A newly made road led into this rocky gorge, whose steep yellow and brown
walls seemed scorched by the sun in many blackened spots, and looked like
a ghostly array of shades that had risen from the tombs in the night and
remained there.

At the entrance of this valley some blocks of stone formed a sort of
doorway, and through this, indifferent to the heat of day, a small but
brilliant troop of the men was passing.

Four slender youths as staff bearers led the procession, each clothed
only with an apron and a flowing head-cloth of gold brocade; the mid-day
sun played on their smooth, moist, red-brown skins, and their supple
naked feet hardly stirred the stones on the road.

Behind them followed an elegant, two-wheeled chariot, with two prancing
brown horses bearing tufts of red and blue feathers on their noble heads,
and seeming by the bearing of their arched necks and flowing tails to
express their pride in the gorgeous housings, richly embroidered in
silver, purple, and blue and golden ornaments, which they wore--and even
more in their beautiful, royal charioteer, Bent-Anat, the daughter of
Rameses, at whose lightest word they pricked their ears, and whose little
hand guided them with a scarcely perceptible touch.

Two young men dressed like the other runners followed the chariot, and
kept the rays of the sun off the face of their mistress with large fans
of snow-white ostrich feathers fastened to long wands.

By the side of Bent-Anat, so long as the road was wide enough to allow
of it, was carried Nefert, the wife of Mena, in her gilt litter, borne by