Page 156 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

[172O-165O B.C.] The Princes of the Desert 127

with a force of Bedouin from the eastern deserts, and driven the
usurper back up the Nile. It was, they reckoned, the first time
the Bedouin had fought for the men of the north against the
men of the south, and their long curved bronze swords had
proved a new and irresistible weapon against the spears and dag­
gers of the southern troops. —At this point in the story three
black-bearded Ishmaelites from Arabia, in long woolen robes,
grinned self-consciously as the men crouched round the fire
turned and looked at the bronze scimitars hanging from their
belts. And the eyes of the listening children widened as they re­
alized that here in their midst was an actual party of the re­
nowned desert warriors.
Yes, they were lawless times, agreed the old men. The war
would not be over as long as there was one king in the north and
another in the south. And it seemed as though the south, with its
black mercenaries from the Sudan, was at least a match for the
north.
The younger men of the district, the fathers of the children,
disagreed. If the south used mercenaries, the north could do the
same. The men of the desert had defeated the Sudanese once
before, and could do so again. —The Ishmaelites glanced at
each other, and said nothing. And next morning they went
on, with their baggage asses, towards the northern capital at
Itkt-toui.
There were frequently travelers from the Levant coast and
its hinterland staying at the inn. For the village lay on the main
road from Sinai and the bitter lakes of the Suez isthmus to the
capital of northern Egypt. And for all the lawless state of Egypt
there was still a good deal of trade between the two areas. And
often, as the children listened, these travelers would interrupt
the reminiscences of the locals to tell of their own country, and
their own troubles.
Civil war was a bad thing, they agreed—though they had
difficulty in understanding the compulsive urge of each of the
rival pharaohs to defeat the other and unite the Nile valley under
one ruler. They came themselves from a much smaller area, the
Jordan valley and the hill country on either side, and they had