H. R. Hall

“ Then arose one of the folk, an old man that had understanding, and he said: ‘Are not the spirits even as we? Do we abide always in one house? Shall not the spirits desire to leave their old dwelling-place and seek a new one? Do we not know that the deer on the hills abide now in one place and now in another: and the wild geese, do they not fly from one place to another? and do not the bees go forth in bands when the time is come for them to seek a new resting-place? So do the spirits of the water. They seek a new place to dwell in. ”

“ We see the evidence of lavish wealth in the furniture of the tomb of Iuaa and Tuaa. Yet, fine as are many of these gold-overlaid and overladen objects of the XVIIIth Dynasty, they have neither the good taste nor the charm of the beautiful jewels from the XIIth Dynasty tombs at Dashûr. It is mere vulgar wealth. There is too much gold thrown about. “For gold is as water in thy land.” In three hundred years’ time Egypt was to know what poverty meant, when the poor priest-kings of the XXIst Dynasty could hardly keep body and soul together and make a comparatively decent show as Pharaohs of Egypt. ”

“ The Serapeum itself is lit with electricity, and in the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes nothing disturbs the silence but the steady thumping pulsation of the dynamo-engine which lights the ancient sepulchres of the Pharaohs. Thus do modern ideas and inventions help us to see and so to understand better the works of ancient Egypt. ”

“ When Grim was but a little more than a babe, he took a spear and killed a wolf-cub that his father had brought into the hut alive. And it was said of him, by them that were wise among the folk, that he would live to be a slayer of beasts.
“Now when he was grown a tall youth, it befell one day that he went forth into the woods to kill meat. He carried his bow and arrows at his back, and in his hand a spear. By his side hung his trusty axe, a stone of the best. So he went, armed like a man, but without the wit of a man, and heeding naught. ”

“ All these things, which have done so much to reconstitute for us the history of the earliest period of the Egyptian monarchy, were placed under the care of the dead slaves whose bodies were buried round the empty tomb-chamber of their royal master in Abydos.
The killing and entombment of the royal servants is of the highest anthropological interest, for it throws a vivid light upon the manners of the time. It shows the primeval Egyptians as a semi-barbaric people of childishly simple ways of thought. The king was dead. For all his kingship he was a man, and no man was immortal in this world. ”

“ Tig liked the summer-time best. It was much better fun playing in the forest near the huts and lying basking in the hot sun than crawling about in the dark, smoky winter pit-hut. He used to climb about in the trees, even when he was quite little. While his mother was busy with her work out-of-doors, she used to put him up into a tree and let him play about among the branches by himself; and sometimes she even made a sort of little crib for him with bands of hide, and left him to sleep safe and sound in a big oak tree. ”

“ At last, on the day that the cairn was finished, the men of the village met together in council to choose one to be chief in the place of Caerig. Then Arsan, the old man, stood up and said:
“Garff is the man among us who is fittest to be our chief; for he is an able man and skilful, whether for hunting or for battle; and he is a man wise in council and the master of many cattle. Shall we not do well to choose him to be our chief?” ”

“ In the Saïte period Thebes had declined greatly in power as well as in influence, and all its traditions were anathema to the leading people of the time, although not of course in Akhunaten’s sense.
With the Saïte period we seem almost to have retraced our steps and to have reentered the age of the Pyramid Builders. All the pomp and glory of Thothmes, Amenhetep, and Ramses were gone. The days of imperial Egypt were over, and the minds of men, sickened of foreign war, turned for peace and quietness to the simpler ideals of the IVth and Vth Dynasties. ”

“ He can spy the deer when they are many paces distant among the fern, where I should see naught. But can he see, as I can see, into the heart of the stone, and can he handle it aright to shape an arrow or an axe? Nay, he cannot. Now [84] I was born to love the good stones, and these my sons follow after me. It is not born in thee to handle stones: thou wilt grow up to be a hunter, like thy father.”
“I should like to be a spearmaker, and make spears and arrows like these of yours,” said Tig. ”

“ The most ancient remains at Thebes were discovered by Mr. Newberry in the shape of two tombs of the VIth Dynasty, cut upon the face of the well-known hill of Shêkh Abd el-Kûrna, on the west bank of the Nile opposite Luxor. Every winter traveller to Egypt knows, well the ride from the sandy shore opposite the Luxor temple, along the narrow pathway between the gardens and the canal, across the bridges and over the cultivated land to the Ramesseum, behind which rises Shêkh Abd el-Kûrna, with its countless tombs, ranged in serried rows along the scarred and scarped face of the hill. ”

“ They sat round the fire and ate of the dried meat and corn-cake that they had with them, and then lay down to sleep. The men watched by turns to keep the fire up; for so long as there was a good blaze they need not fear the attack of wild beasts. Tig lay close beside his father; and when one of the men wakened Garff to take his turn of the watch, Tig wakened too, and saw the darkness all about them and the sparks flying upward towards the stars, and he heard the wind rushing in the tops of the trees around them, and far away the howling of the wolves hunting through the night. ”

“ They have shed blood in E-engura, the temple of the goddess Ninâ, and they have carried away the silver and the precious stones therefrom! They have shed blood in Sag..., the temple of Amageshtin, and the silver and the precious stones of Amageshtin have they carried away! They have removed the grain from Ginarbaniru, the field of the god Ningirsu, so much of it as was under cultivation! The men of Gishkhu, by the despoiling of Shirpurla, have committed a transgression against the god Ningirsu! The power that is come unto them, from them shall be taken away! ”

“ But there were many things that Tig learned from his mother out-of-doors; for Gofa used to do a great deal of work with the other women, preparing the ground for corn and reaping the crops at harvest time; and Tig used to go with his mother to the fields, or to the river when she went to cut osiers for making baskets, or into the woods to gather firewood. He learned to be always on the look-out; always to listen for every sound—even so little a noise as the snapping of a twig ”

“ We have, in fact, reached the end of the Old Kingdom at Sakkâra; at Dashûr begin the sepulchres of the Middle Kingdom. Pyramids are still built, but they are not always of stone; brick is used, usually with stone in the interior. The general effect of these brick pyramids, when new, must have been indistinguishable from that of the stone ones, and even now, when it has become half-ruined, such a great brick pyramid as that of Usertsen (Senusret) III at Dashûr is not without impressiveness. After all, there is no reason why a brick building should be less admirable than a stone one. ”

“ TIG’S father, Garff, was one of the chief men of the village. He was very strong and a clever hunter, and the people used to look to him to take the lead in the big hunting expeditions. He was a rich man, too; but that does not mean that he had much money, because he had no money at all. Nobody had money in those times: they had cattle instead, and if a man had to pay a great deal to another man, he gave a cow or a bullock; but if he had to pay only a little, he gave a joint of meat, perhaps, or a skin or part of a skin, or a basket of nuts, or a jar of corn, or a piece of honeycomb. ”

“ He is nearly at the summit of a high mountain, and up its steep sides, along paths through the trees which clothe the mountain, climb his allies and warriors bearing standards and weapons. The king’s enemies are represented suing for mercy as they turn to fly before him. One grasps a broken spear, while another, crouching before the king, has been smitten in the throat by an arrow from the king’s bow. On the plain surface of the stele above the king’s head may be seen traces of an inscription of Narâm-Sin engraved in three columns in the archaic characters of his period. ”

“ Each man had thrown down his shield and each grasped his axe with both hands. Garff’s weapon was a battle-axe of stone, heavy and strong, but not so keen as the bronze axe of his enemy and not so deadly, unless he could get in a sweeping blow. The chief of the Warriors was taller than Garff, but not stronger, though Garff had the longer arms and was the more active of the two; also the chief had been wounded in the thigh by an arrow, and although he had tugged it out, he could not stop the flow of blood. ”

“ With these new discoveries of Christian Egypt our work reaches its fitting close. The frontier which divides the ancient from the modern world has almost been crossed. We look back from the monastery of Bâwît down a long vista of new discoveries until, four thousand years before, we see again the Great Heads coming to the Tomb of Den, Narmer inspecting the bodies of the dead Northerners, and, far away in Babylonia, Narâm-Sin crossing the mountains of the East to conquer Elam, or leading his allies against the prince of Sinai. ”

“ WHILE they were reading about Gofa making the pots, Dick thought he would like to try his hand at this sort of work; so, after the reading, when they went out, he got a trug and a trowel from the tool-shed and said that he should go and look for some clay.
“David and I are going fishing,” said Joe; “and when we have caught some fish, we are going to make a fire up at the hut and cook them. If you were a hunter, you would come too; making pottery is women’s work.” ”

“ Thus, if the owner of a female slave had begotten children by her he could not use her as the payment for a debt, and in the event of his having done so he was obliged to ransom her by paying the original amount of the debt in money. It was also possible for a male slave, whether owned by a member of the upper or of the middle class, to marry a free woman, and if he did so, his children were free and did not become the property of his master. ”

“ And their chief boasted and said that his people are called the Warriors, and that warriors they be; that they are mightier than we, and are able to drive us into the hills and take away all our cattle, and take also our women and our young men to be their slaves. And their chief showed us his axe, the like of which we have never seen, for it was yellow and shining and of very great sharpness, and he said that with this axe he hath slain above threescore men. Then he sent us away, and we departed and came to our own village again, and brought these woeful tidings to our people. ”