by Marié Heese
I noted that he had no sense of the sanctity of Pharaoh’s body, but ran to her as a child will and threw his arms around her joyously. She bent down and embraced him. His mother, I saw, felt the heat, even though they had been brought in a sedan chair and had not walked the streets. She had a linen kerchief in her hand and mopped her face with it.
She brought a gift of sweetmeats that her cook had prepared; it was arranged in a little basket on some leaves. They were pink and shiny. “Figs, stewed in sweet wine and flavoured with honey,” said Meryetre. The child wanted one, but his mother would not allow it. “Have a tiger nut, darling, those are a gift for your grandmother,” she said. “You should not eat them.”
She herself did not eat anything but drank cooled wine which the slaves brought.
Pharaoh sat down with the child leaning against her knee and she took a sweetmeat. I had kept in the background, sitting cross-legged on the ground as I always do, but at that moment I could not keep silent. She had sent away her slaves, including the one who must taste all she eats and drinks. “Majesty,” I said, in a low voice.
She looked at me with her lion’s eyes, and they were tawny and as brave as ever. She looked at me and shook her head, very slightly. Her daughter Meryetre did not notice this pass between us; she was circling restlessly around the room, picking things up and setting them down and chattering. She is not normally one to chatter much, but on this day she was chattering. Her speech ran on over our heads like a light and inconsequential breeze.
Her Majesty took a sweetmeat and ate it and then she took another and a third. She praised them, asking if her cook might have the recipe. Meryetre agreed, distractedly, as if she were thinking of something else. And then, as soon as the cooled wine was drunk, she made the child say goodbye and took her leave.
Now I come to what my pen does not wish to write. This happened yesterday afternoon; this morning when the God sailed into the sky, Her Majesty King Ma’atkare Khnemet-Amen Hatshepsut was no more. They gave it out that she had suddenly passed on late the previous afternoon. The palace officials said that she had been suffering from a serious flux for some weeks and it had sorely taxed her strength. She had simply stopped breathing and her slaves had found her lying on the ground.
Thutmose, the one who shall now be the King, has ordered that the seventy days of mourning must be properly observed, and Her Majesty’s body has been removed to the House of Death for ritual purification. There will be a great state funeral and the poor will rejoice, for they will be given bread and beer; the royal stores are not yet totally depleted. She will be buried in the tomb that Hapuseneb has prepared for his Pharaoh. There will be sacrifices in the magnificent funerary temple at Djeser-Djeseru that the late great Senenmut built for the King.
The land is quiet and subdued. But I, I cannot sleep and I cannot eat. I am tormented by some questions that will never be answered, and they disturb me greatly.
Why, truly, was I there? Did Her Majesty really wish me to see the child? She could have given me the scroll she had just completed at once and sent me on my way. Or was I there to witness and to write what I had seen? Did she expect something of import to take place that day?
Did she know, when she took the sweetmeat, that her daughter had brought her death? She heard me warn her and she shook her head. To that I can attest. She heard me and she looked into my eyes and she put forth her hand very deliberately. But perhaps she only meant: How can you warn me of danger when it is a gift from my own child? No, no, Mahu, you forget yourself. Perhaps that was all she meant.
Did Meryetre know what she had brought? Had she a part in planning it? Or was she merely the messenger? Or had she no idea at all? She did perspire, that is true, but the day was hot. My face was damp as well. She would not let the child eat of the sweetmeats, but then they did look very rich and he is only little. She did not eat herself, but perhaps she does not care overmuch for sweet things. She was restless, but she often is. I was there and I cannot tell you truly what transpired. I do not know.
For that matter, who knows for sure that there was poison involved? Her Majesty had been tired and unwell for quite some time, and she was no longer young. It might all have been quite innocent. I would rather think that, for the other possibility is too dreadful for me to consider. I do not wish to believe it.
And yet I cannot sleep. The questions go around and around in my heart and I argue in circles. But about one matter there can be no doubt, and that is what saddens me most of all and will not let me rest. It is this: At the end, when death came for her, she was alone. There was nobody to hold her hand, to comfort her, to ease her passing. Nobody to speak words of love, no hand to mop her brow.
I should have stayed with her. Oh, I should have stayed. But I was craven and in her hour of need I scuttled away like a cockroach in the light. I expected her to die. I did. I could have been the last to see her breathe. I could have been with her. But she had entrusted the scroll to me and I knew I had to get it away and safely hidden before …
No, I write a lie. It was not the scroll, that was not it. In truth I was terribly afraid, and I still tremble. If indeed there was poison involved, I was a witness to something that it were better none had seen; those who could murder a Pharaoh would hardly hesitate to wipe out a minor scribe. I think I must find a berth on a ship and depart from Thebes as soon as possible. I might be crushed underfoot like a cockroach indeed. So that is why I deserted Her Majesty yesterday. A craven thing is what I am. I who have always loved her did not have the courage to stay with her when she had need of me.
I will hide the scrolls. That one service I can yet do for her.
But oh, by the Ka of Thoth, I should have stayed.
POSTSCRIPT
Written by Mahu the scribe during the
reign of Thutmose the Third
More than ten summers have passed since I hid the final scroll and fled. It was easy enough for me to disappear. Being an orphan, I was brought up by an uncle who also saw to my schooling. He had several other children, though, and was relieved when I was off his hands. At the time when the Pharaoh Hatshepsut passed into the Afterlife I lived alone with only one female slave to see to my wants. It did not take me long to bundle up a few items of clothing and the tools of my trade and pack the purse with some debens of gold and silver that I had saved. And the golden bracelet Her Majesty gave to me.
I booked a berth on a ship bound for the North and it sailed with the evening tide. When it reached Heliopolis I disembarked and soon found a post as scribe with the Aten priests. There I kept my head down and worked diligently and life treated me well. I missed the well-rounded and flirtatious Syrian slave, but perhaps she would not have suited me in the long run. After a while I took a wife, a small and quiet woman who speaks softly, treats me kindly and keeps my sleeping mat warm at night. We have two sons who will follow me as scribes.
The Pharaoh Thutmose is much admired for his military achievements. Directly after King Hatshepsut passed into the Afterlife the new Pharaoh began a series of highly successful military campaigns. He ruthlessly suppressed the rebellion mounted by the vassal states to the north-east under the banner of the Prince of Kadesh. He personally executed seven rebel leaders, returning home with their bloody, mutilated corpses hanging head downwards from the prow of his treasure-laden ship. Six of these he proceeded to hang from the city walls of Thebes, while the seventh was taken further south to Napata in the Sudan. Its horrific stench was an unforgettable testimony to the victorious might of His new Majesty.
Also the new Pharaoh confiscated the grain harvest from the stores in Megiddo and brought it home to feed his people. In the following flood season Hapi was bountiful again; the inundation came and brought the rich black soil just as it always had. Seeds could be planted, the harvest was a good one and everyone rejoiced. More military campaigns followed, all meeting with great success. He seems bound to conquer all the lands as far as the Euphrates.
Despite much time spent in the
field of war he has managed to collect women like trophies. Besides two principal wives, he has acquired numerous minor wives, including three from Syria, and a considerable selection of concubines. Yet the one who takes precedence, who is the Great Royal Wife and will probably one day be the Mother of the King when young Amenhotep takes the throne, is Meryetre-Hatshepsut. However there has never been a God’s Wife of Amen, for Thutmose has refused to appoint anyone to fulfil that role. Perhaps he remembers how much power it conferred on the late great King, his aunt, when he was young.
Meryetre has not grown more beautiful as time goes by, nor yet, I suspect, has her nature become sweeter, but the Pharaoh honours her and I have heard she sits by his side in the Window of Appearances, heavily bewigged and painted and beringed, when he rewards his generals.
Soon Hapuseneb died and I judged it best to keep the scrolls hidden. They are quite safe, tightly sealed in jars inside the cleft at the back of the cave on my cousin’s mountain farm. I do not think they will easily be found. Now I write this postscript and I will add it to the rest and close the place up and then leave the scrolls where they are. Later generations may discover them and then the truth about my Pharaoh will at last be known. In my lifetime, it is now clear, this will not come to pass.
I have returned to Thebes with this latest rising of the Nile, before the full inundation comes. It is the first time I have been back since the death of the Pharaoh Ma’atkare Hatshepsut, may she live for ever. My aged uncle died and left me some gold in his will and I had to come to settle the estate. Also I wanted to check on the scrolls, which have been a great worry to me. I never handed them to the Grand Vizier Hapuseneb for I did not trust him – and with good reason, as matters turned out, for Pharaoh Thutmose gave him many rewards and there was no doubt that they were acting together.
When I arrived in Thebes, I went to look for Ahmose, my friend the scribe with the one eye for whom I had found work. He had prospered in my absence and now has a comfortable house in a good part of town. He invited me to dinner one evening and we dined well on fish steamed with ginger, quails roasted in garlic and honey and fresh fruit. Afterwards we sat on the ground in his inner courtyard, cross-legged as we were accustomed to sit while working, drank some more wine and talked. The evening breeze was cool and a fountain splashed in a fish pond studded with lotuses. A couple of earthenware lamps cast a golden glow and the faint scent of incense hung in the night air.
We talked generally at first, but then his tone became serious. “There have been developments,” he told me, “of which you may not know, that I think would interest you.” He looked at me assessingly with his only good eye. He had grown plump over the years and had acquired a painted glass eye in the empty socket that put me in mind of the Eye of Horus which the fishermen paint on their boats to ward off evil.
“And what are they?” I was feeling mellow after the good dinner.
He looked around him, as if to make sure that nobody heard, then leaned forwards confidentially. “You know there is a new Chief Prophet of Amen,” he murmured. “In the place of old Hapuseneb, who died.”
I knew, for the priest had visited Heliopolis. I liked him not; he was fat and unctuous and his naked face and bald head shone with sacred oil.
“He has decreed that the late Queen who claimed to be the King …”
“King Ma’atkare Hatshepsut,” I said, not caring for the way he spoke of Her late Majesty, may she live for ever.
He put a finger to his nose and shushed me. “Do not speak the name,” he whispered. “The Prophet of Amen has declared her to have been a heretic.”
“A what!” I was astounded.
“A heretic,” he repeated. “A female claiming to be King is against the laws of Ma’at, he says. It contravenes the natural order of things that the gods have ordained.”
“I don’t believe it. And the Pharaoh Thutmose? What says he of this?”
“He has given orders,” whispered Ahmose, “that her name should be expunged. That her records on the living stone must be removed. That her images should be destroyed. That her building works should be torn down, her obelisks dismantled or hidden. He has omitted her name from the list of Kings he had drawn up. He desires that it should seem as if she had never been.”
I was aghast. “I had heard that he has taken over her temple at Djeser-Djeseru and had his own images and records placed there, but I did not realise that he was actually destroying what was there of hers.”
“Obliterating her,” said Ahmose. He reached out and threw some crumbs into the pool. Fish rose to snap them up. “Gangs of workmen have been put to work hacking out her cartouches and her images wherever they appear. I tell you, brother, her obelisks at Karnak have been hidden behind a wall. At Djeser-Djeseru, the sphinxes bearing her head and her statues have been shattered and flung into a pit.”
“That is dreadful,” I said, and shuddered. Such actions meant that not only was Thutmose removing the late great King from the history of Egypt, but he was attempting to deny her eternal life. Vindictive in the extreme.
“It does not stop there,” Ahmose went on. “The names, records and images of those who worked for and supported her are also being destroyed. Of Senenmut not much is left. Statues – and there were many, although some were destroyed while the late Pharaoh lived …”
“I know,” I said.
“Shattered,” said Ahmose. “And thrown into a disused quarry. Even the names of Nehsi and Thitui have been erased from the walls at Djeser-Djeseru.”
That would be in the records of the famous voyage to Punt, I knew. The leader of Her Majesty’s great expedition and her treasurer were being consigned to forgetfulness together with the late great King.
“But Thutmose accorded her a suitable ceremony,” I said. “The time of mourning was observed. Her body was mummified and the rituals carried out, is that not so?”
“True,” conceded Ahmose. “And everyone believed that he had her buried with her father, Thutmose the First, may he live for ever, in the tomb that was prepared by Hapuseneb. But Pharaoh Thutmose later reburied the mummy of Thutmose the First, in a new and most magnificent tomb elsewhere. And …” he glanced around again, clearly very afraid of listening ears. “The tomb where King Hatshepsut should rest has been robbed and desecrated, and the grand sarcophagus bearing her name and inscriptions stands empty,” he whispered. “The grave goods have been destroyed or burned or have disappeared, and the mummy also. This is not generally known, but I have contacts. And I have been to the tomb. I went on a donkey and it was unconscionably hot. But I made the trip and it is true.” He whispered even more softly, leaning towards my ear. “The lid of the sarcophagus lies to one side, intact, face up, as if it never was in place. The canopic chest of Hatshepsut is empty. The tomb is desolate and only snakes are living there.” He turned his Horus eye on me. “I tell you the truth, brother,” he said.
“I believe you,” I said, cold to my heart’s core.
Therefore it is of the utmost importance that the scrolls should be kept safe. Now is not the time to hand them over to anybody I can think of. Now is the time to bury them deep and wall them up. I shall add these last few words and hide them and I shall never again return to their hiding place.
One day, when her bones and mine are dust, they will be found. Let them bear witness to future generations. It is written: “The strongest buildings crumble and disappear, yet the works of the scribes endure through the ages.” Perhaps the faithful care of a humble scribe may be all that ensures everlasting life for Her Majesty, King Ma’atkare Hatshepsut.
For she did live. Insofar as she was divine, she honoured and she served the gods. She ruled her country wisely and well and Egypt bowed to her and worked for her. Insofar as she was a woman, she passed on the blood royal through the travail of her loins; she loved greatly and she was loved in return. I can attest to that. Oh, yes, she walked this earth and those who knew her observed her beauty of form and spirit. And though her corporeal body
may be lost, yet I am sure that she has joined the never-dying circumpolar stars.
Mahu the scribe
SELECTED SOURCES
Of the sources listed below, I am most heavily indebted to Budge, Tyldesley, Fletcher, Harris and Johnson. The genesis of the novel came from Wells. Johnson made me aware of the importance of the concept of individual conscience to the ancient Egyptians and I thank him for that.
Print media
Assmann, Jan. 1995. Egyptian Solar Religion in the New Kingdom. London: Kegan Paul
Breasted, JH. 1924. The History of Ancient Egypt. London: Hodder & Stoughton
Budge, EA Wallis (trans & ed). 1967 (1895). The Egyptian Book of the Dead (The Papyrus of Ani). New York: Dover
Caldecott, Moyra. 2003. Tutankhamun and the Daughter of Ra. Bath, UK: Mushroom eBooks
Chalaby, Abbas. 1989. Egypt. Firenze: Bonechi
Cotterell, Arthur and Storm, Rachel. 1999. The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Mythology. China: Anness Publishing
Fletcher, Joann. 2004. The Search for Nefertiti. London: Hodder & Stoughton
Freeman, Charles. 1999. Egypt, Greece and Rome. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Gedge, Pauline. 1977. Child of the Morning. New York: Soho
Goetz et al (eds). 1988. Encyclopaedia Britannica Micropaedia Vol 5. Chicago: Chicago University Press
Harris, Nathaniel. 1997. History of Ancient Egypt. London: Chancellor
Harvey, G and Reid, S. 2002. Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt. London: Usborne
Jacq, Christian. 1997. The Son of the Light. London: Simon & Schuster
Jacq, Christian. 1998. The Temple of a Million Years. London: Simon & Schuster
Jacq, Christian. 1998. The Battle of Kadesh. London: Simon & Schuster
