He marvelled at his own rage. How could any man dare to feel anger for a god, he wondered, yet was it not because of this very rebellion of spirit that Ra had struck in anger? Enraged, Ra had decided to visit his vengeance on humankind, seeking no less than their complete annihilation. They would die for their rebellion, drowning in a flood of pestilence and bloodshed.
Ra had chosen as his instrument of annihilation, his daughter Hathor-Sekhmet, goddess of epidemics, war and destruction.
Ra had hurled the eye of his anger - the scorching destructive power of the sun - in the shape of a huge lioness that killed in a frenzy of joy. The Eye of Ra ran through the land like a roaring wind of death. Soon it seemed that all of humankind would die. But then Ra had a change of heart and decided that perhaps he had been hasty. Was this what a god truly wanted? No subjects to rule over? What if the worship stopped? He must forgive those who were left and that meant he must check his messenger of death. But even he could not quell her bloodlust. Day in and day out she killed, resting only before sunset, turning the land white with the bones of her victims and black with the crusted-pools of their drying blood. She spread death even beyond the reach of her claws by pestilence and war.
Ra, in alarm, spoke in a dream to the high prophet of Heliopolis and told him of his plan for intervention and it was done. Servants raced to Elephantine while the lioness rested in the hills after her day’s killing. They collected and brought back quantities of the red earth of Elephantine and mixed it with blood and beer brewed by servant women, filling seven thousand jars.
Then before dawn, they poured out a lake of seeming blood onto the ground where Hathor-Sekhmet came out of her hiding place to resume her destruction. When the cat emerged her eye fell with glee on the shining redness, and thinking it was the blood of her own kills, she drank delightedly and greedily until the alcohol rose up and paralysed her brain and her limbs and she was no longer capable of killing. Then it was that Ra used his power to transform her from Sekhmet-Hathor, the marauding lioness into Hathor, the Sweet One, goddess of sexual love, mirth, drink, music and dancing.
And so life and joy returned, until a time came when the oracles of Ra spoke of freak flares on the sun and mystical solar storms with winds that blew evil on to Egypt.
Then the killing resumed.
Hathor, they said, influenced by the sun’s erratic moods, had somehow reverted to her vengeful phase. Even Ra could not check her. She was slipping from one state to the other.
This time the god took the unexpected step of speaking in a dream not to his prophet but to the pharaoh Djer, giving him a new plan. Following this, the pharaoh, along with his vizier Teti, called a council with the One with the Sidelock of Heliopolis and informed him that a sacred necklace was to be found lying at the feet of the seated statue of Ra in his temple. He was also told that a young soldier must be found, one who was marked by exceptional beauty and by a glyph of a sun, a birthmark, on his chest, for a mission to rid the land of its scourge. That young man turned out to be a kinsman Kha, the very nephew of the One with Sidelock of Heliopolis, a young Commander of Bows from the South.
“Take and wear this magical collar for your protection,” his uncle had said on giving the youth his beautiful ornamental collar. It was thick with turquoise beads and had a heavy counterpoise in the image of a Hathor’s head.
“A collar?”
“It is called the Menat necklace, and Menat will in future become a name for Hathor. Like Hathor’s rattle, the systrum, which we call Se-she-shet, the Menat’s beads make a shimmering sound when shaken. Carry the Menat at all times. It will guard you against the raging claws and teeth of the lioness and its prophylactic power will protect you against her pestilence. Strengthened by its magical power you must hunt her down and slay her. You must do this to carry out the god's will.”
But Kha had growled: “It was the god's will to visit this holocaust on our land. Must I do more to further his will?”
“Take care, Kha. To judge a god is to make oneself a god.”
“Don't ask me to be an instrument of his will, Uncle. I’m a plain soldier of Egypt whose business is to protect the land.”
Ra-hotep lowered his voice and said:
“Then do it now.”
“I'll do anything to save Egypt, even die. But this? How can I kill a goddess?” he said in wonder at his commission.
“With the aid of the necklace.”
“But can a goddess die?”
The One with a Sidelock of Heliopolis looked uneasily around and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Does not Ra himself grow old in heaven, his bones turning to silver, his flesh to gold, his hair silver-blue like lapis lazuli, with spit dribbling from his open mouth? All die. Even the gods, all except the High God.”
So Kha’s quest to hunt down the goddess had begun.
In weeks, he had come close to the scenes of her marauding strikes, but had laid neither arrow tip nor eye on Sekhmet's form, but he had seen every sign of her path in mass destruction and had followed her bloody spoor like the footprint of doom.
“Sister,” he said gently to the girl in the reeds. “Do not be afraid.”
The girl stiffened, her fingers clawing the soft mud. She lifted her head, saw him standing over her, bow in hand. Then it was if the Nile itself had turned its eyes up from the depth to sparkle at him, slashes of delight, flecked with a golden haze. They seemed to drown him in their swirling depths. Wet coils of hair wrapped her cheek, while her parted lips showed white teeth in a smile of surprise, allowing water to stream down her chin and neck. Yes, she was Egypt, all the beauty and allure and sweet-naturedness of Egypt.
He saw something hidden draw close.
“Could I be afraid of such a sight as you?” she murmured, smiling in relief.
He drew the bowstring back to the anchor point of his chin and released. She gasped. The arrow snapped home with a quivering thunk, angling deep into the eye. The crocodile, its rough cataract-back just breaking the surface near the girl's head, boiled in the water, rolling, kicking its tail, throwing up gouts of steamy spray, but death had slid deep and cold into its brain. The girl rolled. She flew towards the bowman, fright lending her speed.
“Sobek!” she gasped.
“That’s no god,” he told her bleakly. “Just a stinking crocodile too lazy to swim out for another bloated corpse in the Nile.”
She encircled his legs in her arms in gratitude and in a way that won pity and tenderness from him. She looked up, eyes sparkled like sunlight on wavelets. Was it fever, emotion or relief from fear? The crocodile was forgotten in the sweet favour that shone in her face. Her eyes were drawn to his necklace. “Not only a beautiful youth, but one with a beautiful necklace.”
Then her eyes rolled back in her head and the beautiful eyes gave way to whiteness. She collapsed in a dead faint, her curls around his ankles…
Kha slung the bow over his shoulder. He bent and picked up the girl, holding her in his arms. She was lithe, refined, sweetly smiling even in oblivion. Don’t die, lovely crawler-in-the-reeds. I have picked up my land of Egypt and am carrying her. There were no signs of wounds on her body. Maybe it was only fever and the blood was the blood of others.
Come! Life, sweet life, is in my breath and at my kiss, though dying, you will rise and break the bands of death.
“Stay alive, Egypt,” he murmured.
Under a compulsion he did not understand, but took to be a wave of protest against death and dissolution, he bent his head and kissed the girl’s forehead. “You're safe with me. I swear this, not in the name of any god, but in the name of mercy, which gods urge on humankind but seem their selves to have in short supply. I'll die for you before I let you die.”
He took her up the riverbank and gave a call.
“Bek!”
A servant who was grazing a pair of tethered donkeys, laden with provisions, appeared with the donkeys in tow. He blinked at the sight of the two of them.
“Master, I heard the noise
and splashing,” he said, gaping, “and thought to myself: ah, the master has taken a dip. Do not come out and expose yourself to the attack of the lioness yourself, Bek, but keep watch. And true enough, Bek, your master has been fishing and look what he has come up with! A fancy piece of fish indeed!”
Kha did not put her on a donkey, but carried her, walking ahead of his servant. In a short time they came upon a deserted country estate with its gates flung wide. They found a grove of palms, sycamores and tamarisks inside. The owners and servants of the estate were either dead or had fled. Kha decided against venturing into the villa where pestilence might linger. There was a shrine in the grove nestled between ornamental ponds and dreaming in the long rays of sunset light. He carried the girl inside it and laid her on a stone table in the gathering gloom.
“My master will spend the night in a shrine,” his servant observed. “Bek, bring lamps and light them with a flint. Bek, unpack the donkeys. Bring water, Bek.” Bek was a servant who loved to issue orders to himself in his master's own tone. It was an odd quirk, but it saved the hunter breath.
“A cloth for her forehead.”
“A cloth for her forehead,” Bek said with a tone of mortification that he had missed an initiative. “Bek, you have only this linen rag,” he said, producing a worn strip from a bag. “Do you think her fine skin has ever touched anything so coarse? Go get something finer, Bek. But where will you find it? We are living off the backs of two donkeys.”
“It will do.”
Bek came back with water.
“Stop gawking and go out and keep guard in case the lioness comes to attack,” Kha gave him an order.
“Think, Bek!” the servant rebuked himself again.
When Bek had gone, Kha bent in the flickering lamplight and wet the rag, running it over the limp girl’s forehead and cheeks and the curve of her throat, wiping off the blood and at the same time cooling her. He did not presume to remove her badly torn dress, though red with blood, but instead bathed her braceleted arms and the pale length of her ankleted legs and the soles of her feet. Her body was as slender as a precious vase. He noticed two curious patterns on the linen fabric of her dress, centred over each breast, rosette-shaped motifs. Odd. He had seen the pattern somewhere before, but could not recall where.
“Who are you and why do you touch me in such a bold way?” she said, opening large, golden eyes. “Do you love me?”
“Easy,” he smiled. “I found you by the river mud-wrestling with a crocodile. Do you remember? I'm Kha, a hunter.”
“And what exactly were you hunting? Defenceless girls?”
He had saved her. He was not going to boast about it though.
“What is your name?” he said.
“I dreamt that you called me Egypt."
"Perhaps I did.”
“Why that?”
“Because you seemed like our land to me - helpless and in need of rescue. What's your name?”
She shrugged and sat up on one elbow. “Are you a lover of Egypt?”
“With all my heart.”
“Then I shall be Egypt. Then maybe you will love me with all your heart.” She was recovering.
Perhaps her fever was broken, if it was indeed fever that she had. Her eyes shone in the lamplight.
“Your real name.”
“I have many names. One is Se-Sheh-Shet.”
“Se-Sheh-Shet,” he said repeating it and toying with its syllables. It had a shimmer to it. Like a rattle. The name also spoke of the place where he had found her on the river bank, the shimmer of insects and the softly clashing reeds in the breeze. I could love this Sesheshet, he thought. I almost do already. I have chosen to invest all the love I feel for my poor benighted land in her form.
“Let us eat and drink and lighten our hearts,” she said, brightening. “Let's rejoice that you and I are together and - that you are alive. Do you have drink and food? Let it be brought and also oil for the body.”
Kha gave his instructions to Bek.
“Yes, master,” the servant repeated his words. “Bek, hurry to the donkeys and bring food and cool beer. And oil for the body. Why call for a luxury like oil in the middle of a hunt? Never mind.” He hurried off.
Kha felt the girl's eyes settle on his ornamental collar of turquoise. “That is a very handsome necklace for a hunter to wear.”
“I wear it for the protection it gives me.”
“Then you won't part with it?”
“No.”
“I like it.”
“Even so.”
“I am dazzled by it and must have it!” she said.
“You mustn't even ask,” he said.
“I will make you part with it - and do so willingly.”
“No.”
“What if I allowed you to come up here and spend a pleasant hour in my arms?” she said, shocking him.
“Not even then,” he said in a rising tone that betrayed both his horror and an unwelcome interest. Her beauty was heart-robbing and her spirit was as deep as a well. But he would do nothing that would prevent him from performing the task he had been sent to do. The necklace was a critical part of his armoury.
“You saved me. Not knowing who I am, yet you saved me. I have not forgotten that. How may I reward you?”
“By surviving.”
Bek came back carrying a plate with conical loaves of bread, figs and a jug of beer and cups as well as a stone jar filled with oil.
“Put down the precious provisions Bek. Leave them, Bek,” the self-ordering servant chattered to himself. “Find food for yourself, but not too much. Don't eat all our provisions or get stone drunk. Remember, Bek, this is a hunting expedition, not a picnic.”
The girl smiled. “A servant who gives orders to himself!”
“He was given to me by a priest. He is not used to being given orders by unpurified ones. I think this lets him keep his pride.”
They ate. She ate lustily, like one fighting to regain her strength. He wondered if she brought the same amiable appetite to all her pleasures. She drained her cup twice and refilled it and filled it again. She drank that too and offered him more, but he covered the mouth of his cup.
She looked disappointed.
“Does the good bowman not unstring his bow at night to relax it?”
“I must stay alert,” he said.
“Do you hunt at night?”
“Sometimes. But I must always take care I am not the hunted one.”
“What is it that you hunt, beautiful man? Other than poor helpless girls in the reeds who cannot hide their nakedness."
“I'm hunting for the cat of destruction,” he said. “I am here to end her rampage.”
“You - hunting a goddess?” She was astonished. “With a bow and arrow? You come to hunt a goddess and you ended up bagging me. Don't be disappointed though. Maybe you found her after all. Maybe I am the goddess. Who knows what she looks like? Who has seen her and lived?” She gave a playful growl, pretending to be Sekhmet Hathor.
She was tiddly, strong beer acting on an empty stomach, he guessed.
“Don't joke about the cat of destruction.”
“Lighten your heart, Kha. It's time to be mirthful. We are young and alive. Can’t I pretend to be cat instead of woman if I want to?”
“You are more kitten than cat.”
“Do you suppose there is a kitten in Sekhmet-Hathor?”
“No, she is a merciless bitch-cat.”
“Would you really kill Sekhmet-Hathor if you found out she were just a kitten like me?” She poured herself more beer. Her eyes were steady in spite of the drink.
“I would have to kill her, whatever form she took.”
“Shall I dance for you Kha?”
“Don't be foolish. You are weak as a kitten and must rest.”
“Don't think about destruction now. Besides it is well known that the cat does not strike at night. She sleeps after her daily orgy of killing.”
“How did you survive?” he asked her, trying to
deflect her from her wanton inclinations, brought on by the beer. “You had the fever?”
“Fever? Yes, I expect that was it. The blood boiled in my veins, I saw a haze of red before my eyes and people running and screaming and a roar like the sun filled my ears, then darkness. I don’t know how I came to the river. I was weakened and needed its coolness in my throat. More drink?”
“No, and you must rest.”
“Tell me a diverting story, Kha.”
“I am in no mood to tell stories.”
“Or a clever riddle.”
“You are a riddle. Who are you, really? Don't you remember? Who is your family? Are you a priestess as I suspect?”
“A Pure One, yes. I am certainly that.”
“In whose temple do you serve?”
“My own of course,” she said enigmatically.
“You worship in your own temple?”
“We must all, Kha. Haven't you learnt that to your cost?”
“Tell me.”
“The temple of Sekhmet-Hathor.”
What a twist. He was hunting the very goddess this young woman served. Maybe it explained why she had survived. She had been spared. It also explained her fondness for drink. Intoxication was a part of the goddess Hathor's temple ritual, the priests and priestesses believing that it led the devout to the attainment of higher planes of existence. Mostly it brought them spewing into the streets. But Hathor's Feast of the Good Union was the most popular occasion of all on Egypt's crowded calendar of festivities.
“Where is your temple?”
“Never mind. All is gone.”
“Do you have family?”
“Not a soul on earth.”
Kha remembered the old maxim: Beware the girl from other parts, whose town and family is not known. Do not stare at her when she passes by. Her heart is deep water whose windings one does not know, a whirlpool with unpredictable eddies.
But he said: “You must come with us. I won't leave you here among the dead.”
“You seem to have taken a protective interest in me. I am exceedingly charmed by it, being more used to conferring protection than receiving it. How sweet!”
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