The Yoke | Page 8

heavy drowsiness of a mid-winter noon had depopulated her booths and bazaars and quieted the quaint traffic of her squares. In the shadows of the city her porters drowsed, and from the continuous wall of houses blankly facing one another from either side of the streets, there came no sound. Each household sought the breezes on the balconies that galleried the inner walls of the courts, or upon the pillared and canopied housetops.
Memphis had eaten and drunk and, sheltered behind her screens, waited for the noon to pass.
Mentu, the king's sculptor, however, had not availed himself of the hour of ease. He did not labor because he must, for his house stood in the aristocratic portion of Memphis, and it was storied, galleried, screened and topped with its breezy pavilion. Within the hollow space, formed by the right and left wings of his house, the chamber of guests to the front, and the property wall to the rear, was a court of uncommon beauty. Palm and tamarisk, acacia and rose-shrub, jasmine and purple mimosa made a multi-tinted jungle about a shadowy pool in which a white heron stood knee-deep. There were long stretches of sunlit sod, and walks of inlaid tile, seats of carved stone, and a single small obelisk, set on a circular slab, marked with measures for time--the Egyptian sun-dial. On every side were evidences of wealth and luxury.
So Mentu labored because he loved to toil. In a land languorous with tropical inertia, an enthusiastic toiler is not common. For this reason, Mentu was worth particular attention. He towered a palm in height over his Egyptian brethren, and his massive frame was entirely in keeping with his majestic stature. He was nearly fifty years of age, but no sign of the early decay of the Oriental was apparent in him. His was the characteristic refinement of feature that marks the Egyptian countenance, further accentuated by self-content and some hauteur. The idea of dignity was carried out in his dress. The kilt was not visible, for the kamis had become a robe, long-sleeved, high-necked and belted with a broad band of linen, encompassing the body twice, before it was fastened with a fibula of massive gold.
That he was an artisan noble was another peculiarity, but it was proof of exceptional merit. He had descended from a long line of royal sculptors, heightening in genius in the last three. His grandsire had elaborated Karnak; his father had decorated the Rameseum, but Mentu had surpassed the glory of his ancestors. In the years of his youth, side by side with the great Rameses, he had planned and brought to perfection the mightiest monument to Egyptian sculpture, the rock-carved temple of Ipsambul. In recognition of this he had been given to wife a daughter of the Pharaoh and raised to a rank never before occupied by a king's sculptor. He was second only to the fan-bearers, the most powerful nobles of the realm, and at par with the market, or royal architect, who was usually chosen from among the princes. And yet he had but come again to his own when he entered the ranks of peerage. In the long line of his ancestors he counted a king, and from that royal sire he had his stature.
He sat before a table covered with tools of his craft, rolls of papyrus, pens of reeds, pots of ink of various colors, horns of oil, molds and clay images and vessels of paint. Hanging upon pegs in the wooden walls of his work-room were saws and the heavier drills, chisels of bronze and mauls of tamarisk, suspended by thongs of deer-hide.
The sculptor, rapidly and without effort, worked out with his pen on a sheet of papyrus the detail of a frieze. Tiny profile figures, quaint borders of lotus and mystic inscriptions trailed after 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