The Golden Falcon

by David C. Clark

  “I also shrink from the prospect of killing good men. Let us hope you are correct.” he replied.

  “When the king returns to this city for the Festival of the Beautiful Valley, he brings Khaemwaset and Merenptah with him, so all parties to the commission can meet in secrecy. I will inform you of the time and place of this meeting.”

  Rekhmire and I made a start on the quarrying. Masons cut a gateway through the southern face of the well shaft, fractionally less wide than the dimensions of the wall. They quarried two metres into the rock and then opened a long, wide corridor to the left of the newly created entrance. Then, at a right angle to the end of this corridor, they cut a short corridor which was the portal into the burial chamber.

  To the right of the new gateway, masons cut a block completely free of the limestone. This block, in the form of a free standing pillar, was just fractionally smaller than the aperture created by the opening of the new gate. The limestone surrounding it was cut away so men could later work around it. When the masons questioned my instruction to shape a massive free standing block, they were told the king wished to have fashioned a colossus of himself at the entrance to the Osiride Cenotaph.

  I had given some thought to a tale that could be put about regarding why I was opening a new substructure adjacent to the king’s existing tomb. Fortunately, its final plan would not conform to conventional tomb architecture and certainly the basalt construction bore no relationship to anything the artisans would have seen elsewhere. I did not want any of the workmen to know the rear chambers would be used to contain pharaonic treasures. Ramesses, Khaemwaset and I spent many hours trying to formulate a convincing story. Khaemwaset, an adept of logic, developed a sequence of thoughts that resolved our problem.

  “Father, you are the king and you have declared yourself divine, the progeny of the gods. The Lord of the Underworld is Osiris and this is well known amongst artisans. My grandfather, Seti built a temple to Osiris in Abydos. You completed the temple and then built a second one in veneration of Osiris. The Osiride sarcophagus sits on a plinth surrounded by a water filled moat.”

  “Yes, the temple of Osiris is well known.”

  “Even though we portray Osiris with a green face, symbolising fertility and new growth, the benefit he bestows upon the kingdom is the black earth deposited during each inundation. Basalt is black. We all journey to the Second Life, king and commoner alike, where we all face the judgement of Osiris before passing into the immortal world.”

  “My son, whilst all know their ultimate destiny is to face the scales of judgement, we know there are some who fear it not.”

  “Whether they fear the scales or not is irrelevant. All know of Osiris and none can question your devotion to him. It is known, at least to tomb workers, members of the royal family, nobles, and even commoners, place statues of various gods within their houses of eternity. So, let me add all these interconnected elements into a whole piece.” He paused, evincing a touch of his father’s ability to create drama.

  “Father, you will instruct the high priest to announce you have decided to celebrate Osiris by building an underground shrine. You have chosen black stone to represent his bounty. The chambers within the secret tomb are to be shrine rooms to honour every deity associated with death and re-birth in the Second Life - Osiris, Isis, Anubis, Selket, Sokar - to name a few. The massive central block will be declared a cenotaph in honour of Osiris. I will issue instructions to all the temples throughout the kingdom that priests everywhere are to spread the knowledge of your great devotion to Osiris, a devotion of such intimacy you wish to perpetually celebrate it within your tomb.”

  “My son, I do not know whether to compliment you on your logic as the story you have woven will carry absolute conviction with all who know of the work or censure you for developing a considerable falsehood. I become concerned that my closest advisors become overly familiar with glib deceptions. I shall instruct the high priest as you suggest. Sennefer, you will immediately let it be known loudly and widely that I am building another Osiride cenotaph. On your behalf, I will ask my father, Amun,to forgive you both for creating a plethora of mistruths.”

  Now we had established a plausible tale I could, without embarrassment, discuss the construction with all those involved. From the rear of the burial chamber, I opened a corridor two metres square and fifteen metres long and cut into the rock six ‘shrine rooms to the gods’, being, in truth, the minimum allowed by Ramesses for his most essential funerary possessions.

  A large chamber, almost a cavern, was quarried to accommodate the armoured sarcophagus and hold the thousands of tonnes of sand that would be poured in to further shield it. Having built several multi-pillared halls, I replicated this technique in the main chamber but employed granite blocks rather than rely on limestone pillars. I had noted cracks in the piers within Horemheb’s tomb and wanted to avoid a similar problem in Ramesses tomb. The pillars were built using granite blocks manhandled into position, with a latticework erected to support basalt plates placed on their tops, thus creating a layer of armour over the chamber. When finished, the vault was a small forest of columns so I declared it a great pillared hall, thus furthering the illusion since all temples were endowed with similar structures.

  The massive sarcophagus had to be sufficiently commodious to accommodate the coffins of Ramesses and Nefertari, which made it a substantial piece of masonry. Placing the sarcophagus trough and lid into the crypt proved an irksome task in the confined space, especially as it had to be lowered into the well shaft, manoeuvred along the narrow entrance corridors and raised up onto the lower half of the block though, with careful management of men, ramps and ropes, the task was achieved, accompanied by many oaths and crushed fingers.

  When asked to explain the purpose of the great rectangular basalt box, I explained it was to be filled with water taken from an inundation, the source of Osiride bounty. How glibly the lies fell from my tongue. Ramesses was again impressed with my imagination and Khaemwaset thought my fable very imaginative. I prayed each day at my personal shrine to Thoth that he may forgive me but he remained silent though I did notice an ibis, well away from its normal feeding grounds on the Nile, visited the area around the workings. When I mentioned this in passing to the king he smiled, reminded me of the earlier appearance of an ibis at the erection of the colossi at the Ramesseum and he repeated his injunction to consider these co-incidences carefully. He would not be drawn further on the subject.

  Work progressed. Masons dug tunnels into the limestone to create drain holes for water and reservoirs for sand. A shaft was driven from the top of the hill into the burial chamber with a branch into the cavity above the ‘shrine rooms’ to allow sand to pour into both sections of the tomb.

  The critical part of hiding the tomb was the conversion of the massive block in the first corridor into a false wall to fit exactly into the entrance cut out of the well shaft. It was painstakingly chiselled to size, with its top and three sides smoothed with great precision so it could be pushed into the aperture. The preparation was exacting work as it would be manoeuvred into the aperture to form the fourth wall of the well shaft. The exposed face was adorned with the same decorations as originally inscribed when the well shaft walls were of one piece. This task I entrusted to Nebamun personally, as this element of the deception was of the greatest importance. Moving the heavy blocking plug would be exceptionally difficult in the limited space but we builders have techniques to master this type of challenge.

  On the day of the entombment, the coffins would be lowered into the well shaft, carried along the corridor into the burial chamber, then placed within the sarcophagus and the false wall moved forward to close the well shaft entrance. Then, granite blocks would be laid behind the plug inside the corridor, ensuring it could never be pushed backward into the new tomb. Once the sarcophagus was sealed under the upper half of the basalt block, a cascade of sand would pour down through the tunnels, filling the access corridor, burial chamber and the area abo
ve the treasury section and its corridor.

  Four years would pass before the excavation was finished, the granite pillars erected and the first shipments of plates received from the quarries. Nebamun visited Thebes once a year. He was far from being a happy man as his masons loathed working with basalt and he had to put down a near riot in the basalt quarry west of the Delta so great was my demand for carefully wrought sections. On hearing of this incident, Ramesses despatched a small contingent of soldiers to stiffen the resolve of the masons. In near despair, Nebamun pleaded with me after I decided to clad the treasury rooms with the same plates and fit the rooms with sliding basalt doors to further impede any potential robber as these secondary chambers were to be filled with valuable funerary goods of religious and personal significance to the king. His entreaties fell on deaf ears.

  During those years, the king suffered the loss of more children. He was fifty-six, and had ruled for thirty-four years, so it was not unexpected many of his children would die from injuries and illness. Ramesses was to pay an increasing penalty for living longer than the normal span of years. Though I was only two years older, I witnessed his growing anguish at losing beloved family members whilst I lived with a deepening concern about Ipi’s health. If she were to pass away before me, I believed my life would lose its purpose no matter how deep my loyalty to the king.

  Sadly, the mausoleum built for his sons held an ever increasing allotment of princes. Several of Nefertari and Isetnofret’s daughters were buried in the Place of Peace. More melancholy tidings came when an imperial messenger arrived in Thebes bearing the news of Queen Isetnofret’s death, after she was bitten by a marsh viper which had found its way into the royal apartments. When I told Ipi, she wept in heartfelt sorrow as she had become very close to the queen and the daughters who lived with their mother. Our intimate association with the king bought its share of grief to our life as both Ipi and I befriended many within the royal household and we felt the passing of our friends deeply.

  We embarked on a flotilla carrying the Theban nobility to Memphis where Isetnofret had chosen to be buried. Upon our arrival, we were escorted to the royal palace for a distressing condolence audience with the king and his eldest children. Prince Khaemwaset conducted the burial service. Although the burial of a queen did not entitle her to the profound ritual attending the death of a king, Isetnofret’s exalted position accorded her a formal and deeply moving funeral. At her request, she was entombed in an older style tomb at Saqqara where Ramesses ordered her grave be tended with the same devotions he had decreed for Queen Nefertari in Thebes.

  The passing of Isetnofret marked the beginning of a steady decline in Ramesses. The fires of his youth were banked, his vitality dimmed by degrees and a mantle of reflective gravity fell about his shoulders. Following the death of Nefertari, he elevated two of his daughters, Bintanath and Meryetamun, to the rank of royal wife in a ceremony designed to show his people the strength and unity of the Ramesside family. Ipi, however, saw this as a tangible indication of his loneliness as the king’s wife had no official role in the kingdom, other than as consort and companion to the ruler.

  I never understood the practice of our rulers marrying their sisters or daughters as surely, these unions could not be sexual. A king had no shortage of bed partners to indulge his pleasures and it is well known children born of familial unions could suffer from distressing physical and mental abnormalities. Perhaps it was an earthly reflection of the behaviour of our gods and goddesses. After all, Osiris married his sister and Horus was the product of their union. Bakenkhons showed me an ancient text in which Re, the great Sun God, begets himself ‘by joining his seed with his body to create his egg within his secret self’ and when I quizzed him as to its meaning, he sagely said my decision to become an architect was many times wiser than the road he trod to the higher priesthood.

  A year after Isetnofret’s death, Ramesses married another two daughters, Nebt-tawy and Hentmire and granted them both the title of royal wife. Later, a fifth daughter, Henttawy, was bonded to her father in marriage but he never referred to her as a great wife. My office received a endless flow of commissions to build smaller tombs in the queen’s valley and elsewhere for princesses and if one of the king’s unmarried daughters died unexpectedly, sometimes hasty arrangements had to be made to find a suitable place for their burial, a problem usually resolved by Ramesses authorising priests to re-open tombs of their mothers or sisters to permit subsequent internments.

  Long established tradition ruled a princess could never claim the children of her marriage to be of royal descent as this would dilute the bloodline and raise the spectre of intrigues against the legitimate ruler and the heir apparent. It was not unknown for rulers in periods of internal turbulence to have troublesome relatives killed as they strove to insulate their rule against sibling jealousy.

  I believe Ramesses sought the close companionship of his daughters to relieve the tedium of his later years. As a younger man, he was as virile as a lion amongst a pride and his children numbered as the stars in the constellations but only Nefertari possessed the personality and character to sooth the imperial brow when the stresses of rule threatened to overwhelm him. Only the few who knew him well saw, under the mantle of divinity, there lay a very human man.

  For all the power and glory associated with being the ruler of Egypt, he confided in me the road chosen for him by the gods was a lonely one. Despite, or possibly because of, having his sons in positions of power, sporadic tensions arose in the princely ranks and those tensions increased the longer he lived. One after another, his surviving eldest son became the heir to the throne. Some waited in frustration for their father’s death. When an heir died, the next prince in line assumed he would inherit the throne. A few sons were deemed unworthy by Ramesses, who passed them over as inheritors and several of the disinherited seethed with anger, even though Ramesses attempted to blunt their vexation by appointments to important positions within his administration.

  When stung by a son’s insolent rebellion or overweening lust for power, Ramesses reacted with fury.One, caught attempting to ignite unrest amongst the nobility in Dendara, was rewarded with the governorship of the country’s most remote province where he killed himself in an excess of food and wine. Another, believing himself above the scrutiny of the treasurer, enriched his purse by under-declaring the production of a remote gold mine under his stewardship. When his perfidy was uncovered, Ramesses made an offering of his hands to the gods.

  Ramesses was ardently devoted to the creation of an indelible image of himself and his family as a divinely ordained dynasty of rulers of the Kingdom. Where possible he relished usurping significant statues of previous rulers. Their names were obliterated and substituted by his own. Wherever there was a blank wall, pillar or pylon, he ensured his name, triumphs and association with the gods were proclaimed in terms of great piety. However, the intent was clear and strident. Whilst every ruler associated his name with our gods as a supplicant, Ramesses was adamant his inscriptions portrayed him not only an equal to the gods but as a god himself.

  I viewed many inscriptions in my travels and remember one remarkable monument on which Amenhotep III, the mortal ruler, makes an offering to himself as an immortal god. Ramesses went further than even Amenhotep until it was impossible to visit an area and not see some representation of him.

  I watched him mature from the young, arrogant man I encountered in Thebes, fresh from the success of his first Opet Festival. Lusty, virile and in the initial blossom of regal power, he strode the land with infallible steps. He never tired and there were always new fields to conquer and new buildings to commission. His majesty intoxicated him so deeply it nearly led to the crushing defeat at Qadesh and, whilst he privately acknowledged he almost lost his life and land there, he turned the near rout into an unparalleled triumph carved into the walls of monuments throughout the realm. Such self-effacing titles as King of Kings, The Indomitable Lion of the Desert, Smiter of Asiatic Heads and Con
queror of all He Surveyed, leapt off walls in panoramas that were the greatest pictorial images in the land.

  He knew every intimate detail of his family’s history from its rise from obscurity under Horemheb. In his thirties, he held no doubt the Pa-Ramessu would establish a dynasty greater than any preceding era and I am sure he believed, with total conviction, Egypt was his by divine right and the country would remain in Ramesside hands for generations through his single handed efforts.

  The elevation of his children to positions of authority was one method of keeping his finger on the country’s pulse whilst laying a very strong foundation for the perpetuation of Ramesside rule.Unlike many earlier kings who excluded their children from power, Ramesses assiduously promoted his family, groomed his offspring in the arts of kingship and assumed, with so many talented sons, they would spawn generations of worthy imperial successors. But he was to live too long and the later half of his life saw all too many of his gifted children die like flowers dropping from the persea tree. The progeny of his middle years were not as dynamic as the fruits of his union with Nefertari and Isetnofret and sons from his late marriage to the Hittite Princess, Ur-Maa-Neferu-Ra, were not blessed with his vitality.

  Forgive me, for I get too far ahead in my narrative in mentioning Neferu-Ra. The Hittite King, Hattusili, and his wife, Queen Puduhepa, remained steadfast friends and when they learnt of Isetnofret’s death, they offered their eldest daughter’s hand in marriage, a union which was a blessing to the king as it bought the warmth of a young, nubile body to his bed whilst strengthened the bond between the two kingdoms. The Hittite king and queen travelled to Pi-Ramess for the betrothal service and stayed as the king’s guest for several weeks where Ipi and I had the good fortune to meet them at a formal dinner. Hattusili and I spent many hours discussing the buildings of Hatti and the countries surrounding his kingdom.