Out of the Black Land

Chapter Two

Mutnodjme

It is a serious business, marrying a Pharaoh.

This is because he is also a God, the avatar of Amen-Re, Lord of All. He takes many women as concubines and secondary wives, but there is only one Great Royal Wife, and it is through her that the crown is gained. Therefore he is usually required to marry his sister.

The case of Akhnamen was unusual. Everything about my sister’s husband was unusual and I found myself wishing, sometimes, that Prince Thutmose, his elder brother, had not died after being bitten by a snake. The physicians and the priests had laboured over him as he shivered and screamed, but their spells had not found favour with the Gods and Thutmose, the eldest son and his father’s delight, had departed to the Field of Offerings, the pleasant land where the ka of the person goes after death.

It is well known that a person has five elements: the ka, or double; the khou, or soul, the little flame which burns over the ka; and the ba, or the body-spirit. Then there are the Name and the Shadow, but only priests really understand these mysteries.

I have at last been allowed to stop tormenting flowers and I am sitting at my sister’s feet, already dressed in my own best garments, listening to Tey’s instructions as the bath-women massage Nefertiti with scented oil. My mother’s voice is sharp and precise. She says exactly what she means, and she knows everything.

‘This is a great honour, daughter, and it has been bestowed on you because Tiye the Queen may she live is your father’s sister. You are required to serve the Pharaoh, please him, and bear him a son.’

‘Mother,’ Nefertiti murmurs, ‘that may not be possible’.

‘You have heard the rumours, then?’ asked Tey. She is sitting in a leather saddleback chair and she is picking the gold leaf off one of the lion’s head finials. I can see her nervous fingers, dark and skilled, smeared with golden dust.

‘They say that he is impotent,’ Nefertiti did not sound perturbed, but then she never did. Her nature was as sweet and still as cream.

‘You must do your best,’ said Tey. Then she sat up straight and clapped her hands, gesturing to the door. The servants left without comment—Tey would never keep a servant who did not obey her instantly—and the door closed.

‘You know the situation, daughter,’ said my mother. ‘Amenhotep the Third may he live and his son, are co-regents. The next King was to have been Prince Thutmose but he is gone. The King strives to teach the Lord Akhnamen wisdom such as he himself richly owns, but the Heir was idle and mystical when he was just a prince. Now he wishes to do nothing but consider the deep matters of the Gods which would be better left to priests, whose business they are.

‘And the King Amenhotep is aging—health and strength be unto him—so your Lord may soon be Lord of all Egypt, may that day be long delayed! Before this happens, a son is needed.’

‘Why didn’t my Lord Akhnamen marry his sister the Princess Sitamen?’ I asked from the floor. Tey jumped, saw that it was only me, and answered briskly.

‘Because his father had already married her. There is no Royal Heiress for the Heir to marry, so he has done this house great honour in choosing Nefertiti. Your questions will not spoil, Mutnodjme, if you keep them in your mouth until later!’

‘Do not scold her, Mother,’ my beautiful sister drew me closer to her scented breast. ‘It was a good question. And the problem remains, Mother Tey. I do not need rumours, I can see for myself that there is something amiss with the Heir; though he is gentle, they say. If no seed springs from him in my womb, what shall we do?’

‘We will think of something,’ said Tey. ‘I will be near, daughter, we will talk again. Let me look at you.’

Nefertiti stood up and Tey herself draped the gown over her; the finest pleated gauze-thin linen, through which her delicate pale limbs moved, as visible as a woman swimming in milk. The fashion for short, neat wigs, the sort that they called Nubian, suited my sister’s pure line of jaw and nose. The jewels of the Pharaoh were laid on her shoulders and arms, and I thought that they weighed her down. My sister was more beautiful in her bare skin as Khnum the Potter made her on his wheel, than any lady dressed in the most precious garments, the richest topaz, turquoise and gold.

Tey my mother adjusted the counterweight which held the great pectoral in balance across the slender shoulders and flicked an errant strand of hair into place.

‘You are beautiful,’ decided Great Royal Nurse Tey, and led Nefertiti to the door. She moved as she always did, with elegance and economy, like a dancer in the temple of Hathor, the Goddess of Love and Beauty, and the attendants, waiting outside until we should please to emerge, leapt to their feet. There were a hundred women in fine gauze and all of their jewellery. The scents of jasmine and myrrh were so strong as to be almost a stench. In homage to her beauty, the naked musicians carried Hathor’s sistra before my sister on the way to her marriage with the Pharaoh Akhnamen may he live. We entered the corridor to the music of harps and drums and little bells.

That was the first time I saw him whose wisdom is famous throughout the whole world. Barbarian Kings sing his praises, and his own scribes and priests bow down to his sagacity: Pharaoh Amenhotep, Lord of the Upper and Lower Crowns.

He was old and fat and I was very disappointed.

We came in to the great hall of the Kings, our music about us, to stand before the two thrones. They were on a high dais with eleven steps. The thrones were of black wood, inlaid with lions and lotuses, and the king’s enemies were on his footstool; defeated Nubians and Asiatics and Hittites. The carved figure of Amenhotep may he live was holding three of them at once by the hair.

Our sandals made a rustling on the inlaid marble floor, as though the papyrus remembered its reedy home. I was right behind my sister Nefertiti, a little stunned by the drumming and the music and half suffocated by perfumes.

Nefertiti was led toward the thrones by Father Ay, soon to be Divine Father. I had not seen him often during my life. He was wearing so many jewels that he glittered in the dawn light; a stocky man with dark skin, like mine and my mother’s. He was scowling, as he usually was. He had shown no interest in me.

The women said that he had been very much in love with his concubine, who bore him one dazzling daughter before she died, and he visited my mother only occasionally. First wife has the position, concubine has the attention; that is what the women said. Perhaps that also was a maxim of Amenhotep may he live! for he had almost a hundred wives; though they said that he doted most on the red-headed woman, Tiye the Queen, who had been his first wife and still lay with him almost every night.

Nefertiti was approaching the throne. She sank down, graceful as a bird, while the music died away and there was silence. It extended for so long that I grew bored. We could not move until one of the Kings was pleased to speak to us.

I tried lining up my new sandals on the golden lotuses on the floor. They fitted perfectly, which pleased me. I peered around my mother, trying not to breathe heavily and risk stirring her delicate gauze draperies. If she felt me moving, she would glare me back into decorous behaviour.

The Lords were looking not at my sister but each other. One was Akhnamen may he live; a young man, heavily decorated and painted, wearing a long wig and the crown of the Upper and Lower Lands. The cobra which was wrapped around the crowns, the uraeus, was of bright cloisonné and so real that I thought I could hear it hiss. The younger King was thick of body, with a strange face; high cheekbones, slanting eyes, a long jaw and soft red lips.

The other King was fat and old. This was the Lord Amenhotep of legendary wisdom. His belly overflowed his beautiful embroidered cloth, and his solid chest bore many jewels; he had thick wrists and stubby fingers overloaded with rings. I was not pleased with him at all until I lifted my gaze to his face and he caught my eyes.

Brown eyes, most deep and considering brown eyes, terribly clever but terribly forgiving. He knew, I felt, as the Divine mouth lifted a little at one corner in a conspiratorial grin, exactly how boring it was to be an overdressed nine-year-old girl, forced to stand in a palace procession and not be able to see anything. He knew why I was peeping around my mother to see what happened to my sister. He even knew, I was sure, how very much I loved her. I smiled back at him with all my heart. Then he shifted his gaze so that my mother would not catch me looking at the Lord of the Two Lands, and returned his attention to his son.

I could not hear what they were saying. My mother was so tense that I felt her quiver like a leashed hunting dog. Was this all for nothing? Were we to take my sister home again? I hoped desperately that this would happen. But finally the strange young man stirred, stood up, and came down the eleven steps to take my sister’s hands and raise her to her feet.

Then the music broke out again, loud and exultant, drums and women’s voices. Nefertiti mounted the steps. Akhnamen may he live presented her to his father Amenhotep, who kissed her on each cheek. Taking one hand each, they presented her to the gathering and we all cheered.

The gates had been opened. Outside were the people of Thebes, all craning to catch a glimpse of the most beautiful woman in the world. When they saw her a gasp and a murmur ran through the mob. Then they began to yell ‘Nefertiti Divine Spouse who lives! Health! Strength! Life to the great Royal Wife!’

As the Kings and my sister walked along the colonnade which led to the temple of Amen-Re where she was to be crowned Queen, flowers rained down from people who lined the walls, so that the golden stone was carpeted with perfumed petals, and the voices followed us, ‘Blessings on the Great Royal Wife, Nefertiti daughter of Divine Father Ay, blessings on Divine Nurse Tey, life to Akhnamen, may he live!’

We left more and more people behind as we moved into the precincts of the temple.

The central mystery, of course, is only for the King and the High Priest of Amen. No one but priests see the God, when they tend him every day. The women stopped as though at an invisible barrier but the Kings walked on, Nefertiti between them, and I followed because no one stopped me, at the heels of Tey my mother and Ay my father.

Inside the temple, in the hypostyle hall like a huge forest of carved petrified trees, four thrones were set up beside a statue of Amen-Re as the Hawk Re Harakti. There were priests waiting. One held a crown. I saw that the Lord Amenhotep was talking to my sister, smiling at her, and she was smiling in return, shy in such state and such company. Then he bade her kneel, and the priest, a tall man with a priest’s shaven skull, raised the crown and lowered it onto my sister’s head.

It was heavy. I saw her shoulder and neck muscles tense to take the weight. With both hands in those of the Lord Amenhotep, she rose again, and was led to sit down on the throne between the King Amenhotep and her new husband, who had hardly looked at her. I was indignant. Didn’t he understand that he had been given the most beautiful of all women as his own?

The air was heavy with the frankincense which came from far-away Punt. It smoked in little dishes on the floor. I felt sick.

Before I could disgrace myself by really being sick in the temple, for which I would probably have been condemned to have my heart eaten after death, I was distracted by the arrival of the Queen, who walked alone up the steps and sat down beside her lord, Amenhotep.

Queen Tiye was plump and smooth, draped in cloth of astounding quality. She wore the Crown of the Upper and Lower Lands, and her skin was as white as milk and her face rounded and smooth. I knew that her hair was red, thought to be unlucky, the colour of Set the Adversary and of Desaret, the Red Waste outside Khemet the Black Land. I knew that there had been trouble with the priests when the Lord Amenhotep had married the foreign woman, although he was Pharaoh and could presumably marry as he pleased, and there were no royal children left from his father’s reign. But I also knew that she had borne sons and daughters to the King and he doted on her. I saw the great crown tilt as Queen Tiye smiled at Nefertiti, and my sister sighed with relief.

Then the priests censed everyone, declared a blessing in language so hieratic that I could not understand it, and we were released to go back to the palace at Thebes and feast.

It was a good feast, and I was sick, after all.

Ptah-hotep

When Pharaoh declares his wish, it is as good as done; and so it was with me. I slept one more night with the trainee scribes in the dormitory. My destiny had been declared. I would now not be a priest. I had no great leaning towards such a life, anyway. I had just wanted to be a skilful scribe, if I had to be a scribe, not a priest.

But I was distracted with grief at leaving my heart’s brother. The Master of Scribes, for some reason, relaxed his usual rule and allowed us to sleep my last night together. In fact the Master seemed strangely sorry for me, considering the fact that everyone else was congratulating me on my amazingly good fortune. He sent me bread and roasted goose and fruit from his own table, and the servant who brought it had been ordered to stay and serve Kheperren and myself as though we were grown and masters in our own house.

We sat in my little room, one on either side of a borrowed table, dressed in our best clothes, and the servant poured wine for us whenever our cups were empty. And because I was a boy and my heart had already been broken when Pharaoh touched my shoulders with the flail, I began to enjoy myself. The food was good, and we ate heartily and drank deep, and drunkenly embraced. Then we slept in each other’s arms all night, and I woke to the dawn twittering of the swallows who nest in the temple of Amen-Re and saw my brother, my spouse, asleep with his head pillowed on his arm. By the cool light he was to me entirely beautiful and unexpressively dear. The light embraced the curve of his olive cheek and the fringe of his sooty eyelashes. Kheperren’s other hand had been curled on my chest as I slept beside him.

I stood silently in the doorway, my bundle of possessions in my hand—a few spare cloths, a childhood amulet given to me by my father, the usual belongings. My palette and the gear of my trade had already gone to the palace. I did not want to wake Kheperren. I feared I would not survive a farewell.

So I dipped my finger in lamp-black and wrote ‘I will always love you’ on the wall near his face, where he would see it when his eyes opened, and went away.

I washed in the sacred lake, put on my best cloth, painted my eyes with kohl to protect them from the glare, and went with the servant who had come from the Lord of the Upper and Lower Lands to take me to the palace.

And despite my best resolutions, I wept all the way.

I was met by a Chamberlain, who exclaimed, ‘So young! Amen-Re have compassion on us, boy, you cannot appear before Pharaoh like that. Come in here.’ He ushered me into an anteroom where a young woman was bandaging a slave’s foot. She did it very neatly, I noticed in my dreary grief. She dismissed the slave with a pat on the toe and an injunction to rest for at least a week, and then turned her attention to me; as the Master of Slaves scolded her patient for being stupid enough to put his foot under a falling bench. ‘And you the King’s favourite cup bearer, what am I going to tell him?’

‘This is the King Akhnamen’s new scribe,’ said the Chamberlain, a fussy man of middle age wearing too much jewellery and paint. ‘Do what you can, Meryt.’

‘Sit down,’ said the young woman. ‘What’s your name, Scribe? I’m Meryt the Nubian. Where does it hurt?’

‘Only my heart,’ I said as I sat down on the stone bench. She took my hand and her warm fingers found my pulse.

‘The voice of your heart says that you are healthy,’ she said gravely. Her skin was soot-black and her eyes twinkled. ‘But drink this while I clean your face and re-apply your kohl.’

I drank obediently as she washed my face with precise strokes of a wad of damp linen and re-drew my eyes. She passed a red-ochre brush gently across my cheeks to restore the bloom of health. The drink was a warm compound of wine, honey and herbs, and it went down smoothly, not offending my already over-worked insides.

‘You have left someone you love to come to Pharaoh’s service,’ she remarked. ‘That is hard. But you will flourish in the regard of the Pharaoh, be happy, and come to your lover again.’

‘How do you know?’ I asked.

‘I am a Nubian and we have some skill in foretelling though I am no oracle. But I know,’ she said firmly.

For some reason I was greatly cheered.

‘There are many people in the palace today, is it always like this?’ I asked, as she straightened my earrings and flicked dust off my wig.

‘It’s the coronation of the great Royal Wife Nefertiti,’ she replied, laughing. ‘Where have you been?’

‘His Majesty took me yesterday from the School of Scribes to be his personal scribe,’ I told her. I felt her draw back in shock, and then she came and knelt before me, her forehead on my sandal.

‘I did not know, Lord, pardon!’ she whispered.

‘Meryt, get up,’ I tugged at her shoulder. ‘Why are you bowing to me?’

‘You are the Royal Scribe,’ she said, looking up from her crouch. ‘You rank higher than almost anyone in the kingdom, except those of royal blood or the priests of Amen-Re.’

‘In that case I order you to stand up,’ I was astounded and I needed more information. ‘This can’t be,’ I said.

‘Lord, if that is your position, then that is your rank.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ I protested.

‘If you will take some advice,’ ventured Meryt in a whisper, ‘beware the envy of others. Have your food tasted and search your rooms for serpents and your bed for scorpions. I am the lowliest of Pharaoh’s slaves, but I know this much; there will be much murmuring at this appointment. No one will say anything to you, Lord, but they will be very angry. The person who was expecting to be royal scribe was the old man the Lord Nebamenet. He has expanded his household on the understanding that he would be awarded the post.’

‘If this is true, Meryt, will you come to me and keep the serpents away?’ I asked entirely on impulse. She looked away.

‘Master, I am unworthy,’ she murmured conventionally, which meant ‘yes’.

Thus I acquired my first slave, for it was true—I had been elevated to one of the highest posts in the Kingdom, and with much more justice than Meryt I felt like saying, ‘Lord, I am unworthy’.

The chamberlain took me into the first hall, where the common people come to speak to officials and those badly treated can appeal to Pharaoh their father. It was decorated with stiff lotuses and stiff papyrus heads, the symbols of Upper and Lower Egypt. A slave was sweeping the stone floor, another was sprinkling jasmine-water, and clearly something was about to happen. The soldiers at the gate had lined up in a long double row, light gleaming off their heavy belts and helmets. The wind carried to me the jingling of their accoutrements. The Chamberlain, muttering something about inconvenience, took me through the Audience Chamber and into the palace behind, and we stood at a window looking down into the hall.

‘The Great Royal Wife Nefertiti was crowned not an hour ago,’ he said under his breath. ‘Both Kings may they live! will be here soon. They will show the new Queen to the people, then come along this corridor into the feasting hall. There the Lord Akhnamen has ordered that you should meet him. Now I really should…’

‘Wait, Lord,’ I grasped him by the arm. ‘The slave Meryt said that I had been given one of the highest offices in the kingdom. She was, of course, wrong?’

‘Nubians, they talk too much. Yes boy, I mean, my Lord, you are ranked higher than almost any, and I hope you live your first decan, for I do not know what will save you unless the Gods do.’

This was alarming and I forgot my grief for a little. Still holding him, I demanded ‘Explain!’

‘I don’t know how to explain it,’ he wailed, the paint on his cheeks cracking a little with the stress of unaccustomed facial expression. ‘Did he know you before, Lord Ptah-hotep, know you…when he was a boy?’

‘No, of course not. Yesterday I was swimming in the sacred lake and he just came and took me. I have never seen him before,’ I replied.

‘Whimsical, whimsical, that’s the Divine Akhnamen. I wish that his brother had lived. But at least he has married; a wife will settle him down.’ He spoke to himself, then remembered me.

‘Now, don’t be afraid, boy, my Lord. He won’t hurt you, he’s the gentlest creature alive, may Amen-Re shine sense upon him! He just doesn’t think, you see, he’s impulsive. But he keeps his friends, and he needs them. Be a friend to him and no courtier’s malice can touch you.’

‘Sell me the slave Meryt,’ I requested. He patted me on the shoulder.

‘Certainly,’ he replied. ‘Ten ingots of copper and she is yours.’

‘Should all this be true, Lord, I will owe you the copper, and you will send her to my quarters as soon as you can. I feel,’ I added, as we heard trumpets and the whole honour guard sprang to attention, ‘that I will need someone to watch over me.’

I went to the feasting hall as the procession left the Audience Chamber and walked along the corridor painted with a fresco of tribute bearers. I was puzzled and apprehensive but my heart was still too sore to be either really joyful or really afraid.

I heard the swish of the ladies’ draperies and their voices, as they were freed from ceremony to speak, pass my window and I slipped out into the passage and came along behind them.

I had never seen such splendour as that feasting hall on my first night in the palace of the Kings. The Kings and their Queens were seated on a raised platform at one end of the hall, with painted frescoes of antelopes behind them and a whole lion hunt on the opposite wall.

The tables were draped with white cloth and laden with all manner of food; bread and roasted fish and dried fish, roasted oxen, goat, roast quail and duck and goose; plums and melons and figs and grapes in black bunches, bursting with juice. There were three sorts of cheese and eleven different cakes, dates, pomegranates, and salads of lettuce and leeks.

I had never seen so much food in my life. In my father’s house we were never hungry, we had bread, fish and beans every day and roasted meat occasionally. But this abundance was astonishing and I had to restrain my hand from creeping out and stealing a cinnamon cake. My nostrils twitched with the heavenly scent. Cinnamon and, I thought, honey.

The chamberlain, who may have been feeling guilty about his casual reception of me, took me by the hand and led me through the feast to the Kings.

Everywhere people were tearing apart roasted quail and crunching bones and demanding more wine. Servants flew about the huge room with pots and jugs. Musicians strummed and plucked valiantly, but could hardly be heard above the voices and the demands for more drink, at once!

I was deafened and shaken—it was like being inside a gigantic mouth—by the time I was kneeling at the feet of the young man with the strange misty gaze.

‘Ptah-hotep,’ he said vaguely. For a delirious moment I thought he might have forgotten me and I would be sent back to my own trade and my Kheperren. Then his eyes sharpened, as if I had come into focus.

‘See, my Lady,’ he addressed a woman of surpassing beauty, who put down her wine-cup politely and smiled at me. ‘This is Ptah-hotep, my scribe.’

The old man sitting next along shot me a look as penetrating as a spear, then smiled and I smiled back. It was impossible not to smile when Amenhotep the King may he live for a hundred years smiled. But the Lord Akhnamen was my master and he was touching my bowed head with his staff.

‘Rise, Ptah-hotep, you are Great Royal Scribe,’ he said quietly, and the whole hall fell silent. The silence began amongst the great nobles, and spread with surprising speed through the feasting ladies to the door slaves. No one glared, but they all stared, some with curiosity, some with a determination to make sure that I did not keep my position while there was poison in the world. I could read them all. Meryt the Nubian had been right.

I was now required to stand and reply, and I did so. I was, for some reason, no longer afraid.

‘Life! Health! Strength to the Pharaoh Akhnamen!’ I cried, and the whole hall screamed the salutation, mostly with their mouths full.

‘Life! Health! Strength!’

I hoped that it would be so for me, too. But I would not have given high odds on my surviving until the next month.