The King's Man

by Pauline Gedge

  “No. Tell me, Keeper, do any of the hieroglyphs on the scroll match Imhotep’s hand?”

  “Perhaps,” Penbui replied cautiously. “I am not sure.” He pulled open one of the doors. “Let us go in, noble one. I have prepared a table and chair for you and set out the relic. Do you require the skills of a scribe? I see that you have not brought your own.”

  “No, thank you, Keeper.”

  Penbui looked at him curiously then stood aside, and Huy entered Ptah’s House of Life.

  The smell surrounded him at once, the slightly musty scent emanating from the thousands of books stored in the row upon row of alcoves and mingling with the odour of dust, stone, and ink. Huy paused, inhaling it with pleasure. It spoke to him of the schoolroom, of the slow learning of a scribe’s discipline, of knowledge imbibed and mastery hard-won. The air was still, cool, and quiet. The only illumination came from thin shafts of sunlight slanting down through the clerestory windows a long way above his head. Not far into the great room stood a table which held a plain oil lamp and a bundle that caught at Huy’s breath. Beside it a piece of carpet lay ready for the scribe Huy knew he would not need. A smaller table a step away had been covered with a linen cloth, two jugs, and two clay cups. Penbui had also paused. As though we are paying homage to something sacred, Huy thought, his eyes on the larger table where the treasure waited for him. This moment is the culmination of all my years of struggle with the Book’s mysteries, enduring Anubis’s scoffing and, worst of all, carrying guilt and a sense of my own inadequacy day and night like a load of mud bricks I could not send tumbling to the ground.

  At an unspoken word the two men walked forward and Huy rounded the table to stand looking down on his prize. “The other volumes were encased in soft white leather,” he said, his voice falling flat in the motionless atmosphere.

  Penbui shook his head. “No white leather, mer kat, and no wax seal either. Just a cedar box, warped and cracked with age and lack of care. One of our artisans is making a new box for it, but of course if you determine that it is indeed a missing part of the Book of Thoth it must be honoured with a sheath of white bull’s hide. In that case I pray that the One will allow it to remain under Ptah’s protection.”

  “I shall urge His Majesty to do so.” Huy drew up the chair and sat, a gesture of dismissal.

  Penbui bowed. “The jugs contain water and wine. A servant will be outside the doors to bring you whatever you need.” He hesitated, and in spite of his tension Huy smiled inwardly. He had never met an archivist who did not hover over his charges like a goose with her goslings.

  “I promise I will not bring either water or wine over to this desk,” he said, “and if I need to consult some other text you might have here, I will send for you. I have one request: a bowl of water, a dish of natron, and a fresh square of linen so that I may wash my hands should they become sweaty.”

  Penbui flushed, then smiled broadly. “My apologies, Master, for being a fussy old man. Your servant will bring the things I have omitted. I was somewhat flustered at the prospect of your presence here.”

  Huy smiled back and watched Penbui flit through the half door. It closed quietly.

  My dear Keeper, I am probably older than you, Huy thought as the silence crept around him. I exist in a limbo of timelessness by virtue of Atum’s desire. Shall I be released now, today, with the meaning of the Book revealed clearly to me at last? He sat waiting, palms flat on the surface of the table to either side of the scroll, and presently the door opened to admit a laden servant who bowed to Huy and set water, natron, and two linen cloths beside the clay cups with the smooth precision of long practice. Bowing again, he left, and Huy was free to touch his prize at last.

  As he held it gently in order to turn it, he was enveloped in a glorious yet slightly sour aroma he recognized at once. His ears filled with the whisper of leaves brushing against each other and he was a youth again, sitting under the branches of the sacred Ished Tree that grew at the centre of Ra’s temple, the first volume of the Book of Thoth lying under his terrified fingers. “Time …” the tangle of moving shadows sighed as his younger self sat with eyes fixed on the far wall, afraid to look down at what lay on the palette resting across his folded knees. “Time …” Huy shook himself, and hooking his fingers carefully under the lip of the papyrus, he drew the scroll open.

  He had not seen the delicate, almost painfully beautiful script since he had read what had appeared to be the last volume of the Book just before his fifteenth Naming Day, but he recognized it at once and his heart gave a thud and began to pound in his ears. The language was archaic, but as before he was able to follow it with ease. This is real, he was thinking deliriously even as his gaze skimmed the characters. I was right, Methen. The Book lacked finality. Will it now reveal a practical application for its convoluted and obscure wisdom? Will I see it, perhaps even experience it, for myself? He wanted to unroll the scroll all the way in order to discover whether the equally familiar hand that had penned so many explanations for him in the past might have done so again. But he took a deep breath and returned to the beginning.

  I Thoth, the Heart of Atum, now set down the Bridge of

  which I am a part.

  It is Ra who rests in Osiris; it is Osiris who rests in Ra.

  Secret, mystery, it is Ra, it is Osiris.

  Three gods are all the gods: Amun-Atum, Ra, Ptah, who

  have no equal.

  He whose name is hidden is Amun, whose countenance is

  Ra and whose body is Ptah.

  Amun-Atum, Ra, Ptah, Unity-Trinity. His image can never

  be drawn, nothing can be

  taught of him, for he is too mysterious for his secret to be

  unveiled, too great and

  too powerful to be approached … one would fall dead at

  once if one dared to pronounce

  his secret name …

  He who began the becoming the first time. Amun-Atum

  who became at the beginning,

  whose mysterious emergence is unknown. No Neter had

  come before him who could

  reveal his form. His mother who made his name does not

  exist. A father who could

  say “I engendered him” does not exist. It was he who

  hatched his own egg. Powerful,

  mysterious of birth … God of gods, who came from

  himself. All the divine entities

  became after he commenced himself.

  He who manifested himself as heart, he who manifested

  himself as tongue, in the

  likeness of Atum, is Ptah, the very ancient, who gave life

  to all the Neteru.

  The King is all Neteru, the divinities, the hypostases of

  Atum which are

  his limbs. The King becomes in becoming.

  The soul of the master of heaven is born, and shall become.

  Come then Ra in thy name of the living Khepri … illumine

  the primordial darkness

  that Iuf may live and renew itself.

  Holding the papyrus firmly open, Huy glanced up for a moment. Thoth is indeed curving back to the beginning as the last scroll I read said he would. He is restating the contents of the first four scrolls, putting the difficulties into concepts that might be easier for a reader to understand. He wants to be understood because he is Atum’s heart, and the Lord of Ra’s Bau. So far I find no problems. Amun-Atum enunciates, he speaks from his heart. Ptah takes this vital word and materializes the Neteru, the great archetypes. And of course, as the High Priest of Ra at Iunu told me once, Ra himself is not the sun, not light, but penetrates the sun, and lights the primordial darkness so that Flesh may live and renew itself. What Flesh? And what darkness? Of the Nun or the twelve houses of night? How odd it is, and yet how right, that I should be sitting here at the end of my long search, considering matters that became familiar to me even before I left my school! His gaze returned to the scroll.

  Horus who protects
Osiris, who fashions him by whom he

  himself was fashioned,

  Who gives life to him by whom he himself was given life,

  who perpetuates

  the name of him by whom he himself was begotten.

  The King is liberated from the humanity which is in his

  members …

  Horus receives him between his fingers, he purifies him in

  the lake

  of the jackal, he brushes the flesh of the royal double.

  Oh arise! You have received your head, your bones are

  reassembled, your members

  Are rejoined to you. Shake off the dust!

  I am Iuf, the soul of Ra. I have come here to see my body in

  order to inspect

  My image which is in the Duat.

  Come then to us, thou whose Flesh sails, who is led towards

  his own body …

  The sky is for thy soul, the earth for thy body …

  Illumine the primordial darkness so that the Flesh may live

  and renew itself …

  Thou art he who becomes, he who metamorphoses himself

  towards

  the east.

  The soul of the Master of Heaven is born and shall become.

  The King returns to the right hand of his father …

  Akh is for heaven, kha is for earth …

  Thou livest now, flesh, in the earth.

  Again Huy paused. So Ra, the divine principle of light, becomes Iuf, flesh. At this point I think I’m losing my grasp of what I’m reading. Akh is spirit, my spirit. Kha is my body. I have the feeling that all I can do is allow my memory to absorb the words and try to understand them later. He read on.

  To me belongs today and I know tomorrow.

  Who is this?

  Yesterday is Osiris and tomorrow is Ra.

  O Isir! Thy mouth is opened for thee with the thigh of the

  Eye of Hor …

  with the hook of Upual … with this metal born of Set,

  the adze of iron,

  with which is opened the mouth of the divine entities.

  My mouth is opened by Ptah with celestial iron

  scissors …

  I have come to you, Osiris. I am Thoth, my two hands

  united to carry Ma’at.

  Ma’at is in every place that is yours …

  You rise with Ma’at, you live with Ma’at, you join your

  limbs to Ma’at, you make

  Ma’at rest on your head in order that she may take her seat

  on your forehead.

  You become young again in the sight of your daughter

  Ma’at, you live from

  the perfume of her dew.

  Ma’at is worn like an amulet at your throat, she rests on

  your chest, the

  divine entities reward you with Ma’at, for they know her

  wisdom …

  Your right eye is Ma’at, your left eye is Ma’at …

  Your flesh, your members, are Ma’at …

  Your food is Ma’at, your drink is Ma’at …

  The breaths of your nose are Ma’at …

  You exist because Ma’at exists …

  And vice versa.

  There was a great deal more. The scroll was thick, and Huy was tempted to hold it open by placing the clay cups on it, but the fear of harming it kept him in his seat. He read steadily, so absorbed that he was unaware of the passing of time until at last he saw the words;

  There, where everything ends, all begins eternally.

  Nothing more was presented in that exquisite hand, but following a portion of blank papyrus Huy saw a scattering of words written in a way he recognized as identical to the clarifications that had been added to each of the Book’s scrolls he had seen. It’s you, Imhotep, I know this is you, and I wish I’d brought my palette with me because, although every word of the Book itself sinks perfectly into my memory, your additions fade with time, a proof that the author of the Book is indeed Atum, dictating to Thoth. Stretching until his spine cracked, he glanced out into the shadows of the extensive room. The thin rays of light illuminating the uppermost tiers of stored scrolls had gone and the small, high windows themselves showed only diffused patches of bronze sky. I’ve been sitting here all day, Huy thought with a shock. I’m neither hungry nor thirsty, and the dose of poppy I always take at noon still rests in Perti’s leather bag. Suddenly oppressed by a weight of fatigue, he looked down, concentrating on the commentary the great Imhotep had penned so many hentis ago.

  The King is Ma’at on earth. He spans the gulf beween earth and the Beautiful West. His limbs are the hypostases of Atum and he is the living Ra as Iuf, Flesh, as Horus himself, one of the mighty three. The heb sed not only renews the King’s strength, it transmutes him. These words of Atum confirm it. It is the sacred heb sed that gives him the limbs of Atum and the Flesh of Ra. This is the way the King truly becomes a god.

  Huy lifted his hands and the scroll rolled up with a tiny whisper. Heb sed, he breathed on an audible sigh of sheer tiredness. A day on which every King performs the rites of regeneration, ceremonies established hentis ago in the darkness of the deep past. We think of it simply as the replenishment of his vigour. We believe that every Hawk-in-the-Nest becomes divine when he ascends the Horus Throne. But what if that is not true? Was the heb sed designed by Atum to do so much more? Have I found the practical application of all I have puzzled over through the years? The Book tells of creation, the beginning of magic, the becoming that resulted in the formation of the Neteru, the growing multiplicity of everything living on the earth, the holiness of Ma’at whose precepts we are commanded to follow. But until now, until the words contained in this last precious chapter, the Book did not speak of the nature and sanctity of kingship. Is this the culmination of all that has gone before since Ra-Atum filled the void of the Nun with his becoming? Does the King truly emerge from the heb sed as a unique being? I can’t think about this anymore today.

  He rose stiffly, walked to one of the double doors, opened it, and stepped outside. At once his men and the temple servant with them scrambled up to bow. A pleasant, warm gush of air embraced Huy. Half the sun had already disappeared into the mouth of Nut, and the light was slowly changing from hot bronze to a delicate pink. Huy addressed the servant. “Tell your master the archivist that I have finished with the scroll and that I shall want to consult with him tomorrow. He may replace it in its box now, and leave it there. You are dismissed.”

  The man nodded and left. Huy beckoned Perti and together they began the short walk out of the temple grounds, along Ptah’s canal, and through Huy’s garden gate, the guard behind them. At the door to the apartment Huy released his men. “I’ll send for you tomorrow,” he told Perti. “The temple staff fed you, I hope.”

  “They did, Master. They wanted to bring you food also, but I took it upon myself to forbid them.”

  “Good. Go now.” I’m both thirsty and very hungry, Huy realized as he entered the apartment and Amunmose came sweeping towards him, but as yet I don’t crave poppy. How strange. “Get me hot food and a jug of beer,” he said as his steward came up to him. “I’ll eat and drink and then see to the dispatches in my room.”

  Amunmose bustled away and Huy turned to Kenofer, hovering at the door to Huy’s bedchamber. All at once the full importance of the day burst upon him and he paused. I have done what no one else has done since the time of Imhotep, he marvelled without any sense of pride. Indeed I know that I am simply standing in the wake of a great man worshipped by many. What else might Atum require of me now that the Book is complete? A vision of Amunhotep’s latest son appeared in his mind’s eye, and firmly he thrust it away. “I’ve time for a massage before Rakhaka stops grumbling and cooks for me,” he said to his body servant. “I’ve been sitting all day.” Kenofer bowed briefly without speaking. He’s learned to be quiet at last. Huy smiled to himself as he entered the room and sought his chair. Kenofer knelt and began to remove his sandals.
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br />   14

  HUY DID NOT FALL ASLEEP until the coming dawn was a barely discernible lightening in the gloom around him. He lay on his back in a state of peaceful calm, hands behind his head, eyes open to the invisible ceiling, while he allowed the Book of Thoth to unreel slowly and steadily through his mind. Its elaborate concepts did not distress him, and he was able to form his own thoughts behind the words. If Imhotep is correct, the Book is proof that every Pharaoh who performs the heb sed emerges invisibly transformed, he reflected. We have paid lip service to the idea for so many hentis that the wonder of its implication has become commonplace. The King dies, is beautified, and ascends to ride in the celestial barque among the stars with the other Neteru, who welcome him as an equal. But is he? They are archetypes, but the heb sed metamorphoses him so that he becomes Horus, Ra-Harakhti in his guise as Iuf, the Flesh of Ra. “The soul of the Master of Heaven is born and shall become,” says the Book. Atum-Ra is gestated, cocooned, and born protected by uraei. The Neteru, the divinities, are the hypostases of Atum-Ra. Therefore they participate in this activity. From the rites of the heb sed the King becomes truly holy. “Come then, Ra, in thy name of the living Khepri … that Flesh may live and renew itself.” As a god greater than everyone else but Iuf in the celestial barque, Huy mused. Greater than Wepwawet the Opener of the Ways, who stands in the front, or Sia, Knowledge, or the Lady of the Barque. Only the Great Neter Iuf stands in the central shrine, with Hu, the Word, behind him. Where does the transfigured King stand?