Uarda | Page 8

my men."
"Halt!" cried Paaker in a rage. "I am the king's chief pioneer."
"Then you will all the more easily find the way back by which you
came. March."
The words were followed by a peal of many-voiced laughter: the
re-echoing insult so confounded Paaker that he dropped his whip on the
ground. The slave, whom a short time since he had struck with it,
humbly picked it up and then followed his lord into the fore court of the
temple. Both attributed the titter, which they still could hear without
being able to detect its origin, to wandering spirits. But the mocking
tones had been heard too by the old gate-keeper, and the laughers were
better known to him than to the king's pioneer; he strode with heavy
steps to the door of the temple through the black shadow of the pylon,
and striking blindly before him called out--
"Ah! you good-for-nothing brood of Seth.
[The Typhon of the Greeks. The enemy of Osiris, of truth, good and
purity. Discord and strife in nature. Horns who fights against him for
his father Osiris, can throw him and stun him, but never annihilate
him.]
"You gallows-birds and brood of hell--I am coming."
The giggling ceased; a few youthful figures appeared in the moonlight,
the old man pursued them panting, and, after a short chase, a troop of
youths fled back through the temple gate.
The door-keeper had succeeded in catching one miscreant, a boy of
thirteen, and held him so tight by the ear that his pretty head seemed to
have grown in a horizontal direction from his shoulders.
"I will take you before the school-master, you plague-of-locusts, you

swarm of bats!" cried the old man out of breath. But the dozen of
school-boys, who had availed themselves of the opportunity to break
out of bounds, gathered coaxing round him, with words of repentance,
though every eye sparkled with delight at the fun they had had, and of
which no one could deprive them; and when the biggest of them took
the old man's chin, and promised to give him the wine which his
mother was to send him next day for the week's use, the porter let go
his prisoner--who tried to rub the pain out of his burning ear--and cried
out in harsher tones than before:
"You will pay me, will you, to let you off! Do you think I will let your
tricks pass? You little know this old man. I will complain to the Gods,
not to the school-master; and as for your wine, youngster, I will offer it
as a libation, that heaven may forgive you."

CHAPTER II.
The temple where, in the fore-court, Paaker was waiting, and where the
priest had disappeared to call the leech, was called the "House of Seti"
--[It is still standing and known as the temple of Qurnah.]--and was one
of the largest in the City of the Dead. Only that magnificent building of
the time of the deposed royal race of the reigning king's grandfather
--that temple which had been founded by Thotmes III., and whose
gate-way Amenophis III. had adorned with immense colossal
statues--[That which stands to the north is the famous musical statue, or
Pillar of Memmon]-- exceeded it in the extent of its plan; in every other
respect it held the pre-eminence among the sanctuaries of the
Necropolis. Rameses I. had founded it shortly after he succeeded in
seizing the Egyptian throne; and his yet greater son Seti carried on the
erection, in which the service of the dead for the Manes of the members
of the new royal family was conducted, and the high festivals held in
honor of the Gods of the under- world. Great sums had been expended
for its establishment, for the maintenance of the priesthood of its
sanctuary, and the support of the institutions connected with it. These
were intended to be equal to the great original foundations of priestly
learning at Heliopolis and Memphis; they were regulated on the same

pattern, and with the object of raising the new royal residence of Upper
Egypt, namely Thebes, above the capitals of Lower Egypt in regard to
philosophical distinction.
One of the most important of these foundations was a very celebrated
school of learning.
[Every detail of this description of an Egyptian school is derived from
sources dating from the reign of Rameses II. and his successor,
Merneptah.]
First there was the high-school, in which priests, physicians, judges,
mathematicians, astronomers, grammarians, and other learned men, not
only had the benefit of instruction, but, subsequently, when they had
won admission to the highest ranks of learning, and attained the dignity
of "Scribes," were maintained at the cost of the king, and enabled to
pursue their philosophical speculations and researches, in freedom from