going in and out at will among the great courts of the temples. Of my
mother I knew naught, for she died when I yet hung at the breast. But
before she died in the reign of Ptolemy Aulêtes, who is named the Piper,
so did the old wife, Atoua, told me, my mother took a golden uræus, the
snake symbol of our Royalty of Egypt, from a coffer of ivory and laid
it on my brow. And those who saw her do this believed that she was
distraught of the Divinity, and in her madness foreshadowed that the day
of the Macedonian Lagidæ was ended, and that Egypt's sceptre should pass
again to the hand of Egypt's true and Royal race. But when my father,
the old High Priest Amenemhat, whose only child I was, she who was his
wife before my mother having been, for what crime I know not, cursed
with barrenness by Sekhet: I say when my father came in and saw what the
dying woman had done, he lifted up his hands towards the vault of heaven
and adored the Invisible, because of the sign that had been sent. And
as he adored, the Hathors[*] filled my dying mother with the Spirit of
Prophecy, and she rose in strength from the couch and prostrated herself
thrice before the cradle where I lay asleep, the Royal asp upon my brow,
crying aloud:

[*] The Egyptian _Parcæ_ or _Fates_.--Editor.

"Hail to thee, fruit of my womb! Hail to thee, Royal child! Hail to
thee, Pharaoh that shalt be! Hail to thee, God that shalt purge the
land, Divine seed of Nekt-nebf, the descended from Isis. Keep thee pure,
and thou shalt rule and deliver Egypt and not be broken. But if thou
dost fail in thy hour of trial, then may the curse of all the Gods
of Egypt rest upon thee, and the curse of thy Royal forefathers, the
justified, who ruled the land before thee from the age of Horus. Then in
life mayst thou be wretched, and after death may Osiris refuse thee,
and the judges of Amenti give judgment against thee, and Set and Sekhet