When the prince saw her advancing, he approached the statue with his
censer, and waving it once in the sight of the army, hung it upon the
spear of the god. The sistrum sounded as the incense rose, and every
man of that vast host bent his knee for a moment! Then the high-priest
commenced a verse of a loud chant in a sonorous voice. The one hundred
priests marching, in procession around the god, answered antiphonally
with one voice in a part; and, the whole army catching up the hymn,
the very pyramids seemed to tremble at the thunder of eighty thousand
deep voices of men rolling along the air. Then Remeses chanted a few
stirring words of this national and sacred war-hymn, the high-priest
answered, the maiden's clear voice rose in a melodious solo, the
hundred priests caught up the ravishing strain as it melted from her
lips in the skies, and again the great army uttered its voice! My
heart was oppressed by the sublimity. Tears of emotion filled my eyes.
I never was more deeply impressed with the majesty of the human voice,
united in a vast multitude, uttered as the voice of one man. The
combined voice of the human race--if such a thing could be--must be
like the voice of God when He speaks!
The invocation and sacrifice were over. Remeses embraced the priest,
and receiving his blessing, in a few minutes every chief captain had
joined his battalion, and at the cry of trumpets and cornets, sounded
all over the plain, and echoed back from Cheops, the whole host formed
in columns of march. Remeses, I being in his company, galloped forward
and took a position on an elevation, from which he reviewed the whole
army as it tramped by. The fleet was in parallel motion at the same
time, and I saw the splendid galley of the Prince Mœris, with its
colored silken sails, and golden beak, gallantly ascending the river.
He stood upon the poop; a tame lion crouched by his side, on the tawny
shoulders of which he rested one foot as he gazed at us. The division
of cavalry was the last in moving, and trotted past us in splendid
array. This arm of the service is not large, nor much relied on in
Egypt. The chariots of iron, to the hubs of which terrible scythes are
sometimes fastened on the eve of battle, and the bowmen and spearmen,
have always been the main dependence of the kings in their wars.
Ethiopia, against which this great army is moving by water and land,
is in a state of civilization and political power not greatly inferior
to Egypt. It has vast cities, noble temples, extensive cultivated
regions, adorned with palaces and villas; it has a gorgeous but
semi-barbaric court, a well-disciplined army, and skilful generals. It
is a race allied by blood and lineage to that of Egypt, and is not to
be confounded with Nubia and the pure Africanic kingdoms. In religion
it is idolatrous, and hostile to the worship of Egypt. A supposed
title, by a former conquest, to the crown of Thebes, has made Ethiopia
for three centuries the hereditary foe of Egypt.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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