Khu: A Tale of Ancient Egypt

by Jocelyn Murray

  Over the centuries, flooding sometimes destroyed entire villages whose homes and workshops were built of mud-bricks. New villages were then built right on top of the remaining debris from the previous structures, so that with time, the newer villages rose higher on a kind of artificial mesa. But if the natural elements were not conspiring against those villages which managed to survive, raiders and disease often took whatever had been left.

  ***

  Somewhere inside the palace Khu stirred in his sleep. He tossed and turned in his bed as he sensed the danger lurking nearby. Then he awoke and sat up at once to seek out his mother Tem.

  “Are you certain?” Tem eyed Khu with doubt.

  She had been sleeping in the women’s quarters of the palace when the boy woke her. She had opened her eyes to find him standing quietly by her bedside. He was barefoot with nothing but a white linen loincloth wrapped about his bottom. His plaited sidelock of hair hung by his shoulder. The feeble light of the moon drifted in through the window cut high into the wall, but only seemed to accentuate the shadows draping the room. A ceramic oil lamp sat on a low table in a corner of the room, its reed wick unlit. No sounds echoed through the palace. No dogs barked in the night. It was deathly quiet.

  “Yes, Mother,” he nodded, “I am sure.”

  He was fidgeting. Tem had not seen him do this before. His usual calm demeanor was tense, and he picked at his fingers with a restlessness that unnerved her.

  Tem did not feel like moving. Hazy remnants of sleep numbed her senses with a thick sluggishness, and her limbs felt weighted by the resulting inertia. Her eyes were the first to move as they darted about the room, roaming over the wooden cabinet against the wall where her clothes were kept, then to a small table where an elegantly carved cosmetics box stored the miniature alabaster pot of kohl eyeliner she applied with a stick applicator to her eyelids each day, along with the green udju eye shadow made from ground malachite. Next to the box was an alabaster jar covered with a strip of leather to keep the oil-based perfume within from evaporating into the dry air. The cosmetics and perfumes were prized by the people for their mystical and healing powers. But even they could not stop evil from entering the hearts of men.

  Tem’s eyes finally came to rest on the window. Its reed shade lay rolled up on the ground below to allow the night air to circulate through the room. She took a deep breath, got out of bed, and lit the lamp’s wick before turning back to face her son.

  The lamp’s light reflected golden pools in Khu’s eyes. He looked upset, worried.

  Tem thought of what Khu had just told her while she slipped on a pair of leather sandals. She did not bother to change out of the simple linen dress she wore to sleep. Perhaps Khu was being plagued by frightening dreams, she thought to herself. Such things were common after traumatic events. Maybe his mind was reliving the horrors he had suffered before arriving here. Some dreams were a way of attempting to process certain things which could not be faced in the waking hours; a repository deep within the mind that would fracture when obstructed by repressed fears and memories too frightening to contain.

  “You do not believe me,” Khu shifted from one foot to the other. He closed his eyes a moment, lowering his head and swallowing hard. Then he drew himself up and opened his eyes again to look at Tem.

  Tem was watching him, her mind working. She was trying to decide whether to send the boy back to bed, or go and warn the king. But there was an urgency in Khu’s eyes that finally persuaded her into action.

  “I believe something is troubling you,” she admitted.

  “But you don’t know if it is just in my head.”

  Tem nodded.

  “And you aren’t sure what to tell the king.”

  She nodded again, and Khu looked away frustrated. He studied the small yellow flame of the oil lamp throwing large shapeless shadows on the wall. Then he turned back to her.

  “Tell him, Mother.” His voice was low and insistent. “Tell him.”

  Tem watched him with a curious expression, pursing her lips in indecision. “Very well,” she said after a short while.

  But she looked unsure. And as they left to tell the king, she hoped she had not made a mistake by believing Khu.

  Mentuhotep wasted no time in sending guards to investigate. He did not wish to take any chances, especially given the circumstances in the northern territories. He grabbed his dagger and tucked it in the strap tied about his kilt. But he paused before leaving the room, and turned around to face Tem and Khu once again.

  “Come with me, Khu,” he told the boy. “I want to know where the sounds came from.”

  Tem had told the king that it was Khu who informed her of the danger. Mentuhotep then simply assumed that the boy might have heard a noise. He was not yet aware of Khu’s heightened perception. Besides, if Tem had said so, the king might not have been convinced enough to believe them. He would have brushed them both away and sent them back to their quarters. People are far quicker to believe that which is experienced through the senses.

  Tem looked frightened when Mentuhotep told Khu to join him. She did not want any harm to befall her son. Khu looked up at Tem before moving toward his father. He could feel the anxiety within her, and he squeezed her hand reassuringly before stepping away.

  “I will keep him safe,” the king said, as he ran a hand over his smooth-shaven head in an anxious gesture. “Do not worry.”

  Tem was biting her lip behind her folded hands which she pressed against her mouth as though in prayer. But she said nothing. She simply nodded her head in a perfunctory bow before her child left with the king. Then she closed her eyes, touched the amulet hanging from her neck on a golden chain, and said a silent prayer to the gods for their protection.

  Mentuhotep was well aware of the dangers that had beset many of the settlements. Lower Egypt was not only divided from the kingdom of Upper Egypt, it was divided against itself. There had been as many pretenders ruling as there were scattered communities spreading out like the branches of the Nile Delta. And the thrones of those territory-kingdoms rested on foundations that were not unlike the soft silt and marshlands saturating the land. It was unstable and chaotic.

  The stability Egypt had once enjoyed, had disintegrated into a number of sepats—local territory divisions—at least in the north. And without political stability there had been much pillaging throughout those lands which had also been plagued by drought.

  The collapse of the unified kingdom had trickled down to all levels of the land. Tombs, temples and monuments had been pillaged and plundered. Canals lay broken, water-storage basins were in disrepair, dykes and ditches abandoned. The complex irrigation system which harnessed the floodwaters of the life-giving Nile had fallen into ruin, leaving the unruly northern territories impoverished.

  Bands of robbers and lawless tribes crawled throughout the region like the grain beetles and cockroaches which destroyed the stored cereals. They took whatever they pleased from whomever they chose, with little consequences. And Mentuhotep had no intention of letting the darkness that shrouded his northern neighbors creep over his own dominion.

  The men pulled their boat through the tall reeds of the riverbank and tied it to a stake. Somewhere in the distance a jackal howled and the men shivered as they touched the amulets hanging from their necks, in hopes that it was not an ill omen. The stars were a blanket of bright pin pricks pulled across the night sky. Frogs and crickets grew silent as the men pushed through the tall reeds growing in thick clusters by the water’s edge. One man stayed behind to guard the boat as the others followed the man who had been anxiously awaiting them on the shore. They moved slowly through the darkness, their daggers in hand.

  “How far?” one man asked.

  “Just follow me,” the leader instructed as he headed toward the village in front of the others. “But keep your distance. If any one of us should be caught, we do not know each other.” He glanced back at the others, pausing to make sure they understood. “I will deny everything,�
�� he continued. “I will deny ever seeing you, and deny having any knowledge of these acts,” he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, then over his shaved head in a nervous gesture. His was the only shaved head in the group. The other men wore their hair cropped just above their shoulders, as most of the laborers, peasants and skilled workers did. “And if you know what is good for you, you had better do the same.”

  “We know the plan,” the first man retorted, wanting to silence the leader.

  “We swore by blood,” another reminded him.

  But the leader only grumbled and dismissed their replies with a wave of his hand. He trusted no one, blood or no blood. Relying on others was an unavoidable nuisance that sometimes proved necessary.

  The land rose muddy above the marshes, then dipped beneath an outcrop of wild grasses before smoothing out before them. The thatched vegetation carpeted a plain where sycamore, mimosas and doum palms dotted the expanse. The goats, sheep and cattle which normally grazed here during the day, had been safely corralled for the night. Flame trees were in full bloom, though their fiery red flowers were lost to the darkness, while the low hanging branches of willow trees caressed the ground like long feathered strands in the soft breeze. An owl hooted its forlorn call, and somewhere another owl responded, prompting some of the men to touch their amulets again.

  The men walked past several plowed fields and onto a road leading through one of the entrances in the walled village. Houses and workshops of every kind spread out in large orderly blocks divided by narrow streets which were deserted at this late hour. The palace lay farther south, and was separated from the village by a short road that led to an entrance in the wall enclosing the great compound and its private gardens.

  Somewhere a dog barked but then fell silent again. A cat darted out from the shadows, crossing their path before it disappeared into the darkness. The men continued until they arrived to one of the structures housing the grain. They were planning to use the large coarsely woven linen sacks kept inside by the vats to transport the precious cereals back to the boat. There were no windows cut into the wall facing this side of the street. And keeping by the building, they crept farther into the village like serpents through the deep shadows hiding the moon’s wan light.

  The king’s guards were roaming outside the palace walls with torches to illuminate their path. They had first combed the private gardens where vines and fruit trees grew in manicured splendor around the ponds stocked with fish, before stepping beyond the gate. The gatekeeper was not at his post, and Mentuhotep assumed he had left to join the guards searching for the interlopers.

  “Where is Odji?” the king inquired of the missing gatekeeper, when they stepped away from the abandoned post.

  “Searching the grounds perhaps, Lord King,” a guard said.

  Khu just kept close to the king’s side as they followed the guards.

  “Which way, son?” the king asked the boy. Khu simply lifted his chin northwards toward the adjacent village.

  A few of the guards had gone ahead when one shouted a warning. “Over here! Stop! Stop in the name of Amun who sees all in darkness and light. Stop!”

  But the man he called out to didn’t stop. He scurried away in the darkness like a nocturnal thing living in the realm of the shadows.

  “Go, go, run!” one of the thieves shouted when they saw they had been discovered.

  “Split up!” another ordered.

  The thieves dispersed to take cover within the village. They sprinted down the streets, cutting through narrow alleyways, and running between some of the tightly packed workshops and homes arranged in ordered blocks, all the while puzzling over how anyone could have seen or heard them when no sound had been made. They had been as quiet as the dead lying in their tombs.

  But not anymore.

  Some of the villagers heard the commotion and woke up to the sounds of screams and chases. A dog began to howl, others barked, and somewhere a baby cried.

  “Wait here!” a man warned his wife as she held a small child to her bosom. The man peeked out of the mud-brick home adjacent to the blacksmith shop where he worked, when he saw a guard running down the street.

  “Stay back!” the guard shouted to the man before turning a corner.

  A few of the villagers hurried up to the roofs of their homes, climbing the side staircases built against the exterior walls of their houses. It was where they slept during those times when the heat proved too stifling to stay inside. They gathered their families safely above where they also hoped to get a better view of the commotion on the streets below.

  One of the guards saw a man crouching in the darkness by a date palm before scrambling up a wall and disappearing through a window. The man had entered a bakery’s storage room which sat across the road from the grain storage houses. His heart pounded as he waved his hands blindly before him so as not to bump into anything in the dark. The nutty aroma of emmer, barley and yeast clung to the room where bread was stored after being baked outside over a fire in the ceramic bedja—large, bell-shaped bread pots. The man was perspiring. He felt like a rat trapped in a large clay pot, with a cat circling by. He tripped, knocking the back of his head against something hard, and a ceramic pot crashed to the ground.

  “Don’t move!” the guard yelled as he climbed through the window after the man.

  The thief was still on the ground, feeling around for something he could use as a weapon. He lifted one of the bedja with both hands. It was heavy. Then he threw it toward the guard, but missed, and it fell with a loud clatter and broke. He used the momentary distraction to find his way to a doorway, before he slipped out of the room and escaped.

  Two other thieves were running across the rooftops, jumping from one to another of the closely spaced buildings. They were heading west, back towards the river that waited under the pale moonlight. They crouched low and kept away from the side of the block bordering the street so no one would see them.

  Someone lunged at them from the shadows, but they were too fast, fueled by the adrenaline of fright. It was one of the villagers—a craftsman—who had gone up to the roof to sleep in the open air where it was cooler than inside. His wife remained asleep below with their young son.

  The thieves kept going, running across three more rooftops before one of them tripped over a clay pot, nearly falling over the side of the building. The other man almost left him in his haste, but then turned to help him up. They continued on, taking better care to watch their footing, especially around the center of the roofs which opened up in a kind of atrium from the floor below, for much-needed ventilation.

  Most of the houses were simple structures with two or three rooms. The main living area was in the front, while the kitchen lay at the back where grain was ground into flour, the flour was sifted, and food was prepared. No cooking was done inside due to the heat, but rather outside over an open fire, or in the case of the larger upper-class homes, on top of the roof in clay ovens before it was brought back downstairs. The different classes of people were mixed together in the towns so that the larger white-washed upper-class houses stood two or three stories next to the simpler laborers’ homes.

  The two thieves finally made it to the edge of the village, and paused to look down over the side of one of the single-story structures over which they had fled. No guards were in sight, and they were anxious to get away.

  “Jump down!” one whispered urgently. “Hurry, we are almost there.”

  “You jump,” the other said. His ankle was hurting from having tripped and fallen over the clay pot recently. “I’ll take the stairs.”

  The first man leaped over the side after a moment of hesitation. He landed safely on his feet like a cat, and pressed his back against a wall in the shadows to avoid being seen. He ran a hand across his forehead, wiping away the dirt-streaked sweat from dripping into his eyes. When his accomplice caught up to him, they took off toward the wall surrounding the village. Its exit waited just beyond a row of date palms casting monstro
us shadows in the murky light of the moon.

  “To the boat!” one said as they left the trouble behind them.

  His partner hesitated, looking back toward the village. “What about the others?”

  “That is their problem. We must go! Remember the plan,” and they took off toward the river waiting beyond the fields.

  Inside the village, the chase was still on as the remaining thieves sought cover from the guards.

  “Over there!” a guard pointed when he caught sight of one man. “Stop! You are surrounded!”

  The thief was sneaking up a ladder propped against a wall, which led to the rooftop of one of the mud-brick workshops when he slipped and fell on his own knife, cutting himself badly in the lower belly. The guard caught up to the injured man and thrust the tip of his spear at his throat. He kicked the injured man’s knife out of reach, and it skittered several paces away on the ground.

  “I’m hurt,” the helpless man mumbled in pain.

  “Don’t move,” hissed the guard, “unless you wish to die, and you want your remains thrown in the desert for the jackals to feast upon.”

  The thief swallowed hard against the pain from his injury. Blood trickled down his neck from the prick of the guard’s spear point. He lay on the ground, sprawled on his back, his arms up by his head in surrender. He closed his eyes and exhaled in defeat.

  The king caught up to the guard and injured thief, with Khu following closely behind.