Part 31 (1/2)

Thus they passed fro out their light, allotted tasks, and for the rest, living as they would and loving those they would, especially their children, of whom they had many By nature and tradition theskilled in the use of the bow and always at hen they could find anyone to fight Indeed e ca them their trouble was that they had no enemies left, and at once they implored Bes to lead the kine and tilling fields

All of these things I found out by degrees, also that they were a great people who could send out an arh behind them to defend their land Of the world beyond their borders the most of thereat deal, since they travelled to Egypt and elsewhere to study the customs of other countries For the rest their only God was the Grasshopper and like that insect they skipped and chirruped through life and when the winter of death ca their young behind them to bask in the sun of unborn summers Such were the Ethiopians

Now of all the cere as Karoon, I knew little, for the reason that the tooth of the crocodile poisoned my blood andin a fine rooold seeypt, and all the vessels were of crystal Had it not been for the skill of the Ethiopian leeches and above all for the nursing of my mother, I think that I must have died

She it ithstood them when they wished to cut offas it had ever been In the end I greell again and from the platform in front of the temple was presented to the people by Bes as his saviour and the next greatest to his hich I was received

Kare passed the Ordeal of the Matrons, but only, I think, because it was found that she was in the way to give an heir to the throne For to theliness, nor could they understand how it caeneral customs of the land, was only allowed one wife lest the children should quarrel, could have chosen a lady as not black

So they received her in silence with ry

When in due course, however, the child came and proved to be a son black as the best of them and of perfect shape, they relented towards her and after the birth of a second, grew to love her But she never forgave and loved them not at all Nor was she over-fond of these children of hers because they were so black which, she said, showed how poisonous was the blood of the Ethiopians And indeed this is so, for often I have noticed that if an Ethiopian ith one of another colour, their offspring is black down to the third or fourth generation Therefore Kare the splendour in which she dwelt

So greatly did she long that she had recourse to the ic lore which she had learned fro into water in a crystal bowl, or so to see visions therein that had to do hat passed in Egypt Moreover in tis which she repeated to me, for she would tell no one else of the in a shrine before the statue of Isis and weeping: a picture thatin the darkness of the Cave of the Bulls, and read in his ht she could not read

Again she saw Easternletters to Pharaoh and knew froypt was threatened with calamities And so forth

Soon the news of her powers of divination spread abroad, so that all the Ethiopians grew to fear her as a seeress and thenceforth, whatever they ly Further, her gift was real, since if she told , in due course they would arrive and make clear much that she had not been able to understand in her visions

Now froain and as soon as Bes was firmly seated on his throne, he and I set to work to train and drill the army of the Ethiopians, which hitherto had been littlebows and swords We divided it into phalanxes after the Greek fashi+on, and are shi+elds in the place of the small ones they had carried before Also we trained the archers, teaching them to advance in open order and shoot from cover, and lastly chose the best soldiers to be captains and generals So it came about that at the end of the two years that I spent in Ethiopia there was a force of sixty thousand ainst any troops in the world, since they were of great strength and courage, and, as I have said, by nature lovers of war Also their bows being longer and more powerful, they could shoot arrows farther than the Easterns or the Egyptians

The Ethiopian lords wondered why their King and I did these things, since they saw no enereat an army could be led to battle On thattheood for theof their wealth, one day the King of kings ht attempt to invade their country Soar far afield, carrying with them as necessary for their sustenance

So it went on until a sad thing happened, since on returning from one of these forays in which I had punished a tribe that had murdered some Ethiopian hunters and we had takenShe had been smitten by a fever which was co old and weak had no strength to throw it off

As medicine did not help her, the priests of the Grasshopper prayed day and night in their teolden locust standing on an altar in a sanctuary that was surrounded by crystal coffins wherein rested the flesh of forht was pitiful, but Bes askedto a locust and praying to ies with the heads of beasts, or to a dwarf shaped as he was like we did in Egypt, and I could not answer him

”The truth is, Brother,” he said, for so he called me now, ”that all peoples in the world do not offer petitions to what they see and have been taught to revere, but to son But why the Ethiopians should have chosen a grasshopper as a symbol of God who is everywhere, is more than I can tell Still they have done so for thousands of years”

When I ca and I saw that she could not live long In a little while, however, her mind cleared so that she knew me and tears of joy ran down her pale cheeks because I had returned before she died She rerave in Ethiopia, and asked to be buried and not kept above ground in crystal, as was the custo of my father and of me; also that she did not think that I need fret myself over I should kiss her on the lips

I asked if she meant that I should marry her and that we should be happy and fortunate She replied that she supposed that I shouldIndeed her face grew troubled, as though so theme the rose-hued pearls, blessed htway died

So I caused her to be eyptian fashi+on and enclosed in a coffin of crystal with a scarab on her heart that Karema had discovered sos that reht froers Then with such ceremony as we could without the services of the priests of Osiris, Karema and I buried her in a tomb that Bes had caused to be made near to the steps of the temple of the Grasshopper, while Bes and his nobles watched from a distance

And so farewell to rew very sad and lonely While she lived I had a hoe land with no one of my own people to talk to except Kareht it well not to talk tooand the tis is not their own Moreover Bes was Bes and an Ethiopian and I was I and an Egyptian, and therefore notwithstanding our love and brotherhood, we could never be like reeary of Ethiopia with its useless gold and daed for the sand and the keen desert air Bes noted it and offered me wives, but I shrank from these black wo of their race whoypt I had sworn not to return unless one voice calledno longer content to discipline and coth I made up my mind By nature I was a hunter asfrom Bes a band of brave s, and with the the path of the elephants to wherever the Gods ht lead us

Doubtless in the end it would be to death, but whatfor which one cares to live?