She said nothing while he talked on and on about how much he loved her and how, as private nobles, they would enjoy a wonderful life together. His own ambitions for power had died in the refining furnace of the desert, and he genuinely saw them as a happily retired couple, walking in shady gardens, talking over old times.
Whether she was accepting what he was saying, or whether she was indeed listening at all, he could not tell. He held her and stroked her as he had done Neferure a hundred times, as a kindly foster-father and friend—not as a lover.
He left her when at last she fell asleep. He laid her down tenderly on her red cedar-wood bed, Wadjet the cobra watching over her, coiled in golden image around each of the bull's-foot legs so that no harm could rise up to her from the earth, and hovering over her on the uprights so that no evil could befall her from above.
* * * *
But Hapuseneb was not so eager for Hatshepsut to give up the throne, and he and others of her close circle met to discuss the situation and how they would deal with it if she went ahead with Senmut's suggestion.
Senmut himself believed that she was ready for the great renunciation he proposed, confusing his change of heart in the desert with her temporary mood of despair. He told Hapuseneb in confidence in order to enlist his help, and then left the court to make preparations for their retirement to her estates near Suan.
Hapuseneb wasted no time in asking for an audience, and was shown into the antechamber of her private quarters.
Hatshepsut was thin and drawn, as though she had neither slept nor eaten for some time, as indeed she had not. She was haunted night after night by the spectre she believed to be her son, who seemed not to be content with what he had already done, but was waiting, gloatingly, for another opportunity to hurt her. Amun-Ra had ceased to communicate with her, and she felt desperately alone. The guilt of how she had misunderstood and neglected her daughter and deprived her son of life never left her.
Hapuseneb's shrewd dark eyes bored into hers. Was she indeed contemplating a step that no pharaoh had ever taken before and would be a disastrous precedent for the future? If the King was divine, Amun-chosen and Amun-protected, how could he just give up his kingship as though it were any ordinary office? How could the people be expected to believe the Pharaoh's position was sacred and unchallengeable if it was subject to whim and pique like any other? “This is what comes of having a woman pharaoh!” he thought bitterly.
When Hatshepsut had taken the double crown, he had been hostile to the idea of a woman ruling; but she had proved herself strong and able and had given him a rank apparently second only to herself. Only Senmut was in a comparable position.
Since Senmut's departure, Hatshepsut had stayed close to her chambers. She was in a daze, dreaming of the quiet ease of a private life away from the pressures and tensions of the life she knew. It was tempting, and yet, and yet...
As soon as she saw Hapuseneb she knew she would not leave. Pharaoh could not step down. Pharaoh could not follow a private dream. Senmut was irresponsible even to think it!
All this passed between Hapuseneb and Hatshepsut before a word was spoken.
“I heard your Majesty was not well,” were the first words he said.
She had entered with shoulders drooping and her mouth down at the edges. He could see her straightening her back even as he looked at her as though the Djed column of Osiris had been inserted into it and was giving her strength.
She lifted her chin and looked him straight in the eye.
“My women shouldn't gossip,” she said. “I am well."
“It is a long time since your Majesty has been seen."
“Even pharaohs need time to themselves sometimes,” she said haughtily.
“But if the sun doesn't rise, Maat is no more."
“Do you dare to reprimand me?” she asked sharply, something of the old spark returning to her eyes.
He bowed low.
“No, Majesty. I do not dare."
She contemplated the top of his head. She knew he was not a man who enjoyed bowing so low. And she knew he was a man she greatly respected. He was right: she was endangering Maat, the Cosmic Order, by her weakness and self-pity. It would not happen again.
“Rise,” she said quietly, “I know you. I'm sure you have nothing in mind but the good of your Pharaoh."
He rose, and there was a silence between them for a while. Both stood facing each other, both suddenly aware of their closeness, yet neither wanting to make the first move away from the other.
It was she who turned at last and walked back towards the door through which she had come.
Just before she left, she looked back over her shoulder.
“I'd be glad if you would accompany me to Djeser Djeseru,” she said formally. The moment of intimacy passed, but was not forgotten. “I hear the whole of the third terrace is complete at last."
How could she have contemplated giving up Djeser Djeseru, her Mansion of Millions of Years, built for a pharaoh, to house a pharaoh, to ensure a pharaoh would live forever and walk freely with the gods among the Imperishable Stars? Would Men-kheper-Ra not have taken it over and toppled her Osirian statues and erased her name?
Ah, how listening to Senmut had nearly destroyed her! She would not listen to him again.
* * * *
Senmut went straight to Sehel Island before he went to Hatshepsut's southern palace. Whether he would tell Anhai what had happened with the book or not, he was not sure.
“I will tell her everything,” he decided at one moment. “I owe it to her.” But the next he had changed his mind and thought it would be best if the secret of his appalling deed died with him.
The temple was already almost complete on the island, and only a few craftsmen were left to paint the texts on the walls and finish the fine polishing of the statues of Imhotep, Djehuti and Hathor that were to be its focus.
Anhai had a suite of rooms leading out into a small garden through one door, and into the healing area of the temple through another, where the dreaming cells and crystal rooms were already established.
She took Senmut at once on a tour of inspection and gave no indication that she thought his behaviour in Men-nefer had been at all odd. Neither of them referred to it, but Senmut had an increasingly uneasy feeling that she did, in fact, know what had happened.
“Crystals?” he said in astonishment as she led him into one of the rooms. There was a low couch and a chair beside it at the centre, but all around the walls were narrow tables loaded with the most amazing crystals he had ever seen.
“Crystals were used in ancient times for healing,” she said quietly. “And I don't see why they should not be used again."
“Do you know how to use them?” he asked, surprised.
“Yes,” she said.
“Where did you learn this?"
“Partly from my parents before I came to the Two Lands, and partly from...” She hesitated. He looked at her intently, knowing in his bones what she was going to say. “Imhotep,” she finished.
He wanted to question her further, but he was afraid his own fiasco would have to be confessed.
He walked across to the south wall and picked up an enormous transparent quartz crystal the size of an ostrich egg. The facets were sharp, as though they had been artificially cut, and the matrix was perfect. He held it up to the light and turned it slowly round, staring into the beauty of it. Would it be so terrible if he told her what had happened? If anyone understood it would be her. He would tell her about the desert too, and how he had changed, and how he and Hatshepsut would retire and marry. He felt calm, as though whatever had happened or would happen was part of a pattern, an order, greater than he or Anhai or Hatshepsut could possibly know about.
She was beside him, smiling.
“Crystals heal when the heart tunes into them,” she said. “They are so much part of Maat's beautiful order. Nearly all illness is because the heart is out of order, out of tune with Maat. To get back into tune puts you into
a mood where the natural healing capacity of your body can function, nothing is preventing it, nothing is blocking it. Your mind gives way to your heart. Your heart gives way to your soul. Your soul gives way to your spirit. Your spirit gives way to that which knows."
Senmut put the crystal down and turned to Anhai.
“I can believe it,” he said. “I am already better for having entered this room. And now I feel myself strong enough to tell you something."
“About the book?"
“About the book.” He met her eyes. “You know?"
She nodded.
“How?"
“I have seen it,” she said, “without entering the tomb. It was not necessary to enter physically. I looked for you to tell you, but you had already left."
“You've seen the book? You know what was in it?” There was mounting excitement in his voice.
“I think so."
“You think so!” he cried. “Don't you know?"
“I believe so,” she corrected herself.
He shook his head impatiently.
“I need to know what was in it!"
“What was in the book cannot be easily spoken as we stand here. I do not know myself exactly the words used on the papyrus. But I know its teaching will unfold for me as I do my work in this place. I have been in its presence, and its presence has entered my deepest consciousness. I know the teaching of my mother Kyra in my heart in the same way, and both will come to me surely, gradually, if I let them, each complementing the other, each completing the other. It is as though the two together comprise a key I can use now, but which I was not capable of using before, even if I had had it in my possession."
Senmut wondered whether, if he stayed with Anhai and worked with her on the island, he would learn all that Imhotep had to teach. But he believed now it was not his destiny to know what was in the book at this time. Perhaps one day he would be ready to know itin the way Anhai knew it. Until then he must be content to do what he could do and do well: design and build harmonious and beautiful structures worthy of a pharaoh and a god. He would make Hatshepsut's southern palace a place where he and she could live together with Maat.
If he tarried any longer on Sehel Island the work would never be done. He decided to leave at once.
* * * *
Some months later the servants in the great palace at Waset exchanged glances, amused, as Senmut strode past them. His face and neck were red with anger and they could see a vein pulsing on his forehead. They all knew where he had been, though all pretended they did not.
“This time she has gone too far,” he was thinking. “This time I shall not let it pass."
As he stormed through the cool tiled passages of the palace, he saw nothing of the decorative designs of palm and tamarisk. He saw only her face as he burst into her room against the guards’ restraining arms. Thinking about it now, he was not sure the guards had not deliberately let him through. They had given in too easily. He was sure, in retrospect, that he detected something in their eyes that should have warned him. They were new men, not the old familiar ones who had known him well for years. He had worked hard and fast to make her southern palace beautiful for her and had returned to Waset, his heart full of hope and love, to find everything changed.
As he burst out of the shady palace into the blinding white heat of the sunlight he relived the shock of seeing her in bed with another man, Hapuseneb. This was something he would never have envisaged in all the years he had known them both. He knew she had given Hapuseneb more power than any high priest had ever had before, extending his estates and his jurisdiction beyond the usual cult areas of Amun to the whole country, north and south, but he had thought she was doing this in order to honour her beloved god, not because she desired his High Priest.
All who knew Hatshepsut knew that her position was becoming more precarious by the day as her nephew grew less interested in spending his time in foreign garrison towns looking after the empire, and more interested in playing power politics at home. Was her intimacy with Hapuseneb part of a cunning game she was playing to hold the throne? Having lifted the local god of Amun above the heads of all the other gods in the Two Lands, and having given his priests in general, and Hapuseneb in particular, unprecedented riches and power, was it not but shrewd good sense to bind him to her with something more than political loyalty?
Senmut's rage almost subsided. He could understand that. He remembered her, half-raised on one elbow, looking directly into his eyes as he burst in—as though she was expecting him, as though this was a deliberate confrontation. Was there regret in her eyes, a plea for forgiveness?
Could he forgive her this time? Could he ignore what he had seen?
He pressed his lips together, remembering Hapuseneb's hooded eyes, his relaxed and comfortable naked body.
Was everyone laughing at him as he stormed from the palace? He had not missed the sly, amused glances, the crude nudges of the palace servants.
How much of his life had he given up to her? His brother had warned him time and again to find an alternative to the wayward Queen. But who could love any other woman, once he had loved Hatshepsut? He had taken other women to bed but, always, Hatshepsut spoiled it for him.
There were times when he almost hated her god Amun. She made him the excuse for everything. Amun-Ra “commanded” her. Amun-Ra “advised” her. Amun-Ra “revealed” to her. There was no doubt that she communicated in some mystical way with the Hidden One. He, who had very few mystical intuitions or transcendent communications, found it difficult sometimes to accept the major changes she made in her life and in the lives of those around her based on nothing more than a message from Amun-Ra, a message no one else had witnessed. No doubt Amun-Ra had instructed her to drop him in favour of Hapuseneb, he thought bitterly. Had she not written on her obelisk:
Behold, I worked under His direction. He was my leader. I was unable to think out a plan for work without his prompting.[22]
[22—“Behold I worked...” quoted by Wallis Budge, in Cleopatra's Needle and other Egyptian Obelisks, The Religious Tract Society, 1926.]
Hapuseneb was the chief of the four First Prophets of Amun-Ra and should as such be a very holy man. But Senmut knew that he was not. His interest in his position was political. He had been an able vizier before, and he was an able administrative high priest now. There was nothing that went on in Amun-Ra's vast estates that he did not control. If “Amun-Ra” had advised Hatshepsut to take his High Priest to bed, Senmut believed it had been arranged in some way, for political purposes. But this did not comfort him. His own was not a political love—it was his life. She should not play with it like this.
He desperately needed to make a gesture of defiance—an assertion of independence. And he wanted her to notice it!
A short while later the gardeners at Djeser Djeseru were startled to witness an unscheduled procession passing along the avenue of sphinxes, between the sacred persea trees and through the gate of the lower terrace. Many of them downed tools and moved towards the causeway, curious to see what was going on.
Senmut strode ahead, and behind him came a small column of priests almost running to keep up with him, the leader carrying an extraordinary object. It was a statue of Amun of the kind that usually emphasised a large erect phallus to indicate his role as creator-force. His sacred symbol, the ram, had been chosen for its strong procreative activities.
Those who were nearest could see at once that the image had been crudely castrated.
The procession, looking neither to the left nor the right, mounted the first causeway at once, between the lion balustrades.
As they reached the second causeway with the serpent balustrades, several more workers joined the small crowd that was now following the procession.
Between the great granite doorjambs boasting of Amun's potency as Bull of the Two Lands, and Hatshepsut's role as “the Great God's Wife", the heavy cedar door swung open to Senmut's imperious knock. Behind it in the colonnaded court, the priests
of Amun were hastily gathering, confused by the unexpected arrival of a procession. Senmut was the King's confidant and favourite and could not be turned away, but had he the right to break in like this? What was he carrying? They gasped as they took in the blasphemous nature of what he was bringing into the Holy of Holies.
Some retreated hastily into the cult rooms and returned with burning incense to fumigate and purify the intruders. Others tried to remonstrate with Senmut and block his passage to the door of the sanctuary itself. No one entered there but the sovereign and the highest of the priests.
Senmut drew the bolts before he could be prevented and stormed into the dark and secret place. The light from the third court now blazed in.
He had seized the statue from the leader of his procession. He entered the forbidden chamber alone and shook the disfigured image furiously before the perfect golden form of Hatshepsut's god.
“Amun,” he shouted. “Father-husband of Hatshepsut Maat-ka-Ra! Beware she does not castrate you too!"
But before he could say more he was seized from behind and dragged out of the sanctuary. Just before the great door was slammed behind him and he was pulled and pushed to the ground, he thought he caught the eye of Amun, and read there a cold and merciless message.
* * * *
The story of Senmut's extraordinary action spread like wildfire, and Hatshepsut could not have ignored it even if she had wanted to. She and her god had been insulted, and the least punishment should be death. But she had loved Senmut for a long time and, although she was very angry with him now, she could not forget that. She stood on the terrace of her official palace on the east bank, looking over the river—the mysterious, silver-blue, deep and abiding flow that kept her country alive.
She had wanted to teach him a lesson for assuming that he had exclusive rights over her, that he could presume to unseat a pharaoh and make her a woman like any other. There were many reasons she had taken Hapuseneb to her bed, but that was certainly one of them.
Now she wished she had not done it. Not only had she lost the greatest love of her life, but she had broken her vow to Amun-Ra. What would become of her?
Hatshepsut: Daughter of Amun Page 22
