To the watchers by the king they seemed like an undulant sea of quilted
helmets and flying tassels, while the sunlight smote through a level
and straight-set forest of spears. They were seasoned veterans, many
of them heroes of a quarter-century of wars. They had followed Rameses
the Great into Asia and had extended the empire and the prowess of arms
to the farthest corners of the known world. They had drunk the sweets
of unalloyed victory from the blue Nile to the Euphrates and had filled
Egypt with booty, scented with the airs of Arabia, gorgeous from the
looms of India, and heavy with the ivory and gold of Ethiopia.
Now they went in formidable array in pursuit of two millions of slaves
to dye their axes in unresisting blood, to return, not as victors over
a heroic foe, but as drivers of men, herders of sheep and cattle, and
laden with inglorious spoil.
Behind them, in regular ranks, beaten by their drivers into an awkward
run, came the sumpter-mules, and after them the rumbling carts filled
with provision.
Meneptah, raging and weeping, saw his army leave him and gallop in an
aureole of dust toward the Red Sea.
Thus it was that "the Pharaoh drew nigh," but came no farther after
Israel.
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