Moon of Israel | Page 4

was, as you may recall, that you said you thought
the plan of this book probable and that it commended itself to your
knowledge of those dim days.
With gratitude for your help and kindness and the sincerest homage to
your accumulated lore concerning the most mysterious of all the
perished peoples of the earth, Believe me to remain Your true admirer,
H. Rider Haggard.

MOON OF ISRAEL

CHAPTER I
SCRIBE ANA COMES TO TANIS
This is the story of me, Ana the scribe, son of Meri, and of certain of
the days that I have spent upon the earth. These things I have written
down now that I am very old in the reign of Rameses, the third of that
name, when Egypt is once more strong and as she was in the ancient
time. I have written them before death takes me, that they may be
buried with me in death, for as my spirit shall arise in the hour of
resurrection, so also these my words may arise in their hour and tell to
those who shall come after me upon the earth of what I knew upon the
earth. Let it be as Those in heaven shall decree. At least I write and
what I write is true.

I tell of his divine Majesty whom I loved and love as my own soul, Seti
Meneptah the second, whose day of birth was my day of birth, the
Hawk who has flown to heaven before me; of Userti the Proud, his
queen, she who afterwards married his divine Majesty, Saptah, whom I
saw laid in her tomb at Thebes. I tell of Merapi, who was named Moon
of Israel, and of her people, the Hebrews, who dwelt for long in Egypt
and departed thence, having paid us back in loss and shame for all the
good and ill we gave them. I tell of the war between the gods of Egypt
and the god of Israel, and of much that befell therein.
Also I, the King's Companion, the great scribe, the beloved of the
Pharaohs who have lived beneath the sun with me, tell of other men
and matters. Behold! is it not written in this roll? Read, ye who shall
find in the days unborn, if your gods have given you skill. Read, O
children of the future, and learn the secrets of that past which to you is
so far away and yet in truth so near.

As it chanced, although the Prince Seti and I were born upon the same
day and therefore, like the other mothers of gentle rank whose children
saw the light upon that day, my mother received Pharaoh's gift and I
received the title of Royal Twin in Ra, never did I set eyes upon the
divine Prince Seti until the thirtieth birthday of both of us. All of which
happened thus.
In those days the great Pharaoh, Rameses the second, and after him his
son Meneptah who succeeded when he was already old, since the
mighty Rameses was taken to Osiris after he had counted one hundred
risings of the Nile, dwelt for the most part at the city of Tanis in the
desert, whereas I dwelt with my parents at the ancient, white-walled
city of Memphis on the Nile. At times Meneptah and his court visited
Memphis, as also they visited Thebes, where this king lies in his royal
tomb to-day. But save on one occasion, the young Prince Seti, the
heir-apparent, the Hope of Egypt, came not with them, because his
mother, Asnefert, did not favour Memphis, where some trouble had
befallen her in youth--they say it was a love matter that cost the lover
his life and her a sore heart--and Seti stayed with his mother who

would not suffer him out of sight of her eyes.
Once he came indeed when he was fifteen years of age, to be
proclaimed to the people as son of his father, as Son of the Sun, as the
future wearer of the Double Crown, and then we, his twins in Ra--there
were nineteen of us who were gently born--were called by name to
meet him and to kiss his royal feet. I made ready to go in a fine new
robe embroidered in purple with the name of Seti and my own. But on
that very morning by the gift of some evil god I was smitten with spots
all over my face and body, a common sickness that affects the young.
So it happened that I did not see the Prince, for before I was well again
he had left Memphis.
Now my father Meri was a scribe of the great temple of Ptah, and I was
brought up to his trade in the school of