty official, peasant and official alike considered him mad. As such he became a person to be pitied and cared for, as one afflicted by the gods, yet one through whom the gods spoke. Thus, Unis could come and go wheresoever and whensoever he pleased.
Except for his periodic visits to the sycamore, Unis was rarely seen. All his time was spent in the great temple library or amidst the crumbling shrines and half-choked tombs of the necropolis.
To the guards of the cemetery he was someone’s animated ka, a restless ‘soul’ seeking, perhaps, to identify his ruined tomb or to find and become reunited to the lost ‘souls’ of his wife and children. He was constantly on the lips of the public-storytellers as an ever-present example of the truth of one of the oldest and most familiar of Egyptian wondertales, the Adventures of Menti.