The Season of the Hyaena (Ancient Egyptian Mysteries)

by Paul Doherty

  The next morning we began the grisly task of collecting the remains. I sent scouts and carts far into the valley, and they returned carrying baskets piled high with bones and skulls as well as scraps of clothing, leather and weaponry. We burned them as an act of purification as well as reverence. We began work before dawn, resting during the midday heat and continuing until darkness fell. The valley was long and steep-sided; caves lay on each side, concealed behind clumps of gorse and bush, each containing the remains of survivors, men, women and children, as well as the bones of their animals. It was a hideous, heart-searing task. One scout brought in a basket of skulls, all belonging to children, as well as the pathetic remains of their toys. The funeral fires were kept burning not just to purify that place of abomination; the flames and smoke also kept back the hyaenas, who, during the day, would watch from afar. Now and again they’d close in, heads down, almost nosing the ground, loping along before bursting into a full, stretched run, only to be driven back by a hail of arrows or burning cloths soaked in oil. At night they became bolder, drawing closer; on the third night they attacked one of the carts, snatching off a guard, dragging him screaming into the darkness. There was nothing we could do to help but stand and listen to his horrific screams, the yelping of the prowlers, and the sound of their powerful jaws tearing him apart. We lit fires on the far side of the carts; archers were instructed to fire the occasional volley of flaring arrows into the night.

  My men became restless. The valley was a haunting, sombre place, a hall of prowling demons and restless spirits. By late afternoon the rocks were fiery to the touch, and above us, an ominous warning of what might happen, great feathery winged vultures circled. On the fourth day the hyaenas attacked early in the morning. One patrol became detached from the rest. Three men struggling with baskets were ambushed just within the valley by a group of hyaenas who attacked so savagely, so swiftly, there was little we could do to help. The men grew mutinous. They hated the brooding, ominous silence and feared these powerful creatures audacious enough to attack during the day. At the end of the week I gave the orders for preparations to leave. I had discovered nothing startling, but had collected sufficient evidence to understand what had happened.

  ‘In all, about four hundred souls,’ I dictated to Djarka, sitting like a scribe, a papyrus scroll across his lap, ‘died here: men, women and children, soldiers, scribes and officials. They included the refugees from Buhen and Thebes, as well as Meryre’s retinue from Memphis. There were soldiers, possibly mercenaries, amongst their company, all fervent Atenists. They gathered here carts, chariots and pack animals, dependent on Apiru guides. They intended to slip north across Sinai into Canaan, protected by a force dispatched from Thebes which consisted of at least an entire chariot squadron, archers and veteran foot soldiers.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ Djarka asked.

  ‘We found the wheel of one of their chariots, probably broken off as they were pursuing survivors. General Nakhtimin supervised this massacre on the orders of Lord Ay. Most of the arrowheads found belong to Kushite bowmen, who support the various chariot squadrons. We also found the head cloth of a member of an imperial regiment. General Nakhtimin didn’t have it all his own way; the Atenists fought back. The attack began near the oasis. Some fled into the desert, where they died or were killed by their pursuers or sand-dwellers. The rest took refuge in the valley, hiding in its caves. Nakhtimin’s force must have stayed here for days, hunting down fugitives; scouts have found evidence of their camp fires and latrine pits.’

  ‘And Meryre?’

  ‘I suspect Meryre and a group of soldiers, probably mercenaries and scribes, fled at the beginning of the massacre. They must have hidden before making their way via a more circuitous route back to the river.’

  I was interrupted by a loud scream, more like the keening of a mourning woman, a shrill cry of anguish from the heart which echoed across the camp. I whirled round. Mert was kneeling on the ground, clawing at her hair and beating her breast. She had silently approached us, knelt and listened to what I had said. If Djarka had seen her, he hadn’t commented, now used to her constant presence. She had been touched by Ma’at; the truth about what I had said had stirred her memory. Djarka put his writing tray aside and hurried to comfort her, crouching down, arms about her shoulders. She must have knelt for at least an hour, rocking backwards and forwards, eyes closed, cheeks wet with tears. Servants and guards, alarmed by her screams, came hurrying up. I drove them away, ordering one of them to bring a cup of wine with a tincture of our precious opium. Djarka fed her this, and between sobs, she gave her own account.

  She and her father and two brothers had been part of the Apiru scouts. They had accepted the task without demur, being promised lavish rewards, reinforced by the bonds of friendship between themselves and many of the Atenists. According to Mert, Lord Tutu had led his people out of the fortress of Buhen and been joined by others from Thebes. They had gathered at an oasis miles to the north-east of Thebes, where the Apiru had met them. She talked of at least four hundred people, a horde of pack animals and carts well provisioned and guarded by mercenaries. They had arrived at the Valley of the Grey Dawn and been joined by Meryre and other stragglers from their company. They were in good spirits, determined to leave Egypt, cross Sinai and enter Canaan. Lord Tutu was of Canaanite birth; he believed that in the new territories they would be able to worship their God under the protection of the Hittite king, as well as those princes of Canaan hostile to Egypt.

  The atmosphere in the camp had been festive. The Atenists truly believed they were escaping persecution. Many of them cherished the hope that in Canaan their leader, Akenhaten, would once again manifest himself. This was the constant chatter about the camp fires. They also put great trust in the promises of Lord Ay. Their only fear was of troops from Memphis under Horemheb, as well as those Egyptian patrols which guarded the mines of Sinai. Lord Ay, however, had promised a military escort. After five days of waiting this had eventually arrived: chariot squadrons, a corps of Nubian archers and Menfyt foot soldiers from one of the imperial regiments outside Thebes. General Nakhtimin had solemnly vowed that his presence and the sight of his standard would be surety enough for a safe departure from Egypt. He had been cordial, talking to Meryre and Lord Tutu as if they were close friends and allies. Late on the day they had arrived, the massacre began. The camp was being prepared for the evening meal. After a hail of arrows, the chariots came racing in, followed by the foot soldiers. Some of the Atenists had stood and fought; Lord Tutu and a group of priests had fled deeper into the valley.

  ‘And Meryre?’ I asked. ‘The High Priest?’

  ‘He wasn’t there that evening.’ Mert wiped her eyes. ‘That’s right: we, the Apiru scouts, stayed on the edge of the oasis. Lord Meryre’s entourage always left just before sundown to go into the desert.’

  ‘To perform sacrifice,’ Djarka observed.

  ‘So that’s how they escaped,’ I whispered. ‘They would leave armed with provisions.’

  ‘How did you escape?’ Djarka asked.

  ‘I hid in the oasis. Now I remember. I was beneath a bush, my face pressed against the earth. I pretended to be dead. Nakhtimin’s men came through. They began to plunder and strip corpses. I escaped unnoticed. I lay there all night. By the morning Nakhtimin had moved into the valley, which he had sealed off. I found a water skin, a linen cloth full of bread and strips of dried meat. I wandered into the desert. The sand-dwellers found me, and the rest you know. I never saw much of the killing, but,’ she closed her eyes, ‘I’ll never forget the screams: men, women and children, my own kin. Some were sleeping. Others were gathering near the cooking pots. Most were unarmed.’

  ‘And the mercenaries?’ I asked.

  ‘They were the ones who fought, the only ones to fight.’ She put her face in her hands and continued sobbing.

  Djarka took her back to our pavilion. He made her comfortable before joining me at the gate to our makeshift defences.

  ‘Hav
e we discovered what you came for?’ he asked, coming behind me. ‘Was it worth it, my lord, to collect bones and burn them?’

  I stared up at that valley, more hideous in the dimming light.

  ‘What did you find here,’ Djarka persisted, ‘that you didn’t know already? Lord Ay simply wished to destroy the last of the Atenists, so he gave them safe conduct here and had them massacred. Will you go back to Thebes, Lord Mahu, and confront him? Who will care? Horemheb and Rameses would have paid to have been part of this.’

  ‘Rameses, perhaps,’ I replied. ‘Horemheb, no. Rameses is a killer through and through, but Horemheb has some honour, and so do I.’ I turned around. ‘I am searching for something else, Djarka. This valley is sacred to the Apiru, that’s why they met here. I feel it here.’ I beat my chest. ‘There’s something else. Something Ay fears.’

  ‘He fears Akenhaten will return at the head of Hittite troops and Canaanite mercenaries.’

  ‘No, no.’ I shook my head. ‘Why did he send Nakhtimin here?’

  Djarka couldn’t answer, but just before darkness, a group of my hardiest scouts returned. I had promised debens of silver to any scout who brought in something remarkable. They returned empty-handed, but their sweaty, grimy-faced leader grinned from ear to ear as he knelt before me.

  ‘My lord, we have found it. Deep in the valley, high up in the cliffs, along a hidden trackway, the mouth of a cave concealed by bushes.’

  I pulled the man to his feet.

  ‘And inside?’

  ‘Like a temple, my lord. A great cave, a cavern of the dead.’

  ‘More corpses?’ I asked.

  The man fought to regain his breath. ‘Coffins,’ he declared.

  ‘Coffins?’

  ‘Burial places,’ the man explained. ‘Dug into the wall of the cave are ledges on which bodies, wrapped in linen and fastened with cord, have been placed. I touched one; it crumbled to dust. There are paintings and, we believe, three corpses from the massacre. I suspect these men were not killed, but were wounded and dragged themselves there to die. One of them wore this.’

  He handed over the ring. He had already polished it clean. I recognised the hieroglyphs of Lord Tutu beneath the sign of the rising Aten. If it hadn’t been for the darkness and the danger I would have gone immediately to that cave. I had already given the order that we were to withdraw the following morning. When I declared that we would stay at least another day, a chorus of protests greeted my words. Nevertheless, I was beside myself with excitement. I had to search this cave and see what it held. Djarka was most vociferous in his opposition, until I tired of his hypocrisy. I grasped him by the arm and pulled him away from the camp fire.

  ‘You knew about that cave all along, didn’t you?’

  ‘I knew of it, but not its whereabouts. This valley is sacred to my ancestors. They use it as a burial place for their leaders. It’s a holy place, not to be violated …’

  ‘By the impure,’ I finished for him. ‘I mean no disrespect, Djarka, but I must see inside that cave. I believe Lord Ay was searching for the same; it is one of the reasons General Nakhtimin came here.’

  Just after dawn I entered the valley with a powerful escort. We moved slowly, following the winding path, alarmed even by the grains of shale tumbling down the rocky sides. The valley seemed to catch the sun. Dust rose in clouds to clog our noses and mouths and sting our eyes. Above us the vultures circled and in the rocky inclines we caught a glimpse of the sleeping hyaenas. There were caves high in the valley sides but the one the scouts had found was hidden by some clever trick of the eye. You had to turn and look back down towards the valley, studying the rock face carefully before you saw the man-made path. It led up to where a cluster of hardy bush and bramble sprouted in the shade of a jutting ledge.

  I told the guards to make camp and remain vigilant. Djarka and I clambered up to the ledge. The gorse was fierce, scoring our flesh as we pushed our way through, and the yawning cave entrance came almost as a surprise. I stepped inside. The impression of being in a dream was heightened by the warm darkness, such a glaring contrast to the sunlight beyond. Djarka had brought a fire bowl. We lit the cresset torches fixed in their wall niches, and the cavern came alight. On one side a series of ledges stretched up to the ceiling and disappeared into the darkness beyond. On each ledge lay shrouded corpses. Some, by the texture of the shroud and the cord binding them, were relatively new; others had crumbled to nothing more than piles of dust and shards of bone. Tutu’s skeleton and those of his acolytes lay deeper in the cave. I examined each carefully. Untouched by the scavengers, their flesh had simply rotted, but some of this still remained clinging to the bones. They were a grisly sight, particularly Tutu, who in his day had been a man of glory, a Lord of Light in the City of the Aten. One of the skeletons had a hole in the skull, possibly the work of some arrow. Savage cuts to Tutu’s left ribs proved he must have known of this cave, been wounded and slunk here with his acolytes to hide and die.

  ‘Shall we bury them?’ Djarka asked, his voice sounding hollow. He was kneeling in the light of the torches; I wondered if he was praying in what he considered to be a holy place.

  ‘As the tree falls, so let it lie.’ I quoted the proverb. ‘Tutu wished to die here; let him remain so.’

  I was about to move away when my foot brushed a leather sack concealed in a cleft between the floor of the cave and the wall. I pulled this out and gently emptied its contents: a long bronze cylinder, the type to be found in a temple chancery or writing office. I undid the stopper and shook out the documents inside. The first was a map of the valley itself, showing the location of the cave in which we now stood. The second was a detailed chart showing paths and wells in the eastern desert. It marked routes across the Sinai, far away from the Horus Road, as well as the Egyptian garrisons which guarded the mines. The third comprised simple jottings. In the light of the torch I recognised Tutu’s own hand; I had seen enough documents from him. It revealed nothing new, except a list of towns in southern Canaan. The fourth, however, was truly puzzling. Tutu had been an expert scribe, whose command of writing had first brought him to the attention of Akenhaten, yet this piece of smoothed papyrus bore nothing more than a picture of an old man surrounded by leaves. I stared in astonishment. At first I thought my eyes betrayed me. I passed it to Djarka.

  ‘Why,’ I asked, ‘should the picture of an old man surrounded by leaves be so important to the Lord Tutu? It’s scrawled in his own hand.’

  Djarka studied it, then lifted his head, staring at something beyond me. When I looked, I glimpsed the paintings, and the terrible secrets they held, on the wall behind me.

  Unemui Bain

  (Ancient Egyptian for ‘the Eaters of Souls’)

  Chapter 17

  I rearranged the torches and studied the wall friezes. They were the work of a professional artist, who had first plastered the rock face before telling his story. The first tableau showed a Pharaoh preceded by his standard-bearers and other officers in war chariots. They were pursuing a sheepskin-clad enemy who had advanced to meet Pharaoh but who now, routed and overthrown, were seeking the protection of a large hill fort on the banks of a river. The citadel was defended by soaring walls and towers with square windows. In front of it some of the enemy who had been captured were in the process of being impaled. Others were stretched out on the ground, wrists and ankles manacled in bronze clamps, waiting to be skinned alive. This grisly ceremony was being watched by the occupants of the fort. Men pierced by arrows fell from the walls whilst Pharaoh’s foot soldiers advanced under the cover of tall shields.

  In the second tableau, Pharaoh, attended by his parasol-bearer, was questioning prisoners whilst a tally was made of the enemy slain by counting the severed heads heaped in front of Pharaoh’s chariot. In the third, the background had changed, and was dominated by hills, some steep, others shallow. The sheepskin-clad enemy, pursued by Pharaoh’s soldiers, had arrived before a fortress; its gates had been set alight, and bright red flames we
re licking hungrily upwards. In other minor paintings, warriors, naked except for loincloths, carried round shields and long spears against Pharaoh’s troops. They were led by a warrior who looked as if he had stag horns on his head. In the last tableau, the citadels had been taken; the ground was covered with corpses, heads impaled on poles. Pharaoh and his charioteers were leaving; behind them trundled carts filled with booty and slaves carrying baskets of the severed heads of his enemy.

  I examined the paintings most carefully, Djarka standing quietly behind me.

  ‘These were not painted by an Egyptian,’ I remarked. ‘He is not celebrating an Egyptian victory but the defeat of his own people.’

  I looked at the enemy again.

  ‘They are Hyksos,’ I whispered. ‘These paintings describe the Season of the Hyaena, when Pharaoh Ahmose drove the Hyksos out of Egypt. You know the story, don’t you, Djarka? How the Hyksos were a violent and vicious enemy, a motley collection of peoples, an army of mercenaries made up of various tribes, many of them from Canaan.’

  I gestured around this makeshift sepulchre and grasped Djarka tightly by the shoulder.

  ‘You should have told me about this!’

  He didn’t try to break free, but simply wiped a bead of sweat running down his nose.

  ‘Do you know what these paintings say, Djarka? Amongst the Hyksos were shepherd kings from Canaan, aggressive and warlike. These paintings show how they were driven out. Your people were the shepherd kings! They returned to Canaan, where successive Pharaohs pursued them. When warfare failed, your people, these shepherd kings, the Apiru, amongst whom is the tribe of Israar, gave up their weapons of battle and returned to Egypt as travellers and herdsmen. This time they won the favour of Pharaoh. Years had passed, so memories had dimmed. They had brought their God or Gods with them.’ I let go of his shoulder. ‘This is not in the paintings, but one such group settled at Akhmin. They became more Egyptian than the Egyptians. Rich and powerful, they gained high office. One of them, Lady Tiye, caught the eye and undying affection of the great Pharaoh Amenhotep III. Now your people had their opportunity. Queen Tiye, with her ideas of one, omnipotent, invisible God, began to teach her husband the secret knowledge of her people. By then, everything described here was history, dim folk memory. Amenhotep the Magnificent never realised the connection between his lovely young wife and the shepherd kings who once terrorised Egypt. He didn’t care if she worshipped the One God under the guise of the Aten, nor did he really care if she made this the staff of life for his younger son, the one he had rejected, the boy I met, the Veiled One, who later became Akenhaten.’