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"Never, never, did we hunt men to eat their flesh! This was not our custom! And I cannot tell you what an abo of ene of the flesh had a special significance-we ate the flesh of our dead "

Maharet paused for a nificance of these words to be plain to all

Marius saw the i before the funeral feast He felt the warm midday stillness, and the solemnity of the moment He tried to clear his mind and see only Maharet's face

"Understand," Maharet said "We believed that the spirit left the body at death; but we also believed that the residue of all living things contains soone For exas retain some bit of his vitality; and the body and bones, surely And of course e consumed the flesh of our dead this residue, so to speak, would be consumed as well

"But the real reason we ate the dead was out of respect It was in our view the proper way to treat the remains of those we loved We took into ourselves the bodies of those who'd given us life, the bodies from which our bodies had come And so a cycle was completed And the sacred remains of those we loved were saved from the awful horror of

putrefaction within the earth, or fro devoured by wild beasts, or burnt as if they were fuel or refuse

"There is a great logic to it if you think on it But the i to realize is that it was part and parcel of us as a people The sacred duty of every child was to consume the remains of his parents; the sacred duty of the tribe was to consume the dead

"Not a single e whose body was not consule e had not consumed the flesh of the dead "

Again, Maharet paused, her eyes sweeping the group slowly before she went on

"Now, it was not a tireat wars," she said "Jericho had been at peace for as long as anyone could remember And Nineveh had been at peace as well

"But far away, to the southwest in the Nile Valley, the savage people of that land le peoples south of the back captives for their spits and pots For not only did they devour their own dead with all proper respect as we did, they ate the bodies of their eneth of the enemy went into their bodies when they consumed his flesh Also they liked the taste of the flesh

"We scorned what they did, for the reasons I've explained How could anyone want the flesh of an enemy? But perhaps the crucial difference between us and the warlike dwellers of the Nile Valley was not that they ate their enemies, but that they arlike and ere peaceful We did not have any enemies

"Now, about the tireat change occurred in the Nile Valley Or so ere told

"The aging Queen of that realhter to carry on the royal blood And ah the female line Since no male can ever be certain of the paternity of his wife's child, it was the Queen or the Princess who brought with her the divine right to the throne This is why Egyptian pharaohs of a later age often ht

"And so it would have been with this young King Enkil if he had had a sister, but he did not He did not even have a royal cousin or aunt toand determined to rule his land Finally, he settled upon a new bride, not from his own people, but froris and Euphrates Valley