The Gardener and the Assassin

by Mark Gajewski

  “I have enough. Besides, I’m the best painter in the village,” Mesedptah said proudly. “I’ve lost count of how many tombs I’ve decorated for priests and officials from across the river. I’ve received plenty from them to barter with in return. Hence these grave goods.”

  “And just how much do you charge for painting?”

  “Typically? Two loincloths, two pairs of sandals, three bundles of vegetables, pigment, one mat, a suitable amount of wood, two baskets of grain, several empty baskets.”

  “You expect me to believe you turned those modest items into these spectacular ones?”

  “I don’t care what you believe,” Mesedptah replied.

  Amennakht snorted. “Come with me,” he told Anhirkawi and Pendua. “The rest of you guard my prisoners.”

  I was a prisoner now? I could understand Mesedptah and Sitmut. But I hadn’t done anything. What was Amennakht going to do to me?

  The three men stepped inside the tomb and began rummaging among the boxes. Soon the ground was littered with bolts of linen and loincloths and tunics and cloaks and wigs and a makeup chest and glass and alabaster jars of oil and amulets and pendants and combs and see–faces, not to mention emmer and barley and preserved meat and jars of wine and loaves of bread and dates and grapes and cloves of garlic and onions and juniper and cumin. There was a set of the brushes and containers and pigments Mesedptah used to paint tombs as well. I’d never guessed my husband was so wealthy. He’d never gifted me with anything remotely fine. Unlike Sitmut; I was convinced more than ever that he was the source of her pendant. The men saved the coffins for last; they actually removed the two wives’ mummies and propped them, standing, against a wall. I turned my back on the tomb then, sickened at their sacrilege. For nearly an hour Mesedptah and I and his alleged accomplices and our captors and the curious waited along the path in the hot sun as the three officials turned the tomb into a smaller version of my house, a scene of wanton destruction. Finally the intruders emerged, drenched with sweat, angry, defeated.

  “Found nothing, I see,” Mesedptah said smugly. “Release me! I’m going to bring charges against every one of you before the village kenbet!”

  “There’s something unusual about that image,” Reshpetref told Amennakht. “Don’t you think?” He pointed.

  The angle of the sun had changed since our arrival. Sunlight had crept farther into the tomb, all the way to the middle section. Reshpetref was right. The color in one part of an image of Mesedptah in a boat on the river with three women was slightly different than that surrounding it.

  Reshpetref grabbed a hand–sized rock from the path. He went into the tomb and smashed it against the discoloration. That part of the wall caved in below knee–level. A hidden alcove, plastered over, not solid stone. He knelt, reached inside, pulled out something, showed it to us. Clumps of gold rested on his extended palm, glittering in the sunlight. “There’s more inside!” Reshpetref announced triumphantly.

  “Spare me, My Lords!” Sitmut cried, falling to her knees. “I’ll tell you everything!”

  “Keep your mouth shut!” Mesedptah ordered menacingly.

  “He made me stand watch!” she accused, sidling away from my husband.

  “I’m warning you!” Mesedptah said, stepping towards her.

  Two men restrained him.

  “They brought what they’d taken from the Great Place to this tomb,” Sitmut said.

  “All these men?” Amennakht interrupted.

  “Yes, My Lord. Mose, Qenna, Hay, Weserhat, Pentauret and Mesedptah. They came very late at night. They unsealed the door and lit a fire inside this tomb. They melted down all the golden objects they’d stolen. Then they divided the gold.”

  “Liar!” Mesedptah cried. “Her lover stole it! He put it in my tomb to incriminate me!”

  “Her lover must be a master craftsman if he restored the image on the wall almost perfectly,” Anhirkawi interjected. “Yet so careless, leaving a ceiling stained with smoke.”

  The tomb’s ceiling clearly showed evidence of a fire inside.

  “Did Mesedptah give you the pendant so you wouldn’t say anything?” Amennakht queried.

  “Yes, My Lord.”

  Pendau spat in my husband’s face. “Brought down by a woman!” he crowed. “Your infidelities have caught up to you at last!”

  “Reshpetref, check the rest of the walls for hidden recesses. The ceiling too,” Amennakht ordered. “Pendau – help him. Anhirkawi, Khonsu – put the grave goods back in their containers. We’re taking them with us. Wadjmose – hurry to Djeme. Tell the high priest to assemble a Great Kenbet. Tell him why.”

  The highest–ranking court of judgment in the valley. I shivered.

  “Yes, My Lord!” Wadjmose dashed back down the path we’d taken, kicking up dust.

  For nearly an hour Anhirkawi and Khonsu filled containers with the objects scattered on the floor of the tomb and stacked them outside beside us. Meanwhile, Pendau and Reshpetref attacked the walls with a vengeance. They found no more recesses. But when they were done every bit of painted plaster lay in bits on the ground. The only items that remained untouched were the coffins of Mesedptah’s wives. And those were covered with debris.

  The men stepped outside, soaking wet, coated with plaster dust. “That’s it, My Lord.”

  “Off to Djeme with the lot of you,” Amennakht ordered sternly, indicating Mesedptah and Sitmut and the other accused who’d been dragged up the hillside with us.

  Anhirkawi seized my arm. “Don’t think you’re going to escape justice, Witch!” he exulted. “Whatever Mesedptah stole during your marriage belongs equally to you.”

  I panicked. Was I going to be executed because of Mesedptah’s greed?

  Anhirkawi pulled me into line behind the others. We headed down the hill, the long column snaking back and forth on the dusty path, more than two dozen men balancing containers filled with grave goods on their shoulders. Our destination was Djeme, the massive fortress–temple of the third Ramesses. It lay at the intersection of the desert and cultivated fields half a mile east of my village. We reached the foot of the hill, then continued around the village wall. On the far side of Ta Set Maat the donkeys I’d seen earlier were being unloaded at the Enclosure of the Tomb alongside a path that led to the distant Ramesseum, the temple of millions of years of Ramesses the Great. As well as being a warehouse, the Enclosure functioned as a community center; men met there to arrange private transactions, such as the excavation of tombs or production of grave goods, or to drink beer, or to celebrate, or to receive officials from across the river. It was also where the entire village gathered whenever a new pharaoh was crowned to hear plans for the construction of his tomb and receive suitable gifts. And where the village kenbet met to resolve disputes between villagers.

  The village kenbet was composed of foremen and scribes and such. They judged lesser criminal and civil cases such as theft, unpaid work, unfulfilled claims, adultery and wife beating. Those who appeared before it were either prosecuting the person they were accusing or defending themselves. Judgments were made based on precedents, but the power of the kenbet to enforce the penalties it imposed was limited; a case often had to be taken up repeatedly because the guilty party failed to discharge the obligations put on him. In fact, one dispute had been dragging on for eighteen years so far. It concerned a pot of lard sold by the worker Menna on credit to Mentmose, the Medjay chief of police. Mentmose had originally promised to pay for the lard with barley, but hadn’t. Menna had won the trial but Mentmose still hadn’t honored the kenbet’s order to make payment. But my husband’s transgression was much too serious for the village elders to deal with. Thus, our trip to Pharaoh’s stronghold.

  The donkeys beside the Enclosure were laden with water in leather skins, sacks of grain, vegetables, meat, salt, and fish. Dozens of scribes were busily registering what was being carried into the storehouse. After the donkeys returned to the river the scribes would divide the bulk provisions into rations and distri
bute them to families in the village. Those rations were our payment for constructing pharaohs’ tombs and memorial temples and various structures in Ipet–Isut. The grain came directly from the storage magazines of the memorial temples, the fish from the village’s fishing boats, the vegetables from the village’s fields. A couple of donkeys bore utensils made by local potters. More carried bundles of firewood or cakes of dried dung mixed with straw to fuel our cook fires and warm our homes. Two village washermen were waiting patiently beside donkeys burdened with the villagers’ clean laundry, preparing to unload them.

  We trod the footpath eastward beyond the base of the hill called Qurnet Murai, its face pockmarked with nearly one hundred–fifty tombs, some hundreds of years old. We passed stables where delivery donkeys were kept, and the mound where we piled our rubbish. The shining river that was the source of life in this narrow valley came into view at the east edge of a half–mile wide cultivated strip, the breeze rippling the emmer and barley growing there like waves on the sea. Both north and south on the plain, at the junction of desert and cultivation, stood memorial temples erected by kings and pharaohs who’d ruled the valley the past nine hundred years. All but three of the temples abutted two canals that ran parallel to the river, each of them joined to the other by smaller perpendicular channels. Those canals enabled cargo boats to deliver goods directly to the temples’ storage magazines.

  I’d become familiar with every structure while assisting Grandfather. Nearly a dozen temples of millions of years were sandwiched between the third Amenhotep’s in the south and the first Seti’s in the north. Amenhotep’s had been the grandest, covering more space than the entire Ipet–Isut complex across the river, though it was now mostly in ruins, its mud–brick walls and limestone buildings felled by an earthquake. Grandfather had been nineteen when the quake rumbled through the valley. He’d barely escaped a collapsing building. The fallen stone in Amenhotep’s temple had been hauled away by subsequent pharaohs to build their temples. Two colossal statues of Amenhotep still towered sixty feet high flanking what had once been the temple’s front gate, with several more, somewhat smaller, still standing amidst the ruins. Magnificent gardens occupied the flats between the front of each temple and the adjacent canal. Thousands of workers were currently swarming the temple precincts, priests and support staff of both sexes who kept the temples functioning each day, porters making deliveries, scribes recording activity. The Ramesseum was the largest and most important of the temples, its gigantic treasury full of storage magazines crammed with goods used to feed and clothe the people of Ta Set Maat and Waset and the nearby valley. Some claimed the Ramesseum held enough grain to support twenty thousand people for a year, as well as precious metals, stone, costly oils, cosmetics, ostrich feathers, skin shields, elephant tusks, baskets of grapes, sacks of nuts – the bounty of a vast and fertile valley.

  Straight ahead of us sprawled Djeme, built and continuously expanded over the last three decades by the current pharaoh, Ramesses. The third to bear the name, he’d erected his walled complex around the Mound of Djeme where eight primordial divinities – the Ogdoad – were buried. They were the ancestors of the god Amen, creator of the world. Amen returned to the mound to be renewed every ten days and so Djeme was a place of pilgrimage. Priests regularly brought his statue across the river from Waset’s spectacular Ipet–Resyt – the Southern Sanctuary – to celebrate his “decade feast.” Three hundred years ago the third Thutmose had erected a small stone temple atop the Mound to host the decade feast; the third Ramesses had restored it and then built his own memorial temple and per’aa adjacent to it.

  We continued on, Djeme growing ever larger as we approached. Nearly one hundred–fifty houses sprawled across the plain outside its walls. Some were occupied by high officials, such as Paweraa, mayor of the west side of the valley, and Kahuti, an army scribe. Others were occupied by priests and fishermen and cultivators and metalworkers and scribes and sandal makers and beekeepers and brewers and woodcutters and herdsmen and goatherds and washermen and potters and a healer and even some of the gardeners who worked for Grandfather.

  Djeme’s nearly fourteen–acre rectangle was surrounded by a high mud–brick and stone wall three–quarters of a mile in length. Its main entrance was on the southeast side; a smaller entrance for workers and deliverymen was in the rear wall directly opposite. Djeme’s centerpiece was Ramesses’ massive memorial temple, its tall pylons and open courtyards and hypostyle halls and storerooms and sanctuary all richly decorated and brightly painted. The forecourt just inside Djeme’s entrance and to its left contained a garden, cared for by Grandfather, and that to the right a small sacred lake and Thutmose’s original stone temple. Inside a second gate and wall beyond the forecourt were stables and a barracks facing Ramesses’ temple. The temple occupied the central section of Djeme, Ramesses’ per’aa its left, and houses and storage magazines and workshops its right. Houses and huts for temple administrators and priests and support staff were located between the memorial temple and Djeme’s outer wall, left of the entrance gate. That’s where Grandfather lived.

  Our procession entered Djeme through a short passageway in the outer wall that was guarded by three high square stone towers. The entrance was supposedly modeled on fortresses found in Setjet, a land north of Ta–mehi, the river’s delta, that bordered the sea. The bases of the towers to right and left of the passageway were decorated with seated statues of the goddess Sekhmet. The passageway tunneled through the bottom level of the third tower, which was at its far end. Two rooms with very large windows were in the upper section of that tower, one stacked atop the other, directly above the tunnel. According to Grandfather, the royals relaxed each evening in those rooms whenever they were in residence, which was usually only during major holidays. They spent the majority of their time in Pi–Ramesses, a mighty city in Ta–mehi founded by the second Ramesses as his capital. When the royals weren’t in Pi–Ramesses or Djeme they temporarily resided in per’aas scattered throughout the valley, participating in local festivals – in fact, those per’aas were known as “mooring places for pharaoh” due to their temporary nature. But the royals came to this section of the valley often. More than sixty holidays were celebrated here annually, including two of the land’s most important – the Opet and the Beautiful Feast of the Valley. The tower rooms caught the evening breeze and offered Pharaoh a birds–eye view of his elaborate garden and stables and temple and harbor and the river and valley, depending on the window he looked from. The harbor was large enough to handle cargo boats that annually carried harvested grain from other parts of the valley to Djeme, each boat sixty–six feet long and twenty–three wide, loaded with numerous sacks of grain gleaned from many farms. The quays lining the harbor enabled rapid unloading and movement of food and supplies.

  I emerged from the tunnel into a small forecourt, still trailing the procession. Scores of people were either milling about there, jeering at we accused, or rushing through the gate just ahead that led to a larger courtyard fronting Ramesses’ temple. News of the upcoming trial had obviously spread quickly and widely. I recognized many villagers in the crowd; I assumed the men and women I didn’t know were workers from nearby temples and farms. I got separated from the procession in the press of people; no one noticed so I proceeded onward at my own pace. Apparently I wasn’t one of the accused after all. Despite Anhirkawi’s earlier assertion, no one had yet bound my wrists as they had the others.

  The scent of flowers from the lush garden and lotus–filled pools to my left wafted on the breeze. That garden had been created for Ramesses by Grandfather. Gardeners under his supervision maintained it to this day. I’d spent many hours caring for it before my marriage. To my right was Thutmose’s small temple, angling slightly away from the gate; on its far side, I knew, my view of it blocked by the temple, was a small sacred lake where priests ritually bathed each morning before visiting the inner sanctuary to awaken and care for the god in his shrine. I continued on and passed through t
he next gate. To either side were the royal stables – Ramesses enjoyed training horses – cages for his pet lions, and barracks for his bodyguards. A pylon towered over the west end of the courtyard, its shining copper–clad central door flanked by two towers. Four gold–tipped flagpoles were set in recesses in the pylon walls, topped with scarlet banners moving fitfully in the breeze. The right side of the pylon was carved with scenes of Ramesses smiting prisoners before Re–Harakhty, the left with Pharaoh smiting prisoners before Amen–Re.

  Beyond the pylon was the temple’s first courtyard. It was more than one hundred feet wide and one hundred–fifty long, with deeply carved and brightly painted columns to right and left, its top open to the sky. Pharaoh’s per’aa was to my left, its columns and doorframes of sandstone, its walls of mud–brick. Set in one section was the Window of Appearances from which Ramesses addressed his subjects and rewarded them on special occasions. Faience plaques depicting Tjehenuians and Setjetians and Shasu and Retunians and other enemies were inlaid around the window and the per’aa’s doors. I turned to look behind me at the back of the pylon. Ramesses’ victories in Ta–mehi over the Tjehenuian and Meshwesh and Seped coalitions in years six and eleven of his reign were recorded there. The wall was literally covered with images of captives and chariots and archers and soldiers and baskets full of hands and penises cut from enemy dead as a means of counting them. The carvings were magnificent – Ramesses pursuing desert tribesmen in his chariot, holding enemy chieftains by their hair, being presented with captured enemies by his eldest son, presenting those captives to Amen. Ramesses had used the booty from those victories to pay for the creation and later expansion of Djeme, or so Grandfather claimed.

  A second pylon ahead of me at the far end of the first court recorded Ramesses’ battle with the Sea Peoples – the Peleset, Tjeker, Shekelesh, Weshesh, and Denyen. Scenes showed Ramesses inspecting his troops, setting out for war in his chariot, battling against tribesmen invading the valley with their wives and children riding behind them in ox carts, a naval battle with Ramesses shooting arrows at ships from land, Ramesses and his entourage bringing captives home, Ramesses receiving captives brought by his sons, the recording of captives, Ramesses presenting captives to the gods Amen and Mut and Khonsu.