The two Etruscans were of medium height, very muscular and with broad shoulders. Their dark hair was matted with dirt and hung in uneven strands on both sides of their faces. The elder of the two was apparently about forty years old and the younger was approximately the same age as Pandion.
The likeness between them was immediately apparent — their sunken cheeks stressed the protruding cheekbones and their stern hazel eyes flashed with a stubbornness that nothing could break.
Pandion was both puzzled and annoyed by the indifference of the Etruscans and hurried back to his own cell. For several days after this Pandion deliberately paid no attention to them although he knew they were watching him.
Some ten days after the arrival of the Etruscans Pandion and Kidogo were sitting side by side over a supper of papyrus stalks. The two friends ate their food quickly and then lingered a while to talk while the others were finishing their meal. Pandion’s neighbour on the other side was the elder Etruscan. Unexpectedly he laid his heavy hand on the youth’s shoulder and looked mockingly into Pandion’s eyes when he turned towards him.
“A poor comrade will never gain his liberty,” said the Etruscan slowly with a note of challenge in his words; he did not fear that the warders would understand him for the inhabitants of Tha-Quem did not understand the languages of their captives and despised all foreigners.
Pandion jerked his shoulder impatiently, not having understood the import of the Etruscan’s words, but the latter squeezed hard with his fingers that dug into Pandion’s muscles like bronze talons.
“You despise them, and you shouldn’t.” The Etruscan nodded his head towards the other slaves who were busily eating. “The others are no worse than you and they also dream of liberty…”
“They are worse,” exclaimed Pandion arrogantly. “They’ve been here a long time and I haven’t heard of any attempts at escape!”
The Etruscan pressed his lips together contemptuously.
“If youth doesn’t possess sufficient intelligence, then youth must learn from age. You’re strong and healthy, there’s still strength left in your body after a day’s heavy toil, and lack of food hasn’t yet undermined your strength. They have lost their strength; that’s the only difference between you and them, and that’s your good luck. But remember that you can’t escape from here alone: you have to know the road and break through by force and the only force we have is all of us together. When you are a good comrade to all of them there’ll be a better chance of your dreams coming true…”
Amazed at the shrewdness of the Etruscan who had fathomed his most secret thoughts, Pandion could find no answer and only hung his head in silence.
“What’s he saying? What’s he saying?” Kidogo kept asking him.
Pandion wanted to explain but at that moment the overseer beat on the table; the slaves who had finished their meal had to make way for the next party and go to their cells for their night’s rest.
During the night Pandion and Kidogo discussed the Etruscan’s words for a long time. They had to admit that the newcomer understood the position of the slaves better than anybody else. Those who bore the brand of Pharaoh had to know the way out of the country if their escape was to be successful. This was not alclass="underline" they had to fight their way through a country with a hostile population who believed that the “savages” had been created to work for the people chosen by the gods.
The two friends were despondent at this but they had a feeling of trust in the clever Etruscan.
A few more days passed and there were four friends in Pharaoh’s shehne. Gradually they acquired greater authority amongst the other slaves.
The elder Etruscan, who bore the awe-inspiring name of Cavius, the god of death, was regarded as their senior by many of the staves. The three others, the young Etruscan, whose name was Remdus, Kidogo and Pandion, three strong, hardy and bold men, became his most reliable assistants.
By degrees from amongst the five hundred slaves more and more fighters appeared who were willing to risk their lives in the faint hope of returning to their native lands. And just as slowly the remainder, the cowed, tormented and oppressed, regained confidence in their strength and the hope grew stronger that by uniting they could resist the organized might of a huge state.
But the days passed, empty and aimless, bitter days of captivity, days of heavy drudgery that they hated if only because it contributed towards the prosperity of the cruel taskmasters who had thousands of human lives at their disposal. At sunrise each day columns of worn-out men under armed escort left the shehne for work in different places.
The inhabitants of Aigyptos despised all foreigners and did not take the trouble to learn the languages of their captives. For this reason fresh slaves were at first employed on the simplest tasks; later, as they learned the Quemt language, they were given more complicated instructions and learned handicrafts. The overseers did not bother about the names of their slaves and called them by the names of the peoples to which they belonged.
Thus Pandion was called Ekwesha — Egyptian for all the peoples of the Aegean Sea; the Etruscans were Turu-sha, while Kidogo and all other black slaves were simply called Nehsu — Negro.
For the first two months in the shehne Pandion and forty other fresh slaves did repair work on the canals in the Gardens of Amon, (A temple at Karnak, near Luxor.)
rebuilt dykes washed away by the previous year’s floods, loosened the earth around fruit-trees, pumped water and carried it to the flower-beds.
The overseers took note of the hardiness, strength and ability of the newcomers and gradually selected a new detachment which was sent for building work. It happened that the four friends and thirty other strong slaves — the leaders of the mass of slaves in the shehne — were all in the same group. When they were transferred to building work, their regular contact with the others was interrupted since they remained away from the shehne for weeks on end.
The first work given to Pandion away from Pharaoh’s gardens was the dismantling of an old temple and tomb on the west bank of the river some fifty stadia from the shehne. The slaves were loaded on a boat and ferried across the river under the supervision of an overseer and five soldiers. They were marched along a path northwards to a ridge of vertical cliffs that here formed a gigantic ledge. The path led them past tilled fields on to a metalled road; suddenly a picture was unfolded before Pandion’s eyes that for ever impressed itself on his memory. The slaves had been halted on a wide-open space sloping down to the river and the overseer had gone away, bidding them await his return.
This was the first opportunity Pandion had of studying his surroundings more or less leisurely.
Directly in front of him rose a vertical wall of copper-coloured rock, three hundred cubits high, dotted with patches of blue-black shadow. From the foot of the cliff the white colonnade of a temple spread out in three terraces. A path of smooth grey stone rose from the riverside plain; on either side were rows of strangely carved sphinxes — monsters in the form of recumbent lions with human heads. Further a broad, white staircase between walls on which were carved twining yellow snakes, one on either side, led to the second terraced building supported by low columns, twice the height of a man, of dazzlingly white limestone. In the central part of the temple he noticed a second row of similar columns. On each of them was the representation of a human figure in a royal crown with the hands folded on the breast.
The second terrace of the temple, a big open space with a lane of recumbent sphinxes, was flanked by a colonnade. Some thirty cubits higher was the third, or upper, terrace of the temple, completely surrounded by a colonnade and filling a natural indenture in the cliff face.