“I will find your book, my Lord Imhotep,” he vowed. “And we will no longer be satisfied with half forgotten truths—but have your own words clear and unequivocal."
* * *
Chapter 5
One of the first things Hatshepsut did when she became Pharaoh was to plan two obelisks to the sun at the Temple of Amun at Ipet-Esut. She wanted to reinforce the vow she had made to Amun that he would be glorified more than ever in his dual image of Amun-Ra. Later, much later, she was to erect two more obelisks in this temple, but the first two, slightly less tall and impressive than the later pair, were always closer to her heart because of the circumstances that surrounded their erection.
She decided to go herself to the great granite quarries of the South at Suan to choose the stone for them. The journey would serve to remind the southern towns of her position as Pharaoh. Northwards from Waset she was a more familiar figure, her journeys to Men-nefer and the delta being more frequent.
She chose to take Senmut with her, and it was during this time that their relationship was at its most beautiful and tranquil. There were periods as the royal barge sailed slowly and majestically south that they felt that somehow they had slipped the tether of time and were free to run wild in an idyllic country, invisible to everyone else. Discretely the servants and the crew went about their business, and if they ever noticed or gossiped about what they saw and heard, they were careful that no hint of it would reach the lovers or the outside world.
The first important stop was at Iuny on the west bank. Hatshepsut would rather not have visited the cult centre of Montu, a war god, but she was too new in her role as Pharaoh to dare to antagonise any important faction in the land. The priests, bowing low, requested the bounty of the Pharaoh for the restoration and extension of their temple. She did not refuse, but her gifts were not generous, and it was not until the reign of the next Pharaoh that the temple was to be properly extended and restored.
From Iuny they crossed the river to Djerty, still under the hawk eye of Montu. Here Hatshepsut was prepared to spend a little more time and ingratiate herself with the priests of Montu's temple in order to get a glimpse of the famous treasure given to the god by Pharaoh Amenemhet the Second about four centuries earlier. She had always been particularly interested in this king, for it was said he had mounted an expedition to Punt, a fabled distant land beyond Nubia that she herself had yearned to visit.
The sanctuary of Montu had received two chests of priceless silver treasure.[4] Though gold was plentiful from Nubia, silver was not readily available in Egypt, and had to be imported from distant lands, from the Keftiu on the Island of the Bulls in the Great Green Ocean, and from the North and East through the traders at Kepel and the lands conquered by her father. Lapis lazuli was also very difficult to obtain and came from the wild mountain regions far to the east. These chests contained ingots and chains, necklaces and bowls of silver, and lapis lazuli in quantities she had never dreamed of.
[4—This treasure is on view in the Louvre Museum, Paris.]
The priests were obviously uneasy at unsealing the storeroom beneath the altar, but Pharaoh's command could not be disobeyed. Only after many wearisome rituals, during which Senmut wondered if their access to the treasure would be denied, did the High Priest finally start to break seal after seal and reveal the chests. When they were opened, Hatshepsut and Senmut gasped at the beauty and the variety of the objects inside, some inherited by the King from ancient times, some brought from countries almost inaccessible and almost unknown.
Hatshepsut reached out her hand to lift a necklace, tempted to try it on. The High Priest stepped forward at once and stretched out a warning hand.
“Your Majesty,” he whispered urgently. “Do not touch. The treasure is guarded by a most fearsome spell."
Hatshepsut hesitated. It was so beautiful. More beautiful than anything she had ever seen. She looked up at the statue of the god standing guard over it. He was hawk-headed like Horus, but so very different in mien. She could feel his eyes on her—wary, cold, malevolent. In her plan for the Two Lands under her rule there was very little thought given to war and conquest. She wanted to stabilise the country within its borders and leave the outside world alone as much as she could. If she antagonised Montu now, would she be attacked, her country invaded and devastated as it had been by the hated Hyksos? Amun had helped her father and grandfather in their wars, but she never thought of him as a war god. All he was doing was helping to restore order and peace to the Two Lands by driving the barbarians out. Montu delighted in war for its own sake.
She withdrew her hand.
The priest, who had held his breath while she had her hand outstretched, gave an almost imperceptible sigh of relief.
She had brought a silver rhyton with fluted sides from the Island of the Bulls, and she handed it to the priest so that he could place it among the other objects. “Perhaps,” she thought, “a gift from a peaceful pharaoh, crafted by a peaceful people, will help to temper the blood lust of this god.” She made a silent prayer for peace in her time.
She stepped back and turned to go, Senmut close behind her. She was glad to get back onto the royal barge and sip cool wine behind the curtains of her cabin, soon leaving the noisy crowds and the malevolent eyes of the war god well behind.
Their next stop was much more to her taste. Their pace was leisurely, but eventually they arrived at the Place of the Two Hills, a small, pleasant town on the west bank, known chiefly for the Per-Hathor, or House of Hathor, that had been there since very ancient times. There were temples to Hathor—the great mother goddess of love and fertility—throughout Khemet, but this one became Hatshepsut's favourite. It was built on top of the eastern hill, with the little town nestling at its foot. The rocky west hill was honeycombed with tombs from the very early dynasties. “The two hills,” Hatshepsut thought, “life and death."
They chose to visit the temple in the cool of the early morning. Hatshepsut refused her golden carrying chair and the company of her attendants, to walk alone with Senmut up the winding path. The garden that had been planted around the Per-Hathor seemed neglected, and the first thing Hatshepsut did was to order that it should be restored and extended.
“Make a bower for her,” she said. “She should be surrounded by lush green and colourful flowers.” She was pleased to see that the tamarisk and sycamore trees that clustered close around the outer walls looked healthy enough.
The view from the doorway was breathtaking—the little town, the green flood plain, the river, silver-blue, with an island like an emerald. Beyond that, as always in Khemet, was the tawny red desert.
In the first court there was a lily pond with lotus in bloom. Hatshepsut smiled and stooped down to trail her fingers in the cool water.
It was a little temple with only a few priestesses, each giving the impression of being there for love instead of for professional reasons. A very old woman who had been the High Priestess since her youth, her face a map of smiling wrinkles, took delight in performing the dawn ceremonies for the Pharaoh. Hatshepsut herself lifted the incense to the nose of the lovely goddess and said a fervent prayer or two. Senmut watched her, standing well back, his presence only tolerated because Pharaoh had requested it. She was so beautiful—as beautiful as the goddess herself—lifting her arms and her eyes to the serene and gentle face of the divine Lady. From Hathor's womb had come the teeming millions of the earth. At her breasts kings had sucked. Her temple was full of music and light. Hatshepsut lifted a golden sistrum and shook it. The young priestesses gathered behind her shook theirs too, and a slow and graceful dance followed to the soft sound of the sistrum, the sound that this day more than any other reminded him of seeds rattling in a seed pod.
He wished he could take Hatshepsut in his arms at this very moment and make love to her before the altar of Hathor. It would not seem a sacrilege, but a dedication. But her face was so rapt, so intensely concentrating on the words of the hymns she was now chanting, he did not dare.
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Later, when the sun was high and hot and they were back on the boat, their lovemaking was more passionate than it had ever been before, as though Hathor had given them her blessing, and any reservation they might have had about the propriety of their relationship was gone. It seemed to him, as they lay quietly afterwards, Hatshepsut's face had the same rapt expression it had had at the height of the ceremony in the temple. He did not speak about it, but he was sure she had felt then the same desire as he had, and their lovemaking now was a kind of sacrament, binding them together forever, performed for Hathor.
Softly he touched her body outside and in with his fingers and his mouth. They had not parted after the first lovemaking, and the second flowed out of the first, like nectar out of a flower. The third and the fourth followed as naturally. Never had either felt such pleasure so deeply and so easily.
When sleep came it seemed that even then there was no parting, but dreams that continued their union.
* * * *
The next part of the journey passed without their noticing. The green plains of the west bank and the desert on the east slid by. Sometimes they emerged from their cabin and stared up at the great dome of the sky ablaze with stars. Sometimes they listened to the singing from the banks as they passed small villages without stopping. Sometimes they heard and saw nothing but each other.
At Iunyt they had to stop. It was a big cult centre for Khnum, the god who was believed to fashion the bodies and the personal souls of the kings on his potter's wheel, and then breathe the life force into their nostrils. Here Khnum shared a temple with the goddess Neith of the shield and the crossed arrows, and Heka, the goddess of magical power. Hatshepsut was already beginning to plan the reliefs for her great temple at Serui and intended to include a sequence in which her divine birth would be depicted. Senmut spent time sketching some of the scenes from the temple of Khnum to use in his design, while she performed the rituals expected of Pharaoh. This place was not as magical for them as Per-Hathor had been, and the visit was short.
* * * *
They had quite a long break from the river at the twin towns of Nekheb and Nekhen, the first on the east bank and the second on the west. “The Red Mound” as itwas known, was a very important cult centre, the home of Nekhbet, “the White One of Nekhen", the vulture goddess, who had come to be the symbol for Upper Egypt. Wadjet, the cobra goddess, was the symbol for Lower Egypt. These two goddesses were known as “the Two Ladies” and every pharaoh had to have one of his five major titles connected with them. Nekhbet assisted at all the royal births and was carved in relief, holding the circle of eternity, her wings spread out in protection over nearly every temple.
The town was surrounded by sagging mud-brick walls and the temple itself was in very bad repair. While she was there Hatshepsut arranged for its proper restoration, and Senmut drew up the plans and promised to return to supervise the more complicated parts of its construction.
They were told of a small ruined temple to Hathor and Nekhbet in the desert mountains to the east, and took a day's ride on mules to visit it. They passed through silent valleys where the blank eyes of rock-cut tombs from the early dynasties stared down at them, and occasional shrines to Horus crumbled on high pinnacles of rock. Above them in the royal-blue sky, the god himself circled ceaselessly on golden wings.
The temple they sought was no more than a ruined chapel; most of the Hathor columns with the goddess's woman face and soft cow ears were fallen, the combined shrine of Nekhbet and Hathor open to the sky, the ceiling slabs long since fallen and lying on the ground smashed to pieces and half-covered with sand.
Hatshepsut and Senmut sat close together on the warm stone of a fallen column and stared silently at the ruined reliefs, the magic symbols no longer magic, the holy place no longer holy. Then Senmut drew in the sand how he would rebuild it, and Hatshepsut picked some dried grasses that had managed to take root in this rocky wilderness, and placed them on the cracked altar.
A shadow passed over them, and they both looked up. A vulture had come to rest on one of the rocky outcrops and was watching them. Hatshepsut gave a little shiver and took Senmut's hand.
“They're never far away, the gods,” she whispered.
He kissed her forehead, but this time chastely. This was Hathor's place as well as Nekhbet's, but somehow the vulture's presence was stern and forbidding. Although they were alone here, unlike at the Per-Hathor, he did not feel like making love under her gaze.
* * * *
At Djeba Mesen, Hathor's great love, Horus, was worshipped in a temple raised above the flood plain. Here again restoration work was planned. The temple was small, but it had two statues of Horus of smooth grey granite simply and exquisitely carved, crowned with the double crown of Khemet. Around the walls were reliefs depicting Horus sacrificing his eyes to save Osiris from the evil rages of Set. The Horus eyes, sun and moon, had become symbols of awareness in the deepest and most sacred sense, and his sacrifice had shown that evil can and will be defeated. The resurrection of Osiris—like the green shoot growing from the buried grain—gave hope of regeneration and eternal life.
* * * *
Not long after Mesen the river narrowed alarmingly and the desert marched beside it, often in the shape of huge and towering sandstone cliffs. The place was known as the Place of Rowing, and the crew had to work hard to get the boat through. The rock faces on both sides of the river were covered with prayers, commemorative pieces and names. It was a wonder that anyone could have reached those inaccessible places to make any kind of mark.
While they were in this area the royal party visited the sandstone quarries from which most of the stone for the temples of Khemet had been taken. They spent some days with the quarry master, while Senmut chose the stone he needed for the work Hatshepsut had set him, and she gave her approval. She did not know as much about stone as he, but there was an occasional piece she spotted that she particularly wanted for its colour and its striations. He explained to her that sandstone had to be laid down in a building in conformity with the bedding plane of the rock as it lay in the natural state, or it would weather badly. She was interested in everything, and sprang from rock to rock, enjoying every moment of it.
At last it was time to leave, and there was one more major centre to visit before they approached their destination.
Nubt, on a promontory at a bend in the river, overlooked wide green plains and the curving silver waters of the Nile. Khnum had another temple here, shared this time with Sobek, the crocodile god, and Horus. The feature that interested Senmut most was an extraordinarily deep well, shown to him by a priest who claimed that what could be seen at the bottom of it was no ordinary water, but the original primeval liquid from which all life had sprung, pure as itwas at the Beginning.
Hatshepsut performed her duties as usual, but seemed in a hurry to leave. She made the boatman pull in to the bank upstream from the town and the temple. There she and Senmut walked through fields of barley and lay beneath blossoming fruit trees to make love like two young peasants.
“How I wish this journey would never end,” she sighed. It was as though, having fretted all her life for power and pomp and ceremony, she was already tired of it and yearning for a simpler life away from the court and all her responsibilities. Senmut held her when she wanted to be held and let her go when she wanted to be let go. They were deeply in harmony with each other and with the rhythm of the ageless river and the land that cupped it between its two hands.
* * * *
Suan was a garrison and trade town, taking up most of the southern part of a large island in the Nile. Huge grey rocks looking remarkably like elephants stood around in the water, marked with the flood lines of the river. The red granite that was so sought after by all the pharaohs for their pyramids and temples and statues created a great hard ridge between Nubia and Khemet. The waters of the river foamed up to a frenzy over the rocky and uneven bed it created, giving the impression that the Nile itself was bubbling up from the underw
orld.
Khnum was the god in charge, this time accompanied by the goddesses Satet and Anuket. There were marked steps to measure the water level, dedicated to Hapi, the androgynous Nile god, which gave information of vital importance to the whole country. The height of the waters here could mean plenty or famine the whole length of the land.
The town itself was full of soldiers to guard the frontier between Nubia and Khemet, and others who came in with the columns of pack animals and traders from all over the region. The desert behind the granite quarries was rich in minerals—amethyst for jewellery, copper-malachite and lead-galena for eye cosmetic, granite, quartzite, diorite, steatite for statues and monuments, copper and tin for bronze. South of the town in the great mountainous regions of Nubia there was more gold than anyone could measure. Many languages were spoken, and even those known to Senmut and Hatshepsut they found difficult to understand when spoken by the locals. This was rough country, and the isolated communities had developed some strange dialects.
Senmut went by himself to the quarries. He was well known there and was soon drinking beer with the quarrymen. It felt strange to be far away from Hatshepsut's side with a group of working men again. The journey began to feel like a beautiful dream, insubstantial and easily dismissed as unreal. Everywhere he heard the hard ring of chisel on stone, the cracking roar as big chunks were levered off, and the shouts and whistles of the men.
Hatshepsut: Daughter of Amun Page 5
