by Joan Grant
Winged Pharaoh
“During the last twenty years, seven books of mine have been published as historical novels which to me are biographies of previous live I have known.”
ALSO BY JOAN GRANT
Far Memory Books
Eyes of Horus
Lord of the Horizon
So Moses Was Born
Life ad Carola
Return to Elysium
Scarlet Feather
Non-Fiction
Speaking from the Heart
Copyright
First published in 2007 by
Overlook Duckworth, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.
New York and London
NEW YORK:
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Copyright © 1937 by Joan Grant
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.
ISBN 978-1-46830-799-3
to DS
Author’s Note
The Ancient Egyptians gave many names to their land. In this story of the time of the First Dynasty, it is called ‘Kam’ and also ‘The Two Lands’; Sumer, the land of the forerunners of the Babylonians, is called ‘Zuma’; and Crete, the centre of the Minoan civilisation, is called ‘Minoas’. Except for the city of ‘Men-atet-iss’, which is Memphis, near Cairo, the locality of all sites is shown dearly enough for the purposes of the story. ‘Abidwa’ is the modern Abydos, and the ‘Amphitheatre of Grain’ is now the site of Tell el Amarna. ‘The Narrow Land’ is Sinai, and ‘the Narrow Sea’ is the Red Sea. There is no standard system for the spelling of Egyptian words and names; in my spelling the ‘a’ is pronounced long, as in ‘calm’.
The emblems of Upper Egypt, ‘The South’, were the Lotus and the Reed; its crown, the White crown. The Red crown was of ‘The North’, whose emblems were the Papyrus and the Bee.
Though horses are introduced into this story, I am aware that no record has so far been found of the horse in Egypt prior to the XVIIIth Dynasty.
Joan Grant
Joan Grant was born in England in 1907. Her father was a man of such intellectual brilliance in the fields of mathematics and engineering that he was appointed a fellow of Kings College while still in his twenties. Joan’s formal education was limited to what she absorbed from a series of governesses, although she feels she learned far more from the after-dinner conversations between her father and his fellow scientists.
When Joan was twenty, she married Leslie Grant, with whom she had a daughter. This marriage ended soon after Winged Pharaoh was published in 1937—a book which became an instant best-seller. Until 1957 she was married to the philosopher and visionary Charles Beatty, who is the author of several books, including The Garden of the Golden Flower, a treatise on psychiatrist Carl Jung. In 1960, Joan married psychiatrist Denys Kelsey.
Throughout her life, Joan has been preoccupied with the subject of ethics. To her, the word “ethics” represents the fundamental and timeless code of attitudes and behavior toward one another on which the health of the individual and society depends. Each of her books and stories explores a facet of this code. As Denys Kelsey has written, “The First Dynasty of Egypt once knew the code well, but lost it and foundered. Eleven dynasties were to pass before it was recovered, but those were more leisurely times when the most lethal weapon was an arrow, a javelin and a club. We feel that in the present troubled days of this planet, these books must be presented.”
Table of Contents
Winged Pharaoh
Also by Joan Grant
Copyright
Author’s Note
Joan Grant
PART I
1 Into Exile
2 Anubis
3 Dream Country
4 Neyah’s Newest Adventure
5 Baby Lion
6 Zeb the Lion Boy
7 Seers in Judgment
8 The Legend of Creation
9 The Body
10 The Healer with Herbs
11 Seership
12 The Soul
13 Horus the Hawk-Headed
14 The Wine-Jars
15 Chariots and Throwing-Spears
16 The Spirit
17 My Mother’s Anniversary
PART II
1 Ney-sey-ra
2 Lion Hunt
3 The Healer with the Knife
4 Dream of Zuma
5 Royal Progress
6 Death of Za Atet
7 Freedom Regained
8 Funeral of Pharaoh
PART III
1 Young Pharaoh
2 Last Day of Childhood
3 First Days in the Temple
4 The Story of Meniss
5 Night in the Sanctuary of Anubis
6 First Trial of Memory
7 The Great Artificers
8 The Dweller in the Corn
9 The Temple Scribe
10 Second Trial of Memory
11 Scarlet Poppies
12 Arbeeta’s Wedding
13 Neferteri
14 Temple Counsellors
15 Septes
16 The Wheel of Time
17 The Widow
18 Hysko-Diomenes
19 Dream of Minoas
20 The Blind Goddess
21 Dio
PART IV
1 Prelude to Initiation
2 The Torturers
3 The Speakers of Evil
4 The False Priest
5 Treasure on Earth
6 The Pitiful Ones
7 The House of the Gods
8 The Place of Records
9 The Place of Weather
10 The Place of Melody
11 The Place of Scent
12 Where Prayers Are Answered
13 The Teachers
14 The Land of Peace
15 Ishtak
16 The Seven Great Ordeals
17 The Winged One
PART V
1 Marriage of Pharaoh
2 Daily Life
3 Pharaoh in Audience
4 The Poisoner
5 Tribute
6 The Festival of Min
7 Dio
8 The Laws of Kam
9 Expedition to Punt
10 The Golden Link
PART VI
1 Sea Journey
2 The Palace of Kiodas
3 Artemiodes
4 Minoan Art
5 The Court of the Sacred Bulls
6 Temple Ritual of Minoas
7 The Sorcerer
8 The Festival of Poseidon
9 Homeward Voyage
PART VII
1 Dream Warning
2 The Amphitheatre of Grain
3 Battle Against the Zuma
4 The Stele
5 The Homecoming
6 Neyah’s Return
7 Belshazzardak
8 The Safeguarding of the Two Lands
PART VIII
1 Noonday of My Mother
2 Children of Pharaoh
3 Den and Horem-ka
4 The Death of Neyah
5 The Evening of My Days
6 The Heart of Kam
> 7 The Tomb of Meri-neyt
8 Return From Exile
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
Into Exile
When the time came for me to return to Earth, a Messenger of the Great Overlords told me that I should be re-born in Kam; and the two who would fashion my new body would welcome me, for we had been companions aforetime and the ties between us were of love and not of hatred, which are the two threads that bind men most closely together upon Earth; and for my brother I should have one with whom I had travelled long upon the great journey.
When this was told to me, the sorrow, which all know when they must leave their true home and go to the place of mists upon another day’s journey, was lightened: for I should have companions in my exile.
While my mother still sheltered me with her body, my father sought to find a gift that would tell her of the love that filled his heart. He could not tell her of his love in words, for words are but the fleeting shadows of reality. Carvers in turquoise nor workers in gold or ivory could please him with their finest craftsmanship. One day, as he was walking in the gardens of the palace in the cool of the evening, he thought of making a garden for my mother, a garden such as had never been seen before. Only by this could he symbolize his love. For nothing can be greater than its creator; and though a carving may be a song in stone, it is born of the sculptor; but the plants of the earth are the children of the Gods.
And so, in a curve like the young moon, he planted trees to shade her from the sun at noonday, and bushes with aromatic leaves to spice the air for her refreshment. And for the bowstring of this living bow, there was the lapping water of the lake, which stretched its silver to the setting sun, Amenti in the West. Then he mustered a host of grassy spears, which closed their ranks to make the smooth green lawns; and he starred them with little flowers, scarlet and yellow, violet, blue and white, which grew to make a carpet for her feet. From lands beyond the boundaries of Kam he brought the scarlet lilies of the Land of Gold, and trumpet vines that grow far to the south, where men walk in their own shadow; and from the north he summoned lemon trees, white oleanders and anemones, and flowers that keep their perfume for the moon, to fill the dusk with their drowsy sweetness. And honeysuckle entwined arbeeta flowers and the blue convolvulus to make her wreaths.
When I was twelve days old, my father for the first time took her to this garden that he had made for her. It was surrounded by a garden wall, and upon the lintel of the door of cedarwood were carved their names, Za Atet, and Merinesut, ‘the beloved of Pharaoh’s heart’. Together they went into the flowering shade, where the paths were secret as gazelle tracks through the reeds. When she reached the heart of the green quiet and saw a garden more beautiful than any she had dreamed, she said that here the petals of the flowers were as though the clouds of sunset had been carved in blossoms by the Sun-god Ra, who upon the Earth could never before have found such pleasure for his rays. And both agreed that it must have pleased the god to see his children here so glorified.
So they named this place Sekhet-a-ra, ‘the meadow of Ra’. And to me also they gave this name.
My brother, who had returned to Earth three years before me, was called Neyah. For at his birth the Priest of Maat in attendance, seeing those who came to speed him on his way, had said: “Hence is one who is worthy to rule over the people of Kam, for the companions of his spirit are long in years. And this child shall be called, Neyah, ‘born with wisdom’; for his master bore this name when in the Old Land he listened to the voice that warned him of the coming of the Great Rain. And just as his master guided his people when the evil ones had disappeared beneath the waters, so shall this child guide the people of Kam when they are assailed by evil ones, who in their turn shall be engulfed by the sea.”
CHAPTER TWO
Anubis
When I was very little and walking was still a new adventure, Maata took Neyah and me with her to the temple. Neyah held my hand going up the steps. Everything was very big, and it was cold after the hot sunshine in the courtyard. In one of the rooms there was an enormous wooden animal like a hunting-dog, painted black. I wanted to touch it, but Neyah said I mustn’t, because it was the statue of a god, and it was called Anubis. And suddenly I felt much older than two, and as wise as Maata my nurse; and I thought I knew all about Anubis, but I couldn’t find words to explain it to Neyah.
When we got home I told Mother about it; and she gave me a little statue of Anubis, just the same only child size, with a little painted wooden house for it to live in. And I kept it beside my bed, so that I could see it the first thing in the morning when I woke up. Mother said that Anubis was the bringer of dreams to children. Sometimes I dreamed of being grown up and doing lots of very important things. I couldn’t quite remember them, but in the morning it seemed very unfamiliar to be only two.
Neyah didn’t have to go to bed until long after me, because he was five. Quite often, before I went to sleep, he used to come and tell me stories. I had a very specially favourite story about a lion and a wild-cat and a hare. The hare lived with his mother in the reeds. He could run much faster than all his brothers and sisters, and although his mother warned him not to go too far from home, he didn’t listen, for he thought he could run away from any danger however sudden. He used to creep out at night and look up at the moon, where he could see the Father of all the Hares, and he used to tell him all about the clever things he had done.
One day, when he was busy thinking about himself, a huge wild-cat sprang upon him; and she picked him up in her mouth and took him home to her cubs for their breakfast. But the cubs had had plenty of breakfast, so the wild-cat put him down at the entrance to her cave and told him that if he moved she would kill him at once. The poor hare was so frightened he kept quite, quite still. Then he looked up at the god of the hares, and he said, “Please, please look down out of the moon and help me. I made such a mistake about being clever. I’ll always listen to people who know more than I do, if only you’ll save me from this wild-cat.”
The wild-cat listened to what he was saying, and she licked her whiskers and laughed to think that any hare, even if he lived in the moon, could attack a wild-cat.
Suddenly in the shadows outside the cave there was a great roaring, and an enormous lion sprang upon the wild-cat and ate her right up.
The little hare saw that his prayers had been answered, and he wasn’t at all frightened of the lion, because he knew that the answer to a prayer is always good, whatever shape it comes in. So he went up to the lion and thanked him. The lion lay down so that the hare could climb on his back. And he nestled in the lion’s mane while he rode back home to his mother.
When the little hare grew up, he told this story over and over again, and he always finished up by saying, “Look to the moon and you will see the wisest of us all.”
CHAPTER THREE
Dream Country
One day, when I was three years old, I was with my mother by the swimming-pool. One end of it was quite shallow, and I could stand there alone. I took off my necklace of lapis and shell beads and my little white linen kilt, and played in the water, banging it with my hands, so that the drops leapt into the air. When I had finished with the water, I ran about in the sun without my clothes on; and I picked some flowers and made them into a bunch to give to Neyah, who was out with my father.
Then Maata came and said that it was time for me to go to bed. But I didn’t want to go, and I said, “No, won’t,” because I wanted to stay with my mother in the sun. Maata looked very stern, and as tall as one of the pillars in the great hall. I jumped back into the pool and splashed very hard, so that she couldn’t come near me without getting wet. And then Mother asked me to come out, so I did. Maata got cross, so I lay on my back and yelled very loud, “I won’t go to sleep. I won’t go to sleep. I won’t.” And I drummed my heels on the ground so that she would know I really meant it and stop bothering me. This was a good idea, because Mother told Maata to leave me alone with her. So Maata had to
go; and I was very pleased.
Then Mother asked me why I didn’t want to go to sleep. And I said, “Because it’s dull, and because I’m enjoying myself having a lovely time.”
And she said, “You can have a lovely time when you are asleep.” I didn’t quite know what she meant, until she pointed to my kilt, which was still lying by the edge of the pool, and went on, “Sometimes you wear that kilt and sometimes you don’t. Just because you haven’t got your kilt on it doesn’t mean you have to be dull. When you want to get into the water you take your kilt off you love being in the water, don’t you? Well, when you go to sleep you take your body off and leave it in your bed, and then you go and have a lovely time; and you can do lots of exciting things you can’t do when you’re in your body, just the same as you can’t go into the pool when you are in your kilt.…Don’t you ever have dreams?”
And I said, “Of course I do.” Then she told me that dreams were memories of things I did when I left my body asleep.… “When you are in bed, if you still want to bathe you can leave your body there, which will please Maata, and you can come and play in the pool, which will please yourself. And in the Dream Country, water is just as wet; and you can have even more fun playing there than when you are awake.”
After she had told me that, I thought I had been very silly to mind having to go to sleep. So I gave her lots of kisses, and went to my room and told Maata I was sorry I’d been horrid. Then she stopped being a long way off like a pillar and became all near and friendly again.
When Mother came to say good-night she sat beside me and stroked my forehead with her cool hand as her soft voice caressed me,
Sleep, my daughter,
For the sun has drawn the curtains of the night,
Leaving the stars to watch you while you rest.
The sails of all the river boats are furled,
And the birds have folded their far-flying wings.
Lion cubs are sleeping in the mother’s warmth,
And fish dream in the shelter of the reeds.
