DAMAR GREEFE (CONTINUED)
As I walked along through the deserted native streets, for the hour
was late, I reviewed mentally the circumstances of that affair,
already several months old, to which I have referred. Since it proved
to have a very important bearing upon my own life and unfortunately
the lives of many others, I will briefly recount it here.
Sir Burnham and Lady Coverly, having arrived at Port Said, were
proceeding by rail to Cairo when an accident farther up the line
necessitated their breaking their journey at Zagazig.
Now, for a time in the spring of the previous year, I had devoted much
labor to an inquiry in this place, which stands of course roughly upon
the site of the ancient Egyptian city of _Bubastis_. In those myths,
or so-called myths, of the Ancient Egyptian religion which represented
the various attributes of man in the guises of animals, I had
perceived a nucleus of wisdom pointing to the possibility that the law
which I had so laboriously established might have been known to the
early Egyptian priesthood. Indeed I was partly induced to inquire into
the myths of Bast, the cat-headed goddess to whom of old this town was
dedicated, by the following two things: first, a chance reference in
the pages of Herodotus; and, second, a persistent superstition that
during a certain season of the year, _psycho-hybrids_ occurred in this
town.
By dint of close research I discovered that the date favored by the
inhabitants of Zagazig, as that upon which such creatures were born
there, corresponded very closely with the Sacred Sothic month,
formerly sacred to Bast, the titulary goddess of the place,
corresponded in short with the ancient Feast of Bast.
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