by Anton Gill
For weekly updates on our free and discounted eBooks sign up to our newsletter.
Follow us on Twitter and Goodreads.
Principal Characters in order of appearance
Historical characters are in lower case. Fictional characters are in upper case. Ancient Egyptian names are sometimes transliterated in different ways. For example, I have adopted Ankhesenamum instead of Ankhesenpaamun, but preferred Nezemmut to Mutnodjmet.
HUY, a scribe
SENSENEB, his wife, a doctor
HORAHA, her father
Ankhesenamun (Ankhsi), widow of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun, wife of Tascherit
TASCHERIT, Military Governor of Meroe
Ay, the reigning Pharaoh
Horemheb, the Commander-in-Chief of the army
KENNA, Ay’s principal secretary
TEHUTY, Huy’s ex-brother-in-law
HEBY, Huy’s son
AAHMES, Huy’s former wife
RENIQER, a land agent
HAPU, Senseneb’s body-servant
Ty, Ay’s Chief Wife
Nezemmut, Horemheb’s wife; Ay’s daughter
TUTHMOSIS, son of Horemheb and Nezemmut
AMENOPHIS-IMUTHES, son of Ankhsi
PAIESTUNEF, a harbour-master
HENKA, Ay’s man
TETA, a boat captain
NESPTAH, a merchant
PINHASY, a scribe
SAMUT, a merchant
TAKHANA, Tascherit’s sister; Nesptah’s wife
NIUI, Samut’s man
PSARO, Huy’s body-servant
APUKI, Takhana’s steward
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The background to the following story is broadly authentic, though the majority of its characters are fictional. We know a comparatively large amount about life in Ancient Egypt because its people - at least its ruling and administrative classes - were sophisticated, literate, and had a sense of history; even so, experts estimate that in the two centuries since the science of Egyptology began, scarcely more than twenty-five per cent of what might be known has been revealed. There is still much disagreement and debate about certain dates and events among scholars, and in the process of discovery, many of the delicate relics of the civilisation of the pharaohs have been destroyed or dispersed.
This is a novel, and I have allowed myself occasional freedoms in interpreting what life in Ancient Egypt must have been like. Bearing in mind that no-one can know completely how the people of that time spoke or behaved, and accepting that human nature has not changed much in the past 3,500 years or so, I nevertheless apologise to Egyptologists and purists for those freedoms. Among the many to whose work I am indebted are not only the founders of modern Egyptology, like James Breasted, E. Wallis Budge, and W. M. Flinders Petrie, but also modern scholars, including Cyril Aldred, W. V. Davies, Christine El Mahdy, T.G.H. James, Manfred Lurker, Lise Manniche, P.R.S. Moorey, R.B. Parkinson, Gay Robins, John Romer, M.V. Seton-Williams, A.J. Spencer, Miriam Stead, Eugen Strouhal, Richard H. Wilkinson and Hilary Wilson. I must also thank Dr H. Peter Speed for patiently and promptly answering a handful of anxious enquiries.
THE BACKGROUND TO HUY’S EGYPT
The nine years of the reign of the young Pharaoh Tutankhamun, 1361-1352 BC, were troubled ones for Egypt. They came nearly at the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty, the most glorious of all the thirty dynasties of the empire. Tutankhamun’s predecessors had included illustrious warrior kings, lawmakers and innovators, who had created a new kingdom and consolidated the old one. But shortly before his reign a strange, visionary pharaoh had occupied the throne: Akhenaten. What had happened essentially was this: Akhenaten had thrown out all the old gods and replaced them with one, the Aten, who had his being in the life-giving sunlight. Akhenaten was the world’s first philosopher, and the creator of the idea of monotheism. In the seventeen years of his reign, and he was only 29 when he died, he made enormous changes in the way his country thought and in the way it was run; but in the process he lost the whole of the northern part of the empire (modern Palestine and Syria), and brought the country to the brink of ruin. Now, powerful enemies gathered there.
Akhenaten’s religious reforms had driven doubt into the minds of his people after generations of unchanged certainty which went back to the building of the pyramids, over 1,000 years earlier, and beyond; and although the empire itself, already over 1,500 years old in Huy’s time, had been through bad times before, Egypt now entered a short Dark Age. Akhenaten had not been popular with the priests of the old religion, whose power he took away, nor with ordinary people, who saw him as a defiler of their long-held beliefs, especially in the Afterlife and the Dead. After his death in about 1362 BC, the new capital city he had had built for himself - Akhetaten - the City of the Horizon - quickly fell into ruin as power reverted to Thebes - the Southern Capital. The northern seat of government was at the city we call Memphis, but at this period it was less important than Thebes. Akhenaten’s name was cut from every monument, and people were not even allowed to speak it.
Akhenaten died without a direct heir, and the short reigns of the three kings who succeeded him, of which Tutankhamun’s was the second and by far the longest, were fraught with uncertainty. None of the three left a direct heir, and during this time the pharaohs themselves very probably had their power curbed and controlled by Horemheb, formerly commander-in-chief of Akhenaten’s army, but now bent on fulfilling his own ambition to restore the empire and the old religion, and to become pharaoh himself. He did so finally in 1348 BC, possibly after a power struggle with his immediate predecessor, Ay, an old man who had also been a senior official in Akhenaten’s court. Like Horemheb, Ay was an ambitious commoner; but his daughter, who became Akhenaten’s chief wife, was the most famous queen in Egyptian history after Cleopatra - Nefertiti. The story which follows takes place during the five-year reign of Ay - about 1352 - 1348 BC; but Horemheb is very much a power in the land.
Horemheb himself reigned for about 28 years, well into old age, marrying Akhenaten’s sister-in-law to reinforce his remote claim to the throne. He, too, died without a direct heir, and his reign ended the Eighteenth Dynasty.
Egypt was to rally under Horemheb, and early in the Nineteenth Dynasty it achieved one last peak under Ramesses II. It was by far the most powerful and the wealthiest country in the known world, rich in gold, copper and precious stones. Trade was carried out the length of the Nile - known simply as The River - from the coast down to Nubia and the Sudan, on the Mediterranean (The Great Green), and on the Red Sea as far as Somalia (Punt). But it was a narrow strip of a country, clinging to the banks of the Nile and hemmed in to the east and west by deserts. It was governed by three seasons: Spring, Shemu, was the time of harvest and drought, from February to May; Summer, Akhet, was the time of the Nile flood, from June to October; and Autumn, Peret, was the time of Coming-Forth, when the crops grew. The level of the annual flood was of vital importance: too high, and farms and building could be swept away; too low, and no crop could be grown: the difference between prosperity and ruin was a matter of a few metres.
The Ancient Egyptians lived closer to the seasons than we do, and to their natural surroundings. They also believed that the heart was the centre of all thought and feeling. The brain’s only function, they thought, was to pass mucus to the nose, with which it was assumed to be connected.
The period during which these stories take place is a tiny part of Ancient Egypt’s 3,000 - year history; but it was a crucial one for the country. Egypt was becoming aware of the less-blessed, more aggressive world beyond its frontiers, and of the possibility that it, too, might one day be conquered and come to an end. It was a time of uncertainty, questioning, intrigue and violence: a distant mirror in which we can see something of ourselves.
The people worshipped a large number of gods. Some of these were restricted to cities or localities, while others waxed or waned in importance with time. Certain gods were duplications of the same ‘idea’. Here are some of the most important:<
br />
AMUN The chief god of the Southern Capital, Thebes. Representedas a man, and associated with the supreme sun god, Ra. Animals dedicated to him were the ram and the goose.
ANUBIS The jackal or dog-headed god of embalming, and the protector of the mummy from the forces of evil during the night.
ATEN The god of the sun’s energy, represented as the sun’s disk whose rays end in protecting hands.
BESA grotesque dwarf who protected the household from demons.
GEB The god of the Earth, represented as a man.
HAPY The god of the Nile, especially in flood. A man whose woman’s breasts represented fecundity.
HATHOR The goddess of love, music and dance. Often represented as a cow, or a human whose head is surmounted by a cow’s horns and the sun’s disk, she was also the suckler and protectress of the king.
HORUS One of the most popular gods. Horus was a defender of good against evil, the hawk-headed son of Isis and Osiris, and therefore a member of the most important trinity in Ancient Egyptian theology. He was also associated with the sun.
ISIS The divine mother; wife and sister of Osiris.
KHONS The god of the moon; the son of Amun.
MAAT The goddess of law, truth and world harmony.
MIN The god of sexual fertility.
MUT The wife of Amun, originally a vulture goddess.
NEKHBET The vulture goddess of Upper Egypt. The lotus and the White Crown were associated with this region, the southern of the ‘Two Lands’ which made up the ‘Black Land’ of Egypt.
NUT The goddess of the sky and the sister of Geb.
OSIRIS The god of the underworld and of resurrection. The afterlife was of great importance to the Ancient Egyptians.
RA The principal sun god.
SEKHMET The lioness-headed goddess of destruction, a defender of the gods against evil and associated with healing; but also dangerous when uncontrolled.
SET The god of storms and violence; brother and murderer of Osiris. Although sometimes regarded as a protector god, he is very roughly equivalent to Satan.
SOBEK The crocodile god.
THOTH The god of time, also associated with writing: usually ibis-headed, he sometimes takes the form of a baboon.
WADJET The cobra goddess of Lower Egypt, the northern of ‘Two Lands’. The papyrus was associated with this region, as was the Red Crown.
******************
