"Judith Tarr - Lord of the Two Lands" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tarr Judith)

Judith Tarr
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Lord Of The Two Lands


тАвPROLOGUE-

Neclanebo.

Nekhtharhab.

The power was in the name. The name was power.

Beloved of Amon, son of the Sun, Great House of
Egypt, Protected of Horus, Lord of the Two Lands.
Nekhtharhab. Nectanebo to the sea-peoples, the raw young
Hellenes who served so well on all sides of the world's
wars.

He stood on the horizon and looked down. It grew like
the lotus flower, his land, kingdom and empire and heart
of the world. Long slender stem of Black Land against the
pitiless red of desert, great dark flowering of Delta on the
edge of the Great Green that was the name and essence of
me sea. Lifeblood of the lotus was the stream of the Nile,
quiescent now, shrunk to its least extent, while its people
tilled the black earth that was its gift. Almost, like a god,
he could reach, touch. Almost, like a god, cup it in his
hand.

The air sighed about him, a whisper like wings, a glim-
mer as of falcon-eyes. Memory touched, passed; sunlight,
singing, the weight of the Two Crowns new and terrible
upon his brows; and names on him, new names, strong
names, god-names for a god-king.

Here in Amon's temple was silence and shadows, and
the basin on its four clawed feet, and Egypt in it, the rich
black land of Khemet, shadow-shaped in water of the Nile.
The walls were alive with painted gods and kings and
queens, beasts, birds, lotus, palm, papyrus, all the many-
colored splendor of Egypt. Barbarians had not touched
these. Not they, not the Parsa, though they had wrought
horrors enough in other temples than this of Amon in

2 Lord of the Two Lands

Thebes. They were gone. He had driven them out, he and
his people; and if there had been more than simple human
force in it, then that was no more than the enemy de-