ldiers stood by in a state of great fear. The
Prince of Bekhten made the great offering before Khensu and the evil
spirit, and the Prince and the god and the spirit rejoiced greatly. When
the festival was ended the evil spirit, by the command of Khensu,
"departed to the place which he loved." The Prince and all his people
were immeasurably glad at the happy result, and he decided that he would
consider the god to be a gift to him, and that he would not let him
return to Egypt. So the god Khensu stayed for three years and nine
months in Bekhten, but one day, whilst the Prince was sleeping on his
bed, he had a vision in which he saw Khensu in the form of a hawk leave
his shrine and mount up into the air, and then depart to Egypt. When he
awoke he said to the priest of Khensu, "The god who was staying with us
hath departed to Egypt; let his chariot also depart." And the Prince
sent off the statue of the god to Egypt, with rich gifts of all kinds
and a large escort of soldiers and horses. In due course the party
arrived in Egypt, and ascended to Thebes, and the god Khensu
Pa-ari-sekher-em-Uast went into the temple of Khensu Nefer-hetep, and
laid all the gifts which he had received from the Prince of Bekhten
before him, and kept nothing for his own temple. This he did as a proper
act of gratitude to Khensu Nefer-hetep, whose gift of a fourfold portion
of his spirit had enabled him to overcome the power of the evil spirit
that possessed the Princess of Bekhten. Thus Khensu returned from
Bekhten in safety, and he re-entered his temple in the winter, in the
thirty-third year of the reign of Rameses II. The situation of Bekhten
is unknown, but the name is probably not imaginary, and the country was
perhaps a part of Western Asia. The time occupied by the god Khensu in
getting there does not necessarily indicate that Bekhten was a very long
way off, for a mission of the kind moved slowly in those leisurely days,
and the priest of the god would probably be much delayed by the people
in the towns and villages on the way, who would entreat him to ask the
god to work cures on the diseased and afflicted that were brought to
him. We must remember that when the Nubians made a treaty with
Diocletian they stipulated that the goddess Isis should be allowed to
leave her temple once a year, and to make a progress through the country
so that men and women might ask her for boons, and receive them.

CHAPTER VI