by Jerry Dubs
Maya shrieked in terror as the girls flooded into the plaza and to Imhotep’s disbelief, the girls began to fight each other, not in play, not a charade, but with anger and power and intent; innocence turned to mayhem.
“The false virgins,” muttered an old man behind Imhotep.
The shrieking grew even louder as the girls fought, the screams ending sometimes in grunts, other times in sobs as clubs pounded off legs and arms, as knives cut into skin and as spears drove into legs and stomachs. Some of the girl warriors fell to the ground, their legs askew, some fought with blood running down their faces, mingling with the paint on their young bodies.
Imhotep saw a girl clubbed on her shoulder. She fell to the ground and immediately the attacker raised her club and struck again, the wooden cudgel bouncing as it struck the fallen girl’s head. As the attacker raised her club to strike again, a small girl, an open gash on her cheek, jumped onto her back. Reaching over the bigger girl’s shoulder the younger girl stabbed at her with a bloody knife.
The crowd began to moan and gasp. Looking away from the bloodshed, Imhotep saw men and women, their mouths working as they prayed to Neith, their eyes wide, some with horror, some with pleasure.
Turning away from the death fights, Imhotep shoved his way through the crowd and away from the savagery of Neith, goddess of war, and her blood-thirsty priestess.
The Soul Who Has Appeared
Shaking in fear as she lay against her father’s shoulder, Maya sobbed quietly while Imhotep carried her through the dark paths of Zau. Not invited to stay at the temple during the ceremony, Imhotep had found an elderly woman who had agreed to rent him a bed. Her small house was near the southern edge of town near a market.
The throbbing of the drums, the trilling of the pipes and the screaming of the girls, their high-pitched voices carrying both fear and rage, chased him through the dark streets as he trotted away from the bloody ceremony.
There was no sound from the crowd, he realized.
They should be shouting in outrage. They should be trying to stop the violence.
He reached a crossroad where a pair of palm trees stood, their trunks angling away from each other, their broad leaves forming a floppy canopy that blocked the starlight. Leaning against one of the trees to catch his breath, Imhotep caressed Maya’s head and kissed the tears from her wet eyes. “Everything will be OK,” he told her.
As he comforted his daughter he thought of what he had seen – young girls attacking each other in a murderous frenzy. He wondered if Ahmes or – he shuddered – if his son, Tjau, had been aware of what would happen at the ceremony.
He wondered if he was too far removed from this ancient society to accept the barbaric mayhem. It seemed as if the villagers and visitors at the ceremony had been excited, not repulsed, by what they were watching. He thought briefly of professional boxing, road rage incidents, even the fights on television shows like ‘Jerry Springer.’
But there was no comparison.
Or, he wondered, was it just a matter of degree?
He remembered a video he had seen once of girls fighting at a fast food restaurant. They had fought as if berserk, beyond any constraints of decency or humanity.
And then suddenly his mind was flooded with images – My Lai, where hundreds of Vietnamese women and children had been tortured and killed by American soldiers; Hue, where thousands of civilians had been killed by the North Vietnamese army; Hama, where Syrian soldiers had executed thirty thousand civilians; the Sikh massacre where unknown thousands had been killed by Hindu mobs; entire populations of villages murdered in Bosnia ... and in Algeria ... and in Lebanon; thousands of Korean civilians killed by South Korean troops; the staggering crimes of the Nazis; Stalin’s purges; and all the other millions of deaths of innocents.
His closed eyes suddenly saw a young Vietnamese girl, running down a dirt road, arms extended from her side, her face contorted in agony, her emaciated naked body burned from napalm. As she ran screaming toward him, she morphed into the frenzied face of one of the girls he had just seen, her mouth twisted in anger, her eyes wide with rage as she thrust a homemade spear into the belly of a fallen girl.
He blinked back tears and pushed himself away from the rough bark of the palm trees. He would get Maya back to the house and then leave at first light for Ineb-Hedj.
***
“Father? Father?”
Imhotep opened his eyes from a nightmare. He didn’t remember what he had been dreaming, just that it had left him with a feeling of dread that gripped his spirit in an iron fist. He didn’t know for a moment where he was, only that he had fled a horror in the night.
“Father?”
Following the sound, Imhotep looked up and saw Tjau. He was still carrying a long, ceremonial shield. His body, lit by a torch held by someone outside the small house, still gleamed with oil.
Imhotep nodded. “Tjau! I thought I saw you. I didn’t know you were going to be here.”
Tjau leaned the shield against the inside wall of the house where Ahmes had told him he would find his father and bent to take Maya from Imhotep’s arms.
“Are you OK, Father? I saw you leave the ceremony. I came as soon as I could.”
Imhotep closed his eyes as he remembered the bloody fight of the false virgins. Shaking his head, he said, “I couldn’t stand to watch that, Tjau.” Getting to his feet, he looked into his son’s eyes and asked, “Did you know what they were going to do?”
“No,” Tjau answered, shaking his head. “We rehearsed our part, walking through the plaza with Merneith hidden among us. Then the false Merneith – a woman who was covered with white powder – walked to us and we admitted her to the enclosed circle while keeping Merneith hidden. Then we knelt and Merneith stood as the other girl crouched behind us.
“How did it look from the crowd? It was supposed to look as if sacred paintings had suddenly appeared on Merneith. Could you tell that there were two people and that they switched places?”
Imhotep shook his head. Unable to completely erase the image of the battle that followed, he couldn’t focus on what Tjua was saying.
“It was all a ruse, misdirection, father,” he said.
Tjau stopped, his voice, when he spoke again was sober, the excitement damped. “The girls came out onto the plaza when we practiced, but we all thought they would pretend to battle, that it would be another ruse. I didn’t know that they would actually fight each other.”
“Tjau!” Maya said, awakening to the sound of her brother’s voice. She touched his face as if to assure herself that her big brother was really there.
“Maya,” he said in response. “You are getting so big.”
“Did you see the bad girls?” Maya asked.
“Yes, Maya. They were just pretending,” he lied to comfort her. “They weren’t really hurting each other. And, they would never hurt you.”
“Because you’re here and you’re a soldier,” she said.
“That’s right. I’m here and I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Imhotep smiled at Tjau and then stepped forward to wrap his arms around his son and daughter.
“We need to go to the temple, Father,” Tjau said quietly.
“Now?”
“Yes, King Sekhemkhet is there and he wants to see you.”
Imhotep shook his head. “I’m not properly dressed to stand before the king. I haven’t bathed today or oiled myself. I’m not perfumed.” He rubbed his hand over his scalp. “I need a shave. I must look ... ”
“It doesn’t matter, father,” he said, his tone struggling to stay neutral. “The king wants to see you now.”
Suddenly the interior of the house grew lighter as the torchbearer stepped inside. To Imhotep’s surprise he saw that it was Siptah, now a commander in the king’s army.
“General Siptah,” he said in greeting.
“Lord Imhotep,” Siptah said, his voice a strange mixture of formal command and sympathy. Turning his head to Tjau, Siptah said, “We
must go.”
***
Outside the house Imhotep discovered that Tjau and Siptah had not come alone. An entire platoon of soldiers was waiting in the dark road. They quickly formed into two files leaving space at the head for Siptah and between them for Imhotep and Maya.
“You can walk with your father,” Siptah said, putting a hand on Tjau’s arm.
Imhotep looked from the young commander to his son, trying to understand what was happening. Was this an escort of honor or one of restraint? With the soldiers walking so close to them, Imhotep decided not to question his son within their hearing.
They began to walk back toward the plaza and the temple. People were walking toward them now, the excitement of what they had just seen filled their voices and their faces.
Imhotep saw them stop and stare at the military patrol and, with chilling certainty, he realized that if he were watching, he would assume that the tired, frightened man surrounded by soldiers was under arrest.
***
The Temple of Neith was a stone building that had none of the elegance of the Temple of Re nor the openness of the Temple of Ma’at. It looked, Imhotep thought, like a fortress.
Heavy, sharp-edged pylons instead of tapering pillars bracketed the entrance, which was guarded tonight by two young girls holding spears. Dirt and blood on their arms, legs, chests and faces identified them as survivors of the bloody melee.
As they passed the girls Imhotep looked to the soldiers and saw that they kept their eyes forward, their faces impassive, a sign that they regarded these children as equals tonight.
The entrance led to a narrow hallway with dark openings to the left and to the right. Straight ahead a series of torches lined the wall and Imhotep shuddered as the flickering yellow light on rough stone walls reminded him of the hallway he had paced outside of King Djoser’s bedroom the night the king had died.
The soldiers had stopped and were waiting for Siptah to command them. “Follow us, but stay outside the chamber,” he ordered them.
As they turned to follow Siptah, Imhotep felt a stirring of air wash down the hallway and he imagined Wepwawet’s wolf snout exhaling in anticipation.
Death has entered this temple, he thought. He looked to Tjau, his face composed as he held his little sister. He looked at Maya, smiling as she nestled in her brother’s arms. He looked down at his own hands and saw them shaking.
They followed Siptah past an archway where the air smelled of water and flowers – a garden courtyard, he thought. Another doorway smelled of iron and offal – the temple abattoir, he hoped.
They turned a corner and, following the torches, came to a wider doorway, its entrance flanked by two more of the surviving girl warriors. One of the girls had an open gash on her cheek. Imhotep started to pause beside her to examine the wound, but was tugged forward by Siptah.
Entering the audience chamber, Imhotep caught a fleeting glance of a small throne occupied by King Sekhemkhet, a broad-shouldered figure in the shadows behind him – Khaba, Imhotep assumed – and the slender body of Merneith, the paintings on her skin alive in the torchlight. He felt Siptah’s hands on his shoulders.
“You must kneel here, Lord Imhotep,” he whispered. “And then crawl on your hands and knees to approach the dais. Then stop and remain on your knees.”
Imhotep started to protest, but Siptah’s eyes grew stern and he shook his head.
Looking into the room, Imhotep tried to catch the eye of King Sekhemkhet to gauge his mood, perhaps to be excused from the humiliating approach to the throne. But when the king’s eyes flicked over him, Imhotep saw only anger in them. Then the king’s gaze moved on to Tjau, who was walking the perimeter of the room with Maya in his arms.
Kneeling, Imhotep began to crawl across the stone floor. Looking down at the stone he saw feet accompanying him. Two soldiers were walking beside him.
The shadow beneath him grew softer as he approached the better lit center of the room. He raised his head to see how close he was, then, stopping, he rocked back on his haunches and rested his hands on his thighs. Keeping his eyes downcast, he waited to be recognized.
He saw the feet of the soldiers beside him sidestep closer and soon he felt a rough hand on each of his shoulders, restraining him.
“Ah, the great Imhotep, destroyer of Anubis, master of Wepwawet,” King Sekhemkhet said with false sincerity. And Imhotep’s heart sank.
“Greetings, King Sekhemkhet. Long life!” he answered.
“For some,” King Sekhemkhet said.
Imhotep heard a shuffling and glanced up. Tjau had approached the throne and handed Maya to the king who was standing now. Khaba came around from behind the throne, one hand seeking support from the raised chair as he swung his partially crippled leg forward.
Merneith glided silently around the other side of the throne and stood beside the king. Raising a hand, she caressed Maya’s cheek.
Lowering his head, Imhotep glanced to his left and right. All along the walls were more of the false virgins, little girls smeared in blood and dirt and death. They each held a spear, not the short, homemade spears from earlier, now the spears they held were soldiers’ weapons, the staffs straight and solid, the stone tips honed to razor sharpness.
“She looks remarkably healthy,” Merneith said.
Imhotep looked up. Four of the girl warriors were standing beside Merneith now, their hands gripping their weapons, their bloodlust eyes filled with awe of the painted priestess.
“Thank you, Spear of Neith,” Imhotep said. “May the gods bless you with long life.”
“She was very ill, King Sekhemkhet. Her urine was blood red. Wepwawet’s cold hand was caressing her. As it did Prince Nebmakhet,” Merneith said.
Seventeen years earlier a young Tim Hope had stood before King Djoser and heard the king rename him, announce to the world that for evermore he would be known as Imhotep. As those words had settled over Tim Hope, he had felt his spirit soar, awakening to life in the Two Lands. He had felt a confidence enter him, an assurance that he was where he was meant to be, and who he was meant to be. The universe had seemed to shift, shuffling his small life into place and Tim Hope had been reborn as Imhotep.
Now, as Merneith’s words pierced him, Imhotep felt his ka leave his body to hover over the temple room and he knew as he looked down on himself that he was looking down on a dead man; his life as Imhotep was ending.
From his distant vantage point he saw Tjau standing a few feet from the king, his head cocked in puzzlement.
He saw Merneith standing beside the king, one hand raised to Maya’s face and the other behind her back beckoning toward Khaba who was lurking beside the throne, a twitching smile on his face as he looked from Imhotep to King Sekhemkhet and finally to his lover.
He saw Siptah farther away, his head down, his shoulders slumped in resignation.
He saw the false virgins, their bodies almost vibrating with energy and anticipation, their bloodlust not fully sated.
“You were absent for a year, Imhotep,” King Sekhemkhet said.
Imhotep nodded, wondering what combination of words he could find that might turn the rush of events. “Yes, King Sekhemkhet. I went to my home to ... ”
“To find a way to save your daughter,” King Sekhemkhet said.
“The path to my land is dangerous and unsure. To travel it is to risk death,” Imhotep said, trying to feel his way past the danger he heard behind the king’s words.
“Yet, worth following to save a child, well, to save your child,” Merneith said.
“Yes, Spear of Neith. I was endangering Maya, putting her life at risk. I was taking a chance I could never take with another’s life.”
“King Sekhemkhet ... ” Tjau began to say.
“Silence!” Khaba shouted.
Without turning his head, King Sekhemkhet raised a hand to silence Tjau and Khaba.
“Even if that life was already in danger? Even if Wepwawet was standing beside my son? Even then, when his body was dying and he
was in pain, even then you wouldn’t try to save him?” King Sekhemkhet asked.
“Instead,” he hurried on, his voice rising in anger, “you told me that you had done everything you could. But you lied to me, didn’t you, Imhotep? You lied to me and you let my son die.”
Imhotep closed his eyes, yet his ka, still floating above the room, tethered to Imhotep’s body with only the most fragile thread, saw the king’s body tense in anger, his mouth clench and his lips turn into a sneering frown.
He saw Tjau tremble and inch forward, prepared to intervene between the king and his father.
He saw Khaba take a hesitant step forward, his hand moving to the waist of his kilt.
He saw Merneith’s eyes flare in anticipation and pleasure.
“I did everything I could, my king. I did everything this time and place allowed, everything that I knew.”
King Sekhemkhet shook his head. “No, Imhotep, you decided how much to do. You weighed the value of my son’s life and you found it wanting. But for your daughter, yes, then you were willing to do what had to be done.
“You were always full of pride, Imhotep. Always sure that you knew best. I saw it when my father was alive and now that pride has grown larger. It knows no limit. You do what Imhotep thinks is right. You do what is best for Imhotep.
“Well, your arrogance has cost you your daughter.”
Imhotep rocked forward to get to his feet, but the soldiers leaned their weight on him and pushed him back to the floor. He looked at the men, their faces impassive and stern. Then he turned to look at the king who was turning away from him, Maya still in his arms. Imhotep wasn’t sure if the king’s words meant that he was taking Maya as his own or if he had pronounced a death sentence.
He tried to shrug the soldiers’ hands away, but instead felt them tighten their grip.
As the king turned, it seemed to Imhotep as if the universe was being dragged along with him, each moment slowing until time became a series of frozen friezes.