by Wilbur Smith
He captured one thought entire, and suddenly understood what Naja wanted from him. The knowledge gave him power, and the way ahead opened before him like the gates of a captured city.
“For a thousand years, every king and every learned man has searched for the secret of eternal life,” he said softly.
“Perhaps one man alone has found it.” Naja leaned forward eagerly, with his elbows on his knees.
“My lord, your questions are too profound for an old man like me. Two hundred years is not life eternal.” Taita spread his hands deprecatingly, but dropped his eyes, allowing Naja to read what he wanted to hear in the halfhearted denial. The double crown of Egypt, and eternal life, he thought, and smiled inwardly, keeping his expression solemn. This regent’s wants are few and simple.
Naja straightened. “We will speak of these deep matters another time.” There was a triumphant light in his yellow eyes. “But now there is something else I would ask of you. It would be a way for you to prove that my good opinion of you is fully justified. You would find my gratitude without bounds.”
He twists and turns like an eel, Taita thought, and I once believed him to be a dull clod of a soldier. He has been able to hide the light of his lantern from all of us. Aloud he said simply, “If it is within my power, I would deny Pharaoh’s regent nothing.”
“You are an adept of the Mazes of Ammon Ra,” Naja said, with a finality that brooked no denial.
Once more Taita glimpsed the shadowy depths of this man’s ambition. Not only the crown and eternal life! He wishes also to have the future revealed to him, Taita marveled, but nodded humbly and replied, “My lord Naja, all my life I have studied the mysteries, and perhaps I have learned a little.”
“All your very long life.” Naja placed his own emphasis on the phrase. “And you have learned a very great deal.”
Taita bowed his head and remained silent. Why did I ever dream that he would have me killed? he asked himself. He will protect me with his own life, for that is what he believes I hold in my hands—the key to his immortality.
“Taita, beloved of kings and gods, I wish you to work the Mazes of Ammon Ra for me.”
“My lord, I have never worked the Mazes for anyone who was not a queen or a pharaoh, or one who was not destined to sit upon the throne of this very Egypt.”
“It may well be that one such person asks you now,” said Lord Naja, with deep significance in his tone.
Great Horus has delivered him to me. I have him in my hands, Taita thought, and said, “I bow to the wishes of Pharaoh’s regent.”
“Will you work the Mazes for me this very day? I am most anxious to know the wishes of the gods.” Naja’s handsome features were alive with excitement and avarice.
“No man should enter the Mazes lightly,” Taita demurred. “There are great dangers, not only for me but also for the patron who requests the divination. It will take time to prepare for the journey into the future.”
“How long?” Naja’s disappointment was evident.
Taita clasped his forehead in a pantomime of deep thought. Let him sniff the bait for a while, he thought. It will make him more eager to swallow the hook. At last he looked up. “On the first day of the festival of the Bull of Apis.”
The next morning, when he emerged from the great tent, Pharaoh Seti was transformed from the dusty and odorous little rapscallion who had entered the oasis of Boss the previous day.
With a regal fury and fire that had dismayed his entourage, he had resisted the attempts of the barbers to shave his head. Instead, his dark curls had been shampooed and combed until they shone in the early sunlight with russet lights. On top of them he wore the uraeus, the circlet of gold depicting Nekhbet, the vulture goddess, and Naja, the cobra. Their images were entwined on his forehead, with eyes of red- and blue-colored glass. On his chin was the false beard of kingship. His makeup was skilfully created so that his beauty was enhanced, and the packed crowds who waited before the tent sighed with admiration and awe as they sank to the ground in adoration. His false fingernails were of beaten gold, and there were gold sandals on his feet. On his chest was one of the most precious of the Crown Jewels of Egypt: the pectoral medallion of Tamose, a jeweled portrait of the god Horus the Falcon. He walked with a stately tread for one so young, carrying the flail and the scepter crossed over his heart. He stared solemnly ahead until, from the corner of his eye, he glimpsed Taita in the front rank of the crowd: he rolled his eyes at the old man, then made an impish moue of resignation.
In a cloud of perfume, Lord Naja walked a pace behind him, splendid with jewels and awesome with authority. On his hip hung the blue sword, and on his right arm he wore the hawk seal.
Next came the princesses, with the golden feathers of the goddess Isis on their heads, and golden rings on their fingers and toes. They were no longer in the stiff, encrusted robes of yesterday: from throat to ankles they were encased in long dresses, but the linen was so fine and transparent that the sunlight struck through it, as though through the river mist at dawn. Merykara’s limbs were slim, and her chest boyish. The outline of Heseret’s body was moulded into voluptuous curves, her breasts were rosy-tipped through the diaphanous folds, and at the base of her belly, in the fork of her thighs, nestled the shadowy triangle of womanhood.
Pharaoh mounted the processional carriage and took his seat on the elevated throne. Lord Naja stood at his right hand, and the princesses sat at his feet.
The companies of priests from every one of the fifty temples of Thebes fell in ahead, strumming the lyre, beating the drum and shaking the sistrum, sounding the horns, chanting and wailing praises and supplications to the gods.
Then Asmor’s bodyguard took up their positions in the procession, and after them came Hilto’s squadron of chariots, all freshly burnished and decked with pennants and flowers. The horses were curried until their hides glowed like precious metal, and ribbons were plaited into their manes. The bullocks in the traces of the royal carriage were all of unblemished white, their massive humps decorated with bouquets of lilies and water-hyacinth. Their widespread horns and even their hoofs were covered with gold leaf.
The drivers were stark naked Nubian slaves. Every hair had been plucked from their heads and bodies, which greatly emphasized the size of their genitals. They had been anointed from head to foot with rich oils so that they glistened in the sunlight, black as the eye of Seth, in magnificent contrast to the snowy hides of their bullocks. They goaded the team forward, and the bullocks plodded through the dust. A thousand warriors of the Phat Guards fell in behind them and burst with one voice into the anthem of praise. The populace of Thebes had opened the main gates of the city in welcome and were lining the tops of the walls. From a mile outside it they had covered the dusty surface of the road with palm fronds, straw and flowers.
The walls, towers and buildings of Thebes were all built of sun-baked mud bricks—stone blocks were reserved for the construction of tombs and temples. It hardly rained in the Nile valley, so these constructions never deteriorated; they had all been freshly whitewashed and hung with banners in the sky blue of the House of Tamose. The procession passed through the gates, with the crowds dancing, singing and weeping with joy, filling the narrow streets so that the pace of the royal carriage was that of a giant tortoise. At every temple along the way the royal carriage came to a ponderous halt, and Pharaoh dismounted in solemn dignity to sacrifice to the god who dwelt within.
It was late afternoon before they reached the docks at the riverside where the royal barge waited to ferry Pharaoh’s party across to the palace of Memnon on the west bank. Once they had gone on board, two hundred rowers in massed banks plied their paddles. To the beat of the drum they rose and fell in unison, wet and shining like the wings of a gigantic egret.
Surrounded by a fleet of galleys, feluccas and other small craft they made the crossing in the late sunlight. Even when they reached the west bank the King’s duties for his first day were not completed. Another royal carriage bore hi
m through the crowds to the funerary temple of his father, Pharaoh Tamose.
It was dark before they rode up the causeway, lit on both sides by bonfires, and the populace had indulged themselves all that day on beer and wine provided by the royal treasury. The uproar was deafening as Pharaoh dismounted at Tamose’s temple, and climbed the stairway between ranks of granite statues of his father and of his patron god Horus in all his hundred divine guises—Horus as the child Harpocrates, with side-lock and a finger in his mouth, suckling at the breast of Isis, or squatting on a lotus blossom, or falcon-headed or as the winged sun disc. It seemed that king and god had become one.
Lord Naja and the priests led the boy Pharaoh through the tall wooden gates into the Hall of Sorrow, that holy place where Tamose’s mummy lay on its embalming slab of black diorite. In a separate shrine in the side wall, guarded by a black statue of Anubis, the god of cemeteries, stood the pearly alabaster canopic jars that held the King’s heart, lungs and viscera.
In a second shrine against the opposite wall the gold-covered sarcophagus stood ready to receive the royal corpse. The lid of the coffin bore a portrait of Pharaoh in gold so lifelike that Nefer’s heart twisted, impaled with grief, and tears started in his eyes. He blinked them away, and followed the priests to where his father’s body lay in the center of the hall.
Lord Naja took up his position opposite him on the far side of the diorite slab, facing Nefer, and the high priest stood at the head of the dead King. When all was in readiness for the ceremony of Opening the Mouth of the dead King, two priests drew aside the linen sheet that covered the corpse, and Nefer recoiled involuntarily as he looked down on his father.
For all the weeks after his death, while Nefer and Taita had been in the desert, the embalmers had been at work on the King’s body. First they had probed a long-handled silver spoon up his nostril and, without marking his head, scooped out the soft custard of the brains. They removed the eyeballs, which would putrefy swiftly, and filled the eye sockets and the cavity of the skull with natron salts and aromatic herbs. Then they had lowered the corpse into a bath of highly concentrated salts, with the head exposed, and let it soak for thirty days, daily changing the harsh alkali fluids. The fats were leached out of the corpse and the skin peeled away. Only the hair and skin of the head were unaffected.
When at last the corpse was removed from the natron bath it was laid on the diorite slab and wiped down with oils and herbal tinctures. The empty stomach cavity was stuffed with linen pads soaked in resins and waxes. The arrow wound in the chest was sewn closed, and amulets of gold and precious stones placed over it. The barbed and broken shaft that had killed the King had been removed from Pharaoh’s body by the embalmers. After it had been examined by the council of state, the missile had been sealed in a golden casket and would go into his tomb with him, a powerful charm against any further evil that might befall him on his journey through the netherworld.
Then, during the remaining forty days of the embalming, the corpse was allowed to dry thoroughly with the hot desert wind through the open doorways streaming over it.
Once it was as desiccated as firewood, it could be bound up. The linen bandages were laid on it in an intricate design, as incantations to the gods were chanted by choirs of priests. Under them were placed more precious talismans and amulets, and each layer was painted with resins that dried to a metallic hardness and sheen. Only the head was left uncovered, and then for the week before Opening the Mouth four of the most skilful makeup artists of the guild of embalmers, using wax and cosmetics, had restored the King’s features to lifelike beauty.
They replaced the missing eyes with perfect replicas of rock-crystal and obsidian. The whites were translucent, the iris and pupils an exact match of the King’s natural color. The glass orbs seemed endowed with life and intelligence, so that now Nefer gazed into them with awe, expecting to see the lids blink and his father’s pupils widen in recognition. The lips were shaped and rouged so that at any moment they might smile, and his painted skin looked silken and warm, as though bright blood still ran beneath it. His hair had been washed and set in the familiar dark ringlets that Nefer remembered so well.
Lord Naja, the high priest and the choir began to chant the incantation against dying for the second time, but Nefer could not tear his gaze away from his father’s face.
“He is the reflection and not the mirror,
He is the music and not the lyre,
He is the stone and not the chisel,
He will live forever.”
The high priest came to Nefer’s side and placed the golden spoon in his hand. Nefer had been coached in the ritual, but his hand trembled as he placed the spoon on his father’s lips and recited, “I open thy lips that thou might have the power of speech once more.” He touched his father’s nose with the spoon. “I open thy nostrils that thou might breathe once more.” He touched each of the magnificent eyes. “I open thine eyes that thou might behold the glory of this world once more, and the glory of the world to come.”
When at last it was done, the royal party waited as the embalmers wrapped the head and painted it with aromatic resins. Then they laid the golden mask over the blind face, and once more it glowed with splendid life. Contrary to custom and usage, there was only one death mask and one golden sarcophagus for Pharaoh Tamose. His father had gone before him to his tomb covered by seven masks and seven sarcophagi, one within the other, each larger and more ornate than the next.
For the rest of that night Nefer stayed beside the golden sarcophagus, praying and burning incense, entreating the gods to take his father among them and seat him in the midst of the pantheon. In the dawn he went out with the priests onto the terrace of the temple where his father’s head falconer waited. He carried a royal falcon on his gloved fist.
“Nefertem!” Nefer whispered the bird’s name. “Lotus Flower.” He took the magnificent bird from the falconer and held it high upon his own fist, so that the populace gathered below the terrace might see it clearly. Around its right leg the falcon wore a tiny gold tag on a golden chain. On it was engraved his father’s royal cartouche. “This is the godbird of Pharaoh Tamose Mamose. It is the spirit of my father.” He paused to regain his composure, for he was near to tears. Then he went on, “I set my father’s godbird free.” He slipped the leather rufterhood from the falcon’s head. Fierce eyes blinked at the light of the dawn and the bird ruffled its feathers. Nefer unknotted the jesses from its leg, and the bird spread its wings. “Fly, divine spirit!” Nefer cried. “Fly high for me and my father!”
He threw the bird up, it caught the dawn wind and soared on high. Twice it circled overhead, and then, with a wild and haunting cry, it sped away across the Nile.
“The godbird flies to the west!” the high priest called out. Every member of the congregation upon the steps of the temple knew that that was a most unpropitious omen.
Nefer was so physically and emotionally exhausted that as he watched the bird fly away he swayed on his feet. Taita steadied him before he fell and led him away.
Back in Nefer’s bedchamber in the palace of Memnon, Taita mixed a draft at his bedside and knelt beside him to offer it. Nefer took one long swallow, then lowered the cup and asked, “Why does my father have only one small coffin when you tell me my grandfather was entombed in seven heavy golden sarcophagi and that it took twenty strong oxen to draw his funeral wagon?”
“Your grandfather was given the richest funeral in all the history of our land, and he took a great store of grave goods to the underworld with him, Nefer,” Taita agreed. “But those seven coffins consumed thirty lakhs of pure gold, and almost beggared the nation.”
Nefer looked thoughtfully into the cup, then drained the last few drops of the draft. “My father deserved such a rich funeral, for he was a mighty man.”
“Your grandfather thought much of his afterlife,” Taita explained patiently. “Your father thought much of his people and the welfare of this very Egypt.”
Nefer thoug
ht about this for a while, then sighed, settled down on the sheepskin mattress and closed his eyes. He opened them again. “I am proud of my father,” he said simply.
Taita laid his hand upon his forehead in blessing and whispered, “And I know that one day your father will have reason to be proud of you.”
It did not need the ill omen of the flight of the falcon Nefertem to warn Taita that they had reached the most dire and fateful period in all the long history of this very Egypt. When he left Nefer’s bedchamber and started out into the desert, it was as though the stars stood frozen in their courses and all the ancient gods had drawn back and deserted them, abandoning them in this their most dangerous hour.
“Great Horus, we need your guidance now. You hold this Ta-meri, this precious land, in the cup of your hands. Do not let it slip through your fingers and shatter like crystal. Do not turn your back upon us now that we are in our agony. Help me, mighty falcon. Instruct me. Make your wishes clear to me, so that I may follow your will.”
Praying as he went, he climbed the hills at the periphery of the great desert. The clicking of his long staff against the rocks alarmed a yellow jackal and sent it scampering away up the moonlit slope. When he was certain that he was not observed he turned parallel to the river, and quickened his stride. “Horus, well you know that we are balanced on the sword edge of war and defeat. Pharaoh Tamose has been struck down and there is no warrior to lead us. Apepi and his Hyksos in the north are grown so mighty as to have become almost invincible. They gather against us, and we cannot stand against them. The double crown of the two kingdoms is rotten with the worm of treachery, and cannot survive against the new tyranny. Open my eyes, mighty god, and show me the way, that we might triumph against the invading Hyksosian hordes from the north and against the destroying poison in our blood.”