The priests were quite confused. No one had explained to them yet what they were supposed to do here, in the new city that the king had quickly built. They had been rousted out of their usual homes in villages in the region and marched together, forced by the king's burly thugs, to new houses in the new town. They had been told to bring along only their basic priestly garments, none of the more elaborate vestments some festivals might require, and definitely no leopard skins, which apparently in themselves offended the king as symbols of the very old order.

So the men, mostly old, stooped, and generally incapable of reading the hieroglyphs on walls around them, had been herded into the square before sunrise and now stood expectantly, unsure about whether they would be suddenly assigned roles in the new ritual or whether they had just been brought to witness whatever was going to happen. Or would they, perhaps, be slaughtered wholesale, as it was rumored some priests had been who had resisted the king's orders? They murmured such questions among themselves as the eastern sky brightened noticeably. There were hundreds of them stretching along the road that led from the houses to a spanking new temple.