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Then she lifted up her voice and cried: "Still is the curse heavy upon Khem and the people of Khem. Pharaoh lies dead; yea, he is dead who has no wound, and this I say, that he is slain of the witchcraft of her whom men name the Hathor. Oh, my Lord, my Lord!" and kneeling, she laid her hand upon his breast; "by this dead heart of thine I swear that I will wreak thy murder on her who wrought it.
She has been three weeks here on a visit to the holy shrine of Hathor." "She must have committed some heavy sin," replied the other. "If she were one of us, she would have been set to sift sand in the diggings, or grind colors, and not be living here in a gilt tent. Where is our red-beard?"
"I may not refuse a King's challenge, though it is ill to contend with our hosts," said the Wanderer, turning somewhat pale, for he was in anger. "Give me the bowl!" He took the cup, and held it high; then pouring a little forth to his Gods, he said, in a clear voice, for he was stirred to anger beyond his wont: "I drink to the Strange Hathor!"
But fear not, for I will be there. Say, wilt thou make the ship ready?" "The ship shall be ready, Eperitus, and though I love thee well, I say this, that I would it rode the waves which roll around the shores of Khem and thou wert with it, and with thee she who is called the Hathor, that Goddess whom thou desirest."
There, far away, he could see the shrine of Hathor gleaming like crystal above the tawny flood of waters. And he must go down to death, leaving no word for Her who sat in the shrine and deemed him faithless and forsworn. Evil was the lot that the Gods had laid upon him, and bitter was his guerdon.
We stood, too, in the temple of Luxor, before the altar of Hathor, with the sunset on one side and the moonrise on the other, and heard what her votaries say to the Goddess of Beauty. It was so mystical that we almost joined in the worship of the Egyptian Venus Aphrodite. It was so still, so majestic, so aloof from everything modern and new. The Nile is essentially a river of silence and mystery.
"I will show thee," answered the priest, and brought him through the Hall of Assembly to a certain narrow way that led to a court. In the centre of the court stood the holy shrine of the Hathor. It was a great chamber, built of alabaster, lighted from the roof alone, and shut in with brazen doors, before which hung curtains of Tyrian web.
The number seven; the Pole Star, with the constellation of seven stars; the God of the month, Hathor, who was her own particular God, the God of her family, the Antefs of the Theban Dynasty, whose Kings' symbol it was, and whose seven forms ruled love and the delights of life and resurrection.
Another rumour began to run among the crowd; like the ring set circling by a stone in water it spread from mouth to mouth, ever widening as it went. Marvels had happened in the temple of Hathor, that was the rumour. Moreover it gave details: that the High-Priest had handed to the bride the accustomed lotus-bud, the flower of the goddess, and lo! it opened in her hand.
In one of the vestibules that we have to traverse on our way out of the sanctuary, amongst the numerous bas-reliefs representing various sovereigns paying homage to the beautiful Hathor, is one of a young man, crowned with a royal tiara shaped like the head of a uraeus. He is shown seated in the traditional Pharaonic pose and is none other than the Emperor Nero!
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