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 chieftain was a youth who had just succeeded his father over his
people and was on his way to Memphis bearing tribute to Meneptah. To
this tributary nation Egypt was remote, splendid and full of glamour.
The name was synonymous of the world and all the glories thereof, and
particularly had it appealed to the active imagination of this youth.
He had seen many Egyptians, but they were naked prisoners laboring in
the mines of Sinai, or overseers or scribes or the ancient exile who
was governor of the province,--and surely these were not representative
of the land.
Now he was to get a glance at real Egypt.
In the early hours of the dawn a follower came to his pallet and told
him in awed tones that the prince was without. Tremulous with
pleasurable trepidation, he went out into the misty daybreak twilight
of the open. And there he met an imperial stranger who towered over
him as a palm over a shrub. At a single glance the Amalekite saw that
there was a circlet of gold about the brow, that the face was fine and
that the garments swept the sands. All this was significant, but when
the stranger delivered him two rolls, one addressed to the chief of the
royal scribes of the Pharaoh, the other to the royal murket, and paid
him with a jewel, the Amalekite, convinced and satisfied, prostrated
himself.
But we may not know what the youth thought when he found that there
were few in all Egypt like this princely stranger.
After these writings came, with all fidelity, to the hands of those who
loved him in Egypt, silence fell between them and Kenkenes.
Meneptah erected no more monuments after the eighth year of his reign,
for in that year Mentu, the murket, died. None could fill his place,
since to his name was attached the title "the Incomparable," as
befitted the artist of that great Pharaoh, likewise titled, who had so
loved him and his genius. Meneptah, in memory of Mentu and his artist
son who had served his king so well, set up no sculptor nor any murket
in his place. It was the one graceful act in the life of the feeble
king, the one resolution to which he held most tenaciously.
Though Mentu's union with Senci was short, it was most happy, save
perhaps for the absence of Kenkenes. But after the letter came from
the well-beloved son there was more cheer in the heart of the father.
Kenkenes was not dead, only absent, as he would have been had he lived
in Tanis or Thebes. Furthermore, the young man had spoken glowingly
and at length on the future of Israel and the Promised Land, and Mentu
told himself that he might visit Kenkenes one day in that new country.