by Overton, Max
"No sir. Her name is Scarab. She's a...a friend of mine."
"Scarab, eh? Funny name for a girl." The head gardener shrugged and turned away to a bench by the wall. "Well, off you go then and be careful."
Smenkhkare grinned and took Scarab's hand, leading her at a run around the gardener's house and squeezing between the back wall of the house and the orchard wall. An old acacia tree had grown up right on the line of the wall, its roots splitting and tumbling the stone blocks, spilling them in a jumbled pile.
"You'll have to climb up these stones, then onto that branch there." Smenkhkare pointed and scrambled up ahead of his sister. "Watch out for scorpions though, they live under the rocks."
Scarab drew back, not wanting to touch a rock with a scorpion under it, but she saw an expression of scorn start to appear on her brother's face. Taking a deep breath, she started up the pile of rocks, then hauled herself onto the branch.
"Well done. You climb well for a girl. Now, follow me." Smenkhkare turned and lowered himself down the tree, from branch to branch. Scarab followed, more slowly as the branches were spaced almost at full stretch for her smaller body. After a few minutes they both stood on the grass underneath the tree, looking toward the imposing buildings of the temples of Amun.
"They're as big as the palace," Scarab said.
"Bigger. The palace only houses the king, though he is also god-on-earth. But Amun is the king of the gods; he needs a much larger home." Smenkhkare started walking toward the nearer temple. After a moment, Scarab joined him.
"We...we're not going to see Amun, are we?" Scarab clutched at her brother's arm.
Smenkhkare laughed. "Not even his statue. We won't be allowed in that far. One of the young priests I know, Pa-Siamen, says they actually dress the statue every day and put food in front of it."
The two children crossed the large garden surrounding the temple and walked round toward the back of it. They passed several men in white linen robes that ignored them completely.
"See," Smenkhkare said. "Nobody minds us being here." He led his sister up to the small building at the back of the temple and rapped on a wooden door. A few moments later the door creaked open and a wrinkled face peered out, like the priests, completely hairless.
"What do you want, boy?" The words were indistinct, formed by toothless jaws and cracked lips.
"May I see Pa-Siamen, sir?"
The old man contemplated the boy, his tongue rummaging around in his toothless mouth. "Polite at least," he mumbled. "Wait here." He closed the door.
Several minutes passed. Scarab sat on the stone steps and watched a lizard on the wall as it sunned itself. Smenkhkare tapped his foot impatiently, then started pacing across the width of the small porch. Footsteps sounded indistinctly behind the door and they both turned.
A youth of perhaps fifteen floods opened the door and peered out. His hairless skull made him appear older but could not mask the bright twinkle in his eyes. "Smenkhkare. I thought it might be you." He looked past the boy at the naked young girl standing behind him. "And who is this?"
"Her name's Scarab. She's a friend of mine."
"From the palace?" Pa-Siamen frowned, staring at her face. "And with such an obviously false name. Nobody calls a little girl 'Scarab'. Well, never mind, have your secret games. You want to come in?"
The young priest led the way into the shaded hallways of the priest's residence, along echoing passages to a tiny room at the back. A small window space was almost blocked by a large bush planted outside, the daylight filtering through, green and cool. A handful of dried and yellowed leaves lay on the tiled floor.
Scarab looked around the tiny room with its sparse furniture. A narrow sleeping mat filled one corner and a stool by a small table sat underneath the window. An open chest completed the decor, a scribe's palette poking out of the top along with a linen robe.
Smenkhkare crossed confidently to the sleeping mat and sat down. "I wanted Scarab to meet you, Pa-Siamen. She doesn't get out much and needs to meet other people."
The youth smiled. "You are welcome in the god's house, little Scarab. Can I offer you some water?"
Scarab glanced around the room but could not see any source of water. "Yes please," she said doubtfully.
"I shall be but a few moments." Pa-Siamen left his room and disappeared down the corridor.
Smenkhkare patted the mat beside him. "Sit down. He is a good man, for a priest. He will tell you all you want to know."
Scarab sat but screwed up her face. "I don't know what I want to know," she wailed. "I thought we were just going on an adventure to see things, not talk to strange men."
Pa-Siamen padded back into the room, carrying a tray with three pottery mugs of water and a plate with a handful of ripe figs. He set it down on the floor next to the cot, helped himself to a mug and one of the figs, and then sat down on the stool. "Well. What would you like to talk about?"
Scarab said nothing, just hanging her head and biting into a plump fig. Smenkhkare grinned. "Whatever you like, Pa-Siamen. I brought Scarab with me because she hasn't seen anything outside the palace nor met anyone who didn't live there."
Pa-Siamen nodded. "It must be glorious to live in the palace, little Scarab, even as a servant or a child. To be in the presence of courtiers and officials, maybe to even see the king. Have you ever seen the king up close?"
"Yes," Scarab whispered.
"Wonderful. Your friend Smenkhkare has told me much about the palace, though no doubt because of whom he is, it is different from your experience."
"She's called Scarab because she likes beetles," Smenkhkare chuckled. "But I think she likes the god Khepri too. Tell us about the gods."
"Ah, one could talk all day about the gods. Scarab, you know you are in the house of Amun? He is the king of the gods and he has a special love for our beloved king Nebmaetre Amenhotep. I am indeed privileged to be a priest of Amun and one day I shall rise to become one of the god's prophets."
"Like my great-uncle Aanen," Smenkhkare said.
Pa-Siamen inclined his head with a smile. He bit into his fig and chewed.
"And what of the other gods?" Smenkhkare asked quietly. "What of the Aten? He has a big temple next to this one now."
The young priest scowled. "The Aten is a minor god, merely a sometime manifestation of Re-Herakhte, the physical disk of the sun. Why, before the time of Nebmaetre's father, he was nothing." Pa-Siamen shrugged. "However, it is the will of the king that the Aten be worshipped, so he must have his own house here in Amun's city."
"And between the temples of Amun, on Amun's own land, and funded by the wealth of Amun." Smenkhkare smiled, slipping his remark in like a dagger.
Pa-Siamen scowled again. "It is not just." He hesitated and glanced round at the open door behind him. "However, it is the king's will, so we obey, but ..." He shrugged and picked up the plate of figs, offering them to the children.
"Excuse me, sir," Scarab whispered. "How does a god who is nothing become a rich and powerful god?"
"Perhaps I overstated the case, little Scarab. I did not mean to say the Aten was nothing, just that he was a minor deity with few worshippers. We Kemetus have many gods that reflect every aspect of our lives and deaths, and the sun god is always important. The actual disk of the sun is a relatively minor aspect though, as Re's heat and light are what sustains us." Pa-Siamen settled back on his stool and took a long drink of water from his cup. "Nebmaetre's father had a foreign advisor, a man called Yuya ..."
"My great-grandfather," Smenkhkare said.
"Yes. He was a priest of the Khabiru, a tribe to the north and east of the empire. He prophesied for the king and the king made him his Tjaty. His daughter Tiye ..."
"My grandmother."
"... grew up in the palace and married Nebmaetre, our beloved elder king."
"And the Aten?" Smenkhkare asked.
Pa-Siamen laughed. "Patience, young lord, I am coming to that. The Khabiru worship the Aten. Yuya's god became an infatuation of t
he king and the worship of Aten increased. Nebmaetre, being married to a Khabiru himself, has pulled Aten from obscurity and set him among the major deities of Kemet." Pa-Siamen looked around again. "The younger king, Waenre, seeks to further raise the Aten's status, almost challenging Amun himself."
"But if Amun is king of the gods, how can he be challenged?"
"He cannot, in truth," Pa-Siamen said. "However, if Ma'at, the balance of our Two Lands, the natural order, is threatened, then we must face the wrath of the gods." The priest leaned closer to the children, putting his empty mug on the floor. "We are the god Amun's servants, doing his will. What do you think would happen if we neglected his worship? Failed to give him the proper respect, offer the proper sacrifices?"
Scarab shook her head, her eyes wide, too afraid to speak.
"He would withdraw his favor from the Two Lands and we would become just another nation, at the mercies of foreign kings and foreign gods. Can you imagine what life would be like?"
A gong sounded deep in the house, low and resonant. Pa-Siamen straightened. "It is the call to the midday ceremonies, children. I must go. Come, I will see you to the door. Quickly now."
Smenkhkare rose and bowed slightly toward the young priest. "Thank you, Pa-Siamen. We are indebted to you for your teaching."
The priest smiled. "A pleasure. Come again. I always enjoy our little talks." He put a hand on Scarab's head as she moved toward the door. "You too, little Scarab. If Smenkhkare brings you, you may come, but do not come alone."
The outer door closed behind the young priest and Smenkhkare turned to Scarab on the porch, blinking in the bright sunlight. "So what do you think? That was more interesting than anything you could do in the palace, wasn't it?"
"Um, I thought we were going to see men pulling great big stones, not talk to priests."
"Another time. We had better get back now before they miss us. The nurses will be looking for you."
Scarab stamped her foot. "I'm not a baby anymore."
"No? Well, we still need to get back." Smenkhkare set off across the gardens, walking fast. After a moment, Scarab followed, then as he outdistanced her, started to run.
"I'm sorry, Smenkhkare," Scarab panted. "Please, don't walk so fast." He slowed but said nothing. "Can I come out with you again? I won't complain. We can go anywhere you want."
"I'll think about it." They arrived at the foot of the acacia tree and Smenkhkare scrambled into the branches. He looked back at the little girl standing underneath with tears in her eyes. Grimacing, he moved back down and stretched out his hand, hauling her up onto the first branch. She rewarded him with a big grin.
On the other side of the wall they descended the stone blocks with care and ran back through the orchard to the ornamental garden and the large tamarind tree. Scarab turned to her brother with a searching expression.
"Thank you for taking me outside, Smenkhkare."
The boy stared at the little girl for a while before nodding. "All right, we'll try it again. Be here tomorrow at the same time." He turned and ran off through the garden toward the palace.
Scarab watched him go, a contented smile on her face.
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Chapter Nine
My first meeting with my brother Smenkhkare changed my life, though at the time I could not see beyond the excitement of venturing outside the palace walls. Being a solitary and lonely child I lacked interactions with others of around my own age. I played with the other palace children sometimes but generally they avoided me, I think because I was a daughter of the king and above their station in life. Then Smenkhkare came along. Looking back, I wonder whether he wasn't also lonely. Although he was a boy and a natural leader, he seemed to have a hunger to teach and guide others. The other sons of court officials desired adventures, not learning and they gradually drifted away. My thirst for knowledge meshed with his desires and from that day in the garden, until Waenre's Heb-Sed festival, I saw my brother at least every few days.
In the weeks and months that followed, Smenkhkare took me to see many other people in the city. For a nine year old boy, he knew a lot of people. I think it was even then that he had an eye on becoming king one day and he realized a good king knows his people, noble and commoner alike. We visited many he knew and some that he did not. He was unfailingly polite and attentive and I think I must have been a real trial to him at times as my attention span was short and I was always looking for the next adventure.
Not all our outings were interesting however. We went back to Pa-Siamen again and met some of his fellow-priests of Amun. That was boring as I didn't understand half of what they talked about. The scribes too almost made me wish I hadn't come. One in particular, Kensthoth by name, was a stuffy old man who delighted in tedious and esoteric details and the hidden meanings of words. He did say one interesting thing, though it was only interesting because it was to do with my name.
"Scarab, you say, little girl. Hmm...ah, hmm. You know of the four elemental forces? Qebsenuf or Fire, Daumutef or Earth, Imset or Air, and Haapi or Water? Well, there is a fifth element called Khepri, the deity of unceasing renewal. Khepri is the sacred scarab, child, and it conveys the boundless emanations of Sa in the universe, the principal of divine protection." He fixed me with his glittering eyes and seemed to look beyond me. "Who gave you this name?"
"The king," I whispered.
"Indeed?" The old scribe raised an eyebrow. "Then the gods themselves have offered you their divine protection, young Scarab. The next time you come across the sacred scarab, listen to the music it makes with its wings. That unique humming is the universe talking to you."
I said I would and the conversation turned to other matters. He was a dry old man who tutored many of the older sons of court officials and I only saw him that once while I was a child. Our paths crossed again later, though many things had changed for me before they did.
Our other forays into Waset were more interesting. I got to see men hauling blocks of stone to one of the smaller temples of Aten, I watched as Ahhotep the glass maker fashioned delicate cups and jars of tinted glass and faience or made beautiful coloured beads in his special molds. I sat for hours with Kenamun the toy maker as he fashioned simple children's toys and dolls from pieces of wood and cloth. He made me a small carved scarab out of some soft wood and I treasured it for a year before one of the other children snatched it and broke it. I wept for a day, then buried my little broken Khepri beside the old husk of the other one in the garden.
Not all our outings were adventures. Sometimes Smenkhkare would tell me at the outset that he wanted to spend time with a scribe, or a priest, or watch the soldiers training in their barracks. On those days, he would take me down to the markets and leave me in the charge of one or other of his friends, returning to pick me up as the shadows lengthened. I got to know the merchants quite well and they would give me small treats as I sat on a box, or bale, or just the dusty ground and watched them at their work.
Asheru sold fruit; figs, dates and pomegranates and sometimes grapes if one of the boats from down river made a swift trip. He was generous and would give me a handful of dried dates or figs to munch as he called out his wares, arguing and haggling with his customers. I learned there was no fixed price for his produce, each transaction being unique and depending on how much the customer was prepared to pay and what Asheru had paid for it from the farmers. The currency he received was fluid too. He might receive pieces of copper, or cloth, or a live pigeon. Once a servant from one of the minor noble houses bought a large basket of sweet figs and paid with a piece of silver, but more often it was payment in whatever the buyers had.
Meres, on the other hand, a grain merchant, was more miserly. Or it may just have been that he had little that was edible. He sat all day on a wooden stool under an awning, his belly hanging over his soiled kilt, making detailed notations on a large papyrus scroll. Some merchants employed scribes to keep their accounts, but Meres begrudged their earnings and h
ad developed a system of his own. It had the advantage that nobody else could make sense of his scrawling and so dispute his calculations. The smaller farmers would bring grain to him in large rush baskets, tipping the golden stream of seeds into the open measuring jars and thence into the great storage bins.
These bins lay in a large building behind the small courtyard where Meres sat, high roofed, airy and filled with dust. I loved it, for the sunlight came through the cracks in the walls in solid bars of gold, a king's treasury all my own. Dust danced in the light and always there was the fluttering roar of birds' wings and the shrill cries of mice. I would lie naked in the dust, my chin resting on my hands and watch these tiny creatures scurrying about or sitting up, whiskers quivering, my own image reflected in their tiny black eyes.
There were cats too that roamed the grain warehouse. Lean and black as a starless night, or spotted like a leopard, or striped in shades of gray, their coats shone as they lay contented or hunted through the shadows, a thin shriek of agony telling of their success. They did not need to hunt to fill their bellies for cats are loved and revered in Waset, as they are throughout the Two Lands. People would leave offerings for these local representatives of the goddess Bastet, small portions of fish or a tiny amount of goat's milk in a pottery dish. They would bow and offer the food, muttering a prayer as they did so. It was understood that if a cat ate or drank the offering on the spot, the prayer would be answered. Most times the goddess looked favorably on the petitioner as they kept the piece of fish small, so the cats were always looking for their next meal.
Sometimes Smenkhkare would take me down to the docks where we would watch the boats unload. For a time I thought that only Kemetu vessels docked at Waset because all the boats were the familiar barges I had always seen on the river, with good Kemetu names like 'Heru Lives' or 'Eye of Re'. My father the king even had a barge of his own called 'Aten Gleams'. It did indeed gleam, being covered in thin, beaten gold and painted in bright colours. I traveled on it when I was older, but for now it was just another wonder to be viewed from afar.
