Hatshepsut: Daughter of Amun

by Moyra Caldecott

  It was Anhai who found it at last, and Senmut took this as a good sign. At first he watched her closely as she stood staring down at the inscription, and then he forgot her as he too gazed at it. He wanted so badly to experience something, to remember something. But nothing happened. The hot sun blazed off the surface of the stone, and the ancient inscription was so faint it was almost impossible to see. “Anhai, daughter of Imhotep...” was there as Hatshepsut had said it would be, but there was something else there that Hatshepsut had not been able to read. Perhaps all those years with the archaic languages of the early dynasties in the archives at the Temple of Ptah at Men-nefer would help him now. Senmut frowned as he stared at the signs, moving his head so that the angle of light would change and give a better image. He thought he deciphered the words “for safe return". This was not so very different from what was inscribed on the other rocks on this frontier island, for nearly everyone who stopped here long enough to carve a prayer was on a dangerous journey and wanted a safe return. He was disappointed—until he looked up and saw that Anhai's eyes were streaming with tears. Something was stirring at last. If only he could feel it too.

  “What is it?” he urged. “Speak to me. Tell me everything you are feeling. Don't be afraid. Speak."

  She sank to the ground and sat beside the boulder with her arms around her knees and her head sunk on her arms, sobbing and rocking like a very young child.

  “What do you remember?” Senmut insisted impatiently. He was deadly afraid of driving the memory away by intruding—but he had to know!

  “It is just sorrow I feel,” she said. “The sorrow of parting..."

  Senmut frowned. He had heard the story of how she had left the Two Lands in the ancient days with her lover. But he could not see that she would have left from this place. It was far, far from the Great Green Ocean she must have sailed upon to reach that distant and alien land.

  She shook her head. “I didn't carve these words,” she said quietly, her weeping done. “It is my father's pain I am feeling here."

  Imhotep himself! Senmut put his hand on the images and tried to will the memory of carving them into his mind. Perhaps he, as Imhotep, had come south to the granite quarries, as he himself frequently did, as architect and supervisor of Hatshepsut's building projects. Perhaps he, as Imhotep, had come to this holy island to weave a spell to draw Anhai back. Senmut shivered with excitement. If Imhotep, master of mystery and magic, had arranged to draw her back to this spot, he would certainly have arranged to be present at the same time. Senmut felt more convinced than ever that he was the great man himself, reborn.

  But what was this? Anhai had risen and was looking at someone over his shoulder, standing beside him. He spun round, but could see no one.

  Why? Why? He who wanted so much to have transcendental experiences and had trained and prepared himself for years was never granted them. Hatshepsut, now Anhai, seemed to have them with extraordinary ease, while he, with all his intellect, his creative talent, his arcane knowledge, could never make them happen.

  She had moved closer to where she had apparently seen someone. Her back was to him and he could not see her face. It seemed to him a long time passed as he waited impatiently for her to tell him what was happening. But he held himself in check and made no move and said no word.

  At last she turned to him, and her face was transfigured with joy.

  “I spoke with my father,” she said in a low and awed voice.

  “Imhotep?"

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “What did he say?” Senmut tried to keep the disappointment out of his voice. He knew now he could not have been Imhotep. Imhotep had materialised separate from himself. He felt ashamed that he had tried to claim identity with a being who was more of a god than a man.

  She smiled sympathetically, looking into his eyes.

  “He sent greetings to you,” she said. “He thanked you for carving this rock for him. He thanked you for your loyalty to him all these years."

  “Loyalty?” Senmut sounded dazed.

  “It seems you were a favourite apprentice of his. You worked on many building projects with him; he entrusted you and the woman you loved with the casting of this spell to bring me back. You were the young man Hatshepsut saw in her vision, and your beloved was the young girl in the boat casting flowers around the island to seal the spell so that it couldn't be taken up and misused by someone else. It was a gentle spell—a calling of the heart. I was not compelled to come, but I came."

  Anhai turned her head and looked across the hot sand to where Neferure was resting in the shade.

  “The Princess Neferure was your beloved in that ancient life."

  Senmut was silent. He was not surprised. There had always been something between them since he first held her in his arms as a young infant, and Hatshepsut, seeing the tenderness of his expression, had appointed him her guardian and tutor. How strange this play within a play ... this constant ebb and flow of time, the same shells rattling on the beach as each breaker washed them in again...

  He knew Anhai was telling him the truth. His old restless desire to be Imhotep was gone. He knew who he was and he knew who he had been—and he was content. Many people claimed to have been great and famous people because they remembered glimmerings of the time in which such heroes and heroines had lived. Would not the ordinary people who now lived in Hatshepsut's Khemet remember the great events of her reign more readily than the small and mundane events of their own lives?

  “Has he gone?” Senmut cried. “There were so many things I wanted to ask him!"

  Anhai looked different somehow. Older. Wiser.

  “Now we have made the contact, we will not lose it,” she said confidently.

  “Will it be only in this place?"

  “I'm not sure."

  She didn't finish. Neferure came running towards them.

  “I had the most extraordinary experience,” she cried. “I am sure I wasn't asleep, and yet suddenly it seemed as though the river was full of flowers."

  Senmut and Anhai looked at each other and smiled. But neither felt that it would be right to tell Neferure what had occurred. Somehow—though she had been a part of the original event—they both felt she would not now understand.

  * * *

  Chapter 11

  Men-kheper-Ra spent very little time in the south at Waset. He found his aunt-stepmother Hatshepsut to be a dangerous and difficult woman. He never knew where he was with her. One moment she treated him like a close and beloved relative, and another like a suspected traitor; one moment like a man, and another like a child. Sometimes he thought of her as an inspired visionary, and at others as a ruthless manipulator of men's lives. His friend Amenemheb believed that the visions were self-induced because of her overweening ambition.

  “Anyone can say they have spoken with the god,” the cynical young man said. “She is always alone when it happens. Either she has been supping on the milk of the sycamore fig and genuinely believes that her hallucinations are religious verities, or she quite deliberately chooses to fake and lie.” Amenemheb was taking his life in his hands speaking about the Pharaoh as he did, but he was relying on his long and close friendship. He was the son of one of the high nobles who had served Hatshepsut's husband. At the moment, Men-kheper-Ra seemed powerless to assert his rights, but it would not always be so, and when he was Pharaoh in real practical terms, Amenemheb was determined to be there at his right hand.

  Men-kheper-Ra had several close friends who were certain that one day Hatshepsut would either relinquish power under pressure from strong nobles on the side of her stepson-nephew—or would be eliminated. It was not easy to assassinate a pharaoh, but it was possible.

  It seemed to his ambitious friends, and his equally ambitious mother, Men-kheper-Ra was too sanguine about the flagrant usurpation of his rights by Hatshepsut. Perhaps he had been too young to rule when his father died, but he was older now—a strong and vigorous soldier, a virile and likeable young man. If he
lacked anything it was his patience with diplomacy and the slow machinations of intrigue. If he could have stormed the palace he would have done it. But to manoeuvre secretly, to spy on people, to bribe people, to find his own way among a swamp of shifting and uncertain loyalties—that was not his style.

  When he was fourteen a bid to place him fair and square on the throne had almost succeeded ...[17]

  [17—For an account of this early bid for power on behalf of the young Men-kheper-Ra see Ancient Records vol. 2, paragraphs 131-151.]

  It took place in the great hall of cedar columns the architect Ineni had erected for his grandfather at the Temple of Amun in Ipet-Esut. Behind the huge wooden doorway inscribed in gold: Amun, mighty in strength, with its leaf of Asiatic copper on which the shadow of Min was modelled in gold, one of the major ceremonies of the sacred year was in progress. Hatshepsut had made her private obeisance and sacrifice to the god in the inner sanctuary, and he was now being carried in procession in his golden boat around the temple—torches flickering, chanters chanting, incense burning.

  The priest who had planned this dramatic challenge to her sovereignty had made sure that Men-kheper-Ra was present this day in his capacity as trainee “god's servant".

  All was going as usual when suddenly the statue of Amun and his boat began to shake violently and then move wildly about the hall as though seeking something. Apparently the four priests carrying it were unable to control it.

  It passed Hatshepsut, who was standing in her golden robes with the blue crown on her head, and came to rest at last before the young prince, Men-kheper-Ra. The implication was that Men-kheper-Ra was the rightful king.

  Those who were in on the trick fell down at once to worship him, while those who were not, looked uneasily from Hatshepsut to her nephew, not knowing whom it would be most advantageous to support.

  In the confusion, those who had planned the incident might well have won the day—had Men-kheper-Ra not hesitated and Hatshepsut not acted so decisively.

  In an instant she stepped forward and confronted the god.

  “Tell me, my father,” she said haughtily, “am I not Hatshepsut Khenemet-Amun, she who unites herself with Amun, the first of the nobles? King of the North and South, Maat-ka-Ra, Son of the Sun, the Female Horus of Pure Gold, Bestower of Years, Goddess of Risings, Conqueror of Lands, Vivifier of Hearts, Chief Spouse of Amun, the Mighty One? Am I not,” she continued, “The Lord of East and West, the daughter of thy heart whom thou lovest before all others?"

  As her titles rolled through the great hall in a voice of authority, those who supported her were strengthened by the sheer power of her conviction that she was indeed Pharaoh, the daughter of Amun-Ra, the Chosen One. Men-kheper-Ra hung his head, and the priests who had tried to shift the balance of power in his favour were lost.

  Silently supporters of Hatshepsut moved forward and took the golden barque from them, and the whole procession moved on its way as though nothing had happened. It passed through the door called “Amun, mighty in strength” and through the pylon of gleaming white stone, beneath the fluttering flags and between the granite obelisks with the golden tips erected by Hatshepsut's father and between which the sun was seen to rise each morning. It wound out through the gardens of the temple, past the sacred lake and down the causeway to the river. The people crowding the river bank to catch a glimpse of the procession as Amun left to visit his consort Mut at the southern temple had no idea that a struggle for power had just been fought, and Hatshepsut's mind, as she walked so sedately and reverently beside the barque, was seething with plans to prevent any such thing ever happening again.

  But when Men-kheper-Ra finally came to the throne he would have his own version of the event carved on the walls of the temple, and this time there would be another ending to the story.

  * * * *

  It was on one of his military training exercises in the desert that Men-kheper-Ra finally decided to accept what help he could from his friends and take back what was rightfully his.

  They had received intelligence that tribute had not been coming in as it should from an area his grandfather had conquered in the east, beyond the Bitter Lakes, and he and his friends, hot and excited from a practice chariot charge, were in the mood to test themselves on a real battlefield. But Pharaoh had said she would deal with the situation diplomatically, and no troops need be sent to the area.

  “If you were King,” the young captain Amenemheb said angrily, “no one would dare hold back tribute. Foreigners jeer at us for having a woman in charge. No other country would tolerate such a thing."

  Men-kheper-Ra, equally annoyed, rubbed down his horse more roughly than he intended, and the beast trampled nervously and whinnied.

  “Sh-sh-ssh,” he hushed, and moderated his action. The horse calmed down.

  He had always known that the time would come when he would take back the throne. He had procrastinated so long partly because he was enjoying the vigorous life of a soldier and the escape from what he regarded as imprisoning protocol and boring state affairs, and partly because Hatshepsut's spies had him and his supporters boxed in so well they couldn't make a move without her being instantly aware of it and making a countermove.

  The two young men handed their horses over to the grooms, and, on Amenemheb's suggestion strolled away from the practice ground towards the low hill that overlooked it. They climbed silently and stood for a while at the top. They could see the straight tracks the chariot wheels had made in the sand, and the others of their company gathering at the long, low building to the east where there would be food and beer for the young men who had been working at the exercises since sunup.

  They both knew they could not reveal what was in their minds in the presence of anyone else. These were Hatshepsut's soldiers, though the young prince, Men-kheper-Ra, was ostensibly their commander. He worked hard, drank hard and played hard—and his rapport with his men was exceptional.

  “If you asked them”—Amenemheb spoke first—quietly—“you know they would follow you."

  Men-kheper-Ra nodded, but said nothing. He could feel it again, that feeling he hated, a kind of rising desperation to be a real king and to have ultimate power. He had it from time to time, but it always went away when he said to himself “one day” ... “just a little longer” ... It was so much more comfortable to stay as he was. He had seen Hatshepsut exhausted from long hours spent poring over despatches, records and texts. He could read, but he felt he had better ways to spend his time. He would enjoy having power over people's lives, but he would not enjoy the meticulous attention to detail that Hatshepsut seemed to consider essential for a ruler.

  Sometimes, impatiently, he felt he would have made a better pharaoh than she; but at others, he wondered. He often did things impetuously that afterwards he regretted. She always seemed to know exactly what she was doing, and why.

  “If you leave it too long,” Amenemheb continued, “the empire will be lost. Your aunt does not care to maintain your father's frontiers."

  “She fought well in Nubia,” Men-kheper-Ra said hesitantly.

  “Yes, she did,” Amenemheb agreed grudgingly. “But one battle is not enough. That was years ago. If a show of force is not constantly maintained, the bright edge of power blunts like an old sword."

  Men-kheper-Ra picked up a small chip of rock and flung it with all his might into the sky. They both watched it as it spun against the blue and started to fall in the direction of Hatshepsut's distant palace. It would not reach it, of course, because the building was miles away shimmering in the heat haze—but for a moment everything seemed possible.

  “A few of us would like to meet to talk with you,” Amenemheb said.

  “Who? Who would like to meet and talk with me?” Men-kheper-Ra asked tersely. He felt that this time—this time he was ready.

  There had been other times, other suggestions, other plots. Some good men had mysteriously disappeared, and the talking had stopped. But this time—this time he felt it would be di
fferent.

  Amenemheb paused. How far should he go? Had he already gone too far?

  Men-kheper-Ra turned and looked at him intently. Amenemheb swallowed. Had he misjudged the moment?

  “Set the meeting,” the prince said “I'll be there."

  “It should be away from here."

  “Of course."

  “I suggest Yunu. The priests of Ra would give us protection. I hear they are not pleased to take second place to Amun."

  “I don't want to get involved in temple politics. I need the priests of Amun on my side."

  “We will not get involved. It is just a place. A safe place."

  “To talk?"

  “To talk."

  “No more than that?"

  “No more than that."

  “Then arrange it."

  Amenemheb bowed his head. Usually the two young men were full of jokes and jibes. They were good friends, and a soldier's camaraderie bound them together. But they both knew that something had changed between them. They had taken a step from which there would be no going back. Amenemheb had staked his future on a throw, and he would win either great power in the land—or death.

  * * * *

  Ra-hotep welcomed the meeting Amenemheb suggested. As far as he was concerned, Hatshepsut was obsessed by Amun and was set to destroy the age-old balance of the hegemony of the gods.

  Ra-hotep did not believe any more than any other thinking priest did that the gods were up there in the sky with jackal and ibis and falcon heads, wearing feathered crowns and sun disks ... He knew the images of the gods were only signposts pointing beyond themselves to a deeper, intangible and inexpressible reality. He knew the danger of having anthropomorphic images often led to the image being mistaken for the reality. But he knew that in not having images there was also a danger—the danger of forgetting that there was a deeper, intangible and inexpressible reality behind the one people could see and touch.

  As guardians and interpreters of these images, Ra-hotep and his colleagues enjoyed a privileged and a very comfortable position, particularly as the sun image had always been of primary importance. Anything that threatened that position worried him. He resented that more wealth was going to the temples of Amun-Ra these days than was coming to the temples of Ra alone—and he feared even more of his privileges might be whittled away in the future by Hatshepsut. “That a woman should choose to wear a beard and dress like a man is against nature,” he said. “And when you start defying natural law, you start a process that can only lead to chaos."