The Kootenai herald. [volume] (Kootenai, Idaho) 1891-1904, 1891-09-19
CINDERELLA In EGYPT.

We may find sermons in stones, but
who would look for fairy tales in a sand
heapS
Nevertheless, in the last tomb of the
last king of the twenty-sixth dynasty.
lies buried the original story of Cinder-
ella and her slipper.
There is, indeed, only one variation of
any consequence between the two YER
sions, and the ancient one is certainly the
more romantic. Cinderella's princely adj
mirer finds in her lost shoe clew to his
vanished enchantress, but King Psam-
metichus falls over head and ears in love
with he knows not whom from only see
ing her sandal
The ancient Cinderella was a beautiful
Greek; Sappho calls her Doricha, and that
was most likely her proper name, but the
Greek people, with whom fairness of skin
was one of the highest qualities of female
beauty, named her, from the loneliness of
her complexion Rhodopis, Rosy Cheeks,
and as Rosy Cheeks she is known in his
tory.
She is mentioned by several writers, but
the slipper story rests on the authority of
Elian. He relates it as having occurred
to Psammetichus.
There were three kings of the name,
and he probably meant the third (Psametik
III of the Sculptures, the last of the
dynasty of the Saite kings, who was con-
quered and deposed by Cambyses the
Persian.
Rhodopis was originally slave and
fellow bondswoman of HGsop, the writer
of fables, in the house of Iadmon of
Samos; and, like the heroine of the modern
tale, a mental and a drudge, so the par
alel holds good from the beginning Like
Cinderella, too, she had fairy godmother,
but more powerful and lavish one, and
her name was Aphrodite.
This patroness procured her liberty and
heaped upon her richess; and Rhodopis,
TO make her name immortal by an offer
ing such as had never been made before,
dedicated with a tenth part of her prop
erty a quantity of iron splits in the Temple
of Apollo at Delphi, and this extraordi-
nary gift was still to be seen there in
Herodotus' time.
Some also say that she built one of the
Pyramids of Egypt; but as Herodotus re-
marks, those who say so evidently know
nothing about it; and however this may
be, if Rhodopis was not so simple as our
own Cinderella, she was, at all events,
more lucky; and if her coachman, and
horses, and chariots were really rats, and
mice, and pumpkins, they never resumed
their proper shape; and no Disseminating
clock sent her hurrying back to her soul
lery, one shoe off and one shoe on. Mid
night never struck for her, and she lost
her shoe in quite another way
At the time / speak of she was said to
be the most beautiful woman in Egypt,
and she lived at Naucratis, port on the
Canopic branch of the Nile, founded in
the preceding reign by colonists from
Miletus; and though born Greek, living
in a Greek city, it pleased her now and
then to play the Egyptian, and to adopt
the manners and fashions of her new
country. And so it came about that one
morning, before the sun was yet high, she
went down, Just as did Pharaoh's daugh-
ter, with her maidens to battle in the
Nile.
At short distance from the bank she
left her litter, and sought a secluded
creek, where, screened in by the feather
ing papyrus, she would be undisturbed
and unseen from The busy river, and there
her girls unmade her toilet. Now the
banks of the father of rivers are hard in
places-a mixture of sand and clay baked
by the scorching sun, and rough to
delicate feet. So Rhodopis did not quit her
sandals until the moment when she
SU6DDeu uOWu luIO lIb Sblll3 COOl Wdu6I3
herself as white and rosy as the lotuses
around her.
There, half wading and half swimming,
she played and frolicked, happy in the
pure JOY of living, like the gay butterflies
that fluttered about the rushes. She
gathered handfuls of lotuses, and threw
them away again; and then, in lazy fit,
she floated on her back, and gave herself
up to thoughts on things in general, and
on herself in particular. But to return
to her sandals, which she had kicked off
on the rivers brink. They lay as she
had left them, pair of dainty shoes fit
for such dainty feet. They were en-
broidered in gold and brilliant colors with
a quaint pattern, and with the ever
present lotus, and most curious of all,
the upper surface Of the sole, on which
her foot rested, bore the figure of a cap
tive with bound arms, on one sandal an
Egyptian, on the other a Greek-a fan
ciful way of suggesting the dominion of
their owner over the hearts of two ma
tions.
Now it CHANGED that just above, sailing
round in his vast circle, a mere speck in
4 the dancing blue sky, was an eagle, and