Bent-Anat threw herself between the man and the stripling, who was hardly more than a boy, once more declared her name, and this time her brother’s also, and commanded Paaker to make peace among the boatmen.  Then she led Nefert, who remained unrecognized, into the boat, entered it herself with her companions, and shortly after landed at the palace, while Paaker’s mother, for whom he had called his boat, had yet a long time to wait before it could start.  Setchem had seen the struggle from her litter at the top of the landing steps, but without understanding its origin, and without recognizing the chief actors.

The dog was dead.  Paaker’s hand was very painful, and fresh rage was seething in his soul.

“That brood of Rameses!” he muttered.  “Adventurers!  They shall learn to know me.  Mena and Rameses are closely connected—­I will sacrifice them both.”

     ETEXT editor’s bookmarks: 

     Her white cat was playing at her feet
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     The dressing and undressing of the holy images
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     Use words instead of swords, traps instead of lances

UARDA

Volume 7.

By Georg Ebers

CHAPTER XXIX.

At last the pioneer’s boat got off with his mother and the body of the dog, which he intended to send to be embalmed at Kynopolis, the city in which the dog was held sacred above all animals;

[Kynopolis, or in old Egyptian Saka, is now Samalut; Anubis was the chief divinity worshipped there.  Plutarch relates a quarrel between the inhabitants of this city, and the neighboring one of Oxyrynchos, where the fish called Oxyrynchos was worshipped.  It began because the Kynopolitans eat the fish, and in revenge the Oxyrynchites caught and killed dogs, and consumed them in sacrifices.  Juvenal relates a similar story of the Ombites—­perhaps Koptites—­and Pentyrites in the 15th Satire.]

Paaker himself returned to the House of Seti, where, in the night which closed the feast day, there was always a grand banquet for the superior priests of the Necropolis and of the temples of eastern Thebes, for the representatives of other foundations, and for select dignitaries of the state.

His father had never failed to attend this entertainment when he was in Thebes, but he himself had to-day for the first time received the much-coveted honor of an invitation, which—­Ameni told him when he gave it—­he entirely owed to the Regent.

His mother had tied up his hand, which Rameri had severely hurt; it was extremely painful, but he would not have missed the banquet at any cost, although he felt some alarm of the solemn ceremony.  His family was as old as any in Egypt, his blood purer than the king’s, and nevertheless he never felt thoroughly at home in the company of superior people.  He was no priest, although a scribe; he was a warrior, and yet he did not rank with royal heroes.