The Bride of the Nile

Bride of the Nile, Complete, by
Georg Ebers

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Title: The Bride of the Nile, Complete
Author: Georg Ebers
Release Date: October 17, 2006 [EBook #5529]
Language: English
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Produced by David Widger

THE BRIDE OF THE NILE
By Georg Ebers
Volume 1.

Translated from the German by Clara Bell

PREFACE.
The "Bride of the Nile" needs no preface. For the professional student I
may observe that I have relied on the authority of de Goeje in adhering
to my own original opinion that the word Mukaukas is not to be
regarded as a name but as a title, since the Arab writers to which I have
made reference apply it to the responsible representatives of the
Byzantine Emperor in antagonism to the Moslem power. I was
unfortunately unable to make further use of Karabacek's researches as
to the Mukaukas.
I shall not be held justified in placing the ancient Horus Apollo
(Horapollo) in the seventh century after Christ by any one who regards
the author of the Hieroglyphica as identical with the Egyptian
philosopher of the same name who, according to Suidas, lived under
Theodosius, and to whom Stephanus of Byzantium refers, writing so
early as at the end of the fifth century. But the lexicographer Suidas
enumerates the works of Horapollo, the philologer and commentator on
Greek poetry, without naming the Hieroglyphica, which is the only
treatise alluded to by Stephanus. Besides, all the other ancient writers
who mention Horapollo at all leave us quite free to suppose that there
may have been two sages of the same name--as does C. Leemans, who
is most intimately versed in the Hieroglyphica--and the second
certainly cannot have lived earlier than the VIIth century, since an
accurate knowledge of hieroglyphic writing must have been lost far
more completely in his time than we can suppose possible in the IVth
century. It must be remembered that we still possess well-executed
hieroglyphic inscriptions dating from the time of Decius, 250 years
after Christ. Thus the Egyptian commentator on Greek poetry could
hardly have needed a translator, whereas the Hieroglyphica seems to
have been first rendered into Greek by Philippus. The combination by
which the author called in Egyptian Horus (the son of Isis) is supposed
to have been born in Philae, where the cultus of the Egyptian heathen
was longest practised, and where some familiarity with hieroglyphics

must have been preserved to a late date, takes into due account the real
state of affairs at the period I have selected for my story.
GEORG EBERS. October 1st, 1886.
CHAPTER I.
Half a lustrum had elapsed since Egypt had become subject to the
youthful power of the Arabs, which had risen with such unexampled
vigor and rapidity. It had fallen an easy prey, cheaply bought, into the
hands of a small, well-captained troop of Moslem warriors; and the fair
province, which so lately had been a jewel of the Byzantine Empire and
the most faithful foster-mother to Christianity, now owned the sway of
the Khalif Omar and saw the Crescent raised by the side of the Cross.
It was long since a hotter season had afflicted the land; and the Nile,
whose rising had been watched for on the Night of Dropping--the 17th
of June--with the usual festive preparations, had cheated the hopes of
the Egyptians, and instead of rising had shrunk narrower and still
narrower in its bed.--It was in this time of sore anxiety, on the 10th of
July, A.D. 643, that a caravan from the North reached Memphis.
It was but a small one; but its appearance in the decayed and deserted
city of the Pyramids--which had grown only lengthwise, like a huge
reed-leaf, since its breadth was confined between the Nile and the
Libyan Hills--attracted the gaze of the passers-by, though in former
years a Memphite would scarcely have thought it worth while to turn
his head to gaze at an interminable pile of wagons loaded with
merchandise, an imposing train of vehicles drawn by oxen, the flashing
maniples of the imperial cavalry, or an endless procession wending its
way down the five miles of high street.
The merchant who, riding a dromedary of the choicest breed,
conducted this caravan, was a lean Moslem of mature age, robed in soft
silk. A vast turban covered his small head and cast a shadow over his
delicate and venerable