It was a splendid banquet. The Lady Nelisa presided with matchless dignity and grace. But I have already described a banquet to you. This was similar in display and the mode of entertaining the guests.
I was seated opposite the daughter of the Priest of Mars, of whose beauty I have before spoken. She asked many questions, in the most captivating way, about Tyre, and yourself, and the Phœnician ladies generally. She smiled, and looked surprised, when I informed her that I was betrothed to the fair Princess Thamonda, and asked me if she were as fair as the women of Egypt. She inquired if Damascus had always been a part of Phœnicia, and how large your kingdom was. When I told her that your kingdom was composed of several lesser kingdoms, once independent, but now united far east of Libanus, under your crown, she inquired if you were a warlike queen to make such conquests. I replied that this union of the free cities of Phœnicia, and of the cities of Cœle-Syria under your sceptre, was a voluntary one, partly for union against the kings of Philistia, partly from a desire to be under so powerful and wise a queen. She said that if the danger were passed, or you were no more, the kings of these independent cities might dissolve the bonds, and so diminish the splendor of the crown which I was to wear. To this I replied, that to be king of Tyre and its peninsula was a glory that would meet my ambition. "Yes," said she, "for Tyre is the key of the riches of the earth!"
I repeat this conversation, dear mother, in order to show you that the high-born daughters of Egypt are not only affable and sensible, but that they possess no little knowledge of other lands, and take an interest in countries friendly to their own. The grace and beauty of this maiden, as well as her modesty, rendered her conversation attractive and pleasing. She is to become the wife of a brave young captain of the chariot battalion, when he returns from the Ethiopian war.
My visit to the pyramids I will now describe, dear mother, although in a letter to the Princess Thamonda I have given a very full account of it. Accompanied by the hierarch and a few young lords--his friends and mine--we rode in chariots out of the gate of the city, passed the guards, who made obeisance to the high-priest, and entered upon an avenue (what noble avenues are everywhere!) of trees growing upon a raised and terraced mound which bounded each side of it. The mound was emerald-green with verdancy, and the color of the foliage of the palms, acacias, and tamarisk trees was enriched by the bright sunshine as seen through the pure atmosphere. At intervals we passed a pair of obelisks, or through a grand pylon of granite. Then we came to a beautiful lake--the Lake of the Dead--where we passed a procession of shrines. Every nome and all large cities have such a lake. I will here state its use, which, like every thing in Egypt, is a religious one. It is connected with the passage of the dead from this world to the next; for the Egyptians not only believe in a future state, but that rewards or punishments await the soul. When a person of distinction dies, after the second or third day his body is taken charge of by embalmers, a class of persons whose occupation it is to embalm the dead. They have houses in a quarter of the city set apart for this purpose. Here the friends of the dead are shown three models of as many different modes of embalmment, of which they choose one, according to the expense they are willing to incur. "The most honorable and most costly," said the high-priest to me, as we were surveying the Lake of the Dead, towards which a procession was moving from the city, when we came before it, "is that in which the body is made to resemble Osiris. And a custom prevails among us, that the operator who first wounds the body with the sharp embalming flint, preparatory to embalming, is odious by the act, and is compelled to take to flight, pursued with execrations and pelted with stones. No doubt the man we saw flying out of a house this morning, as we passed, was one of these incisors."