The Quest of Julian Day Read Online Free PDF Page A

transact in Egypt before I am really my own master.’
    â€˜Our preparations in Cairo and Luxor will take at least a fortnight,’ Sir Walter said quickly.
    â€˜In that case, may I leave it open?’ I asked; knowing that the probabilities were that in a fortnight I should either have got something on O’Kieff or else lost track of him.
    â€˜Certainly,’ Sir Walter agreed. ‘But before asking you to make any definite decision it is only fair to let you know what we propose to do.’
    â€˜There’s no hurry about that as things stand,’ I said.
    He shook his head. ‘I think I’d better tell you now because I’m quite sure I can rely on you not to let it go any further then, if you decide that you would rather not participate in this affair which is, to a very mild extent, illegal, you would feel quite free to make other plans for your winter in Egypt.’
    â€˜Just as you like, sir,’ I agreed, settling back in my chair.
    â€˜You’ve read Herodotus, of course.’
    â€˜Yes; not recently though.’
    â€˜In any case you know enough about it to realise that whereas half a century ago Herodotus was regarded as a romancer and the prize liar among ancient historians, modern investigations have proved that he was nothing of the kind. His records of his travels sound fantastic on the face of them, particularly as many of his stories are completely unsupported by any other ancient writings. But during this century we’ve succeeded in digging up and translating innumerable records on stone or pottery which prove conclusively that nine-tenths of the particulars which he set down in his essays on the ancient civilisations were genuine facts. I wonder if by chance you remember the passage in which he refers to the Persian conquest of Egypt? It is in the early part of Book III.’
    â€˜No,’ I confessed. ‘I don’t.’
    â€˜Well, briefly it was this. During some five thousand years, or perhaps even longer, Egypt, protected by her natural barriers of desert from barbarian hordes, had developed probably the most remarkable and wealthy civilisation the world has ever known. Her two greatest cities, Memphis and Thebes, each had over five million inhabitants, which makes them greater than any city with the one exception of London, in Europe at the present day. In Thebes particularly, the accumulated wealth in gold and jewels in the temples passes imagination, because it was the Sacred City of the great XVIIIth, XIXth and XXth Dynasties which conquered the whole of Palestine right down to Mesopotamia and added the wealth of many other long-civilised peoples to their own.
    â€˜Long before 525 B.C. the tide of conquest had turned and, in that year, came the Persian invasion, Cambyses descended on Egypt with his hordes of horsemen, destroyed her armies and sacked her mighty cities. Having deposed the reigning Pharaoh, Psammetichos III, Cambyses settled down to rest his legions as the new monarch in Thebes. Yet he was not content with having taken the London of the ancient world and, like Alexander who came after him, he sighed for fresh worlds to conquer.
    â€˜To the west of the Nile Valley lies the Libyan desert. It stretches for a thousand miles from north to south and is over nine hundred miles in width. That portion of the Sahara is almost waterless. Arabs cut corners off it with their caravansbut no human being ever succeeded in actually crossing that desert until this was accomplished in the nineteen-twenties by aeroplane.
    â€˜Cambyses learned that to the north-west of the desert there lay another mighty city inhabited by a wealthy people. Their descendants are the Senussi Arabs who inhabit the Oasis of Siwa, a great tract of fertile territory which is known in ancient times as the Oasis of Jupiter-Ammon. Greedy for further spoil, Cambyses determined to march his armies against the Senussi, but he was faced with the almost insoluble problem