in it?  Everything is in ruins.  Laughter is dead, no one can laugh.  Groaning and lamentation are everywhere in the land.  Egyptians have turned into foreigners.  The hair hath fallen out of the head of every man.  A gentleman cannot be distinguished from a nobody.  Every man saith, ‘I would that I were dead,’ and children say, ’[My father] ought not to have begotten me.’  Children of princes are dashed against the walls, the children of desire are cast out into the desert, and Khnemu[1] groaneth in sheer exhaustion.  The Asiatics have become workmen in the Delta.  Noble ladies and slave girls suffer alike.  The women who used to sing songs now sing dirges.  Female slaves speak as they like, and when their mistress commandeth they are aggrieved.  Princes go hungry and weep.  The hasty man saith, ’If I only knew where God was I would make offerings to Him.’  The hearts of the flocks weep, and the cattle groan because of the condition of the land.  A man striketh his own brother.  What is to be done?  The roads are watched by robbers, who hide in the bushes until a benighted traveller cometh, when they rob him.  They seize his goods, and beat him to death with cudgels.  Would that the human race might perish, and there be no more conceiving or bringing to the birth!  If only the earth could be quiet, and revolts cease!  Men eat herbs and drink water, and there is no food for the birds, and even the swill is taken from the mouths of the swine.  There is no grain anywhere, and people lack clothes, unguents, and oil.  Every man saith, ‘There is none.’  The storehouse is destroyed, and its keeper lieth prone on the ground.  The documents have been filched from their august chambers, and the shrine is desecrated.  Words of power are unravelled, and spells made powerless.  The public offices are broken open and their documents stolen, and serfs have become their own masters.  The laws of the court-house are rejected, men trample on them in public, and the poor break them in the street.  Things are now done that have never been done before, for a party of miserable men have removed the king.  The secrets of the Kings of the South and of the North have been revealed.  The man who could not make a coffin for himself hath a large tomb.  The occupants of tombs have been cast out into the desert, and the man who could not make a coffin for himself hath now a treasury.  He who could not build a hut for himself is now master of a habitation with walls.  The rich man spendeth his night athirst, and he who begged for the leavings in the pots hath now brimming bowls.  Men who had fine raiment are now in rags, and he who never wore a garment at all now dresseth in fine linen.  The poor have become rich, and the rich poor.  Noble ladies sell their children for beds.  Those who once had beds now sleep on the ground.  Noble ladies go hungry, whilst butchers are sated with what was once prepared for them.  A man is slain by his brother’s side, and that brother fleeth to save his own life.”