by Jerry Dubs
“And spells,” Kagemni said, breaking his silence. “Your medicines are all well and good, but if there are demons in him, we need to call on the gods and we need to cast spells to drive them out.”
Imhotep felt for a moment that he was in the middle of a Monty Python sketch – absurdity after absurdity – except that this was real and there was truly nothing else he could do. There were no clinics, no doctors with bags full of pharmaceuticals, no emergency rooms. He couldn’t call nine-one-one and wait for help. He had himself, Rudamon and the priests and they all were doing their best in this time and place.
He remembered a Rembrandt painting of a doctor conducting an autopsy. The men grouped around the body had all been intently interested, they were exploring new ground. If Rembrandt painted it, Imhotep thought, it must have been in the early seventeenth century. So the inner workings of the human body were just being discovered then, and here he was more than four thousand years before that.
And he recalled that there were religious cults in America that believed that prayer could cure rattlesnake bites and Christians believed that Jesus had cast out demons and raised a dead man.
Burning a mouse and saying spells doesn’t seem so strange after all.
And, he thought, what else can I do?
***
That evening Hesy burned a mouse and mixed its ashes with mud from the river Iteru. The mixture was applied to the boy’s tender rectum. In the morning the prince’s stool still contained blood as dark and black as the mouse ashes.
After the prince’s morning bath, Rudamon scraped slivers from a man-shaped mandrake root blessed by Kagemni. The mandrake scrapings were mashed and dissolved in watered beer. Prince Nebmakhet bravely drank as much as he could and then threw up.
While the child napped, Rudamon laid a circle of incense bowls around the boy’s bed and filled the bedroom with the pine-lemon aroma of frankincense. The fragrance masked the sulfuric stink of the boy’s diarrhea and seemed to soothe his sleep.
As the prince slept Imhotep cut the root of a water lily into small pieces and boiled it for half an hour. Then he strained out the solids and let the tea cool. When Prince Nebmakhet woke Imhotep helped the boy sip a little of the astringent liquid.
As the boy lay back on his bed, his face flushed in fever, beads of sweat on his upper lip, Kagemni approached him. His head and face were painted green, he wore a high crown adorned with twin ostrich feathers and he carried a crook and flail. The prince watched the priest with listless eyes.
Moving slowly and deliberately, Kagemni silently intoned a prayer as he walked. When he reached the boy’s bedside he spread his arms wide and, throwing back his head, he commanded, “Flow out, poison. Come forth. Go forth on to the ground. Horus will exorcise you. He will punish you. He will spit you out.”
Turning his head, Kagemni symbolically spit to his left and then to his right.
“Repelled is the enemy that is in the wound. Cast out is the evil that is in the blood. You are under the protection of Isis; your rescue is the son of Osiris.
“Your father is Horus and you are Horus, the young child with his finger to his mouth; the sandal of Horus tramples the nekhi snake.”
Kagemni raised his right foot and brought it down forcefully on an imaginary snake.
His arms still spread, the priest looked down on the child. His eyes squinted, he dared the demons to show themselves, but the boy only shivered and curled into a ball.
***
By evening the prince had slipped into what Imhotep believed was a coma.
The room was smoky with incense, Kagemni was still painted green and Hesy was sitting on a stool holding a bowl of a mixture of flakes from the statue of Hathor, ox fat and grains of wheat. The mixture had been boiled and Hesy was sure that if only the boy would awake and eat some of it, the demons who had seized his ba would flee.
Imhotep stood against the wall beside the boy’s bed. He had noticed that the child’s breathing had grown shallower, at times turning irregular. Aside from a few sips of the water lily infusion, the prince hadn’t eaten anything.
Imhotep didn’t believe the child would survive the night.
Turning from the bed, he saw the two bowls he had placed on the long table two days ago. He went to the table to collect them and have them cleaned. The bowl containing the boy’s excrement was covered with flies. The other bowl held only a shallow, film-covered pool of dark orange urine. The interior sides of the bowl, below the stained line that showed how much urine it had once held when full, were littered with white grains. Much, much smaller than a grain of rice, perhaps twice the width of a hair, the grains would have gone unnoticed while suspended in the urine. Clinging to the side of the wooden bowls, the mass of grains looked like the delicate frosting on the side of a cold glass.
Without thinking, Imhotep reached into the bowl and touched the grains. They were soft and mushy. He thought they should tell him something, provide a clue on how to help the boy. Shaking his head he walked across the room to a basin of clean water and washed his hands.
As he cleaned himself he felt an overwhelming sadness. He was sure that the boy’s symptoms and the presence of the tiny whitish grains in his urine would lead a real doctor to a true diagnosis and then to a quick cure.
Instead, if he were lucky, the boy would die in his sleep.
He turned to the sound of footsteps. King Sekhemkhet had arrived.
The king walked past Hesy, through the circle of smoking incense bowls, past Kagemni who stood beside the boy’s bed praying and stopped beside Rudamon who was kneeling by the child, a bowl of water by him on the floor, a damp linen cloth in his hand which he was using to pat the boy’s skin.
King Sekhemkhet’s face was a stern mask, his fierce willpower evident in the strain of his jaw, the tightness around his eyes.
He knelt beside Prince Nebmakhet and kissed his son’s hot forehead. His lips lingered on his son and Imhotep saw the king whisper. He wondered if it was a prayer, a spell, a farewell or a promise of revenge.
Standing at last, King Sekhemkhet turned to Imhotep and raised his eyebrows in question.
His eyes locked on the king, Imhotep frowned and slowly shook his head. The king nodded his understanding and then knelt by his son. Opening his arms, he pulled his unresponsive son into a final embrace.
Banished
A small tomb, little more than an enlarged grave, was hurriedly dug on the Saqqara plateau just south of the first mastaba of King Sekhemkhet’s unfinished pyramid. Large stones cut for his father’s burial vault were split, dressed and used to line the small chamber where Prince Nebmakhet’s mummified body would lie.
Imhotep heard about the preparations from a distance.
After his failure to save the prince, he had been banished from the palace and ordered to stay away from the funeral. Restless, he had gone to the construction site of King Sekhemkhet’s tomb, but was turned away by newly posted guards.
Worried, he had decided to talk with Hesy, but the priest’s servants told him that the priest was too busy to see him. He had sent word to Rudamon, but the royal physician was confined to the palace and unable to meet with him. The last remaining person who had treated the prince was Kagemni, but Imhotep knew that the priest had quickly left Ineb-Hedj, returning to the Temple of Osiris in Abdju.
Each of the men who had failed the king had been isolated.
“It will pass,” Meryt told him one night as they lay in bed.
“I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t help him,” Imhotep answered, his eyes open, staring at the low ceiling of their house.
“You have helped many others,” she said softly.
Imhotep shook his head. “I have pretended to help others. I look concerned and I say the words.”
“You don’t pretend. Why do you say that? Because you failed once?” She raised herself up on an elbow and looked at Imhotep. “You have healed many people. You healed me. You saved King Sekhemkhet’s arm. And Bata, remember when
Bata fell and his ankle became larger than his knee?”
Imhotep sighed and looked away from her.
Meryt brushed a hand across her husband’s face and said, “I think you are homesick for your land.”
“I’m not homesick,” Imhotep protested. He took her hand and turned the palm to his face. He kissed her hand and said, “I love you. I am happy here with our friends and our children. I don’t miss my other life.”
“You miss real doctors,” she said. “And sometimes, dear husband, I see your eyes looking across time and space. I think you are remembering other people, other things, other places. And you sing to yourself, softly so we don’t hear, but I do hear, dear husband. They are songs from your land, words from your time.”
Imhotep started to protest, but Meryt pressed her fingers against his lips.
“I have never lied to you, Imhotep. I tell you truthfully, I am not jealous of your memories or your songs. I am not afraid of your longings. But lately I feel that your ka is restless. Your body is here, but your mind is traveling more and more.”
***
Two days after she returned from her son’s funeral Queen Djeseretnebi miscarried the child she was carrying. King Sekhemkhet, sure that Wepwawet was stalking his palace, sent his wife south to her family home in Waset. Then he gathered his closest friends and disappeared into the western desert on a hunting expedition.
But before King Sekhemkhet left the capital he called Imhotep to the palace.
Imhotep entered the king’s formal chamber to find King Sekhemkhet seated on his throne. Khaba, his trusted companion, was across the room retrieving a knife that he had thrown into a small leather swatch nailed to a wooden board, a game the two men often played.
Laughing when Imhotep was ushered into the room, the two men grew quiet and turned their attention to the royal physician. While the king composed himself on his throne and laid his hands on his knees, Khaba, knife in hand, walked toward Imhotep.
“Lord Imhotep,” King Sekhemkhet said without emotion.
“King Sekhemkhet, long health to you. General Khaba, many successes to you,” Imhotep said, kneeling and bowing his head. His eyes on the floor, Imhotep saw Khaba’s bare feet walk past him and then heard them stop just behind him.
King Sekhemkhet snorted at Imhotep’s ritual greeting.
“Yes, long health,” King Sekhemkhet said. He looked past Imhotep and said, “As if that were something you could confer ... as if you still had a use.”
Suddenly Imhotep realized that he was about to be killed. He felt himself break into a sweat and he thought about Meryt and Maya and what they would do without him.
“Your heka did not save my son, Imhotep.”
“I am sorry, King Sekhemkhet. I am deeply ashamed to have failed The Great House.” He felt Khaba come closer to his back and he wondered distractedly what the knife blade would feel like as it entered his back.
He didn’t think of fleeing or fighting. He could never overpower two young soldiers and if he did escape the room there were guards along the hallway and beyond the hallway there was no place to hide – not in the towns, not in the desert to the east or to the west, not in the river or in the delta.
He knelt, his head down, his shoulders tense, awaiting his death.
Instead he felt a weight lift and realized that Khaba was lifting the menat, the heavy, anhk-shaped symbol of his office as royal physician. The menat rested on his back between his shoulder blades, blocking an easy knife thrust. He closed his eyes, hoping that his death would be quick.
Then he felt a rough tug at his neck and he raised his head to allow Khaba to slip the wide beaded front of the necklace over his head. Realizing that now he was exposing his unprotected throat, he waited for Khaba’s knife to slice across his neck.
The moment passed.
His throat remained intact and the necklace was removed.
Khaba carried it to the throne and handed it to King Sekhemkhet.
“Leave, Imhotep,” the king said. “I can no longer look upon your face.”
***
A year slowly crept by and then another.
Imhotep, who could not work on the new pyramid or attend to anyone in the royal family, longed to leave Ineb-Hedj, but Meryt’s health had grown more fragile. Her friends were in Ineb-Hedj and Imhotep knew that he could never remove her from their loving care.
And although he had been shunned by the king and everyone in the palace, Imhotep’s neighbors showed no signs of coldness. They still shared food, they still called to one another from their rooftops and usually followed the greeting with an invitation.
But without his position and his work, Imhotep’s days were long.
Unable to visit the construction site, restrained from traveling to other cities, banned from the palace, Imhotep had little to do except to sit on his rooftop and sketch.
Seeing her husband sink into quiet depression, Meryt insisted that he come with her one afternoon to visit Paneb and Taki, their oldest friends.
Taki was a renowned cook who had become fat with the years. Her humor and generosity had grown with her size and she was beloved by her neighbors, friends and family.
Her weekly dinners, which she began preparing at dawn, were multi-course, free-wheeling banquets that began in mid-afternoon at long tables set in front of their home and usually ended under the stars on the large, flat rooftop of their substantially expanded home.
Ahmes, who had never married, lived with them when he was not at the Temple of Neith in Zau. Their eldest daughter, Dedi, her husband Meres, and their three children lived in rooms that had been added to the home. Hapu, their youngest daughter, lived at home also. She had refused to marry, insisting that she would become a physician like Imhotep. She argued that she needed all her time to learn homeopathic remedies and healing prayers.
Imhotep, who had first learned the language and customs of the Two Lands from Paneb and Taki, was considered as much a part of their family as their own children and grandchildren. He, Meryt and Tjau had spent many evenings with them, and Taki and Meryt had often whispered together hopefully whenever they saw Tjau talking with Hapu.
Arriving at his friend’s home, Imhotep was called to the roof where a small group of Paneb’s male friends were discussing rumors that General Khaba had persuaded King Sekhemkhet to allow him to make an extended excursion south past Ta-Seti into the land of Kush.
Meryt and Maya joined Taki and Hapu in the main room of her home, which had been converted into a large kitchen. Maya toddled off in search of Dedi. Hapu stayed with them in the kitchen, playing with Kewab, her sister’s newest baby.
“Have you heard from Tjau?” Taki asked Meryt as they sprinkled water over a mash of figs, working it into a paste.
“Very little,” Meryt answered. “Sati said that Tjau offered to resign from Siptah’s command, but Siptah wouldn’t hear of it. Sati said that the men in the army are terribly loyal to the king, as they should be, but many of them have lost children also, so they don’t blame Imhotep the way the king does.”
She raised a hand from the fig paste and tasted one of her fingers.
“I love figs,” she said.
Taki nodded. “Me, too.” She pushed at the paste with an extended finger and said, “I think this is smooth enough,” she said, lifting her hands from the sticky mash. “Hapu, there is a bag of walnuts in the storage room.”
“Yes, mother,” Hapu said. She put Kewab on the ground floor and kissed his head. “Don’t go anywhere,” she teased the baby before she ran off to fetch the walnuts.
Kewab, who was just learning to push himself to his hands and knees, twisted onto his stomach and, after planting his face in the dirt, was able to get his hands under him. He looked across the room and saw Hapu return. Smiling broadly he tried to crawl to her but found himself moving backward instead.
“Tjau did that,” Meryt said. “I told Imhotep that I had never seen a baby crawl backwards and it was probably because he was the father. So
don’t let him see Kewab,” she laughed, “or he’ll know I was teasing him and he’ll stop feeling guilty about it.”
Realizing what she had said, she stopped laughing and tears came to her eyes. “He feels so responsible for Prince Nebmakhet’s death,” she told Taki as she wiped her eyes.
“I remember the first time I saw Imhotep,” Taki said lightly, trying to change the mood.
Hapu handed the sack of walnuts to her mother and scooped her nephew back into her arms. Knowing what was coming, Hapu imitated her mother’s voice and said, “My little Hapu had been stung by a scorpion and the great magician Lord Imhotep produced a magic bag that he magically turned cold ... ”
“Yes,” Taki laughed, “I know I’ve told the story often, but it isn’t everyday that someone from an unknown land, and time, appears and heals your baby from a scorpion sting.”
She emptied the walnuts into a stone bowl and began to take them, one at a time, and crack them open with a rounded stone. She put the meat into another bowl and nodded to Meryt. “Now, don’t grind them too small. They need to give the paste some texture.”
A shadow passed the doorway and Dedi appeared holding hands with little Maya.
“Dedi,” Taki said, her eyes on her work, “could you run down the road and borrow some honey from Sitre? I don’t think I have enough for all these dates. And if Sitre has any cinnamon ... ” she stopped when she realized that Dedi was breathing heavily.
She and Meryt turned to the young woman who was kneeling now beside Maya. Hapu stopped bouncing Kewab on her hip and turned to her sister, too.
“What is it?” Taki asked.
“She has a belly ache,” Dedi answered, “and she peed just now. There was blood in it. Just like they said Prince Nebmakhet had.”