Morning Star | Page 4

by Maspero and by Mr.
Flinders Petrie in his "Egyptian Tales," the /Ka/ plays a very distinct
part of its own. Thus the husband is buried at Memphis and the wife in
Koptos, yet the /Ka/ of the wife goes to live in her husband's tomb
hundreds of miles away, and converses with the prince who comes to
steal the magic book.

Although I know no actual precedent for it, in the case of a particularly
powerful Double, such as was given in this romance to Queen
Neter-Tua by her spiritual father, Amen, the greatest of the Egyptian
gods, it seems, therefore, legitimate to suppose that, in order to save her
from the abomination of a forced marriage with her uncle and her
father's murderer, the /Ka/ would be allowed to anticipate matters a
little, and to play the part recorded in these pages.
It must not be understood, however, that the fact of marriage with an
uncle would have shocked the Egyptian mind, since these people, and
especially their royal Houses, made a habit of wedding their own
brothers and sisters, as in this tale Mermes wed his half sister Asti.
I may add that there is authority for the magic waxen image which the
sorcerer Kaku and his accomplice used to bewitch Pharaoh. In the days
of Rameses III., over three thousand years ago, a plot was made to
murder the king in pursuance of which such images were used. "Gods
of wax . . . . . . for enfeebling the limbs of people," which were "great
crimes of death, the great abomination of the land." Also a certain
"magic roll" was brought into play which enabled its user to "employ
the magic powers of the gods."
Still, the end of these wizards was not encouraging to others, for they
were found guilty and obliged to take their own lives.
But even if I am held to have stretched the prerogative of the /Ka/, or of
the waxen image which, by the way, has survived almost to our own
time, and in West Africa, as a fetish, is still pierced with pins or nails, I
can urge in excuse that I have tried, so far as a modern may, to
reproduce something of the atmosphere and colour of Old Egypt, as it
has appeared to a traveller in that country and a student of its records. If
Neter-Tua never sat upon its throne, at least another daughter of Amen,
a mighty queen, Hatshepu, wore the crown of the Upper and the Lower
Lands, and sent her embassies to search out the mysteries of Punt. Of
romance also, in high places, there must have been abundance, though
the short-cut records of the religious texts of the priests do not trouble
themselves with such matters.

At any rate, so believing, in the hope that it may interest readers of
to-day, I have ventured to discover and present one such romance,
whereof the motive, we may be sure, is more ancient, by far, than the
old Egyptians, namely, the triumph of true love over great difficulties
and dangers. It is pleasant to dream that the gods are on the side of such
lovers, and deign for their sakes to work the miracles in which for
thousands of years mankind has believed, although the scientist tells us
that they do not happen.
How large a part marvel and magic of the most terrible and exalted
kind played in the life of Old Egypt and of the nations with which she
fought and traded, we need go no further than the Book of Exodus to
learn. Also all her history is full of it, since among the Egyptians it was
an article of faith that the Divinity, which they worshipped under so
many names and symbols, made use of such mysterious means to
influence or direct the affairs of men and bring about the
accomplishment of Its decrees.
H. R. H.

Morning Star
by H. Rider Haggard
CHAPTER I
THE PLOT OF ABI
It was evening in Egypt, thousands of years ago, when the Prince Abi,
governor of Memphis and of great territories in the Delta, made fast his
ship of state to a quay beneath the outermost walls of the mighty city of
Uast or Thebes, which we moderns know as Luxor and Karnac on the
Nile. Abi, a large man, very dark of skin, for his mother was one of the
hated Hyksos barbarians who once had usurped the throne of Egypt, sat
upon the deck of his ship and stared at the setting sun which for a few
moments seemed to rest, a round ball of fire, upon the bare and rugged

mountains, that ring round the Tombs of the Kings.
He was angry, as the slave-women, who stood on either