Nile to
Thebes, and this was regarded as an evil omen, for from the south-west
comes the wind that enfeebles the energy of men--the fatal simoon.

In the court of the pattern-house stood several groups of citizens
from Thebes, gathered round different individuals, to whom they were
expressing their sympathy. A new-comer, the superintendent of the
victims of the temple of Anion, who seemed to be known to many and was
greeted with respect, announced, even before he went to condole with
Rui's widow, in a tone full of horror at what had happened, that an
omen, significant of the greatest misfortune, had occurred in Thebes, in
a spot no less sacred than the very temple of Anion himself.

Many inquisitive listeners stood round him while he related that the
Regent Ani, in his joy at the victory of his troops in Ethiopia, had
distributed wine with a lavish hand to the garrison of Thebes, and also
to the watchmen of the temple of Anion, and that, while the people were
carousing, wolves

[Wolves have now disappeared from Egypt; they were sacred animals,
and were worshipped and buried at Lykopolis, the present Siut, where
mummies of wolves have been found. Herodotus says that if a wolf
was found dead he was buried, and Aelian states that the herb
Lykoktonon, which was poisonous to wolves, might on no account be
brought into the city, where they were held sacred. The wolf
numbered among the sacral animals is the canis lupaster, which
exists in Egypt at the present day. Besides this species there are
three varieties of wild dogs, the jackal, fox, and fenek, canis
cerda.]

had broken into the stable of the sacred rams. Some were killed, but the
noblest ram, which Rameses himself had sent as a gift from Mendes when
he set out for the war--the magnificent beast which Amon had chosen as
the tenement of his spirit, was found, torn in pieces, by the soldiers,
who immediately terrified the whole city with the news. At the same hour
news had come from Memphis that the sacred bull Apis was dead.

All the people who had collected round the priest, broke out into a
far-sounding cry of woe, in which he himself and Rui's widow vehemently
joined.

The buyers and functionaries rushed out of the pattern-room, and from
the mummy-house the taricheutes, paraschites and assistants; the
weavers left their looms, and all, as soon as they had learned what had
happened, took part in the lamentations, howling and wailin