DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4393#0266
248 -A- THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE.
to the opposite bank.* Some are so large and so heavy
that it takes a month to get them clown from the mountain
to the landing-place, f Other laborers are elsewhere making
bricks, digging canals, helping to bnild the great wall
which reached from Pelusium to Heliopolis, and strengthen-
ing the defenses not only of Pithom and Rameses but of
all the cities and forts between the Red Sea and the Medi-
terranean. Their lot is hard; but not harder than the lot
of other workmen. They are well fed. They intermarry.
They increase and multiply. The season of their great
oppression is not yet come. They make bricks, it is true,
and those who are so employed must supply a certain num-
ber daily;| but the straw is not yet withheld, and the task,
though perhaps excessive, is not impossible. For we are
here on the reign of Rameses II, and the time when
Meneptah shall succeed him is yet far distant. It is not
till the king dies that the children of Israel sigh, "by
reason of the bondage/'
There are in the British Museum, the Louvre, and the
Bibliothcque Rationale, some much older papyri than
these two letters of the Leyden collection—some as old,
indeed, as the time of Josejih, but none, perhaps, of such
peculiar interest. In these, the scribes Kauiser and Keni-
amon seem still to live and speak. "What would we not
give for a few more of their letters! These men knew
Memphis in its glory and had looked upon the face of
Rameses the Great. They might even have seen Moses in
his youth while yet he lived under the protection of his
adopted mother, a prince among princes. Kauiser and
Keniamon lived, and died, and were mummied between
three and four thousand years ago; yet these frail frag-
ments of papyrus have survived the wreck of ages, and
* See the famous wall-painting of the Colossus on the Sledge
engraved in Sir (i. Wilkinson's "Ancient Egyptians;" frontispiece
to vol. ii, ed. 1871.
f In a letter written by a priest who lived during this reign (Rame-
ses II), we find an interesting account of the disadvantages and hard-
ships attending various trades and pursuits, as opposed to the ease
and dignity of the sacerdotal office. Of the mason he says : " It is
the climax of his misery to have to remove a block of ten cubits by
six, a block which it takes a month to drag by the private ways
among the houses."—Sallier Pap. No. II, Brit. Musoe.
\ " Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as here-
tofore ; let them go and gather straw for themselves."
''And the tale of the bricks, which they did make heretofore, ye
to the opposite bank.* Some are so large and so heavy
that it takes a month to get them clown from the mountain
to the landing-place, f Other laborers are elsewhere making
bricks, digging canals, helping to bnild the great wall
which reached from Pelusium to Heliopolis, and strengthen-
ing the defenses not only of Pithom and Rameses but of
all the cities and forts between the Red Sea and the Medi-
terranean. Their lot is hard; but not harder than the lot
of other workmen. They are well fed. They intermarry.
They increase and multiply. The season of their great
oppression is not yet come. They make bricks, it is true,
and those who are so employed must supply a certain num-
ber daily;| but the straw is not yet withheld, and the task,
though perhaps excessive, is not impossible. For we are
here on the reign of Rameses II, and the time when
Meneptah shall succeed him is yet far distant. It is not
till the king dies that the children of Israel sigh, "by
reason of the bondage/'
There are in the British Museum, the Louvre, and the
Bibliothcque Rationale, some much older papyri than
these two letters of the Leyden collection—some as old,
indeed, as the time of Josejih, but none, perhaps, of such
peculiar interest. In these, the scribes Kauiser and Keni-
amon seem still to live and speak. "What would we not
give for a few more of their letters! These men knew
Memphis in its glory and had looked upon the face of
Rameses the Great. They might even have seen Moses in
his youth while yet he lived under the protection of his
adopted mother, a prince among princes. Kauiser and
Keniamon lived, and died, and were mummied between
three and four thousand years ago; yet these frail frag-
ments of papyrus have survived the wreck of ages, and
* See the famous wall-painting of the Colossus on the Sledge
engraved in Sir (i. Wilkinson's "Ancient Egyptians;" frontispiece
to vol. ii, ed. 1871.
f In a letter written by a priest who lived during this reign (Rame-
ses II), we find an interesting account of the disadvantages and hard-
ships attending various trades and pursuits, as opposed to the ease
and dignity of the sacerdotal office. Of the mason he says : " It is
the climax of his misery to have to remove a block of ten cubits by
six, a block which it takes a month to drag by the private ways
among the houses."—Sallier Pap. No. II, Brit. Musoe.
\ " Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as here-
tofore ; let them go and gather straw for themselves."
''And the tale of the bricks, which they did make heretofore, ye