Out of the Black Land

Chapter Six

Mutnodjme

Merope and I had slept, though we were not aware of having slipped into a doze until we were woken abruptly by a flurry of movement in the outer chamber, and voices crying, ‘The Queen is in labour, send for the great Royal Nurse Tey, the Queen’s midwife!’ I heard my mother grunt as she rose from her saddle-strung bed.

‘Quick,’ I whispered to my new sister. ‘Put on your sandals and we can follow in the confusion.’

‘Why should we?’

‘Because it’s childbirth, and I’ve not been allowed to see it.’

‘Nor me,’ she agreed, tying strings rapidly.

We slipped into the outer chamber, where my mother was stripping off her robe and stepping into a decorated tub. Slaves sluiced her down with cool water and scrubbed her with handfuls of oatmeal mixed with laundryman’s lye and then rinsed her. She then tied a clean cloth about her waist, another around her head, and raised her voice.

‘I am coming!’ she cried. ‘Be silent, women. The Great Queen Tiye has already borne children. She knows what is happening. But she will not be assisted by a clamour like a marketplace on the day before a feast! The birthroom has been prepared; has anyone thought to carry the Queen thither?’

She stilled the babble of replies with a gesture.

‘Good. We will go there now, and she who makes an outcry which upsets the Great Royal Lady will be beaten until she bleeds.’

This threat calmed the crowd nicely and Tey walked composedly out of our apartments and into the corridor. Merope and I followed.

The mammisi was prepared. It had bare walls, a bare floor, and a pallet made of clean linen on the floor. The birth chair had been scrubbed and repainted. Not for the Lady of the Two Lands the peasant delivery, squatting on bricks. The chair was bottomless and at an easy height for the attendant to catch the baby as it was delivered.

So far, so good. The Queen was standing with two women massaging her back. Her hair was dark red with sweat and she looked old. She greeted my mother with a smile which was a sketch of the one I had seen before.

‘Lady,’ she said.

‘Where does it catch you?’ asked Tey.

‘My back, it always hurts my back,’ replied the Queen, and Tey directed the women to massage lower down, in the flat space just above the buttocks. The Queen seemed to feel some relief. She was offered an infusion and drank it.

‘Now what?’ whispered Merope.

‘We wait,’ I replied.

Nothing happened all afternoon. The sun sank towards night and still nothing happened. I was carrying a scroll, one of the few which I owned myself. Ani had copied it for me. It was the tale of Ptah and the Destruction of Mankind. Merope and I sat down against the wall, out of everyone’s way, and peered through the legs of the attendant women. Nothing still seemed to be happening, and we were getting bored, so I opened the scroll and began to read, telling Merope of the sins of humans which made Ptah the creator disgusted with his creation:

Humans blasphemed against the god, saying, ‘His bones are like silver, his limbs are like gold, his hair is like lapis, in truth he is old and weak.’ Then Ptah called to him the gods who were with him in the primeval ocean and took counsel with them…

‘Who were the gods from the primeval ocean?’ asked my sister.

‘Shu who is air, Tefnut who is water, Nut who is sky, they were the first ones, in this story,’ I replied.

The Queen groaned, and we strove to see, but a rush of attendants blocked our view. I consulted my text again:

The gods came and bowed before the majesty of Ptah who made the firstborn gods out of words, out of his lips and teeth, Lord of Speaking Creatures, Maker of Humans. They said before him, ‘Speak to us, for we are listening.’

A woman stubbed her toe on us as she hurried to the door for more cloths and another infusion of the birth herbs, and did not even stop to notice who was sitting in that corner.

I continued the tale:

Ptah said to his gods, ‘Tell me of humanity, what shall I do to these blasphemous ones? I have given them the world, and they say that I am old’.

The gods took counsel, and they replied to Ptah Creator, ‘Lord, you must slay them, so that they shall know fear of the gods.’

‘Who shall I send to slaughter men and women?’ asked Ptah.

The Spreader of Terror rose, lioness-headed Sekmet who is out of Hathor the Goddess, and said, ‘It shall be I.’

And Ptah agreed that it should be so.

‘Who is telling a tale?’ asked the labouring Queen. ‘Bring them here.’

We were discovered, hauled out of our corner, and shoved into the middle of the room where we stood, heads hanging, before Tey’s wrath. The Queen was sitting on the birth chair and laid a sweating hand on my mother’s shoulder.

‘Let her read on,’ she ordered. ‘Sit down, little scribe, and continue. I need something to distract my mind.’

‘Lady, this is not a good story for one in your situation,’ warned Tey, but the Queen merely said ‘Read on.’

‘Do as you are bid,’ snapped Tey.

Greatly wondering I sat down, Merope at my side, and continued with the story of the destruction of the world.

Sekmet Destroyer went forth, and great was the slaughter amongst men and women. She struck fear into their hearts, and Ra said to Ptah, ‘Behold them fleeing into the mountains in terror, and there terror waits for them.’

I stopped as the Queen groaned again. My mother wiped the Lady’s forehead with a wet cloth and instructed me ‘I don’t know what you are doing here against my express orders, Mutnodjme, but now you will learn the way of birth, so pay attention. The pains come at intervals, getting closer and closer until they are almost simultaneous and then the child is born if the gods are kind. While the pain is upon her, she will not hear. When it has passed, she will listen again. This story may not last long enough; do you know any more?’

‘Yes, Lady.’

‘Good. Go on.’

The Queen was attending again, and I resumed the tale:

Great was the slaughter, great the mourning. Corpses littered the mountains and the living could not bury the dead, because there were too many.

Fearing that they would all be destroyed, Re said to Sekmet, ‘Return, return in peace, Sekmet, you have slain enough.’

She replied, ‘You gave me life and this power to kill. I am not glutted; I will not return but slay and slay until no one lives on the earth.’

I risked a look at the Queen. Her thighs were tensed, tendons shaking under immense strain. Her female parts were wet with escaping fluid. I felt elated, frightened and compelled. I could not look away from this body in such agony.

Tey slapped me over the ear and recalled me to myself. I began reading again:

Then Re spoke to the priestesses of the Lady, saying, ‘Do thus and you shall be saved. As women pound barley for beer, they shall crush mandrakes from Elephantine in great number, and they shall make beer which is as red as blood and fill seven thousand vessels.’

And such of the women who lived pounded mandrakes instead of barley, and made seven thousand jars of beer as red as blood.

It was not a groan this time. It was closer to a scream. I waited out the contraction and continued:

Therefore came the Majesty of the South and the North, Re who is Amen and the Sun, Glorious in Might, sailing up the Nile in the barge which is called Glory of Amen-Re and he came to the fields of Suten-henen where the goddess waded in blood.

Another pain, another cry. A priestess from the temple of Isis laid an ankh, symbol of life, on the Queen’s stomach, swollen so tight that I thought that the skin might split. Tey did not have to scowl at me, however, I resumed as soon as I could.

Then came the four, the good gods, and Tefnut filled this field with rain. Then the women poured out the seven thousand jars of beer made with mandrakes of Elephantine, and the water became as blood.

Sekmet the Spreader of Terror snuffed the air and smelt blood, and she dipped her muzzle and drank. And merry was her heart as she drank the blood, and she became drunk on this water, and fell asleep and knew not slaughter any more.

There was a shift in the room. Some spirit had come in. Tey was biting her lip, which she only did when she was seriously worried. I saw blood begin to drip from the Queen’s genitals onto the floor. Bright red, drop by drop, it splashed on the clean marble and pooled. Tey cast a red cloth under the chair so that the Queen should not see the blood and be afraid, and urged, ‘Lady, think, speak, listen,’ and snarled sideways at me ‘Talk, daughter! It’s what you’re good at!’

I stood up and spoke louder. Merope was huddled at my feet, overawed. I wished fiercely that I hadn’t come, but it was too late to repent and time cannot be poured back once the jar of life has been broached.

‘Come, come, oh most beautiful,’ called Horus the Eye to the sleeping Sekmet as she lay in the field of blood. ‘Come with me, most excellent lady, be my own love, for my heart is moved for you.’

And he was to her eyes as the fairest and most delightful of men, and as she woke she loved him. She took his hand and he led her north to a lake called Bubastis, where he said to her, ‘Let us swim, dear one, and be clean.’

And she went in to the water, and came forth a beautiful woman and a cat, and Horus said to her, ‘We shall call this your benign avatar Basht, elegant and fair; and you, Lady, shall always have my heart.’

And they lay on the banks of the lake called Bubastis and had great joy. He imbued her with the perfumes of his body, and she was gladdened by his touch.

I glanced at Tey and she motioned me to go on.

And ever since the cat Basht has been worshipped at Bubastis, city of cats, and ever since the priestesses of Sekmet have made barley beer with mandrakes at the Festival of the Deliverance, and thus shall it always be.

The Queen gave a great, forceful shriek, half of agony and half of effort. Her legs flexed, her hands closed on the arms of the chair with force enough to crush the wood. The cry came again, and the child was born into my mother Tey’s hands in a slippery flash followed by a fountain of blood.

I heard my sister Merope retch, but I was not sick. I was fascinated. As Tey cleared its mouth, the baby began to gasp and then to cry. Tey held it carefully close.

‘Rejoice, Great Queen,’ she said to the woman, as the attendants swathed her loins in red cloth, bound tight to stop the bleeding. ‘You have given your Lord another son.’

‘Smenkhare,’ whispered Tiye. Then she collapsed, and we were thrown out.

Ptah-hotep

I occupied the remainder of the day by instructing my new scribes, ordering more wine for Mentu’s visits, and inspecting the chest full of beautiful cloths. As a Great Royal Scribe, I could wear what I chose and I did not like much decoration. It smacked of ostentation. I was therefore considering the difference between creamy linen with a thin gold border and a starkly white one when Meryt announced, ‘Someone’s coming—someone with a lot of attendants—sit in your chair, Master, take your writing board, tell your scribes to instruct you in something; it’s the King Akhnamen may he live!’

I did as she bade me, throwing myself into my chair and grabbing a plaster board. Hanufer stood beside me and read the complaint from the temple of Osiris that the Nomarch of Heliopolis was reducing his offerings—just as Mentu had said. It was a long wait, and I had time to give him orders to send an investigator to the Nomarch and suggest that he hand over the ingot-shavings to the temple or suffer an afterlife spent inside the Great Snake, Apep. What sort of idiot risks his Eternity for a minor quarrel?

Khety, on my other side, had time to begin a summary of the preparations for the feast of Hathor-at-Dendera—she goes to Horus-of-Edfu at the end of Ephipi and there are always problems with public order—when the King finally arrived, flanked by two soldiers.

He stood in the doorway as we registered his presence and threw ourselves to the floor. I crawled forward to kiss his sandal and he signalled to me to rise by brushing his fly-whisk across my shoulder.

‘You have only a small staff,’ he commented, flicking the whisk at Khety and Hanufer. Meryt stayed where she was until one of the soldiers, shoving her with his foot, said, ‘Fetch wine’ and she rose and slid away.

‘Lord of the Two Lands, more are expected, but not many more.’

‘And you have appointed Mentu as your second. Do you believe that he will be of assistance?’

‘Lord, I believe that he may be of great assistance.’

I did not specify as to how he might assist me, and it was always difficult to discern how much the Lord Akhnamen understood. I had dared to raise my eyes to his face. He was smooth and well tended, this younger son of the King. His eyes were strange, unfocussed, a dreamer’s eyes, a visionary’s. I never knew how to read them. Was he pleased with his selection from the School of Scribes? Was he about to order me back to obscurity? Hope rose in my breast. I could go then and find the Captain Horemheb and rejoin my own dear friend Kheperren.

‘What have you found out? You gave your scribe an order. What was it?’ he asked Hanufer directly.

Hanufer was not over-awed. He stood up straight, smoothed down his cloth, took his ostracon and repeated my order, word for word including the comment about the afterlife, as emotionlessly as though he was reading a laundry list. I held my breath. The King laughed and sat down in my chair.

‘I think I may have chosen well,’ he commented, accepting a cup of wine from Meryt’s hand, after the soldier had tasted it and nodded to her to continue. ‘You have everything you need? No one has offered you affront?’

I shook my head.

‘And you have a guardian,’ he commented, glancing at Anubis who was sitting as still as a stone hound by the door.

‘Yes, Lord, I have.’

‘That should preserve you from any annoyance,’ he murmured ambiguously. ‘I understand that you have been summoned to dine with the Chief Priest at Karnak tonight.’

‘I have, Lord. Is it your will that I should attend?’

‘Mmm…’ he was thinking. ‘Who is your god, boy?’

‘Amen-Re,’ I replied, surprised. Everyone’s god was Amen-Re, the Sun.

‘You come from the Nome of the Black Bull, do you not? Have you a special devotion to Apis or Osiris?’

‘No more than usual, Lord of the Two Thrones.’

‘Be careful,’ he advised me. ‘Yes, you must attend, of course; even I must attend on him if the High Priest summons me. But he will suspect you, Ptah-hotep, because you are young and because I selected you instead of an old man with whom that same High Priest had an understanding.

‘My father the Divine Amenhotep says that the priests of Amen-Re are becoming too bold, too powerful and too rich. I am minded to mend this situation, but not yet. I am thinking of a new city.’

‘A new city, Lord?’ I was following his train of thought as well as I could, but logic was not helping. I decided to just follow this fascinating breeze wherever it went.

‘I will speak of it again. I have been given permission by my father to move from Thebes to a new place, clean, unstained by other worship. On the left bank of the river, at Amarna,’ he said, waiting for my shocked reaction.

The left bank was reserved for Houses of Eternity, the cities of the dead, but I made no comment. If Pharaoh wanted to build a city in a tomb, who was I to argue? I nodded. The King rose.

‘Attend on me early in the morning tomorrow,’ he ordered. We all flung ourselves to the floor again, and he was gone.

Anubis, by the door, gave a faint growl and a long considering sniff. The King had, indeed, smelt powerfully of spikenard, and perhaps that offended my hound’s sensitive nose.

We had barely recovered from the royal visit when another Divine Personage deigned to enter and we were back on the floor again. Fortunately Meryt had ordered it swept and sprinkled or I might have betrayed my dignity with a sneeze.

‘Rise, rise,’ said a slightly impatient female voice, and I came up nose-to-hem with the Chantress of the Temple of Neith, the Princess Sitamen, only daughter of Amenhotep and also his wife.

‘You are Ptah-hotep,’ she observed, motioning to Meryt to bring her a chair. ‘Go on with your work, honoured scribes, I do not wish to interrupt you more than I must.’

Hanufer and Khety collected their wits, closed their mouths, which had gaped, and withdrew to the inner room. I was alone with one of the most powerful women in the Kingdom, and one of the most beautiful.

The Princess Sitamen was slim and strong, with wide shoulders and long legs. It was said that she did not wish to wed at all, and had accepted a marriage with her father with relief, as she could not thereafter be pressured to accept another mate. She loved to run, ride, dance and swim, lived with her maidens in seclusion, and was seldom seen at palace functions or feasts. Her charities were legendary. She had endowed a school of priestesses for the temple of the Divine Huntress Neith, sister of Isis, out of her own fortune, telling her ladies, ‘Melt down a few thousand bracelets, I do not wish to wear anything more decorative than my skin.’ Or so it was said. She certainly wore nothing more than a scant cloth, no jewellery except her badges of rank, and plain sandals such as common people wear.

And her own skin was very decorative. She glowed with health, though she was bronzed with weather, unlike the pale ladies of the palace.

‘I am here on my mother’s errand,’ she began briskly. ‘Her labour began an hour ago, but she does not forget promises. I need a scribe for the Royal Daughter Mutnodjme and a little Great Royal Wife called Merope, a barbarian princess. My mother suggests a young man, because they are both inquisitive and mischievous maidens, and would disconcert anyone older. Unless you can think of an older man who has a flexible mind?’

‘I have never met one,’ I confessed. ‘I am honoured by the Great Royal Lady’s trust. I will find her a suitable scribe. I will appoint someone, or I will come myself.’

‘Good.’ She had discharged her errand but she did not seem to be thinking of leaving. Her maidens had arranged themselves around her on the floor and Meryt had already sent a slave to fetch more wine and cold water. In future we would have to keep a greater store of provisions in the office. There was room enough in the empty rooms at the back.

‘I saw that my brother was with you,’ she commented.

‘Yes, lady, he has just left.’

‘Many will wonder at your appointment, Ptah-hotep.’

‘Lady, they will. I am very young and I have no experience of this work, but I will learn. I will justify the trust which Pharaoh Akhnamen may he live has shown in me.’

‘My father,’ began the Princess, then abandoned the train of thought. ‘No, of course, you cannot approach my father. But should you be able—indirectly, of course—to talk to him, his words are to be cherished. The Divine Amenhotep’s reputation for wisdom is not exaggerated.’

‘Certainly not, Lady of the Two Lands. Every wise man quotes his words.’

‘Thank you,’ she accepted a cup of watered wine from Meryt. Hanufer and Khety, abandoning any pretence of work, had joined the maidens and were handing round wine-vessels. The Lady Sitamen did not seem to object to their presence, so I did not frown them back to their places.

‘The Lady Sitamen seeks a scribe to teach two young Royal Daughters,’ I said to them. ‘She needs an inquiring mind this on the orders of Queen Tiye, may she live. Have you any suggestions?’

‘From the School, Lord Ptah-hotep?’ asked Hanufer, who liked to have the rules explained before he started.

‘There, or anywhere,’ I replied.

I occupied my eyes with gazing at the Princess’ maidens. They were very like her. They were scantily clad in undecorated cloth, they looked coloured by the sun if not precisely weathered, and they looked muscular and competent. One was wearing an archer’s bracer and several carried knives. I would not have liked to approach the Princess Sitamen Great Royal Wife of Amenhotep may he live with mayhem in mind. The attendants of the lady looked capable of mincing any attacker long before he got within striking range. And they looked, to my mind, as if they might enjoy it.

However, Anubis, a war-dog, had sunk down onto his belly and seemed pleased by their company. Evidently they had no unpleasant fate in mind for me.

‘’Hotep, what about Khons?’ asked Khety, who still had not become used to our elevation in status. I stared haughtily at him, until he registered the glare and amended his mode of address. ‘I mean, my lord Ptah-hotep, Great Royal Scribe may you live, would you consider Khons for the honour?’

It was a good idea. Khons was young, he was bored, and his back bore the marks of the master’s displeasure at his endless questioning. He was supposed to go into the Priesthood of Amen-Re but they had rejected him, and he was presently considering the fact that the only temple that wished to have him was the home of the unfashionable Khnum the Potter at Hermopolis—a soggy and uncomfortable place where half the population died young of marsh-borne diseases. His only other option was to return to his village and be a market-scribe; an honourable occupation, but possibly even more tedious than the temple of Khnum. And he was a commoner’s son, as I was myself, and it pleased me to think of him instructing the Princesses.

‘Will he do?’ asked the Lady, arching an eyebrow.

‘He will, with your royal approval,’ I replied.

‘Then you may forgive your scribe for forgetting your honorifics, as he is very young and he is sorry,’ she said; and Khety grinned with relief. Had I wished, I could have had him beaten with rods for such insolence.

‘Write an order for the Master of Scribes,’ I directed. ‘Send him Ptah-hotep’s compliments and beg him to donate another student to the palace. Tell Khons to report to me and I will conduct him to the Royal Ladies Mutnodjme and Merope.’

‘Very good,’ the Princess still did not move and I wondered what else she wanted. She came to some sort of decision and gestured her attendants away.

‘Young men, show my young women the decorative features of your office,’ she ordered, and Khety and Hanufer rose obediently to exhibit my painted walls and my precious statue of Thoth made of the hardest grey granite.

The Princess waited until they had gone out of easy earshot and said quietly, ‘My brother took you from one you loved, Ptah-hotep, to make you Great Royal Scribe.’

Was this a trap? Did she want to find a lever, and therefore needed to confirm my love for Kheperren? He was safely away with the army. The princess did not try to hurry me. She listened to Hanufer explaining at length the symbolism of Thoth being both the Ibis and the Ape, and waited.

‘Yes, there was one I loved.’

‘You sent him away?’

‘Lady,’ I agreed.

‘That was wise, for you are surrounded by enemies. My brother’s action has plunged you into a pit of snakes. But I know how it is to be threatened by the nature of one’s love, Ptah-hotep, more than my brother or my father ever knew. That is why my father married me, to preserve my life and the way I live it. But you will have to marry.’

‘Lady, in time.’ I was not sure of this Divine Princess, or her purposes.

She sighed in exasperation. ‘You have no reason to trust me, Ptah-hotep, but you may. So I will say this, if you are assailed, if your only love is in danger, send or come to me. I have a palace of my own where no enemy enters—or if they do, they do not remain. By gift of my wise father, may he live forever, I have position and power and I will protect you. In one respect, Great Royal Scribe, we are as sister and brother.’

I knew what she meant. She was right. She was also putting herself in peril to so speak to me, and was being astoundingly generous.

I slipped from my kneeling stance into a full ‘kiss-earth’ and laid my forehead on her workaday sandal. ‘I am the Divine Lady’s slave,’ I said with a heart full of gratitude ‘And lie at the Divine Lady’s feet.’