by Jerry Dubs
And Imhotep knew that only he could make it happen.
“Speak, Imhotep.”
He looked up at King Djoser who was leaning on the table with one hand, his other hand playing with the engraved handle of the knife he had used as a pointer.
“King Djoser,” Imhotep said slowly, trying to organize his thoughts. “The river will rise only if Khnum is satisfied. The water comes from beyond Nubia, many days journey south through a forest so thick with trees that you must cut your way through. That land is the land of Khnum.
“He is a god, King Djoser. A gift that would satisfy a man, a governor or a priest is a small thing to a god. All of the Two Lands is yours. All of the Two Lands is dry, the river has not risen for seven years. You must be more than generous to Khnum. You are not only making an offering to the god, you are acting to save The Two lands.”
King Djoser crossed his arms.
“What would you have me offer Khnum?”
Imhotep looked at the maps and saw that they didn’t begin to cover the expanse of land history said King Djoser gave the temple. He remembered the sensation of freedom he had felt when he entered the Two Lands, the feeling of belonging here that had swept through him as he tended to Prince Teti, and the fullness of spirit that came over him when he had been with Meryt.
As he thought of it, the feeling returned to him, filling him with the moment and the possibilities it held, showing him the pathways that opened up from this pivotal instant.
Giving in to the impulse that swept through him now, he stepped to the table and brushed the maps to the floor.
He stood straight and, looking at King Djoser, recited the words he remembered from the stele.
“King Djoser, you must give to Khnum the lands from the river to the mountains of dawn on the east side of the river and as far as the mountains of dusk on the west side. All the land, all the wealth, all the settlements, all the farmers, from the island south as far as an oxen can plow in twelve days.”
King Djoser moved with incredible speed, driving the blade of the silver knife deep into the table.
“You do not know what you ask,” he said, his voice seething.
“And more, King Djoser,” Imhotep said, keeping his voice level and calm. “Give to Khnum a tenth of the riches that flow from Nubia through here and into the Two Lands. A tenth of the game and the fishes, of all the wealth found within the offering.”
“Who are you,” King Djoser asked, “to demand such an offering?”
“Not for me, King Djoser. For Khnum. For the waters of the River Iteru. For the life of the Two Lands. Only a great offering such as this will satisfy Khnum.”
King Djoser wrenched the knife from the table. He flipped it into the air and caught it as he paced, walking the length of the table and then turning back.
“If I refuse,” he said to himself, “and the river does not rise, then the Two Lands will cry out for justice and the gods will know my greed has betrayed Kemet. If I refuse and the river does rise, then the Two Lands will be blessed, but the gods will still know of my avarice.”
He turned to Imhotep. “Words are powerful, Imhotep. Have you met Tama, the priestess of Ma’at? She believes that words unleash all action.
“You have said the words. But it is I who must give them life.”
He brought his arm back and in a quick motion brought it forward again, throwing the knife across the room. The light from the torches danced on the polished silver like a strobe light as the knife twirled silently toward a carved wooden pillar. It struck with a heavy thud, embedding itself deep in the wood.
“I must give your words life,” King Djoser repeated, “or kill them.”
Imhotep bowed his head and waited.
“Repeat these words to no one, Imhotep. We will talk tomorrow.”
King Djoser sent for Imhotep late the following afternoon.
The anger that was visible the night before was gone now, replaced by the serenity Imhotep had come to expect from the king.
“Let us walk, Imhotep,” King Djoser said. He led him out of the temple toward the river. They walked in silence, heading toward the western edge of the island.
“Meryt is recovering from her illness?” King Djoser asked.
Imhotep was surprised to hear the king asking about Meryt. “Yes, King Djoser. She is better every day.”
“Is she carrying your child yet?”
Imhotep stopped short.
“No, no, I haven’t heard any rumors,” King Djoser said with a wry smile. “It is just that she is of age and it would not be unexpected.”
They walked on in silence until they reached the island’s edge. The sun had turned almost a blood red as it lowered itself toward the western desert. The ragged peaks of the distant mountains were silhouetted by the red glow.
“Are you a god as some have said?” King Djoser asked.
Imhotep shook his head.
“I am just a man. I have come from a distant place and I bring knowledge that others here do not have. But I am a man.”
“Do you believe that I am a god?”
“I am not sure I understand what that means here,” Imhotep answered.
“Are gods different in your land?” King Djoser asked.
“I don’t think we have any gods,” Imhotep answered.
“What is a god?” King Djoser said, turning back to face the river. “I understand you have seen Djefi and were at To-She for The Cutting Out of Sobek’s Tongue. Djefi keeps a crocodile that represents the god Sobek. Is the crocodile a god? At times he is a vessel for the god’s ka, his spirit. But the rest of the time, Imhotep, I think he is just a crocodile.
“What about Re? So distant, so painful to look at. Eternal, unchanging, giver of life. Hetephernebti has no doubts that the fiery circle is the great god Re, and my sister is a very smart woman, Imhotep. Very wise.
“There is a difference, I think between the embodiment of the god and the spirit of the god. Am I a god? I cannot crush a rock with my hand or bring a dead person back to life. But I believe that my spirit is a god’s spirit. I truly believe that, Imhotep. I believe that Kemet deserves nothing less than a god as ruler. I am the ruler. When I die, whoever takes the throne will be filled with the godlike spirit that rules Kemet, the very ka that lives inside me.
“I can make mistakes. This body is a man’s, after all. But the ka, the essence of what I am, that, Imhotep, is godlike. It must be.”
They stood by the riverbank, listening to the water slowly pass.
“And so I will give this gift to Khnum. I will give it gladly and freely. Khnum is my father, creator of The Two Lands and I am giving to him what is already his. If this pleases him and he brings the water, then all will be well.”
He looked at Imhotep, his face just inches away from his adviser’s face. “And all will be well, will it not, Imhotep?”
King Djoser announced the gift and the additional expansion of the Temple of Khnum and then settled in on the island, refusing to leave until the waters began to rise.
Imhotep, as much a captive now as Bata, waited with the king and his guard. To keep the young soldiers from boredom, Sekhmire sent a hunting party into the western desert. The boatmen were allowed to go to their homes on leave, but were ordered to return within a month or sooner if the waters began to rise.
The days settled into a routine of exploring the island, swimming in the river and waiting for the water to rise. As much as he enjoyed the time with Meryt and the luxury of the leisure, Imhotep remained on edge, worried that he remembered the translation of the stele correctly, wondering if history correctly recorded that the famine ended after seven years and fearful of what King Djoser’s reaction would be if the flood was meager again.
His concern only increased one morning when Sekhmire arrived after breakfast and asked him to walk with him.
Imhotep had quickly learned that ‘going for a walk’ meant important matters needed to be discussed away from others’ ears. He had also learned that small talk in an
cient Egypt never started with the weather. It didn’t rain, there was no change in temperature; there was nothing to talk about. The only change was in the level of the river. Until recently, that had never been a concern because it always rose and fell at the same time each year.
Instead, conversation often opened with questions about one’s family: parents, children, and spouses, whatever was at hand.
“Meryt looks well,” Sekhmire said as they started down the gentle incline from the temple to the river.
“Thank you,” Imhotep answered. “She is well. And your son and wife? Is there news?”
Sekhmire smiled a smile of genuine pleasure. “Siptah got into a fight with a neighbor boy who is two years older. Siptah has a black eye, but the other boy ran home crying to his mother. He shouldn’t fight, but if he does, I am happy that he won. His mother will punish him, of course. Gently, I hope.”
“He will be a soldier?”
Sekhmire nodded, but his eyes were distant. “I always thought my sons would be soldiers. There is honor there and Kemet needs strong hands. I was chosen for the guard of the king. Now I command it, and there is no higher honor. But I wonder sometimes what lies beyond our borders, beyond the cataracts.
“When King Djoser said that the temple, my father’s temple, would receive a tenth of all the wealth that comes from Nubia and beyond, I began to wonder what Nubia would look like. King Djoser told me that you said there is a land beyond Nubia where there are so many trees that you have to cut a path through them.
“Is that true?”
Imhotep nodded. “Kemet is a beautiful land and the river is life itself. The land that I come from has small mountains that are covered with trees and grass. It has higher mountains, so high that the tops are cold and covered with ice. There are valleys so deep that it takes a full day to climb out of one. There are fields of grain, so wide and long that it takes days to cross them.”
“Is there gold?”
“Not as much as here, or in Nubia.”
Sekhmire squatted by the river and picked up some gravel. He played with the small pebbles, pouring them from one hand to another. Imhotep sat beside him, waiting for him to come to his point.
“They say you see the future,” Sekhmire finally said. He turned to look at Imhotep.
“Some of it,” he answered. “I know more about what will happen five thousand years from now than what will happen tomorrow.”
“How?”
“The country I come from is five thousand years in the future. I don’t know how it happened that I am here and I am not certain how I can get back. Or that I want to go back.”
Sekhmire looked down at the stones in his hand. “What you say is hard to understand. It has never happened before. Some people would say it has not happened now. Some people would say that you are from a land that we do not know and that you tell us things because your king wants to take control of The Two Lands.”
Imhotep nodded his head at what Sekhmire said.
“That would make more sense. But it isn’t true. What have I done, Sekhmire? I have tried to help Prince Teti, I have told King Djoser what I know. I am telling you the truth now, even though it sounds impossible.”
Sekhmire weighed his words. “Why did you tell King Djoser to make such a huge gift to the Temple of Khnum?
“You know that it is my father’s temple. Do you think you can buy my allegiance to King Djoser this way?” He said the words quietly, but Imhotep heard an underlying anger in his voice.
When he had recited the words of the stele to King Djoser, Imhotep hadn't know that Sekhmire's father was priest of the temple here. When he learned of the relationship, he knew Sekhmire would be suspicious. He knew he had to persuade the guard's leader than he was sincere.
“How long has the temple stood here?” Imhotep asked. “Longer than our lives, longer than your father’s life, longer than King Djoser’s life will be. The gift is to the temple, to Khnum. The temple will hold the land when memories can no longer recall you and me.”
“Yes,” Sekhmire said, “but we are here now and this gift will help my father now. Now, when threats are building around the king, now when even his closest adviser is plotting against him, now when the people of Kemet are worried and angry, now when the king needs his guards more than ever.”
Sekhmire stood and wiped his hands on his kilt.
“I cannot be bribed, Imhotep. I do not think King Djoser would attempt it, but you are an outlander. I do not know you. I think you have planted ideas in the king’s mind. If you can do that to the king, then I do not believe you should be trusted.”
Imhotep stood beside Sekhmire and crossed his arms. He looked out across the river and saw a bird dive into the water and come up with a fish wriggling in its beak. The water level, he saw, was the same as the day before and the day before that.
“Yes, I was an outlander,” Imhotep said. “But my spirit as become one with Kemet.”
“Sekhmire, I know that trust isn’t bought with words,” Imhotep said. “I agree with you. I understand that you don’t know me, and you have no reason to trust me. So watch what I do, listen to what I say and then decide. I had no feelings about The Two Lands before I came here, but I have grown to love it, even as much as you do.
“As far as buying your loyalty. I think we all follow our hearts. I don’t think your heart is filled with gold. But if you do follow the shine of gold, then your loyalty can’t be bought, only rented. And then only until someone else has more money to pay. I don’t think you and I are like that.
“And anyhow,” he said, reaching out and squeezing Sekhmire’s arm, “we can’t eat gold, can we?”
At the Temple of Sobek
Light was fading from the western sky as Brian stood on the east bank of the river, and looked across at the temple of Kom Ombo, its gleaming white pillars rising from high on a bluff overlooking the water. Tama said Diane was there and that Djefi would not be; he would be heading north, back to Khmunu.
But Siamun was there.
Two days walk north of Kom Ombo, Samut, a messenger sent by Tama, jogged along the dusty road trying to catch Brian. Tama had sent him on the errand as soon as Meryt’s message had arrived confirming Hetephernebti’s suspicions that Kanakht was plotting to kill King Djoser. She was sure that Djefi was one of the plotters, which made Kom Ombo, Djefi’s new temple, the most dangerous place within The Two Lands.
Brian walked closer to the water’s edge, looking for a boatman or one of those small reed boats he had been dying to try. He found one pulled up on the riverbank almost directly across the river from the temple.
He noted where it was and then returned to the road to get his donkey. After night fell, he would tether the donkey to a tree, cross the river in the reed boat and find Diane. If she was willing to come with him, then they would re-cross the river, get the donkey and head back to Waset where he would hide with Tama while waiting for Tim.
If Diane refused to go with him, then he would leave, knowing that it was her decision to stay here.
Either way he would be free: Free to see what life would be like here with Tama or free to find Tim and return to his time. He wasn’t sure what he would do, but he couldn’t abandon Diane alone in the ancient, alien land without offering her one last chance to leave with him.
He needed to be sure she understood what the decision to stay meant and that she was making it freely.
He was only a few feet from shore when he tipped over the reed boat and splashed heavily into the water. When he resurfaced, he saw the boat bobbing beside him. He pulled himself back onto it and lay flat on his stomach using his hands to paddle across the weak current, trying hard not to think about crocodiles.
Signing with relief that he hadn't been attacked by crocodiles, Brian pulled the boat up on the western bank a short distance from some other boats that were tied to wooden posts. A dirt pathway led up the side of the steep cliff.
He shook himself, spraying water from his hands and arm
s. Listening for a moment, he heard nothing. The slow flowing river behind him was silent. No frogs, no night birds, not even the empty rustle of the reeds along the bank disturbed the quiet.
Looking back across the river at the town, he saw a few fluttering lights from carried torches, but no sounds floated across the river.
Ahead of him, the path disappeared into the darkness as it rose along the side of the cliff.
Stone steps were cut into the cliff near the top of the pathway. When Brian reached them he hesitated and listened again. There was no sound of footsteps or voices. As his head cleared the top of the step, he saw the flat plateau, paved in stone with large unfinished pillars off to his left and several small stone buildings across the stone courtyard.
Near the large pillars, a large circular hole was cut into the stone floor.
Brian took the last few steps and hurried crossed the open plaza to the pillars, stepping behind one to hide.
A gently sloping ramp led down into the circular hole, which was swallowed by the darkness. As Brian stood over it he felt a light air pull on his ankles, drawing toward the opening.
Stepping around the hole, he walked to the first stone building.
The temple was obviously still being built. He saw now that there were small mud buildings out beyond the stone paving, shelter for the workers. The stone buildings would be the apartments for the priests who would live here once the temple was completed. Now they were the obvious place for Diane and Yunet to be living.
He paused by the first building and listened. After a moment he almost started to laugh at himself. He felt like a secret agent. “Bond, James Bond,” he thought.
Tama and Hetephernebti had frightened him with stories about Djefi and he knew first hand that Siamun was mean, but really, he wondered, what was he afraid of? There were no guns here, no ninjas in black outfits with gleaming, curved swords. The worst that would happen is Siamun would find him and mouth off. He really was more afraid of Diane and what she would say.