Afternoon came, and ever we wound among the islands. Ever the desert came closer: especially a group of frowning hills that encroached from the east. The sun was low again when I cried out:
"The pyramids!"
There they were, three of them, tiny with distance and black against the reddening sky, rising from vast inclosures on a hill far back from the western bank. Dikaiarchos and Berosos hastened to look, shading their eyes. Onas and Manethôs , engrossed in a game of checkers, merely glanced up and back again to their game. They had seen these strange edifices before.
Manethôs said: "Here is something of interest to Master Berosos. On your left you see the town of Babylon, whose dwellers came aforetime from his land."
The town stood on the riverbank at the base of a rugged hill. Berosos was at once full of questions. Manethôs explained:
"King Sesostris of the Twelfth Dynasty conquered an empire as wide as that of Alexander and brought home thousands of captives, whom he compelled to labor at building temples. Now, the captives brought from Babylonia revolted and seized yon hill. They fortified this eminence, ravaged the country round about, and defeated all efforts to subdue them. At last the king offered them a treaty, by which they should be allowed to dwell in that place and manage their own affairs if they would be loyal subjects and give up their brigandage. So it was agreed, and they live there yet."
Berosos sighed. "Ah me! Once we, too, were a race of warriors and conquerors."
"Be thankful you are no longer," said Dikaiarchos. "These kings reap a bit of glory, but what do they accomplish besides burning cities, killing and enslaving multitudes, and destroying the accumulated wealth and wisdom of the ages to aggrandize their own mediocre selves? He who ascertains a new law of nature or invents a new device is greater than all your conquerors, and in the long run has more influence."
"You can afford to be philosophical, Hellene," said Manethôs . "You need not take orders from foreigners; you need not skip out of the way when a drunken foreign soldier swaggers down the street. You have no horde of foreign officials meddling" in the affairs of your temple and selling the high-priesthood to the highest bidder."
"No doubt, but it does not alter my argument. I have written a book, proving that all the natural causes of human calamity—fire, flood, famine, plague, and wild beasts—have together slain fewer people than man himself by his wars and revolutions."
"I should rejoice to read it," said Manethôs . "Meanwhile I suggest that we stop for the night at Babylon and go on in the morning, as Memphis is another forty furlongs."
In Babylon-in-Egypt we entered another world. Here were the hooked noses, the flowing beards, the long curled hair, the knitted caps with dangling tails, and the guttural speech of Old Babylon. Berosos was delighted to discover that the people yet spoke the old Babylonian tongue.
"Outside of the rituals of the temples, scarcely ever is the old speech heard in Babylonia any more," he said. "We all speak Syrian in our everyday affairs."
During the evening I became separated from my companions; or rather, I separated myself, for what seemed a good reason. I succeeded in cajoling the reason into a compliant mood, despite the fact that neither of us understood a word of what the other said. Alas! At that point her husband came in, and I had to drop from a balcony and scurry around a few corners to preserve my gore for beautiful Rhodes.
Back at the boat, I found Onas and Dikaiarchos but not Berosos or the Egyptian priest. Fearing that they had met with foul play, I started out to look for them, when they appeared, singing. That is, each was singing a song in his native tongue and paying no heed to the song of the other. They had their arms about each other's necks, although Manethôs was usually careful, for religious reasons, not to touch foreigners. They reeled aboard and sat down with a force that strained the Hathor's flimsy planks. Berosos' plump face was wreathed in smiles, and so was the normally solemn visage of Manethôs .
"Ye gods!" I said to the latter. "Aren't you violating a hundred rules of your temple, man?"
The priest waved a finger at me. "Nought that a few ritual puff—purifications will not cure. It would be different were I higher in the hierarchy. Know you what Berosos and I have done?"
"What?"
"We have taken a solemn oath. We have made a compact. Tell him, Berosos."
The Babylonian said: "Nay, the hiccups have I. You tell him."
"I will try. We have sworn, by Thôth and Osiris and Amnion, and by Nebos and some other Babylonian gods whose names escape me, that—that—what swore we, Berosos?"
"To—to write a book, each of us," said Berosos, "in Greek, setting forth the true histories of our great and glorious peoples. The history of Babylonia will I compose, while Manethôs shall write that of Egypt. We shall draw upon the ancient records of our nations, which you poor benighted Hellenes cannot even read. Thus shall you learn what a privilege it is to know us."
"Let alone," said Manethôs , "let alone make a cruise on the Nile with us. We shall—we shall—what was I going to say, Berosos? Ech! The lazy rascal sleeps."
Manethôs slumped down and joined his comrade in slumber.
Many have heard of the pyramids of Egypt, but not many Hellenes know that the three across the river from Babylon are not the only ones. There are many more, albeit smaller than the great ones of King Souphis and his successors. They stretch for leagues up the western bank of the Nile. In stately procession they filed past us, rising on the skyline beyond the palms and plowed fields and villas, until we came unto Memphis.
Memphis was by far the largest city that I had ever seen. A colossal wall of pearly limestone incloses the city proper, which stretches back from the waterfront across a spacious plain for thirty furlongs and along the river for sixty. Within the wall, many temples rise from the enormous spread of brown brick houses, and around them tower the upper parts of an army of gigantic statues.
When I remarked on the stunning size of the wall, Berosos said: "Vaster by far are the walls of Babylon, though now into decay they have fallen."
Horos guided the Hathor to a mooring place on the waterfront. Manethôs pointed towards the southeastern part of the city, saying:
"You will wish to find quarters for your company, O Chares. Yonder lies the foreign quarter, around the temple of Hathor, where inns of the Greek type are to be found."
"Show me thither, pray," I said.
The foreign quarter of Memphis is noisily colorful. Here one is jostled by men in Hellenic cloaks, men in sleeved robes, men in leather jackets, and men with naked upper bodies. Legs in kilts, and legs in trousers, and bare legs stride past; the blue eyes and lank pale hair of the Kelt mingle with the shiny black skin and tribal scars of the Ethiop. Atop the hurrying figures bob Libyan ostrich plumes, tall spiral Syrian hats, Arabian headcloths, Persian felt caps, and Indian turbans.
Here a liquid-eyed Iberian with black side whiskers under his little black woolen bonnet tries to make an assignation with a slender Indian girl in gauzy muslins and jingling silver gimcracks; there a curly-haired, scar-faced Etruscan quarrels with a booted, bearded, bowlegged Scythian; they shout insults with hands on knives until a Greek soldier from the garrison parts them with a threatening growl. A stocky, turbaned Kordian orders his horoscope read by a curly-bearded Babylonian; a slim, hawk-faced Nabataean and a fat Phoenician goldsmith haggle over a bracelet, with much waving of arms, invocation of strange gods, and crashing of gutturals.
Manethôs found us an inn. When we had eaten, he said: "You will, I suppose, wait upon the commandant whilst I seek my colleagues in the temple of Thôth. Ere I do that, I must have my head shaved and buy me new footgear, for the boat's bilge water has destroyed all the shoon I brought with me."