by Jerry Dubs
“I remember the first moment I saw her, emerging from her mother bloodied but glowing with an otherworldly whiteness. Her skin was pale as cotton, her hair as delicate as a spider’s web, her eyes the color of a drop of water on a blue lotus blossom.
“Named Merneith, she was thought to be blessed, her ka and body torn between the Two Lands and Khert-Neter. I believe, Imhotep, that Merneith believes what she was taught. She considers herself destined to rule Khert-Neter after she dies and she believes that she is also destined to sit on the throne of the Two Lands, the throne that Nebka, who was both her father and grandfather, once held.”
Imhotep shook his head.
“She is a lone priestess, far away from Waset. Teti is here and has the loyalty of the army. I understand that you suspect Merneith is ambitious, Hetephernebti, but what threat can she pose?”
Before Hetephernebti could answer, a heavy cry echoed up the stone corridor. A moment later a guard ran by, saw them huddled in the alcove and skidded to a stop.
He turned to them and said, “The king is dead.”
The Step Pyramid
Imhotep and Paneb had worked for fourteen years on the pyramid that would be Djoser’s home for the rest of eternity. Now that the king had died they had forty days to complete their work.
In a mortuary temple up the river at Khmunu, Djoser’s body lay submerged in a bath of natron crystals. Priests of Anubis and Thoth were tending to his remains, carefully storing his organs in canopic jars as they waited for the salts to dehydrate his flesh. Day and night they watched over his body, praying to the gods and reciting the ritual answers that Djoser would need to give to gain admittance to Khert-Neter.
Here at the edge of the western desert, Imhotep, Paneb and his son, Ahmes, stood just inside the gleaming white wall that surrounded the burial complex with its pyramid, great courtyard, hed seb court and northern and southern courts.
The complex was enormous, covering more than thirty-five acres. A wall, more than thirty feet high, made a mile-long rectangle around the complex. Imhotep, who had spent his entire lifetime in the Two Lands constructing the pyramid, was more in awe of the wall than Djoser’s massive tomb.
Every six paces a bastion protruded from the wall and Paneb, who had overseen the wall design, had placed fourteen barbicans or towers at irregular intervals along the wall. Imhotep had argued for symmetrical placement of the towers, but Ahmes, now twenty, but just a child when construction had started, had been obsessed with the random beauty of nature.
“Look at palm branches, or ripples in the river or the flight of birds, Lord Imhotep,” Ahmes had argued. “They flow, they move, they do not march in a row like soldiers. Even your fingers, each is a different length and girth. What is the world you come from like? Is it chopped into straight lines. Do people walk like this?” he had asked as he paced in front of the laughing Imhotep with his arms and legs unbending.
And so Paneb had interrupted the walls at odd places with fourteen towers, thirteen of them with false doorways for Djoser’s ka, reminding Imhotep of the false doorway through which he had stumbled into ancient Egypt fifteen years ago.
Paneb’s design proved to be stunning.
The facade of the wall was constructed to resemble tall bundles of reeds. The combination of the irregular spacing of the towers, the imposing height of the wall, the beauty of the reed panels and the purity of the limestone, which had been quarried across the river just north of Saqqara, was breathtaking: Order imposed on chaos, monumental size accented by detail.
Paneb was proud of the wall, but he was more impressed with the pyramid that Imhotep had built.
Previous kings had been buried in flat mastabas made of mud bricks. But before he had entered ancient Egypt Imhotep had sketched the crumbling, yet imposing remains of the Step Pyramid. Djoser had discovered the drawing and demanded to know what it was.
Imhotep had told Djoser that it would be his tomb and then he had waited for the king's reaction. Djoser had never quit the habit of tossing and catching a knife and Imhotep worried now that he would lose his temper and throw the weighted blade at him. Instead Djoser’s face had glowed with excitement. The idea that Imhotep possessed knowledge of the future had never disturbed Djoser. After all, he had flown as the god Horus.
“You will build it,” Djoser had said to Imhotep, as much a question as a command, and Imhotep had been seized with the idea that, yes, he would build this monument.
***
The exchange had happened a dozen years ago.
They had been on the island of Abu by the first cataract waiting for the flood. Imhotep, remembering the words from the Famine Stele, had promised the king that the long-awaited flood would arrive if he gave vast tracts of land and a wealth of taxes to the Temple of Khnum. Djoser, who was desperate for the flood to arrive after seven years of drought, had acceded to Imhotep’s demanding prophecy. Then he spent the succeeding days praying to Khnum and watching the river.
Imhotep, who had been in the ancient world for only a few months, spent his time wondering if he had remembered the words of the Famine Stele correctly, and more importantly, hoping that the history he had learned was accurate. If the flood waters didn’t arrive, Imhotep assumed that his new life in the Two Lands would be cut short by an execution.
It had been a time of anxiety and transformation for Tim Hope.
Feeling like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon he had wondered how much a butterfly remembered of its previous life as a caterpillar and how many memories he would retain from his life in modern America.
Not only was he in a strange world, but he had been falling in love with a gangly, cast-eyed girl who would soon become his wife. And he had been trying to find two other Americans who had stepped through the same false doorway in an unknown tomb and emerged five thousands years in the past.
To Imhotep’s great relief the flood had arrived and Djoser, his trust in Imhotep rewarded, had told him that he would build the first stone pyramid. Tim Hope would have been overwhelmed; Imhotep knew that he would accomplish the task.
He had drawn a new, clean sketch of the pyramid and shown it to Djoser who was intensely interested. Anything the king turned his mind to – hunting, rowing a boat, praying to his gods, making love to his wife, drinking beer – commanded his full attention. All the worries of the nagging priests, the carping governors, the threats of bordering land raids, all would be pushed aside as he rubbed senet sticks between his palms before tossing them and laughing.
“If I have a problem, I solve it,” he had explained to Imhotep one night after winning five consecutive games of senet. “Then there is no problem and nothing to divert my attention. One thing at a time. That is the secret.
“Look, Imhotep,” he had said as he crouched, ready to fight. He had waved his left hand in front of him at imaginary attackers. “I have three men attacking me. I have only two hands, one knife. Should I look from one attacker to another, worried about how I can fight the second one before I have dispatched the first one? No! I focus on the most dangerous man. All of my attention, all of my energy, my speed and my strength.” He had clapped his hands loudly.
“Done! Now the second man, then the next.” He had laughed. “Bring them on, as many as you like. I can only fight them one at a time. If the gods want me to join them, then I will die. But here I am, Imhotep, standing in front of you.
“So you will build this pyramid. Build it of stone as no one has ever done. If you encounter a problem, solve it. Then move on. Don’t worry, you will do it. What did you say when you first showed me the drawing? ‘It was built, so it will be built.’ ”
The king had smiled and shrugged, and Imhotep had had no answer.
And so he had built it.
***
Imhotep had been an artist in his previous life, not an engineer. There were no universities, no libraries, no other pyramids to study in ancient Egypt. But Imhotep did have Paneb, an extraordinarily talented tomb artist, and Ahmes, his fearles
s, observant son. Djoser had also placed at Imhotep’s command all the army engineers, mining engineers, and temple engineers and a host of seasonal workers.
The Two Lands was an agrarian society, its seasons fixed by the rising of the flood. During Akhet, the four-month-long flood season, the farmers were available for the king’s work.
And so Imhotep, invested with the titles of vizier and court physician and royal scribe and chief architect, was able to direct the building of models of the pyramid, discovering weight-bearing lines for the new shape and testing ways to create open space within the structure.
Guided by his memories, by the advice of the engineers and artists in the Two Lands and by Djoser’s ever-growing requests, Imhotep had an area the size of a village leveled and prepared for the funeral complex. He had organized a system of transporting the cut stones across the eastern desert to the river, up the river and then into canals dug to bring the stones to the building site.
He had drawn schematic diagrams, thinking as he did that he would need to destroy them to prevent their discovery in the far distant future. He had made scale models of wood, reminding himself that they also would need to be destroyed.
He had stood in tunnels dug into the desert floor and used an articulated wooden staff, composed of smaller sections joined with leather thongs, to measure the distance of the tunnel. He developed a system of polished metal disks to reflect sunlight into the tunnels to create a crude surveyor’s transit.
He had watched the temple engineers use water and a series of wooden troughs to ensure that the pyramid would rest on a level foundation. He had paced the length of the planned pyramid and, with the help of the army engineers, he had determined how large the individual blocks of casing stone could be and how many millions of bricks would be needed to line the rough stone core.
***
Standing now by the finished tomb with Paneb and Ahmes, Imhotep thought of how naive he had been when construction had begun.
The beginning of the first flood season had been lost to construction as Imhotep had helped thwart an assassination attempt on the king. Then he had found the two lost Americans. One of them had died during the rescue, but the other had been saved and returned to her time in modern America, passing through a false doorway in a tomb in Saqqara, just below the plateau where Imhotep was now standing.
The dead American, a young man named Brian Aldwin, had been buried in the tomb originally meant for Kanakht, Djoser’s vizier who had been one of the assassination conspirators.
After the Americans had been found, Djoser had arrived in Ineb-Hedj and taken Imhotep to the plateau in Saqqara where his tomb would be built.
Djehuty, the first month of Akhet, had already passed. The second month, Ptah, arrived and with it an army of farmers and idled merchants supervised by officers of Djoser’s army.
Soon the temple complex had been cleared of rocks and debris, and sand had been shoveled away to expose bare rock. HetHert, the third month of the flood, passed, then Sekhmet arrived and the flood waters receded.
Imhotep remembered standing on the plateau, looking across the flat desert. It was level and cleaned, but no real construction had begun.
“It isn’t possible,” Imhotep had muttered to himself and then he had closed his eyes and recalled the finished monument. It was built, so it will be built, he had told himself.
The growing season of Peret began and fresh grass pushed its way through the soil along the banks of the river, slender shoots of wheat and pale green sprouts of onions and radishes poked through the dark silt left on the fields, houses that had been washed away by the flood were rebuilt and the Two Lands became boisterous with activity. Birds soared through the air carrying twigs and threads as they built nests. Female crocodiles carried hatchlings in their mouths from the nests to the receding river.
Imhotep had been oblivious to it all.
He had huddled with his engineers and drawn up plans and schedules.
If his memory was correct and if history was accurate, Djoser would rule for twenty nine years. Seven had passed before he declared himself a living god. Another seven had passed in drought as the gods seemed to be punishing Djoser. Now another year had passed and the plateau of Saqqara was still empty.
It was built, so it will be built, he told himself over and over.
Although the farmers and merchants had left the work site to return to their fields and markets, the soldiers and quarrymen remained. A small mountain of granite grew on the construction site and some of the stone workers were brought to Saqqara to begin digging a trench outside the wall. The rock pulled from the trench, which would serve as a barrier, was put aside for construction. Beneath the sand, army troops began digging a maze of tunnels and sinking air shafts. The rock from those tunnels was added to the stones from the trench.
Each day Imhotep had stalked the sand worrying that the tunnels beneath his feet would collapse, trying to imagine the growing mountain of stone rearranged and formed into an elegant pyramid. He had worked with models of the pyramid, trying to discover how much stone was needed to support the structure and how much would bring too much weight to it and cause it to collapse.
At night he had lain with Meryt, drifting to sleep as his hand caressed the swell of her belly, growing with their child.
His work was often interrupted by festivals and traveling priests, for whenever one of the many priests passed through Ineb-Hedj, Imhotep, who represented the king, would need to visit with them. Imhotep soon began to complain to Meryt that there were as many priests as ducks and geese in the village market, and, he thought, as noisy and sensible as the fowl.
And Djoser himself was eager to observe the progress on his tomb. He frequently arrived unannounced in Ineb-Hedj where he would study Imhotep’s sketches, marvelling over the three-dimensional perspective and the detail. He would meet with Paneb to discuss the tomb paintings.
“I want stars on the ceiling,” he had told Paneb one day. “It should be a deep blue sky, the belly of Nut, and filled with stars. And I was thinking about the forests I saw above Ta-Seti. I want a forest at the entrance, a cool, shadowy place for my ka to rest.”
“Yes, King Djoser,” Paneb had answered, “a forest.” He had looked at Imhotep and frowned. ‘The trees will die,’ he had silently mouthed, his back to the king.
“I know trees would die in the desert,” Djoser had said. Paneb had started and instinctively ducked, worried that the king would strike him for questioning him.
Instead Djoser had roared with laughter. “What else would you be thinking except that the tree would die?” he had said to Paneb to explain his apparent ability to read the artist’s mind. “Make the trees of stone.”
And so Paneb and the temple engineers had designed a colonnade of stone pillars made of thick disks stacked to create towering pillars and covered with plaster to cover the seams.
The army engineers dug, the stone workers cut granite from the wide trench and then moved on to Tura where they cut limestone for the walls and for the pyramid’s casing. Paneb watched his wall begin to take form and his stone forest take root and Meryt gave birth to a boy she and Imhotep named Tjau.
***
The next flood arrived and the desert seemed to have an insatiable appetite, swallowing all of the granite Imhotep had shipped to the funeral site from Abu, nearly five hundred miles upriver. Every day he carried a torch down the long sloping trench to the ever-growing maze of tunnels, visualizing their direction, plotting them on a map, checking the wooden shoring and admiring the granite casing used to form the walls to Djoser’s underground burial chamber.
The burial chamber, the deepest and largest part of the tunnel system, would lie a hundred and fifty feet below the surface, cut through layer after layer of limestone. Once completed, the chamber would contain a huge red granite sarcophagus. A tunnel would run beneath the sarcophagus platform to allow the workers to move from one side of the chamber to the other once the stone sarcophagus was in plac
e.
The work progressed, but Imhotep worried over a secret fear. Although his drawing showed that the pyramid was six levels tall, all of his models had collapsed when he had added a fifth level. He had decided to construct a four-step pyramid.
“I can’t build what I drew,” he had confessed to Djoser one evening as they walked along the first section of the perimeter wall. Paneb had started erecting the wall along the western edge of the complex, leaving the eastern edge open for easier transport of the stones.
Imhotep had looked at the king, who hadn’t responded to his remark. They had walked across the open sand to the area that had been cleared and marked for the colonnade. There were forty stakes driven in the ground to mark where each pillar of the stone forest would be placed.
“But you did,” Djoser had pointed out, squatting by one of the stakes and sighting along it to the other stakes. “You built my pyramid six levels high. I saw your drawings from the future.”
“Someone did,” Imhotep had agreed quietly.
Djoser had put his hands on the ground and leaned down so his eyes were at the same level as the short stakes. Satisfied that they were aligned, he had stood and clapped sand from his hands.
“The first time I saw a fort being constructed, I couldn’t understand how they could get the walls so straight. Then someone showed me that a simple string stretched between two stakes would serve as a guide. The same with a foundation, how was it so level? The answer was water,” Djoser had said. He had bounced on his toes and rolled his shoulders. “The answer is always simpler than you think it will be,” he had said.
“I’ve tried everything I know. The limit appears to be four levels. The models collapse after that,” Imhotep had confessed.
“Build what you can, Imhotep,” Djoser had said. He had turned to Imhotep and smiled. “If you only build four levels will the drawing you made in the future magically change to show four levels?”