There was a King in Egypt

The monarch indicated in There was a King in Egypt is Akhnaton, the heretic Pharaoh, first brought home to the English reader by the well known Egyptian archaeologist, Mr. Arthur Weigall. Akhnaton, or Amenhotep IV., has an interest for the whole world as the first Messiah. Like Our Lord, he was of Syrian parentage--on the mother's side. Interest in him is undying, because underlying his Sun-symbolism we have the first foreshadowings of the altruism of Christianity.

The book is not directly devoted to Akhnaton. It is about a young English Egyptologist, who is excavating the tomb of Akhnaton's mother, in which the Pharaoh's exhumed body found its final repose; his sister; and an Irish mystic, who copies the tomb-paintings excavated before their freshness fades. Aton-worship and Mohammedanism have an almost equal fascination for this Irishman, and the romance is permeated with their mysticism. The prophecies of a Mohammedan saint who has attained the light by a life of abstinence and self-discipline, influence the current of the romance no less than the visions of the Pharaoh Messiah, whose pure religion threatened his country with disasters like the Russian revolution.

For the historical facts I am indebted to the brilliant Akhnaton, Pharaoh of Egypt,[1] of Mr. Weigall, late Chief Inspector of Monuments in Upper Egypt. The character of the Egyptian Messiah has fascinated me ever since I began to read Egyptian history, and Mr. Weigall writes with the grace and colour of a Pierre Loti. I have always used his translations of Akhnaton's words, and very often his own words in describing Akhnaton.

I take this opportunity of thanking Mr. Weigall for his ungrudging permission to quote from him, and I should like him to know that his book was the inspiration of There was a King in Egypt.

I must also acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. Walter Tyndall's fine volume, Below the Cataracts,[2]--he is equally successful as author and artist--for my description of the tomb of Queen Thiy.

The teachings of the reformed Mohammedanism scattered through my book are derived from the propaganda works of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, especially his Teachings of Islam.[3]

I trust that my readers will find the mysticism of the book not a clog upon the wheels of the romance of Excavation in Egypt, but Virgil's "vital breeze."

NORMA LORIMER. 7, PITCULLEN TERRACE, PERTH, SCOTLAND.

[1] Published by Wm. Blackwood & Sons.

[2] Published by Heinemann.

[3] Published by Dulau.

THERE WAS A KING IN EGYPT

PART I

CHAPTER I

Dawn held the world in stillness. In the vast stretches of barren hills and soft sands there was nothing living or stirring but the figure of an Englishman, standing at the door of his tent.

At the hour of sunrise and sunset the East is its own. Every suggestion of Western influence and foreign invasion is wiped out. The going and the coming of the sun throws the land of the Pharaohs, the kingdom of Ra, the great Sun God, whose cradle was at Heliopolis, back to the days when Egypt was the world; to the days when the sun governed the religion of her people; to the days when civilization had barely touched the Mediterranean and the world knew not Rome; back again to the days when the Nile, the Mother of Life, bordered by bands of fertile, food-giving land, had not as yet sheltered the infant Moses in her reeds. Dawn in Egypt is the dawn of civilization.

Each dawn saw Michael Amory, wrapped in his thickest coat, standing outside his tent, watching and waiting for the glory of Egypt, for Ra, the Sun God, to appear above the horizon of the desert.