by Cliff Graham
“We lived under the yoke of shepherd filth for a hundred years, Moses,” the king said. “The Hyksos were your kin. Semites from the north. I had my historians present me with the report.”
He made a gesture with his flail, and a priest moved close with a scroll and laid it at his feet.
“We drove them out of our land so that their stench did not offend our gods any longer. I have spent my life chasing them wherever they went. But the Hebrews were allowed to stay. Do you know why?”
Aaron did not answer. Pharaoh raised his voice a bit so that the assembly hall could hear him.
“The Hyksos called themselves the Shepherd Kings, and indeed they behaved like kings. They were warriors and conquerors. But the Hebrews behaved like livestock. Tame. Docile. Ignorant. Choosing to live in their own filth. We let them stay because we learned that while shepherds can cause trouble, livestock pose no threat. They take their beatings and continue to work.”
I noticed Moses wince slightly at these words. Pharaoh continued.
“Go back to working among them. They have become numerous, and I cannot allow them to stop working.” He paused and smiled broadly. “Not even to sacrifice and hold feasts to their god in the desert.”
The room was silent and still as we waited for Moses to respond. He shook his head, glanced at Aaron, and turned his back to leave.
All of us gasped. I stepped forward and withdrew my sword, but then I saw that Pharaoh had raised his hand to stop me. I was so confused and furious that I had to turn my head to the ground so that I did not glare at my own king.
“You have chosen to come back and rejoin your people, Moses, and your people are my slaves. I will tell my overseers that the Hebrews must be idle, for they have the time to request permission to go have feasts! Let their work increase threefold and they will not have time to listen to lies from you.”
Moses and Aaron paused and looked back. They appeared to be upset, though their stance was still defiant. All of us turned to Pharaoh and awaited his next words. Many in that hall had already heard him speak more in the past few moments than they had ever heard him speak since he had assumed the throne.
Pharaoh waved the crook and flail in a dismissive gesture, and the foot slaves fell facedown before his throne, forming steps with their bodies to the base of the throne pedestal. Pharaoh stood and descended from the throne by stepping on their backs, the meaning of the gesture even more emphatic after what we had just heard. It was then that I noticed I had not seen these particular slaves before.
They were Hebrews, and Moses looked at them for a long time before departing.
When the two men had left, Pharaoh dismissed everyone else. I fell in behind him as he walked away, it being my turn to provide his escort to his chambers. When we were out of sight of the hall and moving along the corridor to his private quarters, he raised his hand and summoned me beside him. His gait became loose and easy, the same as when he walked among his army and not trapped in the politics and show of the palace.
“My king,” I said.
“I wish to hear your impression of Moses, old friend.”
I had to force myself to speak through the confusion in my soul. “My king, the entire encounter baffles me. I confess that I am slow-witted and cannot fathom why you would have wasted your time speaking to him when he was so disrespectful of your throne. I cannot fathom how he lived in this palace once. And I certainly cannot fathom why you would care in the slightest about my thoughts, your majesty.”
We passed a veranda overlooking the palace gardens. A hundred gardeners worked with tiny blades, removing every out-of-place shoot of weed or grass. The flowers were so fragrant that we could smell them all at once, even from inside the walls. The bull god Apis and dwarf god Bes, the fertility deities, stood in silent watch over the plants, carved by my own hand. The windows had been designed to channel in the breezes from the garden, so that the king would never be without a pleasant scent. The Nile sparkled in the distance. Barges glided on it with full sails.
“You are from the northern lands.”
“Yes, your majesty, the Kenaz.”
“You came to us and have served me well. You have carved our idols and designed temples with skill never before seen. You have fought my enemies bravely. You wear the Gold of Honor for battling with me.”
“I have contributed a pitiful amount, your majesty.”
“You know the Hebrews.”
“Majesty, I do not. I have never had dealings with them.”
“Still, I wish to know the thoughts of a Semite barbarian from their homeland. They are not native to Egypt. They came to us the same way the Hyksos did. The same way you did. From the north and east. Have you heard of a people who worship one god?”
“I have not, your majesty. It makes no sense at all. One god cannot fulfill all that is required of gods.”
“How did you worship in your lands?”
“We had gods of the mountains and the desert, the rain and the crops. But none like the Egyptian gods, divine Pharaoh.”
The king waved the others away with his left hand, and the group of servants and guards who followed us all bowed to the ground, touched their foreheads, and backed away from us. One never turned his back on the king.
We paused at a balcony that provided an even better view of the river and the gardens. Thutmose reached for a golden wine goblet that had been placed on the balcony in the event the whim occurred to the king that he would like a drink. I knew the royal wine steward. He patrolled the halls as much as I did, but instead of looking for threats he was looking for potential refreshment points for the king.
I took a sip from the goblet to test it for poison, as was the duty of any man or woman who was near the king when he took a fresh drink of wine. I felt no constriction in my throat other than the constriction of my nerves. We had fought together and forged a certain bond, but he was still the divine pharaoh and I a lowly servant.
“They will not be going away,” the king said thoughtfully. “Moses was raised the heir of Hatshepsut. He would have ruled Egypt if I had not been born. His name was renowned among our people once, and I fear that it will become so again. A man popular among slaves is not a threat. But a man popular among Egyptians as well as slaves, who knows everything about us . . .” He shook his head slightly.
Before I could answer this stunning piece of information, he continued. “We do not know how it happened precisely, but she took him in and raised him as her own from infancy. She was always an insolent, stubborn woman. But she was very clever and ensured that Moses’s heritage as a Hebrew was overlooked by the court. He has an Egyptian name, after all, and it resembles my own. My scribes tell me that he was exceedingly gifted in the sciences, as well as the arts. That he was the greatest charioteer in the upper kingdom.”
There was a long enough break in his words that I sensed an opportunity to ask, “Great king, why did he leave? And for forty years? Where did he go?”
“The scribes tell me that he killed a man. An Egyptian. That would have been overlooked for a man of his stature, the heir to the throne, but he was renounced. The records have been purged from that point on. The scribes cannot find any more on him. He disappeared from our lands without any trace, and then suddenly my spies tell me that he appeared in Goshen a month ago with his brother, ranting to the people about their god delivering them. That is why I need you to follow them and discover how they are going to try to rally the Hebrew slaves against me.”
Now my confusion began to abate. He could have simply dismissed them and had them killed and been done with it. A tilt of his flail to me and I would have found the courage to grasp them by the hair and slit their throats, eyes of the storm god or not.
But I understood now that the Hebrews had become so numerous that even the slightest rumor spread among their camps at Goshen would cause us no end of trouble. Pharaoh wished to stamp out any rebellion before it could occur by shaming the name of Moses and the power of his unknown god of
slaves. Then, to the Egyptian and slave alike, his name would mean nothing.
As if to confirm this, Pharaoh said, “I do not have enough men in place near Goshen to quell an uprising of a million people, and if they hear of their leaders being struck down, they might ransack the very cities they are building for me. The Hebrews have been docile for generations and suddenly they are agitating against their overseers. I will move carefully.”
“Majesty, I will do anything you ask of me.”
“The overseers ensure that the Hebrews speak our language so that they cannot plot against us in their tongue. I will send instructions that they are free to meet in assembly with Moses and his brother. Their new burdens to make bricks without straw will distract them enough. This will quiet down over time, but I want you to keep your eyes on them and report to me.”
“Yes, Great Egypt.” I bowed low and touched my forehead to the ground and slid backward, away from him.
Follow them I did, all the way back to the land of Goshen. I had been there before during passages to the Way of the Sea for campaigns in Canaan.
As you read in the records of Moses, they returned and told the people what Pharaoh had told them. And the people grumbled and complained, and I thought for certain that Moses and Aaron would be stoned.
But that is not necessary for me to expand upon. We do not have the time now. What happened when they returned is what I wish to tell you about.
His name was Nembit, and he was the king’s chief magician when I was there. He fashioned himself as Yahweh’s adversary when the terrors began.
He had no left eye. It had been torn from his skull when he was a young priest apprentice by a vengeful and jealous lover who attacked him in his sleep. His right eye was clouded with cataracts, so I am sure that he could not see through it either, but he made his way around the palace without difficulty. They said he could see with the eye of sorcery.
He was older than anyone I knew, his shaved head wrinkled and blotched by ancient sunburns that had never healed. Two great scars crossed his temple in parallel lines and went behind his ear, where he had once ripped through the flesh of his head with the fangs of a cobra during a conjuring ceremony.
He had a limp. A crocodile bite, he said. We believed him.
They said he allowed himself to be poisoned so many times, in perfect doses, that he was completely impervious to snakebites.
He consorted with young boys and even younger girls. He took delight in gruesomely torturing slaves, those who had been sent to him for punishment by their masters, claiming he was experimenting with them to find a better way to judge the rising and falling of the Nile by their bodily reactions to his tests. It was believed that Mother Nile was a living being, a channel of lifeblood flowing from the dark heart to the south into the velvet green lowlands of the north. Nembit claimed that Mother Nile could be known much like a human body could be known, and so he tested them.
It was this man that Moses and Aaron stood before.
13
The Terrors Begin
Moses and Aaron departed Goshen to return to the king. I arrived back at the palace in Memphis well ahead of them. I had time to go before Pharaoh and share what I had seen, and he listened with great interest as we walked through the gardens toward the training barracks. The king loved to train with his men as often as he could, and I was honored with the privilege of sparring with him on this day.
“So they are returning to me then?” he asked.
“Yes, my king.”
“And their elders are upset with them?” he asked me for the third time.
“Furious, my king. It would not surprise me if they meted out a death sentence to them upon their return to Goshen.”
Pharaoh nodded. That had been his intent all along.
“Their magic trick with the staff was the best they could do,” he said.
We reached the pit, where a ring of soldiers handed us our weapons. It was alongside a cool, green lagoon of the Nile surrounded by pillars, which were painted with the specific maneuvers of the infantry and the chariot. On one pillar were the paintings of figures engaged in hand-to-hand grappling, and it appeared as though that was the format we were to train on today.
The training master who stood next to the pillar fell to the sand and touched his forehead before Pharaoh when he was summoned.
“I see you have come across new movements,” the king said as he studied freshly painted figures on the column.
“Yes, your majesty,” the training master answered.
After stripping to only a loincloth, I took up my position in front of the king, bowed to him, and we began practicing the maneuvers under the eye of the training master. Soon our torsos were caked with sand as we threw one another around. I did not hold back; it could have been fatal for me. Thutmose was a great conqueror and only wanted the most realistic training that could be provided. He had killed many slaves simply by working on a new technique with his spear or bow that had been created.
We fought to seven draws, and it was clear to me the king was becoming frustrated that he was not mastering the maneuver quicker. He beckoned me forward for another round, and we locked legs, knee to knee, trying to throw each other into the neck hold we had been taught.
He managed to flip me onto my side, and I was about to reach up for his head when I caught sight of Moses and Aaron standing on the edge of the pit.
“Majesty,” I managed to gasp while pointing. When the king saw them, he tightened his grip on me, and I decided the best move for me at that time was to allow him to complete the throw. I put up enough resistance to make it appear to him that I had tried to maneuver out of it, but my body hit the sand in what had to be a satisfying thump for the king to hear.
He stood over me panting, his muscles glistening with sweat and dirty with sand, a grin on his face. He looked up at the Hebrews.
“You have returned to me, Moses. I was expecting you later.”
“We were brought before you as soon as we arrived, Pharaoh.”
The king reached out a hand for me and pulled me up.
“What have you come to demand this time? More food for your people?”
I could see Moses look at Aaron quickly before answering, as though to gain confidence. “The Lord our God says that you are to release the Hebrews and let us go into the desert to make sacrifices to him.”
Thutmose smiled and shook his head. He reached out for a linen towel that a slave had rushed forward to provide and wiped his face. I did the same.
“The staff was not sufficient? You return to humiliate yourselves and your god again?” He walked to the bank of the lagoon and dove in, rinsing himself.
Until this point I had mostly dismissed the trickster god of the Hebrews. He had no empire of men serving him, no monuments.
But when Pharaoh dipped into the Nile that day a second time, I had my first doubts, and the earliest sense that perhaps my world would be coming to an end. For when Pharaoh broke the surface of the Nile, as he came up for breath, a cascade of dark blood erupted in the water around him.
At first I thought there had been a crocodile that had snuck into the lagoon, somehow getting past the netting that had been strung to avoid its entering. I immediately called for the weapons masters, and we all plunged into the water desperate to reach the king.
But as we drew close, we saw the blood rush toward us as though it had been released from a spring in the earth, filling the entire lagoon. The air thickened with the stench of rotting death.
I managed to reach Pharaoh, who was standing absolutely still, watching the blood fill the lagoon all the way to the beach, then past the narrow entrance that led to the main body of the river.
Like a scarlet cloth being unfurled over a banquet table, the blood spread across the river, passing under barges, under fishermen who staggered back from pulling in their nets, all the way across to the far western bank, where the setting sun above the cliffs made it look even more sinister.
None of us could take a full breath, not only because of the stench in the air but because we were in shock.
I looked at the king, waiting for that familiar smile to break out, the expression of a hawk circling a mouse, but he could only clench his jaw and stare like the rest of us.
“Pharaoh!” Aaron thundered from the riverbank behind us. We turned to face him. “I am warning you. Do not put Yahweh to the test!”
Thutmose seemed to gather himself at this and whirled about on his priests, who were standing on the riverbank, looking every bit as confused and terrified as we were.
“What is this?” he called to them.
The magician priest Nembit knelt by the bank of the lagoon and dipped his fingers into the blood. He smelled them and examined them closely. “It is blood, great king.”
Pharaoh punched the surface of the lagoon in his anger. “I know that, you old fool!” He stumbled out of the lagoon to the bank, and I followed him. “Make it stop!”
“Great Egypt, we will consult the gods,” Nembit said, motioning the others to bow low with him and back away. As they turned to leave, I saw his eyes darting to each of them as if searching for answers.
The king raised his arms to the courtiers, who had come to watch his combat demonstration, which now seemed pitiful.
“Return to your homes,” he said, finally regaining some of his royal decorum. “I will go and sacrifice before the gods myself and restore the river.”
Everyone was so shocked by what had happened that it took them a moment to respond, but eventually they filed out of the lagoon, and it was only the king, myself, a few guards and slaves, and the two Hebrews left standing there.
The king walked up to them and appeared genuinely terrified, dripping from head to toe with blood. His kohl eyeliner was running down his face. He moved in close to Moses and stared hard into his eyes.
“You conjure tricks that shame me. I would order you tied down in the scorpion pit this very moment, but I wish to crush the name of your god in front of your people, so that their men will always be laborers and their women whores for my soldiers.”