The tabor-players carried their oblong instruments crosswise, held up by a scarf passed around the neck, and struck the lightly stretched parchment with both hands.
Each company of musicians numbered at least two hundred men; but the hurricane of noise produced by trumpets, drums, tabors, and sistras, and which would have drawn blood from the ears inside a palace, was none too loud or too unbearable beneath the vast cupola of heaven, in the midst of this immense open space, amongst this buzzing crowd, at the head of this army which would baffle nomenclators, and which was now advancing with a roar as of great waters.
And was it too much to have eight hundred musicians preceding a Pharaoh who was the best loved of Ammon-Ra, represented by colossal statues of basalt and granite sixty cubits high, whose name was written in cartouches on imperishable monuments, and his history painted and sculptured and painted on the walls of the hypostyle chambers, on the sides of pylons, in interminable bas-reliefs, in frescoes without end? Was it indeed too much for a king who could raise a hundred conquered races by the hair of their heads, and from his high throne corrected the nations with his whip; for a living sun burning their dazzled eyes; for a god, almost eternal?
After the musicians came the barbarian captives, strangely formed, with brutish faces, black skins, woolly hair, resembling apes as much as men, and dressed in the costume of their country, a short skirt above the hips, held by a single brace, embroidered in different colors.
An ingenious and whimsical cruelty had suggested the way in which the prisoners were chained. Some were bound with their elbows drawn behind their backs; others with their hands lifted above their heads, in a still more painful position; one had his wrists fastened in wooden cangs (instruments of torture, still used in China); another was half strangled in a sort of pillory; or a chain of them were linked together by the same rope, each victim having a knot round his neck. It seemed as if those who had bound these unfortunates had found a pleasure in forcing them into unnatural positions; and they advanced before their conqueror with awkward and tottering gait, rolling their large eyes and contorted with pain.
Guards walked beside them, regulating their step by beating them with staves.
Tawny women, with long flowing hair, carrying their children in ragged strips of cloth bound about their foreheads, came behind them; bent, covered with shame, exhibiting their naked squalor and deformity: a wretched company, devoted to the most degrading uses.
Others, young and beautiful, with lighter skin, their arms encircled by broad ivory bracelets, their ears pulled down by large metal discs, were enveloped in long tunics with wide sleeves, an embroidered hem around the neck, and falling in small flat folds to their ankles, upon which anklets rattled. Poor girls, torn from country, family, perhaps lovers, smiling through their tears! For the power of beauty is boundless; strangeness gives rise to caprice; and perhaps the royal favor awaited one of these barbarian captives in the depths of the gynæceum.
They were accompanied by soldiers who kept away the crowd.
The standard-bearers came next, lifting high the gilded staves of their flags, representing mystic baris, sacred hawks, heads of Hathor crowned with ostrich plumes, winged ibexes, inscriptions embellished with the King's name, crocodiles, and other religious or warlike emblems. Long white streamers, spotted with black, were tied to these standards, and floated gracefully with every motion. At sight of the standards announcing the appearance of Pharaoh, the deputations of priests and notables raised towards him their supplicating hands, or let them hang, palm outwards, against their knees. Some even prostrated themselves, with elbows pressed to their sides, their faces in the dust, in attitudes of absolute submission and profound adoration. The spectators waved their large palm-leaves in every direction.