The music rang out through the night.

Drums beating, and flutes whistling, and horns blowing, the sounds carrying down the

dry slope toward the river.

Moonlight shone down on the black surface.

Barely a ripple was visible.

The nile moved slow, as it always did, cutting its way through the valley, spilling over its

banks every year, regular, and eternal.

Up on the hill, fire light illuminated the musicians.

The smell of roasting beef permeated the air, huge slabs of meat roasting over the fires.

Dancers spun to the music dozens of turning and rising, stomping their feet and moving

in elaborate but familiar patterns.

The copper and ivory bands on their arms and ankles clanked as they danced, adding

another wave of tinkling sound to the raucous proceedings.

Stripes and swirls of bright painted color, red and white and yellow and green marked

the dancer's faces, torsos, arms and legs, wherever the flesh was visible.

Some distance away from the fires and the dancers, amid a forest of upright stone and wooden

markers, a group illuminated by torch lights surrounded and open pit dug down into the

dry earth.

The elderly man's face was peaceful in death, his long and neatly combed hair resting on

a reed mat beneath it as he lay on his side.

A stone stud pierced his lower lip and a necklace of semi-precious stones, glinting in the torchlight,

hung around his neck.

...