The smell of incense was almost overwhelming.
In spite of the fact that Hapuseneb had entered the temple in a mood very far from the religious—his thoughts almost entirely concentrated on how he could replace Ra-hotep as High Priest with someone who would be more co-operative—he felt a shiver run down his spine.
The huge green crystal seemed to be made of light, and light was streaming from it. Dimly in the shadows the figures painted on the walls seemed to move in a slow and rhythmic dance. He felt dizzy and blinked his eyes against the stinging aromatic smoke. Did he see the folded wings of a golden bird contained within the transparent green crystal egg?
Ra-hotep bowed to the ground, and Hapuseneb found himself following him. He who had never felt the awe that others seemed to feel when faced with sacred images, found himself trembling and thought he heard—no, was sure he heard—the beating of mighty wings in the chamber. He wanted to raise his head and look up, but he could not.
The phoenix, Lord of the Green Stone,[10] with eyes fashioned in the Millions of Years, could see into his heart. And he was afraid that what it saw there would condemn him to the Void.
[10—“Lord of the Green Stone...” Utterance 301, paragraph 457c, from The Pyramid Texts vol. I., translated by S.A.B. Mercer, Longman, 1952.]
At last the chamber was silent again.
What was this? Some trick of Ra-hotep's? He hoped itwas.
Ra-hotep rose. Hapuseneb avoided meeting the sun priest's eyes and hoped that his face was sufficiently mask-like to hide how disturbed and shaken he had been by what he had just experienced.
Ra-hotep glided forward and unsealed the door on the far side, and Hapuseneb followed him out of the chamber. He waited beside the High Priest of the Sun while he took a small piece of damp clay out of a box in a wall niche, fixed it on the lock and impressed it with his seal ring. Hapuseneb noticed how thick and heavy the ring was—so heavy that the bezel looked clumsy. He fingered his own with satisfaction, a slender silver ring with seal stone of lapis lazuli. It had been given him by Hatshepsut herself, and for a moment he fancied he felt her light touch on his hand as she fitted the ring on his finger.
Ra-hotep finished resealing the last door and led Hapuseneb silently through another antechamber where once again they were purified by incense.
At last they came to the huge inner court, open to the sky.
Since they had entered the temple proper the floor of each succeeding chamber had been slightly higher than the last, and this courtyard was raised still higher. It represented the first mound of earth that had risen from the waters of Chaos. A white limestone pyramid, its tip made of polished gold, stood on a platform at the centre.
The light from the crystal egg in the dark chamber had been numinous and mysterious. Here there was a blaze of white light. Here Hapuseneb could see into every corner. Here he felt safer.
The heat was intense, the glare dazzling. Around the outside of the court there was a cool colonnade. He wished they could stay there, but noon was approaching and they had to take up their positions for the solstice ceremony.
There were seven white alabaster steps on each of the four sides of the central pyramid. Two other high priests had entered from the opposite side of the court, and now all four closed in on the symbolic centre of the court.
At the base of the pyramid they paused, exchanging glances to ascertain that each was ready.
The sun was almost at its zenith. Hapuseneb could feel sweat running down his face, his neck, his body. He wondered if he would be able to stand the heat. He wondered if he would be able to concentrate on what he had to do.
The moment had come.
The four high priests—of Ra, of Amun, of Ptah, of Djehuti—stepped up onto the first step.
Four voices intoned the praises of Ra:
"Beautiful is thy brightness on the horizon of the heavens, O Ra!” [11]
[11—“Beautiful is thy brightness...” Religion of the Ancient Egyptians.]
On the second step they recalled that he had existed before all else.
On the third they remembered the “Thought of his heart” in which All had been prefigured.
On the fourth they described the coming forth from the Void and the creation of the first day.
On the fifth they praised his wisdom in that he had created day and night so that the dark and light would alternate and a continual dynamic process of renewal would be generated between them.
On the sixth step they bowed silently.
On the seventh they stood up straight and each gazed into one of the four golden triangles covering the apex. They were exactly the correct height for their faces to be reflected.
Hapuseneb stared into the eyes of a stranger. How could he have lived so long with this man and known so little about him? How could he have thought that the busy acts of each day were all that were required of him? In that moment he saw clearly that everything he did, everything he thought or said, had an extension into other realms, and in each of those other realms every act, thought and word had a deeper significance.
He thought about the various festivals of the gods, when the priests acted out the myths. The people looked at the actors and heard what they were saying and saw what they were doing. Some thought that was all there was to see. Others saw that what was happening before them was only the shadow of what was happening beyond the limits of their comprehension. It was no more than a sign at the crossroads pointing out the way.
He had intended to use this ceremony to assert the supremacy of Amun over Ra and the others, but he was suddenly ashamed. He saw his busy activities over the past years in trying to make the priesthood of Amun richer and more powerful than any other in the Two Lands in a different light.
At that moment, for perhaps the first time in his life—unless he counted his experience in the chamber with the green crystal egg—he knew beyond any doubt that he was more than he appeared to be and “the gods” were more than he gave them credit for.
He felt immensely humbled and embarrassed to think that his petty manipulations had been observed by beings who could not be deceived. They knew it was not for them, nor for the good of the land, that he had been labouring so hard.
The four “gods” represented here were different aspects of something so extraordinary and mysterious that no representation, no image, no symbol, could ever hope to get anywhere near the truth of it.
He saw something stirring in the gold mirror before him. It was as though his face was breaking up into long threads and streamers of gold which became fluttering, shimmering feathers. It seemed to him that he saw a golden bird lifting up from the burning surface of the metal, spiralling above them until it was united with the sun. Dazed, he stared until his eyes hurt so much he had to shut them.
He felt Ra-hotep's touch on his arm. It was time to leave.
Had he seen the bird? Had he experienced what he thought he had experienced? Was it the trick of a clever magician—or the gift of one of the beings he had just learned to respect?
Hardly aware of what he was doing, he followed the others in the final ritual and found himself once again in the less sacred rooms of the Temple, surrounded by lesser priests.
He took off his clothes and bathed in the sacred lake.
* * * *
But later at the home of Ra-hotep, sipping wine in the leafy shade of the High Priest's garden, he began to doubt that any of it had happened. He knew how easy it is to make gullible people see things and hear things. No doubt Ra-hotep, like most priests, had a few tricks up his sleeve. He didn't object to that. Was there not a small hidden chamber above the sanctuary at Ipet-Esut for the priest to hide when the god spoke through oracles? But he had thought he, Hapuseneb, man of the world, was beyond falling for tricks.
The sound of wings beating in the sanctuary of the divine egg and the impression of a golden bird flying out of the golden tip of the pyramid could easily have been produced. He was quite ashamed that he had fallen for it.
He was no better than his parents, for whom the ancient myths were more real than their everyday lives. But in the court it was his own face he saw in the mirror—and he saw it with the heightened consciousness of his own soul. For that brief moment he saw beyond all shadows and all shams to the certainty of a great purpose beyond the busy actions of individuals, and he wanted to build temples in the Two Lands not for his own gain and his own power but because he saw something of Hatshepsut's vision for them.
But the habitual thinking of a lifetime was not slow in overriding the momentary splendour of that vision. By the third glass of wine, Hapuseneb was aware of the slender and unusual beauty of a young woman —seemingly a particular protégé of Ra-hotep—and was calculating the advantages of taking her to bed before the night was out.
She in her turn noticed the handsome priest and was well aware of his intentions. He attracted her more than any other man she had met since her arrival in Khemet. He had the hard, strong look of a man of action, and yet he was a priest. That he was much older than her attracted rather then repelled her. She had left behind the young man she really loved in the country of her birth, Britain—a country so far away hardly a person in the Two Lands had ever heard of it—and come to Khemet, the land of her father, to train as a priest. Because in her own country there had been a Temple of the Sun, she had chosen to start her training at the Temple of the Sun in Khemet. But there were great differences between the civilisation she had left and the one she had sought out—and she found herself at first, as a foreigner, looked on as some kind of an illiterate savage compared to the sophisticated people of the City of the Sun.
Gradually she had won their respect, quickly adapting to their ways, and learning her lessons at the Temple with extraordinary rapidity. She was already almost indistinguishable from the locals, although what attracted Hapuseneb to her in the first place was the unusual lilt she gave to the pronunciation of his language, and the slight, haunting impression of foreignness, of mystery, about her.
Inevitably the conversation started with questions about her background, but she did not seem eager to talk about it. She mentioned the long journey over land and over sea, but more she would not say. He could see that she did not come from any of the lands with which he was familiar. Someone had whispered to him that she came from “beyond the west wind", and when he taxed her with it she smiled secretively and said that that was a good enough location for her country.
Her name, it seemed, was Anhai.[12]
[12—“Her name, it seemed, was Anhai.” I wrote 4 novels set in Bronze Age Britain. The Tall Stones, The Temple of the Sun, and Shadow on the Stones were republished in one volume: The Guardians of the Tall Stones. The fourth stands alone: The Silver Vortex. A daughter is born to the High Priestess of the Temple of the Sun at Haylken (Avebury, Wiltshire, England) and her Egyptian husband, Khu-ren. She is named Deva, but has dreams and visions of a life she believed she had in Egypt many centuries before when she was called Anhai. She brings about the destruction of all that the Temple of the Sun stands for in Britain when she wilfully goes against the teaching of her parents, and practices black magic. After her activities bring about the death of her mother she leaves for Egypt, her father's country, to seek redemption.]
“But that is a name from Khemet."
“It is not the name my people called me,” she said, “but it has associations for me and so I chose it for my new life here."
“What did your people call you?"
“De-va,” she said quietly, her eyes staring into the distance, remembering.
“What does it mean?"
“Shining One."
“It fits you. Why did you not retain it?"
“It does not fit,” she said; her voice was suddenly sharp and bitter. “I betrayed it. I have to earn it back."
He looked at her with interest.
Ra-hotep joined them at this moment.
“I see you have found our beautiful foreigner,” he said.
Hapuseneb looked at him irritably. The young woman's expression changed. From the open sincerity of her last remark, she now seemed guarded.
“She is not only beautiful,” Ra-hotep continued, looking pointedly at her, “but she has an extraordinary dedication to her studies. She has no time for anything beyond the work of the Temple."
“Is that true?” Hapuseneb asked, amused. He knew he had not been mistaken in catching a glimpse of a desire almost equal to his own when he first accosted her.
She smiled and met his eyes boldly.
“Up to now,” she said pointedly.
Ra-hotep caught something of what underlay their remarks and was annoyed. He himself had tried to interest Anhai in other matters and she had rather brusquely ignored him.
“She needs no distractions,” he said sharply. “She is about to face a very severe initiation test. She will need all her wits about her."
Anhai reluctantly drew her eyes away from Hapuseneb's and sighed.
“He is right,” she said. “It is time I retired. Tomorrow is an important day for me and I must be ready for it."
“Perhaps you will relax more and sleep better if...” She laughed and Ra-hotep scowled.
“Goodbye, First Prophet of Amun,” she said lightly—and turned on her heel. Both men watched as she crossed the room. She had a swinging grace, a casual sensuous beauty. It was hard to think of her locked deep in the earth, facing the difficult and searching questions of the Assessors, and the very real dangers that lay in the mysterious region of shadows that was neither of one world nor the other.
* * * *
But Anhai did not turn him away when he came to her chamber that night, though she knew she should. Once or twice she told him he must leave, but when he obediently turned on his side and began to haul himself out of the bed she pulled him back and clung to him as though her life depended on it. Only in the lovemaking did she forget her dread of the trials she had to face, and the regrets of her past. But as soon as the long and exquisite moment of the climax was over, she was already questioning, wondering and doubting again.
Hapuseneb propped his head up on one elbow and looked down at her quizzically.
“Are you sure the path you have chosen is the best one for you?” he asked, smiling.
“No, I'm not sure,” she said sharply, turning away from him. “But I've got to try it."
He ran his fingers gently down her back, and she shivered with pleasure. It was a long time since she had felt what she was feeling this night. The spiritual satisfaction she sought in the stern training of the Temple of Ra that had seemed so desirable just a few hours before, seemed very undesirable now. She knew that Hapuseneb was married with children, but there was no reason why she should not give up the priesthood and be a secondary wife. She would live a soft and easy life in a comfortable home with nothing to worry about but food and lovemaking and sleep. As High Priest of Amun he was rich, and she would live in great luxury. She might not even have to give up the priesthood. There were married priests and priestesses. She could have both worlds. She bit her lip, recognising the temptations that had been her undoing before.
This time it was she who left the bed and stood in the pale shaft of moonlight from the window, looking down at him.
“You must go,” she said. “I cannot keep my thoughts straight."
He didn't move at once, but lay watching her.
“Go,” she said urgently. “Please!"
Slowly he rose and dressed. She never moved—holding herself in check, she watched him, her body still tingling from his touch, still wanting it, still needing it.
When he had gone, she seized the first object that came to hand and smashed it against the wall.
“I will go through with it,” she said aloud. “I will!"
* * * *
Beneath the Temple of the Sun at Yunu were twelve dark chambers representing the twelve dark hours of the night.
Several potent myths told what the sun did when it had passed through the
twelve hours of daylight and was seen no more on earth for another twelve hours. One claimed that the sun was swallowed by Nut, the sky goddess, travelled through her body in darkness and, at dawn, was born from her body, refreshed and renewed. Another said that there were twelve caverns in the Underworld through which the sun passed, finding in each a dark and silent world, all life suspended. For the time of its passage through the individual caverns, light and life returned, and all rejoiced—only to fall back into the motionless dust and darkness as soon as it departed for the next cavern.
The Book of Caverns was a well-known text, inscribed on papyrus and carved and painted on the walls of coffins and tombs. It was accepted as a description of the Underworld, of the progress of the deceased as he or she accompanied the sun through the caverns of darkness to emerge at last, after many testing experiences, at the dawn of a new life—providing, of course, that the soul had successfully overcome the dangers and passed the tests.
The initiates of the priesthood of the sun, however, were expected to make the journey while still alive in the earth realm. How could they instruct the dead if they themselves did not know the way?
Anhai had already successfully passed through several grades of training. Her determination, her bright and active mind and the experience of her childhood as the daughter of the High Priest of the Temple of the Sun in that far away, cold, north-western land, pushed her forward perhaps more rapidly than the usual candidate.
She was now to face the journey through the twelve caverns.
The day following her night with Hapuseneb was to be spent in preparation—in last-moment instructions from her tutor, and in fasting and purification ceremonies. She wished she had not met Hapuseneb. Since coming to the Two Lands the discipline of her mind had been good. She had accepted that she could never have the lover she had left behind, and she had immersed herself completely in the work of the Temple. She saw no one to stir her blood and was content with a celibate and cerebral life. But those dark eyes had touched her where she would rather not have been touched, and she found that she was longing to make love again when she should have been thinking only deep and spiritual thoughts.
Hatshepsut: Daughter of Amun Page 12