meaning of the
words. I never saw the congregation more devout, than when the beautiful
and deeply-felt song of praise was sung at the feast of the stairs."

[A particularly solemn festival in honor of Amon-Chem, held in the
temple of Medinet-Abu.]

"Pentaur was always thy favorite," said the former speaker. "Thou
wouldst not permit in any one else many things that are allowed to
him. His hymns are nevertheless to me and to many others a dangerous
performance; and canst thou dispute the fact that we have grounds for
grave anxiety, and that things happen and circumstances grow up around
us which hinder us, and at last may perhaps crush us, if we do not,
while there is yet time, inflexibly oppose them?"

"Thou bringest sand to the desert, and sugar to sprinkle over honey,"
exclaimed Gagabu, and his lips began to twitch. "Nothing is now as it
ought to be, and there will be a hard battle to fight; not with the
sword, but with this--and this." And the impatient man touched his
forehead and his lips. "And who is there more competent than my
disciple? There is the champion of our cause, a second cap of Hor, that
overthrew the evil one with winged sunbeams, and you come and would
clip his wings and blunt his claws! Alas, alas, my lords! will you
never understand that a lion roars louder than a cat, and the sun shines
brighter than an oil-lamp? Let Pentuar alone, I say; or you will do as
the man did, who, for fear of the toothache, had his sound teeth drawn.
Alas, alas, in the years to come we shall have to bite deep into
the flesh, till the blood flows, if we wish to escape being eaten up
ourselves!"

"The enemy is not unknown to us also," said the elder priest from
Chennu, "although we, on the remote southern frontier of the kingdom,
have escaped many evils that in the north have eaten into our body like
a cancer. Here foreigners are now hardly looked upon at all as
unclean and devilish."--["Typhonisch," belonging to Typhon or
Seth.--Translator.]

"Hardly?" exclaimed the chief of the haruspices; "they are invited,
caressed, and honored. Like dust, when the simoon blows through the
chinks of a wooden house, they crowd into the houses and temples, taint
our manners and language;

[At no period Egyptian writers use more Semitic words than during
the reigns of Rameses II. and his son Mernephtah.]

nay, on the throne of the successors of Ra sits a descendant--"

"Presumptuous man!" cried the voice of the high