Beauty of Re

by Mark Gajewski

  We could see what was happening at Thut’s pavilion from a long way off. Several campfires and many torches atop poles thrust into the ground lit the large flat area before the tent, which was about fifty yards from the city gate. Officers were eating next to some of the fires. Servants were bustling about with platters of food and jugs of beer and wine. Baskets of hands and penises were being stacked to one side; several scribes were recording the number contained within each basket, a bloody gruesome task. The donkeys were moving past a small army of scribes who were busily recording what each was carrying, their faces and papyri lit by more torches. Thut was seated on a portable throne directly before the entrance to his tent; Djehuty was next to him on a leather chair. Several more chairs were in a semi–circle to either side, some empty, some occupied. Officers were standing before king and general, giving their reports, then moving to the cookfires when they were finished while others took their place. Tjanuni and several scribes were recording the reports. Couriers stood a respectful distance away, prepared to carry Thut’s orders to his commanders still in the city. The soldiers were all filthy, sweaty, bloodied, exuberant. Some were bandaged. There was a bustle, an energy, not so different from battle, yet far more relaxed, punctuated with laughter and good–natured jests and boasts and shouted congratulations.

  Thut leaped to his feet the moment Amenhotep and I stepped into the firelight and rushed to embrace us both at once. Then he stepped back, looked us over from head to toe.

  “Did you fight in my battle, against my orders?” he asked Amenhotep with mock anger. “I told Mery to keep you safe and far away. It looks like you scaled the walls and slew the wretches all by yourself.”

  “No, Father,” Amenhotep said. Then he explained what we’d been doing.

  “I’m proud of you,” Thut said when he finished the tale. “And you too, Mery, as always.” He gave me a quick kiss. “And now – sit, eat, rest.”

  We both sank gratefully into chairs to Thut’s left. Servants immediately brought us food and drink.

  “You’ve won a great victory,” I said to Thut and Djehuty, lifting my cup of wine to them.

  “Kadesh and its allies won’t rise against me anymore,” Thut said. “And we’ve captured the entire Mitanni force that their king sent. I’m taking every single Mitanni soldier back to Kemet. They’ll work my fields as slaves and serve as hostages. If the Mitanni ever challenge me again I’ll kill them all. As an added bonus, since I have his soldiers I don’t have to continue on to Naharina to punish the Mitanni king. I’ve neutralized him here.” He sighed. “But I won’t consider the victory complete until Durusha is in my grasp.”

  “You haven’t found him yet?”

  “There are many hiding places inside Kadesh,” Thut said. “Many dark holes. That’s why we’ve moved everyone outside the walls – so he can’t blend into a crowd or cower in someone’s house. My men are scouring every building in the city right now. I won’t rest until he’s found.”

  “Perhaps I can help with that.” Amenemhab jauntily emerged from the darkness, bruised and bloodied, kilt torn and filthy, smiling broadly as usual. He was trailed by two men with their arms bound behind them. In his right hand he held the mare’s tail.

  Amenhotep dashed from his chair to Amenemhab. “We saw you kill the mare! I’ve never seen anything so brave! And we saw you go over the wall!”

  Amenemhab fell to a knee, dropping to Amenhotep’s level. “Majesty, a token of victory,” he said, presenting the bloody tail.

  Amenhotep stared at it, wide–eyed.

  “Go ahead. Take it to your father,” Amenemhab prompted.

  He did.

  Tail in hand, Thut looked past Amenemhab at the prisoners. He leaned forward a bit, anxious.

  Amenemhab smiled. “Durusha is the man to my right, Majesty. No more escaping for him.”

  Thut stood, handed the tail back to Amenhotep, clapped his hands together in triumph. “At last! After two decades! For this, my friend, you shall have flies of valor, and a lion collar of gold, and two shebi collars, and two gold helmets, and two gold bracelets.” He paused. “And your pick of the female slaves.”

  Amenemhab smiled again. “Thank you, Majesty.”

  “Intef!” Thut cried.

  The herald appeared from inside the tent. “Majesty?”

  “Bring my mace,” he ordered.

  In a moment Intef returned. The mace was a fist–sized round stone, inscribed with Thut’s cartouche and scenes of him fighting the Nine Bows, attached to a wood staff about three feet long. Intef handed it to Thut.

  “Mery.”

  I moved to his side.

  Thut’s officers began gathering around us, and soldiers as well. The news that the enemy king was about to face justice was spreading rapidly.

  Thut began addressing Dushura in a voice that carried all the way to the Kadeshians huddled against the city wall.

  “Dushura, you first rebelled against me the very day I became the sole ruler of Kemet. You sought to test my might. You rallied three hundred kings and chieftains to your cause and challenged me to battle before Megiddo. My army defeated your combined might and bottled you up in that city. You ran from me and hid within Megiddo’s walls. I took for myself your pavilion, your armor, your golden chariot, all the wealth you left behind. But when Megiddo fell after a long siege, I could not find you anywhere in the city. They told me you had run away, that you climbed over the walls in the night and disappeared into the hills.”

  Thut paused so I could translate his words for Dushura and his followers.

  “You were a coward,” Thut continued disdainfully. “You ran away and left your wife and children behind. I took them all to Kemet. Your wife and daughters I made my servants, the lowest of the low in my per’aa. Your son I raised in my own harem, educated him. I taught him about your cowardice. He has embraced Kemet, and me. He loves me like a father. He has embraced Kemet as his land. He has taken a woman of Kemet for his wife, a daughter of a priest of Amun. Kemet’s gods are his gods now.”

  Another pause.

  “If you had surrendered at Megiddo, like a man, pledged fealty to me, I would have let you go home and continue to rule your city with your wife and daughters and son at your side. Your son would have succeeded you. That is what you lost by running away.”

  Durusha’s shoulders sagged. Whatever pride he might have once had was gone. He looked, to me, afraid of my husband. And rightfully so.

  “You rose up against me again, when I plundered the valley around Kadesh many years ago,” Thut said. “Again you ran away. I sought you for many years, but you stole from land to land, like an evil shadow in the night, planting lies about me like seeds, watering them, watching them grow, until for the third time you launched a rebellion against me. You thought yourself powerful, backed by Tunip, backed by the King of Mitanni. But today I met you in battle and defeated you and I have taken your city. All that is within it – people, goods, animals – is now mine. All you have left is your life.”

  I translated. The king went pale.

  Thut continued. “You have defied me too long, Dushura. If I let you live, you’ll launch another rebellion against me. Of that I am certain.” Thut twisted his mace in his hand. “I’d prefer to execute you in Waset, tied to a stake before the sanctuary of Amun’s temple at Ipet–Isut. But I will not risk you escaping on the long march back to Kemet. So you’ll pay the price for what you’ve done right now – before the walls of your city, before what is left of your people.”

  I translated a final time. Durusha turned white.

  Amenemhab forced Durusha to his knees. Everyone stepped back to give Thut room. Durusha was shaking, sweat beginning to run off him, glistening in the firelight.

  Thut addressed Amenhotep. “My son, you have seen images of the king smiting his enemies carved on the walls of temples, and on maces. Thus have Kemet’s rulers dealt with their enemies even before the Two Lands were united, going back to the very mists of time. It is a task and
tradition that we who are kings carry out to this day.”

  Thut moved behind Durusha. He seized him by the hair with his left hand. Slowly, he raised the mace high in the air. I stole a quick glance at Amenhotep. He was watching calmly. With all his strength, Thut slammed the mace against the side of Durusha’s head. The wretch’s skull collapsed with a sickening sound. Durusha toppled to the earth, shoulder–first, the mace embedded in his head. Thut’s watching soldiers let out a mighty cheer. A keening sound started in the distance, Kadesh’s women mourning their king from beside their conquered city.

  Thut spat on Durusha’s corpse. He yanked his bloody mace free and raised it high in the air and cried out triumphantly. Thut’s long quest – first revealed to me at Mentuhotep’s temple thirty–six years earlier – was finally over. His nemesis was dead, his empire secure, his dream achieved. Thut had just taken his place as the greatest king Kemet would ever know.

  Late that night, as we lay abed in Thut’s tent, sounds of revelry rising from the camp all around us, I kissed him.

  “Congratulations, Beloved,” I said. “You’ve finally gotten everything you ever wanted.”

  “I never doubted, Mery,” he replied. “Durusha, an empire, and” – another kiss – “you.”

  ***

  “Today,” I informed my charges, “I’m going to show you the preparations that have been made at Ipet–Isut for the king’s Heb–Sed.”

  Amenhotep’s friends had been waiting for him in Waset with their parents, all of them Thut’s courtiers, while he and I were campaigning against Kadesh. We’d arrived home three days ago at the head of a vast fleet bearing captives and hostages and treasure. Yesterday Thut had celebrated his victory over Durusha in grand style, with a massive triumphal procession and a great feast afterwards, and throughout the day–long event Amenhotep had sat near the king with his friends gathered around, they listening wide–eyed as he nonchalantly described for them the campaign and battle and execution of Durusha, and pointed out the key captives. It happened that Thut’s triumph coincided with his scheduled fifth Heb–Sed; this morning he’d asked me to make sure everything was in order for the morrow. Amenhotep and his friends were accompanying me to the sacred complex to review the preparations, along with his tutor Ahmose–Humay. All were excited about the upcoming ceremony; they were too young to remember Thut’s most recent one in any detail. We’d just trod the processional way, so familiar to me, through the garden stretching from the per’aa to the entrance of Ipet–Isut. Exotic plants and trees that Thut had brought from Retenu and Setjet and Naharina were interspersed among our native plants now, as well as strange animals from the North that were freely wandering through the greenery.

  Thut had made so many changes to Ipet–Isut in the twenty years since he’d assumed sole rule of the land, as he’d vowed, that it was barely recognizable to me anymore, so magnificently and extensively had he built. After erecting his crown jewel, the festival hall he’d named Akh–menou – “Brilliant of Monuments” – he’d added a large sacred lake for the priests to ritually bathe in, two pylons, including one on the southern axis, a kiosk, ancestor shrines, and two obelisks. In addition, he’d built a long mud–brick wall beyond the eastern end of the complex to keep the farmers of Waset from encroaching on the sacred precinct. I was anxious to see the major constructions that Nefer had undertaken just before our departure for Kadesh – two more obelisks, and a barque shrine inside the Per’aa of Maat. On the latter’s walls she had recorded the details of Thut’s campaigns, from Megiddo until now, taken from the papyri of Tjanuni. It was an idea I’d suggested.

  Ahmose–Humay was helping me shepherd the group – his own sons Sennefer and Amenemopet; Mutnofret, son of Amenhotep’s wet nurse Senetnay; and Kenamun and Usersatet, sons of Thut’s courtiers. Every one of them had grown up with the future king in the harem. The processional way was crowded with priests and temple workers hurrying to workshops and their homes and auxiliary buildings outside Ipet–Isut’s walls, and porters carrying objects from the quay into the temple complex for use tomorrow. Recognizing Amenhotep and me, they all made room for us on the path.

  “At dawn the king will raise a djed pillar before a statue of Osiris,” I explained. “There will be a torchlit procession of all the gods of Kemet, which have been assembled here just for this special occasion.”

  “Including the gods you brought with you from the North?” Mutnofret asked.

  Thut had indeed put ashore at every temple and town between the mouth of the river and Waset to collect their gods as we sailed south. We’d also collected his officials and the most important of the temple priests, all of whom were to participate in the Heb–Sed, thus accounting for the size of our fleet, which had grown at every stop.

  “Yes,” I replied. “They’ll be carried to Akh–menou. The Opener of the Gate of Heaven, Menkheperreseneb, will purify two thrones and two shrines inside the hall, a set for Upper Kemet and a set for Lower. The two thrones were erected there yesterday, side by side, on a dais. Priests will place the gods’ barques in shrines that ring the outer edges of the hall.” I addressed Amenhotep. “The high priest will crown your father, first with the Red Crown, and then with the White, as he sits on the appropriate throne. The king will then make offerings to each god in his or her shrine, and receive their blessings for his continued rule. All the courtiers in attendance will pledge their allegiance to the king. He’ll then make a circuit around the outside of the hall, demonstrating his fitness to rule. There’ll be processions of priests carrying lion–legged furniture, more driving cattle, a procession of the god Min, ritual combat between men representing the ancient towns of Pe and Dep, more crownings. Then the king will move outside the hall, release four birds, and shoot an arrow in each of the four cardinal directions.”

  “And they will fly far over the walls,” Mutnofret predicted.

  I nodded. Even at age fifty–one Thutmose could handle a bow like no other man. Sadly, my own skills had begun to diminish.

  “Will I have a Heb–Sed?” Amenhotep asked.

  “In the thirtieth year of your reign, and every three years thereafter, Majesty,” Ahmose–Humay replied.

  “Your father had one early, in his fifteenth year, and again in the thirtieth and thirty–fourth and thirty–seventh,” I added. “He’s ruled a remarkably long time.”

  “Is Father really the mightiest king to ever rule Kemet?” Amenhotep queried.

  I nodded. “As I’ve taught you, and have myself witnessed. When your father first became king our enemies pressed closely upon our borders and hemmed us in this valley. Now our empire – the first ever created in the world – extends to the northern border of Setjet and east to the land of the Mitanni. To the south Menkheperre – life, prosperity, health – has pushed our boundary in Nubia as far as Kanisa Kurgus. He’s thoroughly subdued the tribesmen there. Many of them now labor in our gold mines, the basis of our foreign exchange with the Aamu princes of the East. Kemet is extraordinarily wealthy, Amenhotep. The tribute of Setjet and Retenu and Wawat and Kush pour into your father’s treasury – huge quantities of timber and metal ores and cattle and grain, delivered annually by the conquered or taken from them in battle, as we all witnessed yesterday at the triumph. Keftiuh and Alashiya – large islands in the Great Green – and great kingdoms – Babylon and Assyria and that of the Hittites – regularly send us gifts to ensure our friendship. Your father uses part of his wealth to honor the gods – all these temples within Ipet–Isut are proof of that. Our trade routes know no limit. Migrants, and even the descendants of captives, have settled along the river, so that they might share in our prosperity. Why, the population of Mennefer has grown to one million – there’s no city in all the world as large.”

  “The king’s wife is correct,” Ahmose–Humay said. “Foreign craftsmen have been drawn to the valley and brought new styles and materials and techniques to us. We now cast statues in bronze. We make drinking vessels and containers and ornaments out of glass.
Tombs are now richly painted, not just etched. The decorative styles practiced by craftsmen have begun to change from the stiff formality of the past.”

  “Like earlier kings, Menkheperre has placed statues inside his temples here at Ipet–Isut to show his strength and portray him as a king who relies on and worships the gods,” I said. “You’ll see many on our tour today of the king kneeling before a god, offering milk or wine or oil or geese. There were a few examples of this style with some of the earlier kings in your family, but the emphasis on this style is due to an increasingly public aspect of our religion.”

  “Because your father is a very devout man,” Ahmose–Humay said.

  “Now I’ll show you the temples and shrines of Ipet–Isut,” I said.

  “How is it that you know about them?” Amenhotep asked.

  “Your father and King’s Wife Neferure and I grew up together in Waset’s per’aa. We visited almost daily.” I lowered my voice. “Don’t tell anyone, but the three of us used to sneak in and play amidst the buildings late at night. We delighted in jumping from dark shadows and frightening the priests and the chantresses. Sometimes we made them scream – the women, at least. The priests just chased us. Though they never caught me.”

  “Don’t you boys be getting any ideas,” Ahmose–Humay warned them sternly.

  That was a warning I knew they’d disregard, just as Thut and I had when we were their age. “Anyway,” I continued, “after your father went to Mennefer to join the army, I lived within the temple precinct for many years, serving Nefer when she was God’s Wife of Amun, before she married your father.”

  “She’s not to be trusted,” Amenhotep sniffed. “She wants my throne. My grandmother told me.”

  At 65, Iset was as vindictive as ever, constantly harping about Nefer’s supposed threat to the kingdom to anyone who would listen. It broke my heart that she’d poisoned Amenhotep against Nefer, just as she had Thut. She’d never stop seeking vengeance against Nefer for whatever slights she believed she’d suffered at Hatshepsut’s hands. I hated Iset for that. Even though Nefer would have nothing to do with me still, it didn’t change the fact that I loved her, that I craved to be reconciled with her. All I’d ever wanted was for Thut and Nefer and me to live together as friends, as we had when we were children. Instead, I’d been separated from him for years, as I was now separated from her. I was glad that Nefer had Aachel for a companion at least, to love her, to care for her, to rely on, and that Aachel had Nefer to fill the void left by Hori’s death. I thanked the gods every morning that we had rescued Aachel from her master all those years ago. I only wished I could have that kind of companionship with Nefer again too.