The Crocodile Makes No Sound

by N. L. Holmes

  WayBack Press

  P.O.Box 16066

  Tampa, FL

  ۩

  The Crocodile Makes No Sound

  Copyright © 2020 by N. L. Holmes

  The Lord Hani Mysteriestm 2020

  All rights reserved.

  Quotes from The Instructions of Any and The Instructions of Amenemope from Ancient Egyptian Literature by Miriam Lichtheim, with permission.

  Cover art and map© by Streetlight Graphics.

  Author photo© by Kipp Baker.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  The Crocodile Makes No Sound (The Lord Hani Mysteries)

  Historical Notes

  Characters

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  Did you enjoy this book? Here is a taste of the next Lord Hani mystery, Scepter of Flint:

  Acknowledgment

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  This book is dedicated to my husband, with gratitude

  Historical Notes

  This story takes place during the period of Egypt’s history known as the New Kingdom, when the country had become an empire, with holdings in Nubia to the south and throughout the Levant to the north. It begins around 1346 BCE, four years into the solo reign of Akh-en-aten, author of widespread religious “reforms”, replacing with the Aten the Theban gods Amen-Ra and his family and gradually most of the Egyptian pantheon. Although this new religion is sometimes called monotheistic, it was more precisely monolatrous. That is, Akhenaten didn’t deny that Amen and the other gods existed, he simply decreed that the Aten was the only god Egypt would worship henceforth. Scholars are divided over the idea of a coregency in Amenhotep III’s later years, but I have accepted that there was one and settled on a duration of five years. Since Akhenaten is known to have reigned seventeen years, this would move his death date earlier than the commonly accepted one.

  The reign of Akhenaten marked a nearly unimaginable overturning of values and customs millennia old, a testimony to the absolute power of the king. But judging by the speed with which his “reforms” were reversed after his death, we must assume that relatively few people really bought into them. We may imagine that those whose livelihood was interrupted by the reforms would have bided their time impatiently and maybe hastened along the fall of Akhenaten’s support.

  Many authors accept that the mysterious “Greatly Beloved Wife” Kiya was the Mitannian princess Taduhepa, originally sent to Akhenaten’s father Amenhotep III. Her name suddenly ceases to be seen at a certain point, and all her monuments had her name chiseled out and that of one of the king’s daughters put in its place. Baket-aten is thought by some to have been her child; others make her a late daughter of Tiyi.

  The prolonged sojourn of Aziru in Egypt and his prompt defection are recorded in the Amarna letters, a collection of diplomatic correspondences preserved at Akhetaten (today Tell el-Amarna). The real Hani’s role in this is, of course, unknown.

  As for the medjay, scholars today refer to them as policemen—that is, a force to keep the domestic peace and deal with civilian crime—even though we know that a police force in the modern sense was an innovation of the nineteenth century.

  Characters

  (Persons marked with an * are purely fictitious)

  Hani’s Family

  A’a*: the doorkeeper of Hani’s family.

  Amen-em-hut: Nub-nefer’s brother, Third Prophet of Amen.

  Amen-em-ope known as Pa-kiki* (The Monkey): Hani and Nub-nefer’s second son.

  Amen-hotep known as Hani: a diplomat.

  Amen-hotep known as Aha*: Hani and Nub-nefer’s eldest son. Later takes the name Hesy-en-aten.

  Amen-hotep known as Anuia: wife of Amen-em-hut, a chantress of Amen.

  Amen-mes known as Maya*: Hani’s dwarf secretary and son-in-law, married to Sat-hut-haru.

  Baket-iset*: their eldest daughter.

  In-hapy*: royal goldsmith and mother of Maya.

  Iuty*: a gardener of Hani’s family.

  Khentet-ka*: Aha’s wife.

  Meryet-amen*: Mery-ra’s lady friend.

  Meryet-mut*: Amen-em-hut and Anuia’s daughter.

  Mery-ra*: Hani’s father.

  Mut-nodjmet*: Pipi’s eldest daughter.

  Pa-ra-em-heb known as Pipi*: Hani’s brother.

  Pen-amen*: son of Amen-em-hut, Hani’s nephew.

  Neferet*: Hani and Nub-nefer’s youngest daughter.

  Nub-nefer*: Hani’s wife, a chantress of Amen.

  Sat-hut-haru*: Hani and Nub-nefer’s second daughter.

  Other Characters

  Abdi-urash: the brother of Aziru, who shared his sojourn in Kemet.

  Akh-en-aten (Amen-hotep IV): known by his throne name Nefer-khepru-ra Wa-en-ra.

  Apeny: wife of Ptah-mose and, in this story, weret khener of Amen-Ra.

  Aper-el: vizier of Lower Egypt.

  Ay: father-in-law and probably uncle of Akhenaten, who held considerable power under his reign and that of his successors, eventually becoming king.

  Aziru: leader of the hapiru, who became the first king of A’amu.

  Djefat-nebty*: woman physician in attendance on the royal harem.

  Djehuty-mes (Thutmose): famous sculptor in the reign of Akhenaten.

  Ineni*: wife of Djehuty-mes.

  Keliya: Mitannian diplomat.

  Kha-em-sekhem*: a sculptor in the workshop of Djehuty-mes.

  Khuit*: neighborhood healer.

  Kiya: Mitannian princess named originally Taduhepa, married first to Amenhotep III then to his son, who made her his Greatly Beloved Wife.

  Mahu: chief of police under Akhenaten.

  Ptah-mes known as Mai: high priest (First Prophet) of Amen-Ra.

  Mane: diplomat assigned to Naharin (Mitanni).

  Nefert-iti Nefer-nefru-aten: queen and later possible coregent of Akhenaten. She was probably his cousin on the maternal side. Her name means “the beautiful one has come.”

  Pentju: Chief physician of Akh-en-aten, priest of the Aten.

  Ptah-mes: former vizier of Upper Egypt, First Prophet of Amen-Ra, and mayor of Thebes, current high commissioner of northern vassals (this last office fictitiously ascribed to him).

  Rekhet-ra*: daughter of Djehuty-mes and former wife of Kha-em-sekhem.

  Si-mut: Second Prophet of Amen-Ra.

  Glossary of Gods

  Amen-Ra: Amen, the Hidden One, was a local god of Thebes. When a Theban dynasty came to power in Egypt, Amen became the high god of the entire country and was merged with the all- important sun god Ra.

  Ammit: “The Devourer”, a monster who consumed the souls that didn’t prove worthy in the judgment that followed death.

  Aten: The Aten was originally just the visible disk of the sun in the sky. Amen-hotep III claimed to be himself the Aten, that is, the manifestation of the sun god. His son took it a step further and worshiped his father as a kind
of purely spiritual high god, not to be depicted or approached except through Akh-en-aten himself, the sole mediator.

  Bes: An ugly, lion-like dwarf god, protector of children.

  Djehuty: Thoth, the god of scribes and judge of souls, often associated with ibises or baboons.

  Djeser-ka-ra: The divinized king Amen-hotep I, who was worshiped as a patron of healing.

  Hapy: The god/goddess of the Nile inundation. Because he/she represented the totality of fertility, Hapy was thought of as hermaphroditic.

  Haru: The solar god Horus. The king, while alive, was considered to be his avatar, except under Akh- en-aten.

  Hut-haru: Hathor, a multi-purpose feminine deity—goddess of beauty, joy, music, and sex, welcomer of the dead, and personification of the gentler aspects of the sun. Her name means “mansion of Horus.”

  Im-hotep: Originally an Old Kingdom official responsible for the building of the Great Pyramid, he became the patron god of physicians.

  Inpu: Anubis, the god of embalming.

  Ishtanu: Hittite sun god, one of several divinities of the sun worshiped in Hatti.

  Khonsu: God of the moon, a son of Amen-Ra, seen as the protector of travelers.

  Ma’at: Both the goddess and the concept (with a lower-case m) of truth, cosmic order, and right.

  Meret-seger: “The lover of silence”, goddess of the desert where the dead are buried on the west bank of the Nile.

  Mut: The consort of the god Amen-Ra, considered a motherly protector.

  Ptah: The creator god of Men-nefer.

  Sekhmet: The lion-headed goddess of plague and hence of healing. She also represented the murderous power of the sun, a kind of malicious alter-ego of Hat-hut-haru.

  Serqet: The scorpion goddess who protected from poisonous stings and from illness generally.

  Seshet: The goddess who personified writing.

  Shu and Tefnut: The male and female principles, twins and spouses, first of all the gods to split off from the primal All. They represented Air or Light and Moisture.

  Ta-weret: “The Great One,” the hippopotamus goddess who protected women and children.

  Glossary of Terms and Places

  A’amu: Called Amurru by its inhabitants, this was a kingdom on the Mediterranean coast north of Byblos and south of Ugarit.

  Akhet-aten: Horizon of the Aten, the new capital city built by Akhenaten.

  Akkadian: The language of Babylonia and Assyria, used as a universal diplomatic language. Its cuneiform writing system was also adopted by nearly every neighbor of Egypt and used to write a variety of languages.

  bulti: Tilapia.

  deben: A unit of weight, equal to 91 grams.

  dja: A unit of volume, equal to about 1/3 liter.

  Djahy: The southern part of the Levant, more or less Roman Palestina.

  djed pillar: A pillar erected in a summer festival and also during the heb-sed, thought to represent the spine of Osiris. It symbolized stability.

  Double House of Silver and Gold: The royal treasury, although much of the wealth of the kingdom was not in the form of precious metals but of commodities.

  doum palm: A type of palm tree bearing large edible fruit.

  electrum: A naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver much prized by the Egyptians as white gold.

  Feast of Drunkenness: An annual festival commemorating Hut-haru’s attempt to wipe out mankind, frustrated by getting her drunk. It was celebrated by inebriation, thought to open participants to a mystic perception of the goddess.

  Field of Reeds: The pleasant land of the blessed dead.

  Gem-pa-aten: One of four Theban temples to the Aten constructed by Akh-en-aten before abandoning that city as his capital.

  Great Green: The Mediterranean Sea.

  hounds and jackals: A board game played by two people, using carved stick-like pieces that slotted into the fifty-eight holes in the board.

  Ipet or Opet: “Shrine,” a Theban festival held yearly at Luxor which renewed the divine soul of the king and reaffirmed his affiliation to Amen.

  Ipet-isut: The great temple of Amen-Ra at Thebes (Karnak).

  iteru: A unit of distance, equal to about a mile.

  Iunu: Heliopolis, a city in Lower Egypt sacred to Ra.

  ka: One of the elements of the human (or divine) soul, which survived death. It seemed to be the vital essence and determined the nature of the person, human or divine. The king was thought to have a divine ka, renewed annually in the Ipet Festival.

  Kebni: The Egyptian name for Byblos, a large city on the Mediterranean coast. The natives called it Gubla.

  Kemet: What the Egyptians called their country. It meant the Black Land, because of the rich black alluvial soil of the Nile Valley. They also referred to Egypt as the Two Lands.

  Kharu: The area represented today by Syria. The name refers to the Hurrian (Mitannian) population, but most people of Kharu were Semitic speaking.

  Khent-min: The city of Akhmim in Upper Egypt, home of Queen Tiyi and her family.

  Kheta: Hatti Land, the kingdom of the Hittites, an increasingly powerful empire in Asia Minor.

  medjay: Originally a Nubian tribe used as policemen, it came to indicate the police in general.

  Men-nefer: The city of Memphis, capital of Lower (Northern) Egypt.

  moringa: A tree bearing beans that were pressed for oil.

  Naharin: An empire in inland Syria and northern Mesopotamia which had been very powerful but was falling apart at the time of our story. Also known as Mitanni.

  nebet per: mistress of the house, a title used for any married woman, regardless of class.

  Nekhen: A town sacred to Horus in Upper Egypt.

  Per-ankh: The House of Life, scribal school run by the priests of Amen-Ra at Thebes.

  Peret: The four-month winter season, or season of “growth.”

  Per-hay: The House of Rejoicing, one of Akhenaten’s palaces in Akhet-aten, named after his father’s palace at Thebes.

  The River: The Nile, which had no name nor any personification as a god.

  Sangar: Babylonia.

  Sau: Saïs, a town in the Nile Delta sacred to Sekhmet.

  senet: A board game for two people similar to checkers.

  shebyu necklace: A special gold necklace granted to favored servants of the king which marked an elevation of their social status.

  Simurru: Tsumur, a city in Kharu that became the capital of the new kingdom of Amurru.

  Speech of the Gods: Writing; in our story used to distinguish hieroglyphics from script.

  sycomore: Not the sycamore or plane tree, but a species of very large fig with edible fruit.

  sunu (m.), sunet (f.): A physician of a scientific sort, as opposed to priestly or magical practitioners of medicine.

  Ta-abet: second month of the season of Peret.

  Tunip: A city on the Orontes River, vassal first of Egypt, then of Hatti.

  Tushratta: King of Naharin.

  Wag Festival: An annual feast of Osiris, during which the dead of the family were honored.

  Waset: “City of the Scepter,” the city of Thebes, the capital of Upper (Southern) Egypt and seat of Amen-Ra’s worship.

  Weighing of the Heart: The judgment of the soul after death, in which the person’s heart was put on a balance against the feather of Ma’at. If it was too light or too heavy, the soul was thrown to Ammi to devour.

  Wepet-renpet: New Year’s Day.

  weret khener: Head of the musical establishment of the Ipet-isut, a post held by aristocratic women.

  weshket collar: A broad, originally floral, necklace composed of rows of beads.

  CHAPTER 1

  Already the third month of the summer season is upon us, Hani thought as he gazed about his garden. The Black Land had begun to pray for a successful Inundation—for high waters and their rich forerunners, the red and green waves, to fecundate the fields.

  Once, the people of Kemet had prayed to Amen-Ra and Hapy, god of the flood. Now Hani wasn’t sure to whom the
y were officially expected to offer their prayers and gifts. To the Aten, he supposed, the only god formally recognized by their king, Nefer-khepru-ra. Certainly not to Amen-Ra, the Hidden One, whose name and cult had become anathema. Hani’s beloved city of Waset, once the capital of the Upper Kingdom and home of the world’s greatest temple, had emptied as the bureaucrats had departed for the new City of the Horizon, and the tens of thousands of priests and lay employees of the god, left without occupation or income, had grown more and more restless. More and more dangerous.

  “That I should have lived to see such a thing,” Hani said, shaking his head.

  Much had changed in the four years Nefer-khepru-ra had ruled alone after the death of his father, Neb-ma’at-ra the Magnificent, and Hani, for one, would have said none of those changes were good. His family tomb had been desecrated. His wife, a chantress of the Hidden One, had been locked out of the Ipet-isut, great temple of Amen-Ra, along with all the other clergy. Hani had been forced by his conscience to drop out of active service in the diplomatic corps, no longer able to enforce a foreign policy he neither understood nor respected. But no one had seized his property, at least, so he still had his garden—his retreat, his hidden place of safety, his little slice of the Field of Reeds on earth. Drawing a deep breath, Hani let his eyes flow fondly over his garden—the trees he and his brother had planted thirty years before, the flowers, the long pool where his beloved ducks played, and the cool whitewashed house set in the middle, where he and Pipi had played as children and now Hani’s own children lived happy lives, as they would until they grew up and moved off to their adult homes.

  Dawn had just begun to spread its sweet pale light over the walled garden. The birds awakened, twittering and calling. Qenyt, his pet heron, stalked silently around the perimeter of the pool in search of unwary frogs, lifting her burnished legs with angular grace. In the sycomores, the crickets were falling silent, and the cicadas had not yet begun their roar. Hani drew a deep breath until the farthest corners of his lungs filled with the pure, fragrant air of morning. This was his favorite hour. Despite the disturbing news that every new day inevitably brought, dawn restored his sense of balance, of ma’at, and his certitude that everything would be all right in the end.