by Angela Hunt
“Idleness chafes at my soul, master. Let me restore my soul to humility by serving the warden of this prison. In this way I can serve you still.”
He had hoped that his words would move Potiphar’s heart, but the master’s granite face remained as expressionless as it had been on the night of Yosef’s disgrace. “Do what you will with him,” he said finally, jerking his gaze toward Khamat. “I care not what this one does.”
And so Paneah, virtual master of the mightiest house in Thebes, became the only slave of Khamat, chief jailer of the king’s prison. Each morning Khamat lowered a rope into the Hebrew’s cell and Paneah climbed forth to do his bidding. The unruly warriors from Potiphar’s guard were excused from emptying buckets of waste from the prison cells, for Paneah cleaned them. He also carried fresh water and food from the prison gate to each individual cell.
Pharaoh’s prison contained two different types of cells: dungeonlike pits to confine the lowest criminals, and stone buildings to house noblemen’s servants and Egyptian citizens. Paneah served the inmates of both. When he had finished with his prison duties, he worked in Khamat’s stone lodge, scrubbing floors, grinding corn or cleaning the stall that held the jailer’s donkey. On slow afternoons when the sky glared hot and blue, Khamat ordered the slave to stand behind him and fan away pesky flies as the jailer napped in the sun. When the sun-god’s Boat-of-Millions-of-Years finally finished its journey across the sky, Khamat escorted the Hebrew back to his cell and pulled up the rope.
The other prisoners, accustomed to giving Khamat a measure of surly respect, took pleasure in belittling the new personality that had entered their small world. This bearded and bedraggled scarecrow, obviously a slave and apparently deserving of his fate, accepted the bitterness they spewed on him without comment. When he knelt to slide baskets of food beneath the iron bars, the prisoners in the walled cells spat on him and cursed him for the food’s poor quality and limited supply. Even the criminals in the pits scorned him, routinely calling him vulgar names and deriding his manhood because he had been reduced to serving them.
“Surely you are the son of a scared rabbit!” one man called as Paneah pulled up his bucket. “Why else would you haul filth for the men who imprison you? What sort of woman gave birth to you?”
“One who wears bells on her skirt and sells her favors,” the man in the next pit called. He made an obscene gesture in Paneah’s direction. “I enjoyed her company the week before I came to this place.”
No matter how crude or lewd the comments, Khamat noticed that Paneah did not respond in word or deed. He moved through a hailstorm of indignities and insults as though his thoughts were focused on another world, one in which men did not surrender to the vilest inclinations of their natures. While he worked, the slave neither glanced toward nor made reference to the barred door leading to Potiphar’s house…and freedom.
Paneah never offered his opinions unless asked, but once Khamat asked for them, he discovered the slave possessed the organizational skill of a military officer and the wit of a royal courtier. Strength and honor supported the skills that were wasted on menial labor, but Paneah did not once hint that his situation should be reevaluated or improved. Khamat could find no trace of ambition or ulterior motive in the slave’s conversation; nor did the man’s words ever contain less than total truth.
In time, Khamat neglected to carry his sword while Paneah worked, then he put aside his whip. The slave’s silent endurance won the respect of the other prisoners; the ribald taunting eventually ceased. Within a year, Khamat stopped supervising Paneah altogether; within two years, he made it a common practice to leave the long rope dangling in Paneah’s cell. “Why should I get up early every morning to drop a rope to you?” he asked his servant. “You would tell me if you were planning to escape, wouldn’t you?”
Paneah looked up from the sandy floor and regarded the chief jailer with a wistful smile. “God has a purpose for me here,” he said, rubbing his hand over the crumbling stone walls as if he felt some affection for the place. “I will not leave until he opens the door for me.”
After his brief exchange with Paneah in the pit, Potiphar did not venture into the prison again. The slave’s words rankled in his brain, urging him to do something, but Potiphar had no idea what he should do. Paneah had talked of his god, but Potiphar had no use for gods, visible or invisible.
Peace and Paneah had departed from Potiphar’s home on the same night. The house that had once brought Potiphar pleasure became a hellish place. Sagira, her charm and cultivated good looks destroyed by an overindulgence in food and wine, flirted brazenly with every man who crossed the threshold. More than once Potiphar had seen sheepish-looking suitors, slaves and noblemen departing from her bedchamber in the dark of night.
He regarded such things with indifference, silently wishing that Pharaoh had ordered him to lose an arm rather than receive a bride. Ramla, the iron-willed priestess whom Potiphar had endured for Sagira’s sake, had not returned to the villa. Alone and forsaken, Sagira whined incessantly, returning handmaid after handmaid to the slave market, unable to find a single girl capable of serving as her companion.
Potiphar possessed all he had ever wanted: a fine house, treasure in his coffers, a sterling reputation as a warrior and friend of Pharaoh. The Gold of Praise hung about his neck, prompting all who met him to kneel in reverent respect for one who had been admired and honored by the king.
But his house, which had once been a haven of rest, hummed with tension and distrust. After Paneah’s departure, Sagira refused to have anything to do with running the household. Potiphar extracted stern but capable taskmasters from his army and set them over his household, but the estate limped along, barely making a profit, the backs of its slaves bruised and broken by the whip.
No longer was singing heard in his house. The only laughter was drunken and coarse, and usually spilled from Sagira’s bedchamber in the darkest hours of the night.
Potiphar retreated to the palace, preferring to spend his time with the king. But Pharaoh had tired of military conquests and spent his days overseeing the craftsmen who were building his tomb in the Valley of the Kings. Thoughts of eternity pressed on the royal mind, and Amenhotep’s concern did not lie with his armies, but with the stonecutters and artisans who were fashioning the tools and treasures he would take with him into the next world.
And yet Pharaoh was forty-two; the captain of his guard, fifty-three. Potiphar knew he was closer to eternity than the king, but he was not eager to prepare for it. How could the future hold anything for a man who had no faith in it?
Chapter Twenty-Three
Two years later, in the grand central hall of Pharaoh’s palace at Thebes, the entire royal family gathered to celebrate the gifts bestowed by a group of visiting foreigners. Tuya sat on a chair beside Abayomi, her hand resting protectively on the gentle swell of her belly. The priestess of Montu had declared that she would bear a son, and Tuya was careful that the proper offerings be offered every day to ensure her child’s safety. She had lost one love because she neglected to placate the gods with proper sacrifices. She would not lose another.
Abayomi, caught up in the music, clapped and occasionally glanced in her direction. She smiled in approval, and he turned again to the musicians, his confidence bolstered. At thirteen, her husband was still much a boy. He had matured enough to earn her respect and father a son, though one had little to do with the other.
She had come to respect her young husband because the prince was a student of life. Anxious to understand the world around him, his insights into natural, divine and human law were curiously creative. He often struggled to communicate his fanciful ideas to others, but Tuya, who had been mother, sister and wife for four years, gave voice to his insights and feelings.
Neither his elder brother, the crown prince Webensennu, nor his father the king understood Abayomi, for their thoughts centered around military ideas of right and might, but Tuya was quietly glad that Abayomi would rather ponder
the way of an ibis in the air than plunder an Asiatic village. Instead of swords and shields, her husband’s chamber was crowded with scrolls, art and animals, living and mummified. His name meant ‘he brings joy,’ and after the grief of her former life, Tuya had to admit her husband-child had brought a measure of sunlight to her dark heart. She still dreamed of Yosef, but not as often as she once had.
Pharaoh and Queen Merit-Amon sat across from a dark-robed quartet of Syrian dignitaries, and Tuya found herself studying the strangers’ faces. They wore short, pointed beards, heavy robes and no jewelry. For a moment she thought she gazed into a transforming mirror, for they were opposites of the clean-shaven, bejeweled, lightly clothed Egyptians. Awed by the ostentation of Pharaoh’s palace, the visitors spoke little and looked much, their dark eyes darting up, down, right and left. Of course they were impressed. Tuya had learned enough to know no palace in the world could rival the beauty and opulence of Pharaoh’s court. Thebes was the center of the world, and the center of Thebes was this room. From it Pharaoh’s divine glory shone like radiant sunlight.
The crown prince sat at Pharaoh’s right hand with two of his wives. Three years older than Abayomi, Webensennu behaved as though he were Pharaoh already, nodding with grave dignity at a pair of wrestlers who competed for his attention while acrobatic dancers in sheer veils whirled before the royal chairs. Though he still wore the prince’s single lock of hair on his right temple, Webensennu gripped an ivory-handled flywhisk as though it were the flail or the crook, the symbols of Pharaoh’s office.
The Master of the Banquet clapped his hands; the dancers stopped, the wrestlers prostrated themselves before Pharaoh. Without warning, a bevy of male slaves spun into the room, each bearing a bowl of roasted meat or honey-glazed fruits. The delicious aromas of goose, duck, teal and pigeon rose from the steaming bowls, and Tuya thanked the gods that the nausea of early pregnancy had passed. She now had the appetite of a field slave at harvest time, and she intended to enjoy this meal to the fullest.
Pharaoh’s family, his noble guests and the visiting Syrians plucked food from the bowls while a group of women musicians danced to their playing of the harp, lute and flute. As a white-robed priestess of Amon-Re strummed the sacred sistrum, Tuya leaned forward to inquire if her husband found the meal pleasing.
The words never left her lips. A sudden shriek interrupted the musicians and the women scattered as one of the king’s food-tasters knocked a bowl to the floor and staggered forward, his hands clutching at his throat. As the crowd gasped in horror, the terrified slave tottered toward his god and king, then collapsed as blood ran from his nose and mouth.
In an instant, Abayomi’s arm encircled her waist. “To your chamber,” he said, pulling her from her chair as his eyes swept the room. “Wait there. You will be safe, I swear it.”
Alone in her chamber, Tuya knelt before the stone statue of Montu and numbly gazed at the figure. What power would such a statue have against one who wanted to poison her husband or her soon-coming son? Montu’s strong arm had done nothing to aid Yosef, and only blind luck had saved Pharaoh’s life tonight. If the poison that struck the innocent slave had worked more slowly, Pharaoh would be well on his way to the underworld. Yet thousands of priests throughout Egypt offered daily sacrifices to protect their king, the divine one.
Which of the gods of Egypt could help her? She despised Bastet, Sagira’s goddess, and Montu had failed her in the past. Amon-Re was Pharaoh’s divine father, but though she would not admit it aloud, she felt nothing but contempt for a god who would allow death to come so close to the anointed king.
Yosef had spoken of and prayed to El Shaddai, the invisible god in whom the world lived and moved and breathed, and yet Yosef now passed his days in Pharaoh’s prison. Yet there had been no announcement of a child born to Potiphar’s wife, so perhaps Yosef had managed to escape the trap Sagira laid for him. Perhaps prison had proved to be a place of refuge for Yosef, a way out of Sagira’s reach. Tuya did not know whether this god could be trusted, but she had believed in his existence from the first time she heard Yosef speak of the Almighty One. He was real, for Yosef would not lie, and El Shaddai had manifested his power by saving Yosef’s life. Because this god was so different from the gods of Egypt, omnipresent and yet invisible, perhaps he worked in unexpected ways.
She turned from the statue of Montu and stared instead at the painted images of Pharaoh on the chamber walls. Distracted, she closed her eyes. “If you are there, Almighty One,” she whispered, “hear the words of Tuya, friend to your servant Yosef. Protect my unborn child, and protect your servant Yosef. If you do not do these things—”
She paused. Most Egyptians threatened the gods with the desecration of their temples or the withholding of offerings if petitions were not answered, but would threats offend an all-powerful god? And how did one punish a god who had no temple and no priests?
“Please do these things,” she whispered. “Please hear me, Almighty One. For today I have petitioned only you.”
Potiphar strode into Pharaoh’s chamber in the quiet of the afternoon, a time when the king usually rested or enjoyed the entertainment provided by his dancing girls. Today, though, Amenhotep sat pensive and quiet in his chair.
Potiphar cleared his throat, hoping the sound would spare him the agony of bending his arthritic knees to the floor. Fortunately, Pharaoh heard and gestured in Potiphar’s direction.
The captain of the guard strode into the royal presence. “O Pharaoh, live forever! I have important news, my king. We have investigated and determined that the shame of yesterday’s attempt on your life was made with the help of either the palace butler or the chief baker. The surgeons were unable to tell if the poison was ingested as drink or food, so we have arrested both men. They await your divine judgment.”
“I will give it—later,” Pharaoh said, inclining his head on his palm. His thoughts seemed far away.
Potiphar shifted uncomfortably. “Is there anything else, mighty Pharaoh?”
The king’s gaze shifted to Potiphar’s face. “Have you thought much about my reign, my captain? You knew my father well—how would you compare my leadership to his?”
Potiphar hesitated, wavering between truth and diplomacy. “You are much the same, and yet different,” he said, his hand tightening around the hilt of his sword. “Your father, Tuthmosis, was a warrior and you have the same fierce heart. Your father fought until he died. But you, my king, have thought much of other things.”
“The other world,” Pharaoh murmured, his gaze drifting again. “Do you know, Potiphar, that I can boast that no man has gone hungry during my reign? The Nile has brought forth her abundance every year. Therefore I know the gods are pleased with me. No priest has dared to think of bringing death to my door.”
Aghast that the king would speak of the age-old rite by which a pharaoh gave his life for his country, Potiphar blinked in silence. In past dynasties, whenever the Nile did not flood sufficiently, famine smote the land so harshly that the people cried out in grief. Because Pharaoh was the giver of fertility and the preserver of all, he was also the Divine Son who might be put to death to ensure the fertility of the land. In the ancient pyramid texts the sages wrote that if the people had not eaten bread, or “the eye of Horus,” both the people and the gods should demand the king’s death so the fields might be fertilized with his blood. Since the kings were immortal gods, this sacrificial death was never declined…at least Potiphar had never heard of any king who refused his role in the ritual.
In a time of famine, when the priests decided that the kingdom had suffered enough, the high priest of Anubis would present himself to Pharaoh wearing the jackal mask of his god. In his arms he would carry the means of Pharaoh’s death: a basket containing a cobra. Knowing that the time had come, the king would raise the lid from the basket and lift the cobra to his breast.
Death by cobra poison came swiftly. After the king’s death, his internal organs were removed during the mummification process
and his heart and lungs ceremonially buried in the soil, bringing breath and life to the earth. A new king, the heir, would confirm his right to succession by installing his predecessor in the tomb, thus insuring the dead king’s place in the other world.
The kings of Egypt’s eighteenth dynasty had died in various ways, but Potiphar could not name one who had sacrificed himself for the land. Did Amenhotep’s new apprehension spring from some secret fear? Did he suppose the jackal-headed priest of Anubis to be lurking outside in a corridor?
“Do you anticipate a famine, my king?” Potiphar asked, his voice a subtle whisper in the room.
The king’s head jerked toward Potiphar. “Surely, Potiphar, you know I fear nothing in this world or the next, and yet sometimes…I wonder. As God, I give everything to my people. I worship myself as God in living form, for I am the physical son of Re.” Amenhotep pulled back his shoulders and lifted his granite jaw. At that moment, his dark, worried face seemed never to have known a smile. “And yet I am as mortal as other men. If I eat poison, I will die. Sometimes I do not feel like a god, and I am sobered by the possibility that I may not be.” He threw Potiphar a look of half-startled wariness. “A life is a great treasure to risk on a lie, don’t you think?”
For some shapeless reason Potiphar thought of Paneah. “My king, I cannot say. I am not a priest.” He bowed, eager to leave the conversation. “If you will excuse me, sire, the royal baker and cupbearer await me. We will take great pains to stall your journey to the next world for as long as possible.”
The hot wind of the sirocco blew sand into Abayomi’s eyes, and his servants sighed in relief when Pharaoh’s second son signaled for the company to halt. “We will pause from our hunt, for the sun is nearly overhead,” the prince called, deepening his awkward voice to command the authority due a royal son. He stepped from his chariot and felt the heat of the desert sand through his sandals. “Lead the horses to shelter here, behind the Great Sphinx of Harmak his, and prepare a resting place.”