THE IMPERIAL PRIVATE BEDROOM was decorated in yellow and blue, Pharaoh’s favorite colors, emblems of sun and sky. He had decided to sleep alone tonight, giving himself a respite from the sexual needs of his nine wives and three concubines. He walked onto the terrace and stood there for ten minutes, leaning on the marble balcony, looking out over the vast expanse of the Nile, which lay before him glittering in the moonlight. Then he walked back into the room, picked up a corner of the blue-and-yellow duvet, and climbed into bed. It was early. He was very tired. The guards outside the door were under strict instructions to let no one in, however urgent the request might be.
He was a tall, vigorous man in his early forties—a good general, an efficient lawgiver, and a skilled manager, who had little patience for the inessential. He seldom remembered a dream, and when he did, he dismissed it with a smile, as you might dismiss a child who has been caught in a piece of inconsequential mischief.
But this dream was different. He had never before dreamed about the Nile, from which all blessings flow, and here he was, standing on its bank alone, with no courtiers around him, looking out not contemplatively but in expectation. And as if feeling had immediately become flesh, a cow poked her head from beneath the surface of the waters and ambled out onto the shore. She was plump and beautiful, her coat a dark reddish brown. As she stood in the sunlight with the water dripping from her flanks, another cow surfaced, walked out of the river, and stood beside her, and then another—seven in all, all of them healthy, plump, beautiful creatures, who stood there contentedly, facing away from the Nile as the water dripped from their flanks in the sunlight. Pharaoh looked on in amazement.
But now there was a sense of foreboding, and again feeling became flesh, and as he looked at the great river, seven more cows emerged from beneath the surface, one after the other—but these animals were emaciated and repulsive to look at. They moved toward the seven plump cows and then, to his horror, they devoured them, sucking them in from the tails until there was nothing left but the reddish-brown muzzles sticking out from their distended mouths, and then the muzzles too were sucked in, and everything about them was gone, and the seven gaunt cows looked as emaciated as before. At this point Pharaoh shuddered. He didn’t know whether it was his body standing beside the Nile that shuddered or his body waking up in bed.
He tried to get back to sleep, but the sense of foreboding tossed and twisted his body from one position to another. When he finally fell asleep again, he had a second dream. Seven healthy ears of grain, full and ripe and golden-yellow, were growing on one stalk. Then seven other ears, thin, dry, and shriveled by the east wind, sprouted close behind them. And the second stalk bent over toward the first stalk, and the thin, dry ears swallowed the full, healthy ears.
He woke up again, in a sweat.