voice as sonorous as a brazen trumpet, the victories of the Pharaoh; he
related the fortunes of the Pharaoh's battles, announced the number of
captives and of war chariots taken from the enemy, the amount of the
booty, the measures of gold-dust, the elephants' tusks, the
ostrich-plumes, the quantities of balsamic gum, the giraffes, lions,
panthers, and other rare animals. He named the barbaric chiefs who had
been slain by the javelins of His Majesty the Almighty Aroeris,
favourite of the gods. At each proclamation the people uttered a mighty
shout, and from the top of the revetment banks threw down upon the
conqueror's pathway long, green palm-branches.

At last the Pharaoh appeared. Priests, who turned and faced him at
regular intervals, swung their censers, after having cast incense upon
the coals lighted in a little bronze cup which was held by a hand at the
end of a sort of sceptre topped by a sacred animal's head. They marched
respectfully backwards while the scented blue smoke rose to the nostrils
of the triumphant sovereign, apparently as indifferent to these honours
as if he were a god of bronze or basalt.

Twelve oeris, or military chiefs, their heads covered with a light
helmet surmounted by an ostrich-plume, bare to the belt, their loins
wrapped in a loin cloth of stiff folds, wearing their buckler hanging
from their belt, supported a sort of dais on which rested the throne of
the Pharaoh. This was a chair with feet and arms formed of lions, with a
high back provided with a cushion that fell over it, and adorned on its
sides with a network of rose and blue flowers. The feet, the arms, and
the edges of the throne were gilded, while brilliant colours filled the
places left empty. On either side of the litter four fan-bearers waved
huge feather fans, semicircular in form, carried at the end of long,
gilded handles. Two priests bore a huge cornucopia richly ornamented,
whence fell quantities of giant lotus-flowers.

The Pharaoh wore a helmet shaped like a mitre and cut out around the
ears, where it fell over the neck by way of a protection. On the blue
ground of the helmet sparkled innumerable dots like birds' eyes, formed
of three circles, black, white, and red. It was adorned with scarlet and
yellow lines, and the symbolic uraeus snake, twisting its golden scales
on the fore part, rose and swelled above the royal brow. Two long,
purple, fluted lappets fell upon his shoulders and completed this
majestic head-d