e needed a
translator, whereas the Hieroglyphica seems to have been first rendered
into Greek by Philippus. The combination by which the author called
in Egyptian Horus (the son of Isis) is supposed to have been born in
Philae, where the cultus of the Egyptian heathen was longest practised,
and where some familiarity with hieroglyphics must have been preserved
to a late date, takes into due account the real state of affairs at the
period I have selected for my story.

GEORG EBERS.
October 1st, 1886.

BOOK 1.

CHAPTER I.

Half a lustrum had elapsed since Egypt had become subject to the
youthful power of the Arabs, which had risen with such unexampled vigor
and rapidity. It had fallen an easy prey, cheaply bought, into the
hands of a small, well-captained troop of Moslem warriors; and the fair
province, which so lately had been a jewel of the Byzantine Empire and
the most faithful foster-mother to Christianity, now owned the sway of
the Khalif Omar and saw the Crescent raised by the side of the Cross.

It was long since a hotter season had afflicted the land; and the Nile,
whose rising had been watched for on the Night of Dropping--the 17th of
June--with the usual festive preparations, had cheated the hopes of the
Egyptians, and instead of rising had shrunk narrower and still narrower
in its bed.--It was in this time of sore anxiety, on the 10th of July,
A.D. 643, that a caravan from the North reached Memphis.

It was but a small one; but its appearance in the decayed and deserted
city of the Pyramids--which had grown only lengthwise, like a huge
reed-leaf, since its breadth was confined between the Nile and the
Libyan Hills--attracted the gaze of the passers-by, though in former
years a Memphite would scarcely have thought it worth while to turn his
head to gaze at an interminable pile of wagons loaded with merchandise,
an imposing train of vehicles drawn by oxen, the flashing maniples of
the imperial cavalry, or an endless procession wending its way down the
five miles of high street.

The merchant who, riding a dromedary of the choicest breed, conducted
this caravan, was a lean Moslem of mature age, robed in soft silk. A
vast turban covered his small head and cast a shadow over his delicate
and venerable features.

The Egyptian guide who rode on a brisk little ass by his side, looked
up frequently and with evident pleasure at the merchant's face--not in
itself a handso