ty on Ptah

The magnificent abundance of the seventh great harvest, which ripened
late in the year of our arrival, attracted a multitude of both men and
animals from all the out-lying countries into Kem to assist in gathering
it, and many of them remained to spend their gains in the luxuries of
the great city. It was an unparalleled period of prosperity and plenty;
and though the rich wasted everything with a careless hand, the poor
were better provided for than they had ever been.

Like an endless caravan Hotep's mules trailed across the city day by
day, and emptied their cargoes into the bottomless pits of the Gnomons.
And Hotep's thousand cattle tramped his threshing-floors during the long
winter, and until the later nightly snows signalled the coming of a
tardy spring; and yet the patient mules streamed through the city, and
wore deeper paths into the sides of the Gnomons, until one by one the
great chambers were filled and sealed.

Late in the spring the toiling cattle left the threshing-floors, and
traversed the fields in long procession, two and two, lashed together by
a bar across the horns instead of a yoke, and dragging heavy stone
ploughs slowly after them to prepare the soil for a new planting. But
while the whole left bank of the Nasr-Nil swarmed with Hotep's patient
teams and their busy drivers, the right bank was deserted, idle, and
lifeless. Every one wondered why the Pharaoh's planting was being
delayed; no one knew why the Pharaoh's men and cattle were idle; and the
old men shook their heads and muttered that the river would overflow its
banks long before the Pharaoh's seed was in. After a while Zaphnath sent
for me, and when I came before him he said,--

"The Pharaoh is sick with the plenty of the land, weary of the sight of
grain-laden mules and ploughing cattle, and so cumbered about with
mountains of wheat that he desireth not to plant his fields. Thou art
not one to see his lands lie idle. If thou hast aught with which to
tempt him, I can persuade him to let unto thee all his land and to hire
unto thee all his men and mules and cattle. For hath he not acquired all
his riches in seven years' harvests? and in another seven thou mayest be
as rich as he."

"Mayhap, O Zaphnath, the coming seven years may not be as plenteous as
the last seven have been; but, in any case, I have no more gold with
which to tempt the Pharaoh, having parted with all of it in a bad
bargain with Hotep, whom thou knowes