Now, like Joseph himself, you are reassured as to the particular kind of man this governor was into whose hands Petepre had given him He was a man of peculiarly even and pleasing temper, and not for nothing has our all-illuminating narrative been in so little haste to take the spotlight from his undeniably stoutish figure, but has let it rest long enough upon him for the reader to get a clear picture of  his hitherto unknown personality. And this for the reason that he has a not insignificant part, again very little known, to play in the tale which is here being retold with all possible correctness and veri-similitude. The fact is that after Mai Sachme had been Joseph's su-perior and task master for some years, he continued for a long time at his side and bore a part in the stage management of great and glorious events, as we shall soon hear - and may the Muses strengthen me in the act of narration.
      All this only in passing. But in speaking of the governor of the prison, the tradition uses the same formula applied to Potipar that he "took nothing on himself,"so that Joseph was soon responsible for all that happened in his second pit. We must pause on this tradition and interpret it aright; for it has not at all the meaning it had in the case of the sun-courtier and consecrated mountain of flesh who "took nothing on himself" simply because his whole being was nominal and titular; because he stood outside humanity and in a straitness of existence without prospect of change, remote from real-ity, an existence of the purest form. Whereas Mai-Sachme was a perfectly competent man, warmly if placidly interested in any number of things, particularly in people. He was a sedulous physician, who rose early every morning to inspect the sol-diers and convicts in his sick-bay. His workroom, in a well-guarded spot in the citadel tower of Zawi-Re, was a perfect laboratory, equipped with a herbarium, with mortars and pestles, phials and oint-  

/ Page 873  /

ment-pots tubes and stills."
"...It was a good thing the captain took these matters on himself al-though as a soldier they were less his province than that of his part-ner at draughts, the priest of Wepwet. But the latter's knowledge of such physical matters was confined to the inspection and ritual slaughtering of  the sacrificial animals, and his methods of  healing were too dependant on charms and phylacteries - though of course these too were useful in there place,..."
"...For this purpose the chaplain had a cobra which he kept in a basket and by pressure on the neck could turn into a magic wand. His successes with the cobra sometimes inspired Mai-Sachme to borrow the creature. But on the whole the governor had the settled conviction that just magic by itself as a sufficing principle was seldom able to pull it off ; it needed to be permeated and propped up by the grosser methods of profane knowledge through which it could produce its effect".

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"...Probably there was always a trifle of "magic" to help out the medi-cines and defeat the insidious demon; but it consisted  not so much in texts for application of the cobra wand as in the emanation from Mai-Sachme's impertable personality, which worked wonders of soothing on the patient, so that he was no longer frightened by his illness, that always having a bad effect."

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"...So the patient lay and looked with equanimity towards healing and death. For this Mai-chme taught them by his own attitude not to be afraid and even when a man's face was already corpse-colour, his hands in their relaxed pose still expressed his doctor's teaching.Quietly, com-prehendingly, with lifted brows and parched lips he lay, looking for-ward to the life after death.
        So the lazaret was pervaded by serenity and absence of fear. Joseph sometimes entered it as the governor's right hand and even lent a hand, for he was soon transferred from the quarry to inside service The words: The governor of the prison committed to Joseph's hand all the prisoners that were in the prison, and whatsoever they did there he was the doer of it," are to be understood as meaning that Potiphar's former house steward, some six months after he entered Zawi-Re, had become, without any special title or promotion, the head manager and provisioner of the whole fortress."  
"...He was accountable to the governor only, to that easy-going man with whom from the very beginning he had got on so well and continued to get on better and better.
      For Mai-Sachme had learned that the words in which Joseph answered him at the first hearing had been uttered in very truth: the ancient, dramatic formula of self-revelation which had startled his phlegmatic soul..."
"Vague and undefined too was Mai-Sachme's feeling that Joseph had uttered the truth in his self-revelation. He could not have said what was meant by the "he" in the always portentous formula "I am he"; he did not even know
that he would not have known what it meant, because he had never found it desirable or necessary to consider the point."

Page 876

" He may be allowed to go his placid way and limit himself, though with a modicum of trepidation, to feeling, faith, and divina-tion. Our source has it that the Lord was with Joseph and gave him to find favour in the sight of the keeper of the prison. This "and" might be interpreted to mean that the favour which God showed to the son of Rachel consisted precisely in the kindliness his taskmaster conceived for him. But favour and kindliness are not precisely the same thing. It was not that God showed to Joseph the favour of mak-ing the captains mind favourable to him. The sympathy and con-fidence - in a word, the trust - which Joseph's appearance and behaviour inspired in the prison-keeper flowed rather from the unerr-ing instinct of a good man for the divine favour - that is for the divine itself - which rested upon this convicts head. For it is in-deed the mark of a good man that he is wise enough to percieve and reverence the divine. Here goodness and wisdom lie so close together they actually seem to be the same.
     What, then, did Mai-Sachme take Joseph for? For something right and proper, for the right and expected one, for the bringer of the new time. At first, only in the limited sense that this man convicted of an interesting crime and sent down to the humdrum hole where it had been the captain's lot to do service for years, and who knows how much longer, brought with him a definite break in the monotony. But when the commandant of Zawi-Re so sharply condemned and rejected any confusion between phrase and reality, his strictness may have sprung from his own involvement in that very confusion; indeed if he did not take care, he might actually find himself guilty of mix-ing up the literal and figuritive. In other words, such faint stir-rings, associations, intuitions as Joseph's traits called up were enough to make the governor round them out into full reality; which in Jos-eph's case meant the manifestation of the expected one, the bringer of salvation, who comes to end the reign of the old and monotonous and to usher in a new epoch amid the rejoicing of all humanity. But about this figure which Joseph suggested floated the nimbus of the divine; and in that again is inherant the temptation to mix up the meta-phorical and the actual, the quality with that from which the quality is derived. But is that such a misguided temptation? Where the divine is, there is God. There is as Mai-Sachme would have put it, if he ever did put anything, instead of divining and believing it a god; in a disguise, of course, which outwardly and indeed mentally is to be respected, even though as a disguise it shows through, so to speak, and is not very convincing, because it is itself so very lovely and well-favoured. Mai-Sachme could not have been a child of the black earth without knowing that there are images of God, breathing images of the Deity, which must be distinguished from the inanimate ones and  

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honoured as living images of God, like Hapi the bull of Menfe and like Pharaoh himself in the horizon of his palace. The governor's knowledge of this fact did contribute not a little to shape his specu-lations about Joseph's nature and appearance - and we knew of course that, for his part, Joseph was not precisely keen on checking such speculations but on the contrary rather enjoyed making people sit up.
     "For the office and the book-keeping Joseph's presence was a perfect blessing."
"...And here Joseph proved to be the long-desired indeed, the bringer of change, the man of the  "I am he."
"...Joseph saw to it that regular reports and accounts went off to the capital, where the authorities read them with pleasure. In his hand the staff of office became a cobra-snake stiffened to a magic wand."
"...In short, Joseph had not betrayed the captain in saying: "I am he."  

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"... Then there was Joseph's own adventure which had brought him down to the prison. His affair with the Sun-courtier's wife profoundly engaged Mai-Sachme's literary sympathies, and Joseph told him the whole story, taking care of course, to spare the afflicted woman and not to minimize his own sins. These he described as being of the same nature as the ones he had earlier been guilty of against his own brothers and so against his father the shepherd king. So step by step he was brought back to the tale of his youth and origins; the cap-tain's shrewd brown eyes got a strange and pregnant dissolving view into the backgrounds of this phenomenon, his aide the convict Osarsiph. Mai Sach-me liked the fantastic name, obviously a made-up allusive combination. He spoke it feelingly like the good man he was, never taking it for the newcomer's own but rather for a disguise or an epithet,or a circumlocution of the "I am he."  
"...The days went on they multiplied, soon almost a year had gone round since Rachel's first born came to Zawi-Re. Then there befell something in the prison , part of a series of important events in the great world. Not immediately, but after some lapse of time, this happening in the prison was to have extraordinary results and produce great changes for Joseph and for his friend and taskmaster, Mai Sachme.

"One day, that is, Joseph betook himself, at his usual early hour to the governor's tower, with some business papers for his chief's ap-proval. The scene was always much like what happened between Petepre and the old steward Mont-kaw, and had the same ending:"Very good, very good, my friend." This time Mai-Sachme did not

Page 879 /  

even look at the accounts, waving them away with his hand. His brows were even higher than usual, his lips more parted; it was plain that he was taken up with a particular ocurrence, and within the limits of his phlegm wrought up.
"Another time Osarsiph," he said, referring to the papers. "Now is not the moment. Let me tell you, in my prison things are not as they were yesterday and the day before. Something has happened, it hap-pened before daybreak, very quietly, under special and secret orders. There has been a delivery of prisoners, a most embarrassing one. Two persons have arrived under cover of darkness, for temporary arrest and safe-keeping - not ordinary persons, I mean they are very highly placed, or they were and may be again, but just now they have come down in the world. You have taken a fall yourself; but theirs is worse because they stood much higher. Listen while I tell you, but better not ask for details."
    "But who are they?" asked Joseph all the same.
    "Their names are Mesedsu-Re and Bin-em-Wese answered the governor with reserve.
    "Hark to that!" cried Joseph. What sort of names are those? !" People don't have such names
    "He had good ground for surprise, for Mesedu-Re meant hateful to the Sun-god" and Bin-em Wese "Evil in Thebes." Those would have been strange parents who gave their sons such names!
     The captain mulled about with some sort of decoction, without looking at Joseph.
    "I thought," he said, "you knew that people are not necessarily named what they call themselves or are temporarily called. Circumstances can make names. Re himself changes his according to his cir-cumstances. These gentleman are called as I have called them, in their papers and the orders I recieved about them, Those are their names in the minutes of the action which will be brought against them, and they call themselves so according to their circumstances. You will not want to know more about it than that."
     Joseph quickly considered. He thought of the revolving sphere, of the above that becomes below and again mounts upwards, by turns; of the laws of opposites, of how order is reversed and things turned upside down. "Hateful to the sun-god - that was Mersu Re," The Lord loves him"; "Evil in Thebes" - that was "Good in Thebes"
Nefer-em Wese. Through Potiphar he knew much about Pharaoh's court and the friends of the palace Merimat; and he recalled that Mersu-Re and Nefer-em-Wese were the names - quite overlaid with fulsome honorary titles - of Pharaoh's chief baker and supervisor of sweetmeats, with the title of Prince of Menfe, and of his overseer and scribe of the buffet, the head butler, Count of Abodu.
     "The real names" said he, " of these given into your hands are

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probably  'what does my lord eat' and 'what does my lord' drink"
     "Well yes," responded the captain. "One only needs to give you an inch and you have an ell, as the saying goes
or you think you have. Know what you know, and ask no further."      "What can have happened?" asked Joseph notwithstanding.
     "Let it be," replied Mai-Sachme. "They say," he went on, looking in the other direction, "that pieces of chalk were found in Pharaoh's bread, and flies in the good God's wine.
"...Before daylight," went on the the captain they were put under b guard on a boat bearing the sign of suspicion on prow and sail. They have been given me into strict though also suitable safe-keeping till their trial and till the verdict is pronounced. A most responsible and trying business. I have put them in the little vulture hut, you know, round the corner to the right by the back wall, that has a vulture with outspread wings on the ridgepole, it happened to be vacant - or rather empty , for it is not furnished in the least as they are used to - and there they sit since early this morning, with some bitter beer, each of them on an ordinary camp-stool; and the vulture house has no other amenities whatever. It is pretty hard on them; and what will be the end of their affair, whether they will soon be put in corpse-colour or whether the majesty of the good God will lift up their heads again, nobody can say. We have to behave in the light of this uncertainty, taking account within limits of their former station and to the extent of our powers. I will put you in charge of them , you will visit them twice or thrice a day, you know, and ask after there wants, if only for forms sake. Such gentlemen require good form; if we only ask what they would like, it does them some good, and it is less important after that whether they get it."

Page 881  

"... Go along now and pay them your respects - with any kind of colouring you think best Beginning tomorrow, you should go morning and evening."
     "I hear and obey said Joseph and betook himself down from the tower to the vulture hut.
       The guards in front of it lifted their daggers with grins spreading over their peasant faces, for they liked him well. Then they drew back the heavy wooden bolt and Joseph entered in to the courtiers."
"... They had sprung up as soon as they saw him, and overwhelmed him with questions and complaints."
"...What will become of us in this hole? They have put us into this bare room, we have been sitting since before dawn behind bolts and bars, with-out the least attention paid to us. Curses on Zawi-Re! Curses, curses! There is nothing here nothing! We have no mirror, we have no razors no rouge-box, no bathroom, no place to satisfy our necessities, so that we are forced to restrain ourselves, though they are more urgent than usual on account of the strain we have been under, and we have the cramps - we, the arch-baker and the master of the vine! Is  

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it given to your soul to feel that this situation of ours cries to heaven? Or do you only come to observe whether our misery has reached the uttermost? "
     "High and noble sirs," answered Joseph, calm yourselves! "I am well disposed towards you, for I am the captain's mouthpiece and ad-jutant and trusted by him with the office of overseer. He has made me your servant, who am to ask after your commands, and as my master is good and even-tempered you may infer my own tempera-ment from his choice of me. I cannot lift up your heads; that only Pharaoh can do , so soon as your innocence is made clear, which I assume with all due respect is present and can be made clear - "
      Here he paused a little and waited. They both looked him in the face: one with eyes swimming in vinous
emotion, yet hopefully; the other wearing a glassy stare wherein fear and deceit swiftly pursued each other.
One would have expected the baker to be like a bag of flour and the cup bearer to resemble the slender vine. But on the contrary it was the cup-bearer who was full-bodied"
"... His chubby cheeks, alas were now Quite bristly with a stubble of beard; but they showed that when shaven and oiled they could shine right jollily. Even the present dejection and gloom on the chief butlers face could not quite extinguish its fundamental trait of joviality. The chief baker was by comparison tall and stoop-shouldered; his face was sallow though perhaps again only by comparison;"
But there were unmistakably underworldly features in the baker's face: the longish nose was set somewhat awry, the mouth showed a one-sided thickening and lengthening, making it sag unpleasantly, and the low-ering brows had a sinister, ill-omened expression.
       We must not suppose that Joseph would have remarked the differ-ence between the two faces with any easy partisanship for the good traits of one and just as easy dislike of the forbidding traits of the other. By tradition and training he would be prone to accord to both the jovial and the jaundiced equal respect for their destinies. He would go further and summon up more cordiality and courtesy towards the man whose features bore the stamp of the lower regions than to him who was already jolly by nature."

Page 883  

"...It is not I" repeated Joseph, "who can lift up your heads nor is it the warden. All that we can do is to ease a little, as well as we can, the discomforts a heavy fate has inflicted on you.  
"...Your servant, by which I mean myself, possesses a fairly clear copper mir-ror, and I will gladly loan it to you for the duration of your stay, which one way or the other can only be a brief span. It will please you that its frame and handle are shaped like the life-sign. As for bathing, you can get that done at the right of your hut by a couple of guards whom I will station there for the purpose; on the left side you can satisfy your necessities; that is probably just now the most pressing matter."
     "Fine!" said the butler. "Just fine, for the present and in view of all the circumstances. Young man, you come like the rosy dawn after the night and like cooling shade after the heat of the sun. Health and strength to you and may you live long! The master of the vine salutes you! Lead us to the left side."
      "But what did you mean," asked the baker, "by 'one way or the other' in connection with our stay and by 'a brief span'?"
      "I meant by that" Joseph answered, " in any case, quite certainly, beyond a doubt - or something reassuring of that sort. That is what I meant 
         And he took leave for the time of the two gentlemen, bowing somewhat more respectfully before the baker than the before the butler.
       Later in the day he came back,..."

Page 884

"... They had conceived a great confidence in Joseph and kept him in talk as long as  they pos-sibly could, with thanks and complaints, both that day and the following one, each time he came to inquire after their welfare and their commands. But in all their volubility they did not depart from their silence on the ground of their presence here but showed the same reserve which Mai-Sachme had shown in his first talk about them with Joseph."
       They suffered most on account of their new names, and repeatedly implored him not to believe that these were their real ones in any sense whatever.
      "It is so delicate of you, Usarsiph, dear youth" they said, "that you do not call us by the absurd names which they put on us when we were arrested. But it is not enough that you do not let them cross your lips; even to yourself you must not call us so; you must believe that we do not go by such indecent names, but quite the reverse. That would be
a great help; for we are distressed lest these fantastic names which are written in indelible ink in our papers and the proceedings of our trials in the writing of truth should gradually take on reality and we be so called to all eternity."  
"...How ever is it possible," Joseph asked looking away just as the captain had done, "how is it possible, how ever in all the world can it have happened that Pharaoh behaved to you like a leopard of Upper Egypt and like the raging ocean, and his heart brought forth a sand-storm like the mountains of the East, of such that overnight you

/ Page 885 /

are shorn of your honours, arrested on suspicion and snatched off down here to us?"
      "Flies," sobbed the butler.
      "Chalk," said the chief baker.
     Both looked the other way but each in a different direction. How-ever, there was not much resort in the hut for three pairs of eyes; their glances met by mistake, then quickly shifted only to meet again whitherever they travelled. It was a depressing game and Joseph would have ended it by going away, as he saw that there was nothing to be got out of them save flies and chalk. They did not want to let him go, they kept trying to convince him how untenable was any suspicion of guilt, how preposterous the names Mesedu-Re and Bin-em Wese.
      "I implore you good youth from Canaan, dear Ibrim," said the butler, "listen and see, how could it ever be that I, Good-and-happy-in-Thebes, could have anything to do with such an affair? It is absurd, it is contrary to the order of things; it stands to reason that it only proceeds from misunderstanding and slander I am the chief of the wine of life and carry the staff of the grape before Pharaoh when he goes in procession to the banquet and the blood of Osiris flows in streams. I am his herald, crying Hail and Health, swinging my staff above my head. I am the man with the garland, of the vine wreath on the head and the foaming beaker!"
"...I live and let live, crying all Hail and Health ! Do I look like one who measures the coffin for the God?  Have I any resemblance to the ass of Set?"        
"...I can see, said Prince Mersu-Re, the chief baker, looking the other way in his turn, "that the Count's words have not failed of their impression on you, man of Zawi and gifted youth."  
"You have perceived that the suspicion we high officials labour under is inconsistent with the sacred office my friend here holds. So you will surely agree that one can even less reconcile it with the sacredness of mine, which is if possible still greater. It is in essence the oldest, the earliest, the most exemplary -  a higher there / Page 886 /

may be, a deeper never. There is a consummateness about it as there is about everything from which a descriptive adjective derives; it is the holy, the very holiest of the holy! It speaks of the grotto and the cavern into which one drives swine to sacrifice, throwing torches down from above to feed the primeval fire, that it burn to warm and expand the forces of production. Therefore I bear a torch before Pharaoh, not swinging it above my head but holding it seemly and priestlike before me and before him, when he goes to the table to eat the flesh of the buried god, which springs forth to the sickle from below and out the depths that received the oath."
    Here the baker gave a start, and the gaze of his staring eyes moved still further aside, until he was looking out of the left outside and the right inside corners. He kept beginning a sentence only to take it back and begin again, yet all the while he only talked himself deeper in. For his words were addressed downwards and he could not turn them round.
"Pardon me, I did not mean to say that;" He began again, "at least I did not intend to say it just like that; I do hope that you are not getting the wrong idea. You are a worldly-wise young man, and we would enlist your understanding in support of our innocence. I talk, but when I listen to my own words I am alarmed. I might be making you feel that I am invoking a sacredness so mighty, that is so great and so deep, that it is almost suspect itself, so to speak, and invoking it might even work the other way from what I want. I beg you, summon all your understanding, do not be confused into the idea that if the evidence is too b that makes it weaker, or even makes it help to prove the opposite. That would be frightful, it would en-danger the soundness of your judgement for you to come on such thoughts. Look at me even though I do not look at you, but at my arguments. I - guilty?"    

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" Here he broke off with another frightful start and his eyeball darted right over into the opposite corners. He asseverated that he had not meant to say what he had said, or at least not the way he had said it.
But Joseph soothed them both, begging them not to take things so hard and not strain themselves on his account."
"...And he asked if they would honour  him with another command. No they said pensively, they knew of nothing ; no other commands would be likely to occur to one, seeing that nothing came of them. Ah, but why must he leave them so soon? Would he not tell them how long he thought the investigation of the charges against them would take
and how long they would have to lie in this hole?
     He would tell them faithfully and at once, he replied, if he only knew. But naturally he did not. He could only make an entirely arbi-trary and irresponsible guess; it would take thirty and ten days in all, at the most and the least, until their fate was decided.
     "Ah, how long!" lamented the the butler.
     "Ah, how short" cried the the baker -  but at once gave another frightful start and assured them that he also had meant to say how long. But the chief butler reflected and then remarked that Joseph's calculation had probably got some sense in it. For in thirty and seven and three days counting their arrival it would be Phar-aoh's beautiful birthday, well known day of justice and compas-sion; on that day, in all probability, their fare would be decided.
      "I did not to my knowledge think of it" answered Joseph, and did not make my calculations according. It was more of an inspiration, but seeing it turns out that Pharaoh's exalted birthday falls just on that day, you can see that my words are already beginning to be fulfilled.    
 

With that he went, shaking his head over his two charges and there "affair"about which he now knew more than he could well admit. Nobody in the two lands might appear or assume to know more than was considered seemly for men to know, and this perilous knowledge

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was hushed up by the authorities in a cloud of circumlocution and secrecy, a screen of words about flies and pieces of chalk and unident-ifiable made up names like Hated of God and Scum of Weset. Nev-ertheless it was soon talked of through the length and breadth of the whole kingdom.
"...The story in all its shockingness did not lack popular appeal; one might say that it had a ritual character, seeming as it did like the repition in the present of events whose foundation lay far back in the past.
      To put it bluntly, somebody had been conspiring against Pharaoh's life - this although the days of the majesty of
that elderly god were well known to be numbered anyhow, and it is common knowledge that their inclination to unite again with the sun could not be arrested either by the advice of the magicians and physicians of the book-house
or even by the mediation of Ishtar of the Way, which His Majesty's brother and father-in-law of the Euphrates, Tushratta, King over Khanigalbat or Mitanniland, had solicitously sent to him. But that the Great House, Si-Re, Son of the Sun and Lord of the Two Crowns, Neb-ma-Re-Amenhotpe, was old and ailing and could scarcely breathe was no reason at all why he should not be conspired against; indeed if you liked, it was a very good reason why he should, however dreadful, of course such an enterprise remained.
       It was a universally known fact that Re himself, the sun-god, had originally been King of the two lands, or rather ruler on earth over all men; and had ruled them with majestic brilliance and blessing so long as his years were still young, mature, or middle-aged, and even for some considerable period of time into his beginning and increasing age. But when he got very old and painful infirmities and frailties, though of course splendid in their form, approached
the majesty of this god, he had found it good to withdraw from the earth and retire into the upper regions. For his bones gradually turned to silver, his flesh to gold, and his hair to genuine lapis lazuli, a very beautiful form of senescence, yet attended with all sorts of ailments and pains, for which the gods themselves had sought a thousand rem-edies but all in vain, since no herb that grows can avail against the diseases of gilding and silvering and lapidification, those troubles of advanced old age. Yet even under these circumstances the old Re had always clung
to his earthly sovereignty although  he must have seen that owing to his weakness it had begun to relax, that he had ceased to be feared and even to be respected.
      Now Isis, the Great One of the island, Eset, a millionfold fertile in guile, felt that her moment was come. Her wisdom embraced heaven and earth, like that of the old superannuated old Re himself. But there was one thing she did not know or command, and the lack of it  

/ Page 889  /

hampered her: she did not know the last, most secret name of Re, his very final one, knowledge of which would give power over him. Re had very many names, each one more secret than the one before, yet not utterly hopeless to find out, save one, the very last and might-iest. That he still witheld; whoso could make him name it, he could compel him and outdistance him and put him under his feet.
     Therefore Eset conceived and devised a serpent, which should sting Re in his golden flesh.

Simple enough mistake to write servant writ the scribe

Then the intolerable pain of the sting, which only great Eset could cure who made the worm, would force Re to tell her his name. Now as she contrived it so was it fulfilled. The old Re was stung, and in torments was forced to come out with one of his secret names after another, always hoping that the goddess would be satisfied before they got to the last one. But she kept on to the uttermost, until he had named her the most secret of all, and the power of her knowledge over him was absolute. After that it cost her nothing to heal his wound; but he only got a little better, within the wretched limits in which so old a creature can; and soon thereafter he gave up and joined the great majority.
     Thus tradition, known by heart to every child of Keme. It did suggest that Pharaoh had had something done to him; since he gradually got worse until his condition was so like that of the old god that one tended to mix them up. But there had been one particular individual who had taken the ancient tradition quite peculiarly to heart: a certain inmate of Pharaoh's house of women, the private and well-guarded pavilion of the greatest elegance adjoining the palace Meri-mat; whither Pharaoh still had himself carried now and then, of course only to chuck one or other of
their graces under the chin, perhaps to defeat her on the board of thirty fields, and at the same time to enjoy the lute-playing, dancing, and singing of the rest of the sweet- scented troop. Often, indeed, he played a game with that very female who took so seriously the old legend of Isis and Re that she yielded to the temptation to re-enact it. Nobody, however well versed in the finer points of this story, can tell this woman's name It has been obliterated from tradition, the night of everlasting forgetfulness shrouds it. And the woman had been in her time a favourite con-cubine of Pharaoh, and twelve or thirteen years before, when he still condescended to beget a child, she had borne him a son, Noferka-Ptah - this name is preserved -  who as a scion of the godlike seed received a special education, and on whose account she, a concubine, was privileged to wear the vulture head-dress. It was not quite so elaborate a one as that worn by Tiy, the great royal consort herself, but none the less a gold vulture cap. This cap, and her maternal weak-ness went to the the woman's head and were fatal to her. For the head-dress incited her to confuse herself with the wily Eset and to cherish ambitions hallowed by tradition..."  

/ Page 890   8 x 9 x 0 = 72  /

"...The ancient records dazed her small and scheming brain, so that she made up her mind to have Pharaoh stung by a serpent, to instigate a palace revolt and set on the throne of the two lands not Horus- Amenhotep, the rightful heir, who was sickly anyhow, but the fruit of her own womb, Noferka-Ptah.
       The first steps toward the goal of overturning the dynasty, bring-ing in a new time and elevating the nameless near-favourite to the rank of goddess-mother had been successfully taken. The plot was hatched in Pharaoh's house of women; but through certain officials of the harem and certain officers of the guard who had been eager for new things, connections had been established, on the one hand with the palace itself, where a number of friends, some of them highly placed - a head charioteer of the god, the chief of gens-d'-armes, the steward of the fruit stores, the overseer of the King's herds of oxen, the head keeper of the Kings ointments, and certain other's - were won over for the enterprise; and on the other hand they got in touch with the outer world of the residential city, where through the offi-cer's wives the male kindred of Pharaoh's graces were drawn in and engaged to stir up Wese's population with evil talk against the old Re, who by now was nothing at all but gold and silver and lapis lazuli.
In all there were two and seventy conspirators privy to the plot.  It was a proper and a pregnant number, for there had been just seventy-two when red Set lured Usir into the chest.  And these seventy-two in their turn had had good cosmic ground to be no more and no less than that number.  For it is just that number of groups of five weeks which make up the three hundred and sixty days of the year, not counting the odd days; and there are just seventy-two days in the dry fifth of the year, when the gauge shows that the Nourisher has reached his lowest ebb, and the god sinks into his grave.  So where there is conspiracy anywhere in the world it is requisite and customary for the number of conspirators to be seventy-two.  And if the plot fail, the failure shows that if this number had not been adhered to it would have failed even worse.
     Now the present plot did fail, although it had the benefit of the best models and all the preliminary steps had been taken with the greatest care. The head keeper of ungents had even succeeded in purloining a magic script out of Pharaoh's book-house and, follow-ing its instructions, had shaped certain little wax images; these were smuggled about here and there and were calculated to produce by magic a mental confusion and bewitchment such as must assure the success of the undertaking. It was decided to put poison in Pharaoh' bread or his wine or in both; and to use the ensuing confusion for a palace coup..."

Page  891.

8 x 9x 1 = 72   7 + 2 = 9  /  "... And then all at once the lid blew off. Possibly at the last minute one of the seventy-two decided that  that by choosing the loyal part he would do better for his career and for the beauty and interest of the wall-paint-ings in his tomb. Or perhaps a police decoy had wormed himself into the councils from the start. Anyhow a list had been put in Phar-aoh's hands. It was painful enough reading, containing as it did the names
of a number of really close friends of the god and visitors to his levee. Th list was on the whole correct, though not quite free from errors and mistaken identities; and the prosecutions had been swift, quiet, and thorough."  
"...and a secret commission met to investigate the whole scheme and each particular guilt. Meanwhile the persons thus exposed were labelled in one common epithet; "Abhorred of the two lands"; while cruel distortions were made of their personal ones, under which they disappeared into various custodies to await their fate in circumstances quite foreign to their usual habits.
     And thus it was that Pharaoh's chief baker and chief butler had come down to the prison where Joseph lay."



Reight wah scribe said ZedAliz lend an eye here, and make note of the word clusters as in clusters of words,  
and exercise a measure of the sense common.
I will keep a close eye said the scribe winking a clothed I  

They had been sitting there now for thirty-and-seven days when Joseph one morning made his usual call to inquire how they had rested and to ask after their commands.He found the two gentlemen in a frame of mind which might be called excited, depressed, and an-noyed all at once.They had by now begun to get used to the simple life and had ceased to complain.

"...Indeed with a bathing-place on their right and some opportunity to shoot arrows and throw nines as a substitute for the lordly bird-shoot, life is not so bad after all. But today they looked definitely relapsed into their former spoilt-children state; as soon as Joseph appeared they exhausted themselves in the old bitter complaints:"  

"...They had had dreams the night before, they said in answer to Joseph's sympathetic questioning. Each of them had dreamed his own dream, and each dream had been of the most speaking vividness, highly impressive, unforgettable, and of quite peculiar flavour: dreams that unmistakably "meant something," wearing the sign "Understand me aright" on their brows. They fairly cried out for inter-

/ Page 892.  

8 x 9 x 2 = 72 x 2 = 144  1+ 4 + 4  = 9   /  

pretation. And at home each of them had his own interpreter of dreams, experts in all the monstrous brood of the dark hours, with eyes for every detail to which a claim of significance could be at-tached; equipped with the very best dream-books and expositions, Babylonian as well as Egyptian, and only needing to turn the leaves, if they found themselves fell short of ideas. And when they were at a stand-still and the books did not help them out, the two courtiers could call a convocation of temple prophets and learned scribes, by whose combined powers the matter could certainly be got to the bottom of. In short, in every such case they had been promptly, and aristocratically served. But now, and here? They had dreamed: each of them his own special, striking, and poignant dream, each with a strange  flavour of its own; their minds were full of them, and there was nobody in this accursed hole to interpret these dreams and serve them as they were used to be served. That was a deprivation far harder to bear than the loss of feather beds, roast goose, and bird shooting; it made them feel their intolerable degradation even to tears.
    "Joseph listened and stuck out his lips a little.
    "Well gentlemen," said he, "to begin with, if it is any consolation to you to know that someone feels for you in your distress, then be-hold in me one who does so. But it might even be possible to do something about this lack that so upsets you. I have been ap-pointed your servant and caretaker, and so to speak, I am here as a general purpose assistant.  

Simple enough mistake writing serpent writ the scribe

So why not after all for dreams as well ? I am not quite unversed in the field, I might boast of a certain familiarity with dreams - do not take the word amiss, it is only apt, for in my family and tribe we have always been in the habit of having interesting dreams. My father the shepherd king, while on his travels, had clothed his whole being with dignity for the rest of his life; it was always an uncommon pleasure to here him tell it. And in my previous life I myself had much to do with dreams, I even had a nickname for it among my brothers, who made a jest of this peculiarity of mine. You have had so much progress in putting up with things - how would it be if you put up with me and told me your dreams, in order that I might inter-pret them?    
      "Yes, indeed" said they. "Very good. You are a most agreeable young man, and you have a way of looking dreamily into space with your charming, yes, even beautiful eyes, when you talk of dreams, that we could almost have confidence in your capacities. But even so, it is one thing to dream and quite another to interpret."  
      "Do not say so !" he responded. "Do not say it without qualifica-tion. For it may be that dreaming is a single whole, wherein dream and interpretation belong together and dreamer and interpreter only seem to be two separate persons but are actually interchange-  

/ Page 893    

8 x 9 x 3 = 72 x 3 = 216  /

able and one and the same, since together they make up the whole. Whoever dreams interprets also; and whoever would interpret must have dreamed. Your exellencies Lord Prince of the Bread and Hereditary Cup-bearer, you have lived under luxurious circumstances of unnecessary division of labour, so that when you dreamed, the inter-pretation was the business of your private soothsayers. But at bottom and by nature everybody is the interpreter of his own dream, and only out of sheer elegance does he have himself served with an interpretation. I will reveal to you the mystery of dreaming: the interpretation is earlier than the dream, and when we dream, the dream proceeds from the interpretation. How otherwise could it happen that a man knows perfectly when an interpretation is false, and cries: 'Away with you ignoramus! I will have another soothsayer who in-terprets to me the truth'? Well at least try it with me, and if I blunder or do not interpret after your own knowledge , chase me away to hide my head in shame!"
     "I will not tell mine," said the chief baker; I am used to better service and I prefer to go without in this as in other things, sooner than take an unprofessional person as interpreter"
     "I will tell mine ,"said the butler. "Truly I am so eager for an inter-pretation that I will gladly put up with what comes, especially since this young man shows some familiarity with the subject and narrows and veils his eyes in a most promising way. Young man prepare to hear and interpret; but pull yourself together, as I likewise must pull myself together to find the right words and not murder my dream in the telling. For it was so clear and lifelike and full of inim-itable spice; for we know, alas, how a dream like that shrinks when you try to put it into words, and becomes the mummy and with-ered, swaddled image of that which it was when you dreamed it and it grew blossomed and bore fruit like the vine which was before me in this my dream - for it seems I have already begun to tell it. It seemed to me I was with Pharaoh in his vineyard and beneath the roof of the vaulted bower where Pharaoh was resting. And before me was a grape vine, I see it still, It was a marvellous vine and had three separate branches. You understand, it grew green and had leaves like human hands; but though the arbour was already hanging full of heavy bunches of grapes, this vine had not fruited yet for that took place before my very eyes in my dream. Lo, it grew before them and began to blossom, sending forth the most beautiful thick blooms among its foliage, and the three branches put out grapes that rip-ened visibly with the swiftness of the wind and their purple fruits were as bouncing as my own cheeks and bulged as nobody's cheeks in these parts. I rejoiced greatly and with my right hand I picked the grapes, for in my left I held Pharaoh's beaker, half full of cool water And full of feeling I squeezed the juice of the grapes into the cup,  

/ Page 894  

8 x 9 x 4 = 288   2 + 8 + 8  = 18   1+ 8 = 9   /  

remembering as I did so that you young man, sometimes squeeze a little grape-juice into water and give it to us when we order wine. So I gave the cup to Pharaoh into his hand .  .  .  . And that was all," he finished lamely crestfallen and disappointed with his own words.
      "It is not a little," answered Joseph, opening his eyes, which he had kept closed as he inclined his ear to the tale. "There was the cup, and clear water within it, and you yourself pressed the grape-juice into it from the vine with the three branches and gave it to the lord of the two crowns. That was a pure gift and there were no flies in it, shall I interpret ? "
       "Yes do!" cried the other. "I can scarcely wait!"
       "This is the meaning," said Joseph. "The three branches are three days. In three days you will receive the water of life and Pharaoh will lift up your head and take away from you the name of shame so that you are once more called Justified in Thebes, and he will install you again in your office, so that you can give him the cup again into his hand as when you were his cup bearer. And that is all."    
      "Splendid, capital!" cried the fat man. That is a beautiful, an exellent, a masterly interpretation, Iam served by it as never before in my life, and you sweet youth, and you sweet youth, have done my mind an inestimable service. Three branches - three days -  how you could have it so pat, you clever youth - and 'Honourable in Thebes' again as before, and everything as it used to be, and once more Pharaoh's friend! thank you, thank you very, very much!"
     And he sat there and wept for joy.
     But Joseph said to him; "District Count of Abodu, Nefer-em-Wese! I have prophesied to you according to your dream - it was easily and gladly done and I rejoice that I could give you a happy interpretation. Soon you will be surrounded by hosts of friends, be-cause you have been declared innocent; but here in these straits I shall be the first to congratulate you. I was your servant and steward for seven-and-thirty days and shall be so for three more, by the gov-ernor's orders; asking after your commands and giving you tokens of your accustomed amenities, so far as our limitations permit. I have come to you here in the the vulture-house morning and evening, and been like an angel of God, if I may so express myself, into whose breast you could pour your troubles and be condoled with over the strangeness of your lot. But you have not asked me much about my-self. And yet like you, I was not born into this hole nor did I choose it for my habitation; I landed here, I know not how, put here as a slave of the King, condemned for a sin which is nothing but misrep-resentation before God. Your minds were too full of your own mis-fortunes for you to have feeling or interests left for mine. But forget me not, and my service to you, Count Chief Cup Bearer; think  

/ Page 895  

8 x 9 x 5 = 360   3 + 6 = 9  /  

of me when you are back in all your glory. Speak of me be-fore Pharaoh and call to his attention that I am sitting here out of the sheerest misunderstanding, and beg in my behalf that he graciously remove me out of this prison where I am so sorely against my will. For indeed I was stolen away simply stolen as a boy from my home and brought down here to Egypt, stolen down into the pit - and am like the moon, when an opposing spirit stopped it in its course so that it could not move shining onwards before the gods its brothers. Will you do this for me District Count Head Cup-bearer, and speak of me at court ?"
       "Yes, of course, a thousand times yes!" cried the fat man. I prom-ise you that I will mention you at the first opportunity when I stand before Pharaoh, and will remind him later if his mind has not grasped it. It would be swinish of me indeed not to think and speak of you to your advantage; for whether you are stolen or are stolen is all the same to me; mentioned you shall be, and pardoned, sweet-honey youth!"  
       "And he embraced Joseph and kissed him on the mouth and on both cheeks.
       "But I also have dreamed," said the long man, though the fact seems to have been forgotten here. I did not know, Ibrim you were such a skilled interpreter or I would not have rejected your aid. I now incline to tell you my dream in my turn, as well as it can be told in words, and you shall interpret it to me. Make ready to hearken."
       "I hearken" answered Joseph.    
    
You will need this said the White Rabbitz and held out another, the Zed Aliz Zed thanked the White Rabbitz,and  took the other.



"What I dreamed, said the baker, was this, and was the follow-ing. I dreamed - but you can see how ludicrous was my dream, for how should I, the prince of Menfe, who certainly never sticks his head into the oven, how should I, like a baker's apprentice, be delivering rolls and crescents ? - but suffice it to say, there I was in my dream, carrying on my head three baskets of fine rolls, one on top of the other, flat baskets fitting into each other, each full of all kinds of good things from the palace bakery; and in the top one lay uncovered the bakestuff for Pharaoh, the crescents and rolls. Then a flight of birds came sweeping down on spread wing, their talons bared, their necks stretched out, their eyeballs goggling and glaring, and screeched as they came. And these birds in their boldness thrust down and ate of the food on my head. I would have lifted my free hand to wave it over the top of my head. I would have lifted my free hand to wave it over the top of the basket and frighten the vermin away; but I could not, for my hand was as lamed. And they hacked at the food, and their flapping was all about me like a wind, and the bird smell of them was piercing in its foulness." Here the baker started, as he always did, went pale, and tried to smile in the misshapen corner of his mouth.
      "That is, he said, "you must not imagine the birds and the stench

/  Page 896  

8 x 9 x 6 =  432   4 + 3 + 2 = 9   /  

on the air nor their beaks nor their goggling eyes as too utterly dis-gusting. They were just birds, like any birds, and when I said they hacked - I dont remember whether I said that but I may have done - that was rather two b a word, used to give you a feeling of my dream. I ought to have said they pecked. The little birds pecked from my basket, they probably thought I meant to feed them, the top basket being uncovered and no cloth over it - in short, the situation was very natural in my dream, except for me, the Prince of Menfe, carrying the bakestuff on my head, and of course that I could not wave my hand - though perhaps I did not want to because I liked the little birds to come. . . .  And that was all"
       "Shall I interpret ?"Joseph asked .
      "As you will," answered the baker.
      "The Three baskets," said Joseph, "are three days. In three days Pharaoh will take you out of this house and lift up your head from off you; that is, he will bind you to the post and shall hang you on a tree and the birds of the air will eat your flesh from off you. And that is all - unfortunately."
       "What are you saying?" cried the baker, hiding his face in his hands. Tears sprang from his beringed fingers.
     "But Joseph comforted him, and said: "Do not grieve all too much, Excellence Chief Baker, neither do you dissolve, O master of the vine, in tears of joy. Rather accept with dignity what you both are and what becomes of you both. For the world too, being round, has an upper and an underside; yet we should not make two much of this two-sidedness, for at bottom the ox is no better and no worse than the ass, they might easily change places, and together they make one whole. You can see by the tears you both are shedding that the difference between you two gentlemen is not so great. You, Your Emi-nence Master of the Feast, be not prideful, for you are only good in a manner of speaking and Isuspect your innocence consists only in that nobody approached you from the side of evil, because you are a chatterbox and they did not trust you So you remained ignorant of evil. And you will not be mindful of me when you come back into your kingdom, although you have promised to; Itell you this before-hand. Only very late will you do it, when you stub your toe on the memory of me. When you do, then remember how I told you so. But you Master Baker, do not despair! For I think you joined the conspiracy because you thought it was respectably backed, and you con-fused evil with good as can easily happen. Lo you are of the god when he is below, and your companion is of the god when he is above, and lifting up the head is lifting up of the head, even though it be on the cross of Usir, on which, in fact, one sometimes sees an ass, in token that Set and Osiris is the same."
      "Thus Jacob's son to the two fine gentlemen. But three days after he  

/  Page 897  8 x 9 x 7 = 504   5 + 4 = 9   /

had interpreted their dreams they were fetched out from the prison and the heads of both were lifted up : the chief butler in honour, the baker in shame, for he was put to death. But the butler completely forgot Joseph, because he hated even to think of the prison and so would not think of his former steward."

Page 898  

8 x 9 x 8 = 576  5 + 7 + 6 = 18  1 + 8 = 9  

"After these events, Joseph remained for two more years in the prison and in his second pit. He had reached the mature age of thirty when he was hastily removed, yes, in the most breathless haste - for now it was Pharaoh's self who had dreamed. After the space of two years Pharaoh had a dream - in fact he had two dreams; but since they came to the same thing we may speak of them as one. The point is idle, by comparison with another: namely, that when we now speak of Pharaoh, the word has no longer, in a personal sense, the meaning it had when the chief baker and the chief butler dreamed their true dreams. For Pharaoh is always the word, and Pharaoh is always; but at the same time he comes and goes; just as the sun is always, yet like-wise goes and comes. So now, that is to say after the two gentlemen, Joseph's proteges, had in opposite ways had their heads lifted up, Pharaoh had gone and come. This had happened and much else besides, and Joseph had missed it, while he still lay in prison and in bor, and only a faint echo of the resounding events had reached him: namely the change of reign, the lamentable passing of one day of the world and the exultant dawn of another, a new time, from which men expect a change for the better, no matter how good, humanly speaking, the former one may have been. On that day, they think and believe, right will drive out wrong, "the moon will come right" (as though it had never come right before!) - in short, from now on life would be one long season of laughter and amaze. All of which was reason enough for the whole population to hop on one leg and drink to excess for weeks - after, of course, a period of mourning in sackcloth and ashes, and that was by no means a hypocritical con-vention, but sincere grief over the going hence of the old time. For man is a creature prone to confusion.
    As many years as his chief butler and the general intendant of bakeries had spent days at Zawi-Re, namely forty, had Amun's son, the son of Thutmose and the daughter of Mittanni's King, Neb-ma-Re-Amenhotpe iii- Nimmuria adorned his throne in splendour and  

/ Page 899

built his palaces; then he died, he united himself with the sun, having had at the close of his life the disheartening experience with the two-and-seventy conspirators who had sought to lure him into the coffin. But now of course he had come to it anyhow, and a splendid coffin it was, studded with nails of pure beaten gold" he lay there preserved in salt and bitumen, made to last all eternity with juniper-wood, turpentine, cedar resin, styrax, and mastic, and wrapped in four hundred ells of linen bandages. Seventy days it took till the Osiris was ready."
Then it was laid on a golden sledge drawn by oxen, that carried the bark holding the lion footed bier roofed over by a canopy. Preceded by incense-burners and water sprinklers and ac-companied by a host of mourners apparently overcome by grief, it was borne to its eternal dwelling in the hills, a many-chambered tomb equipped with every convenience. Before its door the ceremony was performed, the so called "opening of the mouth, with the foot of the Horus-calf.
     The Queen and the court were no longer walled in within the many roomed abode there to starve to death and moulder besides the dead. The days which were considered necessary or proper were far in the past, the custom had lapsed and was forgotten - and why? What had they against it, and why was it remote from every mind? They  indulged their fill in primitive observances, diligently made magic; stopped all the body openings of the exalted cadaver with charms against evil and faithfully performed the ceremony with the calf's-foot instrument, according to the time-honoured ritual. But to wall up the royal court - no, none of that, it was not done any more. It was not only that they did not wish to do it, that they no longer found it a good idea, as once they had. They did not even want to know that the custom had ever been practised or found good: neither the traditionally walled-in parties nor the wallers-in gave a single thought to the matter. Obviously it could no longer bear the light of day - call that light late or early as you will - and that is remarkable. Many people might feel that the remarkable thing was the fine old custom itself, the immurement of the living. But surely it is more remarkable that one day, by common, wordless, indeed un-conscious consent, it simply ceased to come under consideration.
     The court sat with its head on its   knees, and all the people mourned. Then they all lifted their heads, from the Negro borders to the delta and from dessert to dessert, and greeted enthusiastically the new epoch which should know no more wrong, in which "the moon would come right"; lifted their heads in exultant welcome to the son and successor, a charming though not beautiful lad, who if the reck-oning was correct was only fifteen years old and still under the ward-ship of Tiy the goddess-widow Horus-mother, who was still for some time to guide the reigns of state. He was throned and crowned  

/  Page 900   /  

with the crowns of Upper Egypt; and there were great celebrations, in much weighty pomp, partly in the Palace of the West in Thebes, but the most solemn part at the place of the coronation, Per-Mont, whither young Pharaoh and his lady mother, lofty in feathers, with a splendid retinue, on the heavenly bark "Star of the Two Lands," betook themselves upstream amid loud shouting from the banks. When he returned thence, he bore the titles:
"b Bull" "Favoured of the two Goddesses," " Great in Kingship in Karnak," Golden Falcon, who lifted the Crowns of Per-Mont," "King of Upper and Lower Egypt," "Nefer-Kheperu-Re-Wanre,"which means "Lovely of form is he, who alone is, and to whom he is the only"; "Son of the Sun, Amenhotpe," "Divine ruler of Thebes"
"Great in Duration," "Living to all Eternity," Beloved of Amon-Re, Lord of the Heavens," "High Priest of Him exulting in the Horizon by the power of his name 'Heat-which-is-in-Aton' "
      Thus was young Pharaoh called after his crowning. The combina-tion of titles, Joseph and Mai-Sachme agreed, was a compromise ar-rived at after long and tough bargaining between the court and the temple power. For the court inclined to Atum-Re's complaisant sun-sense; whereas Amun's a few low bows before the traditionally Highest but only in return for pretty transparent concessions to him at jealous and oppressive temple power had reaped On in the point of the triangle. The royal boy, actually consecrated as "Greatest of Seers" of Re-Horakhte, had even woven the un- and anti-traditional Aton into the trailing garment of his title.His mother the goddess-widow, called her b fighting bull, quite briefly Meni. But the people Joseph heard, had another name for him, a tender and delicate name:

Neb-nef- nezem it called him , Lord of the Breath of Sweetness - it could not definitely be said why. Perhaps because it was known that he loved the flowers of his garden and liked to bury his small nose in their fragrance.  
     Joseph, then in his pit, missed all these spectacles and the accom-panying hubbub of rejoicing. The only sign of them down the prison was the fact that Mai-Sachme's soldiers were allowed to get drunk three days running. Joseph was not present; he was not so to speak, present on earth when the day changed, tomorrow became today and the sun of tomorrow the sun of today. He only knew that it had happened; and from down below he cast his eyes up to the sun. He knew that Neb-nef-nezen's child-and sister-bride, another Princess of Mitanni, whom his father had wooed for him by letter from King Tushratta, had disappeared and taken her way westward almost as soon as she had arrived. Well Meni, the b fighting bull, was quite used to such disappearances. There had always been much dying about him. All his brothers and sisters had died, some  

/ Page 901  /  

of them before his birth, some since, among them one brother; only a late-born little sister had survived, and she too had shown such a b inclination westwards that she was almost never seen. Nor did he himself look as though he would live forever and always, to judge from the sandstone images which the apprentices of Ptah made for him. But it was imperative that he should continue the line of the sun before he too went hence; so he had been married again in the lifetime of Nebmare-Amenhotep, this time to a daughter of the Egyptian nobility, Nefertiti by name, who had by now become his ex-alted consort and mistress of the two lands, and to whom he had given the radiant title Nefernefruaton - "Beautiful beyond all beauty is Aton."
        "Joseph had missed the wedding feast too, and the sight of the rejoicing crowds on the banks, But he knew about it and he took note of the young Highest. He heard for instance from Mai-Sachme, who got to know a good deal in the course of his duties, that Pharaoh, directly he had lifted the two crowns at Per-Mont, had given the order to complete with all speed the building of the house of Re-Horakhte-Aton at Karnak.His departed father had in fact already commissioned it. And special order was given to erect in the open court of the temple a mammoth freestone obelisk on a lofty base.
       "The sun-meaning of this obelisk, referring to the doctrines of  On at the point of the triangle, was quite obviously a challenge to Amun. Not as though Amun would have had anything against the neigh-bourhood of other gods, in and for itself . Round about his greatness there were indeed many houses and shrines at Karnak; for Ptah the swaddled one, Min the staring , Montu the falcon, and some others had shrines there, and Amun tolerated the worship of them near him, and not only out of benevolence. For the multiplicity of the gods of Egypt was really an asset to his conservatism;
always, of course, with the proviso that he the weighty one, was King over them all, king of the gods, and that they waited upon him from time to time, in return for which he was ready, on proper occasion, to make them a return visit. But in this case there could be no waiting upon; there would be no image in the great new shrine and house of the sun, nothing but the obelisk, which threatened to be so arrogantly tall. After all it was no longer the time of the pyramid -  builders, when Amun was small and Re very great in his light places; when Amun had not yet taken Re into himself and become Amun Re, god of the empire and king of the gods. Among these Re-Atum now, for his part and in his kind, might of course continue to exist, or rather, indeed, should continue to exist - but not in any presumptuous sense, not as a new god called, setting himself up to philosophize about himself. That was fitting for Amun-Re alone, or, more correctly, not even for him; to think , indeed was altogether unsuitable, and the settled posi-  

/ Page 902  

9 x 2 = 18  1 + 8 = 9   /

tion was that Amun and no other was king over the traditional multi-plicity of the gods of Egypt.
   But even under King Nebmare there had been a great deal of fash-ionable speculation at court; and now it looked as though it was going to take the upper hand. Young Pharaoh had given out an edict and had it engraved on stone to commemorate the erection of the obelisk.  It gave evidence of much subtilizing effort to define the nature of the sun- god in a new and anti-traditional way; to define it so sharply, indeed, that it suffered from tortuosity. "There lives." so the inscription ran.  Re-Hor of the horizon, who exults in the horizon in his name Shu, who is the Aton"      
"That was obscure, although it dealt with light itself and was meant to be very clear. It was complicated, although it aimed at simplifi-cation and unification.. Re-Horakhte, a god among the gods of Egypt, had a threefold image: animal, human, and divine. His image was the man with the falcon head, on which stood the disc of the sun. But also as a heavenly constellation he was threefold: in his birth out of the night, in the zenith of his manhood, and in his death in the west. He lived a life of birth, of dying, and of renewed generation a life looking into death. But he who had ears to hear and eyes to read the writing on the stone understood that Pharaoh's doctrinal pro-nouncement did not wish the life of the god to be percieved as a coming and going, a becoming and going, a becoming, passing, and becoming again as a life done away in death and thus phallic; all in all, not as life in so far as life is always done away with as in death, but as pure be-ing, the changeless source of light, subject to no ups and downs, out of whose image man and bird would at some far future time fall away, so that only the pure life-radiating sun disc remained, called Aton.
      This was understood, or not understood but at least energetically and excitedly discussed by such as had the necesssary equipment to talk about it, also by such as entirely lacked the equipment and merely prattled. It was prattled about even as far down as into Joseph's pit; even Mai-Sachme's soldiers prattled about it, and the convicts in the quarry too, whenever they had breath enough; and this much at least everybody understood, that it was an offence to Amun-Re, as was likewise great obelisk they had stuck in the front of his nose, as well as certain more far-reaching
Orders of Pharaoh, having to do with the subtilizing definition in the inscription and really going very far indeed. Thus the great house where the new house of the sun grew up was to bear the name Brightness of the great Aton - yes rumour even had it that Thebes itself, Wese, Amun's city, was henceforth to be called City of the Brightness of Aton;  
About this there was endless gossip."

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9 x 3 = 27  2 +7 = 9  

The lord of the sweet breath, so it seemed, could not do enough to further his purposes and the purposes of the beloved god of his doctrine - in other words the building of his temple; it was carried forwards with such haste and urgency that all the stone masons from Jebu, the Elephant Isle, as far down as the delta, were set to work. And yet all this concentration failed to give the house of Aton the kind of structure suitable for an eternal dwelling. Pharaoh was in such haste, so ridden by impatience, that he gave up the use of the large blocks used for the tombs of the gods, because they were so hard to cut and haul. He gave order to erect the temple of changeless light out of small stones which could be tossed from hand to hand. Quantities of mortar and cement had thus to be used to smooth the walls for  the painted bas-reliefs designed to shine there. Amun had made great fun of all this, so one heard on all sides.    
     So it was that the course of events reached down into Zawi-Re and involved the son of Jacob, even though he was not present at them. For Mai-Sachme's quarry had to furnish much stone for Phar-aoh's hasty building, and Joseph had to be on hand with his over-seer's staff to see that pick and crowbar were not idle, so that the governor of the prison should not get any flowery unpleasantness in his correspondence with the government.
"...For the rest, he con-tinued to endure his quite endurable punishment at Zawi-Re, by the side of his even-tempered chief. It was monotonous like the captain's manner of speech, yet nourished by expectation. For there was much to expect, at hand and afar off - at first near at hand. Time passed for him as it does pass, in the usual way, which we may call neither quickly nor slowly, for it goes slowly, especially when one lives in expectation, yet if one looks back it appears to have gone very the winged messenger, a day which might have startled Mai-Sachme out of his calm and almost taught quickly. Joseph day and lived in Zawi-Re until he got to about thirty, without taking particular notice of it. Then came the breathless him to fear, if he had not already been expecting great things for Joseph.