, subject to eternal laws. He used to choose his counsellors from
among us; we told him what would benefit the country, he heard us
willingly, and executed our plans. The old kings were the hands, but we,
the priests, were the head. And now, my father, what has become of us? We
are made use of to keep the people in the faith, for if they cease to
honor the Gods how will they submit to kings? Seti ventured much, his son
risks still more, and therefore both have required much succor from the
Immortals. Rameses is pious, he sacrifices frequently, and loves prayer:
we are necessary to him, to waft incense, to slaughter hecatombs, to
offer prayers, and to interpret dreams--but we are no longer his
advisers. My father, now in Osiris, a worthier high-priest than I, was
charged by the Prophets to entreat his father to give up the guilty
project of connecting the north sea by a navigable channel with the
unclean waters of the Red Sea.

[The harbors of the Red Sea were in the hands of the Phoenicians,
who sailed from thence southwards to enrich themselves with the
produce of Arabia and Ophir. Pharaoh Necho also projected a Suez
canal, but does not appear to have carried it out, as the oracle
declared that the utility of the undertaking would be greatest to
foreigners.]

"Such things can only benefit the Asiatics. But Seti would not listen to
our counsel. We desired to preserve the old division of the land, but
Rameses introduced the new to the disadvantage of the priests; we warned
him against fresh wars, and the king again and again has taken the field;
we had the ancient sacred documents which exempted our peasantry from
military service, and, as you know, he outrageously defies them. From the
most ancient times no one has been permitted to raise temples in this
land to strange Gods, and Rameses favors the son of the stranger, and,
not only in the north country, but in the reverend city of Memphis and
here in Thebes, he has raised altars and magnificent sanctuaries, in the
strangers' quarter, to the sanguinary false Gods of the East."

[Human sacrifices, which had been introduced into Egypt by the
Phoenicians, were very early abolished.]

"You speak like a Seer," cried old Gagabu, "and what you say is perfectly
true. We are still called priests, but alas! our counsel is little asked.
'You have to prepare men for a happy lot in the other world,' Rameses
once said; 'I alone can guide their destinies in