d into greenland; while our whole land is
enshrouded in death dealing cold and ice and snow and preceding this,
the waters creep up and engulf our city. The mountain on which the great
ship rests sinks down to meet the rising waters and the ship sails off
to the southeast, leaving us helpless victims to be engulfed by the
rising waters or frozen by the creeping, numbing cold, or smothered
under mountains of ice and snow. How long before this shall be I do not
know.

I have told my dream to Nefert, the best beloved of my wives, and we
have agreed to prepare against the portent of such catastrophes.

We have too many idle, too many to feed; it were better were our
population reduced one-half.

We will gather all the provisions of the land into great warehouses, and
only those shall eat who labor to build our great pyramid, within which
the chosen shall find refuge from the rising waters and the destructive
cold.

When the pyramid is completed, we shall store it with great quantities
of grain and fuel and textiles to last for years; and as the waters
rise, if they shall cover the eminence on which we shall built it, which
seems impossible, we shall ascend from the lower to the upper chambers.

On the morrow we will begin our preparations, which will not be wasted,
though the flood and cold come not, as it will make for us a most
pretentious tomb.

I shall send a great force to gather grain and other foodstuffs, another
to collect fuel, others still shall be put to work to weave heavy woolen
textiles. Five thousand shall quarry stone for the pyramid of Theni,
which shall be built upon the highest mountain near our city. Thirty
thousand shall drag and carry great stones from the quarries to the site
and fifteen thousand more shall shape and place the stones. Twelve
thousand shall act as guards and task masters, to see that the work is
done and speedily.

I shall tell the pyramid is for my tomb and until my death to be used as
a great storage warehouse; else the people may grow frightened and
desperate. They have not yet learned to fear storage plants. Those of
the people who are too old or too young to labor shall die.

Dimly discernible from the city is the central high mountain range,
extending from the eastern coast far to the northwest and there ending
in a rugged promontory, jutting out into a frozen sea.

The country across these mountains, and even to their snow-capped,
fog-bannered peaks, is a land of ice