e to me, for I was hunted
down by The Summit of the West, the brave one among all the gods and all
the goddesses of the city; so I would say to all the miserable sinners
among the people of the necropolis: 'Give heed to The Summit, for there
is a lion in The Summit, and she strikes as strikes a spell-casting
Lion, and she pursues him who sins against her! 'I invoked then my
mistress, and I felt that she flew to me like a pleasant breeze;
she placed herself upon me, and this made me recognise her hand, and
appeased she returned to me, and she delivered me from suffering, for
she is my life, The Summit of the West, when she is appeased, and she
ought to be invoked!'" There were many sinners, we may believe, among
that ignorant and superstitious population, but the governors of Thebes
did not put their confidence in the local deities alone to keep them
within bounds, and to prevent their evil deeds; commissioners, with the
help of a detachment of Mazaiu, were an additional means of conducting
them into the right way. They had, in this respect, a hard work to
accomplish, for every day brought with it its contingent of crimes,
which they had to follow up, and secure the punishment of the authors.
Nsisuamon came to inform them that the workman Nakhtummaut and his
companions had stolen into his house, and robbed him of three large
loaves, eight cakes, and some pastry; they had also drunk a jar of beer,
and poured out from pure malice the oil which they could not carry
away with them. Panibi had met the wife of a comrade alone near an
out-of-the-way tomb, and had taken advantage of her notwithstanding her
cries; this, moreover, was not the first offence of the culprit, for
several young girls had previously been victims of his brutality, and
had not ventured up to this time to complain of him on account of the
terror with which he inspired the neighbourhood. Crimes against the dead
were always common; every penniless fellow knew what quantities of gold
and jewels had been entombed with the departed, and these treasures,
scattered around them at only a few feet from the surface of the ground,
presented to them a constant temptation to which they often succumbed.
Some were not disposed to have accomplices, while others associated
together, and, having purchased at a serious cost the connivance of the
custodians, set boldly to work on tombs both recent and ancient. Not
content with stealing the funerary furniture, which they dispose