“But why was its beautiful shining case taken off?” Rachel asked, looking with curiosity at the carving upon it.
“Because in the course of long years the people of other nations who conquered Egypt and had no respect for my wondrous land, broke up the ‘beautiful shining case,’ to quote your own words, little maid, and used it for building temples in which they worshipped gods strange and new.”
Rachel glanced again at her companion. She was still so bewildered that she scarcely knew which she should ask first of the hundred questions crowding to her mind. And then everything around her was so strange and beautiful! The yellow sand of the desert, the blue sky, the burning sun, the long strip of fertile land bordering a great river.
“That must be the Nile,” she thought, remembering her geography. “The Nile is in Egypt.”
Just as though he read her thoughts, Sheshà again broke silence.
“Do you wonder that we worshipped the river in those far-off days?” he asked, dreamily.
“Did you? Why?” Rachel gazed at him curiously.
“It was, and is, the life-giver,” returned Sheshà. “But for that river, there would never have been any food in this land. And therefore no cities, no temples, no pyramids, no great schools of learning as there were here in ancient days when Moses was ‘learnèd in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.’”
“Yes, but how could the river make the corn grow, and give you food?” asked Rachel. “I thought it was the rain that made things grow.”
“In Egypt rain does not fall. But the river, this wondrous river of ours, does the work of rain. Once every year it overflows its banks, and the thirsty land is watered, and what would otherwise be all desert, like the yellow sand you see that is not reached by the flood, becomes green with waving corn, and shady palm trees, and beautiful with fruit and flowers. Yes, no wonder we worshipped our river.”