by Jerry Dubs
“Hepu is here, Governor Seni,” he whispered.
“Yes, yes,” Seni answered, rolling on his side and grunting to push his legs from his low wooden bed. Sabestet offered his arm and Seni pulled himself to his feet.
“I need to piss,” Seni said, his voice hoarse from sleep.
Sabestet nodded. Shuffling to match his pace to Seni’s, Sabestet led him to a chamber pot painted with a picture of Seth.
As Seni trickled into the pot, Sabestet discreetly pulled the linen rag from his waist and covered his face again. Taking a long, soothing draught of the myrrh, he turned back to Seni and said, “Hepu has arranged everything in your waiting room. He said the ritual must be complete before Re appears.”
Seni shook his penis one last time, wiped his hand on his scrawny thigh, and straightened his back to look more formal. “Then we must not keep the priest waiting,” he said, moving with more energy now as he walked naked toward the waiting room.
The chamber was lit with oil lamps sitting on the floor. The flames burned steadily in the still air as Seni walked to a low chair that was placed near the center of the room. As he sat, Sabestet moved behind him and stood at his left shoulder.
“I am here, Mistress of Life,” Seni said in a loud voice. “Tell me what awaits.”
As he squinted into the dim room there was a sudden stamping of feet. He saw movement along the far wall. He didn’t need to count the bodies, he knew there would be seven ... seven Hathors, here to reveal his future.
One of the shadows detached itself from the wall and walked toward him, each footstep accented by the rattle of sistrums. Now a flute began to play a slow, solemn tune and the shadow stepped within the circle of lamps and was revealed. The goddess Hathor was naked, wearing only a small headdress that held two curved horns. In her right hand she gripped a curved ivory tusk, its surface covered with etchings.
Tall and thickset, Hathor began to dance. Her dark, oiled body reflected the lamp flames as she moved with languid steps. Behind her the six shadows drifted closer to the circle of light and Seni saw now that the other dancers wore Hathor’s cow headdress, too, but they were darker, their dusky skins covered with black powder. The six shadows began to stamp their feet in rhythm and Seni leaned forward, drawn by the staccato claps and the sad melody of the flute.
Hathor approached Seni with strange, mechanical steps, her lower legs leading her body as her hips lagged behind, then rolled forward. Standing only an arm’s length from Seni, the goddess began to stroke her hanging breasts with her free hand, sliding the palm slowly over the dark, erect nipples. Then her hand slid slowly down her belly, the fingertips creating trails in the oil that covered her round stomach.
Suddenly she turned her back to Seni and bent forward. In the faint light Seni saw the tip of the ivory tusk slide toward her hidden gateway. Her legs seemed to pull at the tusk, which began to move with the rhythm that grew faster. A harp joined the flute, sending minor notes into the air. Little more than a melodic whisper, the notes died as they drifted across the room.
Hathor stood upright and slowly turned to face Seni, her eyes half closed, her mouth half open as she moved her hips. Behind her the six shadows slapped their feet faster against the stone floor and they began to moan lightly.
Seni’s own breathing grew ragged and his heartbeat raced as it matched the quickening slap of the shadow dancers’ feet. Hathor undulated closer and Seni could see sweat beading atop the oil on her skin as she stood before him and opened her hips.
Her left hand slowly moved between her parted legs and, as Seni watched, she brought her right hand lower and lower. The gleaming curved tusk glowed with light and he saw now that the carvings were ankhs, some complete, some with broken arms, some with the looping head missing.
Hathor parted her lower lips with her left hand and guided the tip of the horn into herself. As the tusk slowly disappeared the shadow dancers behind Hathor began to howl. The harp echoed their screams with streams of discordant notes, the sistrum rattled faster and the shadow dancers stamped their feet as the tusk moved in and out of Hathor.
She was panting now, lost to the music, lost to the pleasure, lost to the rhythm.
Watching her, Seni knew that she was with the gods now, her ka merging with theirs. He gripped the arms of his chair hard to anchor himself to the living world.
Hathor’s moans grew louder, her panting faster and the ivory tusk moved from one world to the other, and then she shivered into a spasm. Opening her eyes as she returned to this world, she withdrew the tusk and held it above her head with both hands.
Hepu was with her now, his dark skin covered with magical markings. The priest reached up to take the gleaming ivory from her hands and as he touched her the harp stopped, the shadows froze and Hathor stared at Seni, her glazed eyes looking at him from the other world.
Then the goddess’ ka departed and the woman standing before Seni became a woman and nothing more. Her eyes darted about the room, surprised to find herself there, and then she turned and walked away. As the shadow dancers and the harpist followed her from the chamber the sistrum began a slow rattle.
Hepu turned his lanky frame toward Seni. In his left hand he held the gleaming ivory, in his right he held a two-tailed lizard. His face frozen in prayer and concentration, Hepu knelt and laid the ivory on the warm stone. As he stood, three boys scurried close to him, each carrying a clay pot. Overturning the pots, they dumped glowing embers on the stone floor to form a circle around Hepu.
When they were finished, Hepu stepped outside the embers that encircled the curved ivory tusk. Then he dropped the two-tailed lizard within the circle.
The lizard sat unmoving for a moment and then, moving away from the hot embers, it approached the tusk. As it limbed onto the ivory Seni leaned forward.
Flicking its tongue, the lizard crawled slowly, searching for the ankh that was Seni's destiny. Finally it settled, lowering its body onto the ivory and resting its head on a fully formed ankh.
As Seni breathed in a deep sigh of relief, Hepu pointed a narrow iron rod into the circle of light. The tip of the rod came to rest at the juncture of the two tails, aimed at an ankh there.
The priest flicked his wrist to prod the lizard away from the ivory. Moving, it revealed the hidden ankh. Although it was black, the arms and body filled in, the head was missing.
Hepu looked at Seni with the confident eyes of a seer.
“Death is near.”
- 0 -
That evening, as Re settled beyond the western desert of Ta-Seti, Seni sat on the same chair in the same chamber. Beside him was a table with a bottle of wine. A golden goblet sat beside it. Two other bottles, empty now, sat on the floor.
Sabestet lifted the wine bottle, tipped its mouth to the goblet and emptied it. Then he placed the bottle on the floor beside the others and shifted his weight from one foot to the other, waiting. Always waiting. Some evenings Seni would drink until he fell from his chair. Other evenings he would stop abruptly and stalk to his bed chamber. Tonight he was drinking more slowly and Sabestet wondered if he would be standing beside the chair all night.
Seni picked up the goblet, swirled the wine and then took a small sip.
The smooth liquid lay in his mouth, rolled across his tongue and down his throat, but he didn’t feel it. Seni didn’t mind dying; he welcomed it. He wanted to rejoin his love.
But first he wanted revenge.
- 0 -
Forty years ago they had played together in a canal that fed the garden pond behind Mut-Nofret’s father’s house in Sunet near the southern border of the Two Lands. They had been eight years old, Seni remembered as he absently swirled the wine in the near empty goblet.
It had been evening, he thought, but perhaps earlier because there was still some light. No, he told himself, there was always light when I was young. I had the eyes of an owl. And Mut-Nofret, she had the eyes of a cat. Knowing, playful, inquisitive, fearless.
She had taken his hand. They had
grown up in neighboring homes and had touched before, playing tag, chasing one another, climbing, swimming.
But never a touch like this, he thought.
There had been adventure in this touch.
She led him into the garden. Her carefree smile, always on her lips, was gone now. Her grip on his hand was tighter and he sensed a nervousness, something he had never felt before. They walked past the tall sycamore and tiptoed through a circle of jasmine and poppies to the inner path.
“Where are we going?” he asked and she shook her head and pulled him onward. She parted the long, hanging strands of a willow and pulled him to a secret place veiled by the green curtain.
Then she turned to face him. A few years later, when his growth had outpaced hers, she would need to stand on her toes to kiss him, but now she simply stepped close, leaned closer still and put her mouth on his.
They had never kissed. It was awkward and uncertain and more exciting than he could have imagined.
Remembering it, he ached for that same rush to course though him once more. Sighing, he tipped the wine goblet and drained it.
They had touched each other, exploring and asking and telling each other what each new sensation was like. The playfulness turned into something heavier and they felt a thickening in their throats and they wanted to do more, but they didn’t know what it was.
Soon it was dark and they knew without saying it aloud that they would repeat this whenever they could, learning from each other.
And they knew they would be together forever.
They coaxed secrets from older friends, they visited temples to find the hidden murals, they watched oxen try to mount each other and they mimicked everything, they touched and they laughed and they grew serious and they fell in love.
A year passed, and another. In two more he would lose his sidelock and be a man. She would begin to bleed and be a woman. They would marry. They would live together, touching and holding each other whenever they chose.
Another year went by and they were constantly together. He grew tall and strong. He studied in the temple, learning to read and working in the fields, learning the seasons and rhythm of life. She grew more and more beautiful. Her face glowed with the knowledge and happiness of a woman shining through young eyes.
Wet with sweat from their lovemaking, they would lie on the moss bed beneath the willow tree and plan their lives. He would become a scribe. In another year she would leave her father’s house to live with him. They would make love every night and every morning, they would create a family, grow old together, and bathe in the light of Re all of their days.
Re! Seni spit at the thought of his name. And all the other gods!
He spit again, bile in his throat. They play at cruelty.
For it was during a festival for the goddess Isis that it ended. Mut-Nofret had been chosen to portray the goddess as a virginal maiden before her marriage to Horus. Honored above all the other girls in the village, Mut-Nofret hadn’t pretended to be Isis, she had become the goddess.
Her beauty was obvious to all, especially to Pharaoh Thutmose who had deigned to attend the festival after hearing rumors of the young girl whose face shone like Re. Watching from the crowd, Seni had seen Thutmose’s eyes as he watched Mut-Nofret. He had watched Thutmose revel in her comely form and her burnished skin and the secret knowledge that shone from her eyes. And he saw Thutmose’s face change from desire to determination.
Time
“Where are we?” Imhotep asked Akila.
She looked across the brown water of the river Iteru at the passing desert and shook her head. Clusters of reeds grew along the water, catching dead leaves and gathering islands of algae. Beyond the reeds the dark mud slowly turned lighter as it climbed from the river to the saffron yellow of the sand. Each passing mile looked like the one before it.
“What do you mean?” she said.
A week had passed since their escape from Threshen’s army in the temple of Khnum. They had learned about Bata’s rise to become commander of Hatshepsut’s personal guard. They had learned about his twenty-seven years of devotion to Imhotep, trying to gain access to the false door every year.
Imhotep knew now that during the quicksilver moments when he had been cradling Meryt’s dying body decades had been passing for Maya, Hapu, and Bata. His little Maya had grown and married a physician named Pentu. She was now Keeper of the Wardrobe for Pharaoh Hatshepsut, although Neferhotep hadn’t been able to explain exactly what that meant.
Before leaving Abu, they had held a ceremony celebrating the new life that Bata and Meryt had in the eternal Field of Reeds. After the ceremony they had tested the false door one last time and found it to be nothing more than a stone carving on a stone wall; Bata had been able to paint over the hieroglyphs on the other side.
Then they had departed for Waset, capital of the Two Lands under the rule of Pharaoh Hatshepsut, Foremost of Noble Women, Divine of Appearances, Powerful of Kas, who had ascended the throne six years earlier and was regarded as Maat-ka-Re, ‘True One of the Ka of Re.’
“I mean, where in time? How are we here – in ancient Egypt – and not in the modern world, our time?” Imhotep asked in English.
They were sitting on benches just in front of a raised platform at the stern of one of three ships taking them downriver. Over their heads, three thick ropes made of halfa grass angled down from the mast to the ship’s deck, anchoring the tall cedar pole. A painted linen panel had been draped over the ropes to create a canopy for them.
Behind them a pilot stood on the raised stern, both hands on a long wooden rudder which he used to idly make slight adjustments to the ship’s course. Most of the piloting was done by the oarsmen themselves, eight men, four on each side of the boat, who subconsciously adjusted their strokes to guide the ship.
With a constant wind blowing against them, the ship’s mast was empty except for a pennant that streamed in the air.
“We tried several doors,” Akila answered, “using the symbols that you painted on the papyrus for us. But none would open. We were running out of paint and I worried that none of the false doors had survived to our era. So we tried fifty lifetimes instead of a hundred, and that didn’t work. So I asked Hapu to give me a different symbol.” She shrugged. “It worked.”
Imhotep shifted his weight on the bench and stared at the passing land.
“Nothing looks very different,” he said after a moment.
“No,” Akila agreed. “I had the same thought when Hapu and I came upriver from Ineb-Hedj. Once you are away from the cities, the landscape doesn’t look any different now that it did in our time.”
Nodding, Imhotep said, “I guess it really doesn’t matter what year it is. We do know that we’re living during the time of Hatshepsut, but I don’t know much about that era.”
He looked around the boat, at the rounded shoulders of the rowers, the polished wood of the deck, the curved prow that was capped with a lion’s head, Sehkmet, he guessed, looking protectively back into the boat.
“I’ve heard of Hatshepsut, or course ... ”
Akila smiled. “That’s like saying you’ve heard of Cleopatra or Marie Antoinette or Queen Elizabeth or Catherine the Great.” She shook her head.
“Hatshepsut was, or I suppose I should say is, one of the most famous female rulers in the world. Her mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri is famous, of course, and she sent an expedition to the Land of Punt. She was, or will be, one of the most successful of the ancient pharaohs, male or female.”
“Yes, I remember the temple, carved into the sandstone cliffs. I forgot that was hers.” Imhotep thought for a moment and then said, “I wonder what she'll be like? I mean, a woman holding power this long ago. She must be ruthless. Like Catherine the Great. I hope Hatshepsut is more like ... ” He paused as he considered the different female rulers Akila had mentioned. “I guess they all scare me in different ways,” he said sheepishly.
“So you’re more comfortable with male rulers? Like Gengh
is Khan or Stalin or Hitler?”
Imhotep laughed, embarrassed at his misogynistic prejudice. “You’re right, Akila. They all scare me. I guess I’m just afraid of powerful people.”
“That’s probably smart,” she agreed. Then she cocked her head and studied him for a moment. “You do know, don’t you, that you yourself are one of those powerful people?”
- 0 -
Re crossed the peak of the sky and began to angrily slide toward the far red desert. The god's rage sent a final burst of heat across the Two Lands and the air swirled with energy.
Imhotep curled atop cushions and surrendered to the emotional exhaustion. Akila lay beside him, listening to his light snoring and poking tenderly at the memory of what had happened to her so far.
The light shade brightened as Neferhotep raised the edge of the linen canopy.
“Excuse me,” he said softly and quickly and began to back out. Akila quickly waved her hand and said, “No, come in, Neferhotep. When your grandfather sleeps he leaves this world.”
At that moment, Imhotep shifted position and moaned.
“He is visiting Grandmother in Duat,” Neferhotep said solemnly. “Guiding her through its dark gates.”
Akila nodded and then, seeing the basket in Neferhotep’s arms, she raised her eyebrows in question.
“I brought bread,” Neferhotep said, holding out the basket.
“Where was that hiding?” Akila asked.
“We just passed a village. They brought provisions to the boat.” When he saw Akila’s puzzled look, Neferhotep said, “Bata knew that Imhotep would be eager to be reunited with mother so he had arranged for some of the villages to keep watch for our boats and to bring provisions to us as we passed so we wouldn't need to put ashore.”
Akila smiled fondly at the mention of Bata’s name. “He was a great man,” she said. “When I first met Imhotep he told me about the many times Bata had saved his life. He trusted no one more. And respected no one more, not even King Djoser.”
