The Pharaoh and the Priest: An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt

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  THE PHARAOH AND THE PRIEST

  _AN HISTORICAL NOVEL OF ANCIENT EGYPT_

  FROM THE ORIGINAL POLISH OF ALEXANDER GLOVATSKI

  BY

  JEREMIAH CURTIN TRANSLATOR OF "WITH FIRE AND SWORD," "THE DELUGE," "QUO VADIS," ETC.

  WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS

  BOSTON . LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY . 1902

  _Copyright, 1902_, By Jeremiah Curtin.

  _All rights reserved._

  Published September, 1902.

  UNIVERSITY PRESS . JOHN WILSON AND SON . CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.

  Alexander Glovatski]

  Jeremiah Curtin at the Statue of Rameses the Great in the Temple of Luxor]

  PREFATORY REMARKS

  The position of Ancient Egypt was unique, not in one, but in everysense. To begin at the very foundation of life in that country, wefind that the soil was unlike any other on earth in its origin. Everyacre of fruitful land between the first cataract and the sea had beenbrought from Inner Africa, and each year additions were made to it.Out of this mud, borne down thousands of miles from the great fertileuplands of Abyssinia by rivers, grew everything needed to feed andclothe man and nourish animals. Out of it also was made the brick fromwhich walls, houses, and buildings of various uses and kinds wereconstructed. Though this soil of the country was rich, it could beutilized only by the unceasing co-ordinate efforts of a wholepopulation constrained and directed. To direct and constrain was thetask of the priests and the pharaohs.

  Never have men worked in company so long and successfully at tillingthe earth as the Egyptians, and never has the return been socontinuous and abundant from land as in their case.

  The Nile valley furnished grain to all markets accessible by water;hence Rome, Greece, and Judaea ate the bread of Egypt. On this nationaltillage was founded the greatness of the country, for from it came themeans to execute other works, and in it began that toil, training, andskill indispensable in rearing the monuments and doing those thingswhich have made Egypt famous forever, and preserved to us a knowledgeof the language, religion, modes of living, and history of thatwonderful people who held the Nile valley. No civilized person who haslooked on the pyramid of Ghizeh, the temple of Karnak, and the tombsof the pharaohs in the Theban region, can ever forget them. But inthose monuments are preserved things of far greater import than theythemselves are. In the tombs and temples of Egypt we see on stone andpapyrus how that immense work of making speech visible wasaccomplished, that task of presenting language to the eye instead ofthe ear, and preserving the spoken word so as to give it to eye or earafterwards. In other terms, we have the history of writing from itsearliest beginnings to the point at which we connect it with thesystem used now by all civilized nations excepting the Chinese. Inthose monuments are preserved the history of religion in Egypt, notfrom the beginning of human endeavor to explain first what the worldis and then what we ourselves are and what we and the world meantogether, but from a time far beyond any recorded by man in otherplaces.

  Egyptians had the genius which turned a narrow strip of Abyssinian mudand a triangular patch of swamp at the end of it into the mostfruitful land of antiquity. They had also that genius which impels manto look out over the horizon around him, see more than the materialproblems of life, and gaze into the beyond, gaze intently and nevercease gazing till he finds what his mind seeks. It was the possessionof these two kinds of genius and the union of the two which made theposition of Egypt in history unique and unapproachable.

  The greatness of Egypt lay primarily in her ideas, and was achievedthrough a perfect control over labor by intellect. While this controlwas exerted even approximately in accordance with the nation'shistorical calling, it was effectual and also unchallenged. But whenthe exercise of power, with the blandishments and physical pleasureswhich always attend it, had become dearer to the priesthood and topharaohs than aught else on earth or in their ideals, then began theepoch of Egypt's final doom: foreign bondage and national ruin.

  The action presented in the volume before us relates to those dayswhen the guiding intellect of Egypt became irrevocably dual, and whenbetween the two parts of it, the priests and the pharaohs, oppositionappeared so clearly defined and incurable that the ruin of both sideswas evident in the future.

  The ruin of a pharaoh and the fall of his dynasty, with the rise of aself-chosen sovereign and a new line of rulers, are the doubleconsummation in this novel. The book ends with that climax, but thefall of the new priestly rulers is a matter of history, as is thedestruction wrought on Egypt by tyrants from Assyria and Persia. Thenative pharaohs lost power through the priesthood, whose real interestit was to support them; but fate found the priests later on, andpronounced on them also the doom of extinction.

  * * * * *

  Alexander Glovatski was born in 1847 in Mashov, a village of theGovernment of Lublin. He finished his preliminary studies in theLublin Gymnasium, and was graduated from the University of Warsaw. Hetook part in the uprising of 1863, but was captured, and liberatedafter some months' detention. As a student he showed notable power,and was exceptionally attracted by mathematics and science, to whichhe gives much attention yet, though occupied mainly in literature.

  Glovatski's published works are in seventeen volumes. These books,with the exception of "The Pharaoh and the Priest," are devoted tomodern characters, situations, and questions. His types are mainlyfrom Polish life. Very few of his characters are German or Russian; ofPolish types some are Jewish.

  Alexander Glovatski is a true man of letters, a real philosopher,retiring, industrious, and modest. He spends all his winters inWarsaw, and lives every summer in the country. He permits neithersociety nor coteries, nor interests of any sort, to snatch away timefrom him, or influence his convictions. He goes about as he chooses,whenever he likes and wherever it suits him. When ready to work hesits down in his own house, and tells the world carefully and withkindness, though not without irony, what he sees in it. What he seesis exhibited in the seventeen volumes, which contain great and vividpictures of life at the end of the recent century. Men and women ofvarious beliefs, occupations, and values, are shown there.

  Glovatski is entirely unknown to Americans. This book will presenthim.

  Excepting the view in the temple of Luxor the illustrations given inthis volume are from photographs taken by me in 1899, while I wastravelling in Egypt.

  The title of this volume has been changed from "The Pharaoh" to "ThePharaoh and the Priest," at the wish of the author.

  JEREMIAH CURTIN.

  Bristol, Vermont, U. S. A., _July 28, 1902_.