Ancient Evenings

by Norman Mailer

  “Then, with His eyes, which were quick like the eyes of the hawk, He saw a movement across a field, and took our chariot off the boulevard, and over rough ground until we passed through a small ravine where there were many bushes, and two peasant girls walking ahead. I can tell you that as they stood to the side for us to go by, so was my Usermare off the chariot, and in the bushes with one girl leaving the other for me—such was His rush. (He could swing a sword faster than anyone I knew.) Quick as He spent the vigor of His Double-Crown to her front and back, He was ready with another set of salutes for my girl, and offered me His. Of course the new one, like the one before, smelled of mud, but I fell upon her with more gusto than the first as if, like my Pharaoh, I was in a charge of chariots. Of course, never in my life had I been more excited than at the thought of trodding into a cave where the Pharaoh, so to speak, had just been stepping in His bare feet”

  “You felt no hesitation?” asked my mother. Ptah-nem-hotep nodded. “I am curious,” He said, “that you knew no fear. These adventures, after all, took place only in your first life.”

  “But I could not have felt more awe if I had gone into battle,” my great-grandfather replied.

  “Yet,” said Ptah-nem-hotep, “if one is afraid, is it not easier to join a battle than to make love? In battle, you need only raise your arm.”

  “Yes,” said my great-grandfather, “except that I was joined to that girl in battle. I struck her thighs many times with my soft club. In truth, I felt some shame. My member, by comparison with what she had just known, was not what you would call mighty. Besides, the first girl was now screaming with joy at the force with which Usermare-Setpenere was jamming her. Still, I thumped my way into position, and then felt the great call of the chariot. My toes dug a hole in the ground before I was done. For my member was bathing in the creams of the Pharaoh. How good was the smell of the earth. ‘I love the stink of peasant women,’ the Pharaoh told me as we rode off, ‘especially when it lives on My fingers. Then I am near to embracing My great Double-Land itself.’

  “I was still feeling a pleasure as brilliant as awakening in the fields with the sun in my face. Even as I had come forth into that peasant girl, her heart came into me. I saw a great white light, as if from her belly, and the waters of the Pharaoh flew across my closed eyes like a thousand white birds. I felt my member had been anointed forever.”

  “And all,” said Ptah-nem-hotep, “from one share in common with a peasant girl.”

  “Look, the child is sleeping,” said my mother.

  I was pretending to. I had noticed that as my great-grandfather told more, everyone present took less notice of me, and by now I had only to close my eyes and they would forget I was there. That was agreeable. They did not trouble any longer to cover their thoughts. But then, in truth, I was near to sleep, for I found myself comprehending matters I had never seen, and for which I knew no name.

  “We rode off again,” said my great-grandfather, “as if nothing had happened, but so soon as we quit the ruts of the field for the greater ruts of one of those unfinished boulevards, He stopped and said, ‘In the Sanctuary this morning, in the middle of our prayers, I saw Myself. I was alone, and I was dead. In the middle of the battle I was surrounded, and I was alone, and I was dead.’ Before I could reply, He had the horses galloping again. My jaws were slamming against my head.

  “I did not know where He would take us, but before long we were out of the town and riding along a narrow road that soon became a trail through a break in the cliffs. Now it grew so steep that we dismounted and sometimes had to stop to lift stones that had fallen on the trail from the heights on either side. Once or twice, I thought He was ready to tie the steeds, but after we climbed through the notch, it widened a little, and I could see it had once been a road.

  “When we stopped to rest, we were all alone in the middle of a ravine, and it was then He said, ‘I will show you a place that is as secret to Me as My Secret Name, and you will not live if you betray this place.’ He looked at me with such warmth that I felt as if I were in the presence of Ra Himself.

  “ ‘But first,’ He said to me, ‘I must tell you the story of Egypt. Otherwise you would be ignorant of the importance of My secret.’ ” With this, my great-grandfather came to a complete pause, looked at all of us, and sighed, as though to comment on his ignorance then. “You cannot know, Great Ninth,” he said, “how little I understood by my Pharaoh’s remark. I had never known that Egypt had a story. I had a story, and there were charioteers I knew with stories, and a whore or two, but the story of Egypt!—I hardly knew what to say. We had a river and it flooded each year. We had Pharaohs, and the oldest man I knew could remember one who was different from all the others because He did not believe in Amon, but I didn’t remember His name. Before that, there had been Thutmose the Third for whom our Royal School of Charioteers was named, and Queen Hat-shep-sut, and a Pharaoh, thousands of years ago, named Khufu but He lived in Memphi, not Thebes, and built a mountain higher than anyone had seen in the Two-Lands and two other mountains built by two other Pharaohs were next to it. That was all the story of Egypt I knew.

  “He told me of other things, however. We sat side by side on the rocks of the ravine looking out to the Eastern Bank. In the distance, across the river, Thebes was thriving, and we could hear the sounds of its workshops as clearly as the echo of a rock falling in the next canyon. So it is hard to think of myself as dreaming, although I could not separate the stories He told me about Thutmose the Third, and Amenhotep the Second, and the Third. Yet when He went on to speak of His own Father, Seti, I could see one Pharaoh clearly at last since Seti’s picture had been chiseled into the stone of many a temple wall, and this allowed me to understand how the days of Usermare-Setpenere were different from my own when we were boys. I always saw the back of my father. I looked at his elbows while he worked in the fields, but Ramses the Second saw His Father on many temple walls holding a prisoner’s head by a hank of hair, there, cut into the stone. I used to feel whenever I looked at such a picture as if the breath of Seti was about to burn the back of my neck, and that I was the prisoner. I used to wonder whether Ramses the Second felt the same when He was a boy but I did not dare to ask Him.

  “Then He began to tell me of Thutmose the Third who was supposed to become King but Hat-shep-sut reigned in His place because She had been married to the second Thutmose. So the Third had to live in the Temple as a priest, and was required to tend the incense pots whenever Hat-shep-sut came to pray. He grew such a great anger that when She died and He became Pharaoh, He was not only as mighty in battle as a lion released from its cage, but also ordered His stonemasons to chip away the name of Hat-shep-sut from all the temples. He cut His own name in Her place.

  “ ‘Why,’ I remember asking of my Pharaoh, ‘was the Temple of Hat-shep-sut not destroyed instead of Her name?’ and He told me that Thutmose did not wish to enrage those Gods Who loved Hat-shep-sut most—He wished merely to confuse Them. I remember Ramses the Second looked at me and seized my knee with His fingers and gripped it. ‘I, too, will be a King to cut His name into stone,’ He said, and told me more about the greatness of Thutmose the Third and how many battles He won and the plunder He took. I was told of the ebony statue of the King of Kadesh, for there was such a Monarch in those days, too, and Thutmose defeated him, and took his statue back to Thebes. Then Ramses the Second told me, The name of the warrior who stood with Thutmose on His Chariot was Amenenahab. Like all who are named after Amon, he was bold. He understood the desire of Thutmose the Third before the King knew His own longing. You will come to understand as well.’ With that, He gave me a kiss. My lips felt as radiant as His Chariot, and I could hardly listen while He told me of other Pharaohs not strong enough to hold the sword of Thutmose the Third such as the Pharaoh Who did not like Amon, the Fourth Amenhotep, a man of odd appearance with a soft round belly, a large nose, and a high head. Yet He must have remembered what Thutmose did to Hat-shep-sut for He did the same to Amon. A tho
usand stonemasons cut away the name of Amon in the temples, and with their chisels wrote a new name: Re-Aton. That, Ramses the Second told me, is God said backwards, even as Re-Aton is the opposite of neter. This Amenhotep the Fourth then changed His own name to Akhenaton, and He built a city in the middle of Egypt that He called the Horizon of Aton. I could not believe all I heard. It seemed strange to me. So soon as it was done, it was undone. For so soon as Akhenaton was dead, Aton’s name was struck from the stone, and the name of Amon was put back. ‘All this,’ said my Pharaoh, ‘caused such a weakness in the land, that by now, we paint our sacred marks on wood and do not cut them into the rock. For that reason My Father Seti told His artists to work only in stone. There are many drawings of My Father where He holds the heads of prisoners before He strikes them dead, and they are on stone.’ With that, He gave a great laugh, stood up, grasped my hair as if to strike me, laughed again, said, ‘Come, I have something to show you,’ and we moved up the road.

  “Soon we came to a place where we had to tie the horses, leave the chariot, and go up a trail so narrow we were near to climbing the cliffs straight up. For certain, we lifted ourselves from rock to rock and often had to offer our arm to the other. I was glad for the difficulty since His stories of Pharaohs who changed the names on the walls of temples had left me in confusion. If there was one thought as sure to me as the stones of the Temple of Karnak, it was that Amon-Ra was our greatest God. So how could there have been a time when He gave way to another God? And that the Pharaoh of this Aton had been a funny-looking man with a big belly—well, I was short of breath from my thoughts more than the climb.

  “When we came to the top of the cliff, I was expecting to find the desert on the other side but saw instead only a descent into a new valley and another rough trail. Standing on the ridge, my King pointed back to the river. ‘There is a place named Kurna out there,’ He told me, ‘where they breed nothing but thieves. It may look like a poor town, but wealth is buried under every hut. Someday, if those thieves make Me angry enough, I will dig up the town of Kurna and cut their hands off. For they are grave robbers. Every family in that town is descended from grave robbers.’

  “I soon learned why He said this. If my head was tired from stories of Thutmose the Third, and Hat-shep-sut and all the Amenhoteps, my Ramses now told of the first Thutmose Who had come to visit the mortuary temples of His ancestors here, and saw how many of Their tombs had been entered and robbed of gold furniture and other treasures. Beholding this desecration of dead Pharaohs, the first Thutmose cried aloud to the sky. For when He died, His tomb could also be robbed. Like His ancestors, He might wander homeless in Khert-Neter. ‘Then,’ said my Ramses, ‘He came to this valley.’

  “We looked at it together. I wondered if an underground river had shaped the place. For a more uneven ground I had never seen. There were many holes before us that opened into other cavities beneath, and many a large cave. I could feel how water had once come twisting through with a roar, carrying away sand and the softer clay, until only rock was left. Now this rock had holes large as a King’s chambers, and halfway up many of the vertical walls in this wilderness of boulders and ledges were what looked to be great caves.

  “Now, my Ramses, Usermare-Setpenere, told me how this First Thutmose had found a cliff with a small entrance that you could only reach by climbing straight up, but, once within, was one cave after another behind this entrance and He said, ‘Here I will build a secret tomb,’ and He had the caves enlarged by the King’s Architect until there were twelve rooms.

  “The rock from those chambers was carted away to the desert, and the laborers were given no opportunity to speak of their work. My Ramses said no more, but I knew what had happened to the workmen. I heard their silence. ‘Nobody ever discovered the hiding place of King Thutmose the First,’ Usermare said. ‘Not even the Pharaohs know the burial place of other Pharaohs. Behind any of these rocks, high up on the walls, you might find one of Them, but there are a million and infinity of rocks in this place. I do not know if that is why it is called the Place of Truth, but here will be hidden My tomb.’

  “Since I lived in the greatest awe of my Pharaoh, I did not want to hear of His secret. So I thought to change the subject. Yet, like black-copper-from-heaven, I was drawn back to talk of it nonetheless. If, I asked, these tombs are difficult to find, then how had the grave robbers of Kurna been able to prosper? Here He took me by the arm, and said, ‘Kiss My lips. Vow that you will not speak of these matters. If you do, your tongue is cut from your throat.’ We kissed again, and I knew what it was, great Ramses the Ninth, to live in the royal body of a Pharaoh, for again I felt a radiance in my head, and the burden of the secret was on me before it was told, even as His tongue was on mine. I knew the life of my own tongue and how I would never want to lose it.

  “ ‘No Pharaoh thought it wise to let other Pharaohs know His burial place in this valley,’ He said. ‘Still, someone had to have knowledge. Otherwise, a tomb could be robbed, and the theft not discovered. So each High Priest learned the tomb of His Pharaoh, and before he died, he would give such knowledge to the next High Priest.’

  “Now, He told me that a High Priest in the time of Amenhotep the Fourth revealed one tomb to the families of Kurna, and shared the spoils. Then these thieves had a quarrel. The sacrilege was discovered. ‘The men of Kurna,’ said Usermare, ‘brought such fear to the heart of Amenhotep the Fourth that He changed His name to Akhenaton and moved halfway up the river between Thebes and Memphi.’

  “I could not believe these thieves of Kurna held so strong a curse that even a Pharaoh would fear them, but as I pondered it, I decided these robbers had been able to invade the tomb because of special prayers said for them by the High Priest, and for the first time I understood how there might be much unholy advantage in being holy. Still, I wondered how these thieves of Kurna had been able to touch the mummy of the Pharaoh. Had any of them died from the fear that bursts your heart?

  “Oh, the heat. The trail was open to the last of the sun and my body grew feverish. I was cold in the shade. It was late afternoon, and we were climbing upward in the second valley, in this Place of Truth, which meant—if its name could be right—that the Truth was hot and ugly indeed. Over the next ridge the sun began to quiver. There was a high hill before us with a peak not unlike the little pyramid on top of each tomb in the Necropolis, The Horn, was what Usermare-Setpenere called it—and the sun now passed behind The Horn and was gone.

  “It was here, in the deep gloom of this last valley, that Ramses the Second showed me a pinnacle of stone as high as an obelisk. It stood no more than a cubit from the cliff, looking as if it had been split away from the rest of the rock by a blow from lightning. In that cleft, Ramses the Second now put Himself, and by much pushing of His back against the wall, and the clever use of His hands and feet against edges in the pinnacle no wider than my finger, I saw Him climb until He was above my height and then twice and three times above it, a sight such as I had never expected, since His white linen was filthy from the effort, yet He wore His War-Crown all the way, never removing it. Once or twice I thought He could not reach the next grip for need of moving around an overhang that kept threatening to tip His helmet, indeed, it almost fell off when, from one position of great strain, He had to lean back so far that I saw it begin to tilt, but believe me, He held to the pinnacle with one arm and saved the Crown with the other, then reached a ledge on the wall where He could perch, and hooted to me to come up. He was now as removed as the height of one of the columns in the Temple of Karnak, which is like the height of ten men, and I began the ascent with the thought that my King was as high above me as my own life, but then, the climb proved not so difficult as it looked, and was almost like going up a ladder most irregularly built. I grew to love the rock that pressed against my back for I could lean on it when I became tired from the pain in my fingers of a poor grip or a sharp grip, and the rock before me in the pinnacle became as intimate to me as the crevices of a man or a wo
man. I knew I would dream of it on many a night since I felt closer to Geb holding myself to these wrinkles in His rocky skin than I had known you could come to a God without prayer.

  “It took me a while to reach the ledge, long enough to learn that living on the side of a wall is not so different from walking on the ground, no more different than sleep from daylight, and I gave a whoop as I joined Him, and received a quick embrace for the pleasure of our accomplishment. I must say I liked Him then as much as any soldier I had known, and thought of Him as my friend, not my Pharaoh.

  “ ‘Here,’ He said, ‘this ledge is like any of a thousand ledges, yet there is none like it. For see what is behind the corner of this boulder.’

  “It was a stone almost as tall as Himself, of a good thickness, and it nearly divided the ledge in two, but at the rear was a hole large enough for a man to crawl through, and when at His nod I tried it, a lizard went clawing up the walls of a cave inside, and I was in blackness but for the little light that entered.

  “In the next instant, Ramses the Second was there beside me, and we sat in the heat, trying to rest despite the scratchings and wails of every creature we had disturbed by our entrance. Bats flew past like whips, and I heard that cry they make so close to the sound of a dying man’s breath—that whistle of panic. They spewed us with dung, yet the odor was forever altered by my nearness to the Pharaoh. In the dark, I could feel the nobility of His Presence, and that was as large as the cave, by which I mean His nearness was like a heart beating in the cave, and so the mean smell of bat dung was made sweeter by my Pharaoh’s own odor full of royal sweat from the climb. To this day, over all my four lives I cannot despise the odor of the bat altogether since it always recalls to me the warm generous limbs of that young Ramses. Yes.

  “We did not sit on the floor of the cave for long, however, before the luminous strength of His body gave vision to my eyes, and I could see better in the gloom, and recognized that this cave was more a tunnel than a chamber, and He laughed at the ingenuity of His scheme, for He would build a tomb of twelve rooms here. Then He added, ‘All this is true if I return from the wars to come,’ and we were silent within this cave. The lizards still scuttled away from us in a clatter and I knew their Gods were terrified of smelling the sunlight on our limbs.