fell on our land like swarms of locusts, robbing and destroying it, were

spoken of as 'a curse' and a 'pest.' Rameses' father was of that race.

When Ani's ancestors expelled the Hyksos, the bold chief, whose children

now govern Egypt, obtained the favor of being allowed to remain on the

banks of the Nile; they served in the armies, they distinguished

themselves, and, at last, the first Rameses succeeded in gaining the

troops over to himself, and in pushing the old race of the legitimate

sons of Ra, weakened as they were by heresy, from the throne. I must

confess, however unwillingly, that some priests of the true faith--among

them your grandfather, and mine--supported the daring usurper who clung

faithfully to the old traditions. Not less than a hundred generations of

my ancestors, and of yours, and of many other priestly families, have

lived and died here by the banks of the Nile--of Rameses race we have

seen ten, and only know of them that they descend from strangers, from

the caste of Amu! He is like all the Semitic race; they love to wander,

they call us ploughmen,--[The word Fellah (pl. Fellahin) means ploughman]

--and laugh to scorn the sober regularity with which we, tilling the dark

soil, live through our lives to a tardy death, in honest labor both of

mind and body. They sweep round on foraying excursions, ride the salt

waves in ships, and know no loved and fixed home; they settle down

wherever they are tempted by rapine, and when there is nothing more to be

got they build a house in another spot. Such was Seti, such is Rameses!

For a year he will stop in Thebes, then he must set out for wars in

strange lands. He does not know how to yield piously, or to take advice

of wise counsellors, and he will not learn. And such as the father is,

so are the children! Think of the criminal behavior of Bent-Anat!"