by Angela Hunt
From the outer courtyard they moved into Per-Hair, the House of Rejoicing. In the stillness of this columned hall, Mandisa could hear the ghostly sounds of ritual chanting. From Idogbe’s tales she knew that the priests rose in the darkness each morning to chant and purify themselves in the sacred pool before entering the temple.
Catching her breath, Asenath stopped. Mandisa stepped forward to see what had distracted her mistress. Like a procession of spirits in the morning gloom, the line of shaven, white-robed priests snaked out of a subterranean chamber. Their hairless chests gleamed with the sacred water; the white of their kilts dazzled even in the dim light of dawn.
“Look at my father,” Asenath whispered, a note of pride in her voice, and Mandisa noticed that the venerable old priest led the others, walking in the place of highest honor. “He will personally speak to the god for me,” her mistress murmured, her voice no more than a breath in the reverent stillness. “And the god will supply what I am seeking.”
While the priests ministered to Khnum, Mandisa waited with her mistress and recalled what Idogbe had told her about a temple’s morning ritual. At dawn’s first ray, the clay seals to the god’s inner sanctuary would be broken, and the doors opened to disclose the idol that represented the divinity. The highest priest would enter and lie prostrate before the image, then, upon rising, he would utter prayers while other priests perfumed the air with incense. The god’s nightclothes would be removed; then the figure would be bathed, anointed and clothed in fresh apparel. Food and drink would be offered. After the god’s spirit had sufficient opportunity to feed itself, the priest would open the doors to any and all supplicants who wished to address the divinity.
Finally a priest beckoned and Asenath moved through a pair of heavy double doors into the innermost sanctuary.
In the holy place, Mandisa lost all custody of her eyes. She stared upward and outward, blinking in unexpected brightness. Gold covered every conceivable surface, sparkling in the gilded paints on the muraled walls, in the serving pieces, in vases and bowls that stood on trays before the stone statue. Rush torches in their brackets threw wavering lights that made the bas-relief carvings dance on the walls.
The god sat upon a platform behind a flower-strewn altar. The statue of Khnum rose over fifteen feet into the air; Mandisa felt like a mere sparrow before it. The image had a slender, well-formed man’s body, but a ram’s snout and face. Two horns snaked to the right and left through his braided wig, upon which he wore the traditional crown of reeds and ostrich feathers.
No amount of gold or decoration could disguise the idol’s ugliness.
Mandisa stepped back in stunned revulsion, but Asenath fell to her knees and bent to touch her head to the floor three times. Though she had not visited a temple since her marriage to Zaphenath-paneah, apparently she intended to atone for her past indifference.
“Speak, child, of your petition to our mighty Khnum,” a voice called. Mandisa lifted her head. The voice belonged to Potiphera, but she barely recognized it in the thickened air.
“Divine Khnum, creator of all that lives and breathes and exists,” Asenath said, not lifting her eyes from the floor, “your daughter has a boon to ask of you.”
“And what is it you seek?” the priest prodded.
“A child, most divine god, a child only you can provide. You have given me two sons, but a man as great and favored as my husband should have more.”
Potiphera turned to face the gruesome god standing in the torchlight. The ebony eyes staring out from the ram’s head seemed to fix upon Asenath.
“Beautiful is your shining forth on the horizon, O living Khnum, beginning of life!” Potiphera called.
“You who bring children into being in women, and make fluid and clay into mankind,
Who nourishes the son in the womb of his mother,
Who soothes him so that he weeps not, O nurse in the womb!
Who gives breath in order to keep alive all that he has made;
When he comes forth from the womb on the day of his birth,
You open his mouth in speech, and give all that he needs.
You have created the earth according to your desire, while you were alone.
You are in my heart, and there is no one who knows you but Potiphera, your son.
Hear me now, O Lord of the Sacred Land, and grant this woman’s request.
For you, O Divine Potter, Lord of the Kingdom, have molded men upon your potter’s wheel, and given them strength to walk upon the earth…”
On and on the priest droned, his voice rising and falling as he flattered, cajoled and finally threatened the god into hearing and granting Asenath’s request. After a while, the sense of awe that had surrounded Mandisa faded. She clenched her jaw to stifle a yawn.
Why did her lady want another son so desperately? She had two fine boys, as handsome as they were bright, and Zaphenath-paneah adored them. As far as Mandisa knew, the master had never expressed a desire for more children, yet Asenath seemed willing to risk even her life for the simple pleasure of placing another child in Zaphenath-paneah’s arms.
Could she not see how much the vizier loved her? Why couldn’t she rest in his love?
Mandisa felt the corner of her mouth twist in a wry smile. She would never be blessed with a love like that, and one son had managed to fill her life. Adom was a fine boy, but how he tied her hands! He was too full of himself at times, grown-up in some ways, but such a child in others. She would have to teach him, for while the master’s sons would be tutored in the scribe’s schools, Adom, son of a servant, would not be welcome there. A father could lead him; a man could explain the things a woman was not permitted to know. Soon Adom would have questions she could not answer, and even now he yearned for a man’s attention. Tarik and Ani were friendly to the boy, but they had so many responsibilities and so little time.…
Her son needed a father. Mandisa did not necessarily want a husband, for she’d been married once and had no wish to repeat the experience. But Adom needed a man to guide, teach and train him. Because she was too gentle, he would have a difficult time outside the protective walls of the vizier’s villa because he had never learned how to defend himself. And soon he would want to know about a man’s way with a woman, and how could she explain what she did not completely understand herself?
Adom needed a father, but how was she supposed to provide one? For a brief moment she considered joining her mistress in prayer, but she could not offer her deepest secrets to a ram-headed idol that stared at food without eating and listened to hour-long prayers without hearing.
Yet Zaphenath-paneah’s invisible God was present everywhere, or so the vizier had said. If her master spoke the truth, this El Shaddai would hear her prayer even if it sprang from Khnum’s temple. And perhaps, if she found favor in his sight, he would answer. In any case, it would not hurt to attempt one small petition.…
While Asenath pressed her forehead to the floor and her father doled out more flattery for the granite god, Mandisa closed her eyes and asked El Shaddai to send someone from whom her son might learn to be a man.
Chapter Thirteen
T he new table, delicate in design and inlaid with gold, crashed against the door. “You stinking Egyptians will learn this about me!” the prisoner roared, his words punctuated by the shattering of pottery. “I once killed a thousand men in a single morning! If God is willing, I will do it again!”
Outside the captive’s chamber, Tarik smiled at Halima. “My grasp of the Canaanite tongue is improving,” he said, consoling the trembling slave girl. “I understood every word of that threat. The man thinks he will kill us all.”
“Sometimes I think he will,” Halima answered, the breakfast tray in her hand shaking so violently that the bowls clattered against each other. “I have nightmares about him. In the dark sometimes I feel a demon sitting on my chest and I open my eyes, expecting to see him.”
“Never fear, sweet Halima,” Tarik said, glancing around. Because they stood
alone in the hallway, he took the tray from the poor girl’s hands. It wouldn’t do for the captain of the vizier’s guard to be seen helping a kitchen slave, but this young woman had shown uncommon courage in facing the Canaanite devil.
He smiled again when her eyes came up to study his face. “A runner has come from Heliopolis. The lady Asenath returns within a few days. Soon you will not have to deal with this sour Canaanite.”
“I do not mind…so much.” Her round face softened in a wistful expression. “But I would not attempt it without you, Tarik.”
He shrugged off the implied compliment. “I would not have persevered if not for our master’s command. A prisoner belongs in prison, not in a house.” He stepped away from the captive’s door as another object collided against it. A chair, from the sound of the crash. “But Zaphenath-paneah says the man is not to be harmed, nor shall he be allowed to harm himself. Yesterday I discovered that he had shredded his garment into long strips, doubtless attempting to fashion a trap of some sort. So I had the strips removed, as well as what remained of his garment. Today he wears nothing but an Egyptian kilt. If he attempts to shred it, he shall have only his inflated dignity to clothe him.”
Halima laughed as color rose to her cheeks. “Tarik, you are shameful!”
“I am only obeying our master’s orders. And though I would rather throw this Shim’on to the dogs than keep him here, I will obey the vizier. In the nine years I’ve known the master, I’ve never seen him make an unwise decision.”
“What about the Canaanite’s food?” Halima rested her fingers on the tray in his grasp. “I have prepared a delicious choice of breads, and we ought not to waste it.”
“It will not be wasted.” Tarik knelt, lowering the tray to the floor. “Let the ants eat the meal—at least they know how to behave. If the prisoner insists on raging like a wild animal, we will let him starve like the lions of the plains. Keep his water jug filled, but do not feed him until he grows more appreciative.”
“Very well.” Halima paused. “I suppose I should return to my work.”
“Yes,” Tarik answered, standing. Halima took a few slow steps toward the kitchen, then quickened her pace in a resolute stride. Tarik watched her go and wondered why she had hesitated to leave him.
Bored and frustrated, Adom wandered through the villa’s wide halls. In his hand he clutched a spinning top of carved quartz and a length of papyrus twine, but Efrayim and Menashe were involved with their tutor and too busy to let him entertain them.
Adom stuffed the twine and top into a pocket of his kilt and tried to think of something else to do. He missed his mother. She had been gone nearly three weeks, and once Adom heard Menashe remark that his mother had gone to live with her father in a place called Heliopolis. Wherever Menashe’s mother went, Adom’s mother followed, and for several nights he’d been terrified to think that the two women might not return to the villa. But then he caught Zaphenath-paneah in the hall, and his heart had warmed when the noble vizier looked him in the eye and smiled with gentle understanding. “Of course your mother is coming back,” the vizier had said, his hand warming the boy’s head. “Very soon, in fact.”
Soon wasn’t soon enough. Adom had spent the morning wandering through the stables, but the master’s groomsmen chased him away. “Get out of here!” one of the slaves yelled. “One kick from the master’s spirited horses will crack that soft head of yours like a melon!”
From the stableyard Adom wandered into the area where the granaries held the villa’s stores of grain and wheat, but his mother’s warning voice echoed in his brain. Countless children and drunken fools, she often told him, had climbed the stairs to peer into the open tops of the hive-shaped cones and fallen in, suffocating as they struggled to climb out.
A line of donkeys and their attendants stood before the granaries where Zaphenath-paneah’s servants measured grain for an official who had not planned for the famine. Overwhelmed by the sight of so many serious faces, Adom sprinted across the yard, through the front courtyard and into the main hall of the house. Several visitors waited outside the central reception hall for an audience with the vizier, and Adom got as far as the vestibule before a guard caught his arm.
The guard bent to look him in the eye. “Where are you going, Adom?”
“I am looking for my mother.”
“She and the Lady Asenath are still away.”
Adom felt himself fidgeting. “Then perhaps I can ask the master when she will return.”
The guard chuckled. “No, my young friend, you cannot. The master is busy. The Double of the King, the Good Shepherd of the People is meeting with four kings of Megiddo, two princes of Shahuren and one king from Ascalon.”
“I will wait for him, then. I will be quiet.”
“No, Adom. The Nourisher of Egypt, the Prince of Mediation dines today with shepherds from Syria and Lebanon, Bedouins from Edom and the host of kings who visit with him now. They have come a long way to seek your master’s face, and they have been waiting longer than you. Run along now, and play with your friends.”
“They are having their lessons.”
“Then find them, and listen to Ani as he teaches. Even the son of a servant should know the truth of the world.”
When the guard straightened, Adom knew he was no longer welcome in the house. Head down, he walked through the front portico and followed the path that led to the garden.
Efrayim and Menashe sat on papyrus mats before Ani, steward of the estate and tutor of Zaphenath-paneah’s children. Though Ani seemed a thin, shrunken man when he stood next to the vizier, now his extraordinary eyes blazed and glowed. Efrayim and Menashe looked like two dolls seated before a giant, so imposing was the old man’s manner as he swayed and spun a tale.
Aware than Ani had seen him approach, Adom knelt on the stone pathway. The two boys, intent upon their teacher’s story, did not stir from their mats.
“In the beginning—” Ani drew an imaginary line in the air “—nothing existed but one God, the invisible God who cannot be configured in stone.”
“Neter?” Menashe interrupted.
Ani frowned. “You are not to interrupt, young master. A wise student questions only after his teacher is done with explanations.”
When Menashe’s shoulders drooped, Ani placed his freckled hand upon the boy’s shaved head. “Do not be discouraged, little prince. You may discern the answer to your question before I am finished.”
Menashe looked up again and Ani continued. “This invisible God is not to be found in shrines. No habitation can contain Him, and you cannot conceive His form in your heart. This God is One and alone, and no others exist with Him. He is the One Who made all things. God is from the beginning, and He has existed of old when nothing else had being. He is the father of Beginnings, the eternal One, the infinite One who endures forever and ever. He shall endure to all eternity. He is hidden from gods and men, and He is a mystery to His creatures. No man knows how to know Him. His true name is a mystery even to His children. Though some call Him Neter, his names are innumerable, they are manifold and no one knows their number.”
“If no one knows his name, then why do my father and Mandisa call him El Shaddai?” Menashe interrupted again.
From a safe distance, Adom grinned. Menashe was always asking questions. No mere warning would silence him.
Ani sighed. “Listen, Menashe, and you will understand. ‘El Shaddai’ is a Canaanite term for ‘Almighty God,’ a name which describes one of his attributes. God is Almighty, just as He is truth. He lives by truth, He feeds on truth. He is the King of truth, He rests upon truth, He fashions truth and He executes Truth throughout the world. God is life, and through Him alone man lives. He gives life to man, He breathes the breath of life into his nostrils.
“God is father and mother—the father of fathers, the mother of mothers. He begets, but was never begotten. He produces, but was never produced. He creates, but was never created. He is the maker of His own form, the fashioner of H
is own body. He is the Creator of the heavens, the earth, the deep, the waters, the mountains. When He spoke His word it came to pass, and His word shall endure forever.”
“If there is only one God,” Menashe said, his face twisting into a frown, “then why are there so many temples in Thebes?”
Ani held up a finger. “The invisible God is the father of the gods. He formed mankind along with the primeval potter Khnum who turned men and gods out of His hands, forming them upon a potter’s table.”
Adom ran his finger over a flagstone. He could never keep the names of the gods in his head. There were too many to remember.
“You see, my students—” Ani sank to a papyrus mat “—once neither heaven nor earth existed, nothing but the boundless primeval water shrouded with thick darkness. The water contained within it the seeds of things, and at length the spirit of the water felt the desire to create the world. The spirit of the water uttered a word, and the world sprang into being, just as the spirit of the water had decided it should. The next act of creation was the formation of an egg, from which sprang Ra, the sun god, in whose shining form we see the mighty power of the divine spirit.”
“That’s not what my mother says,” Adom announced.
Three pairs of eyes turned to him. “Adom,” the tutor said, his voice heavy, “why aren’t you helping someone in the house?”
Adom looked down at his hands. “There’s no one to help. And…I wanted to listen.”
“Then remember what I just told Menashe. A wise student listens. He does not disagree with his teachers.”
“But my mother says God created the world and then destroyed it with a flood. And Egypt came out of the flood, just like the rest of the world, and God never made other gods, only people. And not only she calls him El Shaddai, but so does the master, for I’ve heard Zaphenath-paneah talk about Him—”
