The Women and the Boatman

by Mark Gajewski

  I followed him again, this time along a path on the very crest of the ridge. The river sparkled to my right, lined on its far bank with rich green fields. Wadis and stark desert were to my left, beyond the settlement. We passed through a section of much finer houses than the huts surrounding them; I assumed they belonged to traders and the men who employed craftsmen. Plumes of smoke rose from one area down the slope, likely where workshops were located.

  The huts on the southern edge of Maadi were much like those on the northern. Again, Setau guided me through them. “You’ll find ceramics, tools and raw materials from the Northern lands here,” he said.

  The first hut contained jars filled with carnelian beads, all with holes drilled so they could be easily strung. Carnelian was an exceptionally hard stone, and drilling was a labor intensive process.

  “This jar holds figurines carved from hippo ivory,” Setau said. “Hippos roam the delta in great numbers. They wade from the water onto land to graze at night. Some delta men hunt them full–time on behalf of craftsmen who live at Farkha and carve these figures.” He pointed to another. It was filled with a blue stone I’d never seen before. “Lapis lazuli. It comes from a single land in the North, many months travel from here. And so it’s correspondingly expensive.” Another jar held obsidian.

  We stepped outside the hut. Stacked on its far side were exceptionally fragrant logs, each of them far longer and straighter and bigger around than any tree that grew in the valley.

  “Cedar,” Setau named it. “The trees grow on the slopes of low mountains along the seacoast in the vicinity of Byblos, a port in a land called Retenu. I’ve seen logs more than twenty feet long. That’s as large as most boats can transport.”

  I gave a low whistle. I’d never been near a log a quarter that size my entire life. Wait until I told Dedi.

  We entered a hut crammed with rows of large earthenware jars, all with ledge feet and handles.

  Setau pried the lid off one. “Olive oil,” he said, inviting me to dip a finger inside and taste it. “Enhances the flavor of food.” He moved to another row. “This is resin.”

  It was similar to the resin we boatmen obtained from local trees and used to seal seams in our boats, but this was richer and far more aromatic. Better suited for use as a cosmetic.

  We stepped inside a third hut. “These jars hold wine,” Setau said. “It’s a drink much like beer, only stronger and much more flavorful, made from a fruit called grapes that grow on mountainous slopes in the North and in the desert oases. I promise you’ll taste some tonight.”

  “I look forward to it. I must admit, Setau, what you have here at Maadi will greatly interest Nekhen’s elites.”

  “Good!” Setau said with delight. “Now, let’s go visit a couple of workshops. You can watch craftsmen turn out finished products.”

  Setau led me towards the section in the southeast corner of the settlement from which smoke was rising. We approached a workshop to the rhythmic music of stone pounding stone, not unlike that I was used to from the stone carver’s workshop at Nekhen. A horde of men were working beneath sunscreens, shaping chunks of stone with stone and copper hammers, drilling it, polishing it. Great piles of raw stone were everywhere, in different shapes and colors and types, some sparkling as crystals within caught the sunlight.

  “This is Khaba. He operates these works,” Setau said, introducing me. “I’m off to arrange the meeting with the other traders. Khaba, bring our visitor to Nabaru’s house for dinner. Make sure to visit Haran on the way.”

  “I make vases,” Khaba said after Setau departed. He showed me to the piles of raw materials.

  “Where do you get your stone?”

  “The nearby valley and the deserts, primarily in the East,” he said. “My men quarry it and haul it here on my donkeys.” He pointed to piles, one after another, named the types. “Basalt, limestone, porphyry, breccia, calcite, serpentine, rock crystal, gabbro, granite.”

  We moved to the nearest sunscreen. Khaba bent and picked up a vase, completely smooth, shiny, embedded with veins in intricate patterns. He handed it to me.

  “This is the most beautiful stone vase I’ve ever seen,” I told him.

  “As you can see, my vases have extremely thin walls. They’re carefully finished and highly polished. Why, if you light a flame inside one made of calcite, you can see it through the stone.”

  “Your craftsmen are masters,” I said appreciatively.

  “Each has worked for me for a decade or more. Each has a number of apprentices laboring at his side. They make vases and cosmetic containers, for the most part.”

  “How do you hollow out the interiors?” I asked.

  We stepped over to a workman, peered over his shoulder. He was twirling a drill between his palms, its end deep inside a partially hollowed vase. He lifted the drill. It was a piece of bent wood, fitted with a flint bit at one end and stone weights at the top. He put a few pinches of powder into the vase, then reinserted the drill and began twirling it again.

  “That’s powdered quartz,” Khaba said. “It’s an abrasive. It eats away the interior of the vase as the bit rubs against the stone. It takes two full work days to hollow out a single vase, several more to polish it inside and out.”

  My attention was drawn to a craftsman working on a palette such as those we used at Nekhen to grind cosmetics. The mudstone on my boat was going to prove valuable here, for that was its usual purpose. The palette was already partially decorated with an image I’d never seen before – some kind of monster, with stars in place of its head and hands and two more protruding from its midsection. “What in the world is that?” I asked Khaba.

  “An image from a land called Gezira, far to the north and east of the river,” he said. “Gezira itself nestles in the arms of two long rivers, on a flat plain dotted with large settlements. The land lacks raw materials – they have no wood or metal or lapis lazuli or obsidian. Many decades ago those settlements established colonies in the lands along the seacoast, bases from which to acquire the raw materials they need and transfer them back to their homelands. Their traders travel by boat to Pe and Dep, twin hamlets along one of the river’s branches near the seacoast. Those hamlets trade the objects they obtain from the Gezirians with us, and vice versa. We carve Gezerian images onto our stone objects to increase their value when we trade them.” Khaba bent and picked up a hand–sized cylinder made of white stone next to one the craftsman was using as a model. “This is a cylinder seal.” Khaba moved a few steps to a flat length of wood covered with a thin layer of clay, rolled the seal across it. He showed the wood to me. “Rolling the seal over the clay leaves behind an impression of what’s carved on the stone. You can clearly see the image.”

  I studied the clay closely. On it were two beasts, each with an elongated neck. “These aren’t anything like the animals we paint on pottery at Nekhen,” I said. “We only show ones that exist in this valley.”

  “This is a winged griffin, and this is a panther,” Khaba explained, pointing to each in turn. “Perhaps they actually exist in Gezira. Or maybe they’re imaginary. Who can say?” He indicated the clay again. “See the lines above and below the beasts? The lines frame them, as if they’re standing between the earth and the sky. You know how chaotic pottery is, the images drawn randomly, sized differently, facing different directions, turned at different angles?”

  “As is tradition, going back to a time beyond memory,” I said.

  “On these seals the space between the lines has a defined start and end. All the images are created at the same scale. Scenes unfold in order.”

  “Yes. I see it,” I said.

  “When a potter draws on pots, he draws the outline of an image,” Khaba continued. “But when you roll a stone seal across clay it leaves an impression of the entire image behind, not just its outline. It occurred to me recently I could transfer that concept from clay to stone. My best craftsman is creating this palette as an experiment. See how he’s grinding down the stone around t
he image so it stands up from the surface?”

  “Very interesting and unique.” I swept my eyes around the works. “You support all these craftsmen and their families?” I asked.

  Khaba nodded. “I exchange vases and cylinders and containers and other objects for food and clothing for my workmen. You’ll find the same at Maadi’s other workshops, and among the traders.”

  The same as at Nekhen. “You said you transport stone on your own donkeys?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “At Nekhen one man owns all the donkeys. He transports all goods on land for everyone. Another – the man I work for – transports all goods by water on his boats. Very efficient.”

  “Interesting idea,” Khaba said thoughtfully.

  I spent another half hour inspecting his works.

  “Now we’ll visit Haran’s smithy,” Khaba said. “He works copper.”

  Thick columns of smoke rose from a workshop not far distant. As we neared, the musical ringing of numerous metal objects being pounded into shape with metal tools rapidly increased in volume. We entered a compound. On the right was a large mud–plastered reed house I assumed was Haran’s. To its left was a long structure, an open–sided rectangular wood frame thickly roofed with palm fronds to provide shade. Men were sitting inside it, beating copper into vessels and objects of various sizes and shapes using hammers of copper and stone. Nearby were large piles of charcoal and tinder and split acacia logs, as well as wood waste and, most importantly, a large pile of rectangular and oval copper ingots. Dominating the compound were three shimmering furnaces, their interiors blazing orange and yellow, belching thick smoke into the sky. Men were moving about the furnaces, drenched with sweat, some feeding fuel into the fires, others pouring molten metal into clay molds of various sizes and shapes, and crucibles. I stepped into a virtual wall of heat.

  “This is Haran,” Khaba said, introducing the man who came forward to meet us.

  Haran was obviously from one of the northern lands. A beard framed his jaw and his hair was shoulder length and curly. He had the most massive arms and chest I’d ever seen, probably from years spent working with ore. He greeted me pleasantly, his words heavily accented. No doubt he was used to strange traders inspecting his works. He strolled with us to the furnace on the left.

  “These men are turning small copper ingots into larger ones,” he said. “First they melt the ingots brought to Maadi by nomads. As you can see, they have to continuously feed their fire with charcoal to keep the heat up. Those men stepping on leather bellows are blowing air into the furnace to make the fire burn hotter. When the copper reaches the proper temperature it melts and becomes liquid. Whatever impurities remain from the original smelting burn off. We remove the liquid copper from the furnace, pour it into molds, let them cool. Then we remove the ingots from the molds.” He pointed to a waist–high pile a little to the left of the furnace area.

  I’d never imagined so much copper existed in the whole world.

  Haran led us to the next furnace. “We load many of the ingots onto donkeys and boats and trade it along the seacoast,” he said. “But we also resmelt some so my craftsmen can make smaller objects.” He showed us a number of containers, all filled to the brim. “Axe heads, chisels, awls, fish hooks, needles, pins. Anything that can be made in stone or that appears in nature my craftsmen can duplicate, only stronger and sharper and more durable.”

  I moved to where a young man about my age was bent over a long narrow object with sharp teeth along one edge. He was attaching a wood handle at one end, fastening it in place with copper pins.

  “I’m Heth,” he said as I sat beside him.

  “What’s that?”

  “A saw. Our carpenters use it to cut wood.” He handed me one he’d already finished assembling.

  I inspected it, ran my thumb across its cutting surface. The blade was incredibly thin compared to the flint saws we used in the boatyard, and sharp. Excitedly, I realized with a saw like this working with wood would be extraordinarily easy. Not only to make the chairs and boxes and other household items Nekhen’s carpenters struggled to shape with flint tools, but large items… like planks to construct boats.

  I looked around, spotted a section of tree trunk lying atop and perpendicular to two others nearby. “May I try it?” I asked.

  Heth shrugged. “Go ahead.”

  I put one foot on the log to hold it steady, then sawed a length of wood from it. The surfaces of the resulting disk were smooth, not jagged. I sawed another disk, then another, each thinner than the one before. Half an hour later I was drenched with sweat, my right arm was aching, and a dozen beautiful slices of wood lay at my feet. I handed the saw back to Heth. This changes everything! With a copper saw and copper axes and copper drills I can build a boat of wood! All I need is copper… and someone to transform it into tools. I studied the unsuspecting Heth speculatively.

  Then my thoughts turned to Nekhen – and Rawer. What if he someday regained Dedi’s trust, and the fleet? He’d dismiss me from the boatyard. The path I’d embarked upon at Dedi’s behest, one that had raised me to a new station in life, would have cost me everything. Without boats my ability to help Abar pursue Dedi’s quest would be dead. Unless… with copper, and a man who knew how to manipulate it, I could create an entirely new industry at Nekhen, mirroring the one here at Maadi. Not just new, but one I could envision most of the elites coming to rely on almost immediately. What craftsman’s job wouldn’t be easier wielding copper tools instead of stone? Right before my eyes was a way to free myself from ever having to worry about Rawer again, a way that could eventually generate wealth enough to make me one of Nekhen’s elites and perhaps give me economic clout equal to his. I wasn’t going to waste this chance. Instead of returning to Nekhen with copper tools, I was going to return with copper ore.

  I ate that night at the house of Nabaru, one of the Northern traders who’d settled at Maadi. His house was unlike any I’d ever seen before – perhaps twenty feet in circumference, set six feet deep into the ground, its light roof held up by heavy wood posts, a hearth in its center, smoke curling through a hole in the ceiling, sleeping areas and food preparation areas to the sides. A steep ramp led down into the interior from the entrance. The place was crowded with the traders Setau had assembled. He met me at the foot of the ramp, another man by his side, in appearance similar to Haran.

  “This is Nabaru. He deals in wine,” Setau said.

  “Welcome to my home. Sit. Eat. Drink. After, we will trade,” Nabaru said, his voice also thickly accented.

  I seated myself on a reed mat on the floor to one side of the other traders. They were talking and laughing amongst themselves; all were obviously acquainted. Several of Nabaru’s daughters and his woman were circulating around the room, offering bread and meat and fruits and vegetables from bowls and platters. One girl, exceptionally pretty, probably no more than twelve years old, gangly, long–legged, offered me a cup of dark liquid.

  “Wine,” she said, smiling, regarding me with glittering black eyes.

  I couldn’t help staring – her red hair tumbled nearly to her waist in long loose curls. I’d never seen any quite like it before. I took the cup, sipped the wine cautiously. It was the best thing I’d ever tasted – sweet, with a bit of a bite. I took a longer drink.

  “I’m Bakist.” Boldly, she sat cross–legged next to me. “Papa used to make wine when he was a boy. His family had a vineyard on the slope of a mountain overlooking the sea.”

  “In the North?”

  “A land called Retenu. Fifteen years ago he settled in Farkha, in the delta. That’s where I was born. My half–brother still lives there – he oversees Papa’s operation. Farkha’s a hamlet near one of the western branches of the river, at the edge of a vast marsh and many lagoons. It’s only nine miles from the Wadjet Wer – close enough you can smell the salt tang in the air.”

  “You’ve been to the Wadjet Wer?”

  “Of course. So many times I’ve lost count. Pap
a takes me everywhere. I even went to Retenu with one of his caravans once. I’m the reason he makes so many profitable trades.”

  Bakist’s self–assurance was amusing. “Is that right.”

  She bristled. “Why is that so hard to believe? Because I’m a girl?”

  I was used to competent women. Abar came to mind. And Amenia. “No. Because you’re so young.”

  “You’re not so old yourself.”

  I liked Bakist’s confidence in her abilities, and how she stuck up for herself. There was something of Abar’s fire in her. “Point taken.”

  “Anyway, the grapes grow on vines. At harvest time they pick them and dump them in large round wood vats. Then they stomp on the grapes with their feet and catch the juice that comes out. They collect it in jars, then seal them. The wine ferments over time. Papa imports it from the neighboring families he grew up with.”

  I quickly finished my cup and Bakist poured another from an earthenware jar. “You seem to know an awful lot about wine making.”

  “I helped with the pressing the time I went to Retenu.”

  “When did you move to Maadi?”

  “When I was five. We need to be where the traders are to trade effectively, don’t you agree?”

  “We?”

  “I told you I help Papa.”

  I took another sip of wine. “Does this all come from your father’s homeland?”

  “Mostly. Nomads bring him wine from oases in the western desert too. They carry it overland to Farkha. Caravans that follow the coast trail from the North unload at Farkha as well – wine, almonds, olive oil, milk and cheese from goats. We transport the goods from Farkha to Maadi by boat – it’s two or three days travel by water. Papa’s trying to make wine of his own. A few years ago he planted a vineyard at Farkha. The vines are just starting to produce.”

  “You don’t have an accent like your father, Bakist,” I said.

  “My mother’s from the delta. This is my land.”

  “Your hair… I’ve never seen any that color.”