by Wilbur Smith
Both the stranger and I stood calmly studying each other. Then slowly the cloaked figure raised both hands and lifted the hood off its head and let it drop in folds around its shoulders. Perversely I had presumed that the stranger was a man, but now I was faced with abundant evidence that I had been mistaken.
This was a woman who stood before me, a woman lovely beyond my most extravagant dreams of beauty. Her face was so divine that it caused me exquisite anguish to look upon it. I searched for words to describe it, but all the superlatives of our glorious language paled and were rendered trite and mundane before it. I have never before experienced such soul-rending emotion. Here was all that I have ever hungered for and been denied, everything of value that a cruel fate has placed far beyond my reach for all time. Here was all the glory of femininity embodied.
Slowly I reached out my hand towards her, understanding that it was a forlorn gesture, knowing full well that such magnificence would remain always far beyond my reach, but that it would also remain preserved entire in my memory to haunt me through all eternity.
She smiled at me sadly, an expression of sympathy for my plight and deep regret for having brought it upon me. Then she covered her head with the hood of her cloak, turned from me and glided away into the precincts of the temple, leaving me bereft.
I thought that I might never be able to sleep again, that all my nights from henceforth to the day of my death would be filled with images of the hooded woman. But it was not so.
That same evening as I stretched out in my cot on the palace terrace under the stars I closed my eyes and fell immediately into a deep and dreamless sleep. The very next thing of which I was aware was Phat Tur’s hands shaking me and his voice spurring me awake.
I sat up and realized that the sun was above the horizon and a troop of my servants and slaves were lined up behind Phat Tur bearing all my personal trappings and accoutrements that identified me as an envoy of the Pharaonic House of Mamose, and the bearer of the hawk seal.
‘Rouse yourself, my lord!’ Phat Tur exhorted me. ‘King Nimrod is assembling his war council and he invites you to conclave.’
I blinked my eyes in the brilliant early-morning sunlight. I expected to feel jaded and depressed by memories of the strange visitation of the previous evening. Instead I was astonished by how marvellously well I felt.
‘If His Majesty is waiting, then tell me why you keep me dawdling here, Phat Tur? Let us get on with the business.’ The fact that I was able to jest at such a time was an indication of my light and ebullient mood.
By the time that we reached the council chamber most of the Sumerian military leaders were assembled; all of them in full dress and wearing their decorations and honours. The only one missing was King Nimrod himself. His empty throne at the head of the long table was a warning to me that he intended to stand aloof from the proceedings until I had put forward my proposals for forming an alliance.
After we had observed protocol, I responded to the speeches of welcome; employing Phat Tur as my interpreter. I was still not prepared to let the other side know that I was fluent in their language. Then I opened the negotiations with a titbit to tempt Nimrod to join us at the table.
‘Gentlemen, I am of course fully aware that your navy is one of the most formidable on all the seas; your ships the strongest, your officers the most skilled and your sailors the most gallant.’ They looked pleased with these compliments, which were extravagant. The Supreme Minos of Crete has a far larger and more powerful fleet. The volume of his sea trade is many times larger than the trade of Sumeria. I went on putting my proposition to them. ‘I wish to purchase six of your fine capital ships to deploy them in our struggle with the Hyksos impostor and usurper, Gorrab.’
Admiral Alorus was the commander-in-chief of the Sumerian navy. He was a tall thin man with streaks of white in his carefully curled beard, very dark rings under his eyes, and crooked teeth spotted with decay. He acknowledged my request with a raised eyebrow and a chuckle, not derisive but mildly amused.
‘My Lord Taita, I know that King Nimrod applauds your warlike intentions towards our common enemy. I also know that I speak with His Majesty’s voice when I remind you of the fact that a single ship of war is a costly item and as for a fleet of that number …’ He broke off with an expressive shake of his head.
‘Nothing worthwhile is ever cheap,’ I agreed with him. ‘My Pharaoh is as well aware of that as your King Nimrod. Egypt is in an unenviable position. The Hyksos control the Nile River northwards from Akhenaten as far as the Middle Sea. We do not have sea-going ships of war with which to oppose the Hyksos usurper Gorrab. We have only river galleys, and these are locked in the Nile. If we were able to launch a surprise offensive on his fleet in the open sea what havoc we might be able to wreak.’
I took from my sleeve a papyrus scroll and placed it on the table between us. Admiral Alorus glanced at it casually, but when he realized that on it I had listed the names and specifications of six of the major Sumerian battle galleys he snatched up the scroll and studied it avidly. At last he looked up at me over the top of the papyrus.
‘Where did you get this information?’ he demanded brusquely. ‘It is all highly confidential.’ It was my turn to shrug and shake my head as though I could not understand the question. Phat Tur’s agents had of course prepared the list for us.
‘Would you be agreeable to selling those vessels to us?’ I spoke quietly and reasonably. ‘And if so, what price would King Nimrod consider acceptable.’
‘I beg your indulgence.’ Alorus stood up and bowed to me. ‘Naturally I shall have to consult His Majesty before I can answer those questions.’ He hurried from the council chamber, and it was almost an hour by the water clock standing against the facing wall before he returned.
‘King Nimrod wishes me to inform you that those particular vessels that you have selected cost one hundred and fifty silver deben each to build and launch. If he were to sell them to you, which is highly unlikely, he could not consider a lesser price than that,’ Admiral Alorus announced. I made a quick calculation while Phat Tur was still translating the offer. There are ten thousand deben in a lakh of silver. I had sufficient metal in one saddlebag to purchase forty warships, but my counter offer to Alorus was for seventy-five silver deben a ship. Alorus left the room a second time to speak to the king, and when Nimrod returned with him I knew that he was an eager seller at my price.
His Majesty and I haggled like Arabian horse traders for the remainder of the morning and most of the afternoon. Finally we settled on a price of five hundred deben of silver for all six ships delivered to me at the Sumerian port of Sidon on the eastern coast of the Middle Sea by the end of the month of Phamenoth.
Delighted with what he considered a shrewd deal, King Nimrod invited me and my princesses to a special banquet that evening to celebrate our agreement.
As we left the council chamber Phat Tur was at my side and he murmured just loud enough for me to hear, ‘I promised to take you to visit the Temple of Ishtar. The temple never closes so we can go there whenever you wish. We have several hours to pass before the royal banquet this evening.’
I was as well pleased by the acquisition of the warships from Nimrod as he was to sell them to me. I had been prepared to pay double that amount. Consequently I was in such a jovial mood that I responded at once to Phat Tur’s suggestion, ‘If it is as instructive and interesting as you have suggested then let us visit the temple at once.’
We left the palace and as we walked along the waterfront of the river towards the Temple of Ishtar, Phat Tur reminded me of the history of the temple.
‘As I have already told you King Marduk had over one hundred wives and concubines, but his grand passion was for the goddess Ishtar. First he built the temple to win her favour, and when that proved insufficient to tempt her he started work on the great tower on the other bank.’ Both of us turned to contemplate the top of the unfinished tower, which showed even above the upper gallery of the magnificent Hangin
g Gardens. ‘I have already described how Marduk died before his passion for the goddess could be consummated. Although Marduk’s affections were concentrated on a single object, those of Nimrod his son are much more widely disseminated. It is his boast that before he dies he wishes to have carnal knowledge of every nubile woman in Sumeria: young or old; married or virginal.’
‘That is not an entirely unreasonable ambition for a king to entertain,’ I remarked with a straight face. ‘As with his hunting exploits, it seems that Nimrod is more concerned with numbers than quality. But are not his eyes larger than his other bodily organs?’
‘It is a well-known fact that King Nimrod is insatiable.’ Phat Tur shook his head. ‘So far he is unfaltering in his resolve.’
‘But I do not understand how this relates to his father’s temple,’ I encouraged him.
‘Within six months of King Nimrod’s ascent to the throne he passed an ordinance which compels every woman in the kingdom to sit in the temple for one day in her life. For a fee no matter how great or how small she must have intercourse with any man who asks her, be he friend, enemy or stranger. No woman may refuse, and no husband may forbid this union.’
‘Does that mean that King Nimrod must stand in line with all his subjects to take his pick of the ladies on offer?’ I asked. Phat Tur smiled knowingly and shook his head.
‘According to the royal ordinance, the women must take up their stations at sunrise but only one man is allowed to enter the temple before noon to make his selections. No doubt you are able to guess who that man might be.’ He gave me a conspiratorial grin. ‘After the noon hour any other Sumerian citizen may enter to take his pick of the women who remain within.’
By the time that we reached the front entrance of the temple it was late afternoon. There was a line of fifty men, or maybe more, waiting their turn to enter the main gate of the sacred precincts. Some of them were off-duty soldiers or sailors; others wore the white skullcaps that distinguished them as lawyers, or the blood-smeared black robe that was the uniform of the physician. The remainder were a motley crew of both old and young, and of every class in the kingdom from nobleman to labourer.
‘The priests and priestesses of the goddess are distinguished by their green robes,’ Phat Tur explained. ‘That is one of them.’ He pointed out the man who had come through the gateway and was hurrying towards us. ‘His name is Onyos and I have arranged for him to guide us through the temple, and to explain the mysteries to you.’
Onyos greeted us respectfully and then led us to a barred wicket gate set in the wall to one side of the main gates. At our approach the wicket was opened from within, and we passed through it into the main nave of the temple.
This was so vast that the arched ceiling high above us was shrouded in gloom and shadows. A single ray of sunlight burned down from above and lit the golden statue of the goddess that stood in the centre of the floor.
‘There is an enormous bronze mirror on the temple roof.’ Phat Tur anticipated my question. ‘It is set on wheels and turned by ten slaves to follow the path of the sun from dawn to dusk, and reflect its rays down upon the statue.’ The effect was magnificent and from the blazing statue splinters of moving light were thrown on to the walls of the nave.
‘Have you taken note of the murals, Lord Taita?’ Phat Tur asked. ‘They do say it took two hundred artists twenty years to paint them.’
‘They are astonishing,’ I conceded reluctantly. ‘There is nothing to match these in any other temple I have visited; not even in the funerary temple of Pharaoh Mamose.’ I had designed the murals in Mamose’s tomb so I was insincere in making such a ridiculous comparison.
‘The subjects are fascinating, as I am sure you will agree?’ Phat Tur was displaying an almost proprietary pride in the artwork. ‘All the ardent passions of the goddess Ishtar are depicted here.’ He pointed them out one after the other. ‘War …’
Armoured legions marched in battle array across the high temple walls. Chariots wheeled and charged in storms of dust. Flights of arrows filled the skies. Cities burned and hordes of refugees fled before the rampaging armies. Weeping women held up their dead children, and pleaded for mercy from the conquerors. Great warships with rams of burnished bronze stove in the sides of lesser craft and hurled their crews into a sea already strewn with floating wreckage and corpses. Above the battlefield the goddess flew, pointing at the victors and condemning the vanquished.
‘War, love and sex …’ Phat Tur turned slowly, pointing to the other walls and then bending backwards to draw my attention to the arched and vaulted ceiling fifty cubits above us. ‘No other temple that I have ever heard of contains such a display of erotic and venereal art.’
I followed the sweep of his arms. Wherever I looked were graphic depictions of spurting men and gushing women locked in wanton embrace; or of some god with monstrous genitalia buried deeply in one of the bodily orifices of a goddess. Floating on a sea of steaming sperm and feminine ejaculants, the participants were eternally frozen in their voluptuous contortions.
Over all of them hovered Ishtar on shining white wings, her lovely head encircled in a nimbus of fire, exhorting them to ever greater abandon.
Phat Tur and I circled the nave slowly, marvelling at the imagination of the apocryphal two hundred artists who had laboured twenty years to conjure up these monumental works.
At intervals along each wall of the nave were large cubicles or booths. I counted fourteen of these adjuncts: seven on each side of the nave. We were unable to see into the doorways of these compartments because they were jammed with humanity, both men and women staring with fascination into the recesses beyond. I knew that Phat Tur was waiting for me to ask the question as to what was taking place within, but I declined to abandon my dignity. At last he spoke to our green-robed guide, and the priest led us to the nearest stall and with his staff fell upon the idlers who were crowded in the entrance, urging them in a loud voice to: ‘Make way for the honoured guests of King Nimrod!’ With sullen expressions and muttered protests the crowd opened for us and closed behind us again when we reached the front rank. From there we had an uninterrupted view into the interior of the stall.
Placed around the walls of the circular inner room were mattresses covered with woven woollen blankets in bright colours.
‘Fourteen compartments each with fourteen women on fourteen beds. Fourteen is the magical number of the goddess Ishtar to whom all this frantic activity is dedicated,’ Phat Tur explained gleefully. I knew he was a devotee of the goddess Hathor, and that he had scant respect for any other deity.
I peered into the chamber and counted the women to check his statement. His numbers were correct. However, none of the fourteen females on display were particularly attractive. Most of them were past even middle age, and a few of them were downright repulsive. I remarked on this to Phat Tur, and he agreed readily with my opinion.
‘King Nimrod has already made his choice of all the young and pretty ones. He has skimmed the cream from the jug, and picked the ripest cherries from the bough. These sorry creatures that remain are his rejects.’
I switched my attention back to the women in the room. Five of these were sitting cross-legged, each on her own mattress. They were all wearing crowns of red roses on their heads. This was their only clothing; otherwise they were naked. They waited patiently, with downcast eyes.
‘The red rose is the flower of the goddess.’ Phat Tur explained their head-dresses.
The remaining nine mattresses were occupied by the women who had discarded their floral crowns and were flagrantly coupling with men who were also in various stages of undress. The men grunted as they lunged into them, and the women under them chanted praises to the goddess as they received and reciprocated their devout ardour in full measure.
With mounting distaste I watched one of the men suddenly arch his back in a paroxysm of ecstasy and with a long shuddering cry topple off the female creature under him. His partner immediately rose to her feet, picked up her
robe that lay at the head of the mattress, and pulled it over her head. She paused only to throw the small copper coin that the man must have paid her into his face, and then, weeping silently, she pushed her way through the spellbound crowd in the doorway and ran out into the street beyond the temple gates.
Standing behind me was a sailor. He elbowed me to one side and stepped into the stall. He went to one of the crowned women sitting there.
‘I call upon you to pay your debt to the goddess,’ he challenged her, and he tossed a coin into her lap. She looked up at him dispassionately as he pulled his kilt up above his waist and with his free hand worked his member vigorously into full arousal. His belly was protuberant and covered with a dense carpet of black hair. The woman grimaced as she removed the floral crown from her head and lay back on the mattress, letting her knees fall apart.
I took Phat Tur by the arm and drew him out of the throng of spectators, and then led him firmly towards the temple gates.
The spectacle of sordid little people performing a grotesque parody of something so essentially beautiful inclines me towards melancholy rather than pleasure.
I spent the afternoon of the following day with Nimrod, after he had returned from his morning devotions in the Temple of Ishtar. The king was attended by his military staff and senior advisers during our deliberations.
Lord Remrem and I were trying to persuade them to pursue the campaign against the Hyksos with more determination and vigour. But once a military machine has lost its direction and momentum, it is extremely difficult to get the wheels turning again.
What it all hinged upon was Nimrod’s lack of funds. The amount that I had paid him for the flotilla of six warships was insignificant when compared to his needs. Despite the fact that he had bled his citizens white with taxation, Nimrod had not been able to pay his army and navy for almost two years. Their weapons, chariots and other equipment were in ruinous condition. His remaining troops were on the verge of mutiny.