Out of the Black Land

Chapter Twenty-two

Mutnodjme

I had never chosen a husband for anyone before. Merope had been unable to tell me anything particular, how could she? But she said she wanted a kind man, gentle and strong, with proven fertility and no vices, and we broke down giggling as we realised that what she was describing were the points of a good horse.

The stud market of Aten was open for business and Kheperren and I entered as worshippers. I knew that the Aten was a predominately male religion, but I was not prepared for the temple, which was beautiful beyond belief, decorated with friezes of rural scenes and golden images of the sun disc. All the walls of the inner chamber were carved with images of the royal family, worshipping the Aten together, with the sun’s rays ending in little hands which came down to bless them; Nefertiti the Queen and Akhnaten the King and the little princesses.

I walked away from Kheperren to examine a particularly fine frieze, and at once I was surrounded by men. For the purposes of selecting a suitable man for another woman, I had donned an opaque cloth belonging to my days as a temple maiden and had covered my shoulders and breasts with a plain shawl. This did not preserve me from peering and whispering. I became very uncomfortable. I was behaving in the way which the lord Akhnaten required, I was modest, I was humble, I looked no man in the face, I kicked no man in the crotch for the vile things which they were suggesting to me, but it was not helping. Fingers slid inside my clothes and I was just about to forget this veil of humility and fight back when Kheperren came to my side and all the tweakers and whisperers fell silent. I looked up into his grave scarred face with a look of silent appeal.

He took my hand and said, ‘Come, lady, this is no suitable place for you,’ and I saw the feet shuffle aside as he passed, clearing a way for the soldier and his woman.

‘There is no man in that temple whom I would allow to touch my sister’s sandals,’ I spat as we came out into the sun.

‘I know. Things have become bad for women; the state of the country is very evil. “This land is in commotion and no one knows what the result will be, for it is hidden from speech, sight and hearing,” but that is Neferti’s old prophecy and has already come to pass,’ he replied, leading me through the broad, flat, sanded avenue of sycamores to a square building marked like all others with the rayed disc of the sun god Aten. ‘We may fare better here.’

‘More priests?’ I said, not quietly enough.

‘Lady,’ said a polite voice with a temple accent. ‘How can we serve you?’

Heedless of this modesty taboo, I looked him in the face. He was a middle aged man, clearly a scribe. He did not seem to be horrified by either my person or my actions, which inclined me toward him.

‘I am the Princess the Lady Mutnodjme on an errand of Widow-Queen Tiye, Ruler of the Ruler of the Double Crown, Mistress of Egypt,’ I said, tired of anonymity and driven into using my conferred rank, which I usually forgot. I could not look around quietly for a suitable man, and all the whisperers and tweakers would not leave me alone.

‘Lady Mutnodjme, I and all my men are servants of the Mistress of Egypt may she live,’ he replied, bowing to a proper depth.

‘Who are you and what is your position?’ asked Kheperren.

‘I am the servant of the Aten, the Lector of the Sole and Only God, my name is Dhutmose and I work here writing the stories and miracles of the Aten as far as they have yet been told. There are a hundred and twenty men under my command.’

‘Are they all priests of the Aten?’ I demanded

‘Yes, Lady.’

‘I need to find a husband for one whom the Widow-Queen loves. I need a man who has sufficient wealth to keep her, a lady of birth and position. I need a man who is gentle and kind and well spoken, one who will make her laugh.’

‘One who is not already married?’

‘Of course.’

His brow furrowed. He bowed us into a chamber which was clearly his; there were pictures on the walls of a dwarf and a dog driving a gazelle in harness, a cat’s funeral procession celebrated by mice and some very athletic lovers in a variety of positions. A sexually-active man with a taste for satire, it seemed. I began to be interested in Dhutmose. He had a round face and fringed brown eyes like a cow, with a goat’s wary gleam.

‘Now, lady, let me send for some beer, it is disagreeably hot today, isn’t it? And perhaps your escort would like some too. Soldiers drink beer.’

‘He’s a scribe,’ I said shortly. The trip into the temple had ruffled my temper. ‘But let us have beer, by all means.’

‘He’s a scribe? I beg your pardon, brother scribe, I did not recognise…’ began Dhutmose, flustered. Then he peered closer at my escort and said, ‘By the Aten, it’s Kheperren, isn’t it? My dear boy, don’t you know me? I taught you demotic all those years ago. Where have you been, boy, to get so burned and scarred?’

‘With the army, Master,’ Kheperren broke into a huge smile. ‘Master, I lost track of you ten years ago when I went with the army, and Ptah-hotep became Great Royal Scribe. I thought you dead,’ said my escort.

‘Beer!’ Dhutmose called out the door. ‘The best brew. Right away is not too soon, if you please, gentlemen.’ This call brought an instant scurry of feet as someone raced off to get the best beer.

‘No, no, dead, us? Not at all,’ said Dhutmose. ‘Our master Ammemmes bought himself a large house and estate with the present which he says Ptah-hotep gave him—that boy really did turn out well—and settled down with the scribes who were too old to start again. He’s growing grapes. And making wine. And drinking it. But I was too young to rusticate so I came to the service of the Aten in Thebes. Then my wife died and I’ve been living in Amarna since we opened this house of books. Fine manuscripts we are producing, too. You’ve seen Ptah-hotep? Is he healthy?’

‘Very well, master, he’ll be delighted to learn that you are happy also.’

‘Tell him I wish him very well, and refer him to line 37 in the Prophecies of Neferti,’ said Dhutmose, his bright smile a little quenched. ‘Now, lady, you are looking for a man?’

‘Not for myself,’ I said hastily, and Dhutmose laughed, a good rich hearty laugh.

‘I can see for myself that you are suited,’ he patted my knee. ‘But for this protégé of the Widow-Queen Tiye may she live forever. A young woman?’

‘Eighteen, as I am. Used to the old king.’ I did not name him because I would have had to use the name of the forbidden god Osiris; and that did not strike me as a good plan in the temple school of the Aten.

‘It is going to be very difficult to find a young man with the skill of the old king; especially it is going to be very difficult to find a young man who is unmarried who has those skills unless he has been taught by a very clever young woman. Now, let us see. Eighty-three of them are married. Twenty more are boys. Let me think. We have seventeen possibles. How would you like to proceed, lady?’

‘Call each of them in and let me speak to them and touch them,’ I said. ‘We should be able to weed out the impossibles fairly quickly. I know the lady’s tastes.’

Then we began a weary round of interviews. I had never seen such an unattractive collection of youths. The ones who were not unwashed were over-clean and over-decorated and at least three of them met Kheperren’s eye and blushed or looked away; pretty boys who had been in the army camp, picking up soldiers as brief chance-met lovers. They, clearly, would not do. Not one had a spark of humour or imagination. I would not have lain down with any of them if I had been unmated for a year.

‘Lady, they are all the young men I can show you,’ apologised Dhutmose, reminding me irresistibly of a stock merchant regretting that he had no good horses this year. ‘I agree that they are filthy and unlearned. I am thinking of ordering compulsory bathing before they enter the building. I can show you thirty nice young men with impeccable manners and learning, but they are all married and I can see that the Widow-Queen Tiye may she live would not want to give away her adoptive daughter to be a secondary wife. ‘

‘Then, Master, in default of a pretty young man, I’m afraid it is going to have to be you,’ I said, consulting Kheperren with a lifted eyebrow and getting a nod in response.

‘Me?’ Dhutmose sat down suddenly in his chair of state.

‘I was sent to find a man of humour and intelligence, of kindness and gentleness, one without a wife who had sufficient wealth to support my sister,’ I said firmly. ‘Are you alone?’

‘I am,’ Dhutmose took a sip of beer and fanned himself.

‘Have you sufficient property to take a woman without a dowry?’

‘I have, but a royal lady…’

‘Your wife, she taught to you make love well?’

‘She was pleased with me after a couple of months,’ he said, and then looked so sad that I wanted to hug him.

‘Do you wish to please the Mistress of Egypt?’

‘Of course. The question is, of course, will I please this daughter? What if she wants a strong young man? I am forty, getting a little thick around the middle and my hair is marching backwards across my scalp. I am not the figure of a lover in a song. If she had been the same age, well then, I would like some company, especially if she could read. My wife was a learned woman from the temple of Isis, and we used to read aloud by lamplight on the hot nights when no one can sleep.’

‘She can read and write both cursive and hieroglyphics. She is slim and has light brown eyes and dark brown hair. She likes children and honeycakes and singing. She can dance all the Egyptian dances and Kritian too. She is…’

‘By the Gods,’ gasped Master Dhutmose, forgetting his lately-learned monotheism. ‘Are you telling me that the King Akhnaten may he live is giving away the Royal Women?’

‘Yes, without dowries, within the month and only to priests of the Aten, and the Widow-Queen Tiye is very anxious to make sure that her sister-queen goes to a good home,’ I said angrily. ‘She would do as much for any stray cat.’

‘I speak a little Kritian,’ mused Dhutmose.

‘Good, then please put your seal here and here and you can come and fetch her as soon as the King divorces her.’ Kheperren laid out a scroll on the table.

‘That is outrageous,’ he whispered. ‘Those poor women!’

‘Exactly so, master, now seal the document, if you please.’

‘What is her name?’

‘Merope. The Widow-Queen Merope of Kriti in the Great Green Sea.’

Even the shock he had just received could not induce a scribe to seal a document without reading it, and he spelled his way through the edict.

‘This confers on me all rights over the lady, with or without her will,’ he observed. ‘I hope it is with her will. But if she is wishing to be out of the palace, she might like my house, the friezes are rather fine, and my little daughter needs a mother even if the lady does not want to undertake any more of the duties of a wife. I will understand. Poor woman!’

He sealed the papyrus and Kheperren rolled it up again. My private view was that of all the duties of a wife, the one which Dhutmose was prepared to forgo was the one which Merope was most eager to comply with. I only hoped that he was equal to the challenge.

We left the astonished and gratified Dhutmose calling for a Kritian grammar, and walked back through the wide airy streets to the palace.

I had not looked at it from this angle before. It was like a castle. All the walls were sheer and very high, crowned with square bevelled battlements. There were four gates into the palace, and we were taking the one which led to the Queen’s palace.

‘Tell me of Neferti and his prophecies,’ I asked, remembering the message which Dhutmose had sent to Ptah-hotep.

‘Not here,’ said Kheperren.

Ptah-hotep

I was delighted to hear that my old teacher Dhutmose had found a place in the new regime, and thoroughly agreed with Mutnodjme’s choice. He was, as I remember, a shrewd man, but gentle and kind. It was always Dhutmose who comforted the homesick and sat with the feverish. He loved only women. I recalled that one of the boys had tried to seduce him and totally failed. Dhutmose had lifted the boy’s cloth, pointed at his phallus and said, ‘You are very beautiful, boy, but that thing would get in the way.’ He was just the man to soothe the wounded feelings of an ex-Great Royal Spouse.

But his message was worrying.

I did not have a copy of the prophecies, of course, because the work mentioned the name of Amen-Re and had been suppressed, but edicts cannot suppress memory. Their despairing tone had attracted me when I had been a boy, and I could recall many of the verses without racking my brains.

The line reference, however, meant that I had to reconstruct the whole poem, so I sat down after lunch when men usually sleep and wrote out, from memory, The Prophecies of Neferti on a plaster board which I could easily erase.

Kheperren was sitting at my feet, eating Nubian flat bread, roasted garlic and onions and filling in an occasional gap in my recollection. I am fairly sure that we had the whole of the poem after about an hour.

Line 37 began a verse. It said:

I show you a land in calamity.

Unimaginable happenings.

Men will take weapons of war

Confusion will live in the land.

Men will make arrows of bronze

Men will beg for bread of blood

Laugh with laughing at pain

None will weep at death

None will fast for the dead

Each heart will think only of itself.

‘That sums it up, I think,’ said Kheperren, kissing my knee.

‘You are very cheerful for one reading news of disaster and prophecies of doom!’ I objected. ‘Don’t drop onion juice on my clean cloth.’

‘It’s 12th dynasty, right? The prophecy of the coming of Ammenemes the First. In his time, look a bit further down, it says:

I show you a land in calamity

The weak-armed now are strong

I show you the lowly now as lord…

‘You should have seen the priests at that temple school, ’Hotep, they were filthy and unlearned. Here, look at this next bit. Isn’t all this happening?

The poor man will achieve wealth

The great lady will fornicate to exist…

A sentence is passed

And a hand wields a club

The land is diminished

The counsellors die…

‘And here,’ Kheperren continued:

There will be no Theban Nome

To be the birth-land of every god.

Kheperren dripped more onion juice on my cloth as he went back to his odorous repast, seeming to think that he had made his point.

‘Well, what?’ I twitched the cloth out from under his dripping repast.

‘When Egypt got to that state last time,’ he replied, speaking as though I was a very stupid schoolboy, ‘then a great hero arose and saved everyone, fought off the invaders, brought back the gods and established his throne in might, correct?’

‘Correct.’

‘Then it will happen again. In Egypt, my dear Ptah-hotep, everything happens again and nothing ever happens for the first time, as Master Ammemmes used to say. I’m so glad that he’s well and happy on his estate. What present did you give him, my heart?’

‘All my bracelets and an electrum pectoral which could have purchased a small province. I hope you are right,’ I told him.

‘About what?”

‘The rescuer.’

‘So do I.’

We read the rest of the prophecy in silence. As we read, we drew closer together, until we finished it sitting in the same chair, hugging each other as though we were cold. His body was comforting, even in a fume of garlic.

I show you a son as an enemy

A brother as a foe.

Every mouth says ‘love me’

all good things have passed away

A law is decreed for the state’s ruin

men destroy what is made

Make desolation of what is found

What is made is unmade

Thieves plunder, lords steal.

In all it was something of a relief when the lady Mutnodjme arrived for her cuneiform lesson and we could stop considering the state of Egypt. Kheperren’s general did not need him, so we sat down to sort the diplomatic correspondence and listen to her learning her day’s quota of signs from Harmose, who had claimed his right.

‘This is the sign for… Can you guess?’

‘It looks like a field,’ said my lady Mutnodjme. I observed her as she picked up the stylus to copy the sign. She moved decisively, as though she had always meant to do that which she was doing. It was very attractive, watching her do anything. She was deft. The Kritian princess had called her ‘fat-handed’ which I had taken for an affectionate insult, such as is common between sisters, like Kheperren calling me a commoner or my statement that the nobility were throwing undersized children if Kheperren was their best effort. But now I saw what the soon-to-be-divorced Great Royal Wife meant. The muscles of my lady Mutnodjme’s hands, especially round the thumb and the wide part of the hand, were well developed and strong.

‘It is se-u, which is grain. And this?’

The old scribe stabbed a number of wedges into the clay and my lady’s brow wrinkled. ‘It looks like a stack of building wood,’ she confessed. ‘What does it mean, Master?’

‘It means nunu in Babylonian, which signifies ‘fish.’ See, here is the oldest sign for it.’

‘Yes, I see. Something clearly happened to it in the translation.’

‘Now we will look at compound words; phrases, in Egyptian. Yesterday you learned ‘epinnu’ the sign for plough. If I write that one, then this sign, what do we have?’

‘Plough the field?’ guessed Mutnodjme.

‘Very good. Now there is a difference in these phrases is there not? Plough that field. Plough the field! He ploughs the field. The field was ploughed. The field will be ploughed. If the rains come, the field will be ploughed.’

‘Yes, Master, you are talking about cases, such as nominative, accusative, imperative, dative and ablative, and tenses like future and past,’ said Mutnodjme, disconcerting the scribe, for he had heard, but not really believed, that she was a learned woman.

‘We will consider the grammar later. For the moment all you need to know is that the word order is important.’

‘Master Harmose, I am sorry to interrupt, but I need some help with this Hittite inscription,’ said Kheperren from the floor. Harmose, who was elderly, leaned down with some difficulty and peered, then objected,

‘What’s wrong with it? Just an honorific preface, all letters begin like that, ‘To the lord of the Two Lands and the Mistress of Egypt Mayati in whom his heart delights…’

‘It is Mayati, isn’t it?’ asked Kheperren softly.

‘Who is Mayati?’ asked the lady Mutnodjme.

‘In Egyptian we would call her Mekhetaten,’ said Harmose.

‘You know, I’m getting tired of shocks,’ Lady Mutnodjme complained after a pause.

‘We all are,’ agreed Harmose.

‘What has happened to the position of my sister if foreign kings are referring to the little princess by her title?’ she asked, and we did not have an answer.

The diplomatic correspondence was completed and we were casting about for more work when a slave slammed the door open and announced, ‘The Great King’s Chamberlain Whom He loves, Huy!’

And there was Huy’s oily countenance and his scent of cassia, his usual perfume, offending my apartments. He wrinkled his nose at the smell of onions and garlic which Kheperren still exuded.

‘My lord, what can a humble servant of the King do to honour your visit?’ I asked in the accepted mode of address between superior and inferior, which I knew would annoy him.

‘My lord has sent me to order you to come to his presence,’ he said, using no words of ceremony at all.

‘I come,’ I said, climbing to my feet and brushing down my garment. This summons was unusual. I had not been called to the King’s presence since he had dictated poetry to me. He seemed happy to know that the office of Great Royal Scribe went on efficiently—or perhaps he did not care what I was doing.

Now, however, something had attracted his attention, doubtless bought to him by either Pannefer or Huy, or perhaps the Divine Father Ay. It might have been a coincidence that this summons came after we had heard that something was going on to change the status of the Great Royal Spouse Nefertiti. I shot a look at Paneb, the boy whom I suspected of being the spy, but he looked blank.

I brushed Kheperren’s neck with my hand as I stood up, and the lady Mutnodjme’s knee. I straightened my cloth, which smelt of onions, and smiled reassuringly at my worried staff. I took up a papyrus roll and my writing board, ink and stylus, the tools of a scribe to which I was entitled.

Then I went out, flanked by soldiers, feeling like a prisoner.

They stopped in an antechamber to the great temple of the Aten and motioned to me to sit down, so I sat. Huy paused for a parting sneer at the door and left. Waiting has never worried me. I had a lot to think about.

The lady Mutnodjme and Kheperren appeared to be getting along well. This was excellent. I remembered the stab of jealousy I had felt when I realised that Kheperren was the general’s lover, and his flash of rage when he knew that I had lain with Meryt so long ago. There had been nothing like that this time. Of all lucky men in the Black Land—and there were not many fortunate men in Egypt at this present time—I was probably the most blessed. I had position and wealth which had not made me proud like Pannefer, corrupt like Huy or a miser like Divine Father Ay. I had been able to benefit those whom I loved, my family and my Master Ammemmes. Those who loved me called me generous. I was healthy and over the age when field workers die of exhaustion and poverty, and I might live twenty years more. I had two lovers who both loved me and liked each other.

No one else could have made this boast, though I was not boasting. In spite of the advent of the Aten, I knew what I had to confess after I was dead, and I knew my Book of Coming Forth by Day by heart. I would say: Lord Osiris, I did no evil, except that under duress I ate the flesh of a sacred beast which I afterwards vomited forth. I gave food to the hungry and water to the thirsty and to those who could not cross the water I have boats. I lay with no woman when she was still a child. I took no bribes. I did not oppress the widow and the fatherless. No man cried to me for mercy that I did not hear.

And in my mind’s eye I could see my funeral, and I could hear the voices of the priestess of Isis and a scribe of the army, stretching out their arms to me, crying, Ptah-hotep, dear love, come back to thy house!

When the King’s soldiers came for me, I was quite prepared to die.