Uarda : a Romance of Ancient Egypt — Complete

by Georg Ebers

  CHAPTER XXI.

  When Nemu, riding on an ass this time, reached home, he found neitherhis mistress nor Nefert within.

  The former was gone, first to the temple, and then into the town;Nefert, obeying an irresistible impulse, had gone to her royal friendBent-Anat.

  The king's palace was more like a little town than a house. The wing inwhich the Regent resided, and which we have already visited, lay awayfrom the river; while the part of the building which was used by theroyal family commanded the Nile.

  It offered a splendid, and at the same time a pleasing prospect to theships which sailed by at its foot, for it stood, not a huge and solitarymass in the midst of the surrounding gardens, but in picturesque groupsof various outline. On each side of a large structure, which containedthe state rooms and banqueting hall, three rows of pavilions ofdifferent sizes extended in symmetrical order. They were connectedwith each other by colonnades, or by little bridges, under which flowedcanals, that watered the gardens and gave the palace-grounds the aspectof a town built on islands.

  The principal part of the castle of the Pharaohs was constructed oflight Nile-mud bricks and elegantly carved woodwork, but the extensivewalls which surrounded it were ornamented and fortified with towers, infront of which heavily armed soldiers stood on guard.

  The walls and pillars, the galleries and colonnades, even the roofs,blazed in many colored paints, and at every gate stood tall masts, fromwhich red and blue flags fluttered when the king was residing there.Now they stood up with only their brass spikes, which were intendedto intercept and conduct the lightning.--[ According to an inscriptionfirst interpreted by Dumichen.]

  To the right of the principal building, and entirely surrounded withthick plantations of trees, stood the houses of the royal ladies,some mirrored in the lake which they surrounded at a greater or lessdistance. In this part of the grounds were the king's storehouses inendless rows, while behind the centre building, in which the Pharaohresided, stood the barracks for his body guard and the treasuries. Theleft wing was occupied by the officers of the household, the innumerableservants and the horses and chariots of the sovereign.

  In spite of the absence of the king himself, brisk activity reigned inthe palace of Rameses, for a hundred gardeners watered the turf, theflower-borders, the shrubs and trees; companies of guards passed hitherand thither; horses were being trained and broken; and the princess'swing was as full as a beehive of servants and maids, officers andpriests.

  Nefert was well known in this part of the palace. The gate-keepers lether litter pass unchallenged, with low bows; once in the garden, a lordin waiting received her, and conducted her to the chamberlain, who,after a short delay, introduced her into the sitting-room of the king'sfavorite daughter.

  Bent-Anat's apartment was on the first floor of the pavilion, nextto the king's residence. Her dead mother had inhabited these pleasantrooms, and when the princess was grown up it made the king happy to feelthat she was near him; so the beautiful house of the wife who had tooearly departed, was given up to her, and at the same time, as shewas his eldest daughter, many privileges were conceded to her, whichhitherto none but queens had enjoyed.

  The large room, in which Nefert found the princess, commanded the river.A doorway, closed with light curtains, opened on to a long balcony witha finely-worked balustrade of copper-gilt, to which clung a climbingrose with pink flowers.

  When Nefert entered the room, Bent-Anat was just having the rustlingcurtain drawn aside by her waiting-women; for the sun was setting, andat that hour she loved to sit on the balcony, as it grew cooler,and watch with devout meditation the departure of Ra, who, as thegrey-haired Turn, vanished behind the western horizon of the Necropolisin the evening to bestow the blessing of light on the under-world.

  Nefert's apartment was far more elegantly appointed than the princess's;her mother and Mena had surrounded her with a thousand pretty trifles.Her carpets were made of sky-blue and silver brocade from Damascus, theseats and couches were covered with stuff embroidered in feathers by theEthiopian women, which looked like the breasts of birds. The images ofthe Goddess Hathor, which stood on the house-altar, were of an imitationof emerald, which was called Mafkat, and the other little figures, whichwere placed near their patroness, were of lapis-lazuli, malachite, agateand bronze, overlaid with gold. On her toilet-table stood a collectionof salve-boxes, and cups of ebony and ivory finely carved, andeverything was arranged with the utmost taste, and exactly suited Nefertherself.

  Bent-Anat's room also suited the owner.

  It was high and airy, and its furniture consisted in costly but simplenecessaries; the lower part of the wall was lined with cool tiles ofwhite and violet earthen ware, on each of which was pictured a star, andwhich, all together, formed a tasteful pattern. Above these the wallswere covered with a beautiful dark green material brought from Sais, andthe same stuff was used to cover the long divans by the wall. Chairs andstools, made of cane, stood round a very large table in the middleof this room, out of which several others opened; all handsome,comfortable, and harmonious in aspect, but all betraying that theirmistress took small pleasure in trifling decorations. But her chiefdelight was in finely-grown plants, of which rare and magnificentspecimens, artistically arranged on stands, stood in the corners of manyof the rooms. In others there were tall obelisks of ebony, which boresaucers for incense, which all the Egyptians loved, and which wasprescribed by their physicians to purify and perfume their dwellings.Her simple bedroom would have suited a prince who loved floriculture,quite as well as a princess.

  Before all things Bent-Anat loved air and light. The curtains ofher windows and doors were only closed when the position of the sunabsolutely required it; while in Nefert's rooms, from morning tillevening, a dim twilight was maintained.

  The princess went affectionately towards the charioteer's wife, whobowed low before her at the threshold; she took her chin with her righthand, kissed her delicate narrow forehead, and said:

  "Sweet creature! At last you have come uninvited to see lonely me! It isthe first time since our men went away to the war. If Rameses' daughtercommands there is no escape; and you come; but of your own free will--"

  Nefert raised her large eyes, moist with tears, with an imploring look,and her glance was so pathetic that Bent-Anat interrupted herself, andtaking both her hands, exclaimed:

  "Do you know who must have eyes exactly like yours? I mean the Goddessfrom whose tears, when they fall on the earth, flowers spring."

  Nefert's eyes fell and she blushed deeply.

  "I wish," she murmured, "that my eyes might close for ever, for I amvery unhappy." And two large tears rolled down her cheeks.

  "What has happened to you, my darling?" asked the princesssympathetically, and she drew her towards her, putting her arm round herlike a sick child.

  Nefert glanced anxiously at the chamberlain, and the ladies in waitingwho had entered the room with her, and Bent-Anat understood the look;she requested her attendants to withdraw, and when she was alone withher sad little friend--"Speak now," she said. "What saddens your heart?how comes this melancholy expression on your dear baby face? Tell me,and I will comfort you, and you shall be my bright thoughtless playthingonce more."

  "Thy plaything!" answered Nefert, and a flash of displeasure sparkled inher eyes. "Thou art right to call me so, for I deserve no better name. Ihave submitted all my life to be nothing but the plaything of others."

  "But, Nefert, I do not know you again," cried Bent-Anat. "Is this mygentle amiable dreamer?"

  "That is the word I wanted," said Nefert in a low tone. "I slept, anddreamed, and dreamed on--till Mena awoke me; and when he left me I wentto sleep again, and for two whole years I have lain dreaming; but to-dayI have been torn from my dreams so suddenly and roughly, that I shallnever find any rest again."

  While she spoke, heavy tears fell slowly one after another over hercheeks.

  Bent-Anat felt what she saw and heard as deeply as if Nefert were herown suffering child. She l
ovingly drew the young wife down by herside on the divan, and insisted on Nefert's letting her know all thattroubled her spirit.

  Katuti's daughter had in the last few hours felt like one born blind,and who suddenly receives his sight. He looks at the brightness of thesun, and the manifold forms of the creation around him, but the beams ofthe day-star blind its eyes, and the new forms, which he has sought toguess at in his mind, and which throng round him in their rude reality,shock him and pain him. To-day, for the first time, she had askedherself wherefore her mother, and not she herself, was called upon tocontrol the house of which she nevertheless was called the mistress, andthe answer had rung in her ears: "Because Mena thinks you incapable ofthought and action." He had often called her his little rose, and shefelt now that she was neither more nor less than a flower that blossomsand fades, and only charms the eye by its color and beauty.

  "My mother," she said to Bent-Anat, "no doubt loves me, but she hasmanaged badly for Mena, very badly; and I, miserable idiot, slept anddreamed of Mena, and saw and heard nothing of what was happening tohis--to our--inheritance. Now my mother is afraid of my husband, andthose whom we fear, says my uncle, we cannot love, and we are alwaysready to believe evil of those we do not love. So she lends an ear tothose people who blame Mena, and say of him that he has driven me outof his heart, and has taken a strange woman to his tent. But it is falseand a lie; and I cannot and will not countenance my own mother even, ifshe embitters and mars what is left to me--what supports me--the breathand blood of my life--my love, my fervent love for my husband."

  Bent-Anat had listened to her without interrupting her; she sat by herfor a time in silence. Then she said:

  "Come out into the gallery; then I will tell you what I think, andperhaps Toth may pour some helpful counsel into my mind. I love you,and I know you well, and though I am not wise, I have my eyes open and astrong hand. Take it, come with me on to the balcony."

  A refreshing breeze met the two women as they stepped out into the air.It was evening, and a reviving coolness had succeeded the heat of theday. The buildings and houses already cast long shadows, and numberlessboats, with the visitors returning from the Necropolis, crowded thestream that rolled its swollen flood majestically northwards.

  Close below lay the verdant garden, which sent odors from the rose-bedsup to the princess's balcony. A famous artist had laid it out in thetime of Hatasu, and the picture which he had in his mind, when he sowedthe seeds and planted the young shoots, was now realized, many decadesafter his death. He had thought of planning a carpet, on which thepalace should seem to stand. Tiny streams, in bends and curves, formedthe outline of the design, and the shapes they enclosed were filled withplants of every size, form, and color; beautiful plats of freshgreen turf everywhere represented the groundwork of the pattern, andflower-beds and clumps of shrubs stood out from them in harmoniousmixtures of colors, while the tall and rare trees, of which Hatasu'sships had brought several from Arabia, gave dignity and impressivenessto the whole.

  Clear drops sparkled on leaf and flower and blade, for, only a shorttime before, the garden by Bent-Anat's house had been freshly watered.The Nile beyond surrounded an island, where flourished the well-keptsacred grove of Anion.

  The Necropolis on the farther side of the river was also well seenfrom Bent-Anat's balcony. There stood in long perspective the rows ofsphinxes, which led from the landing-place of the festal barges to thegigantic buildings of Amenophis III. with its colossi--the hugest inThebes--to the House of Seti, and to the temple of Hatasu. There laythe long workshops of the embalmers and closely-packed homes of theinhabitants of the City of the Dead. In the farthest west rose theLibyan mountains with their innumerable graves, and the valley of thekings' tombs took a wide curve behind, concealed by a spur of the hills.

  The two women looked in silence towards the west. The sun was near thehorizon--now it touched it, now it sank behind the hills; and as theheavens flushed with hues like living gold, blazing rubies, and liquidgarnet and amethyst, the evening chant rang out from all the temples,and the friends sank on their knees, hid their faces in the bower-rosegarlands that clung to the trellis, and prayed with full hearts.

  When they rose night was spreading over the landscape, for the twilightis short in Thebes. Here and there a rosy cloud fluttered across thedarkening sky, and faded gradually as the evening star appeared.

  "I am content," said Bent-Anat. "And you? have you recovered your peaceof mind?"

  Nefert shook her head. The princess drew her on to a seat, and sank downbeside her. Then she began again "Your heart is sore, poor child; theyhave spoilt the past for you, and you dread the future. Let me be frankwith you, even if it gives you pain. You are sick, and I must cure you.Will you listen to me?"

  "Speak on," said Nefert.

  "Speech does not suit me so well as action," replied the princess; "butI believe I know what you need, and can help you. You love your husband;duty calls him from you, and you feel lonely and neglected; that isquite natural. But those whom I love, my father and my brothers, arealso gone to the war; my mother is long since dead; the noble woman,whom the king left to be my companion, was laid low a few weeks sinceby sickness. Look what a half-abandoned spot my house is! Which is thelonelier do you think, you or I?"

  "I," said Nefert. "For no one is so lonely as a wife parted from thehusband her heart longs after."

  "But you trust Mena's love for you?" asked Bent-Anat.

  Nefert pressed her hand to her heart and nodded assent:

  "And he will return, and with him your happiness."

  "I hope so," said Nefert softly.

  "And he who hopes," said Bent Anat, "possesses already the joys of thefuture. Tell me, would you have changed places with the Gods so longas Mena was with you? No! Then you are most fortunate, for blissfulmemories--the joys of the past--are yours at any rate. What is thepresent? I speak of it, and it is no more. Now, I ask you, what joys canI look forward to, and what certain happiness am I justified in hopingfor?

  "Thou dost not love any one," replied Nefert. "Thou dost follow thy owncourse, calm and undeviating as the moon above us. The highest joysare unknown to thee, but for the same reason thou dost not know thebitterest pain."

  "What pain?" asked the princess.

  "The torment of a heart consumed by the fires of Sechet," repliedNefert.

  The princess looked thoughtfully at the ground, then she turned her eyeseagerly on her friend.

  "You are mistaken," she said; "I know what love and longing are. Butyou need only wait till a feast day to wear the jewel that is your own,while my treasure is no more mine than a pearl that I see gleaming atthe bottom of the sea."

  "Thou canst love!" exclaimed Nefert with joyful excitement. "Oh! I thankHathor that at last she has touched thy heart. The daughter of Ramesesneed not even send for the diver to fetch the jewel out of the sea; at asign from her the pearl will rise of itself, and lie on the sand at herslender feet."

  Bent-Anat smiled and kissed Nefert's brow.

  "How it excites you," she said, "and stirs your heart and tongue! If twostrings are tuned in harmony, and one is struck, the other sounds, mymusic master tells me. I believe you would listen to me till morning ifI only talked to you about my love. But it was not for that that wecame out on the balcony. Now listen! I am as lonely as you, I love lesshappily than you, the House of Seti threatens me with evil times--andyet I can preserve my full confidence in life and my joy in existence.How can you explain this?"

  "We are so very different," said Nefert.

  "True," replied Bent-Anat, "but we are both young, both women, and bothwish to do right. My mother died, and I have had no one to guide me, forI who for the most part need some one to lead me can already command,and be obeyed. You had a mother to bring you up, who, when you werestill a child, was proud of her pretty little daughter, and let her--asit became her so well-dream and play, without warning her against thedangerous propensity. Then Mena courted you. You love him truly, andin four long years he ha
s been with you but a month or two; your motherremained with you, and you hardly observed that she was managing yourown house for you, and took all the trouble of the household. You hada great pastime of your own--your thoughts of Mena, and scope for athousand dreams in your distant love. I know it, Nefert; all that youhave seen and heard and felt in these twenty months has centred in himand him alone. Nor is it wrong in itself. The rose tree here, whichclings to my balcony, delights us both; but if the gardener did notfrequently prune it and tie it with palm-bast, in this soil, whichforces everything to rapid growth, it would soon shoot up so high thatit would cover door and window, and I should sit in darkness. Throw thishandkerchief over your shoulders, for the dew falls as it grows cooler,and listen to me a little longer!--The beautiful passion of love andfidelity has grown unchecked in your dreamy nature to such a height,that it darkens your spirit and your judgment. Love, a true love, itseems to me, should be a noble fruit-tree, and not a rank weed. I do notblame you, for she who should have been the gardener did not heed--andwould not heed--what was happening. Look, Nefert, so long as I wore thelock of youth, I too did what I fancied--I never found any pleasure indreaming, but in wild games with my brothers, in horses and in falconry;they often said I had the spirit of a boy, and indeed I would willinglyhave been a boy."

  "Not I--never!" said Nefert.

  "You are just a rose--my dearest," said Bent-Anat. "Well! when I wasfifteen I was so discontented, so insubordinate and full of all sortsof wild behavior, so dissatisfied in spite of all the kindness and lovethat surrounded me--but I will tell you what happened. It is four yearsago, shortly before your wedding with Mena; my father called me to playdraughts.

  [At Medinet Habu a picture represents Rameses the Third, not Rameses the Second, playing at draughts with his daughter.]

  You know how certainly he could beat the most skilful antagonist;but that day his thoughts were wandering, and I won the game twicefollowing. Full of insolent delight, I jumped up and kissed his greathandsome forehead, and cried 'The sublime God, the hero, under whosefeet the strange nations writhe, to whom the priests and the peoplepray--is beaten by a girl!' He smiled gently, and answered 'The Lords ofHeaven are often outdone by the Ladies, and Necheb, the lady of victory,is a woman. Then he grew graver, and said: 'You call me a God, my child,but in this only do I feel truly godlike, that at every moment I striveto the utmost to prove myself useful by my labors; here restraining,there promoting, as is needful. Godlike I can never be but by doing orproducing something great! These words, Nefert, fell like seeds in mysoul. At last I knew what it was that was wanting to me; and when, a fewweeks later, my father and your husband took the field with a hundredthousand fighting men, I resolved to be worthy of my godlike father, andin my little circle to be of use too! You do not know all that is donein the houses behind there, under my direction. Three hundred girlsspin pure flax, and weave it into bands of linen for the wounds ofthe soldiers; numbers of children, and old women, gather plants onthe mountains, and others sort them according to the instructions ofa physician; in the kitchens no banquets are prepared, but fruits arepreserved in sugar for the loved ones, and the sick in the camp. Jointsof meat are salted, dried, and smoked for the army on its march throughthe desert. The butler no longer thinks of drinking-bouts, but bringsme wine in great stone jars; we pour it into well-closed skins for thesoldiers, and the best sorts we put into strong flasks, carefully sealedwith pitch, that they may perform the journey uninjured, and warm andrejoice the hearts of our heroes. All that, and much more, I manageand arrange, and my days pass in hard work. The Gods send me no brightvisions in the night, for after utter fatigue--I sleep soundly. ButI know that I am of use. I can hold my head proudly, because in somedegree I resemble my great father; and if the king thinks of me at allI know he can rejoice in the doings of his child. That is the end of it,Nefert--and I only say, Come and join me, work with me, prove yourselfof use, and compel Mena to think of his wife, not with affection only,but with pride." Nefert let her head sink slowly on Bent-Anat's bosom,threw her arms round her neck, and wept like a child. At last shecomposed herself and said humbly:

  "Take me to school, and teach me to be useful." "I knew," said theprincess smiling, "that you only needed a guiding hand. Believe me, youwill soon learn to couple content and longing. But now hear this! Atpresent go home to your mother, for it is late; and meet her lovingly,for that is the will of the Gods. To-morrow morning I will go to seeyou, and beg Katuti to let you come to me as companion in the placeof my lost friend. The day after to-morrow you will come to me in thepalace. You can live in the rooms of my departed friend and begin, asshe had done, to help me in my work. May these hours be blest to you!"