ther to give up the guilty project of connecting the north sea by a
navigable channel with the unclean waters of the Red Sea.

[The harbors of the Red Sea were in the hands of the Phoenicians,
who sailed from thence southwards to enrich themselves with the
produce of Arabia and Ophir. Pharaoh Necho also projected a Suez
canal, but does not appear to have carried it out, as the oracle
declared that the utility of the undertaking would be greatest to
foreigners.]

"Such things can only benefit the Asiatics. But Seti would not listen
to our counsel. We desired to preserve the old division of the land, but
Rameses introduced the new to the disadvantage of the priests; we warned
him against fresh wars, and the king again and again has taken the
field; we had the ancient sacred documents which exempted our peasantry
from military service, and, as you know, he outrageously defies them.
From the most ancient times no one has been permitted to raise temples
in this land to strange Gods, and Rameses favors the son of the
stranger, and, not only in the north country, but in the reverend city
of Memphis and here in Thebes, he has raised altars and magnificent
sanctuaries, in the strangers' quarter, to the sanguinary false Gods of
the East."

[Human sacrifices, which had been introduced into Egypt by the
Phoenicians, were very early abolished.]

"You speak like a Seer," cried old Gagabu, "and what you say is
perfectly true. We are still called priests, but alas! our counsel is
little asked. 'You have to prepare men for a happy lot in the other
world,' Rameses once said; 'I alone can guide their destinies in this.'"

"He did say so," answered Ameni, "and if he had said no more than that
he would have been doomed. He and his house are the enemies of our
rights and of our noble country. Need I tell you from whom the race of
the Pharaoh is descended? Formerly the hosts who came from the east, and
fell on our land like swarms of locusts, robbing and destroying it, were
spoken of as 'a curse' and a 'pest.' Rameses' father was of that race.
When Ani's ancestors expelled the Hyksos, the bold chief, whose children
now govern Egypt, obtained the favor of being allowed to remain on
the banks of the Nile; they served in the armies, they distinguished
themselves, and, at last, the first Rameses succeeded in gaining the
troops over to himself, and in pushing the old race of the legitimate
sons of Ra, weakened as they