The ritual had been trampled into the dust.

The eye of the most unlearned Egyptian could detect the sacrilege at a single glance.

It was the image of a girl, draped in an overlong robe, fastened over each shoulder by a fibula, ornamented with a round medallion.  Through the vestments, intentionally simple, there was testimony of the exquisite lines of the figure they clothed.

The sole observance of hieratic symbol were the horns of Athor set in the hair.

The figure was posed as if in the act of a forward movement.  The knee was slightly bent in an attitude of supplication.  The face was upturned, the eyes lifted, the arms extended to their fullest, forward and upward, the fingers curved as if ready to receive.  The hair was separated into two heavy plaits, which fell below the waist down the back.

One sandaled foot was advanced, slightly; the other hidden by the hem of the robe.

Every physical feature visible upon the living form so disposed and draped had been carved upon this grace in stone.  Egypt had never fashioned anything so perfect.  Indeed, she would not have called it sculpture.

The glyptic art of Greece had been paralleled hundreds of years before it was born.

On the face there was the light of overpowering love together with the intangible pride so marked on the representations of profane deities.  But the most manifest emotions were the great yearning and entreaty.  They were marked in the attitude of the head thrown back, in the outstretched arms and in the bent knee.  That there was more hopeful expectancy than despairing insistence, was proved by the curve of the ready fingers and the uncertain smile on the lips.  It was Athor, eternally young, eternally in love, eternally unsatisfied, receiving the setting sun as she had done since the world began.  None of the rapturous impatience and uncertainty of the moment had been lost since the first sunset after chaos.  And yet, with all the pulse and fervor, here was womanhood, immaculate and ineffable.

Never did face so command men to worship.

“Holy Amen!” the scribe exclaimed, his voice barely audible in its earnestness.  “What consummate loveliness!  But what—­what unspeakable impiety!”

“Hast thou seen Athor?  She is before thee.”

“Athor!  The golden goddess in the image of a mortal!  Kenkenes, the wrath of the priests awaits thee and thereafter the doom of the insulted Pantheon!” The scribe shuddered and plucked at his friend’s robe as if to drag him away from the sight of his own creation.

Firmly fixed were the young artist’s convictions to resist the impelling force of Hotep’s consternation.

“Nay, nay, Hotep,” he answered soothingly.  “The wrath of the gods for an offense thus flagrant is exceedingly slow, if it is to fall.  Lo! they have propitiated me at great length if they mean to accomplish mine undoing at last.  Thus far, and the statue is well-nigh complete, I have met no form of obstacle.”