Pharaoh's Wife

by Félicien Champsaur

  They continued for an hour, and then the Sheikh gave the signal to return. They brought back at least three thousand kilos of fish, which would be distributed equitable to the crowd.

  “Aren’t you curious to see the ruins of ancient Diong-Sies?” asked Madame Messaoud. “It’s a two-hour journey in the automobile, and we’d be back in time for lunch.”

  The Duchess understood that the amiable woman was trying to remain in her company for as long as possible, and would, moreover, be delighted to make an excursion by auto, which she had not yet had an opportunity to do. She gave instructions to Henri, her French cook, who was to assist the Sheikh’s people, and then they all set off for Case-Aeroum, which is the Egyptian name of the ancient Greek colony.

  All that remains of the ancient city of Dionysius are a few formless masses of debris and the ruins of two temples, whose outline can still be made out. In an hour, they had seen it all; in spite of the reminder of her anterior life and the melancholy that emanates from the debris of the past that looms up at every step on Egyptian soil, the Duchess, accustomed to the “businesslike” tempo of the states of the Union, could not assimilate herself to that life, which had so little affinity with her own.

  Antal Fodor felt similar impressions himself. Only Adsum did not miss a single detail. He was joyful in sniffing out and rediscovering the trail of ancient life.

  They made the return journey and, as the Sheikh’s wife had anticipated, arrived in time to sit down at table—and the meal was exceedingly cheerful. In the depths of their hearts, however, was a hidden regret, for they all sensed the approach of the moment of separation: of those little deaths of which life is composed.

  XIII. Intellectual Domination

  From Tanisch to Tersch and from Tersch to Medinet-El-Fayoum one encounters the same sequence of little villages buried like nests in the exuberant verdure of gardens and fields that promise a fine harvest. At Tersch they had crossed the railway line leading to Ebchoual, a modern anachronism in that region of the old world.

  From Medinet, they set a course for Harouarah; there was a pyramid there that it was necessary to see, for it is one of the most interesting, from the viewpoint of its mode of construction. It was built with enormous unfired bricks disposed around a nucleus of natural rock twelve meters high. It is the tomb of Amenemhat II; the Pharaoh reposes there is a great sandstone sarcophagus, with the body of his wife, Neferouptah, beside him in a tiny coffin. The funerary chapel, with its annexes, comprises such a mass of constructions that one arrives there through a veritable maze-perhaps the famous labyrinth cited by Herodotus and Strabo.

  For several kilometers, more tombs. Some distance from Harouarah, the pyramids of Illahoum and Ousirteren. Until then they had been traveling through Fayoum, the best-irrigated and most fertile region in the Nile valley, the most marvelous land in the world. The roads were bordered by clumps of acacias and black poplars, and, tall, rigid and bushy cypresses loomed up like obelisks of verdure. In the villages there as a veritable orgy of colors, so abundant were flowers: roses, jasmines, myrtles and arbutus mingled there like a veritable perfumed brushwood. Then there were plantations of bananas, almonds, oranges, figs, date-palms, lemons and pomegranates, not to mention indigenous fruits. It is always necessary to remember the nahea, whose little fruits taste like apples, and the gechtah with the thick cream.

  Egypt! A land blessed by the gods; a veritable paradise on earth. The indigenes, finding life easy, allow themselves to live without cares, indifferent to the idea of fatherland, and long accustomed, moreover, to live under supervision, with the support of an age-old philosophy that submits to effects without debating their causes. Even the passage of the sumptuous automobiles did not excite either the curiosity or the envy of people indifferent to progress, who had remained the same for ten thousand years. Can they be shaken out of that indifference? Will one then see those children of old Egypt, who already pile into cinemas, wearing shoes on sidewalks, with felt hats or bowlers? Who can tell? Albion is a salesman!

  Now, the three vehicles were parked side by side, and the servants were buy with the cooking and housekeeping, while Diana and the three men were chatting.

  “Another two days,” Adsum said, “and we’ll be entering the Valley of the Kings.”

  “And you’ll find ‘our’ tombs there?”

  “Yes, my Daughter. Fortunately, they have not yet been discovered. Lord Carnarvon was mistaken, for he mistook the false one for the true.”

  “These Pharaohs are astonishing; their greatest concern during their lives was to think about the conservation of their Double, their endurance.”

  “The consequence of an incommensurable vanity!”

  “And that will always be the case: all is vanity. As the Latin saying has it, Vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas.22 The people of today are the same as those of yesterday, and it is this cult of the Double that has created the mania for the imperishable. Do you recall the mask of Amenothis IV, of which one sees reproductions everywhere? It’s the face of a degenerate, for these Pharaohs can never have ruled effectively. They were playthings in the hands of priests or clever ministers.”

  “There is only one kind of domination,” said Adsum, “the only one that can subsist throughout the centuries: intellectual domination—and that’s why religions are so powerful. Humankind does not know how to march without a guide.”

  “And we are bringing it a new religion,” Diana added, “in a spirit of progress: the Flower of Truth.”

  “Thanks to obligatory elementary education,” Ormus said, “children could, if well-directed, prepare a luminous future for us. But they have lost faith, dispute dogmas, and do not answer to anyone except those who flatter their interest. An evil wind is blowing over the world; egotism is individual instead of being collective; no one thinks about anyone but himself!”

  “So it is our duty,” said Adsum, severely, “to put our apostolic devotion at the service of humankind, to fight narrow egotism to the death, for a start. Today, thanks to you, my Daughter, we have an ally of the greatest strength: money. I sometimes hear you pronounce infamous words, Ormus; you too have been infected by the spirit of the twentieth century. You want what people have always wanted: enjoyment. Enjoyment! What folly—what material satisfaction can match spiritual satisfaction? What flash of gourmand or sensual pleasure can match the hours of the joy of thought? Age, you think, my children, imposes that wisdom upon me. Perhaps—but I sense within me a psychic plenitude previously unexperienced. That effect, you will feel too, and like me, you will regret the time wasted in base satisfactions. All in all, it doesn’t matter. So long as I am with you, Ormus, I shall think and act for you.”

  “We’re like the Christians’ holy trinity,” said the Duchess, laughing, “and you are the Father.”

  “Great faith moves toward women, and the spirit takes last place. The religion of the Madonna has replaced the antique Venus.”

  Ormus added: “But it’s still the same idolatry, and lust hides modestly beneath the mystic veils. I prefer the antique lust of the ancients, which was simultaneously art and beauty.”

  On that conclusion, everyone retired to the automobiles. In the billionairess’s motor-caravan, however, Diana repeated the young Mage’s final words—and dreamed.

  XIV. A Billionairess Afflicted by Ennui

  At sunrise, after breakfast, they got under way again, leaving Abukir and its isolated mountain of Gabel-Gadala—which forms a natural pyramid between the Nile and the gorge of Mahouan—behind to the left. Avoiding all the small localities scattered along the great river, they went along the base of the Gabel, between the mount and the Bahr—i.e., river—Yousouf. They crossed over it in order to have lunch in Fechn.

  Fechn, which now has a railways station, was once on the bank of the Nile, as evidenced by the remains of a dock, called Hippone, and its rather considerable ruins, extending to the modern town. Their ensemble can be seen from the terrace of the Hipponia House.

  A Thomas
Cook tour-party was swarming in front of the temple of Sekhmet. In the pure air, deflected by the screen of the mountain, the explanations of the cicerone could be heard, but not understood.

  “They’ll be there for two hours,” said the Reïs. “We can eat tranquilly.”

  “Listen,” said Diana. “I want to play a trick on these importunate tourists. Go with Henri to the kitchens of the Hipponia and stock up on provisions, taking everything, so that there’ll be nothing left to eat when they get here.”

  The hotelier protested, not wanting to leave his stores empty, but Diana possessed the golden key that open all doors, and the little caravan, in spite of the indigestion of bankrupt stones, set out again for Abydos. Diana, distracted by an intimate preoccupation, smiled, and said things that were slightly foolish, momentarily amused by the joke she had played on the flock of tourists.

  Old Egypt is a grandiose, monotonous cemetery. Diana was beginning to get seriously weary of debris, pyramids, necropolises, hieroglyphs and venerable heaps of rubble, almost all identical. The Reïs proposed a halt at the ruins of Till-El-Amarna, but the Pharaoh’s wife decided to cross the Nile and to go upriver as far as the road to the great oasis. Why not admit that she was tired? She wanted a little solitude à deux. Adsum reminded her of St. John Chrysostom, the critic of dancing and free love when she was the Empress Eudoxia. This overlong excursion in the company of a man she desired, whom the continuous close proximity of Adsum and Ahmed prevented her from drawing to the subtle moment that her heart secretly desired, seemed tedious to her.

  Used to seeing everyone yield to her caprice, she was astonished that the Mage was showing so little urgency to force her surrender. Her anterior lives had awoken within her the voluptuous mentality of Cleopatra and Eudoxia, exciting her imagination and her senses. She was in a hurry to reach the Valley of the Kings. She anticipated that when she and Ormus rediscovered their Doubles, that encounter would lead to a less platonic union. Since the impetuous kiss on Long Island, Diana had never been able to be alone with Ormus, who seemed to be avoiding a tête-à-tête on Adsum’s orders.

  They crossed over the Nile again, therefore, and abandoned the dahabieh again, with orders to go and wait for the travelers within sight of Luxor. And the journey by motor-caravan recommenced, between the Libyan mountains and the Bahr El-Schaguieh, which had succeeded the Bahr Yousouf. They ate lunch in Cosée, and then passed successively through Beni-Adin, Neir and Drona, situated a little to the south of the station of Siout, the ancient Lycopolis. Afterwards, there were Deir-Egch, Aboutig and Tahten, and they stopped at Idfeh, the ancient Aphroditopolis, to spend the night. Oof! Already, in this more restricted region between the river and the mountain, one sensed the proximity of the desert. At times, when the kamsin blew, whirlwinds of dust rose above the crests and fell back after far as the road the automobiles were following.

  During the halt, a serious cleaning was necessary. While the bosses took a little walk in the direction of the convents, red and white specimens of Byzantine art built as much for battle as for prayer, which they contented themselves with studying from a distance, two of the drivers went to Schag, a fairly large railway station, to renew their supplies of gasoline, for no further refueling would be possible. The cook Henri and Ned accompanied them to pick up food supplies. The other servants stayed behind to guard the Duchess’s vehicle, which remained there on its own, the other two having gone to fetch the supplies. Adsum, Diana, Ormus and Ahmed slowly went up toward the mountain on foot.

  They made a rapid return to the camp-site when trumpets announced that the replenishment of supplies was complete. The population of the village Medinet-Atrib, a vestige of the ancient Athribis, surrounded the vehicle at a respectful distance. They were fellahs, mingled with a few Bedouins, former nomads turned cultivators. They manifested a benevolent curiosity. A little money was distributed to them; immediately, they made haste to bring fruits and flowers.

  Thus night fell—beautiful night, bringing sensuality in its veils. Diana and Ormus looked at one another, with the troubled thought that it might be employed more agreeably than in sleep. Momentarily, beneath the twinkling of the stars, their eyes connected—but Adsum was there. Sadly, Diana went back to her ambulant bedroom, alone.

  XV. The Tedium of Abydos

  Following one of the Nile’s thousand petty channels, the dahabieh stopped at El-Kerbey, the village nearest to the ruins of Abydos, which enable an understanding of the vanity of human conceptions. For hundreds of centuries, that necropolis, which enclosed in its temple the mummy of Osiris, the divine founder of the Pharaonic dynasties, was the primary objective of the pilgrimage of the peoples of the Nile. Alongside Osiris and Horus, Khenti-Amenti,23 the Sun and Death at the same time, did not represent destruction for the Egyptians, but a passage preceding immortality. Why describe its temple in a pitiful state, with its innumerable votive steles, almost razed to the ground? Why, any more, describe the temple of Ramses II, its crumbling ceilings, the great holes in its floors, and its mounds of debris?

  The region is covered by small pyramids and brick mastabas. All day, Adsum, Ormus and their prisoner roamed the ruins under the guidance of the Reïs, who knew them very well. Fortunately, no bands of Cook tourists came to disturb them. Only the usual Bedouin cicerones were prowling around them, begging for the usual baksheesh. They got rid of them with a few piastres, and then ate lunch in the shadow of the temple of Site.

  After the meal, over the coffee and cigarettes, Antal Fodor said: “In the origin of this Osiris, whose legend still weighs today over the whole of Egypt, it’s probable that one would discover a human individual. All these divinities, funders of religions, have a considerable fundamental similarity. A hero with nothing divine about him is the basis. Osiris chose the Sun as an emblem and a father. Subsequently, deified, he preceded the first Egyptian monarchies. Osiris came from India, the cradle of the world.”

  Diana addressed herself to Adsum: “Have you lived in that epoch, my Father?”

  “Probably, but I have no memory of it, although I have recovered my trail in India, well before the Egyptian epoch. It’s probably that the arrival of that fabulous hero on the banks of the Nile preceded the first dynasty, that of Mehnes, by many centuries, at least a millennium. The latter was able to collect the ultimate fragments of the legend and make them the foundation of a solar cult.”

  “Then you also believe that Osiris was a man?”

  “Certainly, like Buddha, like Krishna, like the Greek Zeus, the Roman Jupiter, the Jewish Jehovah and the Christian Messiah. Only the god of Islam is all spirit and has no human form.”

  “Allah ill Allah!” said Ahmed.

  “Yes, the unique word, which encloses everything and explains nothing.”

  “Amen,” said the enervated Duchess. “Tomorrow, then, we leave for the Great Oasis?”

  XVI. The Valley of the Kings

  When the time was ripe, the vehicles having been cleaned and oiled, they departed in the evening, in order not to suffer too much from the heat. The night and the following day were spent in the sands.

  The crests of the Libyan mountains had already been visible for a long time, but it was after nightfall when the motor-caravans stopped at Medinet-Habo, the village preceding the Ramesseum—the funerary temple of Ramses II. In the distance, illuminated by the moon, presently full, the two colossi of Memnon stood out in the mist rising from the Nile. Desirous of arriving at her tomb, the Pharaoh’s wife directed her escort along the Fadiliveh channel, which they followed as far as the temple of Qournah. There the Reïs, ever precious, climbed into the first vehicle to guide the camel-less caravan through the mountainous maze through the middle of which wound the rocky chains on which the hypogea were built.

  Finally, after some twenty-three hours, the automobiles emerged into the circular space forming the Valley of the Kings.

  In the moonlight, the spectacle was quite imposing. As far as the eye could see there was nothing but steeply-hewn cliffs to th
e east, and steps extending westwards—which is to say, toward the desert.

  That frightful massif, which is nothing but a vast necropolis, must have been formidable in prehistoric times, but the sun and the wind have gradually scoured the lamentable blocks, leaving nothing of that immense pretention but a bizarrely dislocated granitic skeleton. The Valley of the Kings forms its approximate center, and braches extend in all directions. An imposing calm hangs over that desert of enormous stone blocks, solely troubled, from time to time, by the noise of a pebble tumbling from a summit to roll all the way down to the valley floor. Small black shadows seem to race over the ground—the shadows of countless bats, flying silently through the starry night.

  Adsum, absorbed, his mind muffled, followed an uncertain mental itinerary.

  “Well,” said the Duchess, impatiently. “Can’t you find it?”

  The old man gestured to her to be silent. His eyes closed, he was seeing with his mind, hypnotizing himself in order to recover a track in the changes wrought in the mountain over three thousand years.

  Finally, he started walking, going past the hypogeas where Lord Carnarvon had undertaken his excavations. A hundred meters further on, he pointed at the ground, strewn with debris.

  “It’s here.”

  Under his supervision, Ormus and Ahmed set about clearing the ground of the stones and rubble that littered it. Then, with the aid of spades, they dug down into the sand.

  Adsum repeated, despotically: “Go on! It’s there!”

  Sitting on the footplate of the automobile, the Pharaoh’s wife watched anxiously, wondering whether the two mages who had dragged her into this disagreeable pursuit might not be mad.