She’d been with her family in the tower room the night Pharaoh invited me and Grandfather to join them. Her presence had been unusual. She resided in quarters attached to Khonsu’s temple even when the royal family was at Djeme, rarely visiting the per’aa or traveling the land with the rest of the court. That made sense, for her husband was often away on campaign for months at a time. She was wearing a dress of fine white linen with two wide straps, a gold vulture crown, gold belt, and bracelets and necklace studded with turquoise. Her dark wig touched her shoulders. She was beautiful, her eyes dark with kohl, cheeks and lips subtly red. She watched me approach, unsmiling and business–like in service to her god, flanked by several minor chantresses in sheer white skirts. Duatentopet indicated my basket of flowers. “About time,” she snapped. “The god has been unadorned all morning.”
We’d clashed in the tower room and again at the banquet in Pi–Ramesses. I’d just irritated her a third time. “Apologies, Majesty,” I said, lowering my eyes, feeling the color rise in my cheeks. “I was required to be with the great god, Amen.” I hesitated. “Should I place the garlands on the shrine?”
“Certainly not!” Duatentopet said haughtily. “Give them to my steward.” She turned and called. “Amenhotep.”
He snatched the basket from me.
I faded back into the crowd. I was glad I hadn’t sent one of the girls to deliver the flowers. They were too young and tender to face a royal’s wrath.
“Don’t let my half–sister upset you,” came a low voice. A discrete hand took mine.
Pentawere. I marveled at his daring and foolishness. Was he crazy, standing next to me in Tiye’s presence in such a public place? I searched for her among the royal party. She wasn’t looking in our direction. Yet. “Go before your mother sees,” I said, squeezing his fingers.
“Is that what you really want?”
“Of course not.”
“I have to see you alone. Come to my room tonight,” he whispered urgently.
“It’s too dangerous.” It was one thing to be with each other openly at Abdju in obedience to Pharaoh’s command, quite another to sneak about the per’aa under Tiye’s nose. I wanted to be with Pentawere, but knowing Tiye’s spies were lurking everywhere it was an utterly reckless thing to do.
“Then I’ll come to your hut,” he insisted. “I can’t stay away from you, Neset.”
“Your mother’s spies will be watching the lane outside. We’ll be caught.”
“My men will take care of anyone who’s lurking about.”
“It’s too risky.”
“I don’t care.”
“I can’t talk you out of it, can I?”
“No.”
I spotted the third procession. “Mut approaches. I have to give him garlands.”
Pentawere smiled. “I’ll see you tonight.” He lowered his voice. “Beloved.”
He slipped away to join his family and I headed towards the shrine. I felt his eyes on me. I didn’t look his way again while we were on the quay. But the anticipation of seeing him alone after nightfall filled me with a warm glow I hadn’t felt since our time together in Abdju.
Pharaoh and the fourth Ramesses and three high priests and three chantresses presented offerings to the three gods on the quay. Then the masked priests lifted the sledges and carried the gods’ barques to their respective boats and placed the shrines amidships under linen canopies. Priests with burning incense stood beside each shrine, chanting ritually while musicians played. I was, at Pharaoh’s command, on his boat, the Merit–Amen, along with all the royals except the fourth Ramesses. He boarded Khonsu’s boat along with his wife and Kairy.
Merit–Amen was the largest of the three vessels, cedar, decorated with sheets of gold and elaborately woven fabric. Pennants fluttered atop the high–prowed lotus–shaped bow and stern, each etched with the eye of Horus. Dozens of oarsmen sat on benches on the sides of the boat. At the captain’s command they pushed the boat from the quay and dipped their oars and propelled Merit–Amen into the river. They rowed directly west, aiming for the canal slicing across the bottomlands that led to Seti’s temple of millions of years. I moved to the bow with the girls and scanned the far shore. Wide green fields of emmer edged the river beyond its fringe of palm trees. The barren sand–colored hills that guarded the Great Place, rising a mile beyond the cultivation, stretched in a great curve far to the south, fronted by sheer rugged cliffs, the Qurn where Meretseger ruled towering above them.
“I carried water to men excavating a tomb in the Great Place one day,” I told the girls as our boat entered the canal on the west bank, thickly lined with spectators. “From the valley floor the Qurn looks like a pyramid, like the ones raised by ancient kings. The Qurn doesn’t look like that from any other angle on the west bank.”
A large amphitheater occupied the curve of the cliffs. Two hills rose from the plain in its bay – Qurna to the right, Qurnet Murai to the left. Behind Qurnet Murai lay Ta Set Maat.
“See that temple on the left backed against the cliff to the right of Qurna?” I asked. “It was the very first mortuary temple erected on the west bank – Glorious are the Seats of Nebhepetre. It was raised by the second King Mentuhotep more than a thousand years ago soon after he reunified the valley. The ruined temple directly to its right belonged to the third Thutmose – Djeser–Akhet – The Sacred Horizon. It was abandoned after an earthquake mostly destroyed it. To its right is the temple erected by Hatshepsut.”
Even in ruins and nearly buried under drifts of sand and large chunks of rock that had fallen from the cliff Hatshepsut’s temple was magnificent. In all my travels I’d never seen a temple remotely like it. Its architect had been a genius, though he’d clearly taken ideas from Mentuhotep’s.
The desert plain between the green fields and western hills held a plethora of temples. The west–flowing canal we were traversing turned southwest at Seti’s temple and arrowed quite a distance to an intersection with another that led directly east from Djeme to the river straight across from the east bank temple Ipet–Resyt, the Southern Sanctuary. About a third of the way down the long canal it intersected another flowing west that led to a second temple memorializing the third Thutmose where I’d laid out my special garden. Another southwest–flowing canal paralleled the first from Thutmose’s temple to the harbor attached to Djeme. Quite a few temples lay between the two. Another branch of the canal led from Djeme to the ruins of the third Amenhotep’s temple and its colossal side–by–side statues of the seated king.
The Merit–Amen anchored in the small harbor attached to Seti’s temple – Seti Merenptah is Glorious in the Estate of Amen on the West of Waset. Every foot of the canal’s west bank was occupied by spectators, most of whom had camped all night to gain an unobstructed view of the royals and gods. The priests shouldered Amen’s shrine and descended the gangplank and followed a wide path through the garden that covered the plain between the canal and the temple wall and passed through the entrance into the temple precinct. I’d made sure the garden was especially lush and colorful for this event to prove to all doubters – mostly his wives – that Pharaoh had made me overseer of his gardens due to my ability, not out of lust. Priests carrying the other shrines followed, and then the royal family and chantresses and high priests and the rest of the official party. Priests and royals continued towards the sanctuary; everyone else remained in the outer courtyard. Except me and my girls.
“We need to stick close to the procession the rest of the day,” I reminded them. “Keep a sharp watch. If any flowers decorating the barque shrines wilt in the heat we need to replace them immediately. Gods deserve fresh flowers.”
“What if we run out?” Beketaten asked. She and her cousins had only a few of their original arrangements left in their baskets.
“Yesterday I stashed extra bouquets and garlands and wreaths inside every temple. My experienced girls are watching over them right now. If we have need we’ll signal them.”
Yesterday had been m
emorable, the first time I’d ever had completely unrestricted access to the temples’ sacred inner precincts – normally I handed my flowers off to a priest outside the sanctuary door. But they’d been too busy making their arrangements for today and so Usermarenakht had given me permission to go wherever I needed. I’d taken full advantage of the opportunity, reading inscriptions on walls and soaring columns, staring in wide–eyed wonder at magnificently–decorated courtyards and porticos and pylons and sanctuaries, inspecting statues, catching glimpses of my image in the gold and copper and silver that covered surfaces and furnishings.
“Pharaoh Seti was a warrior, girls. He fought the Hittites. He crushed the Shasu in the Sinai. He conquered northern Retenu and Setjet and routed the Tjehenuians. Once he led an expedition into the desert seeking gold but it went badly. His miners were about to die of thirst when he discovered a well and saved everyone.”
“Didn’t Seti start building the hypostyle hall in Ipet–Isut?” Nauny asked.
“You were paying attention.” I gave her a quick hug.
Every step of the procession through the temple was accompanied by the chants of priests and the songs and sistrums of chantresses and the scent of incense. In a long ceremony in front of the sanctuary, Pharaoh and the fourth Ramesses and priests and chantresses set food offerings alight. Yellow flames leapt from the altars as they recited sacred prayers. I added my whispered prayers from a darkened corner as the priests spooned incense into the flames to make the offerings even sweeter to the gods, my fingers grasping my talisman. I wondered if they’d ever had ceremonies like this one at Nekhen to honor the falcon god.
The second stop of the day was a small ancient shrine to Hathor nestled in the shadow of Mentuhotep’s temple at the base of high sheer cliffs almost a mile west of the canal and Seti’s harbor. The masked priests shouldered the three barques and set forth on a long hot dusty hike across the desert plain, trailed by the rest of the celebrants. Pharaoh and Ramesses and their wives were carried in shaded palanquins, each gilt with gold, the ends of their carrying poles shaped like gold–leafed lotus blossoms; the rest of us followed on foot. By now Re was high in the sky and the desert shimmered with his heat. Hot sand burned my feet through my sandals. I dripped sweat. Fine dust kicked up by those in the column ahead of me settled grittily on my skin and dress and choked my throat. I tried to cool myself with a small fan of brown ostrich feathers, a long–ago gift from Pentawere, but it did little good.
The remains of three temples in the bay of the cliffs grew ever larger as we approached.
“Let me tell you about the second Mentuhotep’s temple,” I told the girls.
It occupied a high rectangular platform accessed by a ramp at the end of a causeway lined with numerous statues portraying him.
“That thirty–foot tall building surrounded by the colonnade at the front of the platform is dedicated to Montu–Re. There are more than eighty octagonal pillars in that hall – I counted yesterday. The third Senwosret placed six statues of himself between some of those pillars nearly two hundred years after Mentuhotep’s death to associate himself with his illustrious ancestor. He looks like a tired old man – very unusual. Kings normally depict themselves as young and vigorous. The reliefs on the temple’s walls are very interesting. Some show Mentuhotep seated at an offering table, others depict the siege of a walled city in Retenu, with men pierced by arrows falling from the ramparts. Inside the pillared hall, in its floor, is the entrance to the king’s tomb, a long passageway that dives into the earth and tunnels into the stone of the cliff. Near the entrance stands a colossal statue of Mentuhotep. There’s a spectacular view of Thutmose’s and Hatshepsut’s temples from his elevated courtyard. I’ll take all of you there some day.”
Hathor’s shrine was simple and primitive, a small vaulted chapel cut into the cliff behind Mentuhotep’s temple.
“This shrine was the single destination of the gods’ barques when the Beautiful Feast started,” I said. “There weren’t any memorial temples back then. The third Thutmose partially restored this shrine. He and his wife Merytre are depicted on its walls.”
Hathor’s shrine was one of the few open to commoners. Inside was a gold–leaf covered life–sized wooden cow, Hathor’s symbol, standing in the midst of countless wooden votive phalluses that littered the floor. Three were mine, left after the deaths of my daughters, offered so the goddess would give me a living child. She hadn’t. Now I was a widow with no one to care for me in my old age unless, against all odds, I actually became Pentawere’s wife. All at once I became aware of the talisman around my neck, reminding me that it and hundreds of stories had been handed down in my family for nearly four and a half millennia. If the falcon god was truly arranging my life so I could marry Pentawere, maybe he’d arrange for us to have a child too so I could pass on talisman and stories. Maybe that’s why Hathor hadn’t given me a fourth child with Mesedptah or let the first three live, because of how he’d sinned against the gods. The thought of having Pentawere’s baby made me extremely happy.
The priests rested for a long time at the way station near Hathor’s shrine, worn out by the long carry across the desert. As they ate and drank my girls and I freshened the flowers on all three shrines, ensuring they were perfect. Eventually the priests reshouldered their burdens and made the long walk back to the harbor and returned the shrines to their waiting boats. We all reboarded. Oarsmen rowed the boats about half a mile southwest to the canal’s intersection with the west–flowing canal and turned into it. We soon docked at the quay before the temple of the third Thutmose – Henket–Ankh – The Mansion of Pharaoh Menkheperre, Justified Before the Great God, Which is on the West of Waset. Once again everyone disembarked; once again rituals were carried out, everyone passing through my nearly–restored garden. The priests did not return the gods to their boats after this ceremony. Since the rest of the memorial temples were so close to each other the priests were going to carry the gods to them overland. So all of us in the procession walked, in turn, to the temples of Siptah and the second Amenhotep and then the Ramesseum – The Temple of Usermaatre–Setepenre called United with Waset in the Estate of Amen on the West of Waset. Thousands, mostly temple workers, awaited our arrival there, gathered in front of and around the greatest storehouse in the land.
It was growing late when we exited the Ramesseum. The priests next made offerings at the temple of the fourth Thutmose, with its multiple levels and halls and pylons and columns and colonnades, bypassed the ruins of Tawosret’s, then entered Merenptah’s Mansion of Baenre–Meryamen in the Domain of Amen on the West of Waset. The son of Ramesses the Great, he’d taken stone from Amenhotep’s fallen temple – Receiving Amen and Exalting his Beauty – and used it for his. I’d taken time yesterday to read Merenptah’s Victory Hymn, a record of his military conquests inscribed on the back of a stela originally raised by Amenhotep in his now–ruined temple. In quick order we moved on to the second Thutmose’s Aakeperenre in the Mansion called Seizing Life and Ay’s Mansion of Kheperkheperure–’ir–maat called Enduring is the Memorial in the Place of Eternity. Ay’s successor, Horemheb, had usurped it and renamed it for himself – The Mansion of Djeserkheperure–Setepenre.
Finally we reached Djeme, the fortress–temple and per’aa of the current pharaoh – The Temple of Usermaatre–Meryamen called United with Eternity in the Estate of Amen on the West of Waset. It was now very late in the afternoon and Re was descending towards the western hills, his rays slanting golden across the plain. Shadows were creeping eastward from those hills. Djeme was the final stop of the festival and like almost everyone in the procession I was footsore and dog–tired. After helping me beginning several hours before dawn the cousins were exhausted. Priests carried the gods through the tower–gate entrance and into the forecourt of the fortress and placed them in a gold–doored sandstone shrine on the side of the courtyard opposite my garden. I didn’t need to read the inscription Pharaoh had inscribed upon the shrine, for I knew it by heart: I made
it for you… in your city of Waset, in front of your forecourt to the Lord of Gods, being the temple of Ramesses Hekaiunu in the Estate of Amen, to remain as long as the heavens bear the sun. I built it, and sheathed it with sandstone, bringing great doors of fine gold, and I filled its treasuries with offerings that my hands had brought.
As the royals conducted the sacred ceremonies in the inner sanctuary I thanked the girls and dismissed them. They exited Djeme and headed for Ta Set Maat, chattering wearily but happily. While the day had been tiring, they’d been admitted to sections of temples today that few in their village ever had. They’d have wonderful stories to regale their friends with tonight. I walked over to my garden and paced restlessly back and forth on a path amidst tall fragrant flowers as the ceremony dragged on. Birds chittered from branches over my head and water tinkled through a small canal at my feet and muffled music drifted from the shrine, but I scarcely noticed. I was deep in thought and alive with anticipation. My qualms about seeing Pentawere tonight had vanished, melted away over the course of the day by a craving and hunger and burning need. I could almost feel his arms around me, his mouth against mine, his fingers running up my spine and through my hair. Seeing each other with Tiye close by was a huge risk, but I could no more stay away from Pentawere than he could from me. Allowing him to visit my hut would be dangerous, but not allowing it would be agony. After nearly an hour the royals emerged from the sanctuary. I caught Pentawere’s eye. Slowly, I tucked the long strands of red hair falling over the front of my right shoulder behind my ear. Pentawere smiled broadly. He’d gotten my message. I gave him a quick sultry smile and slipped back into my place in the procession.
The Gardener and the Assassin Page 42