

E-text prepared by Al Haines



THERE WAS A KING IN EGYPT

by

NORMA LORIMER

Author of
  "Catherine Sterling,"
  "By the Waters of Germany,"
  "By the Waters of Sicily,"
  "The Second Woman,"
  "The Gods' Carnival,"
  "A Wife Out of Egypt"
  "On Desert Altars,"
  "On Etna," Etc. Etc.







London
Stanley Paul & Co
31 Essex Street, Strand, W.C.2

First published in 1918




PREFACE

The monarch indicated in _There was a King in Egypt_ is Akhnaton, the
heretic Pharaoh, first brought home to the English reader by the well
known Egyptian archaeologist, Mr. Arthur Weigall.  Akhnaton, or
Amenhotep IV., has an interest for the whole world as the first
Messiah.  Like Our Lord, he was of Syrian parentage--on the mother's
side.  Interest in him is undying, because underlying his Sun-symbolism
we have the first foreshadowings of the altruism of Christianity.

The book is not directly devoted to Akhnaton.  It is about a young
English Egyptologist, who is excavating the tomb of Akhnaton's mother,
in which the Pharaoh's exhumed body found its final repose; his sister;
and an Irish mystic, who copies the tomb-paintings excavated before
their freshness fades.  Aton-worship and Mohammedanism have an almost
equal fascination for this Irishman, and the romance is permeated with
their mysticism.  The prophecies of a Mohammedan saint who has attained
the light by a life of abstinence and self-discipline, influence the
current of the romance no less than the visions of the Pharaoh Messiah,
whose pure religion threatened his country with disasters like the
Russian revolution.

For the historical facts I am indebted to the brilliant _Akhnaton,
Pharaoh of Egypt_,[1] of Mr. Weigall, late Chief Inspector of Monuments
in Upper Egypt.  The character of the Egyptian Messiah has fascinated
me ever since I began to read Egyptian history, and Mr. Weigall writes
with the grace and colour of a Pierre Loti.  I have always used his
translations of Akhnaton's words, and very often his own words in
describing Akhnaton.

I take this opportunity of thanking Mr. Weigall for his ungrudging
permission to quote from him, and I should like him to know that his
book was the inspiration of _There was a King in Egypt_.

I must also acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. Walter Tyndall's fine
volume, _Below the Cataracts_,[2]--he is equally successful as author
and artist--for my description of the tomb of Queen Thiy.

The teachings of the reformed Mohammedanism scattered through my book
are derived from the propaganda works of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, especially
his _Teachings of Islam_.[3]

I trust that my readers will find the mysticism of the book not a clog
upon the wheels of the romance of Excavation in Egypt, but Virgil's
"vital breeze."


NORMA LORIMER.
  7, PITCULLEN TERRACE, PERTH, SCOTLAND.



[1] Published by Wm. Blackwood & Sons.

[2] Published by Heinemann.

[3] Published by Dulau.




THERE WAS A KING IN EGYPT


PART I

CHAPTER I

Dawn held the world in stillness.  In the vast stretches of barren
hills and soft sands there was nothing living or stirring but the
figure of an Englishman, standing at the door of his tent.

At the hour of sunrise and sunset the East is its own.  Every
suggestion of Western influence and foreign invasion is wiped out.  The
going and the coming of the sun throws the land of the Pharaohs, the
kingdom of Ra, the great Sun God, whose cradle was at Heliopolis, back
to the days when Egypt was the world; to the days when the sun governed
the religion of her people; to the days when civilization had barely
touched the Mediterranean and the world knew not Rome; back again to
the days when the Nile, the Mother of Life, bordered by bands of
fertile, food-giving land, had not as yet sheltered the infant Moses in
her reeds.  Dawn in Egypt is the dawn of civilization.

Each dawn saw Michael Amory, wrapped in his thickest coat, standing
outside his tent, watching and waiting for the glory of Egypt, for Ra,
the Sun God, to appear above the horizon of the desert.

To stand alone, nerve-tense and oppressed by the soundless sands, and
surrounded by the Theban Hills, in whose bosoms lie the eternal remains
of the world's first kings, drew him so strongly that, tired as he
might be with his previous day's work, he seldom slept later than the
hour which links us with the day that is past and the morrow which
holds the magic of the future.

For that half-hour only his higher self was conscious of existence, and
it was infinitely nearer to God than he was aware of.  The silence of
the desert and its simplicity, which to the complex mind of Western man
is so mysterious, banished all material thoughts and even the
consciousness of his own body, and left him a naked soul, alone in the
world, encompassed with Divinity, a world whose hills and rolling sands
had known neither labour nor strife, nor the despotism of kings.

For the dead Pharaohs, lying in their tombs under the hills, in the
grandest monuments ever wrought by the vanity of man, were forgotten.
His long days of labour in their depths might never have been.  Man and
his place in the universe were wiped out.

The cold was intense.  Michael shivered and turned up the collar of his
coat.  A faint light had appeared on the horizon, a pale streak like a
silver thread, which widened and widened until it spread into the
higher heavens; with its spreading the indefinite forms of moving
figures appeared--ghostly figures of dawn.

Michael knew that they would appear; he knew that, just as soon as the
streak of light grew in width from a faint thread to a wider band, he
would see them, dignified, stately figures, like white-robed priests,
walking desertwards from the horizon to his tent.

Although he had seen the same figures every morning for some months, he
was not tired of watching them.  It always gave him pleasure to recall
how vividly they had at first reminded him of the pictures, familiar to
him as a boy, of the Wise Men following the star in the east.  But
these were not wise men coming to pay homage or bring presents to the
Galilean Babe who came to be called the Prince of Peace; they were the
Mohammedan workmen who were employed by the Exploration School to which
Michael Amory had attached himself; their labour was confined to the
rougher preliminary digging and the clearing away of the accumulation
of sand and debris on sites which had been selected for excavation.

As the dawn slipped back and counted itself with the years that are
spent and the first yellow gleam appeared in the sky, Michael saw the
tall figures go down on their knees and press their foreheads to the
sand.  It was their third prayer of the day: devout Mohammedans begin
their new day at sunset; their second prayer is at nightfall, when it
is quite dark; their third is at daybreak.

Michael knew that the moment _el isfirar_, or the first yellow glow,
appeared in the heavens, the white figures would turn to the east and
perform their _subh_, or daybreak devotion.  He knew that it would be
finished before the golden globe appeared above the rim of the desert,
for did not the Prophet counsel his people not to pray exactly at
sunrise or