The Ancient Allan. Генри Райдер Хаггард

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       for in addition to the evidence of the name, he described your

       personal appearance and told me that you had come to live in

       England.

       “My dear friend, I can assure you it is long since I heard anything

       which rejoiced me so much. Oh! as I write all the past comes back,

       flowing in upon me like a pent-up flood of water, but I trust that

       of this I shall soon have an opportunity of talking to you. So let

       it be for a while.

       “Alas! my friend, since we parted on the shores of the Red Sea,

       tragedy has pursued me. As you will know, for both my husband and

       I wrote to you, although you did not answer the letters” (I never

       received them), “we reached England safely and took up our old

       life again, though to tell you the truth, after my African

       experiences things could never be quite the same to me, or for the

       matter of that to George either. To a great extent he changed his

       pursuits and certain political ambitions which he once cherished,

       seemed no longer to appeal to him. He became a student of past

       history and especially of Egyptology, which under all the

       circumstances you may think strange, as I did. However it suited

       me well enough, since I also have tastes that way. So we worked

       together and I can now read hieroglyphics as well as most people.

       One year he said that he would like to go to Egypt again, if I

       were not afraid. I answered that it had not been a very lucky

       place for us, but that personally I was not in the least afraid

       and longed to return there. For as you know, I have, or think I

       have, ties with Egypt and indeed with all Africa. Well, we went

       and had a very happy time, although I was always expecting to see

       old Harût come round the corner.

       “After this it became a custom with us who, since George

       practically gave up shooting and attending the House of Lords, had

       nothing to keep us in England, to winter in Egypt. We did this for

       five years in succession, living in a bungalow which we built at a

       place in the desert, not far from the banks of the Nile, about

       half way between Luxor which was the ancient Thebes, and Assouan.

       George took a great fancy to this spot when first he saw it, and

       so in truth did I, for, like Memphis, it attracted me so much that

       I used to laugh and say I believed that once I had something to do

       with it.

       “Now near to our villa that we called ‘Ragnall’ after this house,

       are the remains of a temple which were almost buried in the sand.

       This temple George obtained permission to excavate. It proved to

       be a long and costly business, but as he did not mind spending the

       money, that was no obstacle. For four winters we worked at it,

       employing several hundred men. As we went on we discovered that

       although not one of the largest, the temple, owing to its having

       been buried by the sand during, or shortly after the Roman epoch,

       remained much more perfect than we had expected, because the early

       Christians had never got at it with their chisels and hammers.

       Before long I hope to show you pictures and photographs of the

       various courts, etc., so I will not attempt to describe them now.

       “It is a temple to Isis—built, or rather rebuilt over the remains

       of an older temple on a site that seems to have been called Amada,

       at any rate in the later days, and so named after a city in Nubia,

       apparently by one of the Amen-hetep Pharaohs who had conquered it.

       Its style is beautiful, being of the best period of the Egyptian

       Renaissance under the last native dynasties.

       “At the beginning of the fifth winter, at length we approached the

       sanctuary, a difficult business because of the retaining walls

       that had to be built to keep the sand from flowing down as fast as

       it was removed, and the great quantities of stuff that must be

       carried off by the tramway. In so doing we came upon a shallow

       grave which appeared to have been hastily filled in and roughly

       covered over with paving stones like the rest of the court, as

       though to conceal its existence. In this grave lay the skeleton of

       a large man, together with the rusted blade of an iron sword and

       some fragments of armour. Evidently he had never been mummified,

       for there were no wrappings, canopic jars, ushapti figures or funeral offerings. The state of the bones showed us why, for the right forearm was cut through and the skull smashed in; also an iron arrow-head lay among the ribs. The man had been buried hurriedly after a battle in which he had met his death. Searching in the dust beneath the bones we found a gold ring still on one of the fingers. On its bezel was engraved the cartouche of ‘Peroa, beloved of Ra.’ Now Peroa probably means Pharaoh and perhaps he was Khabasha who revolted against the Persians and ruled for a year or two, after which he is supposed to have been defeated and killed, though of his end and place of burial there is no record. Whether these were the remnants of Khabasha himself, or of one of his high ministers or generals who wore the King’s cartouche upon his ring in token of his office, of course I cannot say. “When George had read the cartouche he handed me the ring which I slipped upon the first finger of my left hand, where I still wear it. Then leaving the grave open for further examination, we went on with the work, for we were greatly excited. At length, this was towards evening, we had cleared enough of the sanctuary, which was small, to uncover the СКАЧАТЬ