350 years flash past and we are now in the time of the New Kingdom and at the start of the reign of the eighteenth dynasty king, Tuthmosis (or Thutmose) III. After Amenemhat IV, Egypt entered a second period of decline but recovered under the powerful eighteenth dynasty kings who established the New Kingdom in around 1550 BC. Tuthmosis III reigned from 1479-25 BC initially jointly with his step-mother (and aunt) Hatshepsut. This period, running for the next four hundred years, is the true Golden Age of Egypt. The most famous of Egyptian pharaohs ruled at this time, including Akhenaten, Tutankhamun and Rameses II, all of whom feature over the next few stories.
Men-amun, aged twenty, in his second year as a lector priest, was returning to duty in the great Temple complexes of Amun-Ra.
Slim and personable in pristine white linen, he was shaven-headed; purified by triple washing; waxed and tweaked clean of every last body hair which could be located. He possessed distinct ambitions to set beside his wits and his elegant scribal skills, though possibly a critical superior might have thought – when pushed – that Men-amun’s intelligence was likely to outrun his actual courage.
He was not late, but he felt it unseemly to appear laggard. Thus he moved quickly, head down, among the afternoon crowds circulating the outer, public Temple courts. He walked aloof along the shadowed side, avoiding contact with any who might attempt to touch him for the offering of prayers, written Letters to the Dead, or petitions to Higher Authority. And once he had thankfully left the heat and general clamour behind, he took a short-cut which otherwise he might never have considered. Turning aside from the vast columned halls ahead, he sought instead a long, narrow corridor of polished stone unpierced by door or window and therefore dark, except for the dust-hazed indirect blear of day at either distant end.
Traversing this passage was like journeying through a tomb shaft towards Judgment, he thought – toying lightly with the idea of apprehension. All external sound was lost. It smelled of nothing here but the cold, unyielding nature of stone. His awareness reduced itself to the enhancement of his own breathing and the slurred punctuation of his rush sandals on the ground.
The shock he sustained two thirds of the way along was absolute – when the floor in front of him quite simply erupted.
A flagstone lifted before his disbelieving gaze, tilted and crashed over backwards.
From the square black pit thus revealed arose the head and shoulders of a man. The face was frantic – slashed and weeping blood – and he was shouting.
Men-amun skittered to a standstill, transfixed.
“Seek help!” this lacerated visage yelled up at him. “Now! Run! Fetch the First Prophet in person – anyone – but by all that’s good: go! Tell them it’s real trouble! Say I’ve got him jammed in, but the frenzy’s terrible and he’s killed again!”
Men-amun croaked back, sheer fright having gone with his voice.
“Are you daft or what?” the man bellowed. “Hear me, muttonhead! Run!” He ducked down, vanishing as quickly as he’d come.
Men-amun shut his useless, gaping mouth.
He had to retreat, take a run and jump the awful gap. He stubbed his toes and rocked the displaced flag. He scrambled upright, sprinting for the duty priests’ living quarters.
He had no authority whatsoever to try approaching Hapu-seneb, Highest of all High Priests – those of Amun-Ra – nor did he have much hope of finding where this exalted personage might be since, outside of religion, the same was also Vizier to Their co-Majesties and as such, not always within the sacred precincts. Yet something dreadful had gone wrong. Men-amun pelted on, praying disjointedly he might at least reach someone to whom he could rid himself of the problem.
He emerged, panting, into the inner court surrounded by the cells and eating house of the junior priesthood. And surely Amun-Ra had heard him, for seated on a stone bench, glancing through a papyrus roll, was the Third Prophet: the Lord Menkheper-re-sobek.
Men-amun jolted to a halt, making hasty obeisance.
Lord Sobek (he had contracted his name long ago in deference to his royal half-nephew, also Menkheper-re, who was now called King as Tuthmosis III) looked up surprised, halfway to reproof at such lack of dignity. Then he saw sweat, and scented fear, and changed his mind. He frowned, listening to Men-amun’s plunging story, snapped his fingers for his steward and sent him instantly to Lord Hapu-seneb bearing a signet ring and a terse message of urgency. He stood up, unfolding his tall, thin figure in one fluent movement.
“Come,” he said. “You and I shall see for ourselves.”
Men-amun would have done almost anything else rather than go back to the passageway’s gloom and that suddenly yawning hole – but he had no choice. When they got there, Lord Sobek peered down into it and grunted. Then he whisked his robes together at the knees and, to Men-amun’s great unease, lowered himself over the lip into the dark. At waist height, he paused.
“Since you have knowledge of this, willy-nilly, I would teach you what it is,” he said, and, “There is a ladder here. Below, will be rushlights on the walls.”
Men-amun was aghast.
“One of the disciplines of priesthood – as you should know – is an ability to walk with fear and come out the further side. You will not progress, else. Follow me,” he was bidden.
And undoubtedly, one great difficulty in life is that when a High Priest who is also a Prince of the Blood sets you a task, you may not easily refuse.
Men-amun swallowed convulsively, then – as Sobek steadily descended – offered his own feet, reluctantly, to be guided down the spelky timber treads.
The corridor underground was barely a body’s width and led in a different direction to the one above. There were tiny prickets carrying light but it was hard to make much out, though Lord Sobek seemed confident enough.
They walked very straight for more than a hundred paces (Men-amun counted as he kept close to the pale blur that was his superior). Twice they were let through solid doors after Sobek had given a sharp double knock. Those guarding them were armed, going by the creak of leather and tiny metallic chimings of their gear. Nobody said anything. Nor were there other sounds – only an ever-increasing stifling stillness laced with the occasional scrape and slitherings of their progress.
The passage turned an elbow.
Abruptly they came out into a vaulted chamber. Here at least it was possible to see partly by daylight, due to two meagre ventilation shafts high up in the roof. Two other passages branched away on the far side ahead of them. To their right, where the chamber bellied out, a strong-room or cell had been built in, made entirely of smooth, worked stone. The wooden locking bar on its door was split and the keeper it ran into smashed away, but the whole had been jury-rigged fast, by dint of someone wedging a bench obliquely into the stone jambs. Liquid dribbled from the threshold, bringing with it a sour stink.
There were five of them now – the two from the passage having walked behind, heavy spears in hand. A third guard squatting opposite the cell entrance, sword drawn and never moving his eyes from it, was the man with the injured face.
“I have sent to the Lord Hapu-seneb,” Sobek informed him.
The man muttered thanks and half pushed himself to his feet.
“No, no, be easy. You have taken enough. He is in there?” Sobek queried.
“He is, Lord Prince.”
“What happened?”
The wounded man shook his head, speechless, sliding back down the wall. One of the others set out to explain.
“Beg pardon, sir . . . he got Si-ankh’s best mate, see? Me and him –” he pointed at his fellow – “was coming on duty. We’d fetched the supper stuff and water as usual. We’d come from yon side, and got bolted in from behind, like they do. There hadn’t been a peep from His Nibs all day, Si-ankh was just saying as Merweh took in his bowl and beaker. There was a pause, like – then all hell broke loose! Si-ankh dashed straight in after – well, you see what he got – but Merweh was blinded and spouting blood. Rolling about and screaming. None of us could get near quick enough to drag him free. You can’t hardly believe the mania! We grabbed Si-ankh and His Nibs come hissing and howling after us busting everything he touched, so it was a matter of cobbling the door to before he got out and went rampaging! What happened inside after that don’t bear thinking on!”
Sobek nodded and would have answered, but a guard reinforcement appeared from the opposite side escorting Vizier Hapu-seneb and an official of the Queen Regent’s household called Senenmut.
There was a brief bustle of activity with people bringing flaring resin torches, brooms and water pots. Si-ankh was taken away for treatment.
Men-amun had to admire Lord Hapu-seneb. He and Sobek stood together, Hapu-seneb with a torch held high. Soldiers made a tight semicircle round them, weapons poised. At Hapu-seneb’s command somebody hoisted away the bench and shoved the door smartly inwards.
“Now you rascal!” the Vizier announced into the interior. “You know us. This sort of thing cannot go on!”
Together, the High Priests marched in.
Against the flickering light, Men-amun caught one horrifying glimpse of a creature barely human, crouching toad-like on the lost guard’s corpse.
The priests’ advance set it off in an unearthly wailing, like a soul in Darkness, but its manic energy was spent.
They bound him, hand and foot, bundling him into a bag made from sewn sheepskins. They pulled his mouth open and made him drink – milk it looked like – but it must have had drug in it to complete quiescence. Four soldiers carried him bodily from the cell and dumped him unceremoniously in a corner.
Merweh’s remains came out in pieces – his throat ripped and dripping, the lolling head a red obliteration. There were chunks of gouged flesh, and a wrenched arm separate. Whatever might be retrieved was collected on a sheet of sailcloth.
There was a great deal of brooming and swilling away.
A military joiner arrived to start fitting new locking bars and keepers.
Sheepskins are abomination – ritually unclean – and this prisoner’s were particularly rank, yet out of sheer curiosity Men-amun forced himself to go near. He squatted to study the madman covertly.
He had a great mass of unkempt, matted hair and gaunt features – quite a prominent nose and sticking-out upper front teeth. His skin was greyish, from lack of light, perhaps. His eyes flickered, evasive, unnervingly blank. He lay there, keening to himself in some wordless, tuneless monotone. After a bit, wriggling and shifting, he began working his arms up from inside the bag. When he got his hands out, tightly lashed, Men-amun could see his weapons: ten hugely overgrown, horny, thickened nails – honed obsessively, no doubt, in his stark surroundings, to pointed, lethal talons. Blood was drying into them. Worse: an eyeball glistened – white and globular – still impaled on a nail half broken.
Men-amun thrust down revulsion.
Almost by accident he turned a key in the situation, for he joined in the keening sound, making it deftly into a repetitive, childlike tune – then a rhyme – then he built on that by tapping each dreadful finger in turn, going round and round. The creature giggled and flexed them, following his game. In time Men-amun pulled a small trimming knife from his belt and cunningly pared off every talon, short and square. Only when there were no more left did the man grow fretful. So to preserve peace and because he could think of nothing better, Men-amun embarked on telling him a story.
“Remarkable!” was Lord Hapu-seneb’s dry comment when he came to oversee the prisoner’s return. But by then the man was hardly awake, what with poppy juice and the low hypnotic drone of Men-amun’s voice.
Prince Sobek led him back along the underground passage. Workmen came behind to replace the flagstone and remove the wooden steps.
“It wouldn’t do to risk this kind of thing again,” the Prince explained.
It gratified Men-amun that Lord Sobek saw personally to his repurification, presented him with fine new linen, and – since the refectory evening meal was now long over – insisted Men-amun took supper in his private rooms.
“The First Prophet was impressed with your forethought in trimming our friend’s nails,” the Prince told him affably, after his steward had served them and retired. “No one else has managed any such thing in years!”
Men-amun looked modestly pleased.
They had roast of goose with salad stuffs, and strong wine imported from islands in the Great Green. The Prince himself broke fresh bread between them.
“Eat, please,” he said, “You must be hungry – I am!”
Men-amun ventured some questions.
“Has that man been there long?”
“Not there . . . No.”
“How old is he, sir?”
“Approaching thirty perhaps – why?”
“I found that difficult to gauge. Is he always dangerous?”
The Prince sighed.
“His condition is intermittent. He might be quiet for months on end. But the rages strike without warning. That is the problem.”
“I see.”
Sobek set down his food.
“I must have your undertaking – on your honour as a priest and in writing – that you will never discuss this matter with anyone. Am I plain?”
“Of course, Highness,” Men-amun hastened to agree. “Indeed, you have my word.”
They spoke of other things but, in the end, Men-amun failed to resist the ultimate, obvious question:
“May I ask – who is that person?”
The Prince’s expression turned glacial.
“That,” he stated flatly down his fleshy Tuthmosid nose, “can be no concern of yours!”
After a day or two the matter assumed unreality – like some ill dream brought on by too much cheese and garlic late at night. Almost.
Yet, in a day or two also, Men-amun was sent for by Lord Sobek.
“You made an impression,” he said, acknowledging Men-amun’s bow and watching him sit cross-legged before him, “in regard to the person you may remember. He likes your storytelling.”
Men-amun’s stomach lurched. He said he found it hard to credit the prisoner had taken any of it in.
“Can Your Highness be sure?”
“Quite sure. Yes. We have consulted. We find it reasonable to try what another tale might achieve. Should you consent, naturally.”
(“We” – who were “we” – precisely? Men-amun wondered.)
There was an uncertain silence during which he was uncomfortably conscious of minute scrutiny. Then Men-amun prevaricated.
“I hardly know what might hold his interest . . .”
“Oh, come! One doubts if he expects some classic text!”
“. . . and if I were missed from duties, sir?”
“If you slip away after refectory supper – might it not seem you had studies given? I shall accompany you to the place – and remain. Any small improvement would help – and be rewarding to yourself, longer term, I might add.”
Men-amun argued it in his head. Patronage he was going to need if he were not to be stuck in the lower priesthood all his life. For though his family did middling-well – father retired with honour from the army, and a brother prospering in merchandise – they had no claims to lineage or social influence. But nowadays people could rise to great power. Lord Senenmut was living proof of that.
He bowed his head, consenting.
“I shall try, Prince, as you see fit,” he agreed.
They took a different route at such times, skirting kitchens, bread ovens, storage places and down into deep cellars. Again there were guarded doors and another narrow subterranean corridor until they reached the stone chamber from an opposite side. Men-amun often wondered where the third passage led.
The soldiers on duty varied.
In the cell was nothing except a built-in mudbrick sleeping shelf on which, usually, would be the putrid sheepskin bag. A thin litter of straw and rushes scattered the floor, in an effort to sop up filth.
The soldiers would remove Men-amun’s knife before he went in, and he would have a bundle of rushes to sit on.
“Daren’t make it a stool, sir,” one of them apologized. “He could grab it and clobber you!”
Often enough the prisoner would be crouched in a corner, naked, covering his head with one arm.
Men-amun would squat, doing his best to ignore the stench, and begin the counting game on his fingers. The man would watch for a while, unmoving, until he took up the thread of rhyme – then, collecting and dragging the bag, he’d creep close and put himself half inside it. Once he tired of the rhyme, he’d demand, clearly: “Story!”
He liked things about animals. Men-amun invented firstly, some endless stuff about a cat journeying to find where the Nile was born. Once absorbed, his listener had an obsessional habit of stroking his right earlobe. Often he would seem asleep – or Men-amun’s tale would peter out from weariness – but if he stopped too soon or tried, however cautiously, getting to his feet, a bony hand would clamp round his forearm with a speed and force that was frightening.
“More,” he would say, “Again! Tell some more!”
Sobek would have to come and intervene with a bowl of whatever-it-was the prisoner drank so greedily, and unlatch the gripping fingers.
“More stories another time,” he’d say, “But only if you are good.”
It wasn’t long before Men-amun came to loathe and fear these occasions.
The return to Temple life afterwards was lengthy – there was always the process of purifying in the sacred pool, not something you could skimp with a High Priest right beside you. The relief, the reward, lay in being rid – in being dry and clean – in taking wine and refreshment in the Prince’s quarters.
“I suspect,” Sobek told him once, “You think we keep the poor creature badly.”
“He is very thin,” Men-amun was judicious.
“His diet must be restricted. And often enough he spoils what food he’s given.”
“Might he not have a loincloth at least?”
“Do you think we haven’t tried? He shreds things – or ruins them. Except for the time he twisted his linen thin and strangled someone with it! You yourself are witness to what can happen.”
Men-amun said no more. But a question plagued him: if this man was so difficult to keep – why did they persist?
It grew worse. The prisoner would greet Men-amun’s arrival with a screech which, given the circumstance, might supposedly be construed as gladness. Like some gigantic vile spider he would scuttle up to sit next to him in his horrid bag – all in a kind of caricature of friendship.
The nails were growing again but this time there was nothing Men-amun could do – no ruse or game which pleased; nor did the guards dare risk leaving Men-amun his knife.
Once, taking advantage of Lord Sobek’s temporary absence outside the cell, Men-amun asked the prisoner his name. He had been following the epic adventures of Wepwawet the jackal, stroking his ear. The interruption made him stare, fretting the lobe.
Men-amun repeated his own name and said again: “Who are you?”
“Story!” pleaded the man.
“In a moment. I am M-e-n-a-m-u-n, yes?”
Impatiently the man nodded, poking him sharply in the ribs.
“Tell me: who are you?”
“No name.”
Such a thing was inconceivable.
“You cannot – not – have a name!” Men-amun protested, aghast.
A name was the person’s unique, essential label. The ka and the ba of the soul attached to it and all of that carried you forever through Existence. You must be so equipped when it came time for you to go back into the Other; when you had to answer before Thoth, god of Wisdom and Ma’at, goddess of Truth, Justice, Balance, for your deeds. To be unknown, unrecognizable then was to be lost in impenetrable Nothing; to have the lights of your spirit extinguished.
“Wepwawet,” the man was repeating anxiously.
“He’s in the story. Who are you?”
“No name.”
Men-amun tried again. The man looked at him disdainfully – as at an idiot.
“No name,” and he shouted, “NO-NAME! No-name IS name! STORY, STORY, STORY!”
He started beating Men-amun with his fists.
Sobek reappeared, alerted by the rise in sound.
Men-amun had no choice but to resume hastily: “. . . so Wepwawet sang to the stars and to his own jackal god, and to Nut of the night sky before setting off once more across the desert . . .”
Men-amun dreaded these times: the darkness, the dirt, the stink – above all, the ever-present prickling awareness of danger.
Sometimes he had the sensation of being watched – but by whom, how, or for what purpose he couldn’t fathom. On leaving once, he could have sworn to a brief drift of perfume in the slack air – sandalwood? – a bizarre note in such surroundings. And having to keep the endless tales going time after time, scoured his mind and imagination dry. It dragged him down, costing him sleep and appetite.
Inevitably, also, after a while his absences from quarters attracted notice. If Men-amun had no great enemies among his fellow lectors, he had no close friendships either. His excuses of extra studies were soon discounted. His colleagues split into two camps: those who pretended mock-sympathy and those who were overtly jealous of him stealing a professional march – for the Third Prophet’s interest had not gone unremarked either.
Then as Men-amun sat one night in the cell’s dank rushes, he was almost overtaken by disaster. Labouring his way through a life of Nekhbet the Vulture, there came a rustling in the litter somewhere in front of him. He tried ignoring it, but the distraction grew and he detected movement. He could have stomached a rat – possibly even a scorpion – but suddenly a viper reared and surged over the lower end of No-name’s bag. Men-amun’s voice died. Abruptly, he got to his feet. The thing paused, searching, its tongue flickering. No-name was quickly restive. Seized with fear on both counts, Men-amun could do nothing but stretch a hand and point.
“Ehhchh! Naughty!,” screamed the prisoner at the hestitating reptile, “Now Men-storyman upset!”
He leapt from the bag, kicking as he went, dislodging the viper and flinging it some distance but, angered now, it came on again, swarming relentlessly straight for Men-amun’s feet and legs. But even as it poised to strike, No-name caught it by the tail, whirling it round in circles so that weight and momentum prevented it from curling or twisting. He cracked it like a whip, and the head flew off, smacking away into a corner.
Galvanized, Men-amun shouted for help. His legs were threatening to fold, but he forced himself to stay upright, for fear this snake was not alone. No-name was peering inside his bag, which he tipped upside down and shook. Nothing fell out.
They came fast, carrying light.
No-name was pleased with himself.
“See!” he told them and presented the long, limp body to Lord Sobek with a flourish, having, as he put it, “Made Men-storyman safe.”
The cell was searched meticulously while No-name, back in his bag, demanded a return to Nekhbet. Not unsurprisingly, after a wobbly start, the vulture encountered a huge serpent, fighting and overcoming it – which No-name found highly entertaining, including repeats and embellishment.
Afterwards Men-amun asked Lord Sobek how the viper could have got there, since the cell was all of smooth, close-fitted stone.
“One wonders, true. Yet it happens. There was a cobra once – an enormous thing. He fed it and claimed to play with it a while – but when it annoyed him once he killed it the same way.”
Men-amun felt sick. Whatever the cost to his future, he resolved that he had gone as far as he could.
“Lord Prince,” he pleaded, being comforted and emboldened by wine, “I beg you to release me from this task! I came on all this by accident. Apart from what just happened, I am dredged empty of stories! I dread the visits. I cannot sleep. And besides, my colleagues grow hostile, by reason of your intervention. I can’t fob them off with excuses forever! I’ll be bound however you want, but I will not go back!”
Sobek seemed pained.
“But surely you have managed extremely well? Granted, this present shock . . . Can you not see the good you do? Your visits are the only sliver of pleasure this poor man has. He listens. He remembers. He goes over what you tell him for himself – I have heard him! Would he have lifted a finger for you tonight, if he did not cling to that brief reward of your coming?”
Men-amun shook his head, stubbornly, in silence.
The prince refilled his cup, regarding him gravely.
“Very well,” he conceded reluctantly, “I do see we cannot ask more than you could honestly give. As for the situation with your colleagues . . . come with me tomorrow afternoon and that shall be remedied.”
Never before had Men-amun been in the Royal apartments.
Resplendent in leopard skin, the Prince steered him through sentried, cedarwood doors and pillared halls into a light, airy room with colourful walls, in which were several black and gilt chairs and two tables. One table was empty; the other – a substantial piece in granite – held a large, intricate model of an architectural project.
He’d scarcely had time to look before three people billowed in through fine hangings on the further side: the First and Second Prophets of Amun-Ra, Hapu-seneb and Ipuyemre, and the muscular, rather coarsely severe figure of the architect in person, the Queen-Regent’s High Steward, Senenmut.
Ipuyemre also favoured leopard skin. Hapu-seneb was cloaked in night blue sewn with silver stars. Senenmut’s pleated white shendyt-kilt was fringed with gold. On his solid shoulders reposed four heavy gold collars of honour.
Men-amun removed his sandals in the presence of superiors. The Lords bowed to one another ceremoniously, pulled up chairs and sat in marvellous unison. Hapu-seneb put down a sheet of papyrus on the empty table. Men-amun stood in front of them and they all leaned back and stared.
It was an interview – more, an examination – like graduating from scribe school, or when he’d done his time as wab-priest learning rites and prayers, before being picked for lector. They knew about him too: the paper on the table – which they referred to now and then – was abstracted from a personal file.
He felt hemmed in.
Dutifully, he confirmed the basics, and that his home was in the suburbs of The City. It seemed to please them that he’d passed out top of his scribal intake, awarded commendations for clarity and style. They liked also the idea of his father’s distinctions for military bravery.
Ipuyemre, known for his literary leanings, understood Men-amun was gifted at narrative.
“For what we have in mind, such facility would be an advantage,” he asserted ponderously.
Men-amun waited nervously.
Senenmut, silent so far and unmoving – watching him with his arms folded, cleared his throat.
“Do little children put you off?” he asked bluntly. His voice rasped.
Men-amun blinked.
“I cannot imagine so, Lord,” he replied, “Though being young and unencumbered I must confess my experience of such isn’t wide!”
The priests seemed mildly amused, but Senenmut looked thunder.
“All right – don’t be smart! The small princess – Merytre – is aye, maybe six months short of starting education proper. But bright and lively . . . all over the place some days! The Queen is minded for her to be kept occupied of a morning: drawing; simple writing and counting; games; little tales. Nothing formal – more what would interest her happily. You would join the Household – naturally. I’m sure I need not stress the long-term benefits! Your duties would be light enough just now to leave time for some religious work, which Prince Sobek tells me you should. If the Princess takes to you – if your face fits – you could go far. Well?”
It felt like the lifting of some huge oppressive weight.
Men-amun bowed acceptance.
“The Lord High Steward does me great honour,” he said.
Senenmut scraped back his chair and stood up.
“I don’t,” he retorted. “Her Majesty does!”
Since Men-amun was virtually at the end of his current three-month duty, it was agreed he should take some, at least, of his due home leave. Their co-Majesties were travelling in the North.
“You can have ten days,” Senenmut told him. “By then they’ll be back. Report to my scribes on your return.”
“Yes, Lord.”
“Her Majesty will, of course, require to have a look at you herself.”
They left.
Men-amun retrieved his sandals and lingered, examining the model: platforms, processional stairs, colonnades, chapels, capped by a central pyramidion. All of it was backed by an ingenious rendering in clay and pebbles of a concave cliff face. Quite suddenly, he realized where it was and what it would be. Work on it was already well in hand. He’d seen it from the ferries, across the river from Waset, The City. This was the Queen’s intended mortuary temple, next to and rivalling that of King Mentuhotep of antiquity.
A manservant came to escort him superciliously out.
Men-amun caught the first boat he could get, upstream to the southern suburbs. It felt good to be going home and at last he could relax.
His father greeted his arrival with a shout of affection and an arm round the shoulders. His young sister-in-law, Inawt, who ran the household, was minded to make a fuss of him. All his recent difficulties slipped away. Even so, Men-amun waited until his brother Sen-re came home and they assembled for supper, before attempting to break the news of his change in prospects. Sen-re gave him the perfect opening.
“How’s the priest business then?” he inquired breezily, pouring beer all round, while Inawt and the servant girl brought dishes.
“Oh . . . fine . . .”
When the activity diminished, he set down his beer and went on, “Actually – I seem to be in line for something new.”
“Oh, yes?” Sen-re was dividing up bread and handing it round.
“I’ve been interviewed. By all three Prophets and the High Steward Senenmut. What they are offering is the chance to start tutoring little Princess Merytre.”
Inawt stared with her mouth open.
“It’s a bit tentative, mind you. She’s too small for proper schooling just yet, but they have hinted I might secure the permanency if they think I’m right. Also, Prince Sobek reckons I should carry on with religious studies – which is good. I’ve got liturgy coming out my ears, but I’d like to branch into dream interpretation if I get the chance.”
There was a buzz of excitement and congratulations. Inawt asked what age Merytre was, exactly, and impressed on him that he must take her some really nice presents when he went back. Only his father was a mite caustic.
“What have you been doing, then – to get picked out for this?” he wanted to know.
Men-amun shrugged.
“I’ve submitted some papers lately – maybe Lord Sobek likes my writing! You might remember I left school top of the intake.” Well, it was half the truth.
“Watch yourself then, son.”
“How do you mean? Oh, come on, Pa, I thought you’d be no end pleased! They recalled your bravery decorations at the interview! This could be a huge step up.”
“I’m pleased – of course I am. I can see it as the start of a big career. Didn’t Senenmut himself come up by way of tutor to the older girl? All I say is: watch out for yourself. Royal Household – that’s a separate world – right? They can suck you dry, then spit you out like a date-pit if anything goes against you. I know. I saw some when I did my stint in the late King’s own guard.”
But, on the whole, it seemed a very good excuse to celebrate. And a day or two later they threw a big party for family and friends (Inawt was the brothers’s second cousin in any case), designed to show off Men-amun in his most glamorous light.
On the last day of his leave, the four of them crossed the river with offerings, food and wine, to visit the maternal tomb.
Men-amun went shaven and purified, and in his proper robe and sash. The whole family had loved their mother. He conducted the rites and read her a Letter to the Dead which he had composed specially. He took pains to do everything with affection and style. Afterwards – with her tomb door open for her spirit to join them – they set up shade awnings, laid mats and picnicked in peace. Through the heat of the day they all dozed. Later, Sen-re and Inawt wandered off on a curiosity tour of other tombs.
“You did that very well,” his father complimented Men-amun. “The religious stuff. Your Ma’d be pleased! I hope you’ll do the same for me when my time comes . . .”
“Thanks, Pa. I will, of course. You know that, surely?”
After a bit he queried lazily, “How many brothers did the Queen ever have?”
“Which Queen?”
“This one. Hatshepsut.”
“Phhhh . . . now you’re asking! Quite a bunch. Why?”
“I’m interested. I need a sort of all-round picture considering what I’m going into.”
His father scratched equably.
“Well . . . five or six, if I remember rightly. Half-brothers, mostly. There were three very much older, for starters. Wadjmose, Amenmose and Ramose. All of them were from old King Tuthmosis I’s previous marriage to Lady Mutnofret. She was a princess, true, but a lesser one. Only when King Amenhotep had him marry the Great Heiress – his daughter Ahmose – did the offspring really count directly.”
“Mhhm. And what came out of that?”
“Eh . . . dear me! Ma’at-ka-re Hatshepsut herself . . . Neferubity her sister . . . Amenemes.”
Men-amun pricked his ears.
“What happened to him?”
“Who?”
“Amenemes, Pa!”
“Died. Like the sister. That wasting sickness, where they cough. There’s a strain of that among them. Oh, and there’s your boss of course, Menkheper-re-sobek. He’s a half-brother. Can’t recall who his mother was . . . Then there was the one she married, obviously – Akheperenre – Tuthmosis II as was. He was interesting: the same age as Hatshepsut absolutely – to the day and hour. Odd, that! Also, you couldn’t hardly tell them apart as youngsters, they were so alike. They used to play tricks on people, did you know? Little devils . . . !” he chuckled reminiscently.
“Ha! What happened to the first three?”
“Wadjmose was an army man. He commanded my unit once. Killed in action. Amenmose . . . an accident . . . scrunched by a chariot. Ramose was the quiet one – went to be a priest but he had the coughing disease.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m not senile! As far as I can be, yes.”
There was a pause.
“Anyone else come to mind?” Men-amun asked.
“No. Who else could there be?”
“And when you were in the Guard . . . did you ever have to do – or hear tell of – any special kind of duty?”
“No, I did not! What is this?”
“Just trying to build the picture, Pa.”
“Well, how about building it back there? You’re the one in the Temple. If you doubt my word, go and look things up in Archives, yes? Now – can I please snatch another spot of zizz before those two get back and we all start packing up?”
Like probing pain in a tooth, Men-amun’s mind kept touching on the problem of No-name.
At home after supper, with Inawt stitching away at something small in blue imported silk – bending close to lamps augmented by polished metal discs – he remarked obliquely, “I suppose King Tuthmosis II did die?”
Sen-re looked astonished. Their father snorted angrily.
“Are you back on that? Yes – he did! You were at the funeral – in the procession of priests. Hadn’t you just been given your lector’s sash? I was there. Didn’t they call me back to help sort out the Honour Guard? Weren’t most of the rest of us there, in the viewing spots along the route I got them? He had twelve good years of rule, and the Queen loved that man! Everyone knew that.”
But this time his father was not to be put off.
“You were nearer than most. Weren’t you lot processed right to the tomb? Didn’t you all file right past the bier? Was there any reason at all to think it wasn’t a genuine body – albeit wrapped and masked and whatnot?”
“Yes, Pa . . . no, Pa!”
“So then . . . was the Queen not distraught enough for you?”
“Pa . . . honestly . . . I didn’t mean . . .”
“Didn’t you witness yourself the choosing of the male heir by Amun-Ra in oracle?”
“Yes. Look, I’m sorry . . .”
“I should hope you are! No one in this house goes round insinuating that the Queen faked anything! Understood?”
“Yes, Pa.”
Inawt bit off thread.
“There,” she said, mystified and anxious to restore harmony, “finished. I swore I would – so you can take it tomorrow.”
It was a child’s waist-belt neatly edged in bright colours. On the lappet ends, enclosed in gold thread cartouches it read twice: “King’s daughter – Merytre.”
Men-amun was presented to Their co-Majesties in the Appearance Hall of the Palace, the morning following his return. He had a long wait, being the very last person called to the Presences that day, and there had been a large foreign embassy to receive – the more exotic of whose gifts had rather got out of hand. Meantime, some bossy chamberlain kept lecturing him on what he had to do.
Finally Senenmut pronounced his name in loud, rasping fashion. Men-amun approached barefoot across what felt like a mile of glistening floor, gaze lowered as instructed, cast himself down prone in full obeisance and uttered the correct praise formula: “Life! Health! Prosperity! be to the Lords of the Two Lands.”
Someone touched him with a wand, so he could kneel up. Senenmut relayed to Their Majesties that here was the potential new tutor for the Princess Merytre.
They sat like statues, side by side, the woman and the adolescent boy – aunt/stepmother and nephew/stepson – weighted with gold and regalia – looking down on him from the combined height of dais and elaborate thrones. Behind the eye make-up they were quite startlingly alike: wide foreheads, high cheekbones, straight, fleshy noses, well-cut mouths, small rounded chins. Their top lips didn’t quite cover prominent upper teeth. It would be easy to assume, erroneously, that they were on the edge of smiling – when they were not. It was the Queen who wore the double crown of true governance; Menkheperre Tuthmosis III had the irridescent blue War Helmet.
For a moment they regarded him with that sort of baleful hypnotic attention reserved by cats for mice – then the Queen nodded fractionally and Men-amun was free to stand, to bow his thanks, to accept his new Household armring and to back carefully away.
He was allotted rooms to himself. One held a plain but proper bed with headrest – where all his life to date he had been used to sleeping shelves. The other was the schoolroom with a low worktable, two stools – even a chair for his own use. Men-amun’s box of personal belongings was sent over from his previous quarters, and a boy servant had been deputed to see to his needs and bring him meals.
The Princess Merytre – when she appeared next morning all by herself – proved to be very lively, articulate and prone to fun.
“Hullo,” she said, putting her head cautiously round the schoolroom door-screen, “are you my Teaching Person?”
Men-amun bowed, offered his name, and admitted that he was.
“Can I come in?” she asked – not really waiting for his answer but hopping the rest of herself into view. “I was ‘sploring,” she confided. “So I could find you first!”
She would not be clothed until her fourth birthday so as yet she trotted about in nothing more than a set of amulets (“Life! Health! Prosperity!”), a pair of tiny gilt sandals and a string of bright beads. Like all royal children, her head was shaven except for the sidelock denoting her rank. This was tightly plaited, tied off with a gold-thread ribbon.
Heeding Inawt’s injunction, Men-amun had not come unprovided.
He laid out on the worktable a scroll of best quality papyrus and a new scribe’s palette, complete with red and black ink cakes, a reed pen and a brush in their holders.
“These, Highness,” he told her, “are my first gift to you. See: they are labelled with your name.”
She touched them, curious and shy.
“But I won’t know what to do,” she said.
“Is it not my job to show you? You shall, quite soon. But we will keep this for your very best work.”
He had other things up his sleeve: a splendidly carved and painted wooden duck set on eccentric wheels so that when pulled along by its string it bobbed up and down – as ducks do.
“Ooh!” she exclaimed, entranced.
And after that he unrolled Inawt’s blue silk embroidered belt.
“Oo-ooh! Pretty!”
He showed her where it said her name on the ends.
Snatching up the belt and toy, she ran away from him, out of the room. He could hear her voice, eager, diminishing with distance, shouting: “Mama! Mama! See what I have! . . . and the blue thing says its ME!”
He spent an anxious time wondering whether to go after her, but didn’t know his bearings yet and feared to put a foot wrong. In a while, Merytre was firmly returned, downcast, and led by a young attractive nursemaid.
“Lady Merytre,” the nurse instructed, “You will tell the Tutor, please, exactly what Her Majesty your mother says you must!”
The child took a deep breath, looked him in the eye, and recited in one long rush: “I-must-say-Thank-You-because-your-presents-are-kind-and-I-must-say-Sorry-because-running-off-like-that-is-not-what-princesses-do-and-I-might-have-made-you-cross. There!” and she added, “You can let go now ’Ty. I won’t do it again.”
The nurse told Men-amun she had permission to stay a while until the pupil settled in – and he, beginning with practice slate and sponge and chalk to show his small charge how to set out her name properly inside its Pharaoh House, was rather more than glad.
The little girl was quick-minded, infinitely engaging. Men-amun soon found within himself an ability to teach. He wanted this job. Before too long, the first scratchy entries of “very best work” began to go into the papyrus roll.
They were absorbed in a counting game he had invented – where you stepped along a painted mat from square to square – when, one morning, turning round because his pupil’s calculations had abruptly exploded into giggles, he found himself face to face with Queen Hatshepsut. This time, shorn of much formality, she was smiling broadly. He had a job to make his obeisance with proper dignity.
“Forgive me,” she said, “I was passing. The mathematics attracted me . . . Please, do carry on.”
She dropped in from time to time after that. She was always charming – often complimentary – but she had an astonishing capacity for appearing almost out of nowhere, and in silence. Only a drift of perfume would warn him of her proximity. She often favoured sandalwood. Other things disturbed him.
He had thought up some little tales about a duck called Wek-wek (Merytre’s name for the toy he’d given her). Wek-wek got into scrapes and had to be constantly rescued by a small but brave and resourceful princess. These adventures proved sufficiently popular that eventually he wrote them down – not least so that nursemaids might make use of them at princessly bedtimes. He looked up once, in class, from trying out a new one, to find Her Majesty – who had quietly borrowed his chair – sitting enjoying it with them. She was absent-mindedly stroking her earlobe. And she possessed always, an air, however kindly she watched him out of her elegant small-cat’s face, of the suppressed danger, the ferocity of Sekhmet, the Lioness.
Uneasily, he remembered No-name.
He tracked down the scribes who were Keepers of the Royal Records and made himself agreeable. Household status had qualified him for limited access and since they were often pushed with work in, say, diplomatic correspondence, his skilful offers of occasional assistance at copying or glossing outdated material was welcome. He located the pigeonholing and labels of the current dynasty. There came an afternoon when sheer press of business combined with some sickness absences had the duty scribe in charge actually asking him to “hold the fort” for the time he was called away to take dictation.
Left alone, Men-amun took down the scroll bearing the labels of Tuthmosis I. Much was as his father had sketched: the Queen’s three most senior half-brothers were very much her elders. Their births, careers and deaths were fully documented. Menkheper-re-sobek, the last one living, had a different mother – a lady called Isis, who had also given the King a daughter of that name. Prince Sobek too, was twelve years older than the Queen. Amenemes, her full brother had come and gone, half grown – like Neferubity, her sister. Both were several years her junior. The last of the Lady Mutnofret’s sons, Akheperenre, who became Tuthmosis II, must have been a surprise. The gap between him and Ramose was a full ten years. And plainly, in red and black, his birth was recorded as coinciding exactly – to the month, the day, the hour, with that of the Princess Ma’at-ka-re, born to the Great Queen, Ahmose. “His Majesty,” ran a marginal note to the text, “was pleased to regard them almost as twins . . .” There was no indication of anyone else.
Akheperenre Tuthmosis II was well accounted for. Being sovereign, he had a scroll to himself: “Prince . . . King . . . slightly wounded in skirmish, fourth regnal year . . . recovered well . . . injured hunting hippopotamus, tenth regnal year . . . persistent grumbling infections from this . . . deteriorating health . . .” For the last two years of his reign, it was tacitly obvious the Queen had carried the burden of government. True to the convolutions of his family, he’d had female children with Hatshepsut; his male heir Menkheperre – now Tuthmosis III – was of the Lady Isis junior.
Men-amun re-examined the first scroll.
Ma’at-ka-re was fifteen when Ahmose, her mother died. Tuthmosis I proclaimed her in co-rule, but died himself a year on. She and Akheperenre were sixteen, barely of age, when they married and were crowned. Sixteen, add twelve and now the two years since his death – made her thirty now . . . just about. Again he scrutinized all the birth entries, but the script was neat and even with no detectable alteration or excision. No-name. Aged thirty . . . just about. But no name.
The Queen was said to be mildly indisposed, but Men-amun soon learned on the Temple grapevine that she had shut herself away in the innermost shrine of Amen-Ra Himself. Only the First Prophet, Hapu-seneb, was in any way permitted to approach.
He ought not have been surprised when Prince Sobek came seeking him, saying, “I need someone I can trust. Will you come?”
He knew what was implied.
Sure enough, the passage they went down – from the royal apartments – penetrated inevitably to the same familiar stony desolation. Only, this time, beyond the first door there was sufficiency of light and there were no guards.
No-name was dead.
He had been carried from the cell and laid down. His hands and feet were bound fast; his mouth stretched wide, seized in a huge rictus which betrayed a terrible and losing fight for breath. His eyelids, not quite closed, showed the dead eyes as white reflective slits.
“Highness! How has this happened?” Men-amun was aghast.
Prince Sobek shrugged.
“I wasn’t here. They tell me he began a rage but the guards pinioned him and tied him up. When they pushed him into his bag, it seems, a cobra had coiled inside.
Death from cobra venom is swift, by means of inexorable paralysis.
“What is it I’m to do?” Men-amun queried.
“Help me sort him out. We’ll have him interred tonight.”
But whatever No-name was due in the way of burial, by the looks of it, it was to be quite shockingly unorthodox.
Someone had provided new, watersoaked sheepskins, strong twine and needles. They had to set to and stitch the whole thing together with No-name inside it. When these skins dried out they would shrink tight. Men-amun found it grotesque.
“Is he to have no embalming? No proper rites?” he protested.
“No.”
Men-amun felt ashamed and uncomfortable.
The head, before its dense crown of matted, crinkly hair disappeared forever, was turned far to one side and had an odd, flattened appearance. No-name might have died of venom – or he might have been subdued and then pressed down into relentless suffocation. There was no way to be certain.
When they finished Prince Sobek sat back on his heels and breathed relief.
“Amen be praised!”
He brought up a rough wooden coffin. Together they lifted in the damp, stiffening bundle. Sobek shut the lid. Inside and out, the coffin was painted plain white. No good spells, no invocations, no name.
Men-amun was enough of a priest to be appalled.
“Have we not just obliterated his Being?” he argued hotly.
“No. I see how it looks to you, but his Being is not here. He has been subsumed.”
Men-amun scowled.
“How . . . subsumed?”
He ran a risk, being belligerent, but this mattered to him – or his training, his way of life, his belief-system, would be in doubt. The Prince stayed patient.
“Do we not teach that the soul is unquenchable? That I myself certainly hold! Then it has migrated elsewhere and I assisted it. Now: we shall cleanse ourselves. I would ask you to rest early this evening. In the small hours I shall need you one more time. You will accompany me properly as a priest. I ask you to judge nothing until our task is ended.”
In the dense blackness which precedes the end of night, Men-amun was taken to the royal quays. Hapu-seneb was waiting. They boarded the kind of little boat site workmen used. It already held the white coffin. Senenmut alone, was captain and crew. They sculled across the river in silence – making the journey to where the new mortuary temple was building. Once there the coffin was placed on a sledge. They dragged it along what would ultimately be the processional Way, then lifted it up new stone stairs to the great first platform. All of this was recently paved except, in the centre, for an open rectangular pit with a small pile of earth and a single flagstone propped next to it. Using ropes, they lowered the coffin carefully into the hole. Senenmut shovelled and levelled the dirt, manhandling the paving stone to seal the place. He and Hapu-seneb spoke together about getting back.
“There is much to be done,” Men-amun overheard Sobek agree, “But he and I remain until the Aten rises.”
When they had gone, Sobek hunted about for a workman’s mat, batted it vigorously free of grit and spread it on the ground.
“We have quite a wait,” he said. “Be easy.”
Men-amun sat down beside him, cross-legged.
“No one less than a prince,” he stated baldly, “would be buried here. However shabbily it has been done!”
Gazing remotely out into the purple of pre-dawn, Prince Sobek countered drily, “I heard you were busy in the Royal Archives. What did you learn?”
“Nothing, Lord.”
“Yet reason and instinct say you are correct. He was my half-brother. Can you not imagine such a burden – such endless sadness? He was the Queen’s brother – more – he was her true twin. Yet it was Akheperenre who so resembled her, and whom she loved.”
Chastened, Men-amun asked, “Was he always dangerous?”
“Always. But he was never in such hard captivity until these last few years – after he tried, once, to murder the Queen. In youth, she could calm him – but latterly his rages grew until they overtook him altogether.”
“I see . . .”
“I wonder if you do!”
After a pause, Men-amun admitted gloomily, “I feel I let him down, all the same. Perhaps I should have gone back.”
“I think not. Feel no blame for that. And shortly, now, you and I shall set him free.”
The density of night had thinned and greyed.
“I’m not sure, Highness, I understand your meaning in his being subsumed.”
“I believe that some part of his Being shall be absorbed elsewhere. I have done rites to that effect. It was his body, surely, that was so wrong – never his soul. The Ka and the Ba are quite other. Is that not what we comprehend as priests?”
“Ah. Yes. But where – absorbed?”
“You shall see. When the Queen emerges from seclusion this day, she will do so renewed, as Pharaoh in her own right, without impediment.”
No wonder they hadn’t killed him! This inextricable half of the Pharaonic whole. Men-amun’s thoughts whirled. . . . Or had they? Finally. Had she? Had she, in the end, taken the risk of overturning Balance in the whole Kingdom by using Wadjet, the cobra, that instrument of royal guardianship, against him? Or worse?
“She has upheld Ma’at – Balance, Truth, Justice – in the Two Lands as it is – since before Akheperenre’s death. Redoubled, she can rule now as she should.”
“And the young King?” Men-amun queried, astounded – for such a thing was unprecedented.
“Do not imagine her as evil! He will continue as he is. Amun-Ra chose him, and besides, she loves him for his father’s sake. He is still two years short of his majority and wishes to pursue a military life – to command, eventually, the whole army. He has nothing to do but wait.”
The east was changing – suffusing subtly with colours: violet, rose, the palest aquamarine. They had reached that breathless moment of stillness and expectation.
Prince Sobek stood up, and Men-amun with him, preparing for the return of Amen-Ra in all his glory.
“Did he ever have a name?” Men-amun asked urgently.
“No. The King my father forbade it. His birth was second and a hard one. He was thought dead at the time. Only on the preparation table in the House of Anubis did he suddenly kick and cry. When the embalmers returned him to the Palace my father deemed it unchancy. As it proved. Later, who dared to risk his gaining any understanding of what he truly was?”
“If he had had a name, Highness,” Men-amun pursued stubbornly, “What might it have been?”
The Prince half smiled into the coming dawn.
“Is she not Ma’at-ka-re? What is the twin of ka-re?”
“Ba. Ba-re.”
“And who is Kheper?”
“The scarab who rolls back the sun daily . . . and Khepri, his deity arising – who is Existence itself!”
“Good. And the prefix ‘Established’?”
“Men . . . kheper . . . ba . . . re.”
Side by side they raised their arms in prayer, each thereby forming the glyph Ka, commending him to Amen-Ra who made him – this Lost Prince whose flawed body was done with, and whose Ba, also, could now take wing in freedom.
The Aten, his golden chariot poised upon the rim of morning, blazed upward – hastening to receive and refashion him.
“I am Deity,” proclaimed Ma’at-ka-re Hatshepsut, Beloved-of-Amun, in her new dual voice as Pharaoh. “I am the Beginning of Existence.”
In the 19th century, Gaston Maspero, then Egypt’s Director of Antiquities, embarked on a preliminary clearing of Queen Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahari.
A plain, white-painted wooden coffin was discovered beneath the paving of the First Platform. It bore neither image, nor label, nor any indication of identity. Inside, sewn into sheepskin wrappings lay the body of an adult male, estimated at death to have been between 25 and 30 years of age. At variance with all custom, no embalming had been done, nor any internal organs removed. The man’s wrists and ankles still showed ligature marks, though the bonds had rotted away. Otherwise there was no sign of injury, except what Maspero called “the terrible distortion of the features” – which he thought consistent with the extremity of suffocation. The sheepskin had been sewn up wet and had shrunk on drying out. The white paint was considered to have been deliberate: the creation of a “blind spot” in the Afterlife.
Maspero, who was horrified, called this man “The Unknown Prince”. (See: “Everyday Life in Egypt” p. 218, Pierre Montet.)
Pharaoh Hatshepsut’s declamatory boast is extant in her mortuary temple. (See: “The Splendour that was Egypt” p. 110, Margaret A. Murray Sidgwick & Jackson 1977.)