As Haqwaset was leaving the room, he touched Maiherpri on the shoulder.
‘I understand your parents are coming for the Festival. I’ll have to make sure their rooms are finished, they won’t want to live in the middle of building works.’
‘I have already taken it upon myself to check Majesty. Everything is prepared apart from some decoration which I’m assured will be finished in the next two days. They won’t be here for ten, so there is enough time.’
The young guard could not hide the excitement in his voice. He was now twenty-four years old and hadn’t seen his parents for five years. He had come to live within the royal household eighteen years ago when there had been an uprising in his homeland. His parents had been worried about his safety and Merymose asked his half-brother to allow him to live in the royal nursery. Haqwaset had been only a child then himself and although the decision was officially his, it was in fact Yuya himself who went to Kush to discuss the uprising and bring the boy back. It was a good decision.
‘Come Maiherpri, join us on the hunt. Be prepared to lose.’
Merymose and Haqwaset had shared a father but had different mothers. Thutmose IV was no stranger to the bed chambers of royal wives and concubines and it was one of the latter who had been Merymose’s mother. This didn’t affect the love shown to him either by their father or by Haqwaset now.
Thanks to the diplomatic skills of Yuya in the early years of Haqwaset’s reign, and latterly the same skills demonstrated by Tiye, the Two Lands had been at peace for the whole of his now almost twenty three years on the throne. The only exception was in his fifth year when he was eleven years old. The rich lands to the south, known as Kush, famous for its gold and cattle was the subject of a small, bloody uprising. It was dealt with easily and quickly by Merymose, appointed Viceroy by their father. Seven hundred and forty captives and three hundred and twelve hands were removed from the enemy dead.
A soldier was paid extra for each right hand presented. The payment to the soldier was in different ways. Jewels and gold were common, but at times land or captives were given as slaves to a soldier finding favour with his King, by distinguishing himself in battle.
Unless granted as slaves to the soldiers, the captives were removed to become slaves in other parts of the Kingdom, some from Nubia had come here to Waset and some were in the Temple of Amun across the river, the scene of his argument with the High Priest this morning.
chapter fourteen
Djoser was not a bad man. At least by his own definition.
It’s true he had, at times, done things which were not entirely legal, but he believed he had never caused anyone deliberate, physical harm. It was also true that, following the death of his wife, he had been quite happy to receive the treasures of nobles who had gone before him and convert them into more usable trinkets. Such things didn’t cause him to lose sleep. He always drew a strong line, however, at items belonging to the gods, as he regarded past Kings. He might have to meet them on his passage to the underworld and he wanted such meetings to be without fear.
Above all Djoser was a loyal man. It didn’t matter to him if you were a King, priest, colleague or family, it was all the same to him. If you respected him and his work, you earned his loyalty. This loyalty meant, no matter how much money he was making from his secret dealings with his sister’s husband, he would never betray his other paymasters nor allow any harm to come to them if he had power to stop it. He would never reveal any secrets of the tombs he personally worked on. His motivation for helping Nahkt was to try and ensure the future security of his daughters, who were all he had left to remind him of his wife.
The dilemma facing Djoser was that, as Nahkt became greedier and more ambitious, it increased the danger for Djoser. He was being pushed into situations which the core of his being railed against. Had he learned nothing from his father? The fate that had almost befallen him?
Inside Nahkt’s tomb, Djoser was finishing the artwork of the most personal and favourite piece he had ever worked on. He only needed to apply the special varnish required to ensure the paint would never fade. Once done, his three daughters would be forever in the sight of the gods. He had used the image of his daughters playing their favourite musical instruments to bring to life a particular scene on the walls of the tomb and it brought tears to his eyes whenever he looked upon it.
The Aten was at its highest and the heat of the day, almost unbearable. Djoser had already bathed twice this morning, had oils rubbed over him to protect him from the rays as much as possible. He was lying, on a folding bed, under a small canopy erected outside his house. His daughters were inside singing and laughing as they went about their chores. Today they were grinding the black powder which would be mixed with animal fat and oil to make the kohl which was needed to decorate and protect their eyes. He had also acquired an amount of malachite from passing traders, so the girls’ supply of both black and green eye decoration was secured for some time.
Djoser was wearing a linen kilt – unfashionably long (or so the girls kept telling him) but he didn’t care for fashion, it was coolness he wanted. He could not bring himself to set about work on the artefacts Nahkt had handed over to him last night. Disturbed by dreams during the night, he had slept badly. His head was aching. Baketamon, his eldest daughter, had given him her own mixture of aloe vera combined with balsam apple and cubeb pepper and massaged his head with oil, all the time making incantations to Horus and Djehuti as she had been taught. It had eased the throbbing, but it still nagged at him.
His dreams had made him think again about his father and stories he was fond of repeating about Yuya.
‘Dreams,’ his father had told him, ‘are not just night time fantasies; they have a meaning and can predict our lives. We must know how to interpret them.’
He shivered as he remembered the tale of the King’s baker who had shared a cell with Yuya and whose dream predicted his own execution.
Djoser’s thoughts had been brought back to the present when his daughters came outside, each one beautiful in their father’s eyes, now even more so as they had finished the work of preparing their kohl. They surrounded him, freshly made up and smiling. He looked worried, clearly thinking deeply.
‘Please father, tell us a story. Please tell us of grandfather in prison and how he got out. We’ve heard it many times but love hearing you tell it again and again,’ Baketamon said, trying to alleviate his worries.
‘You should ask him to tell you himself. He was there, I wasn’t.’
‘No, his stories always change depending on the amount of wine he’s drunk. We are sure he makes it up as he goes along. At least from you we get the same story and it’s such a great one, we’ll never tire of hearing it.’
‘Just so I can get some peace I’ll tell you,’ said Djoser.
The girls cheered at the end of the story, as they always did, when Prince Thutmose told their grandfather and the other prisoners they too were free, and Yuya produced Perneb, saved from execution. Djoser smiled at his daughters; he would do anything to protect them.
‘Now, if you all don’t mind I would like a little time to my own thoughts,’ he said. ‘Please, go inside, prepare me something to eat. I have things I need to do.’
They left him. His contemplative mood returned.
‘Enough reflection on stories of dreams and about Yuya,’ he thought.
Djoser certainly didn’t want to think further on the meaning of his own dream. He knew with equal conviction he needed to speak urgently with Nahkt. His brother-in-law was not going to be a happy man.
*
At the Palace, Haqwaset returned from his hunting trip, both he and Maiherpri having killed two gazelle.
‘Thutmose, Teppy, you must help the butcher to clean and prepare the meat. When it’s been hung and is ready to eat, you will share in the first meal prepared from the kill.’
‘Thank you father.
Come on Teppy, I’ll race you. Last one there pulls the guts out.’
The Two Lands had not experienced full scale war, either in Haqwaset’s reign or that of his father. War was unpredictable and could happen at any time. Haqwaset feared complacency and deemed it essential that Kemet and its army were always ready. He wanted his sons to be able to lead troops, without the fear of blood or the sights and smells of slaughter. The slaying and butchering of animals would never be the same as killing a man, but it was a place to start.
‘That was great sport, Maiherpri, I so enjoy hunting with you. You make the competition interesting.’
It was imperative Haqwaset made the kills. To return without game from a hunting trip would alert spies in the Palace that sport was not the real reason for the excursion. He also needed to have some fun – especially today.
Haqwaset needed to speak with Tiye and also with Yuya. They would know how to deal with his new problem in a diplomatic way. His own inclination would have been to gather those involved and summarily execute them. Maybe he would carry out the sentence on at least one of the criminals himself. First he needed to get to the bath house, then have something to eat. He didn’t want to encounter his wife for the second time that day, filthy and hungry.
At his private bath house, his body servant, ever alert to his arrival, ensured the cleansing oils and drying cloths were prepared and in their correct order. After cleaning off the dirt and animal blood the servant massaged his whole body with oil. The strong, unforgiving sun could destroy a man’s skin if it was not kept at bay with oils and unctions. Perhaps it was the exertions of the day, maybe it was the strong, oiled hands of the servant that relaxed Haqwaset. His mind wandered, first to thoughts about Yuya which led to reminiscences about his father.
It would be some days before Yuya returned to Waset from his palace near the fortress of Zawr. He was spending more time there. It was the area where his father and brothers had settled after they came to live in the Two Lands. Although all his family had moved away and now lived far to the east, Yuya seemed more settled in the delta area, on his lands where cattle grew strong, crops always abundant. His estates included some of the best wine production in all of Kemet. Also he would occasionally receive messages from his two first born sons, who had gone to live with their grandfather all those years ago and had moved permanently to the eastern Kingdoms when their grandfather died. Messages arrived sooner in the delta.
Haqwaset hadn’t been born when his own grandfather, who bore the same throne name, Amenhotep, had first realised how special a man Yuya was; appointing him “Overseer of the Granaries” and unwittingly creating the circumstances, which would eventually see Yuya as the most powerful of men. Yuya was about the same age as Haqwaset’s father, they grew close and became the best of friends. In the few years after Haqwaset was born, he had spent a lot of time with his father, who didn’t move far from the Palace, particularly in the year before he died. Haqwaset would sit on his father’s knee or later lie beside him on the bed listening to his stories. It seemed it was impossible for his father to talk for more than ten minutes without in some way mentioning his friend, Yuya.
A special memory for Haqwaset was, as a very small boy, being taken by his father and Yuya from the Palace at Ineb-Hedj, the city surrounded by the white walls which gave it its name. They rode in chariots to the great pyramids. To the place where, years previously, his father had dreamed and was spoken to by the god, Horus, himself.
Haqwaset’s father was convinced the dream had changed the course of his life. He fulfilled his promise to remove the sand from the mighty Hor-em-akhet, the massive statue with the face of a god and the body of a lion, guarding the way to the pyramid tomb of the great god King Khafre. So powerful in his command of the world, Khafre was able to create a monument so wondrous that all who saw it marvelled at its splendour. A tomb reaching up to the heavens which would last for all eternity.
A great stela was brought with them that day, engraved with the story of his father’s dream. Haqwaset had been too young to read what had been written but he knew the story by heart. It was a story he wanted to be told before he went to sleep every night. As a child he hoped for a similar dream but none had ever come.
There were many times when Haqwaset went alone, or with his own sons, to the site of Hor-em-akhet to show them the magnificence of the statue and its nearby pyramids and Temples. He wanted to teach them the history of their great Kingdom and of their royal grandfather. Every year, on the anniversary of his father’s death, he would travel with Yuya to bring vegetables and sacrifice a bull, remembering the man who was father to one and best friend of the other.
King Thutmose’s reign had been short; only ten inundations had come during his time on the throne.
The servant finished the massage. Haqwaset returned to the present. His eyes were kohled. The feast tonight was to be with a representative from the ruler of Naharina, it was always necessary to look his affluent best when this man was around. The envoy had very expensive tastes and would normally be offering, on behalf of his master, another daughter to become a royal wife. Tonight, however, promised to be different and, Haqwaset hoped, more amusing.
Haqwaset lost count of the number of wives and concubines he had in the various women’s palaces, here in Waset, up in Ineb-Hedj and in the newly completed complex near Shedet in the twenty first sepat of upper Kemet. It must have been nearly three hundred by this time or maybe even more, but really they were status symbols, a way of maintaining peace with the foreign lands surrounding Kemet, and assuring that his power would be greater than any other ruler.
In truth he didn’t even know many of their names or even from which foreign country they had come as a sign of alliance. He smiled as he remembered the correspondence between himself and the new King of Karduniash, Kadashman-Enlil. As was tradition when a new ruler came to power, Haqwaset asked for one of his daughters to be his wife. He had already married this King’s sister, the daughter of Kurigalzu I, the new King’s father, but diplomacy required the next generation also be bound to him.
‘Why do you ask for my daughter’s hand, when I don’t even know if my sister is alive or dead?’
The letter was in the usual flowery language of diplomats, but this was the gist of his correspondence.
‘You didn’t allow my messengers to see my sister. You didn’t give them any gifts. The women you gave them, for their pleasure, were ugly. When I sent you chariots you didn’t review them separately but placed them anonymously with many others. By dishonouring my messengers, you dishonour me. You have daughters, why do you not send one so that I can marry her?’
Haqwaset had no fear of this man. He knew, sooner or later, this King would have to comply with the request for his daughter and he had enjoyed working with Tiye and Huy on the reply. They were at the Palace in Ineb-Hedj.
‘Do you know which is his sister?’ Tiye had asked.
‘No,’ replied Haqwaset. ‘However, Kirgipa says she is one of the women here, so when the messengers arrived I gathered all of the women together and told the messengers the one they sought was there. If they were not able to recognise her, is that my fault?’
The letters written in reply to the King were blunt and to the point.
‘If you send messengers to me who are just traders or donkey herders, who didn’t know your father and had never seen your sister, how can they be expected to know if they have seen her or not? How could they tell the difference between her or a beggar off the streets?
‘How can anything they tell you be trusted, when they lie? The messengers sent by your father, lied to him when they returned, now your own messengers have told you they didn’t receive anything from me. This is a lie. They, like all state visitors, received silver, gold, oil, garments, and other items of great quality. If they decide to keep all these things for themselves and tell you I gave them nothing, then in future I will give nothing. The r
eport to you will be the same whatever I do.
‘As for asking for one of my daughters to marry, this is out of the question. Never has a Princess of Kemet been granted to a foreign King in marriage and never will it be done. When you send your daughter to marry me, you will receive in return, at least seven mina and nine shekels of gold and one mina, eight and a half shekels of silver. I’m informed you have built yourself a new home, therefore as a gift to you my brother, I will send an ebony bed overlaid with ivory and gold, three beds, a head rest, ten chairs and footstools, everything overlaid with gold. All of this will be ready to send as soon as my messenger returns with your daughter.’
The King’s daughter duly arrived and the furniture was sent. Haqwaset never met the girl, but Kirgipa’s reports were favourable.
Wives and concubines were easy to acquire. Haqwaset married those he needed to, bedded those he wanted to and kept them all well fed and cared for in luxury. Above everyone, he loved Tiye. It was her company which he desired most.
He relied heavily, also, on Kirgipa. The envoy, the guest of honour tonight, was on a mission from her father. Kirgipa was the head of Haqwaset’s palaces for his women and children. When she arrived from Naharina to marry Haqwaset, she brought an entourage of three hundred and seventeen ladies in waiting. Haqwaset decided that as they were hers, she should have the responsibility of controlling them, together with a few hundred more. Haqwaset and Tiye both loved Kirgipa. She was the mother of Smenkhare, another son of Haqwaset. The King and his chief wife would have gladly kept this son with their own children but Kirgipa didn’t want to be parted from him. She wished to keep him by her side.
The forefathers of the Lord of the Two Lands had created strength and security for the nation, by force. Many great battles had been fought in the north to secure borders and bring in prized wood, spices and other luxuries. In the south, battles had raged to protect the gold and riches of Kush for the enrichment and enjoyment of the rulers of the Two Lands. Haqwaset, as had his father before him, maintained their nation’s security by means of trade and the presence of a well-armed, well trained and disciplined army stationed at, or near, its frontiers. Garrisons were established beyond its frontiers in the lands of its neighbours and trading partners. Ready to react if attacked; ready to make advances into neighbouring lands to suppress any rumblings of discontent and also to ensure the trade, on which the country relied, was protected.
The Awakening Aten Page 17