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Updated: May 28, 2025
Is it not so, women of Tanis?" "Alas! alas! it is so, O Queen," answered the women as with one voice. "Woes are fallen on you and Khem, my sisters, but on me most of all are woes fallen. My people have been slain, my land the land I love has been laid waste with plagues; my child, the only one, is dead in the great death; hands have been laid on me, the Queen of Khem.
But in the end he determined to forbear and see with his own eyes what befell those who strove to win the way. So he drew back, wondering much; and, bidding farewell to the aged priest, he went with Rei, the Master Builder, through the town of Tanis, where the Apura were still spoiling the people of Khem, and he came to the Palace where he was lodged.
He tells you how the smouldering loyalty of the land of Khem blazed up before it died, and how fiercely the old Time-consecrated Faith struggled against the conquering tide of Change that rose, like Nile at flood, and drowned the ancient Gods of Egypt. Here, in his pages, you shall learn the glory of Isis the Many-shaped, the Executrix of Decrees.
Khem was lost, and lost was I, Harmachis. In the rush and turmoil of events, the great plot of which I had been the pivot was covered up and forgotten; scarce a memory of it remained.
Then the cold light struck the stretch of well-tilled lands, now whitening to the harvest, and as the heavenly lamp of Isis passed up to the sky, her rays crept slowly down to the valley, where Sihor, father of the land of Khem, rolls on toward the sea.
O Egypt! dear land of Khem, whose black soil nourished up my mortal part land that I have betrayed O Osiris! Isis! Horus! ye Gods of Egypt whom I have betrayed! O ye temples whose pylons strike the sky, whose faith I have betrayed! O Royal blood of the Pharaohs of eld, that yet runs within these withered veins whose virtue I have betrayed!
Here thou shalt not die, nor by torment, for thy death shall come to thee from the water as the dead seer foretold, but ere thou diest, once more thou shalt look upon the Golden Helen, and hear her words of love and know her kiss, though thine she shall not be. And learn that a great host marches upon the land of Khem, and with it sails a fleet of thine own people, the Achæans.
"Oh! my father," I gasped, astonished. "Thou art blind: how knowest thou me?" "How do I know thee? and askest thou that who hast learned of our lore? Enough, I know thee and I brought thee hither. Would, Harmachis, that I knew thee not! Would that I had been blasted of the Invisible ere I drew thee down from the womb of Nout, to be my curse and shame, and the last woe of Khem!"
Knowest thou, Eperitus, that when thou stoodest yonder on the board in the Place of Banquets, when the great bow twanged and the long shafts hailed down on the hall and loosened the knees of many, not a little was I put in mind of the song of the slaying of the wooers at the hands of Odysseus. The fame of Odysseus has wandered far ay, even to Khem." And she looked straight at him.
See, Rei, in all wide Khem there is no woman so shamed, so lost, so utterly undone as is to-night the Royal Meriamun, whom thou lovest. I am lower than she who plies the street for bread, for the loftier the spirit the greater is the fall. I am sold into shame, and power is my price. Oh, cursed be the fate of woman who only by her beauty can be great.
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