Lapis lazuli

“ Unless Sumer and Shinar are the same words, outside the Old Testament there is only one Shinar known to ancient geography. That was in Mesopotamia. The Greek geographers called it Singara (now Sinjar) , an oasis in the midst of deserts, and formed by an isolated mountain tract abounding in springs. It is already mentioned in the annals of the Egyptian conqueror Thothmes III. In his thirty-third year (B.C. 1470) , the king of Sangar sent him tribute consisting of lapis-lazuli "of Babylon," and of various objects carved out of it. ”

“ The larger part of the amulets used in ancient Egypt represented some living creature. The most usual type is the bull’s head, which was cut from carnelian, hematite, amazon stone, lapis lazuli, or quartz. Prehistoric Egyptian amulets representing the fly have been found; these were of slate, lapis lazuli and serpentine. In historic times gold was employed as the material. Other types occurring in prehistoric times are the hawk, of quartz or limestone; the serpent, of lapis lazuli or limestone ”

“ But Burna-Buriash does not trust entirely to the Egyptian's sense of gratitude for Babylon's support in the past. He reinforces his argument by a present of three manehs of lapis-lazuli, five yoke of horses and five wooden chariots. Lapis-lazuli and horses were the two most valuable exports from Babylon during the Kassite period, and they counterbalanced to some extent Egypt's almost inexhaustible supply of Nubian gold. ”

“ But my father wrote to them saying, “Cease speaking of an alliance with me. If you are hostile against the king of Egypt, my brother, and ally yourself with another, I will come and will plunder you for he is in alliance with me.” My father did not listen to them for the sake of your father. Now, concerning the Assyrians, my subjects, have I not written to you? If you love me you will not do business with them. Let them accomplish nothing. As a present I have sent to you three minas of beautiful lapis-lazuli, and five span of horses for five wooden chariots. ”

“ The great serpent is not of a type usual in Egyptian designs. The human-headed uraeus is seldom bearded; and the best example of such a monster is on an Ethiopian temple, where a great uraeus has human arms and a lion's head. The colours again repeat the favourite combination expressive of splendour—gold and lazuli. Though lazuli is very rare in early times, yet it certainly was known in the XIIth Dynasty, as shown by the forms of some beads of lazuli. The slaughter of asses in sacrifice is a very peculiar offering, and no sign of this is found in any representations or groups of offerings. ”

“ Lailí looked at him beseechingly with all her eyes, and trembled with age and eagerness; but this only frightened Majnún the more. “It is a Rakshas, a Rakshas!” he cried, and he ran quickly to the palace with the Wazír’s son; and as they ran away, Lailí disappeared into the jungle. They ran to King Dantál, and Majnún told him there was a Rakshas or a demon in the garden that had come to eat them. “What nonsense,” said his father. “Fancy two grown men being so frightened by an old ayah or a fakír! And if it had been a Rakshas, it would not have eaten you.” ”

“ In all these the lassie is bright, and good, and helpful; she forgets herself in her eagerness to help others. When she goes down the well after the unequal match against her step-sister in spinning bristles against flax; she steps tenderly over the hedge, milks the cow, shears the sheep, relieves the boughs of the apple-tree—all out of the natural goodness of her heart. When she is sent to fetch water from the well, she washes and brushes, and even kisses, the loathsome head; she believes what her enemies say, even to her own wrong and injury ”

“ Night pursued them with her horrors, and so they did not learn of Lazarus' doings in the desert, but the vision of the black on red was forever branded on their brain. Just as a beast with a splinter in its eye furiously rubs its muzzle with its paws, so they too foolishly rubbed their eyes, but what Lazarus had given was indelible, and Death alone could efface it. ”

“ Meanwhile Laili was living in the jungle where her husband had left her a little heap of ashes. As soon as Majnun had gone, the fakir had taken her ashes and made them quite clean, and then he had mixed clay and water with the ashes, and made the figure of a woman with them, and so Laili regained her human form, and Khuda sent life into it. But Laili had become once more a hideous old woman, with a long, long nose, and teeth like tusks; just such an old woman, excepting her teeth, as she had been when she came out of the Rohu fish ”

“ Then the lassie walked on a bit, but when she came just about where the sheep was, she heard an awful clatter beginning on the road behind her, and she didn’t know what to do, she was so scared and frightened; for she knew well enough it was the old witch who had thought better of it.
“Come hither to me, lassie,” said the Wether, “and I’ll help you. Hide yourself under my fleece, and then they’ll not see you; else they’ll take away the casket, and tear you to death.” ”

“ Togrukh or Balaban could have told the girl that the Cossack had a habit of never repeating an order; nor, once given, did he change the order. Experience had taught them the value of obeying Demid at once, and discussing the wherefore later. But Lali had come from a narrow world where her sisters were mistresses of numberless slaves. Slaves themselves, they often ruled the Moslem men through beguilement and flattery. ”

“ Lassie lifted up her head. "How do you mean?"
"There are two Lassies to me, dear,—the pretty, sweet-looking girl, and the Lassie who loves me. Most people confuse the two, and think them one and the same; I don't. No matter what happened to you, the Lassie whom I love could never alter—she is unchangeable. She is not subject to change; she doesn't belong to this world; she cannot die. And just as I feel about you, I feel about everybody. What I can see and touch in those I love is what I love least in them."
"Oh, Alva!" it was like a little moan—the girl's voice. ”

“ The rush of water and the creaking of the oars did not drown the voice of Lali. The song deepened, sounding the ring of weapons, the thudding of horses’ hoofs, and mellowed to a note of grief, dwindling so that long after she had ceased the warriors strained their ears to catch her voice.
The eyes of the ataman, Demid, sweeping the stretch of gray water, were moody. He was thinking of the steppe, the homeland of the Cossacks, and of another voice. So Ileana, the granddaughter of Rurik had sung to him when he was weary. ”

“ Laleli is a Turkish woman, who understands no other language but her own and Greek. She is very superstitious, and believes in all manner of charms and spells; for she has no ideas at all concerning Western science, except that it is all contrary to the Koran. I can talk the jargon of an old Hadji well enough, and besides I know something of medicine; very little, but enough to tell me whether she is absolutely in a dying state. It is a great compliment for the Sultan to send his private physician, and if she is in a conscious state she will be flattered and thrown off her guard. ”

“ At last the king and queen took into their palace a stranger lassie to rear up, that they might have her always with them, to love her if she did well, and scold her if she did wrong, like their own child.
So one day the little lassie whom they had taken as their own, ran down into the palace yard, and was playing with a gold apple. Just then an old beggar wife came by, who had a little girl with her, and it wasn’t long before the little lassie and the beggar’s bairn were great friends, and began to play together, and to toss the gold apple about between them. ”

“ Whenever any one entered or left the chamber the negro moved his head a little and looked at Lascaris. But he had grown accustomed to the Georgian and he did not move as she brushed by him, merely breathing deep, as a dog does when half asleep.
She filled the emperor's goblet from a jar brought by a little deaf-mute girl, and at the same time the domastikos, who was the chamberlain of the palace, offered her the tray with Lascaris' supper. The sick man had asked for seasoned food, and the tray held a dish of rice curry. ”

“ Laili said, "Oh, that is quite easy. Khuda will make me a young girl again. In two days' time you must go into the garden, and there you will see a beautiful fruit. You must gather it and bring it into your room and cut it open yourself very gently, and you must not open it when your father or anybody else is with you, but when you are quite alone; for I shall be in the fruit quite naked, without any clothes at all on." In the morning Laili took her little dog's form, and disappeared in the garden.
Prince Majnun told all this to his father, who told him to do all the old woman had bidden him. ”

“ Does a clipped hawk fly back to the hunter? The daughter of Macari is not one in heart with the Moslems; in her veins is the blood of her people. Does the noble lord think that now, when she is restored to us, she will be off at once to that demon’s place, Aleppo?”
The noble lord looked at Ibnol Hammamgi thoughtfully. To tell the truth he had not reflected much upon Lali. The singing girl, that evening, had assured him that she would journey with the Cossacks to the castle of Sidi Ahmad, and Demid had found it a fruitless task to try to reason out why a woman—Lali especially—did things. ”

“ Now we will see why ’tis call’d Lapponia and Lappia, the Etymology of which words is not yet agreed upon by the Learned. Ziegler thinks they were named so by the Germans, from the dulness and stupidity of the people, which the word Lappi signifies amongst them; but this seems improbable, since this Country is but of late known to the Germans, and none of their antient Writers make any mention of Lappia. Moreover, the Finlanders, Swedes and Russians, who differ much in their language from one another, as well as from the Germans, call it all by the same name ”

“ So things went on for a while, the lassie having everything she wanted. But you must know, that no human being did she see from morning till night, only the White Bear could she talk to, and she did not know what man or monster it might be who came to sleep in her room by night. At last she began to be silent and sorrowful and would neither eat nor drink.
One day the White Bear came to her and said: "Lassie, why are you so sorrowful? This castle and all that is in it are yours, the silver bell will give you anything that you wish. ”

“ Well, it is altogether a very mysterious and unpleasant thing to have happened in this old house, and my pretty lassie, I see, does not forget it. She seems to mope, and to get a bit melancholy now and then. I fancy her eyes are not so bright as they used to be; she doesn't talk so much, or sing so much about the house. ”

“ Lali had given utterance to what was in her heart, knowing that her next act would make her defenseless before the rage of the pasha. Her voice, full and clear as a clarion, echoed in the tomb.
“Away Demid! Nine are here with weapons. Away, while there is time!”
The scar on Sidi Ahmad’s cheek grew livid and his hand groped for his sword hilt. And then he crouched as if struck. Something thudded against the wall across the chamber. Dust and fragments of brick flew out. The bricks of the wall moved and fell inward under a series of shocks. A black opening appeared where they had been. ”

“ The door was open, and the afternoon light fell upon no more pleasant sight than the bright shapely Highland lassie, whose sleeves were tucked up to the elbow, her dress pinned behind, while her hands were deftly shaping butter with the aid of a pair of wooden 'clatters' into tempting rounded pats, each pat being dropped, by a quick graceful turn of her skilful hands, into a dish of clear spring-water beside her. ”

“ They are the nomads of Lapland, and their mode of life is entirely pastoral. As the Arabs with their flocks move from one oasis to another, or the Tartars with their cattle, so the Lapps migrate from place to place, compelled by the [199] necessity of finding sustenance for their herds of reindeer. The mosses and lichens on which these animals feed are soon exhausted, and some time elapses before the half-frozen soil replaces them. The same cause operates to prevent the Lapps from assembling in large communities. Seldom more than three, four, or five families encamp in the same neighbourhood. ”

“ So the angel came to Laili again as a fakir and carried her to King Dantal's garden. "Now," he said, "it is Khuda's command that you stay here till Prince Majnun comes to walk in the garden, and then you may show yourself to him. But you must not speak to him, if he is afraid of you; and should he be afraid of you, you will the next day become a little white dog." He then told her what she must do as a little dog to regain her human form.
Laili stayed in the garden, hidden in the tall grass, till Prince Majnun and Husain Mahamat came to walk in the garden. ”

“ My lassie wears upon her breast
No knot of ribbon gay,
Forget-me-nots she loves the best,
Plucked at the dawn of day.
My lassie’s feet like two white mice
Go slipping through the grass,
And all the dew-drops think them nice,
And kiss them as they pass.
The satin shoe with buckle drest
Is richer, it may be,
But if the truth must be confest,
Not half so good to see.
My lassie’s face is fair to see,
My lassie’s eyes are blue,
And always do they tell to me
Her heart is fond and true. ”

“ So after they had lived together a while, the lassie was to have a child, and when the child came to be born the Prince set a strong watch round her; but at the birth one and all fell into a deep sleep, and her foster-mother came, cut the babe on its little finger, and smeared the queen's mouth with the blood ”