"May Seth shrivel you!" said the priest angrily. "I will thank you not to discuss my private affairs with outsiders. A sorry wight is he who exposes his kin."
"He's done you a favor, old boy," I said. "His words assure me that you are truly a human being like the rest of us. I had begun to wonder."
Manethôs grunted and withdrew into haughty silence. Being regarded as a common mortal was evidently not to his taste.
The banks of the Nile swept grandly past. Now the river ran straight for many furlongs; again, it wound in sharp bends, so that Horos and Zazamanx had to break out the oars. Palm trees nodded upon the banks; camels swayed against the skyline. The camel moaned, the falcon screamed overhead in the fathomless blue, and the swape creaked as naked, chanting peasants worked its long boom up and down to raise water to their irrigation ditches.
Canals, large and small, opened into the Nile on either hand. Village after mud-walled village floated past, until I began to understand how so huge a population is credited by the geographers to Egypt. By comparison Hellas is a wild uninhabited waste.
At Leontopolis I was told that the deputy strategos for the Province of the Heseb Bull was away inspecting canals, and nobody else knew anything of my thieves. I began to feel that I had embarked on a fool's errand, plunging farther and farther southward into this mysterious land without even the faintest spoor of my game to guide me.
As the sun set, a red ball behind the western palms, Berosos drew geometrical figures in the wax of a writing tablet. Manethôs asked:
"What do you, Babylonian?"
"I prepare to cast our horoscope for the journey," replied Berosos.
"I have heard of this Babylonian system of divination by the stars. Forsooth, our Egyptian vaticinatory methods are of greater antiquity and wisdom than those of other nations; but still, I would fain have your scheme explained to me— as soon as I have completed my evening prayers." Manethôs spoke to the boat at large. "Allow me to suggest, gentlemen, that those of you who have gods do pray to them now."
When Manethôs had finished his own prayers, he spoke again to Berosos: "Very well, sir, will you set forth your science now?"
"Surely, my friend." Berosos plunged into his lecture. As he spoke, the stars came out, one by one, as if in obedience to his summons. He said:
"From preliminary indications, high hopes have I of a favorable premonstration."
I said: "Any time Berosos tells you that the stars assure you good luck, that's the time to beware."
"Heed him not, Manethôs ," said Berosos. "These scoffing Hellenes are wont to parade their skepticism, not because they understand the higher truths but to magnify themselves by tearing others down."
"That's not true at all!" boomed Dikaiarchos. "For thousands of years, ever since your ancient civilizations arose, men have believed whatever their priests and kings told them, nine-tenths of it self-serving falsehood."
"How know you it was false?" said Manethôs .
"Because all these ancient myths and doctrines contradict one another. As my master, the great Aristoteles, so irrefutably demonstrated, if two statements are contradictory, both cannot possibly be true at once. So it is high time a little skepticism were applied to such matters, to winnow the wheat from the chaff."
"I can show you cases where the event fell out exactly as the stars foretold," said Berosos.
"No doubt, but that proves nothing unless you can also show two other things: that no predictions ever turned out badly, and that the events foretold would not have come to fruition in any case. For example, I can prophesy that the sun will rise tomorrow. Does that make me a prophet?"
Berosos replied: "If you come to Babylon, I will show you our ancient archives, dealing with the very points you raise."
"That may be," said Dikaiarchos, "but never yet have I seen a form of divination that would stand up under logical analysis."
Manethôs : "Believe you not that man can ever know the future?" .
"I wouldn't go so far. While I will not accept any other form of divination, I think there may be something to prophetic dreams."
"Mean you, my learned friend, as when the wise Thôth warns me of the future in slumber?" said Manethôs .
"Essentially, yes."
"Then you do accept the gods?"
"Let's not jump to conclusions," said Dikaiarchos. "I have never seen a god and so know nothing of them. Furthermore, it may be better for us not to know the future; for, if we knew our fate in detail, who would strive to better his lot?"
"As to gods," I began, "I have seen—"
But Manethôs cut me off. "That depends on whether one's vision of the future be absolute or contingent. But if you discredit the gods, how then do you explain prescience in dreams?"
"It may be that in sleep or in hysterical frenzy the spirit loses its intimate connection with the body and is thus enabled to see through the barriers of time and space that normally hem us in. One might call it extrasensory perception. If, as Parmenides taught, all events—past, present, and future—coexist in an eternal now—"
"Then you do believe in the soul?" said Manethôs .
"That there exists a life principle that distinguishes the living from the dead, I concede. But as for the common concept that this spirit goes wandering off by itself, or survives the death of the body—phy! I'll believe that when I see it."
"I can enlighten you," said Manethôs gravely. "There exist not one but three souls in each body. The first, the ba, is immortal and divine and leaves the body at death. The second, the chou or intelligence, and the third, the ka or double, remain with the body. In time, if the body has been properly mummified, these three souls unite to revivify it.
"However, it is but just to say that the Osirians have a rival theory, according to which the ka is a divine emanation—"
"Gentlemen!" I said. "We have reached Athribis. You may stay aboard and dine on talk of the different kinds of soul, but I'm for town."
Again I sought the office of the strategos of the Province of the Great Black Bull. The results were even less satisfactory than the last time. A clerk said to me:
"No, whatever-your-name-is, you may not see General Hybrias. The strategos will see nobody, because he is computing the tax rolls with the nomarch. Come back next month, and then perhaps he will see you. No, you may not see the nomarch, who is helping the strategos with the tax rolls."
It struck me that the farther I got from Tamiathis, the less cooperation I got from Ptolemaios' officials. Such a state of affairs boded ill for my prospects of success in Memphis.
Above Athribis the river took several sharp bends. River traffic became thicker as we neared Memphis. The scenery changed, to remind us that we were about to leave the Delta, the broad flat land of wet black earth and thickly sown villages, shaped like the letter whose name it bears, and enter that part of Egypt where the Nile flows for thousands of furlongs through a narrow green valley between two vast bare deserts.
Already we had caught glimpses of these deserts. Rocky hills and sandy dunes marched in upon us from east and west. The farther south we went, the closer they came: yellow-brown hills from the Libyan Desert, on our right, and gray-brown hills from the Arabian Desert, on our left.
We reached the fork where the Nile divides into its two main branches: the Phatnitic, up which we had come, and the Bolbitinic, which empties into the sea farther west. Here we anchored for the night between two small islands, one of which shielded us from the wind and the other from the current.
The next day we sailed to southward again. Above the fork the river is divided by a multitude of islands, great and small. On the smaller isles reeds and long grasses waved in the steady etesian breeze, while Egyptian families picnicked by the waterside. The larger isles bore farms and villas.