by Jerry Dubs
King Kha-Sekhemwy, silently bridling under Babaef’s attention, had pointed east and said he would be over there. Babaef had shaken his head, barely perceptibly, but enough to let the king know that his answer wasn’t sufficient. Then he had produced a clean piece of linen and sketched a rough map of the mountain passes. He handed the charcoal stick to King Kha-Sekhemwy and asked him to mark the pathways he planned to take.
Whichever path I want, the king wanted to say, but faced with Babaef’s implacable insistence and surrounded by the general’s lieutenants, King Kha-Sekhemwy knew his general would lose face if he refused his request. So, feeling like a schoolboy, he had solemnly marked a trail on the map and then commended Babaef for his excellent planning.
At the first fork in the wadi, King Kha-Sekhemwy had chosen the opposite path from the one he had marked on the map. Then, looking over his shoulder, he thought he saw movement behind him. He shook his head; Babaef had anticipated the king’s contrariness and had sent a spy to map his actual route.
It would feel good to drive my spear into the side of a gazelle, King Kha-Sekhemwy had thought.
Now, with warm sand pooling around his ankles as he stood on the slope of a small dune, King Kha-Sekhemwy could see a small herd of gesa, straight-horned gazelles, gathered around a pool in one of the streams that ran along the edge of the mountains.
Sabef, the Nubian archer, waited just behind the king and prince. He carried his own bow, a weapon nearly as long as the Nubian himself, made of two curved antelope horns joined at the center with a shaft of ebony wood.
Pointing off to his right with his bow, Sabef grunted.
King Kha-Sekhemwy nodded.
“Do you see them, Djoser?” he asked.
Djoser had seen the small billow of sandy dust and the straight lines of the gazelles’ horns when they had first mounted the ridge, but he had waited for his father to point them out.
“Yes, King Kha-Sekhemwy,” he said, speaking formally while Sabef was near enough to hear. “Do you think there will be lions also?”
“Perhaps,” King Kha-Sekhemwy said. “More likely foxes, maybe even one of the spotted cats. But the gesa are better eating.”
Eyes closed, the king slowly turned his wide face to catch a sense of the direction of the wind. Behind them Sabef gathered a handful of sand and let it slide from his fist watching to see where the air took the dust from the sand.
King Kha-Sekhemwy sensed the motion behind him. He turned to Sabef and pointed off to their right. “Yes?” he asked. Sabef, his skin so black that his eyes and teeth seemed to float in a living shadow, nodded agreement. The wind was coming from the north, toward them from the gesa.
“Over this way,” King Kha-Sekhemwy said to the men below them on the sandy ridge. He motioned to his left.
“We’ll stay below the ridge line as long as we can, moving downwind of the gesa,” he told Djoser as they slid down the dune.
“Sabef and I could go in the other direction,” Djoser suggested. “I know that our scent could alarm them, but we could move more slowly than you, staying off wind from the gesa. Then when you signal, we could let them see us.”
King Kha-Sekhemwy considered the question for a moment, then he nodded agreement. It was a small request and it would give Djoser a sense of independence. If it worked, the gazelles would move away from Djoser and into the spears of the king’s hunting party.
“Yes, Djoser,” he said. “Move slowly. When you have circled around them, approach the crest of the dune but do not cross it. I will signal when my men are in place.” Then he extended his right arm, his hand sideways and open. Surprised by the offer, Djoser hesitated and then he reached forward and clasped his hand around his father’s forearm, feeling King Kha-Sekhemwy’s strong grip on his forearm in return.
“Thank you, father,” he said, tears suddenly threatening to fill his eyes.
“Good hunting,” King Kha-Sekhemwy said, breaking off the embrace and silently moving down the dune.
***
The king’s hunting party killed three of the fast-sprinting gazelles. They carried the slain animals back to the small watering hole where the gesa had first been spotted. One of the hunters had directed the digging of a roasting pit where the gutted animals were laid after a bed of coals had been fired and banked.
While the meat roasted, the soldiers, filled with energy after the successful hunt, raced each other and wrestled before cooling off in the shallow pool surrounded by date palms. King Kha-Sekhemwy watched the contests from the shade, but Djoser, brimming with energy, had joined the soldiers.
In his wrestling match he surprised one stocky soldier with his speed and his understanding of leverage and body joint locks. He quickly brought the larger man to the ground but the stronger and heavier man soon gained the advantage, holding Djoser’s squirming shoulders against the sand.
Afterward, instead of sulking at his defeat, Djoser threw an arm around the winner’s shoulders and asked him to teach him how he had been able to gain the advantage when they were on the ground.
In an archery contest Djoser was as accurate as the Nubians but his bow, a smaller weapon made of sycamore, couldn’t generate the power to send an arrow through the small copper target that was pinned against a palm tree trunk.
After watching Sabef bury arrow after arrow in the heart of the target, Djoser asked to try the antelope-horn bow. His arms weren’t long enough to draw the string as fully as the Nubian could and so his arrows, lacking speed, still bounced off the metal target.
“I need a smaller bow,” Djoser said.
“Or longer arms, my prince,” Sabef told him.
“Then I would look like one of Thoth’s baboons,” Djoser said with a laugh.
King Kha-Sekhemwy watched, wondering if Djoser would imitate one of the knuckle-walking monkeys, but to the king’s relief, Djoser’s innate dignity drew the line at monkey imitation.
As the contests wound down, Djoser suggested one more game: throwing sticks.
Similar in shape to boomerangs, but smaller and more rounded, throwing sticks were used to hunt ducks in the marshlands of the delta. Although they also were used in combat, they were more of a distraction than a weapon, something to draw a fighter’s attention away from a spear thrust or the swing of a wooden club.
The men balanced a severed antelope head on a rock and then tried to hit it with their throwing sticks. It was soon apparent that Djoser was incredibly accurate and the contest evolved into Djoser trying to hit the antelope head from greater and greater distances while the men cheered each success.
Once he had reached the limit of his arm, Djoser started trying to hit the antelope head while he was running. After one throw, one of the hunters picked up Djoser’s throwing stick and softly threw it back toward him. Instead of waiting for it to land, Djoser ran forward and snatched it from the air. Soon a game of catch developed and after a short while the men were left with bruised arms from missed catches and humbled egos from watching Djoser’s speed and reflexes.
“Next you’ll be catching spears and arrows,” King Kha-Sekhemwy told him as they settled to eat the roasted antelope.
Instead of laughing, Djoser stopped tearing at the meat and looked at his father.
“Has anyone done that?” Djoser asked. “I think it would be possible, at least with spears. I think arrows would be too fast and their shafts aren’t long enough.” He darted out his right hand as if grabbing a flying arrow. “No, father, I don’t think I could catch arrows.”
He went back to pulling at the meat. Holding a chunk, he tore off a bite with his teeth. After he swallowed, he said, “I might give spears a try.”
“I would suggest blunt ones at first,” King Kha-Sekhemwy said with a grin.
“Thrown by children,” Djoser added with a laugh. Then he said quietly, “Thank you, father. Thank you for bringing me with you.”
King Kha-Sekhemwy smiled back and said, “We’re near one of Hathor’s temples.”
“Ha
thor, here?” Djoser asked.
King Kha-Sekhemwy nodded. He pointed back into the mountain range. “Here she is called the Lady of Turquoise. There is a temple up that wadi, a day’s walk.”
“Are we going there?”
King Kha-Sekhemwy shook his head.
“No, I am staying here at the edge of the mountains where there is water and game. I’ll have plenty of mountain climbing when we go back to the mines.”
Djoser nodded assent.
“You can go,” King Kha-Sekhemwy said.
Djoser looked up eagerly. Like his sister, he was fascinated by the gods, always eager to learn more, to wander the temples, to touch the sacred statues, to stare at the painted scenes of the gods’ lives, to listen to the priests tell the stories.
“Yes, I mean it,” King Kha-Sekhemwy said. “Take your archer with you. However, there isn’t much there, Djoser. It is very small, hardly decorated and no one lives there. But the miners go there to ask Hathor for guidance. There are Sleeping Chambers where the miners receive visions of where to search for gemstones.”
The king smiled. “It must work; we’ve seen the gems. Spend the night there, perhaps you’ll dream of riches.”
King Kha-Sekhemwy stood and stretched his arms above his head.
Releasing a satisfied sigh, he pointed along the base of the mountain ridge. “I’ll take the hunting party up that way,” King Kha-Sekhemwy said. “I’d like to kill one of those spotted cats. The pelt would make a beautiful robe for your mother.
“It might take you a full day to reach the temple, another to return. So, we’ll meet here in three days.”
***
With water-filled goatskins and dangling shoulder pouches packed with leftover meat, Djoser and Sabef departed at dawn. Before they left, King Kha-Sekhemwy gave Djoser a small packet of incense. “An offering to Hathor,” he said. Then he added wryly, “Never approach a temple with empty hands.”
Djoser and Sabef turned their backs to the rising sun and began to climb the rock-strewn wadi. The mountain wasn’t steep, but the pathway was never clear. The faint trail often disappeared beneath boulders which they were forced to climb and then search for traces of the path farther up the mountain side.
They climbed steadily for two hours and then, as the morning sun began to burn down on them, they found shade beside a large, jagged overhang and drank some water and flexed their cramping legs.
Looking down across the desert that stretched away from the base of the mountain, Djoser saw choppy waves of sand. Unlike the smooth desert on the western side of the River Iteru, this one was scraggy and littered with sharp rock outcroppings and tufts of high, dry grass.
Although last night’s campsite was marked by ripples of sand, like a rumpled bed linen, and a trace of darker color, ashes from the campfires, King Kha-Sekhemwy and the hunting party were no longer in sight. Djoser shielded his eyes from the rising sun and looked south, but there was no sign of movement. The king had been in a hurry.
Leaning against the mountain, Djoser breathed deeply and smiled. All his life he had been surrounded and protected. There were always adults with him ... teachers, military instructors, his mother, palace guards. Now, except for Sabef, he was alone. There was no one to tell him where to go, what to say or what to do.
He wished Hetephernebti could experience this. She, of all the people he knew, would appreciate the solitude.
He looked at Sabef to see if he was feeling the same thrill of being alone. The Nubian was crouched, his hands idly playing with loose pebbles. His eyes were on the northern horizon, his lips turned into a small frown.
“Sabef, what is it?” Djoser asked.
The Nubian shook his head.
“Do you see something? A lion or one of father’s spotted cats? Desert-dwellers?”
Sabef rose to his feet and pointed to the north, back up the curve of the plateau that the hunting party had followed earlier.
“I don’t know. I thought I saw a change in the air.”
“A whirlwind?” Djoser asked, swirling a finger like a cyclone.
Sabef shook his head. “No, the way the air danced above the rocks seemed to change.”
“What does that mean? Is it a sign?” Djoser asked. Although he was not a tracker, he knew that more experienced men could read ripples in the water, the change of a bird’s flight, the widening of a donkey’s eye.
“I think it was a lizard taking a piss on a hot rock.” He watched Djoser’s face for a smile and then started to laugh when he saw that Djoser wasn’t offended by the joke.
As Djoser turned to continue the climb, Sabef paused and took another studied look at the edge of the plateau. He suspected that the change in the air had been a campfire being smothered. Someone was following the hunting party.
Another two hours brought them to a series of steps cut into a steeper passage. A shallow, loose stone wall followed the path here. Beyond the wall, the mountain simply stopped, falling away to a rock-strewn valley.
At the top of the cut steps, the path wound to their right following a curve of the mountain where a small ledge had been widened. There was no protection here, just a straight drop from the narrow path.
Walking in front, Sabef took pains to keep his eyes away from the abyss, but Djoser paused, peering into the emptiness and imagining what it would feel like to be a hawk soaring through the blue space between Nut, the sky goddess, and Geb, her earthly husband. He looked at the crumpled mountain below him and the low-lying plateau off to the north.
For a moment he thought he saw movement, a group of darker specks against the brown earth. Then his attention was drawn to the sound of cascading stones and a loud grunt from Sabef.
Turning, Djoser saw Sabef’s muscled back and legs and at his feet, a gaping hole where a piece of the mountain had crumbled away, leaving a gap in the trail. Sabef was on the other side of the breach, leaning against the mountain and breathing heavily.
The path was narrow here and the mountain side sloped more steeply toward the precipice. Whoever had cut the trail hadn’t widened the base enough and now a small section of it was gone.
“I was almost a bird, my Prince, when I need to be a goat,” Sabef said. He reached a hand across the opening to Djoser.
To reach across the divide, Sabef had to stand as close as possible to the gap in the trail. His position left no place for Djoser to step. Djoser shook his head and motioned for the Nubian to back away. Then, without hesitation, Djoser jumped across the opening. He felt the air support him as if the hand of Osiris, son of Nut and Geb, lord of the afterlife, was shielding him from harm.
And as he floated above the abyss Djoser had a sudden premonition that something evil was stalking him but that he would be protected.
***
The temple was a disappointingly small cave with a pair of stone stele the height of a man by the entrance.
Djoser and Sabef peered into the darkness and then walked past it, looking for something grander. But they were atop a high plateau now, the flat cap of the mountain and there were no structures in sight.
They walked about the plateau, enjoying the view of the reddish brown mountains that stepped away from them, sharp and steep as crocodile teeth. Off to the south and westward toward the Great Green Sea the mountain range continued beyond their vision, hidden at the far horizon by a haze of heat.
Eastward they could see the desert spreading out, the brown sand turning bluish gray far in the distance until it merged with the sky, Geb and Nut united.
They walked back to the cave entrance and found a stone bowl on a ledge just inside the opening. Djoser filled the bowl with some of the incense his father had given him and then lit it. A tendril of white smoke rose from the bowl and streamed into the cave.
“There is an opening inside,” Sabef said, “pulling the smoke to it.”
“The Sleeping Chamber?” Djoser said as he sat at the cave opening and drank from the goatskin. He passed the bag to Sabef. The Nubian took the bag
and drank deeply.
“Are there mountains like this in Nubia?” Djoser asked Sabef.
“We call it Ta-Seti,” Sabef said, passing the water back to Djoser.
He picked up his antelope bow and shook it. “Ta-Seti means Land of The Bow. It is much like Kemet. There is the river and that is all. Beyond it only sand. Small hills, but no mountains like this.”
Djoser had heard old soldiers, men in their thirties, talking about the land of Punt where the sky was obscured by overhanging trees so one did not need to wear kohl to protect one’s eyes and where the air was so full of moisture that no oil was needed for the skin.
Someday, Djoser thought, I’ll lead an expedition there.
But now he was here, atop a barren mountain and a simple cave dedicated to Hathor.
He jumped to his feet and stepped into the cave. With his back to the light, he waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. In a few moments he saw that the entrance room led to an opening as wide as two men. A faint gray light came from the passage. He walked toward it.
The passage opened into a larger chamber with smoother walls that had obviously been worked. There were paintings on the wall of Hathor, her double-horned headdress supporting the red orb of the sun. Unlike the few paintings Djoser had seen on urns in temples in Waset, here Hathor’s eyes were larger and rounder. Her chin receded creating a short snout, making her face look cow-like. He wondered if the difference was because of the artist’s unpracticed hand, or if he intended to give the goddess more of an animal form.
Again his thoughts went to his sister and her curiosity about all the gods. He wondered if she had had any luck with the onion. And what happens when she does? Will she marry King Kha-Sekhemwy who already has a chief wife and three minor wives? Will she marry me? Or Nebka, our half brother? Or someone I don’t know?
The questions tugged at him for a moment and then Djoser shook his head lightly. They were questions that couldn’t be answered and so he would put them aside.
