The Eleventh Brother
Page 1
© 2015 Rachel K. Wilcox.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, Deseret Book Company (permissions@deseretbook.com), P.O. Box 30178, Salt Lake City Utah 84130. This work is not an official publication of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The views expressed herein are the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the position of the Church or of Deseret Book. Deseret Book is a registered trademark of Deseret Book Company.
All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wilcox, Rachel K., author.
Eleventh brother : a novel of Joseph in Egypt / Rachel K. Wilcox.
pages cm
A novel exploring the story of Joseph, the son of Israel, in Egypt.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-60907-854-6 (paperbound)
1. Joseph (Son of Jacob)—Fiction. 2. Asenath (Biblical figure)—Fiction. 3. Jacob (Biblical patriarch)—Fiction. 4. Judah (Biblical figure)—Fiction. 5. Egypt—History—To 332 B.C.—Fiction. 6. Bible. Genesis—History of Biblical events—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3623.I5326E44 2015
813'.6—dc232014031014
Printed in Canada
Marquis Book Printing, Montreal, Canada
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Beginning of the Book of Breathings, which Isis made for her brother Osiris, to make his soul live, to make his body live, to restore him anew; that he might join the horizon along with his father . . .
—The Book of Breathings, line 1
Table of Contents
Ancestors of Joseph and Judah
Descendants of Jacob
People of Egypt
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
A Note to the Reader
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Ancestors of Joseph and Judah
Descendants of Jacob
People of Egypt
Amon: A young aristocrat and assistant to Zaphenath-Paaneah
Amosis: Potiphar’s first steward and overseer of the household slaves
Asar: An Egyptian prince
Asenath: Wife of Zaphenath-Paaneah and daughter of the high priest of the sun god Ra (called “On” in Genesis)
Djeseret: Wife of Potiphar
Ephraim: Younger son of Joseph and Asenath
Manasseh: Elder son of Joseph and Asenath
Potiphar: Captain of the royal guard
Sasobek: Name given to Joseph, son of Jacob, upon becoming a member of Potiphar’s household
Senusret: King of Egypt, Son-of-Ra, God-on-Earth
Zaphenath-Paaneah: Name given to Joseph, son of Jacob, upon becoming the vizier, or tjaty, of the kingdom of Egypt
The descriptions, events, and concerns of the various characters, both Egyptian and Hebrew, are meant to be appropriate for their time and place.
For further discussion of the characters and the historical setting in Egypt’s Middle kingdom (such as why there are no “Egyptians” in the novel), please turn to “A Note to the Reader.”
Prologue
Many years ago, in the desert wilderness beyond the borders of the Egyptian empire, a man named Abraham sought out the God of his fathers. And the God of his fathers spoke to Abraham and made a promise with him and with all his descendants after him.
Abraham’s son Isaac had a son named Jacob. Jacob had twelve sons, and Jacob loved his eleventh son, Joseph, more than the others.
Joseph’s brothers were jealous. They betrayed Joseph and sold him as a slave into Egypt. But Abraham’s God remembered Joseph, as He remembered all of Jacob’s family. And just as their separation had a beginning, the God of Abraham saw to it that it also had an end.
This is their story.
Chapter 1
Genesis 37:23–24
My son.
His father’s face, warm and trusting.
I must ask something of you.
It was a simple task, only a day’s journey, and his father smiled as he left.
His father, who trusted him and loved him, even if his brothers taunted him otherwise—his brothers, who were jealous, and anxious, and eager to inherit and be their own men.
You must understand, his father had said, that there must always be one chosen for the birthright—one chosen for inheritance, for succession, for the covenant—
One chosen for sacrifice.
The boy lay alone, broken open to the chill of the desert and the bleeding expanse of stars, enclosed on all sides by the earth that had received his body like a dead man’s.
His memory scrabbled over the broken pieces: his robe, stained with his mouth’s blood, the cloth wailing, the knife driving in and out and the pieces of linen fluttering to the ground as he was dragged away, his arms bruised beneath their fingers.
He had struggled, thinking he could plead with them.
Then his body had collided with the wall of the well shaft, and he had fallen back, screaming.
A day, already, had passed. He knew that his brothers had stayed nearby at first because he’d heard them shuffling, murmuring in low snatches, but they had not answered his cries.
Now the desert was silent.
He lay staring up through the narrowed darkness. A trickle of water ran just beneath the surface of the dry well. He had worn the tips of his fingers raw from digging down toward it. Waves of nauseated hunger stirred him whenever he slipped, intermittently, into a place of no light.
His brothers had meant to kill him, but the knife intended for his throat had been turned instead on his robe, swift hands butchering the cloth as they would a sheep. He had simply been thrown away, the unusable, unclean remnants of the slaughter.
Reuben had begged the others not to hurt the boy, but he had been pushed aside, threatened with the same knife.
Don’t kill him.
He heard Judah’s voice in the tumult, felt his older brother seize him by the arm as he lay on the ground, his captors arguing like dogs over a carcass.
Don’t kill him—Judah was breathless—sell him.
Mercy in the form of slavery. Atonement by pieces of silver.
Joseph had seen his brother’s face in the moment before he was thrown away, and he saw Judah standing there, still, watching—
Just watching.
Chapter 2
Genesis 41:54
The rising of the new star came that year as it did every y
ear. Shimmering in its ascent, Sopdet—star of Isis, harbinger of the land’s renewed fertility and the beginning of the new year—glistened in the trailing stream of dying sunlight.
The man called Tjaty—the vizier, second-in-command to the king—watched the new star rise. He thought, as he often did, on the stillness of the night, the long sigh at day’s end. Yet it was a mistake, he knew, to think the stars aloof or that the night had less to speak than the day. The day was for men to sweat beneath the heat, when the sun blocked the impulse to think beyond the immediacy of the hour. But the night, when the shadows grew long and the sun sank, was the time to gaze beyond the earth, to stare at all that was and wonder at the lives that might be lived beyond the veil of sun-bound days.
Closing his eyes, he remembered the words he had read that very morning as the sun rose on the first day of the new year.
Beginning of the Book of Breathings, which Isis made for her brother Osiris. That was the way the text introduced itself, painted across the brittle, pounded papyrus:
Isis and Osiris, husband and wife, the woman who had called her husband back from the dead and restored the breath of life within his soul, and the man who had been killed by his brother for their father’s throne and who then had passed below to gain power over death—to make his soul live, to make his body live, to make all his members anew—
He had been taught that the mere recitation of such sacred texts released a power within the written word, splitting open the marrow of whatever life was nestled deep within the characters. The vizier smiled slightly. If only it could be done, he thought, by speaking.
Or at least speaking it with his mouth alone in simple recitation, rather than reciting with his body, his breath, disciplining his every thought and action into the proper paradigms, speaking out the rituals with his very life before the gods would hear.
But then, he thought, at least they hear.
And then he heard footsteps scuffling across the open ground. Opening his eyes, he turned away from the night and toward the smiling woman who approached him with two little boys, one a little more grown than the other. Her hair was pulled back in preparation for sleep, her cheeks flushed in the warm air and her body shrouded in a light linen sheath. She held the boys’ hands with the same calm comfort as the sky held the stars.
“They wanted to see the new star,” she said.
Her husband smiled. The two boys scampered on ahead of their mother, thin, dark braids hanging from the side of their heads brushing against their bare shoulders. The taller of the two leaned on tip-toe against the low wall, gazing out across the garden at the outstretched fronds of palm trees and a cluster of blue lotus blossoms floating in the reflection pool. His younger brother struggled beside him, eager to see beyond the estate to the slow-drifting, wide-banked River.
For two years now, the River—Iteru—had failed to overflow its banks. And without the flooding, the River could not spread the rich, fertile black mud that allowed crops to flourish in the desert. The land that Iteru nourished took its name from the River, called after the dark mud that marked the boundaries of Kemet, the Black Land, the floodplain. All that lay beyond the reach of the River was Deshret, the Red Land, the barren place, the west desert where the People buried their dead.
“Do you see the River?” their mother asked, coming to stand behind her sons and tugging on the braid that hung over the younger boy’s left ear.
The child giggled, squinting up at the sky. “Where’s the star?”
“Do you know what it’s called?” his father asked.
His older son nodded. “It’s the star of Isis,” he reported, leaning closer to his younger brother.
“Sopdet.” His father smiled. “Her rising means that the River should be ready to flood.”
The older of the two boys solemnly surveyed the horizon where the River ambled across the plain. “But it’s not flooding.”
The vizier felt a tug on his hand and looked down at his younger son.
“Who’s Isis?”
“Who’s Isis?” The vizier bent down, hoisting the little boy into his arms. “There’s a very old story about her. She was the daughter of Ra, and she saved her husband’s life.”
The little boy nodded, and his father looked past his son to his wife, Asenath, daughter of the high priest of the sun god Ra. “Her husband,” he said, “was named Osiris. And Osiris had a brother named Seth, who was very jealous of him.” He shifted his gaze, looking straight at the little boy, widening his eyes for dramatic impact. “And one day Seth killed him.”
The child’s eyes widened too.
“But,” his father added reassuringly, “luckily for Osiris, Isis was very clever. And she found a way to save him. And that’s why that star”—he looked up, and the child in his arms looked up too—“is named after her. She brings things back to life. And when the floods come, the River brings life back to the entire land. You see?”
The child nodded. His father smiled and kissed him on top of his shaven head.
“So where’s Osiris now?” This time the elder boy was looking up in perplexity.
“Ah.” The man smiled. “He’s up there too.” He gestured with his head toward the stars. “Don’t you see him?”
“Right there.” His mother bent down beside her son, pointing up and slowly tracing an outline in the sky, just below where the star of Isis hovered. “Look closely. That’s his head, there, and then his body, with his arms stretched out to either side.”
Both boys gazed up, the younger one’s mouth hanging open.
“And there”—she looped her finger underneath the figure in a crescent arc—“is his boat.”
The older boy looked at his father. “The gods have boats too?”
“Of course.” The man met his wife’s eyes, and they both smiled. “It’s how they ride across the sky, like you ride along the River. You can always find Osiris with Isis. See how she watches over him?” The boys both nodded. “And you see how Osiris is made up of lots of little stars, all arranged together?” The man looked up again. “That’s like you and your mother and me—all arranged together, to make up our family.”
The younger child rested his head against his father’s shoulder, yawning.
“How do you know that?” asked the older son, crossing his arms.
“How do I know what?”
“About the stars.”
The man smiled. “I used to watch the stars at night with my father.”
The older boy nodded, then, hearing the call of a night-bird, moved toward the sound.
Asenath looked at her husband. “I don’t often hear you talk about your father.”
“He was the one who told me to look at the way the stars hold together,” he said quietly, looking down at his sleepy son. “How they bring peace and order into the sky. He told me that my brothers and I were like the stars.”
Asenath looked at her husband, the moonlight glinting silver in his hair, seeing the creases around his eyes and the years etching slowly into his skin. “Have you been thinking about them again?”
He shrugged, putting a protective hand on his son’s back.
“Zaphenath.”
He glanced at her.
“The goodness you have done in your own life will be returned to you.” She laid her hand over his. “That is ma’at.”
“And ma’at,” Zaphenath said, “is always represented as a woman, isn’t it?” He leaned closer, kissing her lightly on the cheek. But she saw his eyes as he pulled away, and she looked at his face—a face with a dark, proportioned, almost ethereal beauty—and wished she could somehow capture what it was he saw, so that she could see it with him.
But the moment passed, and he simply looked away, back up at the stars.
Chapter 3
Genesis 41:39–45, 56–57; 42:1–14
On the morning after the rising of Sopdet, the first signs of Ra began to glow red beneath the horizon. The People called this first part of the new year the time of Floods
. The earth itself would celebrate by pouring its bounty over the banks of the River, leaving the grateful inhabitants to slosh around outside their homes by boat until the waters receded in a wash of fertile richness.
But for the second year, the earth had ignored the rising of Sopdet, and for the second year, the time of Floods was occurring without any helpful rise in the River at all.
Zaphenath awoke first. He rose from his bed and moved alone through the house as was his custom—he preferred his solitude in this earliest hour. The family’s private washroom was empty, and he lowered himself into the undisturbed water of the bathing pool. With a reflexive wince at the chill and a quick intake of breath, he closed his eyes and plunged his head back, submerging himself completely, suspended between earth and sky, before surfacing again, like Ra from the watery womb of the stars.
He pulled himself out of the pool with a series of tiny splashes and then quickly dried himself in the early morning light. Crossing the room, he opened a small wooden chest set against the wall and took out a sharp bronze blade with a wooden handle. He skimmed the blade along the length of his body, from his legs up to his bare chest; he took a little extra time around his jaw after the blade nicked the skin. Once shaved, he wrapped a fine-spun, pleated linen kilt around his waist. Then he lifted an expensive wig of straight, thick, shoulder-length black hair and fitted it over his head.