"Pardon me, noble prince," I said; "permit me to linger a moment to survey this novel scene."
Remeses drew up his horses, and from the chariot I cast my eyes over the vast level which embraced half a square league.
"These fields, Sesostris," said the prince, "are where the brick are made which are to erect the walls of the treasure-city, one of the towers of which you behold two miles distant. The city itself will take the years of a generation of this people to complete, if the grand design is carried out. On the left of the tower you see the old palace, for this is not a new city we are building so much as an extension of the old on a new site, and with greater magnificence. It is my mother's pride to fill Egypt with monuments of architecture that will mark her reign as an era."
The scene that I beheld from the height of the chariot I will attempt to describe, my dear mother. As far as I could see, the earth was dark with people, some stooping down and with wooden mattocks digging up the clay; others were piling it into heaps; others were chopping straw to mix with the clay; others were treading it with their feet to soften it. Some with moulds were shaping the clay into bricks. Another stood by with the queen's mark, and stamped each brick therewith, or the one which was to be the head of a course when laid. There were also the strongest men employed in raising upon the shoulders of others a load of these bricks, which they bore to a flat open space to be dried in the sun; and a procession of many hundreds was constantly moving, performing this task. Some of the slaves carried yokes, which had cords at each end, to which bricks were fastened; and many of the young men conveyed masses of clay upon their heads to the moulders. Those who carried the brick to the smoothly swept ground where they were to be dried, delivered them to women, who, many hundreds in number, placed them side by side on the earth in rows--a lighter task than that of the men. The borders of this busy plain, where it touched the fields of stubble wheat, were thronged with women and children gathering straw for the men who mixed the clay. It was an active and busy spectacle. Yet throughout the vast arena not a voice was heard from the thousands of toilers; only the sharp authoritative tones of their taskmasters broke the stillness, or the creaking of carts with wooden wheels, as, laden with straw from distant fields, they moved slowly over the plain.