The royal sculptor smiled and snapped his fingers in approval.
“She will be your wife, Ekwesha, and you will have handsome children that I can leave to my children as a legacy…”
It was as though a steel spring had suddenly uncoiled inside Pandion. The revolt that had long been seething within him and that had been further excited by the song-he had heard that evening, reached its highest point. A red haze stood before his eyes.
Pandion stepped away from the girl, looked round the room and raised his hand. The Egyptian, growing immediately sober, ran into the house calling loudly to his servants for help. Pandion did not even look at the coward and with a laugh of disdain kicked the expensive Cretan vase so hard that its earthenware fragments flew to the floor with a dull clatter.
The house was filled with cries and the sound of running feet. A few minutes later Pandion lay at the feet of his master who bent over him, spat on him, shouting curses and threats.
“The scoundrel deserves death. The broken vase is of greater value than his contemptible life, but he can make many beautiful things… and I don’t want to lose a good worker,” said the sculptor to his wife an hour later. “I’ll spare his life and won’t send him to prison because from there they’ll send him to the gold mines and he’ll die. I’ll send him back to the shehne, let him think things over, and by the time of the next sowing I’ll bring him back…”
And so Pandion, badly beaten but still unbowed, returned to the shehne and, to his great joy, met his old friends, the Etruscans. The whole building gang had been employed on watering the Gardens of Amon since they had finished dismantling the temple.
Towards evening the next day the shehne door opened with its usual creak to admit the smiling Kidogo whose arrival was greeted by the shouts of the other slaves. The Negro’s back was puffed and swollen from the blows of a whip but his teeth shone as he smiled and there was a merry twinkle in his eyes.
“I heard they’d sent you back here,’’ he informed the astonished Pandion, “and I began to stagger about the workshop knocking down and breaking everything that came my way. They beat me and sent me here, which is what I wanted,” said Kidogo.
“But you wanted to become a sculptor, didn’t you?” asked Pandion mockingly.
The Negro waved a carefree hand and, rolling his eyes terrifyingly, spat in the direction of the great capital city of Aigyptos.
IV. THE FIGHT FOR FREEDOM
The stones, heated by the blazing sun, burned the arms and shoulders of the slaves. The gentle breeze brought no coolness to them, but instead aggravated their plight by covering them in the fine dust from the stones that ate into their eyes.
Thirty slaves, already at the end of their strength, were pulling on stiff ropes to raise on to the wall a heavy stone slab bearing a bas-relief of some sort. The slab had to be placed in a prepared nest at a height of some eight cubits from the ground. Four experienced and nimble slaves were steadying the slab from below. Among them was Pandion who stood next to an Egyptian, the only inhabitant of Aigyptos amongst the many nations in their slave compound. This Egyptian, condemned to eternal slavery for some unknown, awful crime he had committed, occupied the end cell in the privileged south-eastern corner of the shehne. Two purple brands in the shape of a wide cross covered his chest and back while on his cheek a red snake was branded. Morose, never smiling, he did not talk to anybody and, despite the horror of his own position, despised the foreign slaves in the same way as his free fellow-countrymen did.
At the present moment he was not paying any attention to anybody and, with his shaven head lowered, was pressing with his hands against the heavy stone to prevent it from swaying.
Suddenly Pandion noticed that the strands of a rope holding the stone were beginning to snap, and shouted to warn the others. Two of the slaves jumped to one side but the Egyptian paid no attention to Pandion and could not see what was going on above his head — he remained standing under the heavy stone.
With a wide sweep of his right arm, Pandion gave the Egyptian a shove in the chest that sent him flying clear of the danger spot. At that very moment the rope snapped and the stone crashed down, grazing Pandion’s hand as it fell. A yellowish pallor spread over the Egyptian’s face. The stone struck against the foot of the wall and a big piece was broken off the corner of the bas-relief.
The overseer came running towards Pandion with a shout of rage and lashed at him with his whip. The square hippopotamus-hide lash, two fingers thick, cut deeply into the small of Pandion’s back. The pain was so great that everything went misty before his eyes.
“You wastrel, why did you save that carrion?” howled the overseer, slashing at Pandion a second time. “The stone would have remained whole if it had fallen on a soft body. That carving is worth more than the lives of hundreds of creatures like you,” he added as the second blow struck home.
Pandion would have rushed at the overseer but he was seized by the soldiers who hurried to the scene and brutally thrashed him.
That night Pandion lay face downwards in his cell. He was in a high fever, the deep whip cuts on his back, shoulders and legs were inflamed. Kidogo came crawling to him and brought him water to drink, from time to time pouring water over his aching head.
A slight rustling sound came from outside the door, followed by a whisper:
“Ekwesha, are you there?”
Pandion answered and felt somebody’s hands laid on him in the darkness.
It was the Egyptian. He took a tiny jar out of his belt and spent a long time rubbing something into the palms of his hands. Then he began to pass his hands carefully over Pandion’s wales, spreading some liquid unguent with a pungent, unpleasant smell. The pain made the Hellene shudder but the confident hands of the Egyptian continued their work. By the time the Egyptian began to massage the legs, the pain in Pandion’s back had died away; a few minutes later Pandion dropped quietly off to sleep.
“What did you do to him?” whispered Kidogo who was quite invisible in his corner.
After a short pause the Egyptian answered him:
“This is kiphi, it’s the finest ointment, and the secret is known only to our priesthood. My mother brought it here by paying a big bribe to a soldier.”
“You’re a good fellow. Excuse me if I thought you were trash!” exclaimed the Negro.
The Egyptian muttered something between his teeth and disappeared silently into the darkness.
— From that day onwards the Egyptian made friends with the young Hellene although he still ignored his companions. After that Pandion often heard a rustling sound near his cell and if he was alone the lean, bony body of the Egyptian would come crawling in. The lonely, embittered son of Tha-Quem was outspoken and talkative when he was alone with the sympathetic Pandion, who soon learned the Egyptian’s story.
Yakhmos, the son of the moon, came from an old family of nedshes, faithful servants of former Pharaohs who had lost their position and their wealth with a change of dynasty. Yakhmos had had a good schooling and had been employed as scribe by the Governor of the Province of the Hare. He chanced to fall in love with the daughter of a builder who demanded that his son-in-law be a man of means. Yakhmos lost his head for love of the girl, determined to get the money, come what may, and turned to robbery of the royal tombs as a means to speedy enrichment. His knowledge of the hieroglyphs was a great advantage to him in the commission of a horrible crime that was always cruelly punished. Yakhmos soon had large quantities of gold in his hands but in the meantime the girl had been given in marriage to an official in the far south.
Yakhmos tried to drown his sorrows in merry feasting and the purchase of concubines, and the money soon melted away. The dark road to wealth was already known to him and he again set out to do nefarious deeds, was eventually caught, and brutally tortured and his companions were either executed or died under torture. Yakhmos was sentenced to exile in the gold mines. Every year a new party was sent there at the time of the floods and to await his dispatch Yakhm
os was put into a shehne since there was a shortage of labour for the building of the new wall of the Temple of Ptah.
As Pandion listened with interest to Yakhmos’ story he was amazed at the valour of a man who in appearance was far from brave.
Yakhmos told of his adventures in the fearful underground labyrinths, where death awaited the intruder at every step from traps cunningly designed by the builders.
In the oldest tombs that lay deep below the huge pyramids the treasures and the royal sarcophagi were protected by huge, thick slabs of stone that closed the gangways. The later tombs were in a labyrinth of false corridors that ended in deep wells with smooth walls. Huge blocks of stone fell from above when the intruders tried to move the stones that protected the tombs, heaps of sand shot down through wells from above and barred their way forward. If the bold intruders tried to pass the sand and penetrated deeper into the tombs, more earth showered down on them from the wells and buried the robbers in a narrow passage between the sand-heaps and the newly fallen earth. In the newer tombs stone jaws closed noiselessly in the darkness of the narrow tunnels or a frame studded with sharp spears crashed down from the columns immediately the intruder set his foot on a certain fatal stone in the floor. Yakhmos knew the many horrors that had lain buried for thousands of years, awaiting in silence their victim. He gained his experience at the expense of many others who had perished in the performance of their horrible profession. On many occasions the Egyptian had come across the decaying remains of unknown people who had perished in the traps in the distant past.
Yakhmos and his companions had spent many nights on the verge of the Western Desert where the Cities of the Dead stretched for thousands of cubits. Hiding in the darkness, not daring to speak or strike a light, feeling their way to the howl of the jackals, the laughing of the hyenas and the menacing roar of the lions, the plunderers dug their way through stifling passages or cut through whole cliffs in an effort to find the direction in which the deeply hidden tomb lay.
This was a horrible profession, fully worthy of a people who thought more of death than of life, who strove to preserve for all eternity the glory of the dead rather than living deeds.
Pandion listened in amazement and horror to the tales of adventure told by this thin, insignificant man who had so often risked his life for the sake of a few moments’ pleasure, and could not understand him.
“Why did you continue living like that?” Pandion asked him one night. “Why couldn’t you go away?” The Egyptian smiled a silent, mirthless smile. “The Land of Quemt is a strange land. You, a foreigner, cannot understand her. We are all imprisoned here, not merely the slaves, but also the free sons of the Black Land. Long, long ago, the deserts protected us. Today Tha-Quem is squeezed in between the deserts — it is a big prison for all those who are unable to make long journeys with a strong band of warriors.
‘In the west is the desert — the kingdom of death. The desert in the east is passable only to large caravans with a good supply of water. In the south there are savage tribes hostile to us. All our neighbours burn with hatred against our country whose well-being is founded on the misfortunes of weaker peoples.
“You’re not a son of Tha-Quem and can’t understand how we fear to die in a strange land. In this valley of the Hapi, everywhere alike, where our ancestors have lived for thousands of years and tilled the soil, dug canals and made fertile the land, we, too, must live and die. Tha-Quem is shut off from the world and that lies like a curse upon us. When there are too many people their lives are of no value — and there is nowhere for us to migrate to, the people chosen by the gods are not loved by the peoples of foreign lands…”
“But would it not be better for you to flee now that you’re a slave?” asked Pandion.
“Alone and branded?” came the Egyptian’s ejaculation of astonishment. “I’m now worse than a foreigner… Remember, Ekwesha, there’s no escaping from here! The only hope is to turn the whole of the Black Land upside down by force. But who can do that? It’s true there have been such things in the days of long ago…” Yakhmos sighed regretfully.
These last words aroused Pandion’s curiosity and he began to question Yakhmos; he learned about the great slave rebellions that had from time to time shaken the whole country. He learned also that the slaves had been joined by the poorer sections of the population whose lives differed little from those of the slaves.
He learned, too, that the common people were forbidden to have any contact with the slaves since “a poor man could infuriate the mob in the slave compound” — such were the Pharaohs’ injunctions to their sons.
The poorer sons of Quemt, the tillers of the soil and the craftsmen, lived in the narrow world of their own street. They made as few acquaintances as possible, they humbled themselves before the soldiers, the “heralds” who brought them the commands of the officials. Pharaoh demanded humility and drudging toil and for the slightest act of disobedience the offender was mercilessly beaten. The huge body of officials was a tremendous burden on the country, freedom to leave the country and travel was the prerogative of the priests and nobility alone.
At Pandion’s request Yakhmos drew a plan of the Land of Quemt in a patch of moonlight on the floor. The young Hellene was horrified: he was in the very middle of the valley of a great river thousands of stadia in length. There were water and life to the north and south but to get there through a densely populated land with countless military fortifications was impossible. In the empty deserts on either side there was no population nor was there any means of subsistence.
The few caravan roads along which there were wells were strongly guarded.
After the Egyptian had left him, Pandion spent a sleepless night trying to think out a plan of escape. Instinctively, the youth realized that hopes of a successful escape would grow weaker as time went on and he grew more and more exhausted from the unbearable slave labour. Only people possessing extraordinary strength and endurance could expect fortune to smile on them if they attempted escape.
The next night Pandion crawled to the cell of the Etruscan, Cavius, told him all he had learned from the Egyptian and tried to persuade him to make an attempt to arouse the slaves to rebellion. Cavius did not answer him but sat stroking his beard, deep in thought. Pandion was well aware that preparations for rebellion had long been under way and that the various tribal groups had chosen their leaders.
“I can’t stand it any longer, why should we wait?” exclaimed Pandion passionately; Cavius hurriedly put his hand over his mouth. “Better death,” added the Hellene, somewhat more calmly. “What is there to wait for? What will change? If changes come in ten years time, then we shan’t be able to fight or flee. Are you afraid of death or what?”
Cavius raised his hand.
“I’m not afraid and you know it,” he said brusquely, “but we have five hundred lives dependent on us. Do you propose to sacrifice them? You’ll get your death at a high price.”
Pandion struck his head against the low ceiling as he sat up suddenly in his impatience.
“I’ll think it over and talk to people,” Cavius hastened to add, “but still it’s a pity there are only two other shehne near us and that we have no access to them. We’ll talk tomorrow night and I’ll let you know. Tell Kidogo to come…”
Pandion left Cavius’ cell, crawled hurriedly along the wall so as to get there before the moon rose, and made for Yakhmos’ cell. Yakhmos was still awake.
“I went to see you,” whispered the Egyptian in excited tones, “but you weren’t there. I wanted to tell. .” he stammered. “I’ve been told that I’m being taken away from here tomorrow; they are sending three hundred men to the gold mines in the desert. That’s how matters stand — nobody ever comes back from there…”
“Why?” asked Pandion.
“Slaves sent to work there rarely live more than a year. There’s nothing worse than the work down there amidst the sun-baked rocks, with no air to breathe. They give them very little water as there isn’t
enough to go round. The work consists of breaking hard stones and carrying the ore in baskets. The strongest of the slaves drop exhausted at the end of the day’s work and blood runs from their ears and throats… Farewell, Ekwesha, you’re a fine fellow although you did me a bad turn by saving my life. It’s not the rescue that I value but the sympathy you showed me… Long, long ago a life of bitterness made one of our bards compose a song in praise of death. That song I repeat today.
“ ‘Death lies before me like convalescence before a sick man, like relief from sickness,’ “ intoned the Egyptian in a whisper, “ ‘like sailing before the wind in fine weather, like the perfume of the lotus, like a road washed by the rain, like the return home after a campaign…’ “ Yakhmos’ voice broke off in a groan.
Overcome by pity, the young Hellene drew nearer to the Egyptian.
“But you can take your own…” Pandion stopped short.
Yakhmos staggered back from him. “What are you saying, foreigner. Do you imagine I can allow my Ka to torment my Ba for all eternity in never ending sufferings?…” (Ka — the soul of the intellect. Ba — the corporeal soul, the spirit of the body.)
Pandion understood nothing of what the Egyptian was saying. He sincerely believed that suffering ends with death but did not say so out of tolerance for the faith of the Egyptian.
Yakhmos pushed aside the straw on which he slept at night and began digging in the corner of his cell.
“Here, take this dagger, if ever you dare… and this will remind you of me if a miracle happens and you gain your liberty.” Yakhmos placed a smooth, cold object in Pandion’s hand.
“What’s that? What do I want it for?” “It’s a stone I found in the underground rooms of an old temple hidden amongst the rocks.”
Yakhmos, glad of an opportunity to forget the present in reminiscences of the past, told Pandion of a mysterious old temple that he had come across, during his search for rich tombs, at a bend in the Great River many thousands of cubits below the “City,” the capital, Waset.
The Land of Foam Page 11
