Winged Pharaoh

by Joan Grant

  Funeral of Pharaoh

  Za Atet was the son of the eldest daughter of the first sister of Meniss. His mother’s tomb had been built where for a time Meniss had thought to make his new capital, northwards of the Royal City. She was drowned when sailing in a small boat near the First Cataract; her body was never recovered, and so her tomb was left empty.

  When Meniss and my father, in co-rulership, built the new city of Men-atet-iss, they decided that the resting-place of their bodies should be at Abidwa, where the Light had been rekindled. When my father died, his tomb was still unfinished, though his plans for it showed where every brick was to be placed.

  His body was embalmed in a temple of the Delta, and until his tomb was ready, it rested in the unsealed tomb of his mother. His sarcophagus was of cedarwood, carved and painted in his semblance, wearing the sphinx head-dress, and holding the Crook and the Flail.

  And while he lay there, his soldiers guarded him. Always a chariot stood beside the door, as though it waited for his swift command; and every day his sword and spear were burnished, as though he were but sleeping in his tent before he armed for battle.

  Upon the first day of the second month of the Inundation he started on his last journey to Abidwa. The great funerary barge was in the likeness of the Boat of the Gods. It was towed by ropes that went beneath the surface of the water to another barge, which led the procession, so that it seemed to move alone. On it he lay in his sarcophagus under a green and scarlet canopy, and none but he was on the boat, save Neyah, who stood at the steering oar. For nine days Za Atet journeyed, and each day from one hour after sunrise until sunset Neyah must steer, and could not rest or eat. Far down the river stretched the other boats—the Royal Household; his warriors; his priests; and his scribes. And on the banks were gathered his people, who had come from all his lands to see the splendid passing of their Pharaoh. They had wreathed themselves in flowers to honour him, that had died to free his people from the Shadow.

  My mother’s eyes were never dimmed with tears; yet when she smiled there was a sorrow on her mouth, and I knew that her days were exiles between sleep. She had said that his people must share in his joy of freedom from Earth and be of courage and not weep that he had gone ahead of them beyond their sight. And so his last journey to Abidwa was not of sorrow, but like a triumph on a victory.

  At Abidwa his bier was drawn by twelve white oxen yoked in pairs; they were garlanded with scarlet poppies, the flower of warriors, and with golden corn for garnered wisdom. And thus he led a mighty river of his people along the avenue of sycamores, lined with the soldiers of his southern lands, who sang their warrior songs, as when they sang them before he led them in the battle-line.

  This great Pharaoh’s tomb was not a sepulchre of sculptured stone, but it was like the room in which he had set his seal; and the white walls were in the likeness of the shelves where he had kept his wide papyrus rolls. Behind Za Atet’s final resting-place were the tombs of those that had worked with him and been his friends. Yet this seemed no city of the dead, for it was lapped with lawns, like smooth green water islanded with flowers. For he had said that when his last garden was no longer green and none should come to tend the paths that he had planned, then would his memory have faded from men’s hearts; and he wished not for the little immortality of stone when he would know the glories of the West.

  Then past the semblance of their almighty dead, his people filed.…

  Now all had bidden him their earth farewell, and the floor was deep with the flowers they brought as that final tribute he had wished. No food or wine, no furniture, no swords; no gold or ivory, no carven stone; but only the growing things that he had loved. And then the doors of cedarwood were sealed.

  And we left him there in his serenity.

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER ONE

  Young Pharaoh

  After my father’s funeral, on the evening we got back to the palace Neyah and I went to the Pavilion of Plants and talked together.

  Only a year ago we had been children, but now he had grown almost to a man’s stature. He looked so much older, and even his voice was tired as he said, “It isn’t only you and I, Sekeeta, who have lost our father, but it’s all his people. They knew that every one of them could go to him for justice and counsel, and for his wisdom and his kindliness. Now he is not here any more.…

  “I knew that one day I should be Pharaoh, but I thought that I should rule with him for years; and gradually he would let me do more and more; and when he was old he might have wanted me to rule alone, but I should still have had him behind me. Now his people have only me to guide them. I shan’t even have you to rule with me—for such a long time. Oh, Sekeeta, do hurry up in the temple! It can’t really take years, if you work frightfully hard.”

  “I wish I hadn’t got to go to the temple. I wish the priest could do all that sort of thing, so that I could stay with you. But when I’m a priest, I shall be able to remember being with Father all the time, instead of only sometimes.”

  “Father’s judgments were always right. When he ruled, Justice and Pharaoh and the Scales of Tahuti were three ways of saying the same thing. He had all these thousands and thousands of people to look after, yet everyone who talked to him felt that they alone filled Pharaoh’s heart. His soldiers were his brother warriors: he knew their names, even if he hadn’t seen them for years, and he remembered how many children they had, and where their homes were. It wasn’t just an army he that he led; all the men fought for him because he was their friend. A child could talk to him and be sure of his understanding as if he were a child himself. Do you remember, Sekeeta, how, whenever we went and asked him something, even if he was tired after a long audience, or working at something very important with Zertar, he never answered with just half his mind, he always gave everything of himself?

  “How can I ever be worthy to hold his Crook and Flail, to sit in his Hall of Audience, to wear his Double Crown?”

  ‘Neyah, I know—not only in my heart, but with the sort of certain ‘know’ that comes from outside oneself—that you will be another Atet. Remember what he said to me after he was killed, ‘Tell Neyah that much have I taught him on Earth and much will I teach him away from Earth’. He will be helping you all the time; you have only to think of him and he will be beside you to give you counsel. And have you forgotten what was said of you when you were born, ‘He shall guide his people when they that assail them are engulfed beneath the waters, even as were the evil ones in the Old Land’? This has been fulfilled, just as the other words shall be true of you, ‘This child shall be called Neyah, for the companions of his spirit are long in years, and he is worthy to rule over Kam’.”

  “But Father wasn’t impatient, as I am. He could live in the present and see it clearly, undistorted by the past or the future. When he was sitting in audience, he thought of nothing except of how to bring the clearest judgment upon what was before him. He never let half his mind be thinking that there were still twelve cases to be heard, or how hot it was, or that he wanted to go sailing at noon; or any of the other things that always creep into my mind.…

  “When he was here with us in the evenings, it wasn’t Pharaoh, or a captain-of-captains, or a high-priest of Ptah: it was just a father talking to his children, or a man tending his his plants, or a healer-with-herbs searching for yet another secret of the Great Artificers.”

  “Do you remember, Neyah, long ago when he said, ‘If men remember me, I hope it will be not as a warrior, or as a builder, but as a healer-with-herbs’? Yet he built many temples, and he died upon the greatest victory. Under him our people called themselves no longer the ‘People of the Two Lands’, but the ‘People of Kam’; and the Bee and the Reed became two eyes that see one thing.

  “And when we are afraid of failing, Neyah, we will say in our hearts, ‘For Atet and Light’; for we are his children, and we must follow him and be not afraid.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Last Day of Childhood

&nbs
p; On the day before I went into the temple, I went with my mother to the Meadow of Ra; and I stayed there long with her, for I knew that this was the last day of my childhood.

  I sat at her feet and rested my head against her knees, while her hands caressed my forehead like the cool winds of sunset. My heart was sorrowful, for I thought that never again should Neyah and I know the happiness of children together; for he must rule; and he would find other companions, and some might be dearer to him than I. No longer could the love of my mother be as sandals upon my two feet, for I must learn wisdom myself, so that, shod in truth, I could bear burdens across the heavy places of Earth.

  And as the shadows grew long, my mother talked to me, and the weight of tears upon my heart was lightened. “If you were blind, my Sekeeta, there is nothing that you would not do, there is nothing that you would leave undone, if it might let you see the stars again. Long have you worked before in this life I first held you in my arms, so that you might see from this poor misty land we call Earth to realities where all truth endures. When you were a child and frightened by a dream, remember the comfort a lamp could give to you by driving back the darkness that you feared. One day of your own knowledge you shall be a lamp, and others, who fear the twilight of this world, shall look to you to light them on their way. When you were little I taught you this prayer, ‘Master of thy wisdom let me grow into a great tree so that the weary may rest in my shade and go upon their journey refreshed, and the storm-ridden may regain their strength in the shelter of my boughs’. Now like a tree you shall grow upwards to the Light, and your knowledge shall be the roots that withstand the bitter winds of time that in the future may assail your strength.

  “Far in the future there may come a time of little knowledge in the land, a time when men have forgotten that death and sleep are one, a time when men have cloaked the face of truth, and walk in fear, and know not where they walk. But if you can cross the Causeway to the Gods, then you shall never know the loneliness of those poor lost ones, crying in the mist, who cannot see the stars for their own tears.

  “For love of you I would take all the joys that this Earth holds and put them in your hands. I would keep every sorrow from your path that there should be laughter ever in your heart. Yet would I give you a far richer gift—but it is a gift that you yourself must find. Even if you could have all the joys of Earth, they would last such a little span of time; for chariots break, and lions must die; and sailing-boats shall no more fly the wind; and even the loveliest bodies return to dust.

  “But what you learn in a temple will endure when Earth is a link in a half-forgotten chain. Wisdom and love are mightier than time: there may be deserts where this garden is, forgotten mounds for temple sanctuaries; yet will the love in our hearts be with us still, and you will have learnt how to remember it.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  First Days in the Temple

  I said good-bye to Mother and Neyah on the night before I went into the temple. I couldn’t tell them how much I minded leaving them, lest they should feel they were sending me into exile. That night Natee slept in my room. When I woke in the morning, I saw standing open beside my bed the plain wooden chest in which were packed the few possessions that I should take with me. No longer should I wear fine linen embroidered in gold and coloured threads, or cloaks clasped with golden lion-heads; now my tunics would be of coarse white linen and my cloaks tied with a violet cord.

  Then for the first time I put on the tunic of a temple pupil. It felt harsh to my skin, and my sandals of plain leather were such as only a servant would wear in the palace. I opened the box of painted cedarwood in which I kept my necklaces and bracelets, and I thought how long it would be before I saw them again. Though such things are unimportant, when one looks upon them perhaps for the last time they take on a new significance; just as one may have a garden and see in it the weeds and the flowers that are wilted, yet when one knows that one must leave it, it seems beautiful and without blemish.

  When I said good-bye to Natee, he put his great paws on my shoulder and licked my face. I told him I couldn’t help not taking him with me, and that Zeb had promised to bring him to meet me in a little wood near to the temple so that I could take him for walks. But he knew that I was sad, and he would not be comforted; he whimpered as he always did when he was unhappy. Then I shut him in my room, so that he couldn’t follow me. I wished he were a cub again and could stop himself being unhappy by doing something he wasn’t allowed to do, like eating my sandals or tearing the feathers out of a pillow.

  I went to the temple alone, so that none of the pupils should know that I was of the Royal House; for in a temple there is no rank, save the grades of initiation.

  When I went through the pylon, which had the Scales of Tahuti carved upon the lintel, there were still many people in the forecourt, sitting on the grass in the shade of the sycamore trees as they waited for their friends who had gone into the sanctuaries. I went across the forecourt, up the three wide steps and across the pillared terrace into the cloistered courtyard.

  Ney-sey-ra was coming out of the Hall of the Sanctuaries, talking to another priest, and when I saw him I forgot that I had dreaded leaving the palace.

  I sat down on the grass beside the pool, waiting till he should be ready for me. The lotuses, with their open hearts like golden suns in the blue sky of their petals, reminded me of the first time I had met Ney-sey-ra.

  Soon he joined me, and as we stood looking down at the pool, he said, “Every temple has a lotus pool, for the lotus has always been the symbol of a true priest. Though its roots grow in the mud beneath the water, it opens in the sunlight, and through its stalk the root knows of what the flower has seen.

  “Mankind between birth and death knows of the earth-body; and that is the roots of the lotus. All leave their bodies when they sleep, but few there are whose memory of what they do away from Earth is not washed away by the Waters of Forgetfulness. Some go to the places from whence the Light shines; but only those who have a channel of memory, which is the stalk of the lotus, can bring back to Earth what they have seen in the Light.

  “The bud of the lotus can sense the light and know of its presence, but it is not opened to it. Yet has it gone far in the journey. This is the symbol of one in his first life of temple training. The bud opening to show its petals is the symbol of one who has passed the fine test of an initiate; and the fully opened flower is one who holds all power that one who is still on Earth can possess.”

  Then he told me that he would take me to Hak-kab, who looked after all the girls in the temple.

  The entrance to the pupils’ part of the temple was on the west side of the forecourt—opposite the entrance to the priests’ quarters. I had often been to Ney-sey-ra’s house, but this was the first time I had seen the place that for many years would be my home.

  Hak-kab was old and very thin. She looked a little like Maata, but her eyes were hard. She called to a girl, who was inlaying the lid of a box with bitumen and shell, and left me with her. The girl asked my name, and I told her, Sekeeta. She showed me the pupils’ rooms, which were built in rows on three sides of a long swimming-pool bordered with grass and shaded on the fourth side by pomegranate trees. Beyond the trees were the two-roomed houses of the younger priestesses, each with a garden like a room open to the sky. Dividing us from the boys’ part of the temple was a long building where we had our food and could meet each other and play games and talk.

  It all looked very bare and strange after the palace. I felt very miserable. The future stretched before me like a long grey road, and what it led to was so far ahead that I couldn’t see it.

  The girl told me it was the hour for swimming. I took off my tunic and joined the others in the pool. It was the first time I had ever bathed with anyone except Neyah and our friends, and I didn’t like being in the same water as thirty people I had never seen before.

  Some of them played a game, which they seemed to be fond of. Three girls stood in a row at one end of the
pool, while another threw in a plate, and then they dived in and raced to see who got it first.

  In the afternoon Hak-kab told me that I was to be one of the four girls who garlanded the Meniss pillars of the Hall of Sanctuaries with flowers. She explained to me that the pillars were copies in stone of the reeded pillars of the little temple where Meniss was trained during the long exile. But as Meniss was my great-great uncle, I knew that already. She said that I could go outside the temple when I liked, as long as I was in my room by sunset.

  The rest of the day I wandered about and nobody talked to me. I wondered if I should ever get used to living with a lot of girls, and I longed for Neyah to come in his chariot and take me away.

  In the evening I went out into the forecourt and listened to one of the temple story-tellers, who tell old legends and tales of wisdom to any who come to listen. Men and women and children were sitting round him on the grass. I sat between a goatherd and his son, who carried a newborn kid in his arms. The story-teller was just beginning another story.

  “There was once a man who walked upon stones until his bare feet bled. He was offered sandals, but would not put them on.

  “Then he found himself in a swift river and thought that he was drowning; but when strong hands would have pulled him into a boat, he tried to swim away from them.

  “When he was sitting on a scorching rock at noon-day, he saw before him cool trees beside a pool; and they invited him to rest in their shade, but he ran further into the desert.

  “He tried to draw music from a splintered reed; and he was given a flute of rare wood and ivory, but he broke it across his knee and threw away the pieces.

  “When he was starving, a platter of his favourite food appeared before him; but he buried it in the ground and tried to stifle his hunger by licking a stone.

  “And when the weather grew cold and he had only a few rags to hide his nakedness, they offered him fresh linen and a soft woollen cloak, but he would not wear them, and shivered in the storm.