ok! ye who are wives, and weep with me, ye who are left
widowed."

Now the women looked, and a great groan went up from all that multitude,
while Meriamun hid her face with the hollow of her hand. Then again she
spoke.

"I have besought the Gods, my sisters; I have dared to call down the
majesty of the Gods, who speak through the lips of the dead, and I have
learnt whence these woes come. And this I have won by my prayers, that
ye who suffer as I suffer shall learn whence they come, not from my
mortal lips, indeed, but from the lips of the dead that speak with the
voice of the Gods."

Then, while the women trembled, she turned to the body of Pharaoh, which
was set upon the knees of Osiris, and spoke to it.

"Dead Pharaoh! great Osirian, ruling in the Underworld, hearken to me
now! Hearken to me now, thou Osiris, Lord of the West, first of the
hosts of Death. Hearken to me, Osiris, and be manifest through the lips
of him who was great on earth. Speak through his cold lips, speak with
mortal accents, that these people may hear and understand. By the spirit
that is in me, who am yet a dweller on the earth, I charge thee speak.
Who is the source of the woes of Khem? Say, Lord of the dead, who are
the living evermore?"

Now the flame on the altar died away, and dreadful silence fell upon
the Temple, gloom fell upon the Shrine, and through the gloom the golden
crown of Meriamun, and the cold statue of the Osiris, and the white face
of dead Meneptah gleamed faint and ghost-like.

Then suddenly the flame of the altar flared as flares the summer
lightning. It flared full on the face of the dead, and lo! the lips
of the dead moved, and from them came the sound of mortal speech. They
spake in awful accents, and thus they spoke:

"_She who was the curse of Achaeans, she who was the doom of Ilios; she
who sits in the Temple of Hathor, the Fate of man, who may not be harmed
of Man, she calls down the wrath of the Gods on Khem. It is spoken!_"

The echo of the awful words died away in the silence. Then fear took
hold of the multitude of women because of the words of the Dead, and
some fell upon their faces, and some covered their eyes with their
hands.

"Arise, my sisters!" cried the voice of Meriamun. "Ye have heard not
from my lips, but from the lips of the dead. Arise, and let us forth to
the Temple of the Hathor. Ye have heard who is the fountain of our woes;
let us forth and seal it at its source for ever. Of men she m