The Eleventh Brother

by Rachel S. Wilcox

  Amon clapped his hands, and one of the women stepped forward, holding out a bundle of linens. Amon took the bundle and unfolded it, revealing a fine-spun linen robe meant to cover the chest and shoulders and a linen kilt to be worn underneath.

  “This will be more comfortable for you in the heat,” he said. “There is one for each of you—a gift of the fine clothing of Kemet.”

  Stepping back, Amon held out a hand, inviting the foreigners to enter the bathhouse, while the smiling women stepped aside. “These servants will assist you,” Amon told them as they began shuffling forward, “and show you how to dress after you wash.”

  Benjamin glanced quickly at Judah. “Assist us?” he hissed.

  Judah gave a helpless shrug.

  “Well,” Asenath smiled, “you two look very handsome.” She crouched carefully in front of her sons, trying not to wrinkle her own dress while straightening the linen kilt she had managed to wrestle Ephraim into for the occasion. Manasseh stood beside his brother, decked out in a golden armband and a child-sized beaded collar that spread from his neck out toward his shoulders and swooped across his chest. The boys had both been bathed, and Asenath had carefully lined their eyes with dark kohl and rewoven the single slim braids lying flat against their otherwise bare heads. She turned to Manasseh. “You will make your father very proud.”

  “Who are the people coming?” Manasseh asked again.

  Asenath, her own eyes also carefully lined, looked up at her oldest son as she knelt in front of Ephraim, giving his kilt another twist. “They’re very special visitors,” she said, jangling the golden bracelets on her arms as she brushed at Ephraim’s braid. “You’ve probably never seen anyone like them before.”

  “Are they Nubians?” Manasseh asked.

  “Not Nubians,” Asenath said. “And not from the lands near Kemet. She rose to her feet, smoothing her dress. “These men are Asiatics. They come from a place called Canaan.”

  “Canaan?” Manasseh repeated, wrinkling his nose, while Ephraim, his own armbands glistening on his tiny biceps, began chewing pensively on his finger. “Where is that?”

  “The Red Land,” Asenath said. “Now”—she set her hands on her hips, and Manasseh straightened his shoulders—“it is very important to your father that we be good hosts to these men. You know how to do that, don’t you?” Manasseh nodded dutifully, while Ephraim just looked up at her with his wide dark eyes, still chewing on his finger. Asenath smiled. “Good. And part of being a good host means we aren’t going to stare at them or say anything rude. They are not from Kemet, so they will look very different.”

  “Are they civilized?” Manasseh asked.

  “In their own way,” Asenath said with another smile, “I’m sure they are.” She bent down again in front of her boys. “Your father will be very proud to introduce you.” And she gave each of them a kiss on the cheek.

  Judah raised his arms awkwardly while a serving woman tied a sash around his waist, and he glanced over at Benjamin, who stood straightening his own linen kilt. The other brothers were also nearly all dressed, washed and scrubbed clean from the dirt of the road, and the fresh linen felt soft and light against skin that was accustomed to the rough rub of spun wool. As the woman moved away, Judah looked down at what he was wearing—a linen robe that felt almost like an overcoat, covering his shoulders and neck and tied in around his waist—and experienced the same sense of unease that had followed him since their first journey into the Divided Land.

  Benjamin wouldn’t realize it—he wouldn’t remember the garment his father had given to his chosen heir, before Jacob’s other sons destroyed it—so Judah glanced toward where Reuben was standing. He met his brother’s eye and pulled at one side of the linen tunic. Reuben glanced down at his own outfit, running his hand over the cream-colored folds, and looked back at Judah.

  “It’s his robe,” Judah said, and Reuben looked back down at the linen with its fine weaving and delicate creasing.

  “What’s that?” Benjamin asked.

  Judah turned back to him. “How do you like linen? I think it suits you.”

  Benjamin smiled a little nervously. “Why is he being so generous with us?”

  “We’re not sure he’s being generous, yet,” Judah said.

  Amon appeared again in the open doorway, hands clasped behind his back, and looked over the brothers, who had nearly filled the bathhouse with their broad bodies all crammed in together.

  “Very good,” he said, nodding approvingly, and the brothers glanced around at the freshly washed, linen-clad versions of each other. “Now,” he beckoned with one hand, “come with me.”

  Thou breathest henceforth for time and eternity . . .

  Amon comes to thee bearing the breath of life, he causes thee to breathe and come upon the earth . . . The Book of Breathings . . . is as thy protection; thou breathest by it every day . . . Horus protects [embraces] thy body and deifies thy spirit in the manner of the gods.

  The soul of Ra is giving life to thy soul . . . thy soul breathes . . .

  —The Book of Breathings, lines 25, 39–42, 45–46

  Chapter 27

  Sacred Scrolls

  The sun had nearly completed its descent across the sky, sinking into the womb of the stars where it would await its rebirth the next morning. The horizon darkened into an exquisite deep blue speckled with stars, and the torches shimmered and spat in the outer courtyard of Potiphar’s estate. Within the villa, candles burned in flickering rows along the walls and windows, and the sound of laughter drifted out into the garden, mingled with rhythmic clapping and the sound of delicately plucked strings, shedding melody out into the night.

  It had been a hectic day preparing for the banquet, orchestrating and overseeing the food and the flowers and the dancing girls. The gardens had been under preparation for weeks, and the villa had to be cleaned and prepared to meet the master’s exacting specifications. But when the guests began to arrive—all of whom were court officials like their host, all coming to congratulate Potiphar on the news that the king had decided to appoint him as the new vizier, second-in-command to the king, as soon as the current one retired—everything was in place. Now, as the guests feasted and laughed and applauded, Potiphar’s long-suffering steward slipped out of the house, weary and sweaty, escaping into the cool of the garden.

  Closing his eyes, Joseph breathed in the deep scent of the fragrant blossoms drifting across the reflecting pool, their green lily pads spread beneath the exuberantly open blue and white petals. The mighty, tangling fig trees, with their sprawling branches, cast shadows in the bright moonlight from where they kept their vigil along the outer walls, wise protectors of the estate and all who dwelt within. Potiphar’s garden was a radiant and welcoming place, and it was here that Joseph most liked to come to sit, or think, or rest. And it was here that he stood, taking in the night air, looking up at the stars brought out so brightly now that the sun had passed on from the sky.

  I am Ra in his rising, he thought. I am Atum in his setting; I am Osiris in the night.

  He had been reading through the sacred scrolls with Potiphar, spreading out the texts and unrolling the delicate papyri in parallel, setting the words loose to mingle and converse. Potiphar’s gods all flowed in and out of one another, it seemed—the sun called by the name of Ra in its rising and Osiris, lord of the underworld, at its setting, life and the afterlife all one eternal arc as life passed into death and the dead rose again in the quest to transform time into eternity.

  And somehow, tangled up in these shifting gods and mortal aspirations, was his own great-grandfather—a bearded foreigner, clothed in woolen garments, who spent his life in the desert beneath the stars and the vast expanse of heaven, a visionary who opened himself to the divine and was embraced by the light that created all things. Joseph had once read the words of Abraham as a vision of the cosmos, a glimpse into the creative powers of the universe. But now, when he sat in Potiphar’s villa, he began to sense his master’s gods weaving
themselves into the fabric of his great-grandfather’s visions, expressing the realities that lay beyond the language of the sun-priests of Kemet—guardians of the cosmic cycles, pacifiers of the forces that held the night sky in its orbit and brought the sun out of the womb of the stars each morning.

  And yet, compared to the sublime symbolism of his master’s gods, Abraham’s god spoke with an intimacy that seemed unexpected from the force that held the sun and the moon and the stars in one unblinking gaze, who spanned the heavens and called all things into order at the moment of creation. Could it be that Abraham too was merely seeking to give a voice to these name-shifting forces, as Potiphar’s fellow priests asserted, that he was simply seeking to speak out on behalf of the abstract Source of the powers of nature and the realities that lay beyond the limited comprehension of his creations?

  Or had Abraham actually heard a voice and transcribed a divine communication that came not from the sun, or the moon, or the stars, but from One who had come to him, and comforted him, and talked with him face to face and sworn a covenant with him that his son and grandson and great-grandsons were destined to bear forever after?

  Standing there beneath the stars, enfolded within the sweetness of the night air, Joseph’s eyes traveled down the linen covering his body—the crisp, clean folds of the fabric rippling like waves on the River across the entire length of the garment, running from his shoulders down past his knees.

  And he felt a tightness in his throat.

  He did not often give himself cause to think of the home that had once existed beyond the bounds of Kemet within the world that had been stripped away from him, but now, ever since he had been so unexpectedly reunited with Abraham, a whisper would come, or a quiver, slipping out across the desert and through all the distance that spanned who he once had been from the man he now was—and he was sought out, and began to remember.

  But the spell was broken as he heard a nearby rustling and turned, looking over toward the reflecting pool. His eyes adjusted now to the darkness, he could see someone sitting there, facing away from the water. He moved closer, wondering if one of the servants had perhaps had too much beer and stumbled into the fresh air to recover. But then he saw the smooth, unadorned arms, the delicate hands, and the loose, flowing dark hair that spilled down her back.

  “Djeseret,” he said.

  She raised her face, glistening in the moonlight. His footsteps brushed over the ground as he moved closer, and she sniffed, her large dark eyes turned toward him. He sat beside her on the raised rim of the reflecting pool with the lotus flowers drifting behind on their tiny sea of stars.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, his voice quiet in the garden. Behind them, the villa glowed warmly, and the laughter and applause coming from within seemed at odds with the night’s stillness and the shimmering on her face.

  Her eyes shifted away from his, though she did not turn from him. “An argument,” she said. “It’s nothing.”

  Joseph looked down at his finely sandaled feet, feeling the evening breeze across his back. “I’m sorry.”

  She shook her head again. “I should be used to it.” Then, trying to smile, she looked at him. “I remember when you could hardly speak to any of us, and look at you now.” She brushed the palm of her hand across her cheek. “Running the estate.”

  Joseph glanced down at his hands, clasped loosely together. “That was such a lonely time,” he said softly. “I’d seen so much cruelty.” He glanced at her. “But you were kind.”

  She tried to smile and looked away, playing with the golden bracelet dangling loosely around her wrist. From the villa, the low, rhythmic beating of a drum started up, with a few appreciative shouts, and she glanced over her shoulder to where the candlelight from the house danced across the ground. “Has Potiphar been having you read the scrolls?”

  Joseph nodded.

  She sniffed again. “Have you solved the cosmic mysteries?”

  “Not yet,” he smiled, “but we’re trying.”

  “So is there any chance for new life in this life?” She looked back at him, tried to hold her smile. “Or do we have to wait until the next one?”

  “Well,” he said, “the rites I’ve been studying are all for the living, so I imagine they must have some relevance for this life.”

  “Which ones?”

  “Well, the Abraham texts, to start with.” He paused, looking over the tops of the fig trees, out toward the night sky. “The thing about them is that they’re so—intimate, somehow.” He glanced at her. “My father spoke about God the same way, like God was . . . not a friend, exactly, but someone he knew. Who knew him.”

  “One God?” she asked.

  Joseph nodded. “One God who oversees everything that is.” He looked back up at the stars. “What Potiphar really wants to know is whether the covenant made with Abraham—the man who wrote the texts—can extend to anyone other than Abraham’s descendants.” He glanced back over. “I don’t need to talk about it if—”

  “No,” she said. “It’s fine.” Another sniff. “What does he want to understand?”

  Joseph looked at her. “He wants to understand this idea of covenant by sacrifice—with Abraham, before he has his cosmic vision, and also afterward, with his son Isaac, and the way each person who inherits the covenant also inherits the burden of sacrifice.” He gestured with one hand. “It’s a kind of ritual killing, making something sacred by passing it through the underworld.” She looked down at her own hands. “It . . . seems to be some sort of key to the covenant.”

  “What’s the covenant?” she asked.

  Joseph thought for a moment, trying to recall the words. “I think the text says, To be a greater follower of righteousness, and to possess a greater knowledge, and to be a father of many nations. It’s a binding promise between Abraham and his God.” He paused. “That’s what a covenant is. A promise, on conditions.”

  “All promises seem to have conditions.” She glanced at him. “A father of many nations?”

  Joseph looked at her and nodded.

  “Well,” she looked away again, “Potiphar won’t find that with me.”

  “Actually,” Joseph said, “Abraham and his first wife had only one son.”

  “His first wife?” Djeseret turned back. “Why ‘first’? Did she die?” Joseph shook his head, and he saw her face change as she understood. “Because she couldn’t have children.” She looked down. “So he took someone else.” Her voice had turned cold. “Is that part of the covenant? That his wife also had to be sacrificed?”

  “That wasn’t what it was,” Joseph said, but Djeseret looked away.

  “I’m not sure I think much of your God.”

  “He’s—” Joseph began and then stopped.

  “He’s what?” Djeseret looked back at him. “He’s your God, isn’t he?”

  “Think of it this way,” Joseph said, moving a little closer, trying to close the sudden gap between them. “The Breathings text begins by talking about how the person, the initiate, is going to be called up to join Ra and his son Osiris in the horizon—the in-between place—and then, to prepare, the initiate is washed by the two goddesses. It’s a birth symbol, a rebirth symbol, and meanwhile, here Abraham is talking about the cosmos and the creation, and the creation is a birth symbol, and birth is a symbol of the creation—”

  Djeseret crossed her arms.

  Joseph stopped mid-sentence. Quietly he said, “It’s still the woman who brings life, Djeseret. Even in these ceremonies when there is no actual birth happening. Do you see?” Her expression indicated that she did not see. “The woman is the one who carries the breath of life inside of her,” he went on, still trying, “and she’s the one who transmits it—like the two women who come to wash the new soul in the Breathings text. They reappear at the final judgment, too, looking on as the soul is born permanently into eternal life.”

  “That’s very nice,” she said, “for them.”

  He gestured with his hand. “Well, whether
it’s Abraham or the texts here, I think both the ceremonial and the vision texts are imitating mortal life. Or mortal life is imitating the cosmic vision. There’s some sort of connection—”

  “Of course there’s a connection,” Djeseret cut in. “The entire priesthood is based on the assumption that there’s a connection. We align our lives with the movement of the sun and the stars. The River rises and falls with the sun and the stars.”

  “But if that’s true,” Joseph said, “then what you said—about whether there’s new life in this life—then surely there has to be, don’t you think?” She blinked. “If we go through the right motions, then new life happens in this life and the next.” He pressed a finger into his open palm, as if indicating a word on a scroll. “That’s what the texts seem to imply; that’s why they’re precious and sacred and kept so carefully—they hold the life secrets, in time and in eternity. That’s the formula, over and over—in time and in eternity.” He could feel himself breathing a little more quickly. “And through our following the rituals and the patterns, the gods can release the power in the text and bring it to life—in anyone. Then that person becomes unified with the gods. She breathes again. She lives. It all means the same thing . . .”

  Djeseret looked straight at him. “Those two women,” she said, “who are involved in that ritual washing you’re talking about—you know who they are, don’t you?” She waited for a reply that did not come. “Isis and Nephtys.” She narrowed her eyes slightly. “You’re right about Isis. She is life—she brings Osiris back to the living, and she bears their son. But Nephtys is Seth’s wife. She’s death.”

  “She’s a guardian,” Joseph said, shaking his head. “And a nurse to the new soul as it passes through the transition.”

  “She’s sterility.”

  “She’s part of the balance.” Joseph reached out to touch her arm, but she moved it away. “Djeseret, this is ridiculous. This doesn’t have anything to do with you.”