sengers were approaching, in due course they would arrive and make
clear much that she had not been able to understand in her visions.

Now from the time that I grew strong again and as soon as Bes was firmly
seated on his throne, he and I set to work to train and drill the army
of the Ethiopians, which hitherto had been little more than a mob of men
carrying bows and swords. We divided it into phalanxes after the Greek
fashion, and armed these bodies with long lances, swords, and large
shields in the place of the small ones they had carried before. Also we
trained the archers, teaching them to advance in open order and shoot
from cover, and lastly chose the best soldiers to be captains and
generals. So it came about that at the end of the two years that I
spent in Ethiopia there was a force of sixty thousand men or more whom
I should not have been afraid to match against any troops in the world,
since they were of great strength and courage, and, as I have said, by
nature lovers of war. Also their bows being longer and more powerful,
they could shoot arrows farther than the Easterns or the Egyptians.

The Ethiopian lords wondered why their King and I did these things,
since they saw no enemy against which so great an army could be led to
battle. On that matter Bes and I kept our own counsel, telling them only
that it was good for the men to be trained to war, since, hearing of
their wealth, one day the King of kings might attempt to invade their
country. So month by month I laboured at this task, leading armies into
distant regions to accustom them to travelling far afield, carrying with
them what was necessary for their sustenance.

So it went on until a sad thing happened, since on returning from one
of these forays in which I had punished a tribe that had murdered some
Ethiopian hunters and we had taken many thousands of their cattle, I
found my mother dying. She had been smitten by a fever which was common
at that season of the year, and being old and weak had no strength to
throw it off.

As medicine did not help her, the priests of the Grasshopper prayed day
and night in their temple for her recovery. Yes, there they prayed to a
golden locust standing on an altar in a sanctuary that was surrounded by
crystal coffins wherein rested the flesh of former kings of the land.
To me the sight was pitiful, but Bes asked me what was the difference
between praying to a locust and praying to images with the heads of
beast