by Overton, Max
"Death is not to be feared, young lady, nor are the dead. This which you see before you is merely the Khat, 'that which decays', the physical body that contained the Khaibit or shadow body which has now dissolved, and the Ka, or 'double'. When this man has been readied for his eternal life in the tomb, a funerary priest, the Hem Ka will consecrate a special statue of the deceased. This statue will house the Ka, but my job, and that of those under me, is to prepare the physical body to house the Ba, the soul of PenMa'at."
"My teachers have told me of these things," Smenkhkare said. "But I do not think they explained it very well. It does not seem to be a pleasant prospect, locked in a tomb forever, living in a statue and an eviscerated body."
Ipuwer shook his head. "Your teachers should be punished if they cannot explain it better than that. It is a very complex subject as a person is made up of many bodies, many senses, each with its own guiding principle. The two principles you should focus on, children, are the Ka and the Ba. Leave the rest until you are older and wiser. When a man dies, his Ka travels to the underworld and is tested by the gods. If he has lived a righteous life, his heart will weigh less than the feather of truth and he will pass on to the Field of Reeds, where all good things await him. However, for him to enjoy food and drink and all the pleasures of this life, his spirit must have a connection with his body. The Ka statue enables the spirit to return to the tomb, where offerings of food and drink are left for him. There too there will be effigies of servants ready to carry out his wishes."
Smenkhkare frowned, struggling to comprehend the information. "And the Ba?"
"The Ba resides within the preserved body and enables the returned spirit to leave the tomb at night and go wherever it will, enjoying the good things of our Two Lands."
"What if...what if the body is destroyed?"
"Then the Ba has nowhere to live and the Ka is prevented from enjoying all good things for eternity. The preservation of the body is essential, which is why my job is so important."
"What about poor people?" Smenkhkare asked. "I have seen the poor carrying the bodies of their loved ones out of the city to bury them in the desert."
Ipuwer nodded. "The poor can preserve the body after a fashion, by letting it dry in the desert sands. They have no priests to say the rituals, nor Ka statue; and the residence of the Ba is as wretched after death as it was before."
"That does not seem fair," Smenkhkare complained.
"Fair? What has fairness to do with it? From as soon as we comprehend the fact that we must die, every person in Kemet is striving to make his eternal home the best he can. We live for what, fifty or sixty years if the gods favor us? We are dead for eternity. Surely we should make every effort to make our eternal years pleasurable? What is a lifetime of work if we can live in luxury after death? So a peasant, a poor man, refuses to better himself, to put aside a little for the funerary priest to make the offerings for him. Should we pity him? It is his responsibility."
Scarab put up her hand hesitantly. "Excuse me," she whispered.
Ipuwer smiled. "What is it, young lady?"
"W... why would anyone want to live in a body like this?" she asked in a small voice. "I think it would be dreadful to look like this forever."
Ipuwer chuckled. "Ah, little lady, there you have it. Who indeed would want to live in that?" He pointed at the corpse of PenMa'at. "But that is not what will go into the tomb. Look here." Ipuwer drew his finger down the body's left flank, tracing a long double line that, on closer examination, resolved itself into a neatly incised opening into the abdominal cavity.
"When the body first came to us, it was cleaned thoroughly and the cutter made an incision here. He removed the internal organs and the important ones were placed in the organ jars after drying in natron. You know about the organ jars?"
Smenkhkare nodded. "They are jars that are under the protection of four demigods, the Sons of Heru."
"Very good. The four sons of Heru look after specific organs and make promises to the dead person. Imset cares for the liver and promises to make the person's house flourish, Haapi looks after the lungs and protects the head and members of the body, Daumutef is in charge of the stomach and promises to raise you onto your feet, and Qebsenuf is in charge of the intestines, promising to set the heart in its proper place within the body."
"Is the heart not put in a jar then?" Scarab asked, remembering her nurse saying that organ was the seat of emotions and intellect.
"The heart is left in the body cavity. Now, where were we ..." Ipuwer tapped his chin with a forefinger for a few moments. "Ah, yes. The organs are removed through the incision in the flank, and another one here, in the chest. The cavities are washed out thoroughly and packed with dry natron and resins. The brain is removed through the nose, or sometimes we cut the back of the skull open to extract it, though increasingly embalmers are leaving the brain in the skull."
"What do you do with it?" Smenkhkare asked. "Does it go in another jar?"
"Whatever for?" Ipuwer smiled. "The brain performs no discernible function except perhaps to produce mucus, and the Ka will not need it. It is thrown away, together with anything else that is taken out of the body. So, everything is removed, the body is washed with palm wine and spices and packed with natron before being sent to the House of Waiting where it spends the next forty days in a great tub of dry natron. This removes all the water and fat from the body, leaving it pure and dry as you see it now."
"It is not unclean anymore?"
"No, young lady, else I would not be touching it now. It was removed from the natron and washed to remove all traces of the salts and any debris that might have been missed during the evisceration." Ipuwer picked up one of the body's arms and flexed it. "Note how supple the body is now, despite being dehydrated. We can straighten out the limbs ready for burial."
Scarab watched as the embalmer demonstrated the flexibility of the body. Despite her initial nervousness that bordered on a fear of the dead, those ideas were rapidly disappearing in the face of Ipuwer's calm explanations. She leaned closer and touched the body with a fingertip, marveling at the cool solidity of the flesh. She pressed a finger into her own warm side for comparison, then back to the body once more, rubbing her finger slowly over the cool dry skin.
"What happens next?" she asked.
"We make the body as lifelike as we can. We have teams of specialists that pack linen soaked in resins beneath the skin to plump the tissues up again. Others apply makeup to restore the tones of life to the complexion. The body and the brain cavity are packed with spices and resins to fill and preserve. Finally resin-soaked cloths will be wrapped tightly about the limbs with special prayers written on scraps of papyrus and amulets. Then the family will collect young PenMa'at, who will now be forever young in the halls of eternity, and take him for burial."
Scarab smiled and clapped her hands softly. "That is a beautiful thought, Ipuwer. Thank you for showing me. When it comes time for me to die, I want you to embalm me."
Ipuwer stifled a smile. "You will far outlive me, young princess. Besides, the royal embalmers would have something to say if I stole one of their clients."
"I will let it be known that I desire to be purified in this House of Purification. My brother will do the same, won't you Smenkhkare?"
"Perhaps, little sister." Smenkhkare gazed sadly at Scarab. "Only the gods know the future, and you should not be concerned yet with death. You and I have scarcely begun to live." He grinned. "I will be a great king first and you will be my queen and we shall build a magnificent tomb that rivals that of the great Khufu."
"Indeed you will, young master," Ipuwer said. "And you too, young lady. But for now I must ask you to excuse me. My servants and fellow embalmers must prepare the body of PenMa'at. I will have my son Rekhmire escort you back to the palace. The hour grows late." He peered up into the high vaulted ceiling to where the daylight streaming through the wide windows was dimming, the shadows in the corners of the great room creeping forward.
"Yes, young princess." Ipuwer bowed and extended his hands parallel to the floor at knee level. "I would be honoured. But come with your brother, never alone."
As Rekhmire closed the door, Scarab caught a glimpse of Ipuwer and the other embalmers advancing from the shadows toward the pale body of PenMa'at as he lay on the cold granite slab, awaiting the touch of eternity.
Return to Contents
* * *
Chapter Fourteen
Death is not a thing to be feared, at least not for a Kemetu, and still less for a member of one of the great families. We Kemetus have always loved festivals and religious feasts and see no reason why death should interrupt our enjoyment. We have many gods, several hundred in fact if you separate out all the aspects and incarnations. The sun god Re, for instance, was one of the major gods until Amun rose to prominence. He then assimilated other gods and took on the aspect of the creator god Atum, becoming Atum-Re. Later on he merged with Amun to become Amun-Re. Khepri, the sacred scarab beetle is another subtle manifestation of the sun god, as is Harakhte, and Heru. Then of course there is the sun disk itself, the Aten.
Don't ask a Kemetu to tell you about the gods. He will just shrug and point you toward a priest, and the priest will talk your ears off without making you any the wiser. All most of us know is that the gods exist and we need to worship them. Every day has a god sacred to it, sometimes more than one, and each god must have his own celebrations. Of course, this is not to say that every day is spent in festival, for if this were so, everything would stop, no crop would be farmed, nothing would be made or business conducted. Most gods have settled for minor festivities limited to a few people, or to a particular town that boasts a temple to the deity. On the other hand, there is one festival of Amun that lasts for eleven days, during which the city of Waset shuts down and everybody eats, drinks, and spends the days and nights in frivolous entertainment.
At a time of festival, particularly of one of the major gods, pilgrims will flock in from all over the country, sometimes traveling for weeks to get there. The king, or the priests if the god is a rich one, will provide food and drink during the festival days, usually just bread and beer, but sometimes more. Many of the rites take place within the temples and are known only to the initiates and the priests, though the king, as a higher priest even over the god-chosen Hem-netjer of the deity, must also attend and often participate in the rites. The processions are the public aspect of the festival days. The god emerges from his temple, carried by strong young priests and is borne through the streets. Crowds run before the statue, shouting praises, uttering prayers and petitioning the god incessantly. The king often accompanies the god, riding high on a throne made heavy with gold and precious stones.
The king, as the incarnation of Heru and the son of Re, is god-on-earth, the divine heir, and in the eyes of the people the only intermediary between the gods and mankind. Many people consider the rituals to be effective only when performed by the king. In reality he cannot be everywhere at once and delegates most of the rituals to priests, senior officials and other functionaries. He still performs the rites for the major festivals though, and attends the consecration ceremonies of every temple.
Kemetus believe that the living, the dead, and the gods--the three parts of creation--all share the same basic needs for shelter, food, drink, rest and recreation. The living are found in houses, the dead in tombs and the gods in temples. Divine rituals performed by the living supply the needs of the gods, and the funerary cults, also performed by the living, provides for the needs of the dead. On festival nights, long torchlight processions wind through the streets of Waset from the great temples of Amun as scores of priests, masked and robed, bathed in the sacred waters of the temple lake, visit the dead. Barges carry them over to the West Bank, the realm of necropolis and tomb, desert and jackal, to bring necessary food and drink to the dead.
The great Amun festival takes place around the new moon in the second month of summer, Khentkhety. This is an especially joyous occasion when the city blazes with light all night long. Oil-burning lamps are lit and fastened outside each door to guide the spirits of the dead home to visit their living relatives. Flowers are gathered in profusion from the surrounding countryside and adorn homes and tombs alike. The rich take gifts of food and drink to be offered, meat and bread and beer set out on mats in front of the false doors of the tombs. The less affluent take what they can afford, often doing without, so that their dead relatives might feast on this one day of the year. The poor take nothing at all, having neither gifts nor tombs to visit. Instead, they offer up scraps of papyrus with messages on, or scrawl pictures of food and drink, taking them to the temples for the priests to offer on their behalf.
I did not understand this custom the first time I saw it but Smenkhkare explained the reasoning to me.
"The poor cannot afford a tomb or preparation of the body such as Ipuwer showed us. The dead body is taken out to the desert and left in a shallow sand grave with whatever meager possessions they can afford. The shifting sands hide the body or jackals dig them up. Either way, the relatives have nowhere to take their offerings so they offer them at the temple so the priests can make sure it gets to them."
"But it's only words or a picture. The dead can't eat that."
"Remember the dead do not eat actual solid food, any more than the gods do. They eat the spirit of the food. The priests say a picture of food, or words describing food are as tasty and pleasing as the real thing, to a dead person."
We Kemetus focus on the dead, often spending our lives preparing for our deaths. It is not so strange when one remembers that one lives for maybe fifty or sixty years if you survive childhood, but one is dead for eternity. As soon as we can, we start preparing our tombs. The rich organize rock tombs cut into the solid cliffs near the Western necropolis, bring in teams of masons to carve out rooms, painters and scribes to portray scenes from this life and the next, inscriptions to petition the gods and praise the owner of the tomb. As a princess, that would have been my fate, had my life turned out as I thought it would. When I was a young girl I thought that I would marry my brother Smenkhkare, become queen when he became king, live a long and satisfying life raising my children and ruling Kemet and at last be prepared by skilled embalmers like Ipuwer to spend my death being praised and having my children's children bring offerings to my grave. A full and satisfying life leading to a full and satisfying death. It is very important that one dies and is buried close to relatives, for unless one is properly embalmed, the spirit cannot return to the body, and unless the offerings are made, one cannot enjoy death.
Until I saw the body of the youth PenMa'at, son of Pepienhebsed, Controller of the King's Wharves, lying pale, shrunken and eviscerated on the cold granite slab in the House of Purification, I had never seen a dead body. It made it doubly strange for me in that I had seen PenMa'at once before, though I doubt he saw me. Nobody pays attention to a little girl. He was one of the pupils of the scribe Kensthoth and though I only spoke to the scribe once in my early life, I would sometimes see him from a distance with his pupils.
PenMa'at was my first dead body, but I have seen many more since. I have walked through plains strewn with the dead; bodies piled and cast about like a wheat field after a summer storm. I have sent my share and more to their own personal eternity, and I have spoken with the dead. Yes, I know: it is easy to speak to the dead, harder to get them to answer. Yet I have done this. He could tell me nothing of what lay beyond, but to be fair he had not long been dead, having still the wounds of his passing fresh upon his body. So I no longer fear death, having seen it in its myriad forms and knowing that every one of us must embrace it.
Lest you think that we Kemetus think only of death, let me hasten to add that while we live we strive to enjoy life to the fullest. It would be true to say that the average person does not think of death often. Perhap
s it is because he cannot afford to prepare for eternity but while he has his health he eats, drinks, works, and raises a family that he might have sons about him in his old age, daughters to care for him. We love our families and rejoice in having children around our feet, infants dandled in our laps, toothless grandparents sitting gossiping in the sun by the front door, aunts and uncles visiting with their own families, sharing the goodness of life. I have seen families, rich and poor alike, in the many parks of the city, sitting on the grass or strolling among the flowering shrubs and exotic trees, their children screaming and laughing around them. Feast days and festivals bring out the joy that lies in all hearts. Kemetus love animals too. It is a rare home that does not boast at least one cat, for cats must be our favorite animal. Sacred to the goddess Bastet, these little animals are prized for their vermin-catching abilities and for their calming presence. Dogs are common too, though these tend to wander the streets in packs and sometimes become a public nuisance. The rich have more exotic pets. Some of the nobles display wild cats in cages, monkeys, gorgeously coloured parrots. In the palace grounds we enjoyed a menagerie that included leopards, ostriches, baboons, gazelles of various types and a wild striped horse from the southern lands. I doubt there is a single house in Kemet that does not have some sort of pet. I have seen beggar children nursing a twig on which swayed an insect that looked remarkably like the twig to which it clung. Others treasured a tortoise, a mouse or even a fly.
Of course, it is not always like that. Some families live more in a state of armed truce, much as the nations do. My own family was like this. Smenkhkare and I loved each other, as did my father Nebmaetre and mother Tiye, and there is no doubt that my brother Waenre Akhenaten loved his wife and family, at least at the beginning. But other members of my family displayed a darker side. Husband fought wife, brother fought and killed brother, daughters ousted mothers and uncles betrayed all. Perhaps it is the effect of great power and wealth. Having it, one desires more. There is not much love left over for pets in houses like mine. Akhenaten's children enjoyed baby gazelles, leopard cubs until their claws grew, or a lamb--and of course there were the ubiquitous cats, but though they played with these animals I never saw much love displayed toward them.
