Nore: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/hanitenchantress00pieriala HANIT THE ENCHANTRESS by GARRETT CHATFIELD PIER Author of “Inscriptions of the Nile Monuments,” etc. [Illustration] “_Provided thou art an equipped soul, knowing the Secret Name of Thoth, thou shalt pass unharmed though that abyss which hath no air, whose depths are illimitable._” New York E. P. Dutton & Company 681 Fifth Avenue Copyright 1921 by E. P. Dutton & Company All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States of America FOREWORD My reader. Perhaps you have had the good fortune to visit Egypt! If such be the case, you have undoubtedly stood among the giant columns of the Temple to the Sun-god Amen in the Northern Apt (Karnak). You have marveled at the ever changing colors which light up the walls and columns of the Temple of the Southern Apt (Luxor), so that at one moment they seem to have been carved from blocks of amber, at another from coral, jasper, amethyst or, as the last bright rays of the sinking sun fall full upon them, from colossal bars of red Nubian gold. You have gazed in awe and reverence at the mummy of King Amenhotep, lying in his granite sarcophagus, peacefully asleep he seemed, deep down in the very heart of the Theban Hills. In an alcove nearby you may recall the three bodies lying, uncoffined, upon the bare rock of the tomb chamber. You were informed that the bodies had been removed from their own tombs to this secret chamber of a dead Pharaoh, that they might be saved from the hands of tomb-robbers. “The mummies of unknown royal personages,” your Arab guide informed you. Perhaps the guide permitted you to touch the long black tresses of one of the three. He pointed out what he called the mark of an arrow, which caused the death of another. He told you that the boy had undoubtedly met his death at the hands of a strangler. He hinted at foul murder! If what he said of the three was true, he might well have attempted to identify the bodies. They are, perhaps, those of Wazmes, Queen Hanit’s murdered son, the beautiful slave girl Bhanar, and her one-time mistress, the Princess Sesen, whose wavy black hair appears as soft to-day as when Ramses and Menna wooed her, as when Renny the Syrian died for her. All this, and more, you have doubtless seen. Yet, it is safe to say, you have never so much as heard of the mystery surrounding the tomb of Menna, son of Menna, that most baffling among the many mysterious tombs in and about the great Theban cemeteries. Undoubtedly, Menna, son of Menna, had in life an enemy, a most vindictive enemy; one whose malignant hatred followed Menna into his very tomb.