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The innkeeper hated him intensely, though he carefully concealed his rancour. One day, a silver salt-cellar, reserved for the table of the gods, disappeared from the inn. Ahmes was accused of having stolen it out of hate to his master and to the gods of the empire. There was no proof of the accusation, and the slave vehemently denied the charge.
"In the kingdom of God," he said, "the slaves will drink new wine and eat delicious fruits; whilst the rich, crouching at their feet like dogs, will devour the crumbs from their table." These sayings were noised abroad through all that quarter of the city, and the masters feared that Ahmes might incite the slaves to revolt.
The chased lion's head found with the jewels of Queen Aahhotep, the Harpocrates of Gizeh inscribed with the names of Kames and Ahmes I., and several statuettes of Amen, said to have been discovered at Medinet Habû and Sheikh Abd el Gûrneh, are of that period. Our most important bronzes belong, however, to the Twenty-second Dynasty, or, later still, to the time of the Saïte Pharaohs.
Nevertheless, he was dragged before the tribunal, and as he had the reputation of being a bad servant, the judge condemned him to death. "As you did not know how to make a good use of your hands," he said, "they will be nailed to the cross." Ahmes heard the verdict quietly, bowed to the judge most respectfully, and was taken to the public prison.
At length Zoan itself fell into the hands of the Egyptians, and the Hyksos took refuge in the great fortress of Avaris on the extreme border of the kingdom. Here they were besieged by the Theban prince Ahmes, and eventually driven back to the Asia from which they had come.
He tells us that when the Hyksos were driven out of Egypt by Ahmes I., the founder of the eighteenth dynasty, they occupied Jerusalem and fortified it not, as would naturally be imagined, against the Egyptian Pharaoh, but against "the Assyrians," as the Babylonians were called by Manetho's contemporaries.
Often he would take Thais on his knee, and tell her old tales about underground treasure-houses constructed for avaricious kings, who put to death the masons and architects. There were also tales about clever thieves who married kings' daughters, and courtesans who built pyramids. Little Thais loved Ahmes like a father, like a mother, like a nurse, and like a dog.
Aahhotep was the wife of Kames, a king of the Seventeenth Dynasty, and she was probably the mother of Ahmes I., first king of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Her mummy had been stolen by one of the robber bands which infested the Theban necropolis towards the close of the Twentieth Dynasty.
Among the sarcophagi belonging to kings of the Seventeenth Dynasty which I recovered from Deir el Baharî, the most highly finished belonged to this type, and were only remarkable for the really extraordinary skill with which the craftsman had reproduced the features of the deceased sovereigns. The mask of Ahmes I., that of Amenhotep I., and that of Thothmes II., are masterpieces in their way.
His words flowed gently in the darkness, which they filled with zeal, mercy, and hope; and the neophyte, her hand in that of Ahmes, lulled by the monotonous sounds, and the vague visions in her mind, slept calm and smiling, amid the harmonies of the dark night and the holy mysteries, gazed down on by a star, which twinkled between the joists of the stable-roof.
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