Winged Pharaoh

by Joan Grant

  Neyah had borrowed some tools from the carver and was practising on a thin piece of broken stone. I told him that I didn’t think he was doing very well, and he said I could try and see if I could do it any better. I think I might have done, but I hit my finger and made it bleed; so I gave it back to Neyah. It was much more difficult than it looked. Neyah was so busy with his carving that he wouldn’t talk to me. So without his noticing I worked his hair into little plaits at the back. He would probably be angry when he found out, but that would be much less dull than not being talked to. Then I heard voices. Neyah and I never teased each other except when we were alone, so I said, “Quick, Neyah run your fingers through your hair.”

  It was my father with Zertar. The carver asked my father if he had expressed the thought that he wished to be carved.

  When they had finished discussing the carvings, we went with Father to the vineyard, where the red grapes were being harvested. The men picking them wore white loin-cloths, and the women coarse linen tunics, fastened on the left shoulder. When the tall rush baskets were filled, the women carried them on their heads to the wine-vats, where the grapes were tipped into a circular stone trough. Then they were crushed by a wooden roller, joined to a beam and pushed round by two white oxen. The vintagers were making wine for the palace, so the rollers were light and pressed out only the finest of the juice.

  Then we went down the avenue of pomegranates to the orchard, where we sat in the shade of an old fig tree. I asked Father to tell us a story about something. And he said, “I will tell you about yourselves, for to ‘know thyself’ is of great importance. For only when a man can say, ‘I know what I am, what I have, and what I have not’, can he seek wisely for what he needs before his journey can be completed.

  “I have told you about the body you live in—how it is made up of the khat and the ka-ibis and the ka. When you die this body returns to dust. Now that which wears this body is usually spoken of as the spirit, but really there are two parts of it: the soul which we need only as long as we must return to Earth; and the spirit, which is as enduring as time.

  “Soul and spirit have five divisions, or, if you like, five attributes, just as the body has five senses. The first of these attributes is that with which we experience emotions, and with which we feel. If I touched you lightly while you were asleep, you would not feel it, because that part of you with which you feel is absent. But if your body is hurt while you are asleep, it calls for the protection of your spirit, and you awake. If the pain continues after you return, you know what has awakened you; but if the touch was so brief and gentle that the nerves of your body no longer recorded it when you have returned, then you would not know what had awakened you.

  “To weep when you are unhappy is your body’s way of expressing the emotion that you are experiencing in that part of your soul that is call the ba.

  “When you are in your body your emotions are much less keen than when you are free of it. When Natee licks your bare hand you feel the roughness of his tongue; but if you wore a thick glove, you would feel it much less. When your body is awake it muffles feeling, just as your glove muffles the feeling of Natee’s tongue on your hand.”

  And I said, “That must be why fear in a dream is far worse than anything you can ever be frightened of on Earth.”

  He nodded and went on, “Do you remember that story Pakeewi told you about himself and the two Nubians? How once, when he was with me in the Land of Gold, he got so angry with two Nubians, that, although he was only a little man, he knocked their heads together until they fell down as though dead. Afterwards Pakeewi admitted to you very shamefacedly that he had been full of beer. Well, too much beer or wine strips off that glove, so that the emotions are left naked; and anger can then be felt so strongly that it can make a little man act as though he were in the body of a giant.

  “On that same expedition I was surrounded by the enemy, who numbered more than five hundred, and with me I had but seventy men. And with me also there was a Horus priest, and of his power he caused our warriors to know courage unmuffled by their bodies, so that they fought like warrior gods and fell upon the enemy, many of whom they killed, and the rest dropped their weapons and fled in terror.

  “That is why the soldiers of our southern garrison sing together before battle; for it makes their bodies sit lightly upon them, and they fight with the strength of ten men to one sword.”

  And Neyah asked, “If your enemies in the Land of Gold had sung before battle, could the Horus priest still have made your seventy vanquish their five hundred?”

  “He would have used a different magic. He would have held our enemies to their bodies, so that they were heavy with Earth. Then they would not have had the singleness of purpose that they had before; they would have known fear; they would have wondered why they were fighting, and what they were fighting for, and all those things which, though wise in their season, do not win battles.

  “The ba is written sometimes as a winged human head, which is the older form, and sometimes as a human-faced bird. For the ka-ibis is the highest part of the body and it is in the head, and the ba is the first part of us that is conscious of leaving Earth and of being ‘winged’.

  “The ba is the first part of the soul; and the second part is that attribute you use when thinking of things of form, which are those things you know of through the five earth senses. With this attribute you think of a sunset, or of a lion; of the taste of baked quail; of the sound of a harp; of the smooth linen of your bed when you are tired; and of the smell of the bean-fields beside the river at noon. With this faculty also, you decide what words to speak or write; in what shape to carve or build; and when is the exact moment to speed an arrow to a flying bird.

  “There is nothing fashioned by man that is not first fashioned by his thoughts; just as there is no living thing on Earth that has not first been born of the spirit of one of the Great Artificers. When the carver asked me if he had expressed my thought, he knew that there was a clear image in my mind of what I wished to be created in stone; and he hoped that he had translated it accurately. Before Neyah carves a boat, he has a picture in his mind of what he wants it to be when it is finished; he feels it is only hidden in the wood, waiting for his knife to free it. And when my plants are still beneath the ground, in my mind they flower, and sleeping branches put forth their leaves.

  “Just as emotion is keener when we are asleep, so can we think more clearly of things of form when we are away from Earth. And that is why, before I make any decision of importance or even agree to the plans of a building, I sleep before I set my seal upon it.

  “This attribute of thought is called the nam.…’

  Neyah asked how it was written. And Father took a piece of charcoal from a little quiver, which he often wore hanging from his belt, and in which he carried the reeds and charcoal of a scribe; and on the wall he drew a human mouth. “The words that come forth from our mouth belong to Earth, so when we talk of things of the spirit, they are but a poor conveyor of our thoughts; but when we talk of things of form, words can describe them accurately, for they both belong to Earth. And so the nam is written as a mouth, because it is that part of us with which we think of things that can be described in words.

  “So now you know of your soul, which is the ba and the nam. The soul outlives the body; but when you need no longer be re-born on Earth, having learnt all that it can teach you, you will need your soul no longer: for then you will be master of emotion and you will have outgrown things of form.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Horus the Hawk-Headed

  It was soon after the Festival of Horus that Ptah-kefer told me why the statues of the great Horus, the Hawk-headed, are carved as a man with the head of a hawk.

  Long, long ago, when Earth was still unthreaded on the cord of time, Horus lived in a world as a man. The Gods dwell in splendour beyond our sight; but just as there is no plant that was not once a seed, so there is no god that was not once a man.

  He
was as gentle as dew falling on a meadow, and his strength was like the rising tide, which engulfs all that would bar its way.

  His just anger could blast like the lightning; but when he brought peace the wildest storms abated, and the thunders dared not whisper across the mountains.

  He was as patient as a climbing vine, and the jars of his memory stored all the wisdom of his world.

  The flame of his spirit did not flicker in the coldest winds of circumstance, nor could the gentle breezes of joy disturb its still tranquillity: so had the sword of his will been tempered in the fire of life.

  The Princes of Darkness loosed their arrows upon him, and it was as if rain fell upon a mountain; they challenged his will, and they were as dead leaves thrown upon a fire. They sent a mighty army against him, and under the eyes of Horus it was turned to stone.

  The mightiest of the Lords of Evil he bound in their own darkness, until their hearts were changed. And he released those who had been imprisoned aforetime.

  For his symbol he made the hawk, which can stay poised in the air and bind animals in the shackles of this trained will, just as the army that marched against Horus was frozen in its charge.

  And that is why Horus has the body of a man, through which he attained this power, and the head of a hawk, which is his symbol of it.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Wine-Jars

  After Neyah, my favourite person to play with was Neferteri. I thought we must have been friends lots of times before we were born this time in Kam. Her father was the Vizier and her mother was dead, so she lived in the palace.

  She and I were playing at being dancing-girls. We were in the garden of fig trees, where there was a white wall on which we could watch our shadows to see which of us bent back further. I found that I could touch the ground with the tips of my fingers; Neferteri could put the whole of her hands on the ground.

  I had a cousin staying in the palace. She was called Arbeeta, and we didn’t like her much. She was rather fat, and awfully bad at running; she couldn’t even dive into the swimming-pool, but walked down the steps as if she were an old woman going to wash clothes in the river. She wouldn’t come and dance with us, although we told her she ought to try and make her body into a nice shape, and she had gone off to ask one of the sewing women to make a new tunic for her doll.

  Then I heard Neyah whistling for me, so we stopped dancing. When he saw us he said, “They’ve been storing away the new vintage and they haven’t sealed up the door yet. I’ve looked down the passage and it’s as dark as the Palace of Set. Let’s go and explore it—unless, of course, you think there might be snakes there.”

  I did think it was horrid of Neyah to keep on reminding me about not liking snakes. I said, “I think that’s a lovely idea! We’ll pretend it’s the Caverns of the Underworld, and to get there we must walk along the True Path. The top of the fruit-garden wall will be very good for that.” That would teach Neyah to tease me about snakes! The fruit-garden wall was twice as high as Father, and I knew Neyah hated walking along narrow places high up, although he would never say so.

  He said, “I think that’s rather a childish idea.”

  So I said quickly, “Of course, Neyah, if you think it’s too difficult…”

  “Of course it’s not difficult, but I thought it might look a bit silly. Come on, I’ll go first.”

  And he climbed up the fig tree and on to the wall, and we followed him. We walked along it, right round the orchard and the vegetable garden, and over that very difficult bit where one has to jump the gateway, until we got to the corner of the vineyard. There was an old vine growing up the wall near the wine-store, which was easy to climb down.

  Ten steps led down to the door, which was right underground to keep it cool. The bolt was shot, but they had forgotten to seal it. The cellar ought to have been shut by my father’s cupbearer and sealed with the Royal Seal.

  Neyah left us there for a few moments. He came back with a little oil lamp, which he had borrowed from the cook of the Overseer of the Vineyard; it was only a wick in a little bowl of oil and it didn’t give much light. We went through the door and shut it carefully behind us.

  The wine-jars were taller than I was. They were marked with Father’s name and the year and where they came from. It wasn’t my father’s full name, but just Za Atet—a bundle of reeds, a feather, and a small half-circle; and after these the Reed and the Bee signs, to show it belonged to Pharaoh. The jars were in stands; I thought it was silly they weren’t made so that they could stand up by themselves. It was very cold down there, and there was a strong smell of new wine; there were a few sherds on the ground, they must have dropped one of the jars and broken it.

  The lamp threw huge shadows of us on the wall. Neyah started talking in his ‘frightening’ voice. I knew it was only a game, but it made my spine prickly.

  “Who are you mortals who challenge the Caverns of the Underworld?”

  “No, don’t do that, Neyah!” I was glad Neferteri had told him to stop. I thought it so brave of her not to mind saying when she didn’t like things.

  Then Neyah said he was going to be Tahuti and the biggest wine-jars could be the Forty-Two Assessors. He pointed to the first wine-jar and said, “That one is ‘Anger-without-cause’. Can you, Sekeeta, look at him and say, ‘Thee have I conquered’?”

  And I said, “Yes, I can.”

  “Sekeeta, you lie. Return to Earth. This morning you were angry with your attendant. You said she pulled your hair…”

  “But she did!”

  “But the tangles were of your own making, for you climbed trees without plaiting it. Also, yesterday, you tried to be as clever as your brother at carving in stone; when you very clumsily cut yourself you got into a rage and threw the chisel into the water. Pass on.”

  Then Neyah pretended that the next wine-jar said, “Is there one who sorrows because of you?”

  I said, “No, there’s not.”

  And Neyah made the jar say, “Miserable human! Thou liest. Return to Earth at once as the child of a cross-eyed Nubian. Does not that girl-child, who is staying in your house, even now cry from her own dullness because you have only asked her to play at things that you know she cannot do and mocked her because she is fat?”

  “But, Neyah, I mean Tahuti, she is so stupid…”

  “Then your stating that which all know to be true is as foolish as one who points at the sun on a hot noon and says, ‘See, the sun is shining.’ So in talking of her stupidity you share it with her.”

  Suddenly Neferteri said, “Do you think they will remember about the door not being sealed and come and lock us in? It would feel awfully like being in a tomb.”

  And Neyah said, “Oh, we could easily shout. And even if nobody heard us we could live for ages on all this wine.”

  I said, very firmly, “I think we’d better get out now, Neyah, because this wine will be here for seven years; it was only put in to-day.”

  It had been an exciting game, but I was very glad to get back in the sun again.

  I felt I had been rather horrid to Arbeeta, so I went and found her and told her that she could give Natee his dinner.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Chariots and Throwing-Spears

  Every day, Neyah and I had lessons in spear-throwing and in the flying of arrows. Benater would set up a big line target divided into twenty red and white squares. In each square there was a rough drawing of an animal, and just before we launched a spear, Benater named the animal that we must transfix. We never knew until the last instant where we had to aim, just as when hunting a running antelope.

  Our spears were shafted with light palmwood, weighted at one end with a small stone macehead to balance the heavy leaf-shaped copper blade. A spear is held above and behind the right shoulder, with the weight of the body far back on the right foot. For the spear to fly from the hand like an arrow from a bow-string, body and arm must launch forward together in perfect rhythm.

  One evening when Neyah and
I were practicing together, I got a blister on my hand, so we had to stop. We went down to the stables and got Neyah’s favourite horse, Meri-naga, who was a beautiful shining black, and harnessed him to a light hunting-chariot. It was made of painted linen stretched over a wooden frame, and the floor was woven with strips of leather to make it less bumpy when going fast over rough ground. We drove to the place where the chariot horses are trained. Here, in a long oval, there are posts driven into the ground, and between them the charioteers must wheel their horses at full gallop without letting horse or chariot touch a post. We went three times round the oval. Meri-naga was very fast, and he turned as swiftly as a swallow; I had to hold on to the chariot rail to avoid being thrown out.

  Then we drove down the track to the river to look at a private fish-trap of Neyah’s. There was nothing in it, and he said it was because we hadn’t put it in deep enough water. The trap was a new idea of his. I didn’t think it was a very good one, because the neck of it was so narrow that, if a fish was clever enough to find its way in, it would be clever enough to find its way out again. But I didn’t say anything, for it had taken him a long time to make. We waded into the water and set it again, further out from the bank.

  It was a very still evening; there was no wind and the river was like a silver mirror. Meri-naga was eating grass; we could hear the sharp sound he made tearing it up with his teeth. There was a sailing-boat far out on the water, and we could hear the fisherman calling for a wind. The Gods didn’t listen to him, and they left the river undisturbed even by a breeze.

  Neyah cut a reed and started carving it. I lay on the bank, outstretched upon the ground. In the deep quiet of evening, it seemed that Earth was like a sailing-boat becalmed on a mighty sea that was the sky; and if a great storm arose, and it was night, we should be driven across the universe and outstrip the stars, until they looked like the manes of celestial horses streaming in the wind.