Beauty of Re
Page 19
Thut came looking for me late in the afternoon. He led me to a secluded spot along the river. I sank wearily to the bank beside him in the shade of a small grove of trees. I was exhausted, drenched with sweat from the hours I’d spent in the harsh sunlight, my stomach rumbling with hunger, my skirt torn and muddy and saturated with the blood of the men I’d helped, my left arm stiff and throbbing and crusted over with my own blood from shoulder to elbow. Thut carefully embraced me, pushed the tangled hair plastered to my brow aside, gently kissed my lips. I hugged him back, everything forgotten but his nearness.
“A great victory, My Love,” I said enthusiastically. “Your men followed you without question, just like you hoped. And you were responsible for the strategy.”
“The wretches stood no chance against us,” Thut said humbly.
“As you wouldn’t have if they’d reached Buhen first.”
“True,” he said, and smiled. “How does your arm feel, Mery?”
“Sore, but it’ll be fine,” I said. I moved my arm and winced involuntarily. “I guess I’m officially one of your soldiers now.”
“For the last time, Mery,” Thut said. “I don’t ever want you to risk your life like that again. What if the arrow had been a little to the left?”
“But it wasn’t.”
He sighed. “You’re right, you know.”
“About?”
“Your daring. Its what draws me to you.”
“So you’re still drawn to me? Even after what’s happened?”
“With Hatshepsut? I love you, Mery. Nothing will ever change that.” Thut kissed me again, longer this time. “I don’t blame you, or Nefer, for what her mother has done. Though others say Nefer had a part in it.”
“Nefer was the only one who stood up for you when it happened,” I said earnestly. “But Nefer couldn’t stop it. I was in the audience hall. I promise I’m telling the truth.”
“I don’t doubt you, Mery,” Thut said.
“You’ve ignored Nefer ever since you returned to Waset,” I pointed out.
“My mother’s doing. It’s not worth fighting her over. Though I am glad you snuck on board my boat so we at least could be together for awhile.”
“What about Nefer?” I asked. “She still wants to be your wife, Thut.”
“Tell her that the door hasn’t closed yet, as far as I’m concerned,” Thut said. “Believe me, Mery, I want to marry her, and have a son with her, so you and I can get married the way we planned.”
“I’m so glad!” I exclaimed, and then I kissed him. “But you should know, the last time Nefer suggested becoming your Great Wife, Hatshepsut said she’d never allow Nefer to marry you. It’s going to be complicated, getting around both your mothers.”
That evening, after bathing in the river and changing into a clean skirt and having my arm attended by an actual physician, I recounted my exploits to Nefer and Aachel as we ate dinner. Both were horrified and amazed and made me promise I’d never do anything like that again. Both had been out of their minds with worry when I didn’t return to the cabin before the battle. When I was sure no one was paying attention to us I gave Nefer Thut’s message, and she hugged me gratefully.
After dinner, Thut and Hatshepsut took their places side by side on thrones in the camp they had established just outside the walls of Buhen, each dressed in the regalia of a king, to accept the official surrender of the fortress. Boxes and baskets of booty were presented to them, sullen prisoners were led past, hostages selected from among the children of Buhen’s leaders to accompany us back to Waset. Some of the enemy were marked for return to Waset and execution at Amun’s temple to thank him for our victory. The bravest of our soldiers were introduced to the two kings one at a time by Captain Djehuty, and the two kings awarded them gold and slaves from among the Nubians, and grants of land. Thut promised Djehuty that flies of valor would be awarded him upon the return to Waset.
At the end of the evening, Hatshepsut announced she had assigned Senenmut the task of building a temple to Hathor here at Buhen to commemorate her victory. To mark the occasion she gave Senenmut a red carnelian amulet carved as the face of Hathor, inscribed on its back: “Maatkare, beloved of Iunyt; the hereditary prince and Great Steward of Amun, Senenmut.”
1471 BC
Regnal Year 9 – Thutmose III; Regnal Year 2 – Hatshepsut
Nefer and I waited just outside a pavilion lit with flaming torches and oil lamps at the edge of cultivation a half mile west of the river. In less than half an hour the new moon would rise, and the week–long foundation deposit ceremony for Hatshepsut’s memorial temple would begin. Farther west, Re was just about to disappear behind the hills that guarded the Great Place. Shadows had already filled the flat land in the bay of those hills and crept all the way to the pavilion. Towards the southern end of the bay I could see Mentuhotep’s memorial temple backed up to the nearly vertical rugged cliffs, the garden lush before it. Seeing it awakened memories of Thut and me, what we’d said there, what we’d done since. I fingered the amulet of Hathor around my neck, the one I wore every day, a constant reminder of the love he had for me.
I had seen Thut once since the expedition to Buhen a year ago. The long white scar on my arm served as a daily reminder of that glorious event. He’d come to Waset for the Opet, another uncomfortable encounter. He and Hatshepsut had entered Ipet–resyt together, been renewed by the gods and recrowned. Iset had kept Thut away from Nefer and me the whole time; we’d seen him only from afar. I was certain he still wanted to marry Nefer, so that he could have me. But it was clear that Iset and Hatshepsut were becoming even greater obstacles to that ever happening. As for me, I loved Thut more than ever. I dreamed of him at night. More than once I crossed the river and climbed to Mentuhotep’s temple and dangled my feet over the terrace and thought about our encounter there and our time along the river at Abu and wished I could have him for myself.
This evening Nefer was wearing the vulture crown with two tall white plumes that signified her role as King’s Great Wife, though her main role continued to be God’s Wife of Amun. Our daily routine at Ipet–Isut rarely varied. I awakened her an hour before dawn in our shared quarters. Aachel and I bathed her, anointed her, dressed her. Then she met Hori outside her door, he accompanied by the Amun priests who had themselves just bathed in a small sacred pool. They escorted her to Amun’s sanctuary, where Hapuseneb waited. Together, the high priest and Nefer broke the seal on the door, proceeded inside, woke the god, dressed him, made offerings. Afterwards, Nefer joined Aachel and me where we waited in the garden along the processional way, then ate breakfast, sometimes with Hori in our quarters, sometimes in the per’aa with Hatshepsut on the days we attended audiences, always when a foreign ambassador or dignitary would be present. On a normal morning, after breakfast, Nefer received the administrators of her estates in her own small audience hall, heard their reports, issued orders. She consulted Senenmut only for anything out of the ordinary. Nefer had, with her customary zeal, worked hard in the first months after her ascension to learn everything she could about Amun’s estates. She now knew how to weave flax into linen, bake bread, glean the fields at harvest time, repair dikes, build huts, press grapes with her feet in vats after the harvest, even smelt copper, though that particular activity had tested the limits of her strength. And as she tried her hand at all these, so too had I. But she had also spent considerable time with the overseers, learning their jobs, understanding how every element of the estate fit with the rest. She had grasped those concepts quickly. It turned out that Nefer had a knack for management and soon required little of Senenmut’s oversight. Already the estates were producing more than ever before. Hatshepsut often told Nefer at breakfast how proud she was of her, and I was proud too, of both of them. I was still appalled at how Hatshepsut had come to the throne, and her expectation that Nefer would succeed her. But that the two of them, women, could manage Amun’s estates and the entire Two Lands and do it so well was little short of amazing to me.
Occasionally we three women sailed the river for a few hours in a small boat Nefer had commissioned. She regularly traveled about the estates inspecting crops and dikes and irrigation ditches in a chariot pulled by fast horses, one she had given to me. I loved to race it on the flat land at the edge of the desert; it was absolutely exhilarating and I did so at every opportunity. Nefer was never inclined to learn to drive herself, but she never shied from riding with me. She was a magnificent sight as we pounded across the desert, dust rolling from our wheels and the horses’ hooves, her long hair streaming behind her, her white dress plastered against her body, her wild cries joining mine. Several nights each week Nefer and Aachel and I lay at Hori’s side on the roof atop our quarters, gazing up at the sky as he taught us about the heavens. The four of us even made one trip to Nabta Playa in the southern desert at Hori’s behest to examine three ancient lines of stones and a circular calendar, the megaliths and smaller rocks that comprised them once upright but now fallen and partially drifted over with sand. Hori claimed they marked the summer solstice and pointed to some of the brightest stars in the night sky about the time the annual inundation of the river began. He said that, based on extremely old tales, he thought the stones had been set in place thousands of years before the first king united the Two Lands. As for Aachel and Hori, their romance was moving slowly but inexorably towards marriage, though each so far refused to acknowledge it. All in all, it was an idyllic life for Nefer and Aachel and me. Except, of course, for the sword that dangled over all our heads, the uncertainty of what Thut would eventually do about Hatshepsut, now that he was finally old enough to rule by himself. Hatshepsut’s spies in his court at Mennefer had recently reported that Iset and certain of his advisors were pressing Thut hard to take his army to Waset and depose Hatshepsut by force. I for one was certain he wouldn’t bring chaos to the land by so doing.
“Join us,” Senenmut called, and Nefer and I entered the pavilion. Nefer was dressed in an opaque white dress, adorned with much gold and many jewels as befit this important occasion. Hatshepsut and Senenmut were seated so close together that their arms were touching beside a table that held a scale model in limestone of her proposed temple of millions of years. Across from them stood Senenu, the future temple’s high priest of Amun and Hathor, Chief Treasurer Djehuty, Vizier Aametshu, Opener of the Gate of Heaven Hapuseneb, second prophets of Amun Puyemre and Mahu, and Hori. He was present because of his astronomical skills; on this, the first of the fifteen–night long foundation ceremony, he would take sightings of specific stars to properly align the temple to the heavens.
“Majesty, your memorial temple will be called ‘Djeser Djeseru’ – ‘Holy of Holies,’” Senenmut announced.
The plans had been drawn up under his direction and he would oversee construction, though he had not personally designed the temple. It appeared, at first glance, to be based on that of Mentuhotep, though it was far grander in scale.
“I’ve selected the bay in the hills as its site for three reasons,” he told Hatshepsut. “First, the bay is holy to Hathor as Goddess of the West, and your temple will be built on the site of an existing ancient shrine dedicated to her. That was why Mentuhotep selected the bay as well, according to the old records. Second, Majesty, you have often spoken of the obvious parallels between Mentuhotep, who reunified the Two Lands after a period of chaos, and your own family, which did the same after expelling the Chiefs of the Foreign Lands. And third, if the rock is good in the Great Place, we may be able to dig your new tomb in such a manner that your burial chamber will lie beneath your temple. But, of course, the rock is uncertain, and that may not be possible.”
“We’ll abandon my original tomb?” Hatshepsut asked.
“The one you began digging when you were Aakheperenre’s wife in the wadi west of the Great Place? Yes.”
“And my sarcophagus? Will it be moved to my new tomb?”
“No. We’ll construct a new one. The crystalline sandstone is beautiful, but your existing tomb is more than two hundred feet above the valley floor and accessible only by rope. Getting the sarcophagus inside the first time was incredibly difficult; it will be easier to start again than try to move it.”
Hatshepsut nodded.
“At any rate, your temple will be directly aligned with Ipet–Isut.”
I looked east, across the emerald green fields that edged the west bank of the river. The triangular sails of a few boats were white in the fading light on the silver water. Beyond, the pylons and mud–brick and stone structures of Ipet–Isut glowed redly in the last of the day’s sunlight. Re still reflected brightly from the top half of the two gold–covered obelisks that Hatshepsut had placed there after we brought them from the cataract. Banners fluttered in the breeze atop flagpoles before Ipet–Isut’s outermost walls.
“Djeser Djeseru will be much larger than Mentuhotep’s temple. It will hold mortuary temples for you and your father, twin chapels for Hathor and Anubis, smaller shrines for your ancestors, and a roofless solar temple for Re–Harakhty. The main shrine will be for Amun, of course. Your temple will be the focus of the Beautiful Feast of the Valley, once it is completed.”
I leaned close to the model. Though similar to Mentuhotep’s it was quite a bit larger, with two long ramps and three terraces and numerous colonnades and shrines and countless statues, compared to Mentuhotep’s single ramp and single terrace and single temple.
“While most temples in Kemet have been built of mud–brick, Djeser Djeseru will be constructed of limestone,” Senenmut said. “I’ll also build a valley temple along the river, similar to those at Giza. A causeway, one hundred feet wide, will lead from the valley temple to an enormous forecourt east of Djeser Djeseru. There will be several barque shrines along the causeway, and lining both sides will be sphinxes with the bodies of lions and Your Majesty’s countenance.”
“Like those I’ve planned for the processional way to Ipet–resyt?” Hatshepsut asked.
“Yes. I’ll plant vast gardens and shade trees around a T–shaped papyrus–filled pool in the forecourt, which will be surrounded by a limestone enclosure wall. From the valley temple and riverbank the eye will travel ever upwards, across the desert towards the temple, up the ramps to the highest terrace, and then to the crest of the hills themselves.”
“What will happen to the existing structures that stand in the way?” Nefer asked, pointing towards the base of the cliff.
“Djeser Djeseru will unavoidably cover the tomb of Mentuhotep’s Great Wife Neferu, which is even older than Mentuhotep’s temple,” Senenmut said. “But I will cut a corridor so that worshipers can visit the tomb’s chapel. Its reliefs are much too beautiful to destroy.”
“Even though past visitors have defaced the chapel with graffiti?” Senenu asked.
Senenmut nodded. “Immediately west of the forecourt, at ground level, will be the first and lowest set of colonnades. Behind the colonnades will be long flat walls, one of the primary features of Djeser Djeseru. We will use those walls to illustrate Maatkare’s life and reign, to tell her story for future generations.” He pointed at the model, to the section south of the ramp that led to the second terrace. “For example, this wall will show Maatkare refurbishing the temple of Amun at Ipet–Isut – in particular, the transport of the obelisks from the cataract on the barge, the musicians playing trumpets and drums as they arrived at Waset, Maatkare runni
ng the ritual race to delimit the location of the monoliths.” He looked at Nefer. “You’ll be shown among the figures, sacrificing to the gods, as well as Hori.” He turned back to the model. “On the walls north of the ramp will be scenes portraying Your Majesty as a sphinx trampling Kemet’s enemies, and dressed as a king fowling and fishing in the marshes, and offering statues and cattle to Amun–Re.”
“Will every wall be inscribed during construction?” I asked.
Senenmut shook his head no. “Some will be left blank, to record Her Majesty’s future achievements.” He pointed to the model again. “Visitors will ascend a second ramp to get to the second terrace. They’ll be greeted there by pairs of colossal red granite sphinxes, each with Maatkare’s face, inscribed ‘The King of Upper and Lower Kemet Maatkare, Beloved of Amun, who is in the midst of Djeser Djeseru, and given life forever.’ On the walls of the north colonnade will be perhaps the most important scenes of all – the story of Maatkare’s divine birth and coronation.”
Senenmut lay several sheets of papyrus flat on the table and moved one of the oil lamps closer. We all bent over them, intrigued. Senenmut addressed Hatshepsut. “The scenes in this section show your conception, Majesty.” He pointed to them, one after another. “Amun calls together twelve divinities in heaven, including Isis, Osiris, Nephthys, Horus, Set, and Hathor. He announces he’s going to father a woman to rule Kemet.”
“I will join for her the Two Lands. I will give her all lands and all countries,” Nefer read from the papyrus.
Senenmut nodded. “Next, Thoth proclaims the name of the woman he will impregnate, Ahmes, Great Wife of the first Thutmose, for ‘she is more beautiful than any woman.’ Then Ahmes, sleeping in her boudoir, is visited by Amun, whom she believes to be her husband. They sit face to face on her bed. Amun tells Ahmes she is to bear a daughter whom she will name Khnemet–Amun Hatshepsut, destined to be the future ruler of Kemet. Amun passes Ahmes the ankh, the sign of life.”