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225 Revealed himself to me. Concerning me, with friendly face, these words he declared: "Iam Khnum, thy fashioner." The god announced that he would heed the king's prayers if the king would undertake to "rebuild temples, to restore what is ruined, and to hew out new shrines" for the deity. For that, the god said, he will be giving the king new stones as well as "hard stones which have existed from the begin- ning of time." Then the god promised that in exchange he would open the sluices in two caverns that are beneath his rock chamber and that as a result the waters of the Nile will begin to flow again. Within a year, he said, the river's banks will be green again, plants will grow, starvation will disappear. And when the god finished speaking, and his image vanished, Zoser "awoke refreshed, my heart relieved of weariness," and de- creed permanent rites of offerings to Khnum in_ eternal gratitude. The god Ptah and a vision of him is the central theme of two other Egyptian dream epiphanies; one of them brings to mind the biblical tales of the woman who cannot bear a male heir. The first, describing how a Divine Encounter turned the tide of warfare, is contained in a long inscription by the Pharaoh Merenptah (circa 1230 B.C.) on the fourth pylon in the great temple in Karnak. Though the son of the warring Pharaoh Ramses II, Merenptah found it beyond his capabili- ties to protect Egypt from a rising tide of invaders, both by land (Libyans from the west) and by sea ("pirates" from across the Mediterranean). The warfare reached its culmina- tion when Libyan forces reinforced by the "pirates" were poised to seize Memphis, the olden capital of Egypt. Merenp- tah, desponded, was ill prepared to face the attackers. Then, in the night before the decisive battle, he had a dream. In the dream the god Ptah appeared; promising the king victory, the god said: "Take this now!" and with those words handed to Merenptah a sword, saying further: "and banish from yourself your troubled heart." to Royal Dreams, Fateful Oracles