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[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
At last the pioneer's boat got off with his mother and the body of thedog, which he intended to send to be embalmed at Kynopolis, the city inwhich the dog was held sacred above all animals;
[Kynopolis, or in old Egyptian Saka, is now Samalut; Anubis was the chief divinity worshipped there. Plutarch relates a quarrel between the inhabitants of this city, and the neighboring one of Oxyrynchos, where the fish called Oxyrynchos was worshipped. It began because the Kynopolitans eat the fish, and in revenge the Oxyrynchites caught and killed dogs, and consumed them in sacrifices. Juvenal relates a similar story of the Ombites—perhaps Koptites—and Pentyrites in the 15th Satire.]
Paaker himself returned to the House of Seti, where, in the night whichclosed the feast day, there was always a grand banquet for the superiorpriests of the Necropolis and of the temples of eastern Thebes, for therepresentatives of other foundations, and for select dignitaries of thestate.
His father had never failed to attend this entertainment when he was inThebes, but he himself had to-day for the first time received the much-coveted honor of an invitation, which—Ameni told him when he gave it—heentirely owed to the Regent.
His mother had tied up his hand, which Rameri had severely hurt; it wasextremely painful, but he would not have missed the banquet at any cost,although he felt some alarm of the solemn ceremony. His family was asold as any in Egypt, his blood purer than the king's, and nevertheless henever felt thoroughly at home in the company of superior people. He wasno priest, although a scribe; he was a warrior, and yet he did not rankwith royal heroes.
He had been brought up to a strict fulfilment of his duty, and he devotedhimself zealously to his calling; but his habits of life were widelydifferent from those of the society in which he had been brought up—a society of which his handsome, brave, and magnanimous father had beena chief ornament. He did not cling covetously to his inherited wealth,and the noble attribute of liberality was not strange to him, but thecoarseness of his nature showed itself most when he was most lavish, forhe was never tired of exacting gratitude from those whom he had attachedto him by his gifts, and he thought he had earned the right by hisliberality to meet the recipient with roughness or arrogance, accordingto his humor. Thus it happened that his best actions procured him notfriends but enemies.
Paaker's was, in fact, an ignoble, that is to say, a selfish nature; toshorten his road he trod down flowers as readily as he marched over thesand of the desert. This characteristic marked him in all things, evenin his outward demeanor; in the sound of his voice, in his broadfeatures, in the swaggering gait of his stumpy figure.
In camp he could conduct himself as he pleased; but this was notpermissible in the society of his equals in rank; for this reason, andbecause those faculties of quick remark and repartee, which distinguishedthem, had been denied to him, he felt uneasy and out of his element whenhe mixed with them, and he would hardly have accepted Ameni's invitation,if it had not so