History of Egypt, Chaldæa, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) eBook

Gaston Maspero
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 215 pages of information about History of Egypt, Chaldæa, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12).

History of Egypt, Chaldæa, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) eBook

Gaston Maspero
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 215 pages of information about History of Egypt, Chaldæa, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12).
me, none of my charioteers looked towards me when I called them, not one of them heard my voice when I cried to them.  But I find that Amon is more to me than a million soldiers, than a hundred thousand charioteers, than a myriad of brothers or young sons, joined all together, for the number of men is as nothing, Amon is greater than all of them.  Each time I have accomplished these things, Amon, by the counsel of thy mouth, as I do not transgress thy orders, I rendered thee glory even to the ends of the earth.”  So calm an invocation in the thick of the battle would appear misplaced in the mouth of an ordinary man, but Pharaoh was a god, and the son of a god, and his actions and speeches cannot be measured by the same standard as that of a common mortal.  He was possessed by the religious spirit in the hour of danger, and while his body continued to fight, his soul took wing to the throne of Amon.  He contemplates the lord of heaven face to face, reminds him of the benefits which he had received from him, and summons him to his aid with an imperiousness which betrays the sense of his own divine origin.  The expected help was not delayed.  “While the voice resounds in Hermonthis, Amon arises at my behest, he stretches out his hand to me, and I cry out with joy when he hails me from behind:  ’Face to face with thee, face to face with thee, Ramses Miamun, I am with thee!  It is I, thy father!  My hand is with thee, and I am worth more to thee than hundreds of thousands.  I am the strong one who loves valour; I have beheld in thee a courageous heart, and my heart is satisfied; my will is about to be accomplished!’ I am like Montu; from the right I shoot with the dart, from the left I seize the enemy.  I am like Baal in his hour, before them; I have encountered two thousand five hundred chariots, and as soon as I am in their midst, they are overthrown before my mares.  Not one of all these people has found a hand wherewith to fight; their hearts sink within their breasts, fear paralyses their limbs; they know not how to throw their darts, they have no strength to hold their lances.  I precipitate them into the water like as the crocodile plunges therein; they are prostrate face to the earth, one upon the other, and I slay in the midst of them, for I have willed that not one should look behind him, nor that one should return; he who falls rises not again.”  This sudden descent of the god has, even at the present day, an effect upon the reader, prepared though he is by his education to consider it as a literary artifice; but on the Egyptian, brought up to regard Amon with boundless reverence, its influence was irresistible.  The Prince of the Khati, repulsed at the very moment when he was certain of victory, “recoiled with terror.  He sends against the enemy the various chiefs, followed by their chariots and skilled warriors,—­the chiefs of Arvad, Lycia, and Ilion, the leaders of the Lycians and Dardanians, the lords of Carchemish, of the Girgashites, and of
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History of Egypt, Chaldæa, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.