opened before
the eyes of the high-priest, a troop of lower priests, and at least a
thousand of the inhabitants of Memphis, who had hurried to the spot,
and when the miserable contents were disclosed, there arose such fearful
howls of anguish, and such horrible cries of mingled lamentation and
revenge, that I heard them even in the palace.

"The furious multitude, in their wild rage, fell on my poor servant,
threw him down, trampled on him and would have killed him, had not
the all-powerful high-priest-designing to involve me, as author of the
crime, in the same ruin--commanded them to cease and take the wretched
malefactor to prison.

"Half an hour later I was in prison too.

"My old Mus took all the guilt of the crime on himself, until at last,
by means of the bastinado, the high-priest forced him to confess that
I had ordered the killing of the kittens, and that he, as a faithful
servant, had not dared to disobey.

"The supreme court of justice, whose decisions the king himself has no
power to reverse, is composed of priests from Memphis, Heliopolis and
Thebes: you can therefore easily believe that they had no scruple in
pronouncing sentence of death on poor Mus and my own unworthy Greek
self. The slave was pronounced guilty of two capital offences: first,
of the murder of the sacred animals, and secondly, of a twelve-fold
pollution of the Nile through dead bodies. I was condemned as originator
of this, (as they termed it) four-and-twenty-fold crime.

[According to the Egyptian law, the man who was cognizant of a crime
was held equally culpable with the perpetrator.]

"Mus was executed on the same day. May the earth rest lightly on him!
I shall never think of him again as my slave, but as a friend and
benefactor! My sentence of death was read aloud in the presence of
his dead body, and I was already preparing for a long journey into the
nether world, when the king sent and commanded a reprieve.

[This court of justice, which may be compared with the Areopagus at
Athens, and the Gerusia at Sparta, (Diod. I, 75.), was composed of
30 judges taken from the priestly caste, (10 from Heliopolis, 10
from Memphis, 10 from Thebes). The most eminent from among their
number was chosen by them as president. All complaints and defences
had to be presented in writing, that the judges might in no way be
influenced by word or gesture. This tribunal was independent, even
of the king's authority. M