by Angela Hunt
With military discipline, Potiphar kept his gaze focused on the king and his favorite wives though he jerked his chin in a brief acknowledgment of his guards, who stood alert around the royal family. To the right of the king’s throne stood his eldest son and heir, seven-year-old Webensennu, and behind the eldest son stood the younger, four-year-old Abayomi. The queen, seated to the left of the king, was surrounded by a group of fashionably dressed ladies of the royal harem. Her majesty’s pet dwarf waddled in front of her chair, scowling at Potiphar as if he took too long to traverse the royal throne room.
After Potiphar bowed his head toward the queen, the dark eyes under the gold tiara and weighty wig blinked slowly in response. To keep from glancing in fear to Pharaoh, Potiphar forced himself to read the bold engraving on the queen’s gilded chair: Mother of Upper and Lower Egypt, Follower of Horus, Guide of the Ruler, Favorite Lady.
Finally Potiphar allowed himself to look on the person and face of his sovereign and only god. Amenhotep had dressed in complete royal regalia for this meeting, a sign that could portend evil or good. On his head Pharaoh wore the red and white double crown signifying the union between Upper and Lower Egypt. At the front of the headdress gleamed a golden model of the cobra goddess Wadjet, who could deal out instant death by spitting flames at any enemy who dared threaten the king. A long white robe disguised the king’s wiry, athletic body, and the wide pectoral at his breast covered the battle scars he had won while fighting with Potiphar against the Asiatic city-states. Over everything, beating against Pharaoh’s heart, hung the heavy necklace known as the Gold of Praise. Pharaoh wore it because he was King. A select few men wore it because they had earned Pharaoh’s admiration.
Potiphar allowed his eyes to dart toward the battle paintings to remind Pharaoh that they had been through much together. I remember, my king. Do you?
Amenhotep’s dark gaze met and held Potiphar’s as he extended the crook and flail. “Come forward, Potiphar,” Pharaoh called, the tip of his false beard wagging like the finger of a scolding tutor.
Potiphar’s feet obeyed.
“I am the embodiment of the god Horus,” Amenhotep continued, speaking slowly for the scribes who transcribed every word. “I am Golden Horus, the king of Upper and Lower Egypt. I am the son of the sun-god Re. I am your father, Potiphar, and I wish to honor you this day.”
Potiphar closed his eyes, afraid he gazed too hungrily on the heavy chain of gold around Pharaoh’s neck. By the king’s favor he had a house and cattle and sheep and goats and slaves. He had more than he knew how to manage, but the Gold of Praise had always eluded him.
“What can I give you, my son Potiphar, that you do not already have? I have long pondered this question. I and my fellow gods have already blessed you with life and health.”
“It is enough, O Pharaoh,” Potiphar answered. He fell to his knees and pressed his forehead to the ground. “It is enough that you, a god, have consented to rule over us. I am honored beyond any man because you allow me to serve as the captain of your guard.”
“And yet I think it is not enough,” the king answered.
Potiphar rose from the floor, in grave danger of losing his self-control as he stared at his king. The royal hand was fingering the Gold of Praise…
“My wife, mother of all Egypt, has given me the answer,” Pharaoh said, his paint-lengthened eyes narrowing in some secret amusement. “What you need, noble Potiphar, is a woman’s touch to steady the lion’s heart that roars in your breast. You need a wife.”
Potiphar stared at Amenhotep in the paralysis of astonishment. Gold and favor he had expected, but a wife? He had no interest in women, no need for one, and his independent spirit rebelled at the thought of an equal to share his house and wealth.
“I—I have not thought of taking a wife,” Potiphar stammered, finding his tongue. An idea leapt into his mind and he ran with it, pouring forth golden words to soothe Pharaoh’s prideful ear. “A wife, my king, might impede my service to you. You are a god, you can divide your limitless time and power between your duties and your pleasures, but I am a man of restricted capacities. I would rather surrender my life than one iota of my devotion to you.”
“Well spoken,” Pharaoh said, nodding. He raised the ancient crook, the symbol of the shepherd’s staff by which Pharaoh guided his people. “But you will not deny me this gift, Potiphar. I will give you a woman, and you may marry her or not, as you please. As the sun-god embarked this morning, the keeper of the royal harem reported that an exquisite maiden has been brought to the palace for my pleasure. I give her to you, noble Potiphar, as a token of my divine approval.”
“A thousand thanks, my king,” Potiphar said, not daring to protest again. “I will honor and cherish this beneficent tribute.”
“I know you will.” Pharaoh placed the crook across his chest. “Go now, and walk in the favor of Amon-Re and your king.”
The return of the crook to the king’s chest meant the interview was over. The musicians played louder as Potiphar stood and walked backward from the throne room. He would have to find the harem girl and take her to his house straightaway, or some wagging tongue would tell the king that his favor had not been readily appreciated. Though Potiphar felt secure in Pharaoh’s favor, never was it wise to assume anything in the royal court.
Since only emasculated slaves and the king might enter the harem’s chambers, Kratas escorted Potiphar’s prize from the royal apartments to the wide room where foreign slaves were sorted and evaluated. Despite his disinterest, Potiphar smiled in appreciation at the sight of the slender girl walking by the eunuch’s side. Tall and willowy, her skin was the color of burnished honey and surely as sweet. She wore a simple linen sheath that accented her regal posture, and her face, when she finally lifted it, was as elegantly chiseled as the goddesses in the finest temples.
“I must thank you as well as Pharaoh,” Potiphar told Kratas, his eyes sweeping over the girl. “She will be a beautiful addition to my household.”
The eunuch bowed. “Is your house fully staffed, my lord Potiphar? We have just purchased several slaves from traveling Midianites. The Asiatics will not do for Pharaoh—he wants only Nubian slaves.”
“I don’t know, Kratas.” Relieved for an excuse to turn from the fear-widened eyes of the girl, Potiphar glanced around the room. Several bearded men, uncouth and raveled in appearance, sat or lay on the floor in a molten mess of humanity. They looked at him with burned-out eyes, soured with bitterness. Most wore defeat like a banner, but one youth caught his eye. Though stained with dust and fatigue, the teenager’s face seemed lighted from within. Some god had chiseled indomitable pride into that flushed face, along with intelligence and hard-bitten strength. This lad, if harnessed correctly, would pull more than his share of the workload.
“That one.” Potiphar pointed to the boy. “How much?”
Kratas frowned. “You don’t want him. His arm has been broken, and his body burns with fever from the devils of the desert. He’ll die before two suns have set.”
“I don’t think he is ready to die,” Potiphar countered. “How much?”
The eunuch scratched his chin and eyed Potiphar thoughtfully. “Fifty deben weight of silver.”
“You have just said he is worthless. Ten.”
“I paid forty for him. Do you want your king to suffer a loss?”
“Within two days the crocodiles will have him. Take twenty, and be content.”
Kratas frowned again, then he nodded. “So be it, Lord Potiphar. But I do you this favor only because our divine pharaoh holds you in high esteem.”
“So it would appear,” Potiphar answered, pulling his purse from his kilt.
Through a haze of exhaustion and pain, Yosef saw the exchange of silver and realized that he had been sold to the loud man who had come for the pretty girl. The king’s man accepted the money, then one of the guards yanked Yosef upright. Colors exploded in his brain as the rope chewed on his splintered arm. The long journey had not afforded
his body a chance to heal, and fever coursed through his veins like the quick, hot touch of the devil.
The girl’s wrists were bound as well, then a broad-shouldered slave took the ropes and led Yosef and the girl out of the chamber. They followed the loud man as he walked through the palace courtyard and along the streets of Thebes. People babbled in an unfamiliar tongue as they walked, and though Yosef had managed to pick up a few words on the journey southward, his thoughts drifted into a fuzzy haze in which nothing made sense. He was exhausted, and every step taxed the small store of energy he possessed. His body cried out for rest, water and peace.
He walked, dimly aware of the hot sun, whining wind and the rushing Nile at his right, then the sound of the river retreated into the gray fog around him. He slumped to the ground, surrendering to the cloud of pain that had threatened him since Dothan.
He thought he slept for a long time, perhaps days. When he opened his eyes again, he was lying on a narrow bed in a darkened chamber. A rushlight burned in a corner of the room, and in the flickering light he could see walls covered with a patina of dirt. The air felt as if it had been breathed too many times, and he gasped for breath. He had passed his life in tents and open fields; the confining atmosphere of the small space was almost unbearable.
At the sound of his gasp, a dark shape on the floor stirred. Yosef blinked in surprise when a blanket lifted and a pale face peered out at him. A spirit? He stared in astonishment as the pale face spoke, but Yosef could not understand the words.
“Have I died?” he whispered, struggling to sit up. For a moment he dared hope that he was at home in his father’s tents and the memories of the past few days were only a lingering nightmare. But then the creature murmured something and pressed a hand to his chest, gently forcing him back onto the bed. He realized then that his guardian was no ghost, but a flesh-and-blood creation. Slowly, the memory of his last conscious day returned. The girl beside him was the slave who had journeyed with him to this place.
“You are—?” he asked in Hebrew, pointing to her.
The girl lifted her brows, then the light of understanding lit her dark eyes. “Tuya,” she whispered, resting her delicate hand on her chest. She pointed to him. “Paneah.”
“No.” He shook his head as an inexplicable surge of anger rose within his breast. Had his brothers stolen even his name? “I am Yosef.”
“Yosef?” She shook her head and pointed toward the doorway. “Potiphar.” Her hand fell on his head. “Paneah.”
Yosef sighed and let his head fall back to the bed’s curious headrest. Anger and denial were of no use. He had a new name. A new position—because of his brothers’ treachery he who had been the favored son was now a slave.
What had God done with his dreams of power and authority? Who would bow to him in this foreign place—cattle?
As the girl settled beside him, Yosef closed his eyes in frustrated grief. At least a measure of his strength had returned. His arm no longer throbbed, and the fever-fog that had clouded his thoughts had lifted. He lay still, helpless in his ignorance and weakness, lost in the lonely silence of the night.
He would never see his father again. Nor his brothers, nor the two bright-eyed daughters of the camel-trader he had teased with promises of marriage. Grief blossomed in his chest, crushing his lungs, stealing the air he needed to breathe. Like a drowning man he gasped aloud, trying to lift his head, reaching out for the family he would never see again—
The girl caught his hands, then stroked his brow and murmured gentle sounds. As if she sensed his thoughts, she began to hum, and the room warmed to the odd melody.
Someone had tended him—probably this slave. Yosef lifted his head to look at the fine shape of her mouth and the slender column of her throat. A blush colored her cheeks when her dark gaze caught his, but she didn’t look away. A half-hearted smile tugged at his lips and she returned it, her face shimmering like sunbeams on the surface of the ribbon of river that ruled this land.
Perhaps, Yosef thought, steeling his heart against grief and despair, God had shown mercy by bringing him to a girl who could be a well of understanding and hope in this heathen wilderness.
After her arrival at Potiphar’s house, Tuya was spared from her new master’s attention because the sick slave needed a nurse and no one else in the household seemed willing or able to care for him. And during the days that she nursed Paneah, Tuya discovered that although Potiphar owned a vast villa with many rooms and many servants, the poorly organized estate barely functioned. Because he spent most of his time on military expeditions or in the presence of Pharaoh, Potiphar had neither the time nor the inclination to oversee his own property.
But Tuya’s first concern was for her patient. On the day the master placed him into her care, the young man from Canaan was flushed with fever beneath the stubble of his beard. Under the dirty bandage around his arm, Tuya found an oozing wound from which bare bone protruded. While the young man was unconscious, she sent for a surgeon to set the bone and pour wine over the broken skin. After manipulating the bone and wrapping the arm in clean bandages, the surgeon assured her he had done all he could do. Now the young man’s fate rested in the hands of the gods.
Tuya sat by the side of her fellow slave and worried. She had tended to this young man’s physical body, but what if the gods wanted appeasement before he would be healed? She knew she could never make an offering to Bastet. Though that goddess had been the favorite in Donkor’s house, Ramla’s cool betrayal had hardened Tuya’s heart against the cat goddess. Finally she begged one of the kitchen slaves for a stone statue of Montu, the war god and guardian of the arm.
The statue depicted a man with a hawk’s head surrounded by the golden disk of the sun. Tuya took the statuette to the sickroom, where she placed it in a shaft of sunlight and began a healing chant: “As for the arm of Paneah, it is the arm of Montu, on whose head were placed the three hundred and seventy-seven Divine Cobras. They spew forth flame to make you quit the arm of Paneah, like that of Montu. If you do not quit the temple of Paneah, I will burn your soul, I will consume your corpse! I will be deaf to any desire of yours. If some other god is with you, I will overturn your dwelling place; I will shadow your tomb, so you will not be allowed to receive incense, so you will not be allowed to receive water with the beneficent spirits, and so you will not be allowed to associate with the Followers of Horus.
“If you will not hear my words, I will cut off the head of a cow taken from the forecourt of Hathor! I will cut off the head of a sacred hippopotamus in the forecourt of Set! I will cause Sebek to sit enshrouded in the skin of a crocodile, and I will cause Anubis to sit enshrouded in the skin of a dog! Then indeed shall you come forth from the temple of Paneah!”
Every morning Tuya threatened the statue of Montu with her fierce refrain, and every morning the young man on the bed seemed stronger. He ate gruel from her bowl before the first week had ended, sipping the broth from the wooden spoon without speaking, his dark eyes flickering with a reserve Tuya couldn’t understand. Why didn’t he seem more grateful? He was a slave, as she was, and slaves were not often blessed with the tender care he had been allowed to receive. He could have been sent immediately to work in the fields; few masters would care if a slave costing only twenty deben weight of silver dropped dead over a furrow.
As he slept, Tuya studied the stranger. Though his illness had left him wafer-thin, finely defined muscles slid beneath his skin’s golden tan. A head taller than most Egyptians, his dark hair flowed in gentle waves to his shoulders and was perfectly matched by the beard that had filled in the clean purity of his profile. His hands, with long, sensitive fingers, were well-kept, and Tuya noticed the lack of calluses on his palms. Perhaps she was wrong in assuming that he had been born to slavery.
After a few days he began to speak and gesture with his good arm. In the weeks that followed, he proved to be a willing pupil as Tuya schooled him in the basics of the Egyptian tongue. He had a sharp and clear mind; rarely did she
have to explain anything more than once.
“Who is that you pray to?” he asked one morning when she had finished bowing to the statue in the sunlight.
Tuya rose and reverently put the statue away. Montu had met all her requests; he deserved to be handled with respect.
“Only the king has access to the gods. Only he can pray. I was chanting before Montu, an ancient war god. He has healed your arm.”
Horror flashed in the young man’s eyes. “Please don’t think such a thing! It is an abomination for my people to bow before any stone object. We worship the invisible god, the one and only creator of heaven and earth.”
Tuya sank to a papyrus mat on the floor. Only one god! Despite his quick intellect, this youth was utterly unsophisticated. She tilted her head and looked at him. “Does your god have a name?”
“The god of Avraham, Yitzhak and my father Yaakov spoke to my forefathers as El Shaddai,” he answered, lifting his chin. “He is God Almighty, the unseen god.”
Tuya shook her head. “Amon is the invisible god,” she explained in the voice she would have used to teach an ignorant child. “He is Amon-Re, king of the gods, the chief god of our king’s empire. He is the creator, the one who rose from chaos and created maat, the principle that guides our actions. He created all things that move in the waters and on the dry land, then he took a form like ours, becoming the first pharaoh. After a long life, he ascended to the heavens and left the other gods in charge of the earth.” She couldn’t resist smiling. “There are many gods, Paneah. Our land grows gods as freely as it grows grain.”