Out of the Black Land

Chapter Twelve

Mutnodjme

We sat at our teacher’s feet and construed the Satire of Trades, written years ago by Dua-Khety for the instruction of his son.

‘This was quoted to me so often by my father when I was a child that I loathed it, but it is nevertheless good literature,’ said Teacher Khons, giving Merope the scroll. She began to read:

It is miserable for the carpenter when he planes the beams of a roof. It is the roof of a room measuring ten by six cubits.

‘What’s a cubit?’ she asked.

‘The length of my forearm,’ said Khons. ‘A digit is the width of my finger. There are six digits in a palm, and there are six palms in a cubit. The measure of the world is the measure of a human,’ he added, quoting another wise scribe.

Merope continued:

He spends a month in laying the beams and spreading the roofing material. All his work is done, but his wife and children are hungry while he is away.

The bricklayer is in pain. He works outside in the wind with no garment but a cord for his back and a string for his buttocks. He is so exhausted by his labour that he can hardly see, and he eats with his filthy hands.

But I have seen the bricklayers, Teacher. They seem happy enough, even if they are naked. They sing. And at night they get drunk and sing more. Just under our window, where they are building the new rooms,’ commented Merope, puzzled.

‘That is true, my pupil, but this is a satire. It exaggerates for the purpose of making a point.’

‘The point being that Dua-Khety wants to make his son decide that a scribe’s life is the best?’ I reasoned. Teacher Khons nodded.

‘But he’s lying,’ I said. ‘I mean, exaggerating. That is not the way to make a proper argument. The Maxims of Ptah-hotep which you made us read last decan say:

Truth is great and its effectiveness endures forever; it has not been confounded since the time of Osiris.

Khons sighed. ‘A little colouring is necessary even for truth,’ he told me. ‘Do you not remember the Tale of Truth and Falsehood?’

‘No,’ we said, hoping to escape more of the Satire of Trades. Khons obliged:

Truth came home one day, naked and wounded, having been beaten and cursed by the people who did not wish to hear, while his brother Falsehood went dressed in the brightest garments and feasted with every household.

‘What shall I do?’ cried Truth to the gods. ‘No man wishes to hear me and all beat me and throw things at me; look, I am covered with dung.’

‘You are naked,’ said the goddess Maat, sympathetically. ‘No naked one can command respect. Therefore take these robes and you will walk without fear and all men will sit at your feet to hear your stories.’ And she dressed Truth in Fable’s garments, and he was welcome at every house.

‘What’s a fable?’ asked Merope, who also did not like the Satire of Trades. Khons smiled and began:

The lion summoned all beasts to come to his court.

All animals attended, except for the desert fox, the clever, sand-coloured slinker who steals rather than fights. The lion waited, and still the fox did not come to offer obeisance.

At last the lion left his cave and came to the fox saying, ‘Why have you not come to offer your obeisance to me?’

The Fox replied, ‘I judged that it would not have been good for my health. I have seen many tracks going into your cave, Lord, but none coming out.’

‘And that is a fable about…what?’ I asked.

‘The nature of government,’ replied Khons shortly. ‘The Satire of Trades, Princess Merope, if you please.’

The message-carrier leaves on his journey after giving his property to his children, as he does not know if he will return. He is always afraid of lions and ambushes. He only relaxes his vigilance when he returns to Egypt, and by then his house is only a tent. He does not come home to a feast.

Why not?’ asked Merope. ‘Even if he did give his property to his children, wouldn’t they be pleased to see him again?’

‘Perhaps we should read something else,’ said our Teacher. ‘The satire might be too sophisticated an art-form for you literal young women.’

‘Good speech is as rare as malachite, yet can be heard in the conversation of slave women at the millstone,’ I quoted from the Maxims of Ptah-hotep, and Khons laughed.

‘On second thought, we will write,’ he ordered, and we took our writing boards and opened the pot of ink. I found my favourite stylus in the bunch and Merope sanded away her previous essay with pumice.

‘What shall we write about?’

‘The festival of the new year,’ said Khons. ‘Did you have a good feast, little Princesses?’

‘Wonderful,’ declared Merope. ‘I love roasted duck and I had a whole one to myself. But I didn’t get to see it as well as my sister, because she had enough wisdom to be swept away by the crowd and lifted up by the Nubian of the Great Royal Scribe Ptah-hotep may he live. Why are we having lessons, anyway, teacher? It’s only the third day of the holiday, which is twelve days long. Amen-Re lies in the arms of his wife Mut. No one else is working. The commoners are all sleeping to store up energy for tonight’s feasts. Why are you working?’

‘As a favour to your mother, to keep you occupied while she arranges the move to the palace on the lake. You will have visitors today, my pupils, and she wants to keep you occupied. But we can tell stories if you would like.’

‘Take us for a walk?’ we coaxed.

‘Where would you like to go?’

‘Down into the village,’ suggested my sister.

‘Out onto the water,’ I asked. I had never got over my fascination with the river, even though it had tried to eat me.

‘Sorry,’ said Khons. ‘Neither. The village is full of drunken people and the river is rising fast. You remember what happened to you on the day that the river was rising, Mutnodjme.’

‘Then to a temple,’ we said.

‘Which one?’ asked Khons warily.

‘Basht,’ said Merope. Basht the cat came to her name and walked delicately over the tiled floor and onto Merope’s lap.

‘That is in the village, and we cannot go to the village.’

‘Story, then,’ I said, for we were clearly not going to join the interesting crowds and noises which we could hear outside the walls. At least we were not going back to the Satire of Trades.

Khons nodded and began:

Isis and Osiris were brother and sister and loved each other with a love greater than death.

Isis was the most wise of all the daughters of Geb and Nut, and she said to Osiris, ‘Be my lover, oh most beautiful of all men, and I will lie in your arms and I will never leave you.’

And Osiris beheld her and replied, ‘Most lovely of all women, I will lie with you, and love you, and I will never leave you.’

But Set their brother was jealous and said, ‘Why did she not choose me? I am as strong as Osiris, and I am good at lovemaking, yet she has chosen my brother and not me.’

Therefore he decided to kill Osiris, hoping that Isis would love him after her husband was dead. So he had a sarcophagus made, exact to the measurements of his brother, taken from the print he had left sleeping in the sand, and he challenged the gods, that whoever fitted into the valuable goldwork should have it for his own.

Osiris climbed in, and lo! Set clapped the lid down, and welded it shut. He flung Osiris into the Nile, and so he perished miserably, suffocating in the dark.

And Set said to Isis, smiling,‘You shall be my wife.’

‘Wicked!’ cried my sister Merope. ‘What happened? Did Isis take Set as her husband?’

‘Of course not,’ I argued. ‘Isis is the lady of wisdom, she wouldn’t do something so stupid.’

Khons raised a finger for silence, and I subsided.

Not only did Set fail with Isis, who scorned him saying he was a scorpion among brothers, but his own wife Nepthys, disgusted by this murder, left him also, taking with her their son Anubis.

Isis and her sisters lamented for Osiris, then turned themselves into birds; and Isis and Nepthys and the Divine Huntress Neith flew low over the Nile, seeking the coffin, crying to lost Osiris, ‘Come to thy house!’

And many people saw the birds and wondered, for they called with human voices to the dead man, ‘Come to thy lover!’

But they could not find him, until a bird told them that the tamarisk tree had found the coffin and grown lovingly around it to preserve it from destruction, and that the tree had been cut down and made into the pillar of a King’s house. That tree has ever since been sacred to Osiris.

Isis came in the form of a woman to the King’s house and offered to suckle his child if she could ask for anything in his house. The baby was sickly and not likely to live, and they had no other children. So she nursed the child, dipping him each day into the fire to make him immortal, and at night changing herself into a swallow which mourned around the pillar, crying for lost Osiris.

Thus it went, until one night the Queen found the woman putting her child on the fire, and cried out, so that the child lost his chance of immortality, and the nurse was transformed into a mourning swallow.

The swallow then spoke with human voice, saying, ‘Take your child, he is strong though now he will not live forever, and give me the pillar of your house.’

And greatly wondering they obeyed, and the pillar was replaced and a woodman split it open with his axe to reveal the marvellous sarcophagus inside.

Then Isis was a woman again, and opened the coffin and wept over the dead Osiris inside, and all who heard her weeping were afraid, for it contained all the sorrow in the world. Then she took the coffin with her and rowed it down the Nile and placed it in a thicket while she slept. But while she slept Set came, and found the body; and, in his malice and misery,hacked it into pieces and flung the pieces into the air, and they scattered all over Egypt.

Then Isis called her sisters and Anubis the black dog, son of Set, who came to her and mourned with her afresh.

Then they collected the pieces, crying, ‘Come, holy one, be one, be alive, for Isis has thine hand and Nepthys thine arm.’ But they did not find the phallus, for the fish of the river had eaten it.

Then Isis assembled her husband and made her magic, drawing down time and the moon, even Khons himself as her ally. And making a phallus out of the mud of the river, she descended onto the phallus as a woman, her thighs wrapping his hips, and he entered into her and seeded her body with the divine child, even Horus the Revenger, born to contend with his uncle Set.

‘But what happened to Osiris?’ I asked. ‘He did not come alive in the world again, did he?’

‘He rules the otherworld, my pupil,’ Teacher Khons said.

He reigns over the Field of Reeds, a pleasant place of feasting and little waterways, of lotus and canals, where no sunlight blisters or cold bites; where no sandfly stings or crocodile threatens. No hot winds blow there, where the happy dead live in their houses, attended by their shabti, the answerers who are buried with them.

There each family has its own fig tree and grape vine, and all live in peace with one another. And in the centre of this pleasant place is the House of Osiris, where Kings and Queens dwell and feast and laugh forever.

‘It is not so in the Island,’ said Merope.

‘Tell us,’ I said, leaning on Khons, who nodded at Merope.

‘There all dead persons explain their lives to Gaia, Mistress of Animals, and Dionysus the dancer, her consort. There they say: I have been just, I have not hurt or killed, I have loved and been loved, there are those who will mourn my death.

‘And Gaia welcomes them into her kingdom, to dance with the Dancer and sleep in the green grass, on the mountains where the goats crop, in the Island Underworld where Gaia sits on her flowered throne,’ Merope said.

‘Here, too, one must confess before Osiris,’ returned the teacher. ‘The dead one must say: I have done no murder. I have not oppressed the widow and orphan. I have fed the hungry and given water to the thirsty; and to those who could not cross the river I have given boats.

‘The more power the person had on earth, the more chance they had to do the wrong thing and the more likely they are to see their heart sinking in the balances against the feather of Maat. For the herdsman has little chance to commit sins; he is too poor for gluttony and too ugly for lechery and has too little power to oppress the poor. But the great man has a correspondingly greater scope, and therefore can more easily fall into sin.’

‘What happens to those whose heart is heavy in the balance?’ asked Merope.

‘The heart is eaten by the monster Aphopis, half crocodile and half dog, and they are forgotten,’ replied Khons.

‘Even if they are embalmed in the proper way and all the spells said and offerings made?’

‘Even so,’ said Khons seriously. ‘Unless the dead person is good, they will not survive to live in Osiris’ kingdom. In the Tale of Se-Osiris the Magician, it is told that the good poor man goes on rejoicing to feast with Horus, and the rich greedy and corrupt man lies down at the first keeper’s door, and the socket for the door-pivot is his eye.’

We thought about this. It was a sobering image. For if the more powerful had more scope to commit sins, what could we make of the changes being wrought by the most powerful of all, who had just announced that he was changing his name and would henceforth be known as Akhnaten; and that in his new city there would be no feast of Amen-Re at the New Year?

Ptah-hotep

Many people came to visit us over the next two days. The report was written, with Kheperren’s reluctance to declare his own bravery overcome, mostly by main force—by which I mean that Hanufer sat on him while Bakhenmut made a fair copy of the report and gave it to Khety to copy five times, and I sealed it. It was then an official document and it would have been treason to meddle with it or erase so much as a line. This was explained to Kheperren with due solemnity and he agreed to allow the report to go to Horemheb and the King without emendation.

The holidays were always marked with a round of visiting and a lot of eating and drinking, and Kheperren and I wandered from gathering to gathering, arriving when we wished and departing when we felt like it. I had never drunk so much in my life, but consoled my conscience with the notion that soon I would be back at work; and then my mind shied away from the thought that Kheperren must leave me again at the end of the twelve days. He must go with the captains and depart into the waste, and risk his life every day, a life so precious to me that I did not know if I could live without him.

However, we were enjoying our leisure. The palace was loud with the noise of parties, the stink of lamps and the cloud of perfumes; wine, roasting, melting fat as the scent-cones dripped oil down the faces and wigs of the guests. We were lurching down a corridor, arms around each other, in the middle of the second night, and Kheperren was saying how difficult navigation was in the half dark when we almost fell into the arms of Horemheb and an old man.

We dropped as soon as we saw who it was with the brave captain, and kissed his sandal toes. I tried to force my wine-soaked wits to remember the proper forms of address but I was hauled up by the shoulder before I could get through half of the titles of Amenhotep the King, may he live forever.

He was regarding us with very shrewd dark brown eyes. I leaned on Kheperren and he leaned on me and together we remained more or less upright. Horemheb said, lips twitching, ‘Here is the Great Royal Scribe of your Royal Son, Master, and my brave army scribe.’

‘Come with us,’ said the King, and we followed him into a little antechamber, past two ranks of soldiers. There a woman sat nursing a child. It was Great Royal Wife Queen Tiye, the red-headed woman, and she smiled indulgently upon us and called for wine mixed with water and plain bread with sesame seed, reputed to be good for hangovers. We sagged down onto a precious carpet before the King’s feet and Horemheb took a chair.

‘I am always pleased to talk with chance-met companions,’ said the King slowly, making sure that his words penetrated even the most wine-sodden skull. ‘It would not be proper for me to interfere in my son’s household, of course, but I admit I was curious about this young scribe, especially since the Great Royal Lady tells me that he deals most impartially with the matters she sends.’

I had investigated the farmer’s complaints, discounted ten percent for exaggeration and found a case to answer. The Headman was now awaiting trial for oppression and theft, though what would probably seal his fate was defrauding the King’s taxes. The new Headman would be required to watch his predecessor’s execution, which should ensure exemplary rule in that village for a generation or so. Since then the Queen had seen fit to send me three or four other matters, which I was considering.

Not that I was capable of considering all that much at the moment. Kheperren, always a happy drunk, was showing a tendency to giggle, and I felt as though every thought had to be dredged up as from a deep well. When the wine-and-water came, I took some deep draughts and ate some bitter herbs, which the slave had also brought. They were the dark green nettle which we call gallus, a strong restorative. I felt slightly sick, but clearer in the head. The King looked approvingly on me and smiled.

I could not see any of my lord Akhnamen, now Akhnaten, in the king. He had none of the dreamy aura which surrounded the Royal Son. He was immensely alive and alert, though old, and if his gaze had been sharper when he was younger then he would have been able to stare holes in a stone door.

I realised that I had been fetched, accidentally on purpose, to a serious meeting which palace procedure would have totally forbidden, and sat up straighter. My dearest friend appeared to be sobering, also. No one ever said that Kheperren was unobservant.

‘General Horemheb,’ said the King, ‘what shall we say to this Great Royal Scribe and this decorated soldier?’

‘We shall say that they hold the fate of the Black Land in their hands, and explain the situation without frightening them too badly,’ replied Horemheb, flicking a blue-beaded tress back over his shoulder.

‘You trust them, despite their youth?’

‘I trust them because of their youth,’ he replied. ‘And because although he has no taste for war, Kheperren saved my life. He did not flinch and he did not run, and that is much for an untried and scholarly young man. And I trust them because they are brothers.’

‘Very well,’ said the King Amenhotep may he live.

‘General,’ said Kheperren, wavering down to kiss Horemheb’s foot, ‘congratulations on your elevation.’

‘Scribe,’ said the general, ‘I thank you. I have here your mark of valour, which you will wear in memory of the Battle of the Mountains.’

He took Kheperren’s hand and slipped a heavy gold arm-ring onto his wrist. It was figured with silver bees.

I knew that Kheperren was about to protest and I wanted to hear what the King had to say, so I pulled him back onto our carpet and said, ‘Congratulations, soldier! My lords, we are at your disposal. What did you wish to say to us?’ I was worried as to how long my sobriety would last and I did not wish to disgrace my office by falling asleep.

‘Egypt,’ said the King, a little amused by my presumption, ‘is at its fullest extent. We control more land than we ever have, and we control it mostly by diplomacy. The army, of course, is important,’ he deferred to the general in a way which was most pleasing to watch, ‘but mostly we have maintained this empire by diplomacy. My entire foreign office spends all its days in writing letters to the surrounding kings and princelings and in patching up alliances and in fostering quarrels between our enemies.’ The old man got up and began to pace the room, occasionally pausing to stroke the cheek of the sleeping child or take a strand of the Queen’s coppery hair between his fingers.

‘Consider,’ he continued, ‘on both sides of the Nile there is Desaret, a bleak waste, where nomads roam. They are not immensely important on their own, being quarrelsome and uncertain of purpose. If they can ever ally one with the other, settle their differences and invade in force that will be a different matter, and I have agents amongst the tribes to warn the throne of the emergence of a new god, which is the only thing which could make them dangerous. Beyond them on one side there are the kingdoms of Mitanni, Babylonia and Khatte, who are bitter enemies of each other and must be kept so. For if they combine, my children, then Egypt will fall before their combined might, and we will be subjugated just as we were under the Hyksos.’

‘How can they be kept at variance?’ I asked.

‘By a sedulous fostering of quarrels, my scribe, by a careful application of flattery and gifts, by marriages and alliances. On the Great Green Sea our messengers sail to Achaea and to Kriti; there is a Princess Merope of that Island amongst the Great Royal Wives, here to bind her father Minos to our treaty. We sail to Ugarit, to Tyre, to Byblos unmolested. Our boundaries stretch across most of the Known World, but take heed of this: no army in the world could protect them if they were assailed at more than one point. However big the army, however well led—and General Horemheb, I mean no insult—they could not get to a troubled spot in time if an invasion in force was attempted. Only diplomacy can keep Egypt, and that is why you are here, young and honourable men. I fear…’’

He was standing by his wife and she reached up and took his hand, drawing it to her breast. For a moment, I saw fear in the heart of the Lord Amenhotep.

‘My son is building a new city, and you will go there with him when it is finished, Ptah-hotep,’ said the King. ‘I doubt the King Akhnamen—Akhnaten now, of course—will bother with a foreign office, so I am asking you to do me this favour. Take with you several scribes from my service who speak the foreign tongues and write the barbaric cuneiform. Receive the ambassadors politely, send out such presents as will please them, and try—for me, for Egypt—to balance the allies and suppress the enemies. You can maintain a link with the army by your letters to your heart’s brother Kheperren who will stay with the General Horemheb, who will keep him safe for love of me.’

‘Lord of the Two Crowns, I will try to do as you wish,’ I began. ‘But I do not know what the Lord Akhnaten intends for me, and at any moment I may lose his favour. Already I am worried by this man Huy, whom he took from the cattle-market.’

‘Ah, yes,’ said the King, sitting down heavily, so that the straps of his chair squeaked. ‘Huy. He has named him Chamberlain?’

‘Yes, Lord. Huy is insolent to his superiors and cruel to his inferiors and he has great ascendancy over the Great Royal Son. I know that he is disliked by everyone; but the same could be said of me,’ I added, conscious that I was telling tales.

‘No, the same is not said of you,’ said the King. ‘Ever since you came back alive from your interview with the Chief Priest of Amen-Re, you have been respected.

‘It is my fault, you know; all of this,’ he added.

We stared at him.

‘I began to attack on the power of the Priests of Amen-Re. It seemed to me that they had grown too great. A kingdom must have balance, young men; it must lie between contending powers on a fine point, like a pair of scales. I saw the Amen-Re temple taking over more and more administration until my father was almost helpless to act at all; for they ran the kingdom, and he was merely a figurehead. That was not my idea of royalty, though it would have been better if I had not meddled.

‘I thought the Aten a charming philosophy, rooted in ancient belief, that I could use to remind the Amen-Re priests that they were not as important as they thought. I managed to retrieve a number of operations from them. Now I believe that I was wrong.’

He began to pace again, an old man under a great burden.

‘Lord, you were not to know that your son would be sick…’ began the Queen, saying something which I would not have dared to voice.

‘But such things happen,’ said the King. ‘There will in the nature of history be weak kings and mad kings, and the kingdom must be able to cope if the head of state is an infant or incapacitated. I took all the reins into my own hands in my arrogance, and now it may be that the next driver is going to steer the chariot off a cliff, to the ruin of all.’

‘It shall be prevented, if our lives can do so,’ said Horemheb, and we agreed aloud.

‘I may not be able to speak to you again,’ said King Amenhotep may he live, laying his hand on my head then on my brother’s.

‘Particularly beware of Mittani. Tushratta is a devious, greedy and unprincipled king who will tear up any treaty if it suits him. His main enemy is Khatti; luckily they love gold. Send them cartloads of statues. Do what you can to mitigate the effects of my son’s fanaticism. Report to General Horemheb. The gods bless you and keep you, my sons.’

As we were leaving, carefully reproducing our previous stance though we had never felt less drunk, we heard him whisper, ‘And may the gods save Egypt.’

The last I saw of the Pharaoh the Lord Amenhotep may he live long, he had slumped down next to his wife, burying his face in her neck, and she was stroking his white hair.