Also their bows being longer and more powerful, they could shoot arrows farther than the Easterns or the Egyptians.
The Ethiopian lords wondered why their King and I did these things, since they saw no enemy against which so great an army could be led to battle.

On that matter Bes and I kept our own counsel, telling them only that it was good for the men to be trained to war, since, hearing of their wealth, one day the King of kings might attempt to invade their country.

So month by month I laboured at this task, leading armies into distant regions to accustom them to travelling far afield, carrying with them what was necessary for their sustenance.
So it went on until a sad thing happened, since on returning from one of these forays in which I had punished a tribe that had murdered some Ethiopian hunters and we had taken many thousands of their cattle, I found my mother dying.

She had been smitten by a fever which was common at that season of the year, and being old and weak had no strength to throw it off.
As medicine did not help her, the priests of the Grasshopper prayed day and night in their temple for her recovery.

Yes, there they prayed to a golden locust standing on an altar in a sanctuary that was surrounded by crystal coffins wherein rested the flesh of former kings of the land.
To me the sight was pitiful, but Bes asked me what was the difference between praying to a locust and praying to images with the heads of beasts, or to a dwarf shaped as he was like we did in Egypt, and I could not answer him.
"The truth is, Brother," he said, for so he called me now, "that all peoples in the world do not offer petitions to what they see and have been taught to revere, but to something beyond of which to them it is a sign.