Nefer the Silent [Paperback]

They built a civilization ahead of its time, and dominated the ancient world.
They defined an era of war, love, passion, power, and betrayal.
They were a people of mystery whose secrets have turned to dust -- but who inspire our awe and wonder even to this day....
The ancient Egyptians
They showed us how to live. And how to die.
Christian Jacq, author of the international triumphRamses,brings the people and the passions of ancient Egypt to life in an enthralling epic novel in four volumes.Chapter One

Life was so monotonous. Plowing immediately after the annual Nile flood, sowing, reaping, and harvesting, stocking up the granaries, watching out for locusts, rodents, and hippos that might lay waste the fields. Then there was irrigation, looking after your tools, plaiting ropes at night instead of sleeping, watching over the flocks and the teams, not to mention forever worrying about your piece of land and never thinking of anything beyond the quality of the wheat and the state of your cows' health....Yes, it was utterly monotonous, and Ardent could stand it no longer.

The young man was sitting under a sycamore tree, where the fields met the desert. It offered him plenty of shade, but he was unable to get off to sleep and enjoy a well-deserved rest before heading to the family pastures to tend the oxen. At sixteen, Ardent was over three and a half cubits tall and built like a giant; and he had no desire to settle for the life of a peasant, as his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had done.

Just as he did every day, he had come to this quiet spot, and, using a little piece of wood he had whittled, he had drawn animals in the sand. Drawing. He would have loved to draw for hours on end, then add color and re-create a donkey, a dog, and a thousand other creatures.

Ardent had great powers of observation. What he saw entered his heart, which then gave orders to his hand -- though his hand was completelylãl