CHAPTER VI.
On the night following the banquet just described, Amasis allowedhimself only three hours' rest. On this, as on every other morning, theyoung priests wakened him at the first cock-crow, conducted him as usualto the bath, arrayed him in the royal vestments and led him to the altarin the court of the palace, where in presence of the populace he offeredsacrifice. During the offering the priests sang prayers in a loud voice,enumerated the virtues of their king, and, that blame might in no caselight on the head of their ruler, made his bad advisers responsible forevery deadly sin committed in ignorance.
They exhorted him to the performance of good deeds, while extolling hisvirtues; read aloud profitable portions of the holy writings, containingthe deeds and sayings of great men, and then conducted him to hisapartments, where letters and information from all parts of the kingdomawaited him.
Amasis was in the habit of observing most faithfully thesedaily-repeated ceremonies and hours of work; the remaining portion ofthe day he spent as it pleased him, and generally in cheerful society.
The priests reproached him with this, alleging that such a life wasnot suited to a monarch; and on one occasion he had thus replied to theindignant high-priest: "Look at this bow! if always bent it must loseits power, but, if used for half of each day and then allowed to rest,it will remain strong and useful till the string breaks."
Amasis had just signed his name to the last letter, granting thepetition of a Nornarch--[Administrator of a Province]--for moneyto carry on different embankments rendered necessary by the lastinundation, when a servant entered, bringing a request from thecrown-prince Psamtik for an audience of a few minutes.
Amasis, who till this moment had been smiling cheerfully at the cheeringreports from all parts of the country, now became suddenly serious andthoughtful. After long delay he answered: "Go and inform the prince thathe may appear."
Psamtik appeared, pale and gloomy as ever; he bowed low andreverentially, on entering his father's presence.
Amasis nodded silently in return, and then asked abruptly and sternly:"What is thy desire? my time is limited."
"For your son, more than for others," replied the prince with quiveringlips. "Seven times have I petitioned for the great favor, which thougrantest for the first time to-day."
"No reproaches! I suspect the reason of thy visit. Thou desirest ananswer to thy doubts as to the birth of thy sister Nitetis."
"I have no curiosity; I come rather to warn thee, and to remind theethat I am not the only one who is acquainted with this mystery."
"Speakest thou of Phanes?"
"Of whom else should I speak? He is banished from Egypt and from hisown country, and must leave Naukratis in a few days. What guarantee hastthou, that he will not betray us to the Persians?"
"The friendship and kindness which I have always shown him."
"Dost thou believe in the gratitude of men?"
"No! but I rely on my own discernment of character. Phanes will notbetray us! he is my friend, I repeat it!"
"Thy friend perhaps, but my mortal enemy!"
"Then stand on thy guard! I have nothing to fear from him."
"For thyself perhaps nought, but for our country! O father, reflect thatthough as thy son I may be hateful in thine eyes, yet as Egypt's futureI ought to be near thy heart. Remember, that at thy death, which may thegods long avert, I shall represent the existence of this glorious landas thou dost now; my fall will be the ruin of thine house, of Egypt!"
Amasis became more and more serious, and Psamtik went on eagerly: "Thouknowest that I am right! Phanes can betray our land to any foreignenemy; he is as intimately acquainted with it as we are; and besidethis, he possesses a secret, the knowledge of which would convert ourmost powerful ally into a most formidable enemy."
"There thou art in error. Though not mine, Nitetis is a king's daughterand will know how to win the love of her husband."
"Were she the daughter of a god, she could not save thee from Cambyses'wrath, if he discovers the treachery; lying is to a Persian the worstof crimes, to be deceived the greatest disgrace; thou hast deceived thehighest and proudest of the nation, and what can one inexperienced girlavail, when hundreds of women, deeply versed in intrigue and artifice,are striving for the favor of their lord?"
"Hatred and revenge are good masters in the art of rhetoric," saidAmasis in a cutting tone. "And think'st thou then, oh, foolish son,that I should have undertaken such a dangerous game without dueconsideration? Phanes may tell the Persians what he likes, he can neverprove his point. I, the father, Ladice the mother must know best whetherNitetis is our child or not. We call her so, who dare aver the contrary?If it please Phanes to betray our land to any other enemy beside thePersians, let him; I fear nothing! Thou wouldst have me ruin a man whohas been my friend, to whom I owe much gratitude, who has served me longand faithfully; and this without offence from his side. Rather will Ishelter him from thy revenge, knowing as I do the impure source fromwhich it springs."
"My father!"
"Thou desirest the ruin of this man, because he hindered thee fromtaking forcible possession of the granddaughter of Rhodopis, and becausethine own incapacity moved me to place him in thy room as commanderof the troops. Ah! thou growest pale! Verily, I owe Phanes thanks forconfiding to me your vile intentions, and so enabling me to bind myfriends and supporters, to whom Rhodopis is precious, more firmly to mythrone."
"And is it thus thou speakest of these strangers, my father? dost thouthus forget the ancient glory of Egypt? Despise me, if thou wilt; I knowthou lovest me not; but say not that to be great we need the help ofstrangers! Look back on our history! Were we not greatest when our gateswere closed to the stranger, when we depended on ourselves and our ownstrength, and lived according to the ancient laws of our ancestorsand our gods? Those days beheld the most distant lands subjugated byRameses, and heard Egypt celebrated in the whole world as its first andgreatest nation. What are we now? The king himself calls beggars andforeigners the supporters of his throne, and devises a petty stratagemto secure the friendship of a power over whom we were victorious beforethe Nile was infested by these strangers. Egypt was then a mighty Queenin glorious apparel; she is now a painted woman decked out in tinsel!"
[Rameses the Great, son of Sethos, reigned over Egypt 1394-1328 B. C. He was called Sesostris by the Greeks; see Lepsius (Chron. d. Aegypter, p. 538.) on the manner in which this confusion of names arose. Egypt attained the zenith of her power under this king, whose army, according to Diodorus (I. 53-58). consisted of 600,000 foot and 24,000 horsemen, 27,000 chariots and 400 ships of war. With these hosts he subdued many of the Asiatic and African nations, carving his name and likeness, as trophies of victory, on the rocks of the conquered countries. Herodotus speaks of having seen two of these inscriptions himself (II. 102-106.) and two are still to be found not far from Bairut. His conquests brought vast sums of tribute into Egypt. Tacitus annal. II. 60. and these enabled him to erect magnificent buildings in the whole length of his land from Nubia to Tanis, but more especially in Thebes, the city in which he resided. One of the obelisks erected by Rameses at Heliopolis is now standing in the Place de la Concorde at Paris, and has been lately translated by E. Chabas. On the walls of the yet remaining palaces and temples, built under this mighty king, we find, even to this day, thousands of pictures representing himself, his armed hosts, the many nations subdued by the power of his arms, and the divinities to whose favor he believed these victories were owing. Among the latter Ammon and Bast seem to have received his especial veneration, and, on the other hand, we read in these inscriptions that the gods were very willing to grant the wishes of their favorite. A poetical description of the wars he waged with the Cheta is to be found in long lines of hieroglyphics on the south wall of the hall of columns of Rameses II. at Karnal, also at Luxor and in the Sallier Papyrus, and an epic poem referring to his mighty deeds in no less than six different places.]
"Have a c
are what thou sayest!" shouted Amasis stamping on the floor."Egypt was never so great, so flourishing as now! Rameses carried ourarms into distant lands and earned blood; through my labors the productsof our industry have been carried to all parts of the world and insteadof blood, have brought us treasure and blessing. Rameses caused theblood and sweat of his subjects to flow in streams for the honor of hisown great name; under my rule their blood flows rarely, and the sweatof their brow only in works of usefulness. Every citizen can now end hisdays in prosperity and comfort. Ten thousand populous cities rise on theshores of the Nile, not a foot of the soil lies untilled, every childenjoys the protection of law and justice, and every ill-doer shuns thewatchful eye of the authorities.
"In case of attack from without, have we not, as defenders of thosegod-given bulwarks, our cataracts, our sea and our deserts, the finestarmy that ever bore arms? Thirty thousand Hellenes beside our entireEgyptian military caste? such is the present condition of Egypt! Ramesespurchased the bright tinsel of empty fame with the blood and tears ofhis people. To me they are indebted for the pure gold of a peacefulwelfare as citizens--to me and to my predecessors, the Saitic kings!"
[The science of fortification was very fairly understood by the ancient Egyptians. Walled and battlemented forts are to be seen depicted on their monuments. We have already endeavored to show (see our work on Egypt. I. 78 and following) that, on the northeast, Egypt defended from Asiatic invasion by a line of forts extending from Pelusium to the Red Sea.]
"And yet I tell thee," cried the prince, "that a worm is gnawing at theroot of Egypt's greatness and her life. This struggle for riches andsplendor corrupts the hearts of the people, foreign luxury has given adeadly blow to the simple manners of our citizens, and many an Egyptianhas been taught by the Greeks to scoff at the gods of his fathers. Everyday brings news of bloody strife between the Greek mercenaries and ournative soldiery, between our own people and the strangers. The shepherdand his flock are at variance; the wheels of the state machinery aregrinding one another and thus the state itself, into total ruin. Thisonce, father, though never again, I must speak out clearly what isweighing on my heart. While engaged in contending with the priests, thouhast seen with calmness the young might of Persia roll on from the East,consuming the nations on its way, and, like a devouring monster, growingmore and more formidable from every fresh prey. Thine aid was not, asthou hadst intended, given to the Lydians and Babylonians against theenemy, but to the Greeks in the building of temples to their false gods.At last resistance seemed hopeless; a whole hemisphere with its rulerslay in submission at the feet of Persia; but even then the godswilled Egypt a chance of deliverance. Cambyses desired thy daughter inmarriage. Thou, however, too weak to sacrifice thine own flesh and bloodfor the good of all, hast substituted another maiden, not thine ownchild, as an offering to the mighty monarch; and at the same time, inthy soft-heartedness, wilt spare the life of a stranger in whose hand hethe fortunes of this realm, and who will assuredly work its ruin; unlessindeed, worn out by internal dissension, it perish even sooner from itsown weakness!"
Thus far Amasis had listened to these revilings of all he held dearestin silence, though pale, and trembling with rage; but now he broke forthin a voice, the trumpet-like sound of which pealed through the widehall: "Know'st thou not then, thou boasting and revengeful son of evil,thou future destroyer of this ancient and glorious kingdom, know'stthou not whose life must be the sacrifice, were not my children, and thedynasty which I have founded, dearer to me than the welfare of the wholerealm? Thou, Psamtik, thou art the man, branded by the gods, feared bymen--the man to whose heart love and friendship are strangers, whoseface is never seen to smile, nor his soul known to feel compassion!It is not, however, through thine own sin that thy nature is thusunblessed, that all thine undertakings end unhappily. Give heed, for nowI am forced to relate what I had hoped long to keep secret from thineears. After dethroning my predecessor, I forced him to give me hissister Tentcheta in marriage. She loved me; a year after marriage therewas promise of a child. During the night preceding thy birth I fellasleep at the bedside of my wife. I dreamed that she was lying on theshores of the Nile, and complained to me of pain in the breast. Bendingdown, I beheld a cypress-tree springing from her heart. It grew largerand larger, black and spreading, twined its roots around thy mother andstrangled her. A cold shiver seized me, and I was on the point of flyingfrom the spot, when a fierce hurricane came from the East, struck thetree and overthrew it, so that its spreading branches were cast into theNile. Then the waters ceased to flow; they congealed, and, in placeof the river, a gigantic mummy lay before me. The towns on its banksdwindled into huge funereal urns, surrounding the vast corpse of theNile as in a tomb. At this I awoke and caused the interpreters of dreamsto be summoned. None could explain the vision, till at last the priestsof the Libyan Ammon gave me the following interpretation 'Tentcheta willdie in giving birth to a son. The cypress, which strangled its mother,is this gloomy, unhappy man. In his days a people shall come from theEast and shall make of the Nile, that is of the Egyptians, dead bodies,and of their cities ruinous heaps; these are the urns for the dead,which thou sawest."
Psamtik listened as if turned into stone; his father continued; "Thymother died in giving birth to thee; fiery-red hair, the mark of thesons of Typhon, grew around thy brow; thou becam'st a gloomy man.Misfortune pursued thee and robbed thee of a beloved wife and four ofthy children. The astrologers computed that even as I had been bornunder the fortunate sign of Amman, so thy birth had been watched overby the rise of the awful planet Seb. Thou..." But here Amasis broke off,for Psamtik, in the anguish produced by these fearful disclosures hadgiven way, and with sobs and groans, cried:
"Cease, cruel father! spare me at least the bitter words, that I am theonly son in Egypt who is hated by his father without cause!"
Amasis looked down on the wretched man who had sunk to the earth beforehim, his face hidden in the folds of his robe, and the father's wrathwas changed to compassion. He thought of Psamtik's mother, dead fortyyears before, and felt he had been cruel in inflicting this poisonouswound on her son's soul. It was the first time for years, that he hadbeen able to feel towards this cold strange man, as a father and acomforter. For the first time he saw tears in the cold eyes of his son,and could feel the joy of wiping them away. He seized the opportunityat once, and bending clown over the groaning form, kissed his forehead,raised him from the ground and said gently:
"Forgive my anger, my son! the words that have grieved thee came notfrom my heart, but were spoken in the haste of wrath. Many years hastthou angered me by thy coldness, hardness and obstinacy; to-day thouhast wounded me again in my most sacred feelings; this hurried me intoan excess of wrath. But now all is right between us. Our natures are sodiverse that our innermost feelings will never be one, but at least wecan act in concert for the future, and show forbearance one towards theother."
In silence Psamtik bowed down and kissed his father's robe "Not so,"exclaimed the latter; "rather let my lips receive thy kiss, as is meetand fitting between father and son! Thou needest not to think again ofthe evil dream I have related. Dreams are phantoms, and even if sentby the gods, the interpreters thereof are human and erring. Thy handtrembles still, thy cheeks are white as thy robe. I was hard towardsthee, harder than a father...."
"Harder than a stranger to strangers," interrupted his son. "Thou hastcrushed and broken me, and if till now my face has seldom worn asmile, from this day forward it can be naught but a mirror of my inwardmisery."
"Not so," said Amasis, laying his hand on his son's shoulder. "If Iwound, I can also heal. Tell me the dearest wish of thy heart, it shallbe granted thee!"
Psamtik's eyes flashed, his sallow cheeks glowed for a moment, and heanswered without consideration, though in a voice still trembling fromthe shock he had just received: "Deliver Phanes, my enemy, into mypower!"
The king remained a few moments in deep thought, then answered: "I knewwhat thou wouldst ask, and will fulfil thy
desire: but I would ratherthou hadst asked the half of my treasures. A thousand voices within warnme that I am about to do an unworthy deed and a ruinous--ruinous formyself, for thee, the kingdom and our house. Reflect before acting, andremember, whatever thou mayst meditate against Phanes, not a hair ofRhodopis' head shall be touched. Also, that the persecution of my poorfriend is to remain a secret from the Greeks. Where shall I find hisequal as a commander, an adviser and a companion? He is not yet in thypower, however, and I advise thee to remember, that though thou mayst beclever for an Egyptian, Phanes is a clever Greek. I will remind theetoo of thy solemn oath to renounce the grandchild of Rhodopis. Methinksvengeance is dearer to thee than love, and the amends I offer willtherefore be acceptable! As to Egypt, I repeat once again, she was nevermore flourishing than now; a fact which none dream of disputing, exceptthe priests, and those who retail their foolish words. And now give ear,if thou wouldst know the origin of Nitetis. Self-interest will enjoinsecrecy."
Psamtik listened eagerly to his father's communication, indicating hisgratitude at the conclusion by a warm pressure of the hand.
"Now farewell," said Amasis. "Forget not my words, and above all shed noblood! I will know nothing of what happens to Phanes, for I hate crueltyand would not be forced to stand in horror of my own son. But thou, thourejoicest! My poor Athenian, better were it for thee, hadst thou neverentered Egypt!"
Long after Psamtik had left, his father continued to pace the hall indeep thought. He was sorry he had yielded; it already seemed as if hesaw the bleeding Phanes lying massacred by the side of the dethronedHophra. "It is true, he could have worked our ruin," was the plea heoffered to the accuser within his own breast, and with these words,he raised his head, called his servants and left the apartment with asmiling countenance.
Had this sanguine man, this favorite of fortune, thus speedily quietedthe warning voice within, or was he strong enough to cloak his torturewith a smile?