There was a King in Egypt

by Norma Lorimer

When Michael found himself on his feet and ready to mount his camel—that undignified proceeding, which always made him realize his own helplessness and evoked from the camel ugly roars of justifiable resentment—he found himself scarcely as fit as he had thought; he was giddy and still distressingly tired. It was very annoying, not feeling up to his best form, now that they were drawing so close to the exciting spot. He had imagined that he would feel like a gold-miner hurrying to peg out his claim, instead of which he was conscious of but one feeling, physical and nervous exhaustion.

He braced himself up. The air was cooler; a little breeze was lifting the sand and carrying its invisible atoms across the surface of the desert. How many times on his journey he had seen this noiseless drifting of the sand! Now, as he watched it from his high seat, it made him think of the saint's grave. Even in this short time much sand would have collected on the mound which covered his bones.

This ceaseless drifting of the sand was an object-lesson which illustrated very practically the complete obliteration of Egypt's ancient cities and lost civilizations. Michael knew that on such a day as this he had only to lay some small object down in the desert, and very soon an accumulation of sand would gather round it. After a little time the object would be completely lost to sight, and in its place there would be a little mound, which would grow and grow as the years rolled on, until it became a feature in the landscape. In such a way were the neglected temples of the gods saved from the ravages of fanatics.

To Michael this provision of Nature, this preserving of the world's earliest treasures and story, was very beautiful. It meant a great deal more than the mere accumulation of wind-blown sands; it meant that the Creating Hand is never still, that the making of the world is eternal. In Michael's opinion there was no doubt but that Egypt's priceless treasures had been designedly hidden, that the Author of Nature had preserved them until such a time as mankind was capable of appreciating them and guarding them. The drifting sands—ever at the caprice of the four winds to those who have eyes to see and see not—have saved Egypt's history, which is written in stone.

Reflecting, as was his wont, on these side-issues of the world's evolution, he journeyed on. The breeze was stiffening, a cool, invigorating breeze, which had cleared the sky and brought some white clouds into it. In the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings the heavens rarely held a cloud; in the eastern desert his travels had carried him northwards, where the dews are heavier and the sudden changes in the temperature less noticeable.

With the cooler atmosphere his spirits rose, his vitality quickened. Wonderful pictures danced before his eyes, pictures which he had seen over and over again, his first visualizing of the treasure. The vision had never been far from his mind. He could see himself inspecting the bars of gold which Akhnaton had hidden in the hills, and fingering the ancient jewels while he thought once more of the story he had been told by a member of an excavating camp in Egypt. The story reassured him: Some native workmen, belonging to the camp, had come across a number of terra-cotta crocks hidden under a flight of steps. They were full to the brim of bars of pure gold. The gold had obviously been thrust into the jars very hurriedly. The theory they suggested to experts was that the citizens, suddenly becoming alarmed by the approach of a besieging army, had thrust the wealth of the public treasury into the jars and hidden them in the hollow behind the steps of a staircase in some public building. If the Romans ever besieged the city, they had overlooked the jars and so the gold had remained in its simple hiding-place until the enthusiasm of modern Egyptologists discovered it. In the jars there was sufficient gold to pay for a year's excavation on the historical site.

Michael knew that such things were possible in Egypt, where tales as wonderful as any in A Thousand and One Nights are still being enacted. Egypt's buried treasures are infinite. In that land of amazing discoveries there has been nothing more amazing than the means of their discovery.

High up in the blue, on his swaying seat on the camel's back, he felt like a man in a cinematograph-theatre, gazing upon film after film as it came into view and dissolved away.

The desert was the stage, his thoughts were the films. At one moment the picture presented was his old friend in el-Azhar, rejoicing in the knowledge that Michael's journey was accomplished, the treasure realized. He could see the African's eyes glowing like living fire; he could hear his sonorous chanting. His next vision was of Margaret and her triumphant happiness; the next his own troubles and embarrassments, the troubles of too great wealth. What was he to do with the treasure now that he had discovered it? There were new laws and stringent regulations and restrictions which must be adhered to; the Government had become more grasping.

But these troubles he put aside. "Sufficient for the day was the finding thereof," the proving to scoffers that visionaries had legs to stand upon as well as heads. He could hear Freddy's boyish laugh, a laugh of sheer incredulity and amazement, and while Freddy laughed he could see and feel Margaret's eyes shining with victory. It made him very nervous and excited to think that soon he would be able to actually touch and examine the treasure and sacred writings of the world's first divinely-inspired prophet. The doubts of his material mind would be forever silenced when his fingers had held the jewels and his eyes had seen the gold.