ory, and Mr. Weigall writes
with the grace and colour of a Pierre Loti. I have always used his
translations of Akhnaton's words, and very often his own words in
describing Akhnaton.

I take this opportunity of thanking Mr. Weigall for his ungrudging
permission to quote from him, and I should like him to know that his
book was the inspiration of _There was a King in Egypt_.

I must also acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. Walter Tyndall's fine
volume, _Below the Cataracts_,[2]--he is equally successful as author
and artist--for my description of the tomb of Queen Thiy.

The teachings of the reformed Mohammedanism scattered through my book
are derived from the propaganda works of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, especially
his _Teachings of Islam_.[3]

I trust that my readers will find the mysticism of the book not a clog
upon the wheels of the romance of Excavation in Egypt, but Virgil's
"vital breeze."

NORMA LORIMER.
7, PITCULLEN TERRACE, PERTH, SCOTLAND.

[1] Published by Wm. Blackwood & Sons.

[2] Published by Heinemann.

[3] Published by Dulau.

THERE WAS A KING IN EGYPT

PART I

CHAPTER I

Dawn held the world in stillness. In the vast stretches of barren
hills and soft sands there was nothing living or stirring but the
figure of an Englishman, standing at the door of his tent.

At the hour of sunrise and sunset the East is its own. Every
suggestion of Western influence and foreign invasion is wiped out. The
going and the coming of the sun throws the land of the Pharaohs, the
kingdom of Ra, the great Sun God, whose cradle was at Heliopolis, back
to the days when Egypt was the world; to the days when the sun governed
the religion of her people; to the days when civilization had barely
touched the Mediterranean and the world knew not Rome; back again to
the days when the Nile, the Mother of Life, bordered by bands of
fertile, food-giving land, had not as yet sheltered the infant Moses in
her reeds. Dawn in Egypt is the dawn of civilization.

Each dawn saw Michael Amory, wrapped in his thickest coat, standing
outside his tent, watching and waiting for the glory of Egypt, for Ra,
the Sun God, to appear above the horizon of the desert.

To stand alone, nerve-tense and oppressed by the soundless sands, and
surrounded by the Theban Hills, in whose bosoms lie the eternal remains
of the world's first kings, drew him so strongly that, tired as he
might be with his previous day's work, he seldom sle