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Moses had to prove his devotion over and over. She stroked his hair lovingly, reassuring him that not Seti but the finest surgeons in Egypt would perform the operation—if, indeed, it had to be undertaken. That was still in the future and, as for Amon-Teph, he, top, knew a little less than everything. Yet he was a good man, she hastened to say, turning the boy’s tearful face up to her and looking into his eyes.
    â€œA man doesn’t weep, my son; and as for Amon-Teph, heed him well when he teaches you. He will teach you to be the kind of man Egypt has forgotten. There are few such teachers left in Egypt.”
    â€œYou know?” Moses whispered. “You know the things he teaches me?”
    â€œHow could I help knowing? Even if Amon-Teph had not told me? Night after night—well, Moses, we have out dreams for you. I know little about the gods, but a great deal about politics, and the two go hand in hand. Do you think it was for want of a god to stand sponsor for you that I called you Moses and only Moses? I am sure that the God Ramses himself suspects the meaning of the strange name you bear, which is only half a name, and which foolish people laugh at. Let them laugh, my son. Let the God Ramses laugh, for he knows too much and too little of who you truly are—and perhaps it was wrong for me to keep the truth from you for so long. Well, just a little longer now. You are a man already, but there is still height and strength and knowledge—another year, another two years. Meanwhile, bear yourself like a god, my son-not simply as a prince of Egypt but the Prince of Egypt. Let all who see you know that—not by word, but by the way you walk, by your abiding truth and justice , by your look and your bearing. It will not be long now.”
    The lengthy speech tired her, and though Moses pressed her, she lay silently on her couch, her eyes closed; and not a word more would she say.

[9]
    THERE WAS A sense of balance and reality in Moses that made him less vulnerable to wild dreams and heady illusions; and to his way of thinking there was less reason to bear himself as a god—which was a highly speculative and confusing notion at best—than there was to bear himself like a man—which was a factual condition and one that offered untold advantages and excitements.
    Like his royal cousins who had come into the same estate, he soon tired of the novelty of carrying forty or fifty pounds of war equipment through the day and, like them, he pared it down to a bronze dagger. While even this constituted braggadocio in so peaceful and orderly a place as the Great House of Ramses, it bolstered his new status to feel the cold scabbard against his thigh. With gold in his pouch, he shopped the teeming market place of the city, savouring, along with his delicious sense of freedom, the colour and excitement of life in a busy international bazaar; for here, only a hundred yards or so from the water front and the immense docking facilities that Ramses had built for his beloved city, were the merchants and the products of all the world—silks from the legendary land of China where, it was said, people were yellow of skin with slanting cat’s eyes; beautiful ivory carvings from the equally legendary Ganges cities; dried fish and black wool from Troy; regal purple wool and linen from Phoenicia; fat figs and worked silver from Philistia; hard smoked sausage and willow bark from Sardinia; cedar from the hills of Lebanon; salt from the sea people—the pirates of Myrmidia, Locria and Argos; wrought gold and wine from Crete; pepper and cloves from the merchants of Hatti, who brought it from the very ends of the earth; pottery from Achaea and Salamis; feathers and hides from the land of Kush; caged lions and leopards from unnamed lands to the south of Kush; khat and dates from the Bedouins of Arabia; and succulent, dried fruit from the gardens of Babylon.
    And even more fascinating than the wonderful