into the presence, he addressed words of homage to the king, and, having presented the gifts from his lord, he said that he had come to beg His Majesty to send a
"learned man,"
|
i.e., a magician, to Bekhten to attend Bent-enth-resh,
|
His Majesty's sister-in-law, who was stricken with some disease. Thereupon the king summoned the learned men of the House of Life, i.e., the members of the great College of Magic at Thebes, and the qenbetu officials, and when they had entered his presence, he commanded them to select a man of "wise heart and deft fingers" to go to Bekhten. The choice fell upon one Teḥuti-em-ḥeb, and His Majesty sent him to Bekhten with the envoy. When they arrived in Bekhten, Teḥuti-em-ḥeb found that the Princess Bent-enth-resh was possessed by an evil spirit which refused to be exorcised by him, and he was unable to cast out the devil. The Prince of Bekhten, seeing that the healing of his daughter was beyond the power of the Egyptian, sent a second envoy to Rameses II., and besought him to send a god to drive out the devil. This envoy arrived in Egypt in the summer of the twenty-sixth year of the reign of Rameses II., and found the king celebrating a festival in Thebes. When he heard the petition of the envoy, he went to the Temple of Khensu Nefer-ḥetep "a second time,"[1] and
- ↑ Thus the king must have invoked the help of Khensu on the occasion of the visit of the first envoy.
