C. of B. THE CAT OF BUBASTES.
A TALE OF ANCIENT EGYPT.
By G. A. HENTY,
Author of “The Young Carthaginian,” “For the Temple,”
“In the Reign of Terror,” “Bonnie Prince Charlie,”
“In Freedom’s Cause,” etc., etc.
FIVE PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS BY J. R. WEGUELIN.
NEW YORK:
THE F. M. LUPTON PUBLISHING COMPANY.
PREFACE.
My Dear Lads:Thanks to the care with which theEgyptians depicted upon the walls of their sepulchers theminutest doings of their daily life, to the dryness of theclimate which has preserved these records uninjured forso many thousand years, and to the indefatigable laborof modern investigators, we know far more of the mannersand customs of the Egyptians, of their methods ofwork, their sports and amusements, their public festivals,and domestic life, than we do of those of peoples comparativelymodern. My object in the present story hasbeen to give you as lively a picture as possible of thatlife, drawn from the bulky pages of Sir J. Gardner Wilkinsonand other writers on the same subject. I havelaid the scene in the time of Thotmes III., one of thegreatest of the Egyptian monarchs, being surpassed onlyin glory and the extent of his conquests by Rameses theGreat. It is certain that Thotmes carried the arms ofEgypt to the shores of the Caspian, and a people namedthe Rebu, with fair hair and blue eyes, were amongthose depicted in the Egyptian sculptures as being conqueredand made tributary. It is open to discussionwhether the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt took placein the reign of Thotmes or many years subsequently,some authors assigning it to the time of Rameses. Withoutattempting to enter into this much-discussed question,I have assumed that the Israelites were still inEgypt at the time of Thotmes, and by introducing Moses[Pg 4]just at the time he began to take up the cause of the peopleto whom he belonged, I leave it to be inferred thatthe Exodus took place some forty years later. I wishyou to understand, however, that you are not to acceptthis date as being absolutely correct. Opinions differwidely upon it; and as no allusion whatever has beendiscovered either to the Exodus or to any of the eventswhich preceded it among the records of Egypt, there isnothing to fix the date as occurring during the reign ofany one among the long line of Egyptian kings. Theterm Pharaoh used in the Bible throws no light upon thesubject, as Pharaoh simply means king, and the name ofno monarch bearing that appellation is to be found onthe Egyptian monuments. I have in no way exaggeratedthe consequences arising from the slaying of the sacredcat, as the accidental