The Amulet of Amon-Ra
Page 17
“I should get back,” said Dje-Nefer.
Bibi reached under his traveling cloak. “The Pharaoh asked me to give you something.”
“Thutmose?”
“Already you forget?” asked Bibi, chuckling.
“Never!” said Dje-Nefer. “But she already gave us so much.”
“This was just for you.”
Bibi held out his hand. On his palm lay a stone statuette of Hatshepsut, dressed as a man.
“To remember her by,” he said.
“I will,” said Dje-Nefer, taking the statuette.
“Keep it safe,” said Bibi. “The Pharaoh also had a gift for Mutemwija. In her last hour, she had me take it off her own arm. She said it was something she felt she needed to do.”
He reached under his cloak again, then brought out a slim gold bracelet.
“She’s here tonight,” said Dje-Nefer. “I’ll give it to her.”
With a nod and a wave, Bibi set off, heading upriver towards Aswan.
Dje-Nefer stroked the statuette.
“Remember.” She would. Even if no one else did.
Thanks to a friend she had never met, Dje-Nefer knew that the memory of a great woman would not be erased forever. The name of the female Pharaoh—Hatshepsut—would endure.
Dje-Nefer turned and walked up the long dusty road back to the villa, where her future waited.
Hatshepsut, the female Pharaoh, really did exist. She reigned as King in the Eighteenth Dynasty, from 1490 to 1468 B.C. After her death, her mortuary temple was destroyed, her images smashed, and her obelisks were plastered over. Only a few small fragments remained, enough to give Egyptologists clues to her existence, which they found in the early 1900’s. The process of restoring the temple is still underway. The temple itself is one of the loveliest in all of Egypt; with its series of colonnades and ramps, it seems to grow gracefully from the cliff towering at its back. You can still see images of Hatshepsut’s trading expeditions to Punt painted on the walls.
No one knows who damaged the temple of the female Pharaoh and tried to remove her name from history, although evidence points to her nephew Thutmose III. Perhaps it was done to make it look as though the kingdom had passed unbroken from father to son.
Hatshepsut’s mummy was lost for centuries and feared to have been destroyed along with her temple. However, it was rediscovered in 2007, and positively identified as Pharaoh Hatshepsut by DNA testing and by the match of a missing tooth, found in a Canopic box marked with her cartouche.
Most of the names for the fictional characters in this book are based on real names of people from Ancient Egypt.
Amon-Ra- Ah mon rah (ah as in “jaw”)
Bast- Bahst
Bes- Base
Bibi- Bee bee
Daoud- Dah ood
Dje-Nefer- Jeh nef fer
Drus- Droos
Hapi- Hah pea
Hathor- Hah thor
Hatshepsut- Hat shep soot
Hekhanakhte- Heh kan ak tay
Hopi- Hoe pea
Horus- Hoar uss
Isis- Eye siss
Ka-Aper- Kah Ah per
Kai- Kye
Khufu– Koo foo
Mentmose- Ment mose
Meryt-Re- Meh rit ray
Miw- Mew
Mutemwija- Moo tem wee jah
Neferhotep- Neh fur hoe tep
Osiris- Oh sigh riss
Parahotep- Pair ah hoe tep
Ra- Rah
Ramose- Rah mose
Satyah- Sat yah
Sekhmet- Sek met
Senmut- Sen moot
Tetisheri- Teh tee share ree
Thutmose- Thoot mose
Ti- Tee
This pronunciation guide is only a suggestion. No one knows the exact spelling of names, which are taken from hieroglyphs. The hieroglyphs are vague about vowels, and opinions differ about stressed syllables.
Leslie Carmichael has been inside the Great Pyramid at Giza, has watched the world turn purple during a total solar eclipse, and has been an honoured guest at a Canadian-Scottish-Taiwanese wedding. She has swum in the Red Sea, picked amethysts out of the ground near Thunder Bay, watched a space shuttle land, and cooked a Medieval dinner for 200 people. She has worn a corset, a suit of armour and a Klingon outfit (but not all at the same time).
Leslie also writes comic interactive plays for Pegasus Performances. She likes to work on miniature dolls and dollhouses when she’s not writing. She can crochet three-dimensional objects without a pattern, but finds knitting way too complicated.
Leslie lives in Calgary, Alberta, with her husband, three children and two cats.