Beauty of Re

by Mark Gajewski

  “I wear it every day – and night,” I said in answer to his unasked question. “I’ve never forgotten what happened between us at Mentuhotep’s temple.”

  “You still love me, don’t you Mery? I’ve seen how you’ve looked at me on the boat on the way to the cataract, and at the banquet. You can’t make yourself think of me as just a friend, can you?” There were traces of both triumph and doubt in his voice. He seized me by the shoulders and pulled me closer.

  I was in a horrible position. Of course I loved Thut. Of course he was far more than a friend. I wanted to shout my love for him joyfully to the very heavens, but I held back. Nothing could ever come of it. I’d told him at Mentuhotep’s temple that we had to forget our love. The reason for that had not changed. We simply had to. Even though I hadn’t been able to. I couldn’t keep the misery from my voice. “You already know the answer, Thut.”

  “Then say it, Mery!”

  “I can’t, Thut! I love Nefer, and you’re going to marry her. You both mean the world to me. If I confess my love it’ll complicate our three lives. It’ll change everything for us. Please don’t make me choose between loving you and hurting Nefer. I beg you.”

  “It doesn’t have to be either me or Nefer,” Thut said. “I’ll surely take many wives, Mery. Kings always do. That’s how I’ll grow my empire, build lasting alliances with the rulers of other lands. Nefer is reconciled to that. Don’t you think she’d welcome you as one of them?”

  “We’ve already talked about this,” I reminded him. “It’s impossible.”

  “I’m the king,” Thut said gently. “If I commanded you to be my wife, you’d have to obey.”

  “Of course I would, Thut. And that would make it easy for me, being commanded, having no choice. But if you truly care for me and Nefer you won’t.”

  Thut stared into my eyes for a long moment. Then he pulled me to him. “I love you, Mery. I can’t help myself.”

  His lips were suddenly hard on mine. At first I tried to turn away, but it was a half–hearted effort. I didn’t really want to. I yielded to him, then responded. I raised my arms and circled his neck. His right hand slipped to my back and he nearly crushed me to himself. His left slid down my side to my hip. My body melted into his. My heart was pounding. I wanted him like I’d never wanted anything in my life. I wanted my doubts and fears and good sense to disappear. I wanted him to be a commoner like me so we could go away and spend the rest of our lives together. I wanted this moment to last forever. And I knew that it could not and that it had to end. I broke our embrace, pushed him away.

  “You have to go, Thut,” I said, tears springing into my eyes. “You have to go or I’ll confess that I love you, that I hear your voice on the wind, that I see your face in the sun, that I can’t bear being apart from you, that my body cries out for you every minute of every day. But I can’t confess any of that – ever.” I was breathing hard now, panting, my heart breaking. “If you love me you’ll go, Thut.”

  “It’s too late for that,” he said. He was breathing hard too. Without warning, he scooped me into his arms once again. I couldn’t help myself. I surrendered. I laid my head against his chest. My heart beat even faster. He carried me to the riverbank. He laid me on my back atop a pile of fallen palm fronds and fell to his knees beside me and kissed me again and again and again.

  We awoke in each other’s arms just before dawn. We’d gotten little sleep. I’d never felt so happy and sad and fulfilled and empty in my entire life. I’d had a tantalizing taste of what life with Thut could be like, and now I craved it. I wanted to have it forever. Though I knew that was impossible. We rose just as the sky began to lighten in the east. Hand in hand, we made our way to the edge of the army’s camp. Thut took me in his arms in the shadow of some palm trees just beyond the soldier’s tents. He kissed me.

  “Neither of us can ever mention this,” I said firmly after I returned his kiss. “It’d kill Nefer, knowing I betrayed her. And we can’t ever be together like this again, Thut. We have to forget it ever happened. We have to keep our distance from each other.”

  Thut pulled me close once more, stroked my hair. “Oh, my beautiful, beautiful Mery. My fiery–haired love.” He bent his head and kissed me tenderly. “We may not mention what we did, but we’ll never forget – either of us.” He kissed me again. “So I’ll ask you again, now that we both know beyond any doubt what we feel for each other, know the joy we can have together – Mery, will you be my wife?”

  Misery swept over me. “I want to so badly, Thut. Believe me, I do. But I won’t compete with Nefer. I can’t.”

  “What if you don’t have to?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve given it a lot of thought, Mery. What if I take Nefer to wife, make her my Great Wife, and then, once she gives me a son and heir – what if I marry you then? She’ll have what she wants, and we can have what we want.”

  I felt like a drowning man spotting the safety of a distant shore, saved from certain death. Thut’s solution was so simple. Why hadn’t it occurred to us before? Thut was destined to take many wives. Nothing was going to change that. I could be one of them. Nefer could have her place, and I could have mine, subservient to her. Surely she wouldn’t object, for she loved me as much as I loved her. She’d want me to be happy. I threw my arms around Thut, tilted my face to his. “Yes!” I exclaimed, tears springing to my eyes. “Yes, Thut! Joyfully! Gladly!”

  Afer kissing me once more, Thut stepped from the shadow of the trees and strode towards his tent. The camp was beginning to stir to life. I watched him through tear–wet lashes. He looked back once and smiled broadly. I’d never been so happy in my life. Thut loved me. I loved him. Nefer’s future was secure. She’d become Thut’s wife and so would I, and our friendship would be preserved. I’d just have to wait a bit, until she had a son. I could do that, knowing what waited for me. My feet barely touching the ground, I made my way back to the viceroy’s dwelling.

  ***

  Everyone was up and about a little before dawn on the day the obelisks were to be loaded onto a gigantic barge for transport to Waset. Swenet and Abu had never seen such activity. Hundreds of sailors swarmed over the decks of nearly thirty large boats anchored in the river near the end of the quarry canal, seeing to ropes and oars, their captains’ shouted orders echoing against the far plateaus. Some of the boats belonged to merchants, some to fishermen, some to temples and gods’ estates; they’d been commandeered from towns as far away as Waset and were going to be used to pull the obelisks north. A small army of workers dressed only in kilts swarmed along the banks of the canal, some being positioned by overseers, others uncoiling and stretching long thick ropes. Farmers and craftsmen and townspeople from miles around had gathered and lined the banks of the canal and the river itself, watching the spectacle unfold.

  Thut and Aachel and I took positions near the obelisks on the south bank of the canal. I smiled shyly at Thut and he smiled at me and the secret that we shared burned hot within my heart.

  A long broad barge made of sycamore was centered below the obelisks. Hundreds of men pulling on thick ropes had hauled it into position the day before. The outer edges of the hull were nearly touching the banks of the canal. The barge was more than a hundred feet long and loaded from end to end with thousands of stone blocks a foot square. It rode extremely low in the water because of their weight, its deck just inches above the water’s surface, the piled stone only inches below the obelisks.

  “The stones on the barge weigh twice what the obelisks do,” I informed Thut. “That was the only way to get the barge low enough to float under them.”

  Hori and Nefer and a procession of priests carrying burning incense in golden containers, and chantresses playing sistrums and crotal bells and small drums and shaking menat necklaces, marched along the south bank of the canal from the river towards where we waited. The chantresses wore only white skirts and gold necklaces and earrings. Lotus stems were fastened in their hair, the b
lossoms dangling over their brows. Once beside the obelisks, the chantresses and priests fanned out in a wide semi–circle. Hori and Nefer stepped up to the obelisks and purified them with both water and incense. Then they made offerings of food to Re on small altars, lighting the various items and scooping incense into the flames to sweeten the smoke. Throughout the ritual, priests from local temples recited appropriate spells. The ceremony concluded, Hori and Nefer joined us, and we seated ourselves in leather–bottomed chairs in the shade of a canopy to observe the loading of the obelisks.

  “Incredible!” Nefer exclaimed as the workers sprang into action.

  Hundreds, dressed in kilts, jumped onto the barge and began removing the blocks of stone. Each block was light enough for a single man to lift. The men on the boats passed them to men standing on the canal banks. They stacked the blocks in orderly piles. The workers’ torsos soon gleamed with sweat. Muscles in legs and backs and arms and chests bulged as the men first removed all the blocks from directly below the obelisks, clearing a space on deck for the obelisks to eventually rest. Then they removed the blocks from the sides of the barge, and finally from bow and stern. Throughout this process the barge slowly rose in the water. By the time half the stones had been removed the deck of the barge was touching the three beams that supported the obelisks over the canal. By the time the last of the stones was piled on the bank the barge was riding high enough in the canal that the obelisks were suspended several feet above ground level, their support beams high enough to clear the banks.

  Carpenters had assembled six wooden frames, each wide enough to reach across both obelisks, and workers laid them on top of the massive objects at equal intervals. Then more workers crawled over the obelisks, firmly lashing the frames to the obelisks to keep them in position, and then lashed the obelisks themselves to the barge. Then they attached three pairs of hogging trusses, each pair consisting of two long ropes stretching from the barge’s bow to its stern and passing over the frames. Several overseers tightened the trusses by passing a stick between the pairs of ropes and then twisting the stick over and over. The trusses would keep the hull from collapsing under the great weight it bore.

  Finally, the obelisks secured, the steersmen attached their oars, one on each side of the stern.

  Then sailors fastened numerous ropes to the westernmost end of the barge, and long lines of men on each bank of the canal began to slowly pull the heavily–loaded vessel the short distance to the river. By now the heat was merciless, and the men by turns pulled and rested and drank water and took up the ropes again. After considerable effort, the barge’s bow finally poked out of the canal and into the river. At that point more ropes were fastened to the barge, and men waded and swam with the free ends to twenty–seven boats manned by eight hundred fifty oarsmen that clustered in orderly rows in the river channel. Though the current would carry the barge downstream, the weight it bore was so great that it would need assistance to reach Waset. Once all the ropes were attached, the overseer gave a great cry. The men on the smaller boats dipped their oars into the river. The barge moved very slowly into the current and began to drift north. With considerable difficulty, the barge was turned by steersmen with long flat oars so that its bow headed directly down the river. The task had to be done quickly because the river was narrow here, the island of Abu dangerously close, and if the barge came to rest on a sandbar there would be no getting it off. The sailors bent to their oars with a purpose and churned the river white, and the barge began to move a bit faster. Everyone gathered along the riverbank cheered. Men with long poles stood at the barge’s bow, probing for sandbars or areas of low water. The steersmen fought to keep the barge in the center of the channel, away from boulders and other obstructions.

  All of us in the royal party then ascended the gangplank onto the royal boat. I was the last; I told Thut goodbye at the gangplank’s foot. He would be leaving for the Second Cataract in the morning. It nearly broke my heart to part from him now, after what had happened between us, for all at once I felt a great sense of possession and possibility as I regarded him. I glanced at Nefer standing on deck, and a bit of guilt washed over me because of what had happened between Thut and me on the banks of the river. I’d have to keep that a secret from her, at least until after we were both Thut’s wives. But, I rationalized, I was putting Nefer’s interests ahead of my own. I could have married Thut today, gone south with him. But I wouldn’t become his wife until Nefer became the mother of a king. That way, I could have Nefer and I could have Thut. A future that had seemed so uncertain upon my arrival at the First Cataract was now filled with clarity and purpose.

  The captain gave an order and sailors pushed the royal boat from the shore. Once we were past the end of Abu and the river channel became wider, we sped past the barge and moved into position to lead the procession down the river. Three escort ships full of priests fell in line just behind us, the priests censing the river ahead of the obelisks with incense, chanting appropriate spells without ceasing. I stood at the stern and watched Thut until he was too distant to see anymore.

  And so began a three–week long journey, leisurely for us in the royal party, desperately hard for the sailors. We traveled only by day, anchoring the barge in the river at night for fear of running aground on sandbars. The thousand sailors and priests of the escort boats camped each evening along the bank, ate beside blazing campfires, slept exhausted in tents or atop blankets under the stars. I refused to sleep on the boat; I shared a tent with Aachel on shore, simply for the adventure of it. By day I spent almost all of my time with the hostages that had been delivered by the viceroy, four boys and a girl, all my age or a little younger. Two spoke a bit of my language; as we traveled north I questioned them closely about Wawat and Kush and its geography and wildlife and crops and culture and gods. I began learning their language, and by the time we reached Waset I could more or less converse with them.

  ***

  “Hapuseneb, is it true that the gods make their wishes known to kings in dreams?” Hatshepsut asked.

  “They do, Majesty,” answered the Opener of the Gate of Heaven. “A dream is a biayet, a sign from god.”

  Hatshepsut was seated on an ebony throne atop the three–step high dais in the king’s private audience hall in Waset’s per’aa. She wore a white pleated dress of fine linen, with wide straps, and was bedecked with gold and jewels, a uraeus crown on her brow. Sunlight spilled into the room from two narrow windows high up the walls and her light brown skin glowed warmly, enhancing her loveliness. She was not yet thirty, still at the height of her beauty; I’d long ago lost count of all those who sought to court her, from Kemet’s officials to ambassadors and rulers from foreign lands. To date she had ignored them all.

  The throne was richly decorated with gold and faience, its feet carved in the shape of lion’s paws, the sides etched with the bee and sedge and papyrus and lotus, the symbols of Upper and Lower Kemet. The walls of the audience hall were elaborately and colorfully decorated with images of Thut making offerings to Amun, and its floors were plastered and painted with scenes of him trampling the Nine Bows. The ceiling was decorated with five vultures, each protecting one of the king’s names. I sometimes wondered if the omnipresent reminders of Thut disturbed Hatshepsut as she ruled the land in his name from his per’aa.

  As always, I was in attendance on Hatshepsut and Nefer, though today I couldn’t wait to be dismissed. Aachel was in our quarters in the per’aa, getting our dresses and jewels and perfumes ready for the Opet. Tomorrow was the start of the eleven–day long festival, established by Hatshepsut shortly after her ascension to the regency and already the most important religious celebration of the year at Waset. Its purpose was to reidentify the king with the royal ka that had been shared by all of Kemet’s previous kings, renew his divine kingship, and reconfirm his right to rule. In short, the Opet legitimized the king. At dawn, statues of Amun and his wife Mut and their son Khonsu would be carried in procession from their temples at Ipet–Isut t
o the small stone shrine Ipet–resyt three miles to its south that Hatshepsut had recently erected. A fertility rite conducted within that shrine would renew the king’s authority and affirm his divine nature, and refresh the gods’ as well. Hatshepsut would stand in for Thut this year; he hadn’t returned from his tour to the Second Cataract yet.

  I was even more in love with Thut now than I’d been before the trip south. I missed him terribly. I was mentally and physically exhausted these days; I’d scarcely slept more than a few hours at a time since parting from him. I’d tossed and turned half of every night, unable to drive what had happened between us from my mind, going over and over the precious hours we’d spent on the riverbank and the promise we’d made to each other afterwards again and again and again. I was happy and miserable at the same time. Now that I’d agreed to marry Thut, I didn’t want to wait to become his wife. I wished something would happen to hasten Nefer and Thut’s marriage, so that my own could take place.

  Nefer was wearing a simple white linen dress today, and a gold diadem and a girdle of turquoise. She squirmed in her chair, as restless as me. She wanted to escape the audience hall too, a place in which she had become a fixture. Even though she was only fifteen, and a girl, Hatshepsut’s advisors had long ago accepted Nefer’s daily presence and, in fact, greeted her enthusiastically each morning upon her arrival. She was always prepared and fully engaged and, despite her youth, occasionally able to offer an insight or perspective based on her extensive travels in the valley and the superb education she was receiving under Senenmut’s tutelage. She was, I knew from practically being her shadow, doing everything she could to prepare herself to help Thut rule when he took the throne on his own. The past couple of years she had become as popular with the king’s courtiers as Hatshepsut herself. Everyone gravitated towards her; she was the life of every banquet hosted by the Regent. I thought half the men and boys in the royal court were in love with her, and those that weren’t pursued her anyway, seeking the position marriage to her would bring. Nefer flirted sometimes, basking in her admirers’ adulation, but taking neither they nor their flattery seriously, still certain she’d be Thut’s Great Wife very soon.