by Wilbur Smith
Hui, who had been an outlaw when I captured him, was now a senior officer commanding five hundred chariots. All these old friends and acquaintances were delighted to welcome me into their camp, including even that reprehensible old reprobate Kratas, who was commander-in-chief under Pharaoh. On the evening of my arrival Lord Kratas attempted to drink me insensible. Later I was one of those who carried him to his cot, and I held his head while he puked it all up. The next morning he thanked me brusquely and sent his orderly officer to parade before me the Minoan refugees who had managed to escape the wrath of King Gorrab and reach our lines.
There were some forty or so of these unfortunates. They were a sorry lot, having fled with only meagre possessions and with their families decimated by the Hyksos.
I moved slowly down their ranks, treating the fugitives with respect and kindness, but also questioning them shrewdly.
There was one family group of three huddled together at the furthest end of the line whom I came to at last. The father spoke passable, but heavily accented, Egyptian. His name was Amythaon. Up until three weeks previously he had been a merchant in Memphis, trading in corn, wine and leather. He was so successful that even I had heard of him through my agents in that city. The Hyksos had burned his home and warehouse, and raped his wife in front of him until she bled to death.
His son was nineteen years old. His name was Icarion. I liked him immediately. He was tall and strongly built. He had a mop of thick curling dark hair, and a cheerful face. He had not been overwhelmed and crushed by misfortune as seemed to be the case with his father.
‘Of course, you flew from Memphis on wings that you made for yourself?’ I asked him.
‘Of course,’ replied Icarion, ‘but I kept well clear of the sun, lord.’ He had picked up my allusion to his name immediately.
‘Can you read and write, Icarion?’
‘Yes, lord. Although I do not enjoy it as much as my sister does.’
I looked at his sister, who stood behind the two men of her family, and I studied her face. She was rather pretty, with long dark hair and a bright intelligent face, but not as pretty as either of my two princesses. Then again there are very few who are.
‘My name is Loxias and I am fifteen years old.’ She anticipated my questions. She was almost the same age as my darling Tehuti. Her Egyptian was perfect, as though she had been born to it.
‘Can you write, Loxias?’
‘Yes, lord. I am able to do so in all three systems: hieroglyphics, cuneiform and Minoan script.’
‘She keeps my accounts and writes all my correspondence,’ Amythaon, her father, interjected. ‘She is a clever girl.’
‘Can you teach me to speak Minoan and write with Linear A?’ I asked her.
She thought about that for a few moments then she replied, ‘Maybe, but it will depend on your ability, Lord Taita. Minoan is not an easy language.’ I noted her use of my full name and title. It indicated to me that she was as clever as her father boasted she was.
‘Test me. Say something in Minoan,’ I invited her.
‘Very well,’ she agreed and then uttered a long sequence of lisping and exotic phrases.
I repeated them. I have a musician’s ear for sounds; both instrumental and spoken. I am able to replicate the cadence and accent of any human speech faultlessly. In this case I had no idea what I was saying but I said it perfectly. All three of them looked startled and Loxias flushed with annoyance.
‘You are mocking me, Lord Taita. You do not need my tutelage. You speak it almost as well as I do,’ she accused me. ‘Where did you learn?’ I smiled mysteriously, and left her guessing.
I commandeered horses from Hui’s regiment and the four of us rode south to Thebes that same day. I found comfortable accommodation for the little lost family a short walk outside the city walls, in one of the small villages on my newly granted Mechir estate.
I spent several hours every day with Loxias learning to speak and write in Minoan. Within a very few months Loxias admitted that there was nothing more she could teach me.
‘The pupil has outstripped the teacher. I think that probably there is much you can teach me, Lord Taita.’
My two princesses were not such eager or adept students as I was. In the beginning they were both adamant that they wanted nothing to do with such a stupid and uncouth language as Minoan. Nor did they wish any truck with a Minoan peasant girl of humble birth. They informed me that this was their joint decision, and that it was absolutely final and irreversible, and there was nothing that I could do about it. Tehuti did all the talking and her little sister stood by and nodded her head in concurrence.
I went to speak with their big brother, Pharaoh Tamose. I outlined for him the necessity of us Egyptians developing and exploiting our burgeoning relationship with Crete, and how this depended in a large measure upon the ability of the two girls to communicate with the Supreme Minos and his courtiers. Then I set out in detail the plans I had for his sisters.
Pharaoh sent for the two little rebels and remonstrated with them. He ended this one-sided discourse with such dire and convincing threats that even I was worried that he might carry them out. The princesses forthwith reversed their absolutely final decision. But for several days thereafter they sulked at me with a practised intensity.
Their rancour was rapidly set aside when I set up a prize for the student who showed the most improvement over the previous week as judged by their new language teacher, Loxias. The prize was always a piece of highly desirable feminine frippery which Amythaon found for me in the bazaars of the city.
Soon they were able to chatter, argue and emote in fluent Minoan, and Loxias exceeded her brief by teaching them a number of words and expressions that were better suited to the taverns and brothels of the city slums than to the palace. Over the following months these three little hellions delighted in shocking me with these utterances.
They soon became such a closely knit trio that the princesses took Loxias to live with them in the royal harem.
Ownership of Mechir estate provided me with an excuse to escape from the palace whenever the fancy took me and to ride free and unfettered over my own lands, usually with my princesses and the ubiquitous Loxias for company. I had taught them to ride astride, which is a remarkable achievement for any Egyptian man or woman, and even more so for the sisters of Pharaoh.
In addition I made special bows for the three girls which I carefully matched to their strength. With practice they were able to draw the bowstring to their lips and place two arrows out of three in the target I set up for them at a hundred paces. I kept alive their enthusiasm for this sport by awarding prizes and super-abundant praise for the best lady archer of the day.
When my people were sowing my fields with corn, the wild birds descended on us in flocks to steal the seed. I paid the girls an extravagant bounty for every bird which they brought down with an arrow. Each of them soon became a formidable huntress, able to hit the plumed pests high on the wing.
Riding and shooting were skills that I knew would stand the girls in very good stead in later life.
I truly revelled in the time I was able to spend with my charges, because once I was back in the palace I was firmly under Pharaoh’s dominion once more. There was seldom a day that passed without him calling me to his presence at least once in order for me to solve a problem or to give him my advice or my opinion. I learned not to be put out of countenance when he rejected my counsel, only to resurrect it some little time later as his very own idea.
One of the other problems that I was faced with at this time was the disposal of the treasure that I had brought to Pharaoh Tamose from the Minoan fort at Tamiat.
Pharaoh was impatient to begin utilizing it for the welfare of his subjects. I had to restrain him from paying the nation’s debts with silver ingots bearing the hallmark of the Supreme Minos of Crete.
‘Great Pharaoh, you and I are both aware that the Minos has his spies in every city of our very Egypt,’ I pointed out to hi
m. ‘It would take but a short time for one of them to send a message back to Crete to inform him that every souk and tavern in Thebes was awash with silver ingots bearing the hallmark of the bull of Crete.’
‘Is what you are telling me I can never spend the bullion I have packed into my treasury over there?’ He pointed with his chin at his father’s tomb on the far side of the Nile. ‘In case the Minos is alerted to its existence?’ His tone was bitter and his expression angry.
‘I beg your forgiveness, Royal Egypt. You are the father of the nation. The treasure belongs to you to use in any way you wish. However we must alter its appearance so that no man alive, and in particular not the Supreme Minos, will ever be able to recognize it.’
‘How will we achieve that, Taita?’ He was only slightly mollified. At least he was looking into my face with an expression which was once more friendly and interested.
‘We must break the ingots down into much smaller fragments, each weighing the same amount; say half a deben. Each of these could bear the image of your royal head.’
‘Hmm!’ he murmured. I had known that he would like the idea of his own head on the fragments. ‘What would we call them, these silver fragments of mine, Tata?’
‘Pharaoh will surely think of a better name, but I had the idle notion that they should be known as silver mem.’
He smiled with pleasure. ‘I think that is very appropriate, Tata. Now what image are we going to stamp on the reverse side of my silver mems, opposite my head?’
‘Of course, Pharaoh will decide that.’ I bowed my head and avoided his gaze.
‘Of course I will decide that,’ he agreed, ‘but you would like to make a suggestion, I can see that.’
I shrugged. ‘We have been together since the moment of your birth, Majesty.’
‘Yes. Horus knows I have heard about it from you often enough. When you relate how my first act was to piss on you, I always think I should have pissed harder and longer.’
I pretended that I had not heard the last part of his remark. ‘I have always been close behind you, loyally and faithfully. It might be propitious to continue that tradition.’ I paused, but he urged me on.
‘Continue! However, I think I can see in which direction we are headed.’
‘Perhaps – and I say perhaps with all humility – perhaps Pharaoh might see fit to order that the image of the wounded falcon should decorate the reverse side of his silver mem,’ I suggested and he let out a shout of laughter.
‘You never let me down, Tata. You had it all worked out from the very beginning!’ The wounded falcon with a broken wing is my personal hieroglyph.
Under the royal auspice and in terms of strict secrecy I set up a mint within the precincts of the tomb of Mamose to manufacture this coinage. Coin was the new word I had conceived to describe these pieces of silver. Pharaoh accepted it without argument.
This coinage was another of my achievements which proved an extraordinary boost to the progress and prosperity of our very Egypt. Nowadays a smoothly functioning monetary system is an essential instrument of government and commerce. It was one of my gifts to my Egypt, and one of the principal reasons why we will always be the pre-eminent nation of the world. Although other nations have since imitated us, the silver mem is now the coin that is recognized and accepted joyfully in every country in the world.
With a nudge from me Pharaoh changed the name of his father’s tomb to ‘the Royal Mint’; thereby expunging the deleterious taint of death and interment from the place. When this was done Pharaoh appointed me to be the governor of this institution; thereby adding substantially to all my other duties and responsibilities. However, when duty calls I never complain.
One of my first acts in my new capacity of governor was to appoint Zaras to be the Guardian of the Royal Mint and Treasury. I prevailed on Pharaoh to give him the command of a battalion of guards to assist him in carrying out these duties. Of course this placed Zaras completely under my authority.
Since Princess Tehuti had contrived her stratagem to force him to inspect her diamond ring, and thereby making her intentions clear to me, I had been very careful to keep Zaras isolated on the western bank of the Nile. I knew that when my darling had fixed her mind on a certain course of action it was extremely difficult, if not impossible, to distract and dissuade her.
The only way that I could think of was to sever any contact between her and Zaras until I was able to work out her manifest destiny for her. Clearly this destiny was for her to become the queen and consort of the most powerful military figure in the world and not the plaything and camp-follower of some common soldier, however pleasant and congenial that soldier might be.
One of the few facts that I knew about the enigmatic figure of the Supreme Minos was his predilection for beautiful women of royal blood. To be entirely truthful, even this was not a proven fact. It was merely a rumour which by frequent repetition had become hard fact.
Nonetheless I was confident that this shadowy but omnipotent figure would find both my little princesses irresistible, and that through them I would be able to manipulate the Minoan to my will, and the greater good of our very Egypt. I consoled myself that Tehuti could hope for no greater honour and higher duty than to occupy a throne and to save her homeland from the Barbarian. When she realized this she would soon set aside her trivial infatuation with Zaras.
But in the meantime I would have to keep that worthy young man confined in the Royal Mint with little or no opportunity to cross the river; there to sniff around the royal harem like a dog with the scent in his nostrils of a little overheated bitch.
Up until this time Pharaoh and we members of his royal council had followed the mounting conflict between the Supreme Minos and the Hyksos King Gorrab with utmost attention. And we had done whatever lay within our power to intensify their hostility towards each other. Unfortunately this was not much. Crete was far away and we had no contact with its ruler.
While I waited for the time to come when I could put my plan for Tehuti and Bekatha into effect I set out to learn what I could about Crete and the Supreme Minos. This was where both Amythaon and his daughter Loxias provided me with invaluable information about the island state, its history and population, its resources and most importantly its rulers.
I use the plural ‘rulers’ deliberately; for it seems that Crete has four kings. The Supreme Minos, as his title suggests, dominates the other three lesser kings. They live in separate palaces, but these are linked to the grand palace at Knossos by roads magnificently paved with marble slabs. In Egypt we would refer to these as satraps or governors, and not kings.
When I questioned him closely I learned that Amythaon had been born in a small village only three leagues outside the walls of Knossos, the citadel of the Supreme Minos. His father had been an officer in the palace and as a child Amythaon had been a spectator at many of the festivals and processions of the Minos. He was the first person that I had ever spoken to who had actually laid eyes on the Minos.
According to Amythaon he is a splendid and imposing figure who is always masked when he appears in public. The mask he wears is in the shape of a bull’s head fashioned out of pure silver. None of his subjects have ever seen his face.
‘He is immortal,’ Amythaon declared. ‘He has ruled since the birth of the nation, back in the mists of time.’
I nodded wisely, but it did occur to me that if none of his subjects had ever seen his face how did they know that it was the same man who had ruled forever? To me it seemed likely enough that when the incumbent Supreme Minos died his successor simply donned the silver bull mask and continued the reign.
‘He has a hundred wives,’ Amythaon went on and looked at me to be impressed. I adopted an expression of awe. ‘The Supreme Minos receives wives from all the other kings of the city states across the islands that dot the Aegean Sea. Four times a year, on the festivals which mark the changing of the seasons, they are sent to him as a form of tribute.’
‘How many vassal kings d
oes the Supreme Minos have, Amythaon?’
‘He is a mighty monarch. He has twenty-six vassals in all, my lord,’ he told me, ‘including the three on the island of Crete itself.’
‘How many wives do they send him?’
‘Every year each vassal king sends him seven wives.’
‘That adds up to 182 each year. Do you agree with my figures, Amythaon?’ I watched him count on his fingers and at last he nodded.
‘That is correct, my lord.’
‘Then can you explain to me how the number of his wives remains at one hundred, as you asserted at first?’
‘I am not sure, lord. That is what I was told by my father when I was a child.’ He looked perplexed, and I asked another question to relieve his embarrassment.
Amythaon was even more helpful to me in describing the topography of the island of Crete and its population. I had accumulated a number of allegedly accurate maps of the island that all differed widely from each other. Amythaon went over these with me, laboriously correcting the substance and details and in the end consolidating these into a master map which he guaranteed was perfect. This map showed all the cities and villages, the ports and the anchorages, the roads and the passes through the Cretan mountain ranges.
Because of his family connections Amythaon was also able to give me reliable figures for the Minoan army and navy.
The number of foot-soldiers was substantial. However these were mainly mercenaries recruited from the other Hellenic islands or from amongst the Medes and Aryans of eastern Asia. Because of the mountainous nature of Crete itself, he told me that the Minoans possessed relatively few chariots, compared to the Hyksos or to our own Pharaoh.
It seems that the Supreme Minos makes up for this by the strength of his navy which far exceeds any other in the Middle Sea. Amythaon was able to give me estimates of the numbers and types of ships that it comprises.
The numbers that Amythaon quoted were so large that I knew they were exaggerated. I thought that if I was mistaken and Amythaon’s figures were accurate, then the Supreme Minos was a mighty man indeed.