There was a King in Egypt

by Norma Lorimer

"He was there. I stifled my consciousness of him, Meg."

"Don't," she said. "Let's go forward."

"I know what you mean," he said. "Regrets are weak, foolish."

"I don't want to bring the hotel at Assuan into this valley. Let's just watch the sun transform its infinite mystery into our waking, working, everyday world—if Egypt can be an everyday world."

"May I say Akhnaton's beautiful hymn to you? It is about the sunrise.
He must often have seen it just as we are seeing it now."

"Akhnaton's? Yes, do. How wonderful to think that he wrote hymns!"

Michael began the famous hymn. "'The world is in darkness, like the dead. Every lion cometh forth from his den; all serpents sting. Darkness reigns.'"

"We might substitute jackals," Margaret said gently.

"'When thou risest in the horizon . . . the darkness is banished. Then in all the world they do their work.

"'All trees and plants flourish, the birds flutter in their marshes, all sheep dance upon their feet.'"