On its river-side the houses and streets were brilliant, but on the hill-slope lay, with but few more respectable exceptions, miserable, poverty-stricken huts constructed of acacia-boughs and Nile-mud. On the north-west rose the royal citadel.
“Let us turn back here,” exclaimed Gyges to his young companions. During his father’s absence he was responsible as their guide and protector, and now perceived that the crowd of curious spectators, which had hitherto followed them, was increasing at every step.
“I obey your orders,” replied the interpreter, “but yonder in the valley, at the foot of that hill, lies the Saitic city of the dead, and for foreigners I should think that would be of great interest.”
“Go forward!” cried Bartja. “For what did we leave Persia, if not to behold these remarkable objects?”
On arriving at an open kind of square surrounded by workmen’s booths, and not far from the city of the dead, confused cries rose among the crowd behind them.
[Artisans, as well among the ancient as the modern Egyptians, were
accustomed to work in the open air.]
The children shouted for joy, the women called out, and one voice louder than the rest was heard exclaiming: “Come hither to the fore-court of the temple, and see the works of the great magician, who comes from the western oases of Libya and is endowed with miraculous gifts by Chunsu, the giver of good counsels, and by the great goddess Hekt.”
“Follow me to the small temple yonder,” said the interpreter, “and you will behold a strange spectacle.” He pushed a way for himself and the Persians through the crowd, obstructed in his course by many a sallow woman and naked child; and at length came back with a priest, who conducted the strangers into the fore-court of the temple. Here, surrounded by various chests and boxes, stood a man in the dress of a priest; beside him on the earth knelt two negroes. The Libyan was a man of gigantic stature, with great suppleness of limb and a pair of piercing black eyes. In his hand he held a wind-instrument resembling a modern clarionet, and a number of snakes, known in Egypt to be poisonous, lay coiling themselves over his breast and arms.
On finding himself in the presence of the Persians he bowed low, inviting them by a solemn gesture to gaze at his performances; he then cast off his white robe and began all kinds of tricks with the snakes.
He allowed them to bite him, till the blood trickled down his cheeks; compelled them by the notes of his flute to assume an erect position and perform a kind of dancing evolution; by spitting into their jaws he transformed them to all appearance into motionless rods; and then, dashing them all on to the earth, performed a wild dance in their midst, yet without once touching a single snake.
Like one possessed, he contorted his pliant limbs until his eyes seemed starting from his head and a bloody foam issued from his lips.
Suddenly he fell to the ground, apparently lifeless. A slight movement of the lips and a low hissing whistle were the only signs of life; but, on hearing the latter, the snakes crept up and twined themselves like living rings around his neck, legs and body. At last he rose, sang a hymn in praise of the divine power which had made him a magician, and then laid the greater number of his snakes in one of the chests, retaining a few, probably his favorites, to serve as ornaments for his neck and arms.
The second part of this performance consisted of clever conjuring-tricks, in which he swallowed burning flax, balanced swords while dancing, their points standing in the hollow of his eye; drew long strings and ribbons out of the noses of the Egyptian children, exhibited the well-known cup-and-ball trick, and, at length, raised the admiration of the spectators to its highest pitch, by producing five living rabbits from as many ostrich-eggs.
The Persians formed no unthankful portion of the assembled crowd; on the contrary, this scene, so totally new, impressed them deeply.
They felt as if in the realm of miracles, and fancied they had now seen the rarest of all Egyptian rarities. In silence they took their way back to the handsomer streets of Sais, without noticing how many mutilated Egyptians crossed their path. These poor disfigured creatures were indeed no unusual sight for Asiatics, who punished many crimes by the amputation of a limb. Had they enquired however, they would have heard that, in Egypt, the man deprived of his hand was a convicted forger, the woman of her nose, an adulteress; that the man without a tongue had been found guilty of high treason or false witness; that the loss of the ears denoted a spy, and that the pale, idiotic-looking woman yonder had been guilty of infanticide, and had been condemned to hold the little corpse three days and three nights in her arms. What woman could retain her senses after these hours of torture?—[Diodorus I. 77.]
The greater number of the Egyptian penal laws not only secured the punishment of the criminal, but rendered a repetition of the offence impossible.
The Persian party now met with a hindrance, a large crowd having assembled before one of the handsomest houses in the street leading to the temple of Neith. The few windows of this house that could be seen (the greater number opening on the garden and court) were closed with shutters, and at the door stood an old man, dressed in the plain white robe of a priest’s servant. He was endeavoring, with loud cries, to prevent a number of men of his own class from carrying a large chest out of the house.
“What right have you to rob my master?” he shrieked indignantly. “I am the guardian of this house, and when my master left for Persia (may the gods destroy that land!) he bade me take especial care of this chest in which his manuscripts lay.”
“Compose yourself, old Hib!” shouted one of these inferior priests, the same whose acquaintance we made on the arrival of the Asiatic Embassy. “We are here in the name of the high-priest of the great Neith, your master’s master. There must be queer papers in this box, or Neithotep would not have honored us with his commands to fetch them.”
“But I will not allow my master’s papers to be stolen,” shrieked the old man. “My master is the great physician Nebenchari, and I will secure his rights, even if I must appeal to the king himself.”
“There,” cried the other, “that will do; out with the chest, you fellows. Carry it at once to the high-priest; and you, old man, would do more wisely to hold your tongue and remember that the high-priest is your master as well as mine. Get into the house as quick as you can, or to-morrow we shall have to drag you off as we did the chest to-day!” So saying, he slammed the heavy door, the old man was flung backward into the house and the crowd saw him no more.
The Persians had watched this scene and obtained an explanation of its meaning from their interpreter. Zopyrus laughed on hearing that the possessor of the stolen chest was the oculist Nebenchari, the same who had been sent to Persia to restore the sight of the king’s mother, and whose grave, even morose temper had procured him but little love at the court of Cambyses.
Bartja wished to ask Amasis the meaning of this strange robbery, but Gyges begged him not to interfere in matters with which he had no concern. Just as they reached the palace, and darkness, which in Egypt so quickly succeeds the daylight, was already stealing over the city, Gyges felt himself hindered from proceeding further by a firm hand on his robe, and perceived a stranger holding his finger on his lips in token of silence.
“When can I speak with you alone and unobserved?” he whispered.
“What do you wish from me?”
“Ask no questions, but answer me quickly. By Mithras, I have weighty matters to disclose.”
“You speak Persian, but your garments would proclaim you an Egyptian.”
“I am a Persian, but answer me quickly or we shall be noticed. When can I speak to you alone?”
“To-morrow morning.”
“That is too late.”
“Well then, in a quarter of an hour, when it is quite dark, at this gate of the palace.”
“I shall expect you.”
So saying the man vanished. Once within the palace, Gyges left Bartja and