by Jerry Dubs
“We nearly lost Pharaoh Hatshepsut,” Admiral Ahmose said. He clapped his palms against his legs and stood. “If she hadn’t managed to defeat that giant, well, I might have joined Ty in his wooden box. It would have been better than going home to face General Thutmose.”
Imhotep nodded agreement and waited.
“Have you seen Ty?” Admiral Ahmose asked, finally approaching what was on his mind.
Imhotep shook his head. “No. I’ve heard him scream sometimes and then he stops right away.” He shrugged.
“They gag him as soon as he starts,” Admiral Ahmose said. “Most of the time he sits there, his eyes open, but he isn’t seeing anything. I think in some way he is already dead. His ka has fled, but his body hasn’t surrendered yet.” He looked up sharply at Imhotep.
“It isn’t our way. He should have his head cut off, or, if she didn’t want to spill blood, she could have strangled him. I’m not defending him,” Admiral Ahmose added quickly. “He is a traitor and should die, but this, this is horrible.”
Imhotep agreed, but he said only, “As you said, Admiral Ahmose, he is a traitor and his actions nearly caused the death of Pharaoh Hatshepsut. And Queen Ati. And Akila.”
Admiral Ahmose held up his hands. “I know, I know.” He shook his head and looked off into the distance. “I am happy that we are leaving. I can’t wait to put this all behind us.”
Imhotep clapped his shoulder. “Oh,” he said, looking at the mass of goods, “I don’t know, Admiral. After you get all of this on the ships, we won’t be leaving very much behind.”
Admiral Ahmose smiled and said, “Thank you Lord Imhotep. You understand that I’m not questioning Ty’s punishment. It is just that it isn’t our way. It doesn’t …” he said, lowering his head and shrugging. “It doesn’t feel right, that’s all.”
- 0 -
Three days later, as Re began his journey across the pale blue sky, Admiral Ahmose stood on the pier watching as a sailor led the final baboon aboard the ship. Curious, the baboon tugged at the leash as it climbed over the crates and sacks that fill the narrow walkway between the rowing benches.
“Once you’re out on the water, you can turn him loose,” Admiral Ahmose called. “The others are doing fine.”
He put his hands on his hips and stared out at the three other ships that were already loaded. They sat low in the water. When the sailors had rowed the ships away from land, the oars had stuck almost straight out from the side of the ships.
The men had carefully checked and recaulked dried sections of the hull and they would keep near the shoreline on the trip north. Admiral Ahose shrugged. There was nothing more he could do.
A farewell feast was already under way at the center of the newly rebuilt village and once the final ship was loaded, they would set sail.
He glanced at the mound of goods that would be loaded on the fifth ship. Smiling to himself, he recounted the baskets of myrrh tree saplings. There were thirty, one less than Imhotep had predicted back when they were building the fleet.
So he isn’t infallible, Admiral Ahmose thought as he turned to go join the feast.
- 0 -
Distant drums filled the air, the cattle that hadn’t fit onto the ships began lowing and the warriors of Ta Netjer stamped their feet in rhythm as King Parahu escorted Pharaoh Hatshepsut to the pier.
“Thank you, Pharaoh Hatshepsut,” he said, trying out the words Queen Ati had patiently taught him. “I hope you will visit again.”
Pharaoh Hatshepsut smiled at him and said, “We are honored to have you as a friend. You and Queen Ati must visit the Two Lands, which I hope you will view as a second home.”
She glanced over her shoulder at Akila, who approached her and raised her hands to the back of Pharaoh Hatshepsut’s neck. She untied the double cords that held the wide, beaded necklace in place and then reaching her hands past Pharaoh Hatshepsut’s neck, she carefully lowered the jewelry into her hands.
Pharaoh Hatshepsut carried the necklace to Queen Ati and draped it around her chest. Princess Tem reached up to tie the necklace in place behind her mother’s neck.
Leaning close, Pharaoh Hatshepsut said, “You are the heart and ka of this land, which is the Land of the Gods, Queen Ati.”
Her eyes moist with tears, Queen Ati touched the blue glass beads of the necklace as she looked at Pharaoh Hatshepsut. “And you, Ma’at-Ka-Re, are the breath of gods. You give us life.”
She nodded and Princess Tem stepped around her and offered Pharaoh Hatshepsut a parting gift, a small seedling of a myrrh tree nestled in a beautifully woven basket, the reeds intertwined with black hair.
Pharaoh Hatshepsut accepted the gift and glanced at the hair and back at Queen Ati.
“It is from the dead warrior. A reminder of victory you won in the Forest of Myrrh,” Queen Ati said.
A wide smile filled Pharaoh Hatshepsut’s face.
“A victory we won,” she said, leaning close to Queen Ati and touching her cheek to hers.
- 0 -
As the fifth ship carried Pharaoh Hatshepsut and Akila away from land, Admiral Ahmose and Imhotep waited alone on the pier. Small canoes would carry them out to the first ship where they would begin the long journey back to the Two Lands.
Turning at the splashing sound of a canoe drawing close, Admiral Ahmose said, “You were right, Lord Imhotep.”
“Oh, I’m sure I was,” Imhotep joked. “About what?” he asked with a smile.
“Remember when you said that we would bring thirty-one trees back with us, and I laughed and said that I would be sure that I counted?”
Imhotep nodded,
“There were thirty trees and I was sure that you were wrong.” he looked down at the small plant Pharaoh Hatshepsut had received from Queen Ati and had asked Ahmose to take on board with him.
“This is the thirty-first,” Ahmose said.
Things That Are True
Although this is a work of fiction, I tried very hard to remain true to the facts, if there really are facts, about ancient Egypt.
King Huni was the last king of the Third Dynasty. Whether the dynasty ended in revolt, as I suggest in this story, or if it passed with little anarchy to the next dynasty is unclear.
However, the records of the Eighteenth Dynasty when Pharaoh Hatshepsut ruled are much clearer. The ancient Egyptians were excellent record keepers, although, like modern rulers, they had no qualms about altering their telling of history to align it with their political aims. I’ll get to that in a moment.
Hatshepsut was the daughter of Thutmose I. His two sons, her older brothers, did die before their father. Amenmose was a general. Historians seem to agree on that.
Hatshepsut was married to her much younger half-brother Thutmose II, who apparently had some sort of infirmity — possibly physical, possibly mental. Either way, Hatshepsut gradually became a co-ruler with him and, when he died, she assumed the regency for her stepson Thutmose III.
She held that regency, and kept Thutmose III, who would come to be regarded as the Napoleon of ancient Egypt, from the throne for as long as fifteen years (depending on which chronology you want to believe) until her death.
She did spread the story of her divine conception as justification for claiming the throne for herself.
Years after she died, Thutmose III had her name removed from most of the monuments that we now believe she built. He might have been expressing contempt for a strong stepmother who kept him from the throne. He might have been simply appropriating her work as his own. He might have been erasing her memory to strengthen the legal argument for his rule as pharaoh.
We just don’t know.
At any rate, we do know from Pharaoh Hatshepsut’s amazing mortuary temple, which I had the pleasure of visiting, that she did send an expedition to the Land of Punt. An entire wall of her temple is devoted to the journey, which has been compared to a modern-day trip to Mars.
Historians have not agreed on the location of the fabled Land of Punt, although there
is a general agreement that it was somewhere on the horn of Africa near modern-day Somalia or Djibouti.
I totally fabricated the idea that Pharaoh Hatshepsut went on the voyage. There is not even a hint that she went to the Land of Punt. However, her advisor Nehsy did lead the expedition and he did meet King Parahu and Queen Ati. The queen was famously deformed as I described and the disease is now named after her.
I tried to describe accurately the construction of the ships and the gifts taken to and the tribute received from the Land of Punt (called the Land of the Gods or Ta Netjer by the ancient Egyptians).
Lastly, Senenmut is believed to have been Hatshepsut’s lover and father of her second child. While he is given credit for building her mortuary temple, curiously, he himself never claimed credit for designing it.
And, yes, the expedition did return with thirty-one myrrh trees. They were planted in front of Pharaoh Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple to create her very own Forest of Myrrh.
The Field of Reeds
Following is an excerpt from “The Field of Reeds,” the final novel of the Imhotep tetralogy.
The Field of Reeds
A novel by Jerry Dubs
Kebu the survivor
Something moved inside the wound in Kebu’s thigh.
Grimacing, the injured warrior leaned against the spongy, rotting bark of a fallen tree. He heard a soft rustling in the high grass behind him and, worried about snakes, he leaned to look behind the trunk.
Fern leaves, their surfaces glistening with moisture, crowded together, hiding the soft ground beneath them. Kebu blinked away sweat and told himself that the sound had been nothing more than a bird.
Above him sunlight leaned heavily on leaves shaped like giant spear tips. Around him the misty air hummed from the thrum of ungainly insects struggling to stay aloft. The air in Kerma had been hot, but never so heavy with water, even along the great river Iteru. And the land there was open. Trees lined the river, and wheat, barley, chickpeas, lettuce, and onions turned the fields green, but there was space beyond and between them where a person could glimpse sand or people or approaching animals.
Here, along the jungle route from Tadjoura to Kerma, the trail was enclosed by overhanging branches and towering ferns. The trees were covered in vines and Kebu couldn’t see what caused the rustling in the bushes or made the tree branches bend and sway in the unmoving air.
He closed his eyes as the shadows began a dizzying dance. For a moment he wobbled to a wave of vertigo and then he forced his eyes open. Leaning forward he looked again at the undergrowth on the other side of the tree. Satisfied that he wouldn’t frighten a snake or disturb a sleeping leopard, he sat to examine his thigh.
Beads of sweat rolled down his face and dropped from his narrow chin as he unwrapped the dirty linen he had torn from his shendyt and used to bind the jagged wound. The innermost layers of the bandage were yellow and bloody and stuck to his leg.
Gritting his teeth he tugged the linen free, ripping a sharp pain from the long, deep gash on his thigh. The skin around the wound was tender and the mud he had smeared on it after escaping the slaughter at Tadjoura had dried. Feeling something pinch inside the wound, he picked at the caked mud, pulling flakes of it away.
His eyes blurred from sweat and pain. He wiped them dry with the back of his arm and bent closer to his injured leg.
The wound was dirty and raw; the mud hadn’t bound it together.
The mud here isn’t magical like the mud from the sacred river Iteru, he thought.
Kebu stared at the wound. He didn’t see anything moving under the skin. Perhaps the sensation had been nothing more than his torn muscles twitching.
He probed the edges of the gash. It hurt but nothing moved under the tight skin.
Shrugging, he picked up the dirty linen to rewrap his leg. And then he saw it. A thin sand-colored leg poked out from the wound. A second leg emerged, and then a third.
Kebu looked for a rock to smash it and then realized that in order to crush whatever was inside his leg he would need to strike his own wound. Jaw clenched, he stared at what he believed must be the legs of a spider.
Cautiously, slowly, he slid a hand along his leg, drawing closer to the insect.
As he waited, Kebu reasoned that the spider must have crawled into the open wound last night while he lay unconscious at the edge of the forest after fleeing the death and the fires.
During the battle at Tadjoura a spear had buried itself in his thigh and, as he fell, someone had clubbed his head. Sparks of fire had filled his eyes and then blinked out into blackness. His last thought had been that he would awaken in Duat and he had wondered if he would be able to find his way through the underworld to the eternal Field of Reeds.
A fourth leg appeared, its tip blacker than the sandy color of the first two joints.
Kebu held his breath and slowly inched his hand nearer.
A black head poked out of his leg, followed by a bulbous, yellow body.
Kebu swept his hand across his leg, winced as he scraped over the wound and quickly closed his fist around the spider. Feeling a small pinch, he knew that the spider had bit him. He squeezed his hand tighter, killing it.
He wiped the crushed spider on the log and then rewrapped his leg. As soon as he found a spring he would wash the wound and apply more mud.
Now it will heal, he told himself.
Standing, he put his weight on the injured leg. It held.
Kebu breathed deeply and allowed himself to think that he might survive.
He was a Medjay warrior, ready to accept death in battle. But the fight Yuya had led them to had not been a battle. There had been too many warriors from Ta Netjer and too many soldiers from the Two Lands.
Yet Kebu had fought.
He and his comrades had been forced into a defensive circle, attacked on three sides by soldiers while flames from burning huts crackled in the night. They had exhausted their arrows and, spears in hand, they had faced the soldiers without fear.
This was how a Medjay fought.
This was how a Medjay died.
Yet the gods had let Kebu survive.
His companions were dead, even the mighty Yuya. No doubt the warriors of Ta Netjer had flayed the skin from Yuya to make drum heads. That was what he would have done.
Yuya would have done it while the losing soldiers were still alive, Kebu thought.
But now the fight was over and there was nothing for him here.
Yet his mission was not over; the gods had let him live for a reason. He needed to return to Kerma and tell Governor Seni that they had failed, that the women had survived.
Breathing heavily, Kebu turned and limped into the jungle’s heavy shadows.
Baboons
“Captain Djehuty wants the baboons moved to a different ship,” Admiral Ahmose told Imhotep as they walked along the western shore of the Red Sea, which the ancient Egyptians called the Great Green.
“Not ours, I hope,” Imhotep said, brushing sand from his hands. Two sea gulls squawked as they passed overhead. Imhotep watched them join a squabble of birds that circled the five ships swaying offshore in the sea they had followed from the Two Lands to Ta Netjer.
I’m always brushing sand from my hands, Imhotep thought with a wry smile.
Admiral Ahmose shook his head, setting his several chins in motion. “Djehuty doesn’t care which ship, just so they are moved.” Ahmose paused by the edge of the camp. Behind him the sailors and surviving soldiers from the expedition were setting up tents, building corrals, cutting posts to tether animals and unloading the five ships of the armada.
“Maybe they’ll escape,” Imhotep suggested.
Ahmose looked quickly at Imhotep and studied him for a moment. Eyes squinted, Ahmose said, “I never can tell if you are making a joke, foretelling the future or just making conversation.”
“I don’t foretell the future, I just remember it, bits here and there. And I’m not a very good joke teller, so you can assume that I’m u
sually just making conversation,” Imhotep said.
Ahmose sighed. “I was hoping that you were letting me know that those baboons would escape. It would certainly solve that problem. But then,” he continued, “I’d have a bigger problem because Pharaoh Hatshepsut would be upset.” His short neck disappeared into his shoulders as he shrugged in resignation.
Imhotep, worn by the lengthy expedition, stopped walking and put both hands on the tall walking staff he always carried. “If it helps, admiral, my memory is that all five ships return to the Two Lands. Pharaoh Hatshepsut will be immensely pleased, the baboons, the giraffes, the myrrh trees — all thirty one — survive and your name will be remembered forever and ever.”
“This isn’t you trying to tell a joke, is it?” Ahmose asked, staring into Imhotep’s eyes.
Imhotep smiled and said, “No, admiral, that would be a very poor joke.”
“Yes, it would,” Ahmose agreed. He put his hands on his hips, failed to find a resting spot on his wide waistline and let his hands slide to his side. “So the problem is solved, the baboons survive the trip, Pharaoh Hatshepsut is happy and therefore I survive the trip,” he said.
“And where will you put the baboons?” Imhotep asked, hoping that his reassurances had helped Ahmose decide that the baboons could stay where they were.
“I suppose Djehuty can endure their company a little longer.” He leaned toward Imhotep and asked, “You know what they do, don’t you?”
When Imhotep shook his head, Ahmose said, “They fling shit. They climb up on the mast and then they shit, catch it in their hands and throw it.
“I certainly can’t have them flinging shit at Pharaoh Hatshepsut.”
He scowled at Imhotep, challenging him to disagree.
“No, certainly not,” Imhotep agreed and then, hoping to change the subject he said, “How long will we be ashore this time?”