CHAPTER XLVII.

The king had left the camp, and had settled in the neighboring city of
Rameses' Tanis, with the greater part of his army. The Hebrews, who were
settled in immense numbers in the province of Goshen, and whom Ani had
attached to his cause by remitting their task-work, were now driven to
labor at the palaces and fortifications which Rameses had begun to build.

At Tanis, too, the treaty of peace was signed and was presented to
Rameses inscribed on a silver tablet by Tarthisebu, the representative of
the Cheta king, in the name of his lord and master.

Pentaur followed the king as soon as he had closed his mother's eyes,
and accompanied her body to Heliopolis, there to have it embalmed; from
thence the mummy was to be sent to Thebes, and solemnly placed in the
grave of her ancestors. This duty of children towards their parents, and
indeed all care for the dead, was regarded as so sacred by the Egyptians,
that neither Pentaur nor Bent-Anat would have thought of being united
before it was accomplished.

On the 21st day of the month Tybi, of the 21st year of the reign of
Rameses, the day on which the peace was signed, the poet returned to
Tanis, sad at heart, for the old gardener, whom he had regarded and loved
as his father, had died before his return home; the good old man had not
long survived the false intelligence of the death of the poet, whom he
had not only loved but reverenced as a superior being bestowed upon his
house as a special grace from the Gods.

It was not till seven months after the fire at Pelusium that Pentaur's