, saying that I should not
judge the spirit by the body, or of the god by his house.

We camped outside this town and soon learned that the people who dwelt
in it or elsewhere in other towns must be numbered by the ten thousand,
for more of them than I could count wandered round the camp to look at
us. The men were fierce-eyed and hook-nosed; the young women well-shaped
and pleasant to behold; the older women for the most part stout and
somewhat unwieldy, and the children very beautiful. All were roughly
clad in robes of loosely-woven, dark-coloured cloth, beneath which the
women wore garments of white linen. Notwithstanding the wealth we
saw about us in corn and cattle, their ornaments seemed to be few, or
perhaps these were hidden from our sight.

It was easy to see that they hated us Egyptians, and even dared to
despise us. Hate shone in their glittering eyes, and I heard them
calling us the 'idol-worshippers' one to the other, and asking where was
our god, the Bull, for being ignorant they thought that we worshipped
Apis (as mayhap some of the common people do) instead of looking upon
the sacred beast as a symbol of the powers of Nature. Indeed they did
more, for on the first night after our coming they slaughtered a bull
marked much as Apis is, and in the morning we found it lying near the
gate of the camp, and pinned to its hide with sharp thorns great numbers
of the scarabaeus beetle still living. For again they did not know that
among us Egyptians this beetle is no god but an emblem of the Creator,
because it rolls a ball of mud between its feet and sets therein its
eggs to hatch, as the Creator rolls the world that seems to be round,
and causes it to produce life.

Now all were angry at these insults except the Prince, who laughed
and said that he thought the jest coarse but clever. But worse was to
happen. It seems that a soldier with wine in him had done insult to a
Hebrew maiden who came alone to draw water at a canal. The news spread
among the people and some thousands of them rushed to the camp, shouting
and demanding vengeance in so threatening a manner that it was necessary
to form up the regiments of guards.

The Prince being summoned commanded that the girl and her kin should be
admitted and state their case. She came, weeping and wailing and tearing
her garments, throwing dust on her head also, though it appeared that
she had taken no great harm from the soldier from whom she ran away. The
Prince