et behind thee
all cares; think only upon gladness, until that day
cometh whereon thou shalt go down to the land which
loveth silence."

A Ptolemaic inscription quoted more fully towards the end of this
chapter reads: "Follow thy desire by night and by day. Put not care
within thy heart."

The ancient Egyptian peasants, like their modern descendants, were
fatalists, and a happy carelessness seems to have softened the
strenuousness of their daily tasks. The peasants of the present day in
Egypt so lack the initiative to develop the scope of their industries
that their life cannot be said to be strenuous. In whatever work they
undertake, however, they show a wonderful degree of cheerfulness, and a
fine disregard for misfortune. Their forefathers, similarly, went
through their labours with a song upon their lips. In the tombs at
Sakkara, dating from the Old Empire, there are scenes representing
flocks of goats treading in the seed on the newly-sown ground, and the
inscriptions give the song which the goat-herds sing:--

"The goat-herd is in the water with the fishes,--
He speaks with the _nar_-fish, he talks with the pike;
From the west is your goat-herd; your goat-herd is from the west."

The meaning of the words is not known, of course, but the song seems to
have been a popular one. A more comprehensible ditty is that sung to the
oxen by their driver, which dates from the New Empire:--

"Thresh out for yourselves, ye oxen, thresh out for yourselves.
Thresh out the straw for your food, and the grain for your masters.
Do not rest yourselves, for it is cool to-day."

Some of the love-songs have been preserved from destruction, and these
throw much light upon the subject of the Egyptian temperament. A number
of songs, supposed to have been sung by a girl to her lover, form
themselves into a collection entitled "The beautiful and gladsome songs
of thy sister, whom thy heart loves, as she walks in the fields." The
girl is supposed to belong to the peasant class, and most of the verses
are sung whilst she is at her daily occupation of snaring wild duck in
the marshes. One must imagine the songs warbled without any particular
refrain, just as in the case of the modern Egyptians, who pour out their
ancient tales of love and adventure in a series of bird-like cadences,
full-throated, and often wonderfully melodious. A peculiar sweetness and
tenderness will be noticed in the followin