During his reign, Pharaoh Amenhotep, the Magnificent, had set aside or infringed upon many an established precedent or custom. It almost seemed as if he had thus sought to prove to his subjects his utter infatuation for Thi, the Syrian, his second wife.

For the late Pharaoh had done nothing without Thi’s cooperation. Though of common extraction, her name and titles had appeared upon all state documents beside his own. This was at once a new and a radical innovation.

Amenhotep’s infatuation for the beautiful Thi had produced, among many other marvels, a vast pleasure lake, an artificial body of water, which now stretched its placid reaches on three sides of the villa-palace of the former monarch. This villa was now occupied by Thi and the new Pharaoh, her son.

About the banks of the broad lake waved feathery acacia, sweet scented mimosa, marsh flowers, and tall papyrus plants. Upon its pellucid waters rested white and blue lotus flowers. Great cranes, pink and white flamingos and pure white ibises pecked leisurely among the lily pads or spread their wings to dry in the rays of the late afternoon sun.

A sheltered landing-stage opened on a causeway whose granite flagging led up to the door of the palace, the Per-aoh or “Great House” as both the palace and its august master were called. To the left of this causeway stood a small building set apart by the art-loving Pharaoh for experiments in glass and fayence. To the right lay the series of rooms reserved to Auta, the Royal Sculptor, and his pupils. Counted among the latter were the then reigning Pharaoh, Akhten-aton, and Noferith, his wife.

Akhten-aton has a great admiration for his valiant ancestor Thothmes, third of the name. He counted among his most prized possessions a gold goblet said to have been designed and fashioned by the hand of that gifted Pharaoh.

All Egyptians knew how well the hand of the great “Conqueror of Asia” had wielded the curved sword of Amen, and with what marvelous results alike for the enrichment of Egypt and for the prestige of her name. Few had ever guessed that Thothmes’ rare moments of relaxation had been spent in the studio of his Chief Goldsmith.

To-day, Akhten-noferu, the “pleasure barge” of the Queen, was drawn up beside the landing-stage in anticipation of Thi’s arrival.

Less than a hundred cubits in length, its cedar beams were covered throughout with thin plates of pure gold. Its linen sail was ornamented with squares of blue and red. The blades of the light cedar oars were tipped with silver; the two great steering-oars were entirely sheathed in the same bright metal. A portrait head of the late Pharaoh was carved upon the handle of each of the steering-oars. Two elongated eyes at the prow of the barge were inlaid with alabaster and deep Babylonian lazuli. The name of the vessel appeared inlaid in pale green emerald from Suan in the south. In the after part of the vessel a low dais was covered with red and blue checkered tapestry, to match the great sail.

With half-suppressed giggles of excitement and whispered jests, the “sailors” now appeared. Noisily trooping down the causeway they took their places at the oar benches, as their leader indicated. Their leader, Princess Sesen, was as amusingly disguised as her “sailors,” the handmaidens of the Queen-Mother herself.

Queen Thi now appeared. As her short figure passed from the dark shadows of the passage into the glare of day, two ebony black Nubians dropped in an arch above her large and profusely curled wig, a pair of ostrich-feather sunshades dyed in brilliant tones of red and blue. The servants fell prostrate at sight of her and so remained, muttering wishes for “long life and health,” until she was safely seated upon her gilded cedar chair, and a cushion placed at her feet by little Ata, youngest of her maidens.

At her approach the “sailors” had been silenced by a warning gesture from the Princess.

Suddenly the momentary decorum of these little maids was interrupted by a wailing cry from one of their number, who, without apparent reason, burst into a violent fit of weeping.

For a few moments she was unable to explain the reason of her distress. But finally, her sisters gathered that her turquoise pendant had slipped from her neck and fallen into the water. This pendant, a gift from the Princess herself, the tearful little maiden vowed she must have. She could not row, she would not row, until it was found.

After much delay her fears were somewhat allayed by the Chief Eunuch, who promised to send for Enana, the Magician. Enana’s incantations would soon bring to the surface her missing jewel. He promised that she would find it awaiting her when the barge returned to the landing-stage. Thus, in part reassured, little Thutu dried her eyes and again bent over her oar in anticipation of the signal to start.

A trumpeter in the prow blew a shrill note upon his long instrument (a new importation from Syria), a group of singing women from the temple of Sekhmet burst into song; Rahotep, the Chief Eunuch, clapped his fat hands; the ropes were cast off, and the forty maidens dipped their light cedar oars in the placid waters. The barge “Beauties of the Sun Disc” drew out slowly into the dancing waters of the lake.

Seated in the shadow of the great checkered sail, Queen Thi smiled her appreciation of the novel surprise which her maidens had prepared for her. As the vessel drew out through the nodding lotus flowers Kema’s flute made soft music which seemed to mingle with the pearling ripples of the waters. Kema, it seems, played the flute so well that the cranes and water-fowl often lit upon the sides of the barge to hear him.

Queen Thi was not aware that novel entertainments such as this had been customary with the Egyptian court from days immemorial. She was now to hear of just such a method of distraction as had been practiced under the great Egyptian monarch Senefru, who had lived, died and been laid to rest, high up in his colossal pyramid, some twenty centuries before her time.

For Sianekh, the story-teller, suddenly appeared and seated herself upon the deck in front of the Queen’s chair. As was her custom, she neglected both the prostration and the formulÆ of greeting. Sianekh was a privileged character at Court, a favorite with the late King, both on account of her inexhaustible fund of stories and because of the fact that Pepi, her husband, had lost his life while defending his royal master from the attack of a wounded lion.

Yes! Thi’s obese and indolent husband, the late Pharaoh, had once been inordinately fond of lion-hunting. One hundred and two lions he had killed with his own arrows. One had gone down upon the very expedition so fatal to his chariot-driver, Pepi. But it was the last animal of that great hunt which had sent Sianekh’s husband to the Valley of Shadows. Pharaoh never forgot Pepi’s sacrifice. Pepi’s tomb never lacked its offerings of beer, wine and milk, flesh and fowl or of fresh white linens for the rewrapping of his mummy.

Sianekh, the story-teller, slipped from the sleeve of her loose white mantle a small ebony wand tipped with electrum.

Without preamble she commenced a tale of King Senefru’s days, a tale of the epoch of those gods of old, the pyramid-builders.

In her monotonous singsong she told how the good king, tired with the cares of state and oppressed by the great heat of noonday, sought a cool spot in which to rest, and found it not. How his son flew upstream in the fleetest royal barge in search of a famous magician. How he found him fishing in the Nile without a hook, and finally persuaded him to come to his father’s court.

She told of the wonders performed there by the aged seer. Of wine turned to honey. Of bees which went into a little hive only to emerge as brilliantly colored birds resembling those of distant Punt. Of the goose’s head which he restored to its body so that it sprang once more to its feet and rushed cackling and hissing from their midst.

Finally she told of Senefru’s pleasure-barge, of the little maidens who rowed it and of one of their number who dropped her pendant into the water, even as had Thutu, and of the magician of old who parted the waters and descended dryshod to the finding of the pendant.

“But see, O Queen. Enough of the doings of the ancients. There is the tablet to the faithful Nakht, a hero of our own day and generation.” Sianekh pointed to a tall shaft which rose high above the bank. “That tall shaft marks the stake where Nakht met his death. The story goes that Isis, only daughter of the Vizier Rames, made an appointment to meet the son of Nakht at this spot. Yonder inlet was filled to overflowing with the waters of the inundation. But Nakht, son of Nakht, rather than abandon his tryst, let the swirling waters of the inundation flow over his devoted head. Isis threw herself into the waters with him. To this date lovers hang garlands about the shaft and breathe a prayer to Hathor for sons and daughters like Nakht and Isis.”

As Sianekh rose to her feet the Queen thanked her and presented her with a pair of gold earrings which she unfastened from her own ears, an unheard of honor, and one which even the story-teller appreciated.

The Eunuchs showed their approbation by loud cries of affected astonishment, for the stories were not new to them. But the little maidens, who had rested on their oars during the recital, showed their keen delight in the tales by frequent “oh’s” and “ah’s” of astonishment and approval scattered throughout the telling.

On the barge the hours slipped by unnoted. To Yakab the Chancellor, who now anxiously awaited the return of the Queen, each minute seemed an hour.

Yakab had hurried off to acquaint the Queen of Bhanar’s plight, and to beg her to come to the assistance of one of her unfortunate country-women.

Hour after hour Yakab was compelled to sit beneath the striped awning which fronted the palace door. Hour after hour he pretended to listen to the doorkeeper’s account of his exploits amidst the Nubian goldfields, in the arid Turquoise Country, among the hills of Mitanni or beyond the Great Bend of the Euphrates.

Pentaur, the Doorkeeper, had served three successive Pharaohs. Already was he popularly supposed to have exceeded the one hundred and ten years customarily prayed for by all pious Egyptians. Yet, Pentaur seemed to have the key to some mysterious hekau-charm, which kept his well-worn teeth in his head, his deep-set eyes clear and his head erect. Though Pentaur walked with a jackal-headed cane, it was from choice, and not necessity.

Like all men, Pentaur had his failings. Next to the somewhat colored recital of his own travels and successes, Pentaur loved to recount the exploits, narrow escapes and journeyings of his famous ancestor and namesake, Pentaur, companion and histographer of that greatest of all Pharaohs, Thothmes the Great. As he listened, perforce, to this garrulous descendant of Pentaur, Yakab wondered if it had indeed been the fiery Thothmes who had crushed Nubia and the whole of Asia, or whether the first Pentaur had not in point of fact been the true instrument of Pharaoh’s worldwide successes.

Yet, much of what the Doorkeeper said of his ancestor was true. Was not Pentaur the Historian’s account of Pharaoh’s exploits written in good hieroglyphic and graphically pictured upon the walls of Amen’s temple nearby? Indeed, Pentaur, the Doorkeeper, had good cause for his pride of ancestry.

The weary Yakab was on the point of relinquishing his long vigil when the notes of a trumpet announced the return of the royal barge. Soon after Pentaur sent in Yakab’s crumpled note to the Queen-Mother’s apartment.

Once the acknowledgment was in his hands, Yakab picked up his long staff and rose to depart. As his gaunt form passed beneath the outer pylon, Pentaur motioned him back to the ebony stool. Pentaur considered Yakab an excellent conversationalist, for the reason, perhaps, that Pentaur’s flow of anecdote had not once been interrupted.

But Yakab smilingly shook his head. He could not resist following up his heart-felt expressions of farewell with a sarcastic prayer for the repose of the souls of Pentaur’s ancestry, as far as he could recall it, commencing with Den, one of the valiant “Followers of Horus” of the days of the gods.

Yakab feared that he had failed a member of his race. He had been too late. Yakab loved riches; Yakab loved power. But, above all else, Yakab loved his home, his family, his people. And was not Bhanar one of his people?

That night Yakab could not sleep.