Journey

by Angela Hunt

  Shim’on stood to tell of how Rebekah and Yaakov had deceived Yitzhak and stolen the firstborn’s blessing from Esav. Yaakov had been a wily deceiver in his youth, but Esav had already demonstrated his contempt for his father’s blessing. If Esav did not receive the firstborn’s birthright, Shim’on’s uplifted eyebrow seemed to say, he got what he deserved.

  On and on the stories continued, acknowledging Yisrael’s vices even as they celebrated his virtues, focusing Yaakov’s image in their memories, reviving the old man’s youth, his yearnings, his submission to God’s commands. Menashe sat like a statue through it all, surprised again and again by his grandfather’s unpredictable encounters with El Shaddai.

  He had never heard such stories! He had grown up with the tales of Egyptian gods and goddesses, legends of Horus and Isis and Osiris and the primeval waters from which the world was supposedly formed, but he had never felt any personal connection to such outlandish accounts. But now his uncles revealed his own history, unmasking the rivalry between Yaakov and Esav and explaining the trickery which brought Lea, the elder daughter, into Yaakov’s tent though he loved Rahel, the youngest.

  “In a similar way our father, Yaakov, displeased Yosef before he died,” Binyamin told the gathering. “Yisrael crossed his arms so that Efrayim and not Menashe received the blessing of the right hand—”

  Menashe colored fiercely when he heard his own name, and Binyamin stopped abruptly, apparently recalling that Menashe had not returned to Thebes with Yosef and Efrayim.

  “Go on, uncle, it is all right,” Menashe murmured, the misery of the previous day still haunting him. “I’m not sure what Grandfather meant by his gesture.”

  “He meant nothing.” Shim’on leaned forward from across the circle and gave Menashe an almost playful smile. “So what if Efrayim has more children than you? Rejoice! You will have fewer mouths to feed in your lifetime and less worry when you are dead. Count it a blessing, my nephew!”

  Shim’on’s words brought a measure of comfort, and Menashe managed a tentative smile as he listened to the other stories that poured from the lips of Yisrael’s sons. He learned of Yaakov’s frantic flight from Hebron after the artifice which cost Esav his father’s blessing, of the death of Rahel at Bethlehem, of Yaakov’s stunned amazement when his sons told him that Yosef lived as vizier of all Egypt.

  Re’uven stood up, his voice rumbling like thunder as he recited yet another oral history. “And El Shaddai said to Abram, ‘Go you forth from your land, from your kindred, from your father’s house, to the land I will let you see. I will make a great nation of you, and will give you blessing, and will make your name great. I will bless those who bless you. He who curses you, I will curse. And all the families of the earth will find blessing through you.’”

  Re’uven paused, his eyes strafing the gathering. “And just as El Shaddai spoke to Abram, later called Avraham, thus did He speak to Yisrael in the night. ‘I am the god of Avraham your father and the god of Yitzhak,’ He said. ‘The land on which you lie I give to you and to your seed. Your seed will be like the dust of the earth. You will burst forth to the sea, to the east, to the north, to the Negev. All the clans of the soil will find blessing through you and through your seed! Know this, I am with you, I will watch over you wherever you go and will bring you back to this soil. Indeed, I will not leave you until I have done what I have spoken to you.’

  “After this our father woke from his sleep and said, ‘Why, God is in this place and I did not know it! This is none other than a house of God, and that is the gate of heaven!’ And so our father, Yaakov, started early in the morning, and he took the stone that he had set at his head and set it up as a standing pillar and poured oil on top of it. And he called the name of the place Bet-El, meaning ‘House of God,’ but Luz was the name of the city in former times.”

  “The House of God?” Menashe whispered to Jokim. “Where is Bet-El?”

  Jokim shrugged. “I’ve never been there. I was born in Hebron, and we moved from that region when I was young.”

  “Don’t you want to visit the place?” Menashe nudged his cousin. “And Shekhem, where our uncles slaughtered the city? And the site where Rahel is buried? How can you hear stories of these places and not want to see them for yourself?”

  Jokim gave him a sidelong glance of disbelief. “I’ve heard stories of Sheol, too, and I don’t want to go there! Would seeing these places help me be a better shepherd, or make my goats give more milk?”

  Menashe spread his hands as he fumbled for words. “That other land is the one God promised to our people! Canaan is where Yaakov wanted to be buried! If one land is like another, why did Yisrael make my father swear to bury him in Canaan?”

  For that Jokim had no answer.

  Miles away, in Thebes, Efrayim stood in silent respect as the corpse of his grandfather entered through the gates. In order to take full advantage of the best physicians, Yisrael’s body had been brought directly to the small temple within the vizier’s villa. Pharaoh’s own physician-priests had been dispatched to tend to the patriarch of the Hebrews.

  While Menashe lingered in Goshen, Efrayim agreed to help Ani, the steward of his father’s estate, oversee preparations for the vast funeral procession that would return Yisrael to the land he loved. As busy as a fly with his unexpected responsibilities, Ani assigned Efrayim to the job of overseeing the crucially important embalming process.

  Efrayim knew that the people of the Nile had elevated physical preservation to an art form. The Egyptians believed that when a person died, his ba and ka, elements of the soul, escaped from the body and lived on in the tomb. The ba watched over the living family and friends of the deceased, while the ka traveled back and forth from the body to the Other World. In order to enjoy true immortality, the ba and ka had to be able to recognize the body throughout the ages or they could not return to it.

  Though Efrayim did not agree with these elements of Egyptian religion, if Yaakov’s body were to withstand the long days of mourning and a tedious journey into Canaan, it would have to be embalmed. And so Efrayim followed the corpse, slipping into a dark corner of the small temple to watch the priests of Amon-Re commence their work.

  Yisrael’s body, which had been enfolded in sheets of linen, was stretched out on a slanted embalming bed within the temple, then reverently unwrapped. After positioning and cleansing the flesh, the priests allowed the water and fluids to drain away through holes in the marble slab. Efrayim watched in fascination as the physicians used a chisel to break through a resistant bone at the back of the nostrils. With an iron probe, they extracted several cupfuls of a semiliquid gray substance. The brain material, considered worthless in this life and the one to come, was thrown away.

  Over the course of the next several days, Efrayim rose with the sun, breakfasted with Ani and then joined the physicians in the little temple to observe the continuing process of embalming. After removing the brain, the physicians made a slit in the left side of the body just above the joining of leg to the trunk. Working from this cut, the embalmers removed the liver, lungs, stomach and intestines. After carefully cleansing these organs, the priests rolled them in powdered natron (a grainy, salty chemical gleaned from deposits in the Nile), then placed the organs in separate canopic jars for the journey to the tomb. The heart, seat of the emotions, was removed, sprinkled in natron and replaced inside the chest.

  The physicians carefully cleansed the interior and exterior of the body with scented oils, then packed the body cavity with linen and bundles of natron. As they neared the completion of this first phase of the long process, the physicians chanted prayers and stitched across the gaping cut.

  As he watched the priests work on Yisrael, Efrayim marveled that the Egyptians displayed such reverence for this father of the Hebrews. A decree from Pharaoh himself urged his people to observe the passing of the vizier’s father, and for the past thirty days the citizens of Thebes had mourned Yisrael as thoroughly as had the Hebrews in Goshen. Many nobles of the
court sprinkled ashes on their wigs each morning and beat their breasts outside their houses in public acknowledgment of the debt they owed Yisrael, progenitor of their beloved Zaphenath-paneah, the Bread of Life and Father to Pharaoh. Though twelve years had passed since the great famine, most Egyptians remembered that the vizier—under the guidance of his god—brought them through the Years Without the Flooding of Hep-Ur, the ancient river.

  Yet why shouldn’t the Egyptians and Hebrews work together? He and Menashe, the offspring of a son of Yisrael and a daughter of the Black Land, proved that such a mingling could bring honor to both peoples. The two sons of Yosef had been reared among the glories of Egypt, enjoying the fullness of its splendor and access to its vast treasures of knowledge. They spoke both the Egyptian and the Canaanite languages, and could write the hieroglyphs as easily as the twenty-two consonants of the Hebrew tongue.

  And Yisrael blessed us equally with his other sons, Efrayim thought, studying the wizened face in repose on the embalmer’s slab. And he blessed me with his right hand…

  Finished with the suturing of the body, the embalmers stepped back. Chanting prayers to the gods of the underworld, they lifted painted bowls and ladled powdered natron over the corpse. They continued chanting until the powder lay heaped over the body, enveloping it completely.

  Efrayim breathed a sigh of relief. The natron would cover the body for forty days, completely desiccating it. Until the end of the drying time, Efrayim would not need to look at his grandfather’s corpse again.

  The sun had already begun to melt behind the walls of the villa when Efrayim left the temple. The guards at the gate of the villa stirred in a flurry of activity, and he shaded his eyes to see through the bright glare of the setting sun. A pair of camels stood there, joined by lead ropes to a straggling pack of donkeys. A small group of men, clothed in the linen garments of the desert-dwelling Bedouin, had dismounted to speak to the guards. Efrayim turned away, satisfied that the visitors were traders from the north seeking to curry the vizier’s favor before the day’s business was done.

  “Efrayim!” Efrayim turned when Menashe’s voice rang out across the courtyard. He had not heard from his brother since they parted in Goshen, but now Menashe ran toward him, his head turbaned in linen, his slender body disguised by a long tunic. His eyes snapped in greeting. “I have such news!”

  Efrayim greeted his brother with a quick slap on the back, then stepped back and rested his hands on his hips. “What can possibly be happening in Goshen?” He flashed his brother a teasing smile. “A new lamb, perhaps? Or has Re’uven found a way to make his cattle grow as fat as Binyamin’s?”

  Menashe ignored the sarcasm. “Sleepy Goshen will never be the same.” He slipped an arm around his brother’s shoulder as they walked toward the villa’s wide portico. “The entire world comes to mourn Yisrael. Kings from Jericho, Kadesh Barnea and Gaza. I never dreamed our grandfather was so well-known! Though Father often referred to him as a prince, it has been so many years since Yisrael dwelled in Canaan, I did not think the kings of the world would remember him. But within a week of your departure, the horizon filled with caravans, men who had traveled many miles to reach our settlement. They came, they offered words of comfort, they told stories of Yaakov that stirred my blood like nothing I have ever felt before.”

  “Our settlement?” Efrayim lifted a mocking brow. “You speak as if you are one of them.” He stepped back and eyed Menashe up and down. “You even look like you are one of them.”

  Menashe flushed with sudden anger. “The Hebrews are our people. If God had not called our father out from among them—”

  “They would all be dead,” Efrayim interrupted. “And you and I would not exist. But we do. And we are not only Hebrews, we are Egyptians, too. This is the will of God, and Yisrael confirmed it before he died. God Himself married the sons of Yisrael to Egypt, and we are the first-generation offspring.”

  Menashe’s dark eyes narrowed and hardened, but Efrayim did not give him a chance to speak. “Do not let tales of desert barbarians turn your head, for such stories are not your only heritage.” He grasped Menashe’s elbow. “Your past lies in the glory of the pharaohs, the splendor of Egypt, the strength of the Nile. If God can bless a straggling pack of nomadic shepherds, how much more can He bless those who have the resources of the world’s mightiest empire at their disposal?”

  Menashe glared at Efrayim in irritated silence. Shrugging, Efrayim dropped his brother’s elbow and walked away, a little surprised at his own temerity. Never before had he spoken so forcefully to his older brother, and never before had Menashe let him get away with it.

  He tucked his hands into the belt at his kilt and began to whistle. Perhaps he was the mightier man after all.

  Menashe shook his head as his brother walked away. Only the sweet grace of understanding had enabled him to hold his tongue, for Efrayim had mourned in the heart of Egypt. He had not spent the past month sitting by the fires of the Hebrews, listening to the stories of Avraham and Yitzhak, Sara and Rebekah.

  And what did Efrayim know of his heritage? Nothing! For the first time in his life, Menashe felt as though he fully understood the legacy of his ancestors. The knowledge that he and his people had been chosen to bless the world had left Menashe shaken and awed.

  He bounded up the portico steps and wandered through the vestibule. The front hall where his father routinely received guests and supplicants stood empty, but the room had been recently deserted, for the fragrance of incense still hung in the air. Menashe moved through the halls toward his father’s private chambers. A pair of guards stood outside a wooden door, confirming his expectations. “Is my father inside?”

  One of the guards answered with an impersonal nod.

  “May I enter?”

  Another stiff nod. Tarik, the captain of the vizier’s bodyguard, encouraged his warriors to be stern of demeanor and limited in speech.

  Menashe pressed the door open. Like a demi-king in his own personal realm, his father sat in an elevated chair next to a tray loaded with papyrus scrolls. Ani, forever the dutiful steward, hovered near like a watchful guardian.

  Ani’s beaked face spread into a grin at Menashe’s approach. “Master! Look who has returned!”

  Menashe lowered himself to his knees and prostrated himself. After a month of the Hebrews’ casual, easygoing familiarity, the gesture felt awkward and stiff.

  “Rise, my son.”

  Menashe lifted his head as his father smiled. “It is good to see you.” One of the parchments on the tray curled and rolled onto the floor, and Yosef frowned as Ani scurried after it.

  “I trust your uncles took good care of you?” Yosef’s handsome face, lined now with weariness and the passing of many years, seemed to gentle as he turned back to his elder son. “How are they faring in the north?”

  “They mourn,” Menashe said, straightening. He shifted and felt his cheeks burn at the honest welcome in his father’s eyes. “They mourn, but they are comforted by a stream of visitors from Canaan and beyond. A band of Esav’s people arrived just before I left.”

  “Edomites?” Yosef’s brows shot up. “I suppose Esav’s sons will forgive the past for an occasion such as this.” He glanced again at the parchments on the tray. “So,” he said, clearly distracted, “tell me what you have done during your time with your uncles.”

  “Father, I have learned so much!” Menashe struggled to curb his excitement. “The stories they tell are unbelievable. Jokim assures me that these things are true, yet I find it hard to believe that an angel of God could stop Avraham’s hand as he prepared to sacrifice Yitzhak, and Sarah could give birth at ninety years of age.”

  “El Shaddai has always been a god of miracles,” his father answered, reaching for the parchment Ani had retrieved. “From the beginning of the world until this day, He has not taken His hand of blessing from us.”

  “I know, Father, but—” Menashe paused “—if these tales are so wondrous, why haven’t you shared them with
us? Jokim could not believe I had not heard the stories of Rahel and Lea, or Yaakov and Esav.”

  He stopped, afraid to reproach his father further, and saw that Yosef’s attention was riveted to the parchment in his hand. He had not even heard the question.

  “Peace and prosperity to you.” Menashe bowed his head. “I think I’ll go wash and change into something—more Egyptian.” He gave Ani another smile. “Efrayim thinks I look like a goat herder.”

  Ani laughed, and Yosef’s face wrinkled in an automatic smile. “Yes, go clean up.” He dismissed Menashe with a wave. “Perhaps I will find you at breakfast tomorrow.”

  “Perhaps.” Menashe lowered his gaze as he backed out of the chamber. “But I will understand if you do not.”

  Chapter Four

  Forty days passed. The glistening sheets of water left by the inundation thinned but remained on the fields, brilliantly mirroring the cloudless blue sky above. As the vizier’s servants went forth to reset the flooded boundaries of his fields, Efrayim met again with the physician-priests. After greeting them in the villa’s temple, he stepped aside and allowed the men to begin their work. While lifting rhythmic chants to Amon-Re, the embalmers used palm-frond fans to blow the piles of natron from Yaakov’s physical remains. When the last of the white powder had been blown, brushed and swept away, priests sponged the shrunken body and wiped it with oils, ointments and spices.

  Efrayim sat on a stool in the corner of the tiny temple, his fingers pressed over his mouth as the priests went about their work. The physicians reopened the body cavity, removed Yaakov’s heart, now shriveled from the natron, and placed it inside a special jar. One priest inserted a stone scarab, an amulet in the form of a beetle associated with the rebirth of the sun, in the heart’s former position. As the sun climbed across the sky outside, the priests stuffed the body with packets of fresh linen, then plugged the eye sockets and nostrils with beeswax. Crossing the patriarch’s arms, they covered his fingernails and toenails with specially designed golden caps. With silken thread the priests sewed the embalming cut together, then covered the wound with a golden plate engraved with the protective Eye of Horus.