The Judgment

by D. J. Niko

  Hiram pursed his lips and fell silent.

  Zadok leaned into his king’s ear and whispered. “Offer him cities in Galilee.”

  Solomon drew a sharp breath. Zadok continued. “Twenty of them.”

  The king turned to the priest in surprise. Zadok affirmed his position with a nod, hoping Solomon would see his logic: the mountainous terrain of Galilee, though beautiful and fertile, would be foreign to a seafaring people. Hiram would be impressed enough by the magnitude of the gift to accept it in exchange for services. Later, when he would find himself unable to take advantage of it, Solomon would offer to help develop it—for a price.

  Solomon turned nearly in slow motion to his guest. “Of course, I do not expect a favor. I mean to pay. You have been a good friend, my lord Hiram. I wish to reward you with land in my own country. If you honor me by accepting it, I shall deed you twenty cities in the land of Galilee, in the mountains of Naphtali, very near your kingdom.”

  Hiram sat up. “It is a generous offer you make, my lord.”

  “Then say you will take it.”

  The Tyrian king took a long sip of wine and firmly set the empty cup on the table. “Yes. I will accept your gift. My navy shall set sail for Ophir in a fortnight. Ready your men.”

  “You shall have a hundred of my best.”

  The two kings placed their hands on each other’s shoulders and touched foreheads.

  When Hiram pulled away, a look of concern crossed his face.

  “What is it, brother?” Solomon asked.

  He held up his cup and a servant rushed to him with the bladder of wine. “There is also the matter of Egypt. The Egyptians have long dominated the trade with Ophir. As you know, they have a voracious appetite for gold. It will be difficult to negotiate for so great a quantity as you require. The pharaoh does not like to share his resources.”

  “Leave the pharaoh to me. Continue with your preparations, and I will ensure we are well received at Ophir.” Solomon signaled to one of his footmen. “Music!”

  Two young men, one holding a lyre and the other a harp, entered the banquet hall and sat on low stools in direct view of Solomon and his honored guest. The harp player plucked the strings, releasing a sweet, angelic sound. Zadok closed his eyes and listened to the melodic prayer offered to the heavens, every note resonating within his core. He sent up thoughts of gratitude for the triumphant negotiations that would ultimately bring more wealth to Israel and glory to Yahweh. There was every indication that God’s promise to his people would be fulfilled by the son of David. Tears formed behind his eyelids as he was filled with profound joy and thankfulness that he had lived to see the dawn of the greatest epoch in the Hebrews’ history.

  The lyrist joined in with a somber cadence, which dissolved into a rapid strum that was downright playful. The mood in the room was instantly buoyed. Zadok looked toward his left. The young king was transfixed, as he often was when music played. It was a gift from his father, this love of melody. “When I play the lyre, I am closest to God,” King David had always said. David had mastered the instrument, and in his hands it became a tool for calling the divine and subduing the wicked.

  When the first psalm ended, Solomon acknowledged Zadok’s gaze. “We must bring the lyrist with us.”

  The priest inferred the answer but asked anyway. “Where to, my lord?”

  “Tomorrow we ride for Zoan and the palace of Psusennes II. We shall take gifts of gold, silver, wine, olive oil, and golden honey to the pharaoh.”

  “My lord, it is my duty to caution you. Relations between Israel and Egypt have been strained . . .”

  Solomon raised a hand. “It is time for change. What we need now are allies, not foes. Egypt is weak. Its leader lacks vision. Trade has all but ceased, and the state’s wealth has dried up. Pharaoh cannot even build a water network for his people.” He leaned forward and spoke softly. “He is spending all the state’s money on gold for funereal masks to glorify himself and his kin, to the detriment of infrastructure. In exchange for some of that gold, there is much we can offer Egypt.”

  Zadok hesitated. Solomon’s political agenda had never reached this far afield, and he wondered if his decision was a sound one. The Egyptians, in his estimation, could not be trusted. They swayed like reeds in the wind. And their attitude toward the people of Israel, though unspoken, was not a favorable one: since the days of the exodus, when the Hebrews escaped bondage in search of their promised land, the Egyptians considered them an inferior breed. But other than his own instinct, Zadok did not have a good argument for quelling the king’s plan.

  The musicians launched into a merry tune that seemed to speak of optimism and dreams fulfilled.

  As if reading his priest’s thoughts, Solomon said, “Trust me, Zadok. This journey will change everything.”

  6

  The king’s caravan arrived in Zoan—or Tanis, as the traders knew it—on the third day of the last month of the great flood. The sand mounds on the outskirts of the city opened like red maws and gave way to a fertile valley in the desert’s belly. The arid land suddenly was thick with palms and orchards fed by the high waters of the Nile, which splayed into a delta on its way to the sea.

  Zadok sat up on his camel and glanced at Solomon, a slim figure cloaked in white from head to foot. His youthful vigor showed in his riding posture, which had not wilted despite the distance traveled by the royal caravan of two hundred camels and donkeys and nearly as many men. As was the custom for kings, Solomon could have spent the twelve-day journey inside a fringed silk carriage on the backs of the beasts of burden. He chose to ride like a common man. The stretch between Canaan and Egypt was full of raiders and thieves, he’d said, so it was prudent to keep status hidden.

  Even the gifts intended for Pharaoh Psusennes II were humbly packaged. Wrapped in black sackcloth woven of goat’s hair, the kind used to store grain or house desert dwellers, were treasures worthy of a king: forty talents of the finest imported silver and gold, earthen pots full of thick thyme honey from the Levant, olive oil and jars of cured black olives from the groves outside Jerusalem, and enough wine to warm the royal household through the season of the emergence.

  As they entered the city through a tunnel of palms, Zadok halted his camel and took a moment in stillness to observe the unfolding panorama of the capital of Lower Egypt, wrestled from the sodden banks of the Nile by the pharaohs of the twenty-first dynasty. Zoan was a sprawling oasis, its tree boughs bent with clusters of fruit—dates, sycamore figs, pomegranates. The scent of wet earth was everywhere, a sweet fragrance that called to mind fecundity and renewal.

  Swallows circled above, their forked tails slicing the cool wind blowing in from Mediterranea, the sea beyond the river valley. A pair of hoopoes, their crowns of golden feathers splayed open, flitted among the fig trees, inserting their long beaks into the hollows of the trunks to coax out the tastiest beetles. The musical hoo-hoo-hoo of their song hung in the air like a welcome.

  Though winter was not yet upon the land, the sky was low and thick with pewter clouds. The chill of autumn’s breath went through Zadok’s old bones, making him shiver. He pulled a woolen blanket from his saddlebag and tossed it across his lap.

  Solomon caught up to him. “This is it, old friend. The land from which our people escaped slavery so long ago.” He pointed to the river in the distance. “The Nile Delta. It is where the children of Israel were subjugated in the most deplorable manner, hoisting silt from the river to make mud bricks for the Egyptians’ houses.” His jaw tightened. “Every injustice has its day of reckoning.”

  Zadok knew he was referring to the ten plagues that swept over Zoan, a series of warnings from the Lord to the reigning pharaoh. It wasn’t until the tenth plague struck and all Egyptian firstborns died that the pharaoh was brought to his knees and finally released the Hebrews from their servitude. It was from this very city they escaped and made their way back to Canaan, their patriarchal home. Zadok imagined the throngs passing through the same avenue of d
ate palms, heads bent and backs whipped raw, and was struck by the irony of a royal Israelite caravan entering the city for the first time since the exodus.

  The king prodded his camel with a braided goat-hair crop, and the priest followed. As they made their way toward the riverbanks, a great temple structure came into view. A high wall of dressed stones encircled the compound so that only the tops of the pylons were visible from ground level. Zadok imagined the builders’ intention was to keep the temple and the worship therein cloaked in mystery.

  Breaks in the wall, which was as thick as six camels standing side by side, offered some glimpses inside. One opening revealed a processional way into the temple, lined by two rows of obelisks and statues glorifying past kings. At the end of the way was the temple forecourt, delineated by four high columns with capitals carved in the likeness of palm fronds and a score of lower ones, fluted all around and capped with delicate engravings depicting papyrus brooms.

  It was impossible to see inside the temple—that surely was by design—but beyond its closed facade there must have been a courtyard, for a colossal statue towered behind it. Ramesses II, the one the Egyptians called “the great ancestor” and the one reviled by the Israelites for his brutal campaigns into the Levant, kept silent watch over the temple and the whole of Zoan, his stone effigy a reminder of the nation’s long since expired glory days.

  When it reached the banks of the Nile, the caravan stopped beneath a canopy of sycamores. Across the river was the royal palace, built upon a manmade mountain of stone. The pylons of the pharaonic dwelling rose some fifty cubits above the river’s swollen levels, and their flagpoles reached even higher as banners whipped the air between heaven and earth.

  The riders already had been given their orders: the royal entourage would camp riverside within view of the palace. Only the king and his top officers would be collected by Psusennes’ personal barge and taken across the river, where they would stay in quarters reserved for state visits.

  The pharaoh’s men were waiting for their passengers by the riverbanks. They had been alerted weeks ago of the royal arrival, when Solomon had sent word to his counterpart requesting audience for trade talks.

  “Egypt will welcome the king of Israel with trumpets and pipes,” Psusennes wrote back in a message.

  Zadok was suspicious of the pharaoh’s enthusiasm and doubtful that centuries of animosity could be so easily forgotten. He kept his reservations to himself so as to not dampen Solomon’s spirit on the eve of crucial negotiations.

  The Egyptians had lined up in two rows flanking an aisle lined with brilliantly colored carpets. They wore white cotton, knee-length kilts with vertical knife pleats, and belts of woven wool. Their chests were bare and smooth, the color of cured mud. The only ornament on their bodies was a pair of brass armbands wrapped around the tops of their biceps. Their eyes were ringed in kohl and exaggerated; yet their gazes were vacant, almost idiotic.

  They stood at attention and waved green papyrus brooms as Solomon and his men descended the riverbanks and proceeded to the barge, an impressive vessel carved of ebony and decorated with gold. Twelve oars, also of ebony, protruded from each side, and a rectangular sail hung from a mast claimed from the trunk of a date palm. Three young women dressed in white serenaded the passengers with lutes, harps, and song as fragile as a meadowlark’s as they came onboard.

  As the inundation came to an end, the Nile was at its fullest. The water, which took on the hue of a dove’s wing under the moody sky, had risen above the midway point of the Nilometer, a stepped structure abutting the stone mound on which the palace was built. It would be a good year for the Egyptians, who counted on the annual coming of the floods for irrigation of their crops.

  If nothing else, the pharaoh would be in good spirits, Zadok thought. He sat back on a gilded chair and listened to the maidens’ high-pitched lilt, which competed for his attention with the cadenced whoosh of the oars as they sliced the river. Tranquil as the surroundings were, he could not find peace. He vowed to not let his guard down despite the warm welcome.

  The boat came to rest on the shore of the promontory that housed the palace and its auxiliary structures. To underscore the godlike aura of the pharaoh, no other dwelling stood nearby. The royal compound was shielded from the common existence by a thicket of palms that formed an amphitheater around the finger of land dedicated to the regal court.

  Solomon and his entourage ascended the steps leading to the entrance courtyard. The low, mud-brick walls of the T-shaped forecourt facing the Nile were freshly coated in brilliant white that dazzled the eyes even on a misty autumn day. In the midst of the court was a series of rectangular lotus ponds lined by rows of date palms, straight as poles and perfectly maintained. On the fringes were the walking gardens, encircled by clumps of salt cedars whose leaves had yellowed in response to the cold, and shaded by mighty sycamores and willows. In the center were planted all manner of flowers that were foreign to Zadok’s eyes. A gentle breeze coming in from the river carried the scent of sweet anise from the herb beds around the footpaths. The bucolic scene was as close to Eden as anything Zadok had witnessed in the lower heavens, but he knew with all conviction that within it lay a toxic temptation he could not yet name.

  The hour advanced, and a melancholy dusk fell upon Zoan. The clouds had parted now, revealing a lilac sky and a sliver of a moon afloat in the void. The moisture was so thick that breathing was like inhaling a fine mist.

  Zadok steadied himself upon his staff and waited on the edge of the open terrace set upon the high point of the palace mound. Soon the banquet room would be filled with important Egyptians coming to pay tribute to his master. Solomon had gone alone to meet Psusennes prior to the festivities. It was an unofficial meeting, and no business was to be discussed. As was royal protocol, the two would arrive together at the gathering, a move symbolic of their pending alliance.

  He felt a presence behind him and turned around with some effort. Benaiah, the army captain, stood there like a statue, rigid and expressionless. Though he came alive on the battlefield, Benaiah was awkward in social situations. He was there as a bodyguard to the king because duty called for it, but it was obvious he’d rather be in the trenches, belching and guffawing with his mighty men.

  “What news, Benaiah?” Zadok asked.

  “I met the pharaoh’s commander in chief; they call him Shoshenq.” The captain rubbed his short black beard and squinted toward the Nile.

  His words are as few as his sword cuts are many, Zadok thought. He tried to encourage him. “This Shoshenq . . . is he worthy of his post?”

  Benaiah laid a hand upon his waist sash, onto which was tied a small but lethal knife. “He has a taste for blood. And a certain disdain for the Hebrews.”

  “He is a Libyan, is he not?”

  He nodded. “Son of the chief of the Ma, the tent dwellers and warriors of the desert lands. Also the nephew of Osorkon the Elder, who reigned in Egypt before Psusennes and his predecessor.”

  “Royal descent. But a foreigner nonetheless.”

  “He looks and thinks like an Egyptian. And wants to fight like one, though he does not have many opportunities under Psusennes. He has made no secret of his desire to push east into Canaan and the Transjordan, but the pharaoh is more interested in pleasures of the flesh than in conquests.” Benaiah’s rotund brown face hardened. “In my mind, Shoshenq is a threat.”

  “So long as the pharaoh lives, I think not,” Zadok said. “Psusennes is too lazy and content to wage a campaign.”

  “But he is also in want of tribute. If he cannot get enough in his own country . . .”

  Zadok laid a hand on the captain’s shoulder. “This is why we are here, Benaiah. To avert any plans of invasion by forging an alliance. If Psusennes can get what he wants by peaceful means, there will be no need for bloodshed.”

  The trumpet of the pharaoh sounded. It was time to go inside. Zadok cast a glance toward the banquet room, which was filling with Egyptians dressed to celebr
ate, and turned back to Benaiah. “I know a captain must always be on his guard. But we are here to bring about peace. Let us not forget.”

  The two made their way to the great hall and stood among the masses that had gathered to celebrate the royal visit. There must have been six-score pairs of kohl-ringed eyes in the room, all turned toward the massive gilt wood doors that would be the gateway for the procession. The guests were dressed in impeccable white linen and wore black wigs cut in styles so similar it was difficult to distinguish one from the other. Some of the women braided their wigs and crowned them with enameled headdresses and perfume cones that released a pleasant myrrh scent, masking the odor of perspiration. Jewelry was dazzling. There were enough gold and precious gems to decorate a temple, yet these people wore them for their own aggrandizement. Zadok, who stood out in his draped gray gown and blue mantle like a beggar in a crowd of noblemen, cringed at the display of excess.

  The heavy doors, carved with Egyptian deities and symbols, creaked open and a pair of trumpeters marched into the room as their horns delivered short, fanciful bursts. Behind them were pipers chiming in with shrill but happy notes and percussionists tapping frame drums. A servant girl with breasts exposed walked backward, lining the king’s path with lotus blossoms.

  The pharaoh, seated on a gilded chair with purple cushions, entered on the backs of eight male servants with bare chests and shaven heads. The members of the crowd, standing on either side of the pharaoh’s passage, bowed simultaneously.

  He was a sight to behold. His hairless torso gleamed in the torchlight, for it was rubbed with perfumed oils that released the scent of bitter almond as he passed. His breastplate was shaped like outstretched eagle’s wings and inlaid with stones as big as fists and carved in the shape of scarabs. He held a flail in one arm and a crook in another: the symbols of his kingship. A tall, tapered headdress rendered in silver and bronze bore a coiled serpent with lapis lazuli eyes to match his own, which were gray with flecks of deep blue.