The Yoke: A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt
John Stuart Mill · en
The towers of the city had sunk below the northern horizon when,
opposite a poor little shrine for cowherds on the shore, a brazen gong
sounded musically for the sunrise prayers. The Libyan hilltops were,
at that instant, illuminated by the sun, and Kenkenes, in obedience to
lifelong training, rested his oars and bent his head. When he pulled
on again he did not realize that he had been, with the stubbornness of
habit, maintaining the breach between him and Rachel. There was no
thought in his mind to give over his faith.
At noon, weary with heat, hunger and heavy labor, he drew up at
Hak-heb, on the western side of the Nile, fifty miles above Memphis.
The town was the commercial center for the pastoral districts of the
posterior Arsinoeite nome--Nehapehu. Here were brought for shipment
the wine, wheat and cattle of the fertile pocket in the Libyan desert.
Being at a season of commercial inactivity, when the farmers were
awaiting the harvest, the sunburnt wharves were almost deserted.
Few saw Kenkenes arrive. Most of the inhabitants were taking the
midday rest, and every moored boat was manned by a sleeping crew. He
made a landing and went up through the sand and dust of the hot street
to the only inn. Here he ate and slept till night had come again.
Refreshed and invigorated, he continued his journey. At noon the next
day he stopped to sleep at another town and to buy a lamp, materials
for making fire, ropes and a plummet of bronze sufficiently heavy to
anchor his boat. He was entering a long stretch of distance wherein
there was no inhabited town, and he was making ready to sleep in the
bari. Then he began to travel by day, for he was too far from Memphis
to fear pursuit, and rest in an open boat under a blazing sun would be
impossible.
The third evening he paused opposite a ruined city on the eastern bank
of the Nile. Hunters not infrequently went inland at this point for
large game, and although the place was in a state of partial
demolishment, Kenkenes hoped that there might be an inn. He tied his
boat to a stake and entered Khu-aten,[1] the destroyed capital of
Amenophis IV, self-styled Khu-n-Aten.
Here under a noble king, who loved beauty and had it not, the barbarous
rites of the Egyptian religion were overthrown and sensuous and
esthetic ceremonies were established and made obligatory all over the
kingdom. In his blind groping after the One God, the king had directed
worship to the most fitting symbol of Him--the sun.
He appeased the luminous divinity by offerings of flowers, regaled it
with simmerings from censers, besought it with the tremulous harp and
had it pictured with grace and vested with charm. And since the power
of the national faith was all-permeating, its reconstruction was
far-reaching in effect. Egypt was swept into a tremendous and
beautiful heresy by a homely king, whose word was law.