The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Cat of Bubastes, by G. A. Henty

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Title: The Cat of Bubastes
A Tale of Ancient Egypt

Author: G. A. Henty

Illustrator: J. R. Weguelin

Release Date: August 22, 2009 [EBook #29756]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration]

THE CAT OF BUBASTES

G.A. HENTY.

[Illustration: C. of B.
THE REBU PEOPLE LED INTO CAPTIVITY.--Page 55.]

THE CAT OF BUBASTES.
A TALE OF ANCIENT EGYPT.
BY G. A. HENTY,

_Author of "The Young Carthaginian," "For the Temple,"
"In the Reign of Terror," "Bonnie Prince Charlie,"
"In Freedom's Cause," etc., etc._

_FIVE PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS BY J. R. WEGUELIN._

NEW YORK:
THE F. M. LUPTON PUBLISHING COMPANY.

PREFACE.

My Dear Lads: Thanks to the care with which the Egyptians depicted
upon the walls of their sepulchers the minutest doings of their daily
life, to the dryness of the climate which has preserved these records
uninjured for so many thousand years, and to the indefatigable labor
of modern investigators, we know far more of the manners and customs
of the Egyptians, of their methods of work, their sports and
amusements, their public festivals, and domestic life, than we do of
those of peoples comparatively modern. My object in the present story
has been to give you as lively a picture as possible of that life,
drawn from the bulky pages of Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson and other
writers on the same subject. I have laid the scene in the time of
Thotmes III., one of the greatest of the Egyptian monarchs, being
surpassed only in glory and the extent of his conquests by Rameses the
Great. It is certain that Thotmes carried the arms of Egypt to the
shores of the Caspian, and a people named the Rebu, with fair hair and
blue eyes, were among those depicted in the Egyptian sculptures as
being conquered and made tributary. It is open to discuss