Daughter of the Gods: A Novel of Ancient Egypt

by Stephanie Thornton

  Little brown sparrows chirped as they flitted amongst the juniper bushes and Re pulled himself over the horizon. Slave gossip drifted from the garden. Life continued its ceaseless march, but Hatshepsut wanted no part of it.

  She was a murderer many times over. The voices of the dead beckoned her.

  “May the soles of her feet be firm.” Tutmose choked on the words, his mouth set in a grim line as he picked up his mother’s black granite statue.

  Hatshepsut stared at the knife on the ground, at the spreading pool of blood.

  It had taken less than a week to fulfill Djeseret’s prophecy.

  Tutmose followed Hatshepsut’s gaze to the knife and then to her mangled wrists. The blood there was thick, a mottled shade of rust compared to the fresh slick of red on the copper blade.

  “A pharaoh’s sacrifices never end.” He spoke slowly. “This is a lesson I’m just beginning to learn.”

  Hatshepsut silently picked up the knife. She would finish what she’d started.

  He crouched in front of her, his voice no more than a whisper. “There have been enough deaths to sate Anubis for years to come. Egypt needs you.”

  “No.” Hatshepsut shook her head violently. “It’s my turn to face Ma’at’s scales, to answer for what I’ve done.”

  “In due time,” Tutmose said. “You still have a kingdom to rule.”

  “Egypt is yours.”

  He shook his head. “Nothing in this life is that easy.” He held his hand out for the knife, but Hatshepsut didn’t move.

  He dropped his hand. “It would be simple to let you slit your wrists and take the throne as you greeted Senenmut and Neferure in the Field of Reeds,” Tutmose said. “But that’s not what’s best for Egypt.”

  She knew what he was going to say. And she didn’t want to hear it.

  “I need to take command of the armies,” Tutmose said, “both in the City of Truth and abroad.” His face was set in grim lines. “Egypt would best be served if you continued as pharaoh, no matter how you may wish otherwise. Ma’at demands it.”

  There was a long silence while Hatshepsut twisted Senenmut’s ring on her thumb. The weight of empty years stretched before her.

  “Facing Ammit would be easier,” she said.

  Tutmose nodded. “I know.”

  This time she allowed Tutmose to take the knife from her when he reached out his hand.

  Remaining in this life would be the hardest thing she’d ever done, another sacrifice in Egypt’s name.

  A fate worse than death, and it was all she deserved.

  Chapter 32

  Aset’s rooms were almost empty.

  The cool days of Peret had boiled into the full heat of the harvest season and cooled again as Isis cried and the Nile flooded before Hatshepsut had found the will to order Aset’s apartments cleared. Now only a couple of stray cats and a handful of rough cedar boxes remained after slaves had swept the dust and dried flowers from the chambers and packed up the majority of the former concubine’s belongings.

  Hatshepsut took up the task of sorting Aset’s jewelry, pausing over each piece to remember the occasions when she had worn the baubles. She untangled a lapis-and-gold vulture pendant worn to one of Neferure’s naming-day celebrations and set aside Aset’s favorite collar strung with carnelian and turquoise beads from the expedition up the Nile, and the turquoise earrings Hatshepsut had given her when Tutmose was born. Perhaps Satiah would want them.

  “I came to see if I could help.”

  Tutmose stood in the doorway, for once not dressed in full military regalia, but instead wearing a plain white kilt and a gold pectoral depicting Horus with his wings spread wide over his heart. He would depart for the northern frontiers the following morning.

  Nomti poked his head inside. “Do you mind, Per A’a?”

  “Not at all.” She smiled as Nomti took up his post. He’d been quickly reinstated as medjay, amidst apologies that she’d ever suspected him guilty of treason.

  He’d only given that fearsome smile, which was now even more frightful with several new scars to accompany his black tattoos. “You’d have known if I’d been guilty,” he’d said.

  “Because you wouldn’t have failed.”

  “Precisely.” Then he’d dared to draw her into his arms and let her sob out her pain and anger. There had been no mention of the past then, only his steady presence. And now Tutmose waited to help her pack away so many more memories of the past.

  “This is all that’s left.” She motioned to the boxes on the floor.

  Tutmose opened one of the smaller ones and lifted out an alabaster carving of Taweret. The hippo goddess’s swollen white belly filled his palm. “Do you mind if I take this? Satiah might appreciate it when the next baby comes. Perhaps this one will be a boy.”

  Satiah’s child, which Hatshepsut had so feared, had been born perfectly formed, a baby girl with her mother’s eyes and Tutmose’s somber expressions. With Neferure’s death Tutmose was now free to marry as he saw fit and, after a suitable period of mourning, he had taken Satiah as his first wife. The sight of Tutmose doting on his young wife and daughter—and dote he most certainly did—would make any woman’s heart light.

  “I’m sure Taweret will bless you and Satiah with many more children. At least I hope so.”

  And Hatshepsut meant it, even if she sometimes had to leave the room when watching Satiah nurse her daughter, wishing it could be Neferure sitting there with such a perfect expression of love on her face. Hatshepsut would never forgive herself for all she’d done in this life, and she had yet to find it in her heart to forgive Aset, but time and her trials had tempered her, for better and for worse.

  Tutmose stacked some of the boxes. “I can take care of all this if you’d rather.”

  “I don’t mind.” All the same, she was touched by the offer. Egypt would be in capable hands when she passed to the West. Tutmose’s honor and loyalty would serve her kingdom well. “I’m trying to remember your mother the way she was when we were young. It seems so long ago.”

  Silence enfolded them as they sorted through the crate. The box was filled with gold ointment jars, a collection of amulets including one of a giant phallus and another of a scarab, and a broken statue of Hathor. At the very bottom Hatshepsut found the dagger. Intertwined papyrus and lotus blossoms climbed their way up the knife’s ivory hilt and a hammered sheath of decorated bronze covered the blade. Her breath caught in her throat as she turned it in her hands. Re’s light hit the metal, glinting off images of a lioness attacking an ibex and a cow. Flawless hieroglyphs marched down the middle.

  The one who is powerful, Sekhmet, lady of slaughter and wearer of the solar disk

  She struggled to draw a breath, remembering an identical inscription from long ago. Grief and time must have marred her memory, transformed it into this impossible trick.

  Alone now at the bottom of the cedar box, a tiny scroll of papyrus lay tied with a bit of frayed rope. Dreading what she might find, she unrolled the paper carefully, ignoring the flakes of papyrus that floated to her lap. Formal hieroglyphs stood in perfect columns, the elegant and precise handwriting that could only belong to a well-trained scribe.

  In the name of Ma’at, goddess of truth and justice, I bequeath this dagger to my daughter, Aset, upon my death, and entrust the Temple of Hathor to keep her safe until she and I meet again in the Field of Reeds.

  Blessed be Hathor, goddess of love, to whom I dedicated my life as chantress.

  And then, in stilted hieroglyphs, like the hand of a child with its first brush, was a single name.

  Merenaset

  Hatshepsut stared at the note for a long moment, dumbstruck at the secret the gods had hidden from her for so long. Then she laughed, little chortles at first, but soon great peals of laughter echoed off the ceiling. The wild sound ricocheted off the whitewashed rafters and scattered the cats who had been sunning themselves on the window ledge. She covered her mouth as tears poured from her eyes.

  Al
armed, Tutmose set down the senet board he’d been wrapping. “What is it? What’s so funny?”

  It took a long time for her to gain control of herself. Hiccupping with unspent laughter and wild sobs, she gave Tutmose the dagger and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

  He stared quizzically at the knife, turned it over in his hands. “I don’t understand.”

  She shook her head, her wig wild and the kohl around her eyes smeared where tears still ran.

  “Senenmut made this for me,” she said. “And I gave it to your grandmother.”

  “My grandmother?” Tutmose looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. Perhaps she had. “But you didn’t know my grandmother.”

  “A merchant dragged her to the Court of Reeds because she’d stolen bracelets from his stall. Your father wanted to cut off her ears, but I gave her a position as chantress in Hathor’s temple so she could support her daughter. I gave her this knife, too.” She sighed, wiped her cheeks, and let her hands float to her sides in a gesture of surrender. “Her name was Merenaset.”

  Understanding dawned across Tutmose’s face. “And she gave it to her daughter. My mother.”

  She had saved Aset, only to kill her.

  Tutmose seemed to read her thoughts and clasped her cold hands within his warm ones. “If it hadn’t been for you, my mother never would have come to the palace to dance for my father,” he said. “I would never have been born.”

  And Neferure and Senenmut wouldn’t have died.

  Silent tears streamed down her cheeks. She recalled Senenmut’s words from the temple of Set long ago. There was always order amongst the chaos, even when it wasn’t possible for her to see it.

  “Things are as they were meant to be,” Tutmose said. “Everything is as the gods will it.”

  Epilogue

  1426 BC

  YEAR THIRTY-TWO OF PHARAOH TUTMOSE

  Tutmose leaned on his ivory walking stick—the same one his father had used after an accident with an elephant in Canaan—while standing under the shade of a myrrh tree, its fragrance wafting faintly on the breath of the gods. Time, rather than a glorious battle with some wild beast, had eaten away at an old combat wound so that he needed the cane. Now he stood in the Western Valley, a wizened old man about to commit the greatest crime of his life.

  Hatshepsut’s temple at Djeser-Djeseru shone like a mirage amongst the ruddy cliffs, the entire complex guarded by a walkway of solemn granite sphinxes and rows of statues all wearing his stepmother’s face, a woman he hadn’t seen in almost three decades. Each wore the remembrance of a smile, something Tutmose could scarcely recall the pharaoh wearing in this life. In her later years, Hatshepsut had grown fat and more ill-tempered than a mule as her health had deteriorated. She’d found solace in food and in memories, and Egypt had prospered under her guidance as it always had. Tutmose had maintained her mortuary temple after she had passed to the West, even as he had ordered his own, grander temple to honor Amun while expanding the kingdom left to him. Under his hand, the borders of the Two Lands had stretched to the ends of the sky, reaching from the Levant in the north far past Dongola in the south, making his Egypt the largest in history.

  And yet he knew he owed all his successes to Hatshepsut, to the woman who had usurped his throne and passed to him a stable and peaceful country, despite all it had cost her.

  Tutmose’s heart was heavy, weighed down with the dishonor of the decision he was now forced to make. He hoped Ma’at would forgive him for what he was about to do.

  He prayed Hatshepsut would forgive him.

  “Tear them down.”

  Tutmose’s voice was quiet as he spoke to Amenhotep. His youngest child and only surviving son, Amenhotep had seen seventeen years and was soon to take his place on the Isis Throne in what Tutmose hoped would be a peaceful co-regency. The transition from his reign to his son’s must be smooth, so no scheming courtier could rally behind one of his many older daughters, including Weretkhetes, the daughter Satiah had borne after Neferure’s death. Weretkhetes was no Hatshepsut; she was too self-centered to wear a crown that required such sacrifice. Tutmose’s spies had intercepted whispers of those who supported Weretkhetes, courtiers who wished to seize the throne from young Amenhotep. Before Hatshepsut, the scenario would have been implausible, but one of Egypt’s most successful and peace-loving pharaohs had opened the door for future strife and bloodshed based on the new precedent that allowed a woman to rule.

  The next pharaoh had to be Amenhotep. Anything less could plunge Egypt into civil war.

  “Every image depicting Hatshepsut as pharaoh must be destroyed,” Tutmose said.

  “Of course, Father.” Amenhotep’s voice cracked as he bowed and carried the order to a large pit clustered with workers. Dressed only in loincloths in the heat, the men would work through the day and still not finish pulling down Hatshepsut’s statues.

  Amenhotep gave the orders to the foremen, too quietly for Tutmose to hear, but the overseers glanced at the strange sight of the pharaoh standing alone under a myrrh tree. Tutmose had preferred to spend his time planning military campaigns and had rarely overseen a building project, but this was a duty he could not shirk, no matter how much he wished to.

  His son returned to his side as the workers clustered around one of Hatshepsut’s sphinxes. One man raised his hammer, then let it fall with a resounding crash. The men cheered and the sound of the blows echoed through the valley. Tutmose cringed.

  “Are you sure you want to stay, Father?” Amenhotep asked. “These overseers worked at Karnak. I told them this was the same job, only that here there are no images of Hatshepsut as Great Royal Wife to save.”

  “I’ll stay,” Tutmose said. “For a while.”

  The workmen crawled over the statues like ants, decimating Hatshepsut’s smiling images. Hammers and adzes flew in a frenzy, the overseers urging the men along.

  “You are big, fat water buffalo,” yelled a foreman. “You are dung!”

  The men rolled their eyes, laughed, and made obscene gestures at the overseer’s back, as if they were on some sort of holiday.

  It was too much to watch.

  “I’m going into the temple.” Tutmose started down the avenue of sphinxes, his eyes trained on the temple’s entrance, as Amenhotep fell into step behind him. They passed a scrawny worker struggling to hammer away the head of one of Hatshepsut’s sphinxes. Finally, he hit his target with a crack like lightning, and her smiling face sheared away from the nemes headdress and fell to the sand with a dull thump.

  Tutmose forced himself to walk up the causeway to the top terrace as similar sounds of destruction continued behind him. Here in the temple’s innermost sanctum, painted scenes of Hatshepsut before Amun filled the temple walls. In one corner was a nondescript mural of her in open adoration of the hidden god; she was dressed in male attire with a green perfume bottle in her hand. Behind her stood a smaller man with his head also bent in worship.

  Senenmut.

  “I want that.” Tutmose pointed at the image with his walking stick. “And I want it left intact.”

  Amenhotep’s brow furrowed and he opened his mouth to speak, but seemed to think better of it and fetched a worker with sweat pouring down his temples. Between wiping his palms on his kilt and mopping his brow with his hem, the man used his adze to chip away the portrait, and after what seemed an eternity, he presented it to the pharaoh.

  “May I ask why you wanted that?” Amenhotep asked as the workman backed out of the temple, almost tripping in his haste.

  “Hatshepsut’s public monuments—the obelisks and her temples—must be cleansed to purge Egypt of its memory of her reign as pharaoh and protect your claim to the throne.” Tutmose stroked the image of Hatshepsut’s double crown with his thumb, brushed the plaster dust from Senenmut’s wig. “But I won’t jeopardize Hatshepsut’s ka. Her name must live on, so some of her images must remain.”

  “And Senenmut?”

  “I want all my family to greet me in the Field
of Reeds one day.”

  Amenhotep offered his father his arm. “Where will you put them?”

  Tutmose took his son’s arm, feeling suddenly tired. He smiled. “In my garden, next to the black granite statues of my mother and father.”

  Amenhotep chuckled; he knew the family saga and how little the four would enjoy spending eternity together. “I’m sure all of them will have choice words for you when you arrive in the Field of Reeds one day.”

  Tutmose grinned. “I know they will.”

  The two walked out into Re’s brutal heat. The workers had assembled a line of wooden carts containing fragments of Hatshepsut’s statues. Several ochre-painted heads and crowns lay on top of the closest cart, and Tutmose stopped to watch as the first load was dumped into the pit’s open mouth. The statues fell with a crash and an explosion of dust, an inappropriate ceremony for their eternal burial.

  He hoped Hatshepsut’s own sacrifices in Egypt’s name would make her more forgiving toward him when he finally greeted her in the Field of Reeds. The woman did have a nasty temper.

  Tutmose clutched the painted temple fragment with one hand and his walking stick in the other. “Come, Amenhotep. It’s time to go home.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Hatshepsut was one of the greatest rulers during the Golden Age of Egypt’s New Kingdom, but her memory was almost lost to history during a concerted campaign to erase every image and reference to her as pharaoh. The real story of Hatshepsut’s life was one of the great mysteries in Egyptology for many years, as historians struggled to reconcile why various monuments around Luxor included her name and the title Great Royal Wife, yet other obscure monuments (such as the pinnacles of toppled obelisks) bore this woman’s name with references to a male pharaoh. Added to the mystery were the many likenesses and cartouches in temples like Karnak and Deir el-Bahri of an unknown pharaoh that had been removed in antiquity. Finally, Egyptologists realized they had found a case of a woman successfully ruling Egypt as pharaoh, but, for some reason, someone shortly after her rule had tried to erase her memory. Now the only question they had to answer was why.