Desert God by Smith Wilbur

Author:Smith, Wilbur [Smith, Wilbur]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2014-09-24T23:00:00+00:00

Every hour of those last five days we spent in Babylon seemed to be filled with frantic activity. There were the last meetings with Nimrod and his council, the signing of accords between our nations, and the arrangements agreed upon for the remainder of the bullion that I had promised him to be collected by Nimrod’s minions in Thebes. I was mightily pleased that I would not be present when the promissory bond for twenty-seven lakhs of silver, which I had signed with the hawk seal, was presented to Pharaoh Tamose.

On top of all this, there was the arrival in Babylon of the emissary that the Supreme Minos had sent to Babylon to welcome my mission and travel with us to Crete. He had sailed from Knossos in a flotilla of war galleys with his entourage. He had left the ships in the Sumerian port of Sidon and travelled overland with his entourage to meet me.

His name was Toran, which translated from Minoan as ‘the Son of the Bull’. He was a handsome man in the prime of his life and he travelled in such state as befitted the representative of the richest and most powerful monarch on this earth. King Nimrod set aside an entire wing of the palace to accommodate his entourage. Simply to feed and entertain the Cretan visitors Nimrod was obliged to spend much of the three lakhs of silver which I had bestowed upon him. He was eager to see Toran return to his island and did all in his power to hasten his departure.

Notwithstanding his physical beauty and regal manners Toran was one of the shrewdest and most intelligent men I had ever encountered. At our first meeting we formed a strong bond of mutual respect; almost immediately each of us recognized the superior qualities of the other.

One of the many virtues that we shared was a loathing of the Hyksos barbarians and everything even remotely associated with them. I spent almost an hour commiserating with him on the despicable and unprovoked attack they had made on the Minoan fortress of Tamiat, and the atrocities that they had committed upon the Cretan troops that they had captured there. Toran’s youngest son was one of the junior officers whom they had beheaded after he had surrendered to them.

However, neither of us mentioned the three great Cretan treasure triremes and the 580 lakhs of silver bullion that the Hyksos had stolen from the Supreme Minos. It was as though that vast treasure had never existed. I for one would readily have sworn before all the gods that I had no knowledge of it.

What finally convinced me of Toran’s superior talents and his advanced intellect was his fluent command of the Egyptian language and the fact that he had read and studied much of my own writing on various subjects. He told me that he considered my treatise on naval warfare and tactics to be a work of genius, and that he had translated much of my poetry into the Minoan language.

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