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DEATH COMES AS THE END
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The action of this book takes place on the West bank of the Nile at Thebes
in Egypt about 2000 BC. Both place and time are incidental to the story.
Any other place at any other time would have served as well: but it so
happened that the inspiration of both characters and plot was derived
from two or three Egyptian letters of the XI Dynasty, found about 20 years
ago by the Egyptian Expedition of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York, in a rock tomb opposite Luxor, and translated by Professor (then Mr)
Battiscombe Gunn in the Museum’s Bulletin.
It may be of interest to the reader to note that an endowment for ka-ser-
vice–an everyday feature of ancient Egyptian civilization–was very similar
in principle to a mediæval chantry bequest. Property was bequeathed to
the ka-priest in return for which he was expected to maintain the tomb of
the testator, and to provide offerings at the tomb on certain feast days
throughout the year for the repose of the deceased’s soul.
The terms ‘Brother’, ‘Sister’ in Egyptian texts, regularly mean ‘Lover’
and are frequently interchangeable with ‘Husband’, ‘Wife’. They are so
used on occasion in this book.
The Agricultural calendar of Ancient Egypt, consisting of three seasons
of four months of thirty days, formed the background of peasant life, and
with the addition of five intercalary days at the end of the year was used
as the official calendar of 365 days to the year. This ‘Year’ originally began
with the arrival in Egypt of the flood-water of the Nile in the third week of
July by our reckoning; but the absence of a Leap Year caused it to lag
through the centuries, so that, at the time of our story, the official New
Year’s Day fell about six months earlier than the opening of the agricul-
tural year, i.e. in January instead of July. To save the reader from continu-
ally having to make allowance for this six months, however, the dates
here used as Chapter headings are stated in terms of the agricultural year
of the time, i.e. Inundation– late July to late November; Winter– late
November t
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