reign of the divine Meneptah. She had fortified herself and resisted
the great invasion of the Rebu. Her generals had done battle with him
and brought him home, chained to their chariots.

And after the festivities in celebration of her prowess, she laid down
pike and falchion, bull-hide shield and helmet, and took up the chisel
and brush, the spindle and loom once more.

The heavy drowsiness of a mid-winter noon had depopulated her booths
and bazaars and quieted the quaint traffic of her squares. In the
shadows of the city her porters drowsed, and from the continuous wall
of houses blankly facing one another from either side of the streets,
there came no sound. Each household sought the breezes on the
balconies that galleried the inner walls of the courts, or upon the
pillared and canopied housetops.

Memphis had eaten and drunk and, sheltered behind her screens, waited
for the noon to pass.

Mentu, the king's sculptor, however, had not availed himself of the
hour of ease. He did not labor because he must, for his house stood in
the aristocratic portion of Memphis, and it was storied, galleried,
screened and topped with its breezy pavilion. Within the hollow space,
formed by the right and left wings of his house, the chamber of guests
to the front, and the property wall to the rear, was a court of
uncommon beauty. Palm and tamarisk, acacia and rose-shrub, jasmine and
purple mimosa made a multi-tinted jungle about a shadowy pool in which
a white heron stood knee-deep. There were long stretches of sunlit
sod, and walks of inlaid tile, seats of carved stone, and a single
small obelisk, set on a circular slab, marked with measures for