Out of the Black Land

Chapter Ten

Mutnodjme

The conversation with the Nubian woman in the Great Royal Scribe’s service had been brief but so packed with information that I went straight to my mat and lay down to think, astonishing my sister Merope, my mother and my teacher.

But I did not have time to really consider the implications of what I had heard, because the Priestess of Isis was announced and both Merope and I were banished to be thoroughly washed and perfumed and to have our hair combed and arrayed fittingly.

For the Chief Priestess of Isis is the mistress of magic, of learning and of spells; and was it not Isis who by her sorcery collected up the pieces of her murdered husband, put them back together, all except for his phallus which the fish had eaten, and then magically compensated for that loss, and mated with him to conceive and birth Horus the Avenger? That class of power differed from that of the Pharaoh, but was not to be slighted.

We were ushered back into the big room with the beautiful frieze of flowers—cornflower, lotus, sunflower and all the riverine grasses—a little breathless but terribly clean, and knelt to the tall slim woman in the green robes.

Isis’ Lady was old. I knew that the proper title was ‘Singer for Isis’ but she sounded too old to sing. Her feet were hard and calloused like a dancer’s; and her robes smelt of moon-leaf and unefer, magical herbs.

Tey my mother introduced us, and as is proper, we did not move until the old hand had moved to touch first Merope, then me, on the bare shoulder.

‘Mutnodjme,’ she said consideringly, dismissing Merope with a delicate wave. ‘You are learned, I am told.’

‘Lady, I have a little learning,’ I agreed. I knew how much I did not know.

‘And would you have more?’

‘Lady, if I am allowed to ask questions.’

Khons grinned, and Tey scowled.

‘Mutnodjme, my life has been entirely spent asking questions. Whether you will receive answers, well, there is a question.’

I was looking into her face. She had the papery skin of the aged, deeply lined, and her voice was high and trembled a little. Her dark eyes were unreadable, but might have contained a glint of humour. I gambled on this and replied honestly.

‘Lady, as long as there are questions there will be answers, or there is no sense in asking them.’

‘And you are sensible?’ At least she was continuing the conversation.

‘Sometimes, Lady of the Lady Isis.’

She gave a short laugh; almost a grunt. ‘Sing,’ she said.

I rose to my feet. I had always liked to sing and Nefertiti liked to listen to me, though I gave Tey a headache. I sang one of the spells which people used to charm snakes.

A face has seen a face

A face is against a face

The mottled knife

Both black and green

Goes forth against

What is seen

Back with thee, hidden one!

Hide thyself, venomous!

Back with thee, hidden one!

Hide thyself, toothless!

In Nemi’s name, the son of Nemit,

Thou shalt do no hurt.

I finished with an elaborate twirl on the last three notes and sat down. The old woman did not comment on my voice but asked, ‘You banish the serpent in the name of Nemi. Who is Nemi?’

‘Lady, the woman who taught it to me did not know. Teacher Khons thinks he might be a servant of the Nine of Thebes; my sister Merope says that the name is not Kritian and she does not know; and the Nubian woman who cleans the floor says that it is not Nubian. Therefore I would derive the title from our word for wanderer; so it would mean, Wanderer son of Wanderess, which is a good description of a snake. So I think that’s what it means, and it’s a way of naming the snake. So maybe the song should say ‘I name thee Nemi, son of Nemit’ which would scan, too.’

‘And the value of knowing a name?’

‘If you know someone’s name…’ I groped for words. ‘You know them, Lady, and can hurt them. All the spells depend on knowing a hidden name.’

There was a pause in which I wondered if I had said something terribly wrong. Then she nodded.

‘My name,’ said the old woman, getting to her feet with my mother’s assistance, ‘is Duammerset, Priestess of Isis, and you may come to me for more learning, little daughter, if you will.’ She made a complicated gesture of blessing and was gone, escorted by three attendants in the same green robes.

They were the most beautiful of greens, deep and rich, the colour of malachite, and I wondered what dye they used.

I was surprised by my mother hugging me and Khons offering me a honeycake.

‘That is a very alarming lady, my daughter, and you spoke up well, and sang well. I am pleased with you,’ declared Tey, ‘And so will your father be. That settles your future, daughter. If you wish to marry from the temple, then Isis is your dowry.’

Khons was so delighted at how well I had acquitted myself that he offered to take us for a walk to the walls, and Tey was so pleased with me that she allowed this.

The town of Thebes baked under the sun of the month of Mesoré. We could practically hear the old mud houses in the village creaking as they dried. The village was large, and on one side of the river the temple of Amen-Re stretched out of sight, pile on pile of glowing golden buildings. A few fishing boats slid across the river, the reed ones which the fisherman use only in this season when the river is almost stagnant. No one was stirring in the small houses where linen bleached on the roofs of the laundrymen and new spun threads hung limply at the dyer’s. All sensible people were asleep in the dark, waiting for a change of weather. No work was done in the fields in this season. There is no sense in ploughing dust. I remembered Merope saying that in her island the fields were watered from the air, by rain, but here the Goddess Tefnut contented herself with the Nile. I had only seen rain perhaps ten times in my life.

There was not a breath of air, which was an advantage. The poison-breath wind had gone and soon we would be feasting and rejoicing in the five intercalary days on which the common people got married, and then the rise of the river again at New Year, when there was another feast, Opet. Merope leaned on the marble wall and exclaimed, pulling back as the hot stone scorched her tender arms.

‘I don’t like Egypt,’ she said, ‘you were my only friend and now you’re going away.’

‘Not for years,’ said Teacher Khons consolingly. ‘She cannot enter the temple until her moon-blood comes, and even then the priestesses may send her home if she is not mature enough. Isis deals with the great mysteries, birth and death, and they cannot be contemplated by anyone who is still a child. We will go on as we have been doing, Princess, and learn as much as we can. And anyway, you must go and be a Great Royal Wife in truth when the time comes for you.’

‘That’s true, Teacher,’ Merope appeared to be comforted. ‘What is this Lady Isis, anyway?’

‘Come and sit down under the awning, pupils, and I will try and tell you, but first I will call for some small-ale and some fruit and Mutnodjme will tell us what she knows about the Lady Isis.’

‘She is the Lady of a Thousand Names,’ I said as I sat down next to Merope in the thick shade. ‘Lady of Bread, Lady of the Wheat Field, Star of Mariners, gentle and learned. When Set the Destroyer murdered her husband she sought for him and saved him and rules the Land of Sekhet-hetepet, the Field of Offerings, with him. Her child is Horus and her sisters are the Ladies of Motherhood, Hunting and Protection: Tawert, Neith and Nepthys.’

‘A very good start,’ encouraged Teacher Khons. ‘Do you know the tale of the theft of the Name?’

‘No, tell us,’ we said, our invariable answer.

‘First, tell me why Great Royal Nurse Tey said that Isis would give you your dowry,’ asked Merope.

‘Because a woman learned in the mysteries of Isis needs no dowry,’ I answered. ‘Women of that temple can deliver babies, tend the sick, make spells, draw down Khons by the hair,’ I added, referring to the God of the Moon and Time and grinning at Khons the teacher, who slipped off his Nubian wig and revealed an entirely bare scalp.

‘You might have trouble pulling this Khons down by the hair,’ he chuckled.

‘She is a wise woman, a skilled woman, and worth a great dowry. That is, if she lasts for the whole time. Priestesses are required to stay in the temple until they are eighteen, and I may not live that long, of course.’

‘If the gods are kind, you may survive and become a good magician. Do not take to sorcery, Mutnodjme, I beg,’ said Teacher Khons, replacing his wig.

‘Because I mightn’t be good at it?’ I asked.

‘Because you might be altogether too good at it,’ he responded.

Then we settled down with a cup of small-ale each, Khons produced the papyrus, and we read it by turns. Merope, who still had trouble with Egyptian, began:

Behold the Goddess Isis lived in a woman’s body skilled-with-words. Her heart turned away from millions of humans and turned to millions of gods. How could she become esteemed on earth, how could she make herself Lady of Knowledge by means of the knowledge of the Great Name?

‘This is too difficult, Teacher,’ Merope begged. ‘Can I give it to my sister? In any case, she reads better.’

‘Very well,’ said Khons, giving me the roll. I took up the tale:

Behold Re came each day in the sacred ship, lord of the double crown. Divine Re had become old. He dribbled at the mouth. Now this Lady Isis took his spittle and earth and moulded it into a serpent in her hand, even a serpent with fangs sharp as arrows, and she placed it on the path before the Lord Amen-Re’s foot.

When the Most High walked on his way, the serpent drove its fangs into his ankle, and the life began to depart from the Eternal’s body, and the creature of Isis began to destroy the Lord of the Sun.

Then that mighty god opened his mouth and cried aloud.

The gods said, ‘What is the matter?’

And the Lord Amen-Re found that he could not speak, for the poison was running in all his limbs as the Nile conquers the lands through which it flows.

Then the great god steadied his heart and spoke, and said, ‘I have been stung by some deadly thing of which I have no knowledge, which was not made by me and is not of me. Never have I felt such pain. Can it be fire? Can it be water? My heart is burning, my limbs are shivering, let there come to me all those who know words of power and banish this agony from me.’

And all the gods lamented, for they knew no remedy.

I could see it all, the little serpent the colour of earth, the bite and the great god’s cry of pain. The part of the story which I liked most came next, and Khons took the scroll from me to read at an even pace, for when I was excited I always read too fast. I listened with bated breath as I always did to Isis’ clever manoeuvre.

Then came Isis with her words of power and in her mouth was the breath that is life. She said ‘What is this, Lord? Has some created thing dared to bite you? I shall overcome it.’

And the Divine One said, ‘I walked the road of this country my own Khemet to look on my own works and a serpent bit me. Can this be fire? Can this be water? I am hotter than any fire. My limbs tremble, I sweat, my eyes fail. I cannot see.’

Isis said, ‘Divine One, tell me your name, and I shall cure you.’

And Amen-Re said, ‘I am maker of mountains, I am creator of all, I am maker of waters. I have created love. I am he the gods know not; I am one who is hidden. I am he who commands and the Nile flows forth to water the land. I am the creator of hours, time, festivals and years. I am Khephri at dawn and Harakhte at noon and Temu in the evening.’

And those names were named but the poison still tormented him.

So Isis said to him, ‘Declare your real name, your hidden name, and you will be healed.’

And the poison burned in Amen-Re like a smith’s fire, and he said, ‘I will allow Isis to search my heart, and my name shall go from my body into her body, from my heart into her heart, and she shall know my name.’

Then Isis the Great Lady of Magic kissed his mouth and the Name flowed into her, and she said, ‘Flow, poison, I make you to fall upon the ground, for you are conquered, in the name of the Great God which he has told me. Re shall live and the poison shall die, for if the poison lives then Re shall die.’

These were the words which Isis spoke, the Queen of Magic, and she had knowledge of Amen-Re’s name.’

‘But what good did it do her?’ I objected.

‘She knows still the secret name,’ said Khons. ‘And secrets known to only one other make the other very powerful. The Lord Amen-Re endowed her son Horus with his two eyes, the sun and the moon, and they helped Horus in his battle with Set the Destroyer. And the Lord Amen-Re healed Isis when that same son injured her, because she let Set loose from his chains.’

‘Why did she do that?’

‘Because he was her brother,’ said Khons.

It was very hot, and we lay down in the shade to sleep. How could the Lady Isis be the sister of Set the destroyer? It was very confusing.

Ptah-hotep

I went to the King very early the next morning, as he had ordered, and sat down at his feet with my whitened board to listen as he was shaved and tended.

‘My father may he live first quarrelled with the High Priest of Amen-Re when he was minded to take the Lady Tiye as his Great Royal Wife. She was a commoner, no Princess, but there was no Great Royal Heiress for him to marry and he was sure that Tiye, my mother, would be a good queen and she was his choice.

‘That High Priest remonstrated with Amenhotep, who was a boy, thinking that he could overbear him and alter his mind, but my father was not convinced or afraid. He had already fought one battle then, and said that there should be no more wars in Egypt.’

The barber, who was trying to shave the king, stood patiently with his bronze razor in his hand waiting for a break in the conversation. I tried to provide one.

‘Lord, as it says on the scarab: I married the Great Royal Wife Tiye and made for her a lake called Lake Tiye on which I sail my barge Gleam of the Aten,’ I said, watching as one side of the royal face was oiled and scraped. He had hardly any beard but shaving is good for the skin.

‘And further, my lord, I have read the account of the Battle of Kush, where it says: One came to the Lord, saying,“The foe, Kush the wretched, has planned war in his heart. The King went forth. Kush knew not this lion which was before him.”’

The King murmured along with me, as though he too knew this inscription by heart. I only knew it because I had been forced to copy it perfectly seven times in dictation or suffer the consequences. I recited:

Kush came, their hearts eager to fight, and many fell. The might of the King took them in an hour; making a great slaughter of them, their king and their cattle. They planted the harvest, but the King reaped it, mighty bull, strong in heart; great things were in their hearts, but this fierce-eyed lion slew them by the command of Amen, it was he who led them in victory.

I added the words of the viceroy, and my Lord Akhnamen knew them also.

The king’s son, vigilant for his lord, favourite of the good god, the king’s scribe Mermose said, ‘Praise to thee, good god! Great is thy might against him that affronts thee; thou hast caused the rebellious to say, “The fire we have kindled rages against us.” Thou hast slain his enemies and they are under his feet.’

‘Amen again,’ muttered the king.

I observed that the barber had now shaved both sides of his face and was sliding the razor under his chin, so I kept talking.

‘They say that the construction of the lake only took fifteen days, remarkable speed,’ I observed. ‘It is a fair place and I hope to see it when the family moves back to Djarukha after the New Year. I believe that the palace is beautiful beyond belief.’

The royal throat was shaved and the King was now free to answer. ‘It is beautiful, but not as beautiful as my new city of Amarna will be, once the canals are built and there is water. You saw the plans, Ptah-hotep, are they not splendid?’

‘Absolutely breathtaking,’ I agreed, for they were, although I didn’t think that there was enough gold in the world to build them; or enough labour.

‘Do you know your titles, Ptah-hotep?’

‘Yes, Lord.’

‘Then, Keeper of All Secrets to Whom No Heart is Hidden Whose Heart is the King’s, listen.’

‘Lord, I listen.’

As he talked, he allowed his hand to lie on my shoulder, and it was probably only my imagination which made it seem very heavy. Servants came and replenished his cup and mine, made him stand to replace his cloth, and painted his eyes with kohl, and he did not seem to notice them. The Keeper of All Secrets was going to share his knowledge with at least eight people, I estimated.

‘In the beginning was nothing,’ he said, and I seized my stylus. ‘Void. The primeval chaos before Nun the primeval ocean, before the gods, all these later pretenders in which an ignorant people believe. My father is renowned for his wisdom, is he not? And he believes in the Aten, the spirit before the beginning which made all things, the visible god who manifests himself every day to all humans, the sun-disc is his symbol, but it is not he. He is himself and no other and cannot be known.

‘Lord, I hear you,’ I said. So far it seemed a harmless mysticism.

‘My father believes in the beginning, in Aten the voice in chaos which said to the world, ‘Be!’ and it was. All men shall believe it,’ he said.

I began to feel uneasy. ‘Lord, does not your father may he live renowned for his wisdom, also say, Enquire not into another man’s gods?’

‘He said that, but he is an old man, and does not have the heart for the great work which is before us. All men shall speak to god, not through the medium of priests and their prattle and their useless rituals, but to the Aten himself by the sun-disc which gives life to all of the Black Land. I shall simplify,’ said Akhnamen the Pharaoh, making a broad gesture with his soft hands.

For a moment, I caught his enthusiasm. Without priests or sorcery or words, without the trade in sacrifice and charms and spells, a man could speak directly to the source of all goodness, to the breath of creation. He saw my understanding in my face.

‘Away with the mumbling old men of Re and the toothless old women of Isis. Away with faithless promises of an afterlife! There is no afterlife but to be reborn as another human, as a beast, as a tree.

‘I would like to be a tree, planted in a garden, fruitful and full of life, fed by the water and breathing gentle vapours like prayers to my maker, even to Aten the symbol of the Creator. What would you like to be, Ptah-hotep?’

‘Lord…’ I hadn’t considered it before, but I could think of nothing else. ‘Lord, I would be a dog, who could guard the farmer’s crop against thieves and his household against robbers, and I would sleep every night on his doorstep.’

He seemed pleased with this idea—they had told me that he valued loyalty—and stroked my cheek.

‘You have not even begun to sprout a beard,’ he mused.

‘No, Lord, and I may not; my father has no beard.’

‘Nor mine,’ he said. ‘My father is still too wary of the priests of Amen-Re to take such action as should be taken against them, and I am not yet strong enough. But when Aten transforms my father and I rule alone, then they will be chastened for having the effrontery to admonish my father about my mother, and for promulgating false gods to the people.’

I was about to say, ‘Lord, false or not, the people need their gods,’ when I caught his eye and decided to be silent. It was, in any case, unlikely that I could argue my obsessed Master out of his cherished beliefs.

‘Why do men need gods?’ he asked, having picked up my thought, which he was reputed to often do.

‘Because their lives are hard,’ I replied. ‘They work all day for bread, and though they are seldom hungry in this rich land they have not enough of what they like to eat. They may have married the wrong woman, they may have no children or no sons and too many daughters, they may have lost their only love, they may be in mourning for wife or parent, and they weep, saying, “How can I endure this?” And they are comforted when they consider that after death they will live pleasurable lives in the Field of Offerings, drinking beer which will never sour and eating bread which will never rot.’

‘Dreams,’ scoffed my lord Akhnamen.

‘Or they can attribute their own failure to the ill-humour of a god, as when the Nile flood is too low and the fields parch into dust, spoiling the young seedlings; or too high, and the people watch their houses melt in the water and take to the boats, weeping, screaming insults at Hapi.

‘If the canals are ill maintained or the ducks stray or the fish desert the nets they can always blame the god rather than themselves or their own carelessness. And when pure misfortune strikes, it is always better to have something to curse by,’ I added.

I waited for a moment, hoping for an interruption, but he was thinking.

‘I know nothing of the life of the common people,’ he said at last. ‘You were a commoner, were you not, Great Royal Scribe? Tell me of your life.’

‘Lord, it is not interesting, I was the son of a scribe.’ I suddenly remembered that I had not written to my father to tell him of my elevation, sending some large present so that he would not call me undutiful. I wondered what he would like. A vineyard?

‘Tell me of a commoner’s life,’ he said.

‘Lord, let me recite to you from the Satire of Trades,’ I offered, not capable of so much description without some time to prepare.

‘Recite,’ said Akhnamen; so I began:

Consider the field worker—cruel is his fate! His skin is like leather, and he tends his crop in tears. He eats bread by the side of the meadow and is burned by the sun…

‘He is honoured,’ said my lord, ‘for the sun is the emanation of the Aten.’

I didn’t know what to say.