d.

Only a short period of life seemed allotted to the invalid ruler, and
the service of the time-honoured god of the dead, to whom he had erected
one of the most magnificent temples in the world at Alexandria, to which
Egyptians and Hellenes repaired with equal devotion, opened hopes for
the life after death which seemed to him worthy of examination.

For this reason also he desired to secure the favour of the Egyptian
priesthood.

For this purpose, for the execution of his wise and beneficent
arrangements, as well as for the gratification of his expensive tastes,
large sums of money were required; therefore he devoted himself with
especial zeal to enlarging the resources of his country, already so rich
by nature.

In all these things he had found an admirable assistant in his sister
Arsinoe. As the daughter of the father and mother to whom he himself
owed existence, he could claim for her unassailable legitimacy the same
recognition from the priesthood, and the same submission from the people
rendered to his own person, whom the religion of the country commanded
them to revere as the representative of the sun god.

As marriages between brothers and sisters had been customary from
ancient times, and were sanctioned by religion and myth, he had married
the second Arsinoe, his sister, immediately after the banishment of the
first Queen of this name.

After the union with her, he called himself Philadelphus--brotherly
love--and honoured his sister and wife with the same name.

True, this led the sarcastic Alexandrians to utter many a biting, more
or less witty jest, but he never had cause to regret his choice; in
spite of her forty years, and more than one bloody deed which before her
marriage to him she had committed as Queen of Thrace and as a widow, the
second Arsinoe was always a pattern of regally aristocratic, dignified
bearing and haughty womanly beauty.

Though the first Philadelphus could expect no descendants from her, he
had provided for securing them through her, for he had induced her to
adopt the first Arsinoe's three children, who had been taken from their
exiled mother.

Arsinoe was now accompanying her royal husband Philadelphus to the
eastern frontier. There the latter expected to name the city to be newly
founded "Arsinoe" for her, and-to show his esteem for the priesthood--to
consecrate in person the new Temple of Tum in the city of Pithom, near
Heroopolis.

Lastly, the monarch had been en