Ramses, Volume V

by Christian Jacq

  At the age of fifty-five, after thirty-three years on the throne of Egypt, Ramses halted the flow of hours to ponder his actions. Until now he had never stopped moving forward, overcoming all obstacles, refusing to concede that anything was impossible. Although his energy was undiminished, he no longer faced the world like a ram with his horns down, barreling full speed ahead. Reigning over Egypt did not mean imposing one man’s will, but rather infusing the law of Ma’at with new life, with Pharaoh as her first servant. The young Ramses had hoped to forge ahead with an entire society in tow, changing hearts and minds, delivering Egypt forever from pettiness and baseness. As he grew more experienced, the dream had faded. Humans would always be what they were, enmeshed in falsehood and evil; no doctrine, no religion, no government could change their nature. Only the practice of justice and the continual application of the law of Ma’at kept chaos at bay.

  All that his father, Seti, had taught him, Ramses had endeavored to uphold. His desire to be a great pharaoh, to set his seal on the destiny of the Two Lands, no longer counted. Having lived the most fortunate of lives, having climbed to the pinnacle of power, he had only one remaining ambition: to serve.

  Setau was drunk, yet kept on swilling strong oasis wine. He stumbled angrily around the bedchamber.

  “Don’t go to sleep, Lotus! This is no time to rest. We need to think and decide.”

  “You’ve been saying the same thing for hours now.”

  “Yes, and you ought to listen. You and I know the truth. We know that Ahmeni is a sellout, totally corrupt. I hate the little scribe, I’d like to see him boil in the cauldrons of the destroyers of souls . . . But he’s my friend, he’s Ramses’ friend. As long as you and I keep quiet, he won’t stand trial for his crimes.”

  “Do you think Dame Cheris’s operation could have some connection to a plot against Ramses?”

  “We need to think and decide . . . If I go see the king . . . no, I can’t. It’s the eve of his sed-feast. I can’t spoil his jubilee. If I go see the vizier . . . he’ll arrest Ahmeni! And you’re no help!”

  “Get some sleep. You’ll think better if you’re rested.”

  “We don’t just need to think, we need to decide! How can we decide if we’re asleep? Oh, Ahmeni . . . what have you done, Ahmeni?”

  “The right question at last,” Lotus said dryly.

  Stiff as a statue, despite his trembling hands, Setau stared at his lovely wife.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Before you give up sleep for good, ask yourself what Ahmeni has actually done.”

  “It couldn’t be clearer, since the barge captain gave us his name. Someone’s been skimming temple goods in the Delta, and that someone is Ahmeni. My friend Ahmeni.”

  Serramanna was sleeping alone. At the end of an exhausting day, putting the various elements of his sed-feast security detail in place around the main temple, he had sunk into bed without a thought for the delectable body of his latest mistress, a Syrian girl who was supple as a reed.

  Shouts wrenched him from a deep sleep.

  The hulking Sard shook and stretched like an animal, then ran into the hall, where his steward was tussling with a visibly tipsy Setau.

  “We have to investigate, right away!”

  Serramanna pulled the steward aside, grabbed Setau by the collar of his tunic, dragged him into the bedchamber, and poured a jug of cool water over his head.

  “What the . . .”

  “It’s only water. Must be a while since you’ve tried any.”

  Setau plopped onto the bed. “I need you,” he told the Sard.

  “Don’t tell me your godforsaken snakes claimed another victim.”

  “No, we have to investigate.”

  “Investigate what?”

  “Ahmeni’s finances,” Setau finally blurted out.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Ahmeni has a hidden fortune.”

  “What have you been drinking, Setau? It’s worse than snake venom.”

  “Ahmeni has been dealing in stolen goods. And it may even be worse! Suppose his activities threaten Ramses?”

  “Explain what you mean, man.”

  Disjointedly, but omitting no vital detail, Setau related how he and Lotus had uncovered Dame Cheris’s skimming operation.

  “And you believe a bandit like that barge captain?” Serramanna said at length. “Under pressure, he might have picked a name at random.”

  “He seemed honest,” objected Setau.

  Serramanna was stunned. “Ahmeni . . . the last one I’d ever suspect of betraying king and country.”

  “You mean you would have suspected me first?”

  “Don’t tell me I’ve hurt your feelings! It’s Ahmeni’s integrity we’re questioning.”

  “We need to investigate.”

  “Investigate! That’s easy for you to say. During the sed-feast there are heightened security demands. And Ahmeni has a finger in everything. If he has done anything dishonest, and figures out that we know, he’ll cover his tracks. Did you think we could accuse him without solid proof?”

  Setau buried his head in his hands. “Lotus and I were witnesses. The barge captain gave only one name.”

  It made Serramanna’s stomach turn to think that Ahmeni, the most faithful of faithful servants, might be just another corrupt official. If so, there was no hope for human nature. The worst part was the possibility that Ahmeni could be involved in a plot against Ramses. Were his hidden riches arming the Pharaoh’s opponents?

  “Maybe I’m drunk,” admitted Setau, “but I’ve told you everything. Now three of us know about it.”

  “I wish I didn’t.”

  “What will we do, Serramanna?”

  “Ahmeni has rooms in the palace, but he almost always sleeps in his office. We’ll have to lure him out and conduct a careful search. If he’s hoarding gold or gemstones, we’ll find them. We’ll put a tail on him and note the identity of all his callers. He must be in contact with the other members of his network. Let’s hope that none of my men slip up. If the vizier’s police get wind of this, I’ll be in serious trouble.”

  “We have to think of Ramses, Serramanna.”

  “Who else would I be thinking of, Setau?”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  All of Egypt prayed for Ramses that morning. After such a long reign, how well would he absorb the formidable energy that emanated from the gathering of gods and goddesses? If his physical body were no longer in a state to serve as a receptacle for the ka, or spiritual essence, it could be broken like an over-fragile container. The fire of Ramses’ reign would meld with the celestial fire, while his mummy returned to the earth. On the other hand, if the king’s regeneration was successful, new blood would circulate in the country’s veins.

  At the Temple of Regeneration in Pi-Ramses, Kha had assembled the statues of the divinities arriving from both the northern and southern provinces. For the duration of the feast Pharaoh would lodge among them, isolated from the outside world.

  Dressing at dawn, Ramses thought about Ahmeni. How endless these days must seem to his longtime secretary! All during the sed-feast he was kept from consulting with the king, and any number of matters he considered urgent would have to be tabled. According to Ahmeni, Egypt was never run well enough and no official took his role as seriously as he should.

  Crowned with the traditional twin headdress, wearing a tucked linen robe, gilded kilt, and golden sandals, Ramses appeared in the palace doorway.

  Two royal sons bowed low to the monarch. Wearing sectioned wigs with side panels and long shirts with billowing sleeves, they carried poles topped with carvings of a ram, one of the incarnations of Amon, the hidden god.

  Slowly the two standard-bearers preceded Pharaoh to the towering granite portal of the Temple of Regeneration. In front of it stood obelisks and colossal statues symbolizing the royal ka, like their counterparts at Abu Simbel. The original plans for Pi-Ramses, conceived in Year Two of Ramses’ reign, had left room for this temple,
as if the king sensed he would remain on the throne for more than thirty years.

  Two priests in jackal masks greeted the monarch. One of these procession leaders opened the way to the south, the other to the north. They guided Ramses through the hall of tall columns, toward the vestry, where the king stripped and donned a short, shroudlike linen tunic. In his left hand he held his shepherd’s crook; in his right hand was the three-pronged scepter, representing Pharaoh’s three births, in the underworld, on earth, and in the heavens.

  Ramses had already undergone many a physical test, from facing down a wild bull to single-handedly battling thousands of frenzied Hittites at Kadesh; yet the sed-feast was a more intense kind of combat, where invisible forces came into play. The self must die, returning to the uncreated matter from which it had issued. Ramses must be reborn in the love of the gods and goddesses. He must succeed himself. This act of alchemy would forge an inalterable bond between his symbolic person and his people, between his people and the divine powers assembled within him.

  The two priests in jackal masks again guided the sovereign to a large open-air courtyard, like Pharaoh Djoser’s at Saqqara. This was the work of Kha, such an admirer of ancient architecture that he had commissioned the replica within Ramses’ Temple of Regeneration.

  She was walking toward him.

  Meritamon, the only daughter of Nefertari, now became Nefertari herself, reborn to give Ramses rebirth. A long white robe, understated gold collar, headdress with two tall plumes symbolizing Life and the law. She was dazzling, the Great Royal Wife. She took her place behind him, where at every stage of the ritual she would protect him with the magic of litany and song.

  Kha lit the flame that illuminated the divine statues, the chapels in which they stood, and the royal throne upon which Ramses would sit if he emerged victorious. The high priest would be assisted by the great council of upper and lower Egypt, whose members included Setau, Ahmeni, the high priest of Karnak, the chief physician of the realm Neferet, and a number of royal sons and daughters. Setau, sobered up, was no longer obsessed with investigating Ahmeni. All that mattered was the ritual that must be perfectly staged to renew Ramses’ vital powers.

  The great dignitaries of upper and lower Egypt prostrated themselves before Pharaoh. Then Setau and Ahmeni, in their role as the king’s “sole companions,” washed his feet. Thus purified, his feet would take him through space, water, earth, or fire. The water jug used in the ritual was in the shape of the hieroglyph sema, depicting the cardiopulmonary juncture and signifying “unity.” This sanctified water made Pharaoh a coherent being, the unifier of his people.

  Kha had organized everything so well that the days and nights of the festival flew by like a single hour.

  Forced to walk slowly in his form-fitting tunic, Ramses activated the offerings of food that lay on the chapel altars. His gaze and the holy words “Pharaoh gives this” released the foods’ spiritual gifts. The queen, in her symbolic role as celestial cow, was supposed to feed the king on milk from the stars, ridding his body of weakness and disease.

  Ramses worshiped each divine power, preserving the multiplicity of creative impulses flowing into him. Thus he drew precisely on the inalterable unity concealed within each statue, at the same time giving them magical life.

  For three days it was one procession, litany, and offering after another in the great courtyard. Short stairways led to the radiating chapels that sheltered the gods and goddesses, defining the sacred space and diffusing their energy. By turns lively or contemplative, the music of tambourines, harps, lutes, and horns accompanied the various parts of the ritual set out in the scroll that the celebrant priest unrolled.

  Assimilating divine energy, exchanging dialogue with the bull Apis and the crocodile Sobek, wielding a harpoon to keep the hippopotamus at bay, Pharaoh forged links between the great beyond and the people of Egypt. The king’s actions rendered the visible invisible, building a harmonious relationship between man and nature.

  A platform had been raised in an outlying courtyard; here sat three adjoining thrones. To reach them Ramses had to go up several steps. When he sat on the throne of upper Egypt, he wore the white crown; for lower Egypt, the crown was red. And one aspect or another of the royal person, a duality in motion, enacted each phase of the ritual. It was an apparent contradiction in terms, resolved in the oneness of Pharaoh. Thus the Two Lands were one, yet remained distinct. Seated alternately on the two thrones, Ramses became either Horus, with his piercing gaze, or the almighty Set, with a third identity of his own that reconciled the two warring brothers.

  On the next-to-last day of the festival, the king shed his white tunic to don the traditional kilt worn by pharaohs since the days of the pyramids. A bull’s tail hung from the waistband. The time had come to ascertain that the reigning pharaoh had correctly assimilated the divine energy and could now take possession of the earth and sky.

  After acting out the drama of the two warring brothers, Horus and Set, Pharaoh was prepared to receive anew the Testament of the Gods, making him the rightful heir of Egypt. When Ramses’ fingers closed around the small leather swallowtail case containing the invaluable document, everyone’s heart skipped a beat. Would a human hand, even that of the Lord of the Two Lands, be strong enough to take hold of a supernatural object?

  Firmly gripping the Testament of the Gods, Ramses next laid his hand on a rudder, representing his ability to steer the ship of state in the right direction. Then he strode boldly across the great courtyard, equating it with Egypt as a whole, the image of earth and sky. The king completed the ritual circuit eight times in all—four each as lord of upper and lower Egypt. Pharaoh’s footsteps transfigured the Two Lands’ provinces, affirming the reign of the gods and the presence of the celestial hierarchy. Through him, all past pharaohs were restored to life, and Egypt was rededicated to the divine.

  “I have gone the course,” proclaimed Ramses. “I have held the Testament of the Gods in my hand. I have traversed the earth and touched its four corners. I have covered it according to my heart. I have gone the course, crossing the ocean of origins. I have touched the four sides of heaven. I have gone as far as light and have offered the fertile earth to her queen, the law of Life.”

  This final day of the sed-feast was a time of celebration in towns and villages. The word was out that Ramses had triumphed; his reign would be full of new energy. Yet the feasting could not begin until the rejuvenated monarch displayed the Testament of the Gods to his people.

  At dawn, the Pharaoh mounted a sedan chair borne by his highest officials. Hard as it was on Ahmeni’s back, he insisted on taking part. Ramses was carried to the four points of the compass, and at each he drew his bow and shot an arrow to proclaim Pharaoh’s continuing reign to the entire universe.

  Then he mounted a throne, the underside of which was decorated with a dozen lion’s heads, and addressed the directions of space, announcing that the law of Ma’at would reduce the forces of evil to silence.

  Crowned anew, Ramses paid homage to his ancestors. Those who had gone before, opening the doors to the invisible, were the base on which the monarchy rested. Even Setau, who prided himself on being strong, could not hold back his tears. Never had Ramses been so great, never had Pharaoh so thoroughly embodied the light of Egypt.

  The king left the great courtyard where time had been abolished. He crossed the hall of columns and climbed the stairs leading to the top of the monumental gateway. Appearing between the pylon’s two tall towers, like the sun at its height, he showed the Testament of the Gods to his people.

  A ringing cry rose from the crowd. By acclamation, Ramses was recognized as fit to govern; his words would be life, his deeds would join earth to heaven. The Nile would be life-giving, reaching into the valleys, depositing fertile silt on the fields, providing clean water and abundant fish. The gods’ blessing made glad the hearts of all the king’s subjects. Thanks to him, food would be plentiful as grains of sand on the banks of the Nile. And so it was said o
f Ramses the Great that he shaped the country’s prosperity like dough in his own hands.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Two months and a day.

  A stormy day, after two months of discreet and painstaking investigation. Serramanna had not skimped on manpower: he had used his best operatives, experienced mercenaries, to tail Ahmeni and search his rooms without attracting attention. The Sard had warned them that if they were caught, they were on their own; if they implicated him, he’d strangle them with his own hands. Bonuses were also promised, in the form of additional leave days and special rations.

  Keeping Ahmeni away from his office for any length of time proved difficult. A last-minute inspection tour of the Faiyum gave Serramanna the break he needed, but the search yielded nothing. The scribe’s nearly unoccupied rooms, the storage chests and shelves in his office, even his library, concealed nothing suspicious. Ahmeni continued to work night and day, eat copiously, and sleep little. As for his callers, they were all upper-level government officials, summoned as needed to go over their accounts and prime their enthusiasm for public service.

  Listening to the Sard’s negative results, Setau wondered if he might have been dreaming; yet both he and Lotus had clearly heard the barge captain name Ahmeni. It was impossible to erase the blot on his memory.

  Serramanna was ready to call off the investigation. His men were on edge and likely to commit some blunder before long.

  But on that stormy day the old pirate’s worst fears were confirmed. Just after noon, when Ahmeni was alone in his office, the king’s sandal-bearer had a highly unusual visitor: a rough-looking character with one good eye and a bushy beard.

  Serramanna’s operative trailed him to the Pi-Ramses harbor and had no trouble identifying the man as a barge captain.