This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of thefile for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making anentire meal of them. D.W.]
By Georg Ebers
Translated from the German by Clara Bell
The "Bride of the Nile" needs no preface. For the professional student Imay observe that I have relied on the authority of de Goeje in adheringto my own original opinion that the word Mukaukas is not to be regardedas a name but as a title, since the Arab writers to which I have madereference apply it to the responsible representatives of the ByzantineEmperor in antagonism to the Moslem power. I was unfortunately unable tomake further use of Karabacek's researches as to the Mukaukas.
I shall not be held justified in placing the ancient Horus Apollo(Horapollo) in the seventh century after Christ by any one who regardsthe author of the Hieroglyphica as identical with the Egyptianphilosopher of the same name who, according to Suidas, lived underTheodosius, and to whom Stephanus of Byzantium refers, writing so earlyas at the end of the fifth century. But the lexicographer Suidasenumerates the works of Horapollo, the philologer and commentator onGreek poetry, without naming the Hieroglyphica, which is the onlytreatise alluded to by Stephanus. Besides, all the other ancient writerswho mention Horapollo at all leave us quite free to suppose that theremay have been two sages of the same name—as does C. Leemans, who is mostintimately versed in the Hieroglyphica—and the second certainly cannothave lived earlier than the VIIth century, since an accurate knowledge ofhieroglyphic writing must have been lost far more completely in his timethan we can suppose possible in the IVth century. It must be rememberedthat we still possess well-executed hieroglyphic inscriptions dating fromthe time of Decius, 250 years after Christ. Thus the Egyptiancommentator on Greek poetry could hardly have needed a translator,whereas the Hieroglyphica seems to have been first rendered into Greek byPhilippus. The combination by which the author called in Egyptian Horus(the son of Isis) is supposed to have been born in Philae, where thecultus of the Egyptian heathen was longest practised, and where somefamiliarity with hieroglyphics must have been preserved to a late date,takes into due account the real state of affairs at the period I haveselected for my story.
GEORG EBERS.
October 1st, 1886.
Half a lustrum had elapsed since Egypt had become subject to theyouthful power of the Arabs, which had risen with such unexampled vigorand rapidity. It had fallen an easy prey, cheaply bought, into thehands of a small, well-captained troop of Moslem warriors; and the fairprovince, which so lately had been a jewel of the Byzantine Empire andthe most faithful foster-mother to Christianity, now owned the sway ofthe 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 ofJune—with the usual festive preparations, had cheated the hopes of theEgyptians, and instead of rising had shrunk narrower and still narrowerin 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.
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