Ancient Evenings

by Norman Mailer

  I saw it all, therefore, and was witness to the first hour of the first day of the five days of the Festival (after the five days of preparation) when Usermare in the early air of morning strode down the steps between a file of Nubians wearing red sashes across their chests and a file of Syrians in long blue wool caftans with embroidered white flowers. A eunuch came forward with a headdress of two feathers, each almost as long as his own torso, and the body of the eunuch was painted in blue. He wore only a necklace and a short skirt of red and yellow. Behind him came another slave who, dressed the same might have looked the same if his body had not been washed in white, and these two painted eunuchs led the Pharaoh down the file of Nubian and Syrian soldiers to a gathering of little queens who waited with their children at the end of this promenade. Now, the little queens knelt and threw flowers at Usermare, and you could hear the giggling of their children. A long cheer now began in the markets of the city in response to the hubbub of acclamation that first greeted His appearance when He came out of the doors of the Hall of King Unas, and the echoes began to pass back and forth from the Palace to the city, and from the alleys, avenues and embankments of the river back to the royal grounds, a penetrating of cheers into one another that was like the meeting of clouds in a storm, and soon became a din.

  Having passed through the file of Nubians and Syrians, Usermare inclined His Double-Crown toward the little queens, gave His blessing to the children, and walking alone, passed through an arbor of trees leading to the Court of the Great Ones. There, in that prodigious place, a thousand long steps in length by a thousand in width, were the hundreds of His retinue waiting. And across the Court, gathered on the far side before the shrine of Isis, were thousands of barren women who had come here in the dawn of each of the five days of preparation, and would come again for the five days of the Festival, all of them on their knees, or on hands and knees, praying. And between them and the retinue, across the great walks and flowered avenues and marble fountains of this plaza, in every corner and bower, were the shrines of Gods carried to the Court of the Great Ones in these last few days after being rowed down or having sailed up the river in Their Sacred Barges. Everywhere were such chapels, put together quickly of reeds and as quickly washed with white clay in imitation of the ancient chapels and shrines of the first Gods in the reign of Menes and Khufu there back at the creation of the earth and the water, the heavens and the fires. For the first shrines were no more than reed huts, so said the priests.

  Now, high courtiers with the special rank for these five days of Friend-of-His-Feet—a title bestowed for this Festival—rushed forward from the ranks of the retinue to wash His legs before He would put on His sandals again, enter His palanquin, and embark on His first procession through the city on the first day of the Godly Triumph. When the Friends-of-His-Feet were done, other courtiers came forward in a great rank of the mighty ones of Upper and Lower Egypt, forty-two Nomarchs from the forty-two nomes, and they kissed the ground before Him.

  Then His sons came forward in the bright sunlight, three of the four sons of Nefertiri (only Amen-khep-shu-ef was not present) and, carried by His nurse, was Peht-a-Ra, a child with black ringlets, curly as a Hittite, and surrounded by a guard of twenty, together with the seven sons and daughters of the plain third wife, Esonefret, and they were all followed by the hundred sons and daughters of the little queens from the Gardens of the Secluded and from His other Gardens at Tanis, Fayum, Hatnum and Yeb, and, of these, the youngest who had never left their homes before were much bewildered, while the older children, now full-grown, carried themselves with importance on this day. Being sons of the Pharaoh, they were, no matter how removed from Their Father, in command of such offices as Superintendent, or Treasurer of a nome, or were High Priests or Prophets, Chief Judges, Reciter Priests, Scribes of the Divine Book, Governors, even Generals, and yet these sons of little queens, and their wives, and the daughters of little queens with their husbands were only a small part of the retinue that now formed after much jostling into a procession and began to move out across the Court of the Great Ones, through the grounds of the other Palaces, across all of the Horizon of Ra until they passed through the gates and into the city. It was a file thousands of paces long, and twelve of the Royal Charioteers were runners to carry the Great Golden Belly, built for the occasion of this jubilee, and sweated themselves to the task with its high honor and heavy difficulty inasmuch as the soldiers were obliged to run with the palanquin as fast as the horses pulling the chariots and carriages. Behind were other squads to replace them at every halt, while on either flank were His Guard, those files of Nubians and Syrians through which He had passed on leaving the Throne Room, now also running beside Him. Then came the long line of the retinue for this first day, a host of golden carriages and chariots bearing His officers, and His Princes and Princesses with the palanquins of the Court Ladies and the little queens and Lords of the Bedchamber and all the standard-bearers and fan-bearers, the mace-bearers and lancers of each Nomarch of the forty-two now standing in chariots driven by their grooms. How many plumes the horses carried! Their harnesses had been worked upon for months, the leather embossed with a filigree of gold and silver leaf.

  On this first morning there were fires at every crossroad still burning from the night and by every gate to the quarters of the city. Before some of these fires, the Pharaoh would halt, stand in His open palanquin on the shoulders of His charioteers, and, towering above all, would wave His left arm to one side and His right to the other before bringing the fingertips of both hands together so that His arms might encircle His own Double-Crown. The crowd, watching, cried out with pleasure at the sight of the procession, and the gleam of the sun looked back at them from the broad golden collars that everyone near the Pharaoh was wearing. The fan-bearers arched their immense fans of great reeds and feathers about Usermare’s head, people waved bouquets of flowers as He passed, and the town children rushed ahead in order to wave again, while His runners strewed the street with oil of flower-water so that the Good and Great God would smell nothing that was not sweet. And now in front of Him, and to the sides, pressing to keep the crowd back, Nubians and Syrians were swinging clubs and crying out, “Make way for the God. Back up, back up. The One is coming.” Often they had to shout to be heard, while the crowd laughed at their accents, and gave way only after much pushing. “Listen to my word,” the Syrians shouted, “do not make me use my stick.” Sooner or later, they did, and blood would be on the route from a bleeding scalp, and wretches with bloodied noses would wave in happiness at the procession since in years to come they could speak with pride of the day they came so near to the Pharaoh that they were whipped until they saw their own blood.

  Now, as they passed, priests came out from each temple and burned incense. Drummers and harpers played for the Pharaoh as He went by, then joined the rear, and townspeople followed in greater numbers until the procession went through the markets. There, everybody came out of the shops. It would take half the morning for the last of the retinue to pass through some of these narrow streets.

  Usermare went by the carpenters, the joiners, the cabinet-makers, and the veneer-maker, down the Street of the Metalworkers, past the copper forges and the lead forges, the tin shops and the bronze shops of the armorers, down the Street of Fine Metalworkers where He waved to all who knew the Crafts of Gold and Silver and Electrum and to their families. He nodded to the shops of the boot-makers, the weavers and the potters, and greeted their hundreds of apprentices. He was cheered by the weavers of woolens and linens, by the shops that made thread and the shops that made lampwicks, and through the Quarter of the Jewelers where they worked in red and yellow jasper, and carnelian, and malachite, and alabaster, carved the scarabs of lapis-lazuli and the little lions and cats. He passed the wagonmakers and the wheelwrights, the furniture makers and the ivory workers. They went down the Street of the Sculptors where the bas-reliefs were prepared for the palaces and the tombs, and the inscriptions were struck, down the long da
nk street of the sandal-makers and tanners, full of the stench of hides being cured, a low occupation. Even on these festival days when the tanners did not work, no amount of perfume cast by the runners could keep off the smell, and it was the same with the heavy aromatics of the sawdust of the fine woods in the Street of the Coffin-makers, worse in the stench of the gutters of the papyrus-makers. Then the promenade went by the butcher, the brewer and baker all selling their food to people in the street and many cheered with a full mouth before they crossed the alleys of the basketmakers, and painters, and came at last to the canals along the Square of the Boatbuilders with their long sheds and wharves. The river was near. They had arrived at the place where they would meet the Sacred Barge of Ptah sailing up the river from Memphi these last ten days.

  Here my Father ceased to tell us any more, as if He would reflect on the sights that had moved before us, and my mother sighed and said in a voice of admiration that she was amazed how much Ptah-nem-hotep could know of these-years-that-were-behind-us. What He had told was like a wonder seen clearly by a blind man.

  I could feel His pleasure at the praise but He only said: “I have studied every papyrus that speaks of the Great Festival of Ramses the Second, and the Third Festival that I now relate to you, which took place in the Thirty-Fifth Year of His Reign is the greatest, and I believe what I told is near to all that passed, at least by every exactitude of the records. I must, however, apologize that I cannot give the titles of all the courtiers and servants who attended this Festival since Usermare employed the charming custom (also taken up by My Father for His Godly Triumph after His first thirty years) of bestowing titles whose sounds have not been heard for the last twenty Kings, and sometimes, if one could measure, for more than a thousand years, back to Khufu and Menes. That is the difficulty. Not all of the titles have been recorded, and some of the papyrus in the Royal Library may have been moved too roughly from the old vaults in Thebes to the new in Memphi, for it is frayed. Some of the titles have also been misspelled. They are unfamiliar. But there! I am as fussy in these matters as a Chief Scribe. I do not know if it is My old allegiance to Ptah, but I have a great respect for Him, the best of all craftsmen, and so I try to know the old quarters of Thebes as they were then, even as I know the shops of Memphi now.”

  When my great-grandfather nodded, and said, “All You have described is justly placed,” there was a respectful judgment within his voice, or so I felt, taking it in through the exquisite ears of my Father whose pleasure in His own description was thereby not lessened. He quickly said, “You, of course, were there:’

  Menenhetet nodded.

  “In the retinue of Rama-Nefru?”

  “In Her Household Guard,” said my great-grandfather. “No one of the Three Great Consorts was there the first day, not Nefertiri, nor Esonefret, nor Rama-Nefru, but I was at the head of the men of Her Hittite ranks, and there was much discomfort when I walked by the few officers of the Royal Guard of Amen-khep-shu-ef who were in the city. Even if the Prince had not yet arrived in Thebes, they were here, and it was clear they knew His opinion of me. That was so ugly I told myself not to enter any bar where they might be drinking during these five nights of celebration, unless I wanted to be beaten half to death.”

  “Yet it is these matters,” said Ptah-nem-hotep with new delight, “that I wish to hear, for they concern subjects a scribe is not trained to express.”

  “I will respect Your desire,” said my great-grandfather. His eyes did not move from the sight of us on our couch.

  “Was what I told of this procession without error?”

  “It is better than my memory,” said Menenhetet. “On that day I saw only what was near me, but You see it all.”

  “Still, you must think, I am certain, of matters I failed to tell, or did not know to tell.”

  “Only the smallest incident,” said Menenhetet. “It is amusing now For I can say that the procession through the streets of these shops is true as You have told it, but the last street before the Square of the Boatbuilders passed by a corner of the Whores’ Quarters—which were larger by far in those days than now. A great jeering burst forth from those women. They were sitting in their windows when the little queens went by, and might never have recognized them (since each little queen was dressed like a Princess and rode in a gold carriage) if not that all the little queens were together with their children and no men were near. Besides, I confess it, the little queens looked as merry as whores. They had passed before the vast admiration of half the men of Thebes and were so unaccustomed to such warm looks that their cheeks were flushed redder than paint.”

  “Was there a scandal at the outburst?” asked Ptah-nem-hotep.

  “No, the jeers from the Whores’ Quarter were soon overcome by the most frantic sizzling of the sistrums and the loudest pounding of the drums in our procession, and we quickly went on, just as You say, down to the Royal Quay to meet the Sacred Barge of Ptah.”

  “You must inform Me of anything that took place about which I do not know. For it is My wish to enter these five days and breathe with the heart of Usermare.”

  “I understand all that You say,” said my great-grandfather. He looked again with cold eyes, powerful in their certainty, at each of the three of us, and said, “I will serve.”

  “Spoken like a Vizier,” said Ptah-nem-hotep.

  My great-grandfather touched his forehead to his fingertips. “I will serve,” he repeated.

  Now, my Father began to speak of the acts of Usermare on the first day of the Godly Triumph. As the Pharaoh and the front of His procession reached the riverbank, the cheers were larger than any sound heard in Thebes for many years. Half the city must have been waiting for the other half to arrive and this ovation was even greater than the great cheer that had gone up two months ago when the obelisk had arrived after its long trip down river from the quarries near the First Cataract. Now, in the five days before the first day of the Godly Triumph that commenced on this dawn, the High Priest, the Vizier, and even Usermare had gone out in smaller processions to meet the greatest of the multitude of Gods arriving, and had once more received much acclamation. Indeed, for all of these five days of preparation, large crowds had been gathering again and again on the banks to watch the Gods being removed from Their cabins, carried to shore and brought up the avenues to the Court of the Great Ones on the shoulders of Their priests who staggered from the weight of palanquins that had to carry not only the God but the burden of His traveling shrine, often built in the shape of a small boat. According to the wealth of the temple, these boats were made of gold or of silver or merely of bronze inlaid with gold, and were heavy. Depending on the customs of each God, some were exposed to the throngs in the Court of the Great Ones, and some were never seen, the doors to Their shrine remaining sealed, but whether the God was well known in Thebes, or from a faraway nome with none but poor, sweaty, bedraggled priests to bear Him on their much-used shoulders, a horde of children and beggars would always follow such minor Gods through the city. One crowd had never ceased to be great over the last two months. That was the mob about the obelisk. Its progress on rollers up the large slopes from the Quay to the Court was, to be certain, not quick, but there had been fascination for everyone watching because of its length and the silent wisdom of its black granite, impervious to all sights and smells.

  Now, however, the Sacred Barge of Ptah was arriving, and no God who had come to Thebes in all of these days was so mighty as Ptah of Memphi. His boat, even as seen in the river, was as long as the great barge User-Hat of Amon, the Strong Heart of Amon, and it would have taken a man seventy long steps down the quay to equal its length.

  Actually, it had sailed the last few bends to Thebes during the night, and tied up in the early morning to wait for the arrival of the Pharaoh. Runners between the boat and the procession had been going back and forth since dawn, but now, even as Usermare came forward to the Quay, so did the Barge of Ptah come around the last turn and gleam upon the water as if the God we
re standing in its masts. All of its cabin and its spars, its rudder, and even its oars were made of gold or covered with gold leaf, and there was much music on the riverbank and many cries of joy. Those who could see told others of the beauty of its cedar wood and the gold on its cabin inlaid with precious stones, but then Usermare had chosen His route this morning through the congestion of the craftsmen’s shops rather than proceeding down the great avenues to the river because He had wished to give homage to the multitude of Ptah’s works and skills in the city of Thebes.

  Usermare stood by the stone hawser on the Royal Quay as the Sacred Barge came near, and He caught the mooring rope. Even those who were too far away to see still cheered, and the ladies and nobles in the golden carriages stood to applaud. The High Priest standing by the palanquin that carried the silver shrine of Ptah sang a hymn, then broke the seal, threw back the bolts, opened the doors, and before the eyes of the crowd, brought forth the God, holding Him in his arms.

  He was no larger than a doll, but Ptah had limbs that moved, and His black lips and golden chin could open and close upon His golden face. Courtiers from the ranks of Usermare came forward and laid fine wines and fruits and roast-meats and goose in a semicircle of plates about the High Priest of Ptah and the God he held on the Quay, while Usermare knelt, and said, “We, of the Temple of Amon, offer food and drink to the Great God Ptah.” The God stared back at Usermare and looked upon the food, and His golden eyelids blinked to give assent. Like all divine beings, He needed sustenance. He had now obtained it. For even as a God may create what He wishes by calling forth its name, so could He eat by gazing upon His food.