Before the Throne

41

HORUS HAILED, “Pope Benjamin!”

A thin man of medium height came in, pacing forward until he stood before the throne.

Thoth, Scribe of the Gods, then recited, “They persecuted him with banishment in the desert. Amr ibn al-As released him when declaring freedom of worship and the eviction of the Byzantines.”

Osiris bid him speak.

“Belief is what ennobles man — what gives him his dignity, his strength, and his path to God,” said Pope Benjamin. “I endured what I did of Byzantine oppression without being shaken in my faith. Then I shut myself in a monastery in protest against humanity’s descent into the abyss of tyranny and corruption. Then God willed that Egypt should find herself ruled by the sons of Ishmael — and that they should institutionalize the freedom of religion. Hence I once again exercised the Alexandrian papacy and the spiritual governance of the Copts.”

“So the best thing that an Egyptian could wish for,” reeled Thutmose III, “was a just foreign occupation!”

“Our people had spent roughly a thousand years huddled in their villages,” said Patriarch Benjamin, “prostrate under alien dynasties, who ruled over them by force and the sword.”

“Did you not use your spiritual authority to awaken the populace?” asked Abnum.

“I lived at the time of a new invasion,” the patriarch explained, “one that brought religious liberty and which lightened the torments of the peasantry. The occupiers did not impose their religion upon us, so it would not have been appropriate to spread the spirit of rebellion.”

“There is no blame for this man,” advised Isis, “who lived in an age whose advantage belonged to others.”

“There is nothing that our court can hold against you,” determined Osiris.