Winged Pharaoh

by Joan Grant

  “If one of you grows weary, then shall the other give him of his strength. If one of you should lose the way, then shall the other show him the way to freedom. If one of you is assailed by the arrows of evil, then shall the other be his shield.

  “You shall be unto each other as the Crook is to the Flail, as the arrow is to the bowstring, as the steering-oar is to the Boat of Time.

  “Together you shall be father to a great people, and you shall cherish them even as I, Ptah, have cherished you. You shall be the ears with which they hear wisdom, the mouth with which they speak wisdom, the eyes with which they see the fruits of wisdom upon Earth.

  “Now is your sun at noonday; and when your life is at sunset and you return to your true home, then let my heart rejoice in your day’s journey.

  “Henceforward Za Atet and Zat Atet are Pharaoh.”

  Then before the priests in the Hall of Sanctuaries my mother took off the White Crown and placed it upon my head.

  As Neyah and I came out into the Court of the Pool of Lotuses, I thought of the time when as a child I had waited there for Ney-sey-ra on the day that I entered the temple to become his pupil.

  Now in the forecourt there was assembled a great multitude, who waited, silent as a field of corn rippled by the breeze, to hear me take my oath before the Gods. Standing before the statue of Ptah and before my mother, who was seated on the granite throne beside the statue of the great Za Atet, I gave the Oath of Pharaoh:

  “Mighty Ptah, hear my voice! so that throughout the Brotherhood of the Gods you may testify that these words spring from my heart and spirit and are the truth.

  “With this Crook I will shepherd my people so that their feet stray not from the true path, but march swiftly to the Great River where they may take seat in the Boat of Time and ferry across to dwell in the Land of Peace.

  “With this Flail I will drive back invaders of my country. It shall be the protection of the innocent, and wrongdoers shall fear it, so that they change their hearts and retrace their steps to the path of freedom.

  “By the power of the Golden Cobra I will assail the forces of evil. The temples of Kam shall be as lamps in which the light shines strongly, so that none shall walk in darkness. The courtyards of the temples shall echo to the feet of the Bearers of Golden Sandals, so that many tongues shall speak with true knowledge of your country.

  “No child shall know fear or hunger, or be without a parent; no man or woman shall be without a friend; and none shall suffer when their body is no longer strong enough to do their work: for to all my people I will be as a father.

  “I will be the eyes of the blind and a clear voice to the deaf; I will be a healing ointment to the wounded and a draught of herbs to the sick; I will be a staff to the weak and a shield to those who are beset with enemies.

  “I will remember always that all on Earth were given life by you, and remembering this shall know that all my people are my kinsmen.

  “The gateway of my spirit shall be ever open to your wisdom, so that the Light of the Gods may shine forth upon my people and they be guided by your hand on mine.

  “Ptah, by whose life I walk upon the Earth; Horus, who trained my will for rulership; Anubis, who showed me the Causeway to the Gods; to all of you I pledge my sacred oath: I will keep the balance of Tahuti’s Scales.”

  Then my people with one great voice acclaimed me Pharaoh, and my thoughts again returned to the day that I had first entered the temple; and it seemed that I could see a sad little girl, who I knew was myself, going for the first time through the gateway to the pupils’ quarters.

  After the vizier of every nome had sworn fealty to me, Neyah and I, together Pharaoh, returned to the palace, standing in a chariot of two white horses. The way was lined with our people, and the air about us sang with their joy.

  That night we gave a great banquet in the Hall of Audience to the priests, viziers, nobles, and captains, who had come from throughout the Two Lands to welcome Pharaoh. About the palace stretched the pavilions where this company was housed; and outside the walls oxen were roasted over fires and a thousand jars of palace wine were drunk; and there were baked fish, and ducks, and geese; sweetmeats, and cakes, and spiced white loaves, and beer: so that the multitude joined in the feast.

  When the banquet was over and we could be alone, I found that my thoughts ran too swiftly for me to escape them in sleep. So I went to Neyah’s room, and I found that he was awake. We talked for some time of the many happenings of the day. Then Neyah said, “We are both too restless to sleep. Shall we go down to the lake and sail? There is a full moon to-night and a good breeze; look how it is blowing out the curtain.”

  I went back to my room and put on a plain tunic and left my hair free. We went out through the garden, where the moon shining through the fig trees made shadows clear-cut as the black and white plumage of an ibis. I picked some figs to take with us. When we were children we used to feel that it made it more of an adventure if we took something to eat, even if we weren’t hungry; and I remembered how we used to pretend that we were explorers in a new land; and fruit became the animals we had speared for food, and a flask of water was a soldier’s ration on a desert march.

  A sentry saw us, but in the darkness he took us for a pair of lovers, and he laughed and wished us happy memories.

  The boat was moored to a wooden platform among the reeds. We untied it and poled it through the shallow water until we were out of the shelter of the bank. The sail filled as soon as we unrolled it, and as it gathered strength, we slid smoothly out on to the lake. We saw a hippopotamus and steered away from it, for sometimes they will upset a boat if they have young with them, as this one had.

  Then we threw over the stone and took off our clothes and swam for a long time in the moonlight. The water was as refreshing as cool linen on the skin. Usually I didn’t like bathing in the lake, for sometimes there were crocodiles even in the deep water; but that night I didn’t think about them.

  When we climbed back into the boat, we pulled up the stone and drifted on the wind.

  Here in the quiet darkness it seemed that Pharaoh was not ourselves, but two far-away people whom we had seen at the marriage ceremony.

  When I am away from my body and look down to where I must return when I wake, there is an unreality about Earth: my body seems no more part of myself than does a dress, which takes on the line of my body only while I am wearing it. Here it seemed that only Neyah and Sekeeta were real, and that Pharaoh was as far from us as are the temple statues from the Gods they symbolize.

  And I said, “For ten years I have worked to let the things of Earth be light upon me. I have thought of priestly things and the voice of my spirit. I have striven to open the gateway of my memory, and I have bathed in the light that shone through the ever widening gate. I have lived with people to whom ceremonies of palaces and courtiers are but toys for children. It will be difficult for me to remember that to the ears of many people, words sound wiser if they are spoken by one wearing the robe of ceremony. In a queen, unthinking actions grow long as the shadows at sunset; a small courtesy becomes a noble graciousness, and a small impatience the lash of a royal anger.”

  “It should be easier for you than it is for me, Sekeeta. You have but to sleep and you awake refreshed with memory. Sometimes I dream; but often sleep is a dark curtain that is drawn between my lying down at night and my waking in the morning.”

  “But, Neyah, your body is an armour for your thoughts. They do not leap from your mouth as mine do. Your speech is guarded by your wisdom; people hear from you only what you think is well for their ears. Too often I say what is in my heart; I think my hearers are ready for it, but often I misjudge their age. All the years I was with Ney-sey-ra I was a pupil of one of great wisdom; one who never over-tried my strength, and who always knew what food my spirit needed. But now a great people look to me for guidance. I must never seem unsure, or they would fear to follow me. I must never be impatient or unwise, or they would doubt the justice of
Pharaoh.”

  “We have each other, Sekeeta, we shall always have each other. We need never be lonely, as I have been lonely for so many years.”

  “Neyah, we will be so strong in each other that we shall be like two great pillars. Kam shall be the lintel, and together with our people we will be a gateway to the Light.”

  “In memory of this day we will not set up a stele; but we will build a pylon to the courtyard of the palace. Upon one side there shall be your name, and upon the other mine. And upon the lintel there shall be the Reed and the Bee, and the Lotus and the Papyrus, the Sun at Noonday, and the Scales of Tahuti. And there shall be no doors, for it shall be an ever open gateway to Pharaoh. And they who come after us will know that in our time we upheld Justice and Truth in the Two Lands.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Daily Life

  When rulership was new to me, the ceremony of my days seemed like the games that Neyah and I used to play when we were children, when wine-jars had become the Forty-two Assessors, when a reed cut from the river bank was the Flail of Pharaoh, and the trees bowing in the wind were his people in homage.

  I still woke soon after dawn and recorded on my tablet any memory of what I had done away from Earth that would aid me in what I must do throughout the day. Adjoining my apartments I had a little sanctuary copied from the room in which I used to sleep in the temple. In it there was no furniture, and the white walls were undecorated except by the flowers in a niche under the high window. Here, upon waking and before I slept, I prayed to the Gods that I might be worthy of my heritage, and that to all my people I might give wisdom, justice, and compassion.

  Then I would swim with Neyah in the private pool of the garden of herbs of Za Atet, upon which our rooms opened. After we had swum together, I lay on a high narrow couch while Pakee rubbed my body with scented oils until my muscles were smooth under her fingers. Then she would sponge me with cool lotion from a silver bowl, and while I rested with all my muscles relaxed, my hands and feet were tended, the nails painted vermilion, or, if it was a day of festival, covered with gold-leaf.

  In the temple I had but a single comb and a little copper mirror, in which my reflection was blurred as if I saw it in a wind-rippled pool. Now my ivory combs were carved with my seal as a Winged Pharaoh: the hawk of the trained will upon the triumphal boat, above the wings of a Winged One; then, below this, my Horus name, Zat, written as a snake, next to the key of life and flanked by two rods of power, power wielded upon Earth and away from Earth. This seal was carved on my ointment jars, which were also a gift from my mother upon my marriage day. And I had jars of salves and unguents, and alabaster flasks of scented oils; silver hand-mirrors with handles of carved ivory, and stone palettes for grinding the malachite with which I shaded my eyelids. I had little sticks of hard black greese, sharpened like the reeds of a drawing-scribe, with which I lengthened my eyes like the statue of a goddess, and I shaped my brows with pluckers of silver so that they sloped upwards like the wings of a flying bird. Pakee would comb my hair, which was cut to shoulder length, and polish it with fine linen cloths until it was as smooth as the shining coat of a black stallion.

  Sometimes I wore the sphinx head-dress of linen or a wig of little woollen plaits, gold tipped; but usually I bound my hair with a wreath of flowers or netted it in narrow turquoise beads. For ceremonies I wore the gold fillet of the Royal Cobra, or the White Crown, which, though it was made of layers of starched linen, was heavy upon my head.

  If the day was hot, Neyah and I took our first meal in the Pavilion of Plants; or if it was cool, in one of our private rooms. We drank milk from alabaster cups and ate fruit from dishes inlaid with lapis lazuli; ripe dates and figs, melons and apricots and grapes. And we rinsed our hands in a bowl of scented water and dried them on napkins embroidered with gazelles or scarlet fish, or patterned with vine leaves.

  Every second day Neyah or I gave audience until an hour before high noon, or if he was away from the Royal City, I gave audience four days in every seven. The one who was not in audience sat in council in the Room of Seals with viziers and overseers, and all others who came for the decree of Pharaoh. Messengers would come to us from distant cities, bringing news about the harvest, about the welfare of the people, and of their care. All that affects the people of Kam, be it a roadway, a system of water-channels, the building of a new temple or of the dwellings where the old pass their days in gentle quietude, the planting of the highways with trees so that the traveller may walk in the shade, or the planning of gardens that are shared among the people: all these things receive the Seal of Pharaoh, for the people of Kam are to Pharaoh as his palace. Their joy is his contentment, and their sorrows are the tears of his heart.

  To all matters that had to do with temples, I set my seal with my priest name Meri-neyt, the Beloved of Ney-sey-ra, the name which he had given to me, his pupil, after my initiation. The name Ney-sey-ra means ‘born a priest of the Light,’ for at his birth it was known that before returning to Earth he was already a fully initiated priest. He wrote his name with the symbol of the Goddess Neyt, the goddess of those who are born ancient of days. This is a sheaf of corn, bound with a thong to show that the wisdom which it symbolizes has been garnered; and across the sheaf are the two arrows of the trained will, one pointing to Earth and one away from Earth, showing that in both places can this will be directed. At the Festival of Neyt her symbol is carried on a standard, and in the writing-sign of her name the pole of the standard is shown supporting the sheaf. So upon my seal there was the plough, ‘meri’, meaning ‘beloved’, for as the plough furrows a field before the harvest, so does love make the heart fruitful; and this was followed by Ney-sey-ra’s seal.

  One of the names of the great Meniss was Za-ab, the Wise of Heart, and his seal for this name was a bundle of reeds and papyrus tied with a scarlet thong: for he had united the North, the Land of the Papyrus, with the South, the Land of the Reed, by the wisdom of his heart and the scarlet of a warrior. This seal was also used by my father. But Neyah and I used it in two forms: either the field of papyrus or the field of reeds; and this was often followed by a young bird, meaning ‘earth-child’, and Za in the form of a sieve: Pharaoh Son of Horus, Za son of Za.

  My father had also written his name by the snake and the arm, which are the sound signals for Za. Neyah and I used the snake alone.

  These seals could be enclosed in a pillared square, to show that we had gained entry into the House of the Gods, the Great Building Splendid with Pillars. Above this square was the hawk, the symbol of trained will, showing that this was the Horus name of Pharaoh. Sometimes, in addition to the Horus name, we would write, Atet: the feather, ‘a,’ that same feather which is wisdom, and the half-circle, the sign for ‘t’. If I wished to show that it was I who had set the seal, I would use my own form of it, in which there was the priest-symbol of a drop of water, which showed that, just as rain falls from the heavens, so had I brought the water of my maat down to Earth. This sign, which means ‘remembered wisdom’, is also the sound sign for ‘tee’.

  Rey-hetep was the Vizier of the Royal Household. His scribes kept the records of all tribute, and under his counsel it was allotted for the welfare of Kam. The Overseer of the Royal Household had held his office since the time of my father. He was in authority over all the palace servants; over the twenty cooks and all the kitchen boys; the hundred serving women, the linen-weavers, the washers of clothes, and the water-carriers. Harka was still Overseer of the Chariots, and in his care were all the royal animals: the horses and lions, the hunting-dogs and cattle, the asses and geese and ducks and milch-goats. Pharaoh’s Cupbearer was also the Master of the Vineyard. At his decree the vines were planted, the grapes harvested and pressed in the vats, and the wine-jars stored in the cellars. The Overseer of the Gardeners was the brother of Maata. Under his direction were the three hundred men and women who worked in the gardens and orchards of the palace and on the grain-lands of Pharaoh.

  Yet all these sometimes came to P
haraoh for counsel, to tell him that a new plant had flowered for the first time, or that the foreign grapes prospered; that a mare was in foal, or that a blight had fallen upon a cornfield. And to all these things did Pharaoh give his ear and his heart.

  In the hot weather all in the palace slept for two hours at noonday. And as Ra grew gentle upon his journey, sometimes Neyah and I would sail together on the lake or go upon the hunt with our nobles, spearing crocodiles or flying our throwing sticks at a wild-fowl in the marshes. And we would race our chariots against the captains, but none were so skilled in this as Neyah, for when the reins were between his fingers a horse would turn like a flying swallow, and at his voice would outstrip the wind.

  Often there were banquets in the great hall of the palace, but the evenings that I loved were those when Neyah and I were alone together. We would tell each other all that we had done throughout the day; and when I had sat in judgment I would tell him of what had been brought before me and ask what judgments he would have given. And it was as if the long years I had been away from him had passed as quickly as a shadow moves a cubit over the ground. Our hearts were near to each other, and our thoughts were matched like twin-paced horses in a chariot.

  Now that I was Pharaoh, my mother no longer lived in the palace. Though she had been weary of rulership, she shared the guardianship of Kam with Neyah until I took up the Flail. Then she was free to leave the life of ceremony and to live in the house that was the most beloved to her of any dwelling-place upon the Earth; for here it was that she had lived with my father in the days of their youth. This little palace, which had been built by Meniss, was circled by sycamore trees, and its lawns opened on to the lake. Neyah and I often went to see her there, and though our day might have been long and we weary with responsibility, we were as children that are happy, while we walked in her tranquillity.