That he was an artisan noble was another peculiarity, but it was proof of exceptional merit.  He had descended from a long line of royal sculptors, heightening in genius in the last three.  His grandsire had elaborated Karnak; his father had decorated the Rameseum, but Mentu had surpassed the glory of his ancestors.  In the years of his youth, side by side with the great Rameses, he had planned and brought to perfection the mightiest monument to Egyptian sculpture, the rock-carved temple of Ipsambul.  In recognition of this he had been given to wife a daughter of the Pharaoh and raised to a rank never before occupied by a king’s sculptor.  He was second only to the fan-bearers, the most powerful nobles of the realm, and at par with the market, or royal architect, who was usually chosen from among the princes.  And yet he had but come again to his own when he entered the ranks of peerage.  In the long line of his ancestors he counted a king, and from that royal sire he had his stature.

He sat before a table covered with tools of his craft, rolls of papyrus, pens of reeds, pots of ink of various colors, horns of oil, molds and clay images and vessels of paint.  Hanging upon pegs in the wooden walls of his work-room were saws and the heavier drills, chisels of bronze and mauls of tamarisk, suspended by thongs of deer-hide.

The sculptor, rapidly and without effort, worked out with his pen on a sheet of papyrus the detail of a frieze.  Tiny profile figures, quaint borders of lotus and mystic inscriptions trailed after the swift reed in multitudinous and bewildering succession.  As he worked, a young man entered the doorway from the court and, advancing a few steps toward the table, watched the development of the drawings with interest.

Those were the days of early maturity and short life.  The Egyptian of the Exodus often married at sixteen, and was full of years and ready to be gathered to Osiris at fifty-five or sixty.  The great Rameses lived to the unheard-of age of seventy-seven, having occupied the throne since his eleventh year.

This young Egyptian, nearly eighteen, was grown and powerful with the might of mature manhood.  A glance at the pair at once established their relationship as father and son.  The features were strikingly similar, the stature the same, though the young frame was supple and light, not massive.

The hair was straight, abundant, brilliant black and cropped midway down the neck and just above the brows.  There was no effort at parting.  It was dressed from the crown of the head as each hair would naturally lie and was confined by a circlet of gold, the token of the royal blood of his mother’s house.  The complexion was the hue of a healthy tan, different, however, from the brown of exposure in that it was transparent and the red in the cheek was dusky.  The face was the classic type of the race, for be it known there were two physiognomies characteristic of Egypt.