Winged Pharaoh

by Joan Grant

  I heard the rustling again, and deep in my heart I thought it was a snake and not a bird: the sound echoed, and I could not tell where it came from. I said loudly, “Sekeeta, you’re being a coward!” so that I should have to prove to myself that I was not. Then I wished I had not spoken aloud, because the silence seemed to rush in on me: it was so still, it was like fingers pressing on my ears. I hoped Ney-sey-ra was asleep, so that he would be waiting for me. I thought of him very hard and prayed at the same time to Horus for courage.…

  When I awoke, Ney-sey-ra was sitting beside the bed waiting to hear my memory. But I was so pleased to see him and to realise the night was over, that the memory of my dreams flashed away and was gone. I thought Ney-sey-ra would have been disappointed, but I should have known his understanding. And he told me that many temple pupils, after their first night alone in the sanctuary, realising a little of what initiation meant, went back to their families and left the work of priests to others.

  CHAPTER SIX

  First Trial of Memory

  The next time I slept in the sanctuary, I had much to tell Ney-sey-ra when I returned to my body.

  “First I went to the house of a poor woman who had a sick child. She knew not from what it suffered, and she thought it was dying. When from exhaustion she slept on the floor beside the bed, I told her that her child had eaten of a poisonous plant while leading the goats to pasture; and that she must give it a cupful of sweet oil to drink and put cloth wrung from hot water on its stomach to ease the pain; that in three hours she must give it bread crumbled in warm milk, and soon the poison would be gone and her child be well again.”

  Ney-sey-ra asked me, “Was the child a boy or girl? What country did they live in?”

  “I think it was a boy; I am not sure. I do not know the country; there were hills covered in short grass.”

  “It was a boy, and the land was Minoas, five days’ rowing from the island of their king.”

  “Next I went to a man who starved his oxen and stalled them belly-deep in filth; and clustering flies were feasting on their sores. I made him see a white bull with golden horns, who said to him, ‘I am the God of Oxen. For your cruelty to my people, until every sore upon them is healed, you shall spend your sleep in lying down in filth and on your shoulders you shall wear a yoke.’ I cannot remember where or who he was.”

  “His name was Shezzak and he was a Zuma. For five nights you have been to him and told him to be compassionate. But he would not listen; and so he needed stronger teaching than words: for he could not understand his oxen’s pain until he shared it with them.”

  “Then I went somewhere, I know not where, and tried to go along a narrow path, but my way was barred by a frightful creature like a monstrous crocodile. And as it rushed at me, I turned and fled, and I woke in terror.”

  “That was a creation of an evil one, to send you back to your body and stop your work. I know the fear that such things can instil, but next time you see one you must try to walk on, and will that it should crumble at your feet. If it is too strong for you, call to me for aid. Use your courage as a sword and as a shield, and they who challenge it shall run from you: for all things of the Darkness fear the Light.”

  “Then I slept again, and I went to the Place of Children and showed two little crippled boys that there they need not limp, but could run races one with the other…and there was more, which I cannot remember. I think I told them stories. And I built a little girl a house of sand.”

  “You have often been to this place before, as you remember, and played with children who smiled in their sleep because of the happiness of which they dreamed.”

  “And lastly, I remember going to a man who had just died, to tell him he was free of Earth. But he laughed at me and said I was mad. He picked up a stone and threw it at a tree and said, ‘Do you still think I am a ghost? Ghosts are but part of man’s imaginings, or at best misty shapes that sob upon the wind. I am alive—you fool to call me dead! Even my wound has healed and shows no scar’. But though I talked gently to him, he only laughed. And I said, ‘You say that we are still on Earth: watch me fly, here I am lighter than a bird’. And of my will I rose above him. But still he laughed, and he said this was a trick, or else some strange fantastic dream and that he must be sleeping after too much wine.… He had been murdered in a wine-house brawl on the island where the sea ships of Minoas are built, and his name was Prax-ares.”

  Ney-sey-ra said, “That is well remembered. You have brought it back clearly and in detail, with nothing added or misunderstood. When next you sleep, go to him again, until he wakens to reality and knows where he is.”

  “Why should he not believe that he had died?”

  “People of his country know not what death is. They think that when their nostrils no longer draw breath, they shall have reached the end of consciousness. So finding themselves still living, they think it must be upon Earth that they live. And in so thinking, they are bound by the limitations of Earth, from which they should be free.…But he will listen, though it may take time.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Great Artificers

  When I asked Ney-sey-ra how the Great Artificers created vessels for life on Earth, he told me, “Before any living thing first comes to Earth, it must be conceived within the mind of its creator. He must fashion it from thought in all its complexity and at one time. Then he must clothe it with the substance of Earth before it becomes visible in the eyes of man.

  “When a scribe draws a picture, he draws first one line and then another, until all the separate lines together make the picture that he sees in his mind. If he worked like an artificer, he would have to hold the picture in his mind, complete and perfect in every detail, and in a flash of time project it on to the wall. Yet the drawing-scribe has only to see his vision lengthwise and heightwise. So now think of a sculptor. In his mind he knows the statue he wishes to create, and with his chisel he frees it from the block of stone before him. If he had to create a statue in a flash of time, he would have to hold every aspect of it in his mind, as though a thousand interlacing circles encompassed it and every part of every rim of them were at the same moment the place from which he saw it. And statues are but the outer shell; they have not texture, save the wood or stone, no flesh, or heart, or channels for their life.

  “Now think what an artificer must do if he would make the body of a lion. Not only must he know all that the eye can see, but also all the elaborate workings of veins and stomach, heart and lungs and bowel, muscles and blood, and a thousand other things that must be there before a lion can live: the thousand thousand hairs that make its coat and all the royal splendour of its mane; those magic mirrors that are living eyes, which let its spirit know of sound; and its nostrils, which bring it knowledge on the wind.

  “Now close your eyes and visualise that lion—and your vision must be more embracing than the sun: for though the sun can bathe a stone in light, half of it is shadowed. But the artificer must know each hair-tip, each drop of blood, bathed equally in the brilliant light of his will, so that he sees it in its entirety, all at one time. Then he is but a quarter on his way. Now with his power he must mould it into earthly form, so that it can hold the life for which he made it. Does it sound difficult?”

  “So difficult!”

  “And therefore worthy of the Gods who do it.”

  “I am glad they do not waste their time by doing things that I can understand.…Would it be much easier to make an ant?”

  “Perhaps a little. But though an ant looks small to us, size—away from Earth—is but a manner of thought. So there one cannot say that a lion is bigger than an ant, except when thinking of them in terms of Earth. Though an ant is shorter than you little finger-nail, its design exactly fulfils the purpose for which it was made, and if you could see it the same size as yourself, you would know it to be very complex.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Dweller in the corn

  One day I walked along the path through the
cultivation and went among the corn, gathering scarlet poppies, the flower of warriors, to weave about the pillars in the temple; for it was the anniversary of my father’s great victory. The sun was hot and I had walked far; and being tired, I lay down in the shade of the growing corn and went to sleep.

  I found myself in a great forest; and the smooth trunks of the trees soared above me to the sky. I walked onward through the growing colonnades, and I saw an animal, which was as large as a lion, but with the semblance of a field-mouse. We could talk together, for I knew its thoughts. I asked it what it was called and it told me ‘The Dweller in the Corn’. Then I knew that I had left my body, and that the forest through which I walked was the corn-field in which I had gone to sleep.

  I put out my hand and touched the mouse; and the mouse suffered me to caress her as though she were my favourite horse. Her eyes were larger than a gazelle’s and her whiskers were like rods of silver. Then I asked her where she lived, and the mouse led me up the smooth pillar of a corn stalk and showed me her nest. I stood beside her in the soft and rounded warmth, which swayed with the ripple of a passing wind. And the mouse told me of the Danger Shadow of the Fields: how a brother might be still, in fear, when death fell from the sky. And she warned me to keep in the shelter and not to cross an open space till it was dark.

  Then I left the mouse and went on my way; and above me the wind curved out the silken sails of scarlet petals.

  And then before me I saw a grassy wall, and I looked over it, and I saw it was a nest with three great eggs. Suddenly the air about me was stirred by wings, and the mother quail had come back to her nest. She seemed not to see me, nor to feel my hand smoothing the feathers of her head. I knew she was listening for the tapping chicks to start breaking their way out of the eggs, for she had sat long upon them and yearned to see their hungry mouths open in greeting when she brought them food.

  When I awoke I pondered on my dream. Why do we not remember that there is only size when we think in terms of earthly form? Zeb, who would rather cut off his right hand than injure Natee, thinks nothing of seeing a hawk swoop on a mouse. A moth is as worthily the work of Ptah as a swift horse. To think that size relates to godliness is as though one listened to a man for his stature and not for his words. Tall buildings are not more lovely than a flower, nor twenty harps sweeter than a singing bird. We should think of all things as though they were as ourselves, for once we shared their life, in our first journey from the hands of Ptah.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Temple Scribe

  In my fifth year in the temple, there were twelve pupils in the way of Anubis, and forty who were learning to be lookers.

  A looker is trained to leave her body by looking at a bright spot of light, sometimes at a flame, but usually at sunlight reflected in a cup of polished silver. Although she has left her body, to her it seems as if the things she sees away from Earth are a vision pictured in her cup. Lookers can see only to the spirit counterpart of Earth. They watch over the borders of our country, so that an invasion should not find us unprepared. They are also used to send messages between temples; and by this means news can travel many days’ journey in the span of time that it takes a priest to leave his body and make a distant looking-girl see a vision in her cup. For some messages there are symbols, which are recognised in all temples. Every big town has its symbol. If a looking-girl at Abidwa saw first a crook and then a locust, she would know that there was a pestilence in the Royal City. If she saw an ibex and a stripped husk of corn, she would know that the garrison of Na-kish needed more grain. At the chief temples, in time of danger, three girls look into three sides of a pyramid of silver, and if all see the same vision, then it is known that their sight is clear and unobstructed.

  Of these forty pupils, there were three training to be ‘Lookers of Maat’. And of these, I was one. And Ney-seyra taught me how to leave my body, first by looking at a bright light, and then by my will, unaided, until I could travel as freely as if my body slept, yet at the same time make my tongue record what I did and saw away from it. I travelled not only to the counterpart of Earth, but to all those places to which my spirit could reach upon a sleep journey. And Ney-sey-ra taught me also how to read my own records; until I could look back across a vista of the years and see myself when I had lived in other countries and spoken other tongues; remember a hundred childhoods and a hundred deaths as clearly as if each past moment were the living present.

  Although I could remember that I had made my body speak when I was away from it, when I returned I could not remember in detail what I had said. So my words were recorded by a scribe, and when he read them to me, I knew whether I had recorded clearly what I had seen.

  Among the scribes was one, Thoth-terra-das, who was my friend; and often we talked together when our work was done. He was old, and had been a temple scribe for forty years. Though he had no priestly training, he had recorded much of wisdom, for he was a scribe of priests. Words to him were like colours to a drawing-scribe, and with them he painted things that he had seen, so that other men could look upon them through his eyes.

  He would tell me to search for words as if I were a goldsmith matching beads to make a necklace, balancing their colour, sound, and shape, and smoothly stringing them upon my thread of thought, so that they should delight both mind and ear.

  Once he said to me, “The Goddess of Truth in her celestial sphere walks naked in beauty, but when she comes to Earth she must disguise herself in words. There have been wise men who have seen her face, yet dressed her in plain tunics of coarse wool, hiding the silver beauty of her hands in falling sleeves of sober-coloured stuff. They should have spun for her fine linen robes, so that her radiance could shine forth on men as light shines through an alabaster lamp.

  “Though I am old and long have been a scribe, I have but heard her spoken of by priests; yet was their wisdom heavy on their tongue and could not show her image to my heart. They have the knowledge, I the net of words. If we could only share each other’s skill, then would men see her rare beatitude and all would follow on the path she leads.

  “So I but string my words upon the thread of gratitude for the loveliness of Earth—the slumberous murmuration of the sea; the patient pattern of an ancient vine; the muted gold of sunlight through a mist; the mountain’s still impatience for the sky—into a necklace carven of my thoughts, unwarmed by the touch of her that I make it for.

  “Sekeeta, in a little span of years your gateway will be open to her sphere. Remember that words may be the only link between many dwelling here on Earth and a perfection that they cannot see. So pray to Ptah to make you wise in words, so Truth may walk on Earth serenely crowned.”

  And he inspired me with a love for words. For to say, ‘Death is kind’, is not enough; men should be told of it until they feel it is their lost love that they hasten to. And I would show Thoth-terra-das the little tributes I had made to what my heart found beautiful and true.

  I have a beloved.

  Yet I know not how long is the path that leads to her door.

  But when she opens it to me,

  I shall hear music sweeter than harps or flutes.

  If I am hungry,

  She will give me fruit.

  More delectable than figs or pomegranates

  And food smoother than honey on the tongue.

  If I am thirsty,

  She will give me cool wine

  More refreshing than any in the royal cellars.

  If I am weary,

  She will anoint me with scented oils

  And put sandals finer than Pharaoh’s upon my feet.

  If I am sorrowful,

  She will make my tears be of joy.

  As I hasten towards her,

  I hope that each turn in the path

  Will show her waiting for me,

  Her arms outstretched in greeting:

  For I long to dwell in peace in her house.

  My beloved is very beautiful,

  Her eyes are gentl
e,

  And her hands that succour me are strong.

  I have longed for her through my lonely days on Earth.

  For she has welcomed me after many journeys.

  And the name of my beloved is Death.

  Thoth-terra-das was quite pleased with my poem, but he said it was too long and it would have been better if it had ended:

  …I hope that each turn of the path

  Will show her arms outstretched in greeting:

  For I long to dwell in peace in her house.

  Do you not know the name of my beloved?

  Her name is Death.

  I said, “I am not sure that I agree. But if you want a short poem, here is one:

  A starving man dreamt he sat at a feast

  A blind musician dreamt he saw the stars,

  A vanquished warrior dreamt of victory,

  And when they woke they found that it was true,

  For in their sleep the three of them had died.

  And he said, “I find that very pleasing. Always remember, it is better to make a bracelet that fits the wrist, than a necklace so long that the wearer stumbles over it.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Second Trial of Memory

  As time passed my memory became clearer and more detailed. One evening, before I slept beside the sanctuary, Ney-sey-ra told me to return to Earth two hours after sunrise. And in the morning as I opened my eyes I saw him sitting beside me, waiting to hear what I should tell him.…

  “First I went to the wife of a farmer, who though good of heart was foolish of tongue. She loved her husband, yet she would upbraid him if he were lazy, or too full of beer, or if, when he had been irrigating his fields, he left not his sandals outside the door, but covered the matting of her floors with mud. Her husband saw not her love, because it was obscured from him by a thicket of thorny words. So he thought long on the girl who tended the milch cows, and who was comely and spoke to him only with admiration on her tongue. Before she slept the woman had prayed that her husband’s love might return to her.