"There are, you will observe, some curious features of these stories. For instance, why should it take the Judaeans forty years to cross the land of Sinai? According to all the geographers, whereas this peninsula is certainly hot, barren, and rocky, it is no larger than the Peloponnesos, and so could be traversed in a ten-day or two, even afoot."
I said: "If the Judaeans' forebears were truly a race of blind, crippled, and leprous beggars, as in Manethôs' tale, it might take them forty years."
"Ah, but if they were, they could never have escaped the pursuit of the Egyptian king! No, what we have here are probably a few scraps of authentic fact, boiled up with a lot of myth and legend and patriotic fiction. And how, in this stew, shall we tell the false from the true? The answer is: We cannot."
"Whatever be the truth," said I, "all this happened long ago. So why should Manethôs and Azarias hate each other so, despite the fact that neither really knows the other? Each, taken by himself, is a pretty fine fellow. Yet each of them snarls like an angry dog at the mere mention of the other."
"You cannot expect men to be rational about national enmities," said Dikaiarchos. "As everyone knows, people like to have friends, but they also like to have enemies. A hereditary foe is a useful thing to have. It gives you somebody to feel superior to; it provides a handy target for all the furies and hatreds which you have boiling around inside you but which you dare not direct at those nearer you. So, if you truly convinced either one of our friends that the other was really a good, honest, and kindly man, you would do him no service, for you would rob him of his dearly cherished enmity."
"Do you think such enmities a good thing, then?"
"Herakles, no! They cause all the hideous massacres and cruelties and destructions that I have set forth in my book. I merely state that this is how most men seem to be made, and I see no easy way of changing them. Even the godlike Platon, when he imagined his ideal states, assumed that they would be at intermittent war with their neighbors, and he therefore bestowed upon them strength in arms enough to defeat all comers. Of course he did not live to see such mighty captains in the field as Alexander and Demetrios. If he had, he might not have been so sure that his little city-states could be defended by virtuous valor alone."
"We're testing that theory in Rhodes right now," I said. "Come around in another year and see how we made out— Papai! Here's Manethôs again."
The lean priest rode up on the back of one of the big white Egyptian asses. "Rejoice, O Chares!" he said, dismounting. "At my temple I found news which so nearly touches you that I thought it my duty to warn you."
"My dear Manethôs!" I said, springing up to take the ass's bridle. "Tell me, by all means. Could I first get you something to wash the dust of the journey from your throat? Pray excuse us, O Dikaiarchos."
Manethôs let me steer him to a tavern and pour beer into his private bronze cup. When he had quenched his thirst, he whispered:
"Word has come to my temple of the battle in the bull-burial chamber. It seems that we left two men dead and one gravely wounded, though Tis has no worse than a pigeon's egg on the side of his skull. Moreover, Tis, with Alkman's help, has dispatched a band of hardy rogues in a rowing barge to slay you and your comrades."
"How has word come so quickly, in such detail?" I asked.
"We have our methods," murmured Manethôs .
"Go howl! Is it by familiar spirits, or tame falcons, or that extrasensory perception of which Dikaiarchos speaks?"
Manethôs only smiled and went on. "Now, the cult of Thôth is not the only one to learn of these events. Some busybody of a bat whispered the tale in the ear of a priest of the temple of Osiris at Memphis. This was the first that this exalted college knew that Tis had been using one of their sacred sarcophagi as a locker for his loot. A shocking sacrilege, of course." Manethôs tried without complete success to suppress a smile.
"Anyway," he went on, "the priests of Osiris, with unseemly haste, knocked down the brick wall that parts the chamber from the corridor leading up into the temple. They found the secret door in the taurine coffin, but, lacking the key, they could not open it, nor would it yield to blows and bumps. They also found and explored the tunnels excavated by Tis.
"In fact, they encountered Tis and his rogues therein. I take it that there was a battle in the dark, with heads broken and knives fleshed. In the end Tis's band fled back to his house and barricaded the door into his bedroom, even as we did when they pursued us. Then the priests carried stone and rubble into the tunnels to block them and bricked up the secret entrance to the chamber.
"Then appealed Tis to his crony Alkman to compel the priests to vacate the bull-burial chamber whilst he took away his loot. So the strategos came clanking up to the temple with a score of soldiers. But the high priest refused them admittance. Nay more, he even defied this mighty man, averring that Alkman's jurisdiction, by express command of King Ptolemaios, did not extend one digit into the temenos, and that if he forced his way in he should rue it. This he said, with his temple guards around him, trying to look fierce behind their wicker shields and caps of crocodile; but not, I do fear, presenting too martial an array compared to Alkman's bronze-blanking hoplitai.
"Further, the high priest threatened Alkman with assorted curses and nocturnal ghostly visitations. This the strategos, being a superstitious wight for all his ferocity, took much to heart.
"Although he desisted from trying to invade the temenos, Alkman did demand to enter the chamber through the tunnels to remove the loot, which, he said, was governmental property. Not so, said the high priest; it belonged to great Osiris, having been deposited under his holy ground. Much talk brought no solution to this impasse. The upshot was that, whereas Alkman has posted soldiers at the entrances to the tunnels and all around the temenos of Osiris, lest the priests smuggle out Tis's loot, the priests keep watches of temple guards in the bull-burial chamber, lest Alkman or Tis again gain access thereto. And all the while the sarcophagus cannot be opened save by Tis's key, or by boring through a cubit of granite, which were a tedious task.
"Withal, the several parties to this contention quake in terror lest news of their wrangle come to the ears of the king, who would then seize the stuff for himself. Were it not that our knowledge of the matter were like to get us all murdered, I should find it a most risible affair."
"Suppose," I said, "that Alkman did lay hands upon the loot. Would he then return it to Tis?"
"That know I not, though I doubt it. If the imbroglio became noised abroad, Alkman were more likely to turn on Tis and slay him quickly, ere his dealings with the arch-thief become known to the king. Then he would plead: Why, certes, he had known Tis, but only as an honest merchant. Never dreamt he that so foul a soul underlay so fair a seeming! On the other hand, if Tis's knaves succeed in slaying us, Alkman might well continue his profitable partnership with this villain, who is now the undisputed lord of the criminal classes of the Province of the White Wall."
Amenardis burst out: "Amnion-Ra! How can you talk so calmly about being killed?"
"Faith in the immortality of the soul, madam," said Manethôs .
"Me, I no want to be killed, soul or no soul. We must get to the sea, Chares, right away. You order Horos to take us down river tonight!"