The Yoke | Page 9

the swift reed in
multitudinous and bewildering succession. As he worked, a young man
entered the doorway from the court and, advancing a few steps toward
the table, watched the development of the drawings with interest.
Those were the days of early maturity and short life. The Egyptian of
the Exodus often married at sixteen, and was full of years and ready to
be gathered to Osiris at fifty-five or sixty. The great Rameses lived to
the unheard-of age of seventy-seven, having occupied the throne since
his eleventh year.
This young Egyptian, nearly eighteen, was grown and powerful with
the might of mature manhood. A glance at the pair at once established
their relationship as father and son. The features were strikingly similar,
the stature the same, though the young frame was supple and light, not
massive.
The hair was straight, abundant, brilliant black and cropped midway
down the neck and just above the brows. There was no effort at parting.
It was dressed from the crown of the head as each hair would naturally
lie and was confined by a circlet of gold, the token of the royal blood of
his mother's house. The complexion was the hue of a healthy tan,
different, however, from the brown of exposure in that it was
transparent and the red in the cheek was dusky. The face was the
classic type of the race, for be it known there were two physiognomies
characteristic of Egypt.
The forehead was broad, the brows long and delicately penciled, the
eyes softly black, very long, the lids heavy enough to suggest serenity
rather than languor. The nose was of good length, aquiline, the nostril
thin and sharply chiseled. The cut of the mouth and the warmth of its

color gave seriousness, sensitiveness and youthful tenderness to the
face.
Egypt was seldom athletic. Though running and wrestling figured much
in the pastime of youths, the nation was languid and soft. However,
Seti the Elder demanded the severest physical exercise of his sons, and
Rameses II, who succeeded him, made muscle and brawn popular by
example, during his reign. Here, then, was an instance of
king-mimicking that was admirable.
Originally the young man had been gifted with breadth of shoulder,
depth of chest, health and vigor. He would have been strong had he
never vaulted a pole or run a mile. To these advantages were added the
results of wise and thorough training, so wise, so thorough, that defects
in the national physique had been remedied. Thus, the calves were
stanch and prominent, whereas ancient Egypt was as flat-legged as the
negro; the body was round and tapered with proper athletic rapidity
from shoulder to heel, without any sign of the lank attenuation that was
characteristic of most of his countrymen.
The suggestion of his presence was power and bigness, not the
good-natured size that is hulking and awkward, but bigness that is
elegant and fine-fibered and ages into magnificence.
He wore a tunic of white linen, the finely plaited skirt reaching almost
to the knees. The belt was of leather, three fingers in breadth and
ornamented with metal pieces, small, round and polished. His sandals
were of white gazelle-hide, stitched with gold, and, by way of ornament,
he had but a single armlet, and a collar, consisting of ten golden rings,
depending by eyelets from a flexible band of the same material. The
metal was unpolished and its lack-luster red harmonized wonderfully
with the bronze throat it clasped.
Diminutive Isis in profile had emerged part-way from the background
of papyrus, and the sculptor lifted his pen to sketch in the farther
shoulder as the law required. The young man leaned forward and
watched. But as the addition was made, giving to the otherwise shapely
little goddess an uncomfortable but thoroughly orthodox twist, he

frowned slightly. After a moment's silence he came to the bench.
"Hast thou caught some great idea on the wing or hast thou the round of
actual labor to perform?" he asked.
His attention thus hailed, the sculptor raised himself and answered:
"Meneptah hath a temple to Set[1] in mind; indeed he hath stirred up
the quarries for the stone, I am told, and I am making ready, for I shall
be needed."
The older a civilization, the smoother its speech. Age refines the
vowels and makes the consonants suave. They spoke easily, not hastily,
but as oil flows, continuously and without ripple. The younger voice
was deep, soft enough to have been wooing and as musical as a chant.
"Would that the work were as probable as thou art hopeful," the young
man said with a sigh.
"Out upon thee, idler!" was the warm reply. "Art thou come to vex me
with thy doubts and scout thy sovereign's pious intentions?" The young
man smiled.
"Hath