by Angela Hunt
When Akil snapped his fingers Jendayi pulled her harp close, ready to play again. For years music had been a mindless diversion that helped camouflage the deep despair that colored her days and nights. Ever since she had been abandoned as a small child, she had grown accustomed to pain and loneliness.
The music began, and Jendayi’s fingers plucked the strings of her instrument. She faced a lightless future, a life of nightmares and boredom and slavery. Music was her single joy, but it was a bittersweet pleasure, for the love and joy embodied in the melodies only reminded her that she would never experience these emotions herself.
She attacked the harp with nimble fingers and a burning heart, giving voice to the agony of her despair. The women in the queen’s company would undoubtedly listen to her music…and think it beautiful.
They would not know anything about the heart from which it sprang.
Queen Tiy, Mother of Upper and Lower Egypt, Follower of Horus, Guide of the Ruler, and Favorite Lady, shifted in her gilded chair, bored by the music and the gymnastics of her pet dwarf. The ladies of her court, each of whom had dressed and painted herself in an effort to outshine the others, laughed and giggled at the slave’s antics, but Tiy smothered a yawn. She allowed herself one hour with her ladies merely to fulfill the role the royal court expected of her; in reality she had no patience with others of her own sex. Only Sitamun, her eldest daughter, held any fascination for her, and Tiy suspected she tolerated Sitamun only through maternal affection.
“Hail to you, my lady!” A courier prostrated himself at the double doors of her throne room, his broad hands slapping the tile. Breathless from running, the man’s ribs heaved like the flank of an exhausted stallion. Tiy quirked an eyebrow and signaled the musicians to be silent. Such haste was unusual in Pharaoh’s dignified household.
She extended her hand in pardon for his intrusion. “Rise and tell me what news you bring.”
Her ladies twittered like birds as the elegant slave approached, and Tiy rolled her eyes, annoyed with their adolescent yearnings. Life in the palace had spoiled them. Her, it had hardened.
The messenger bowed again, about to lower himself to the tile and repeat his salutation.
“Remain on your feet and speak.” Tiy laced her fingers and gave the man a gracious smile. “What news brings you into my court?”
“The vizier of Upper and Lower Egypt, the great and noble Zaphenath-paneah, stands outside your door,” the messenger said, a blush coloring his cheek.
“Zaphenath-paneah wishes to see me?” Tiy lowered her hands as a curious, tingling shock ran up her spine. The vizier spent every morning with Pharaoh, regularly crossing the river to Amenhotep’s new palace at Malkata. He rarely sought her company.
Stricken dumb in her presence, the messenger wagged his head.
Tiy glanced around. She must give the vizier her prompt attention, but she would not receive him before these simpering women, nor would she subject him to the ridiculous antics of the dwarf.
“I will speak to Zaphenath-paneah in my garden,” she said, rising from her chair. “Bring him to me at once.”
Leaving her retinue to their vapid entertainment, she slipped out a hidden door.
After returning from Goshen with Yisrael’s body, Yosef charged Efrayim with the care of Yaakov’s remains while he proceeded directly to the king’s palace at Thebes. He knew Pharaoh would not be in residence, but the queen would be holding court and she could convey his message.
Yosef did not feel up to the task of wading through the king’s harem in order to bare his heart and speak of Yaakov.
Though women abounded in the king’s life, no one doubted that his heart and his trust safely resided in the formidable Queen Tiy. Amenhotep had built Tiy an imposing palace at Malkata, but she preferred to spend her time in Thebes, receiving courtiers and overseeing the care of her royal children. As Yosef followed a guard through the gleaming halls of the queen’s chambers, he thought it strange that the royal pair seemed bound as much by distrust as by affection.
The messenger stopped at a passageway opening to a roofed and columned portico. Yosef stepped through the opening, where tall columns, painted in stripes of green and gold and mounted by lotus blossom capitals, dwarfed his own substantial height. The ceiling above his head had been painted a deep blue and emblazoned with the white-gold images of stars. Polished alabaster tiles under his feet reflected his image while a landscaped garden and quiet reflecting pool lay beyond the portico. But he did not see the queen.
Yosef locked his hands behind his back and advanced with caution, not wanting to surprise Pharaoh’s Great Wife if he had caught her unprepared. The queen tended to be an overwhelming presence, strong and forceful, intense and intelligent. Yosef supposed that some of her sharpness sprang from her awareness of her lowly pedigree. As the daughter of Yuia, a provincial priest of Akhmin, and Tuia, a servant of the Queen Mother, Tiy had been married to Amenhotep when they were both little more than children. Though Tiy probably felt she had to prove her worthiness and ability to reign, Yosef believed the hard edge she brought to an inbred dynasty would improve the royal lineage.
“Zaphenath-paneah.” Tiy’s piercing voice cut through his musings, and he whirled to face her. Apparently pleased that she had surprised him, she smiled and folded her hands as she stepped out from behind one of the pillars. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
He lowered himself to the ground, and sighed in relief when she told him to stand.
“I have a most urgent request,” he said, his eyes meeting hers. A small woman, barely five feet tall, her face was marked with a pointed chin, deep-set eyes and a firm mouth. He would not have called her beautiful, but her complexion and clothing were immaculate, her headdress regal and imposing. No royal wife in his memory had appeared more conscious of her august status.
“Your request?” A small smile shadowed the corners of her mouth and her voice softened. “You know I would do anything in my power to please you.”
He heard something in her voice—an intimation of desire—and he frowned. Over the years, especially since the death of his wife, a host of bored, silly women had offered themselves to him for purposes of matrimony or pleasure, but Yosef had managed to elude them and keep his mind on his responsibilities. Ordinarily he would resort to an artful cat-and-mouse game that dissuaded attention-starved women, but today the matter of his father’s burial pressed on his mind.
“If you would please me,” he said, bowing as if he’d been honored by her attention, “know that my father, Yisrael, has departed this life and gone to his fathers. I have charged my physicians to embalm him, and we have entered into our days of mourning. But if I have found favor in your eyes, please speak to Pharaoh for me. As he lay dying, my father had me swear that I would bury him in the site that he dug for himself in the land of Canaan. So if you would be kind, beg Pharaoh to let me go to Canaan, bury my father and return.”
A tremor touched her smooth, marblelike lips. “Your father has died?”
“Yes, my queen.”
“I am so sorry to hear it.” Uncertainty crept into her expression. “If you have a difficult journey, you may be gone for some time.”
“A small caravan can make the journey in seventeen days. A larger party will be slower, but I do not think we will be gone more than two months.”
Tipping her head back, she gazed into his eyes. “What if some harm should befall you? Pharaoh cannot risk losing you, Zaphenath-paneah. You are more than a father to him.”
Yosef bowed his head. “Once the days of mourning are passed and my father is buried, I know that God Shaddai will hasten my return. My lifelong duty is to serve Pharaoh—and you, his queen.”
Satisfaction pursed her mouth. “Then I will speak to Pharaoh for you. And you may go bury your father, and we will see that your journey is well made. With you shall go all of Pharaoh’s chief servants, the elders of his household and the governors of Egypt. The world will see, and know, that one of Egypt’s
mighty ones has passed into immortality. And thus his name will live forever, as will he.”
Yosef bowed from the waist. “I thank you, my queen.”
An inexplicable look of withdrawal had crept over her face when he looked up; strong emotion flickered in the wells of her eyes. “I will mourn with you,” she whispered, lifting a hand as if she would touch his shoulder. But she did not, and after a moment, she turned, the wind stirring her wig as she abruptly moved away.
Tiy immediately ordered a barge to carry her across the river to the complex at Malkata. The name meant “Place Where Things Are Picked Up,” and Tiy was not certain if Pharaoh had meant to refer to the clean look of the place or his habit of acquiring women for his harem.
From the deck of the barge, Tiy could see the pink granite palace rising from its exalted strip of earth. The western mountains that concealed the burial places of ancient kings rose behind Pharaoh’s house, the swollen river stood before it. The barge turned into the T-shaped harbor dredged especially for alkata, and to her right Tiy caught a glimpse of the lake Amenhotep had ordered his architects to dig in her honor. On festival days, the waters of her lake rocked with barges and boats dedicated to the sun god, Aten.
A narrow canal, camouflaged by thickly growing reeds, broke off from the lake and skirted the entire complex before doubling back to the Nile. Tiy hated the canal, convinced that it served as an ideal nesting place for snakes and rodents, but many of Pharaoh’s top officials and couriers used it as a secret entrance and took pride in knowing of its existence.
The late afternoon sun streaked the water crimson, and Tiy fretted at the railing, eager to be off the ship. When at last the gangplank lowered, she hurried past the guards and strode through the pink-tinted columns of the entrance gates. The buildings around her, built of sun-dried bricks and lavishly painted with scenes of life along the Nile, shimmered with the rich colors of life.
Malkata was not merely one palace, but several, a sprawling combination of compounds, each with its own administrative offices, houses for court officials, halls, chambers, chapels and lavish apartments. Homes for the most deserving and skilled artisans had been erected on the site, but the average people of Egypt had been forbidden to settle on this western shore of the Nile.
She hurried along the pathway, ignoring the fawning slaves and officials who fell to the ground like paddle dolls at her approach. The palace built for her son, Crown Prince Neferkheprure’ Wa’enre’, rose at her left hand, but the complex to which she hurried was far larger and more elaborate than the prince’s. It was home to the king’s vast harem.
Tiy would never forget a dispatch she once found—in it, Amenhotep had instructed his provincial governors to send him “beautiful women, but none with shrill voices. Then the king your lord will say to you, ‘That is good.’”
Many kings of Egypt had loved the thrill of battle, but her husband preferred love to war. During his reign he had married additional Egyptian women as well as two princesses from the Mitanni kingdom, two from Syria, two from Babylon and one from the kingdom of Arzawa in Anatolia. One of the Mitanni princesses arrived with 317 ladies-in-waiting, many of whom Amenhotep was terrifically pleased to add to his harem.
Slaves and guards scattered like chaff as she swept into the House of the Women. She found her husband seated in the reception hall, a trio of dancing girls before him, an all-female orchestra behind him, and a pair of concubines at his side. For an instant her temper flared as it had in the early days, then she reeled in her anger and hid it away.
She forced her lips to part in a curved, still smile as his gaze met hers. “Life, prosperity, and health to you, my lord!” she murmured, prostrating herself on the floor.
“Tiy?” Amenhotep’s voice cracked in surprise. “I didn’t expect to see you today.”
She lifted her head and boldly met his eyes. “I have had a visit from your vizier, Zaphenath-paneah. He begs your permission to journey to the land of Canaan to bury the one we knew as Yisrael.”
“My vizier’s father is dead?” With the back of his hand Amenhotep absently pushed one of the concubines away, then straightened himself in his chair. “The old man? I thought he would never die. None of Egypt’s pharaohs ever lived so long.”
“Zaphenath-paneah says his god loved the old man,” Tiy answered, lowering her gaze. “The god’s blessing rested on him.”
“As it has rested on Egypt since my vizier’s arrival.” When Amenhotep’s jaw clenched, Tiy knew what he was thinking. As a child, when Zaphenath-paneah had been Pharaoh’s tutor, Amenhotep had dutifully given lip service to the vizier’s invisible and almighty god. But as he grew older and fell under the influence of the priests of Amon-Re, Pharaoh decided that Zaphenath-paneah’s ideas were too restrictive, too conservative. And so he had widened his allegiance to a host of gods, placating both his people and his priests, and Egypt had not seemed to suffer for it. Indeed, after the famine the crops grew back greener than before, and due to the vizier’s ingenuity, all the land in Egypt now belonged either to Pharaoh or the priests. Whether this rich blessing had fallen on the Black Land because of her Pharaoh or her vizier, Amenhotep could not say, but he suspected the latter, for his father, Tuthmosis IV, had filled the sacred annals with words of praise for Zaphenath-paneah and the spirit of God that rested on him.
Amenhotep might be vain and hedonistic, but he was not a fool. He would not risk the future.
“What did you tell Zaphenath-paneah?” Pharaoh asked, in a lower, huskier tone.
Tiy stood and clasped her hands. “I knew you would not want him to be unhappy, my king. So I told him to go and bury his father in Canaan. He had sworn to do it.”
Pharaoh gripped the arms of his chair. “Tiy, what are you thinking? What if he does not return?”
“He will, my lord.” Tiy smiled in the calm strength of knowledge. “I am sending the best of Egypt with him—the elders of your household, the priests, a royal escort, a fleet of chariots and warriors. Such a show of support will bind his heart to yours…and will guarantee his safe return.”
Pharaoh sank back in his chair and cast her a glance of pure admiration. “My clever Tiy,” he murmured, his eyes appraising her. “Beautiful as well as scheming. The gods were good when they sent you to me.” Masculine interest radiated from the dark depths of his eyes as he leaned forward and extended his hand. “Will you eat dinner with me?”
Tiy felt the corner of her mouth lift in a wry half-smile. Ignoring the dancing girls, the musicians and the concubines, she met his hungry eyes and defied them. “My king, I must see to the particulars of our vizier’s journey.” She lifted one shoulder in an elegant shrug. “If you would retain your vizier, you must allow me to refuse your kind invitation.”
“Of course.” He dropped his hand. “Go, then, and see to it that our vizier is happy.”
“Fret not, my husband.” She gave him a confident smile. “On my life, I would not allow him to leave us forever.”
Chapter Three
Once the patriarch’s body had been washed and loaded onto the barge for transport to Thebes, a heavy, mournful mood settled on the Hebrews around the encampment’s central fire. Menashe joined his uncles as they sat and wept for nearly a full day without speaking, some rocking back and forth, some kneeling on their cloaks, staining the fabric with their tears.
Reluctant to confront the confident, superior smirk Efrayim had worn since Yisrael’s final blessing, Menashe chose to remain in Goshen until the days of mourning had passed. Feeling like an outsider, he hunched around the fire with the others, his arms drawn close to his chest, his eyes downcast. He had not spent much time with his grandfather, for the demands of Egypt had prevented Yosef and his sons from regularly visiting Goshen, but Menashe held a deep and abiding respect for the man his father had openly adored.
As the sun sank toward a livid, purple cloudbank piled deep on the western horizon, Re’uven stood, wiped his tears and folded his hands. Facing the circle of men, he let out
a long, audible breath, then began to recite the story of two babies who jostled each other inside their mother’s womb. “God Shaddai told Rebekah that two nations would be divided from her belly,” Re’uven said, depth and authority in his voice. “One tribe would be mightier than the other, the elder would be servant to the younger. And when her days were fulfilled for bearing, twins were in her body. The first one came out ruddy, like a hairy mantle all over, so they called his name Esav, Rough One. And then his brother came out, his hand grasping Esav’s heel, and so they called him Yaakov, Heel-holder.”
Re’uven sat down. In the silence that followed, Yehuda rose. Leaning hard on his staff, he told the story of how Esav sold his birthright to Yaakov for a serving of boiled red stew. “Therefore they called him Edom, Red One,” he said, raking wisps of windblown hair from his forehead, “and Yaakov gave Esav bread and boiled lentils, and he ate and drank and arose and went off. Thus did Esav despise the right of the firstborn.”
When Yehuda had finished, Dan rose to tell of the time Yitzhak and his sons had moved to dwell in Gerar in obedience to the voice of God Shaddai. “And God said to Yitzhak our grandfather, ‘Do not go down to Egypt. Continue to dwell in the land that I tell you of, sojourn in this land, and I will be with you and will give you blessing,’” Dan recited, his eyes sweeping over the men in the circle. “And God said, ‘I will make your seed many, like the stars of the heavens, and to your seed I will give all these lands. All the nations of the earth shall enjoy blessing through your seed, in consequence of Avraham’s hearkening to my voice and keeping my charge—my commandments, my laws and my instructions.’”