to wait twenty-nine days after he had arrived in your harbour, although you certainly knew he was there.  He is indeed still what he once was:  yes, now while you stand bargaining for the Lebanon with Amon its lord.  As for Amon-Ra, the king of the gods, he is the lord of life and health, and he was the lord of your fathers, who spent their lifetime offering to him.  You also, you are the servant of Amon.  If you will say to Amon, ‘I will do this,’ and you execute his command, you shall live and be prosperous and be healthy, and you shall be popular with your whole country and people.  Wish not for yourself a thing belonging to Amon-Ra, king of the gods.  Truly the lion loves his own!  Let my secretary be brought to me that I may send him to Nesubanebded, and he will send you all that I shall ask him to send, after which, when I return to the south, I will send you all, all your trifles again.”

“So spake I to him,” says Wenamon in his report, as with a flourish of his pen he brings this fine speech to an end.  No doubt it would have been more truthful in him to say, “So would I have spoken to him had I not been so flustered”; but of all types of lie this is probably the most excusable.  At all events, he said sufficient to induce the prince to send his secretary to Egypt; and as a token of good faith Zakar-Baal sent with him seven logs of cedar-wood.  In forty-eight days’ time the messenger returned, bringing with him five golden and five silver vases, twenty garments of fine linen, 500 rolls of papyrus, 500 ox-hides, 500 coils of rope, twenty measures of lentils, and five measures of dried fish.  At this present the prince expressed himself most satisfied, and immediately sent 300 men and 300 oxen with proper overseers to start the work of felling the trees.  Some eight months after leaving Tanis, Wenamon’s delighted eyes gazed upon the complete number of logs lying at the edge of the sea, ready for shipment to Egypt.

The task being finished, the prince walked down to the beach to inspect the timber, and he called to Wenamon to come with him.  When the Egyptian had approached, the prince pointed to the logs, remarking that the work had been carried through although the remuneration had not been nearly so great as that which his fathers had received.  Wenamon was about to reply when inadvertently the shadow of the prince’s umbrella fell upon his head.  What memories or anticipations this trivial incident aroused one cannot now tell with certainty.  One of the gentlemen-in-waiting, however, found cause in it to whisper to Wenamon, “The shadow of Pharaoh, your lord, falls upon you”—­the remark, no doubt, being accompanied by a sly dig in the ribs.  The prince angrily snapped, “Let him alone”; and, with the picture of Wenamon gloomily staring out to sea, we are left to worry out the meaning of the occurrence.  It may be that the prince intended to keep Wenamon at Byblos until the uttermost farthing had been extracted from Egypt in further payment for the wood, and that therefore he was to be regarded henceforth as Wenamon’s king and master.  This is perhaps indicated by the following remarks of the prince.