Egypt

2

The noble Nakht, tall, slim and elegant, was standing at the top of the entrance stairs of his grand city house, greeting his rich and elite friends as they arrived and passed through into the grand reception hall. He was wearing his finest pleated linens and a magnificent shebyu collar-two strands of solid gold rings. Such collars were royal gifts, signs of high favour and office, strikingly beautiful, and very heavy. Such ostentation was a recent development in his personal appearance, which had always been austere; but his rise to even greater eminence, as royal envoy, seemed to have encouraged him to a more open display of personal opulence, about which-as he made very clear-he was not to be teased. Nakht was now one of the most powerful men in the land: the chief official who oversaw the relations between the judiciary, the priesthood, the government and the palace, and who, as royal envoy, represented Egypt abroad. In short, he was the keystone of power. And yet I could never quite square that with the man I knew, who was more interested in studying the mysteries of the stars, and the obscure puzzles of ancient texts, than in the crude, day-to-day business of power and politics. I observed him in action from my bodyguard’s vantage, just to his side. His finely drawn face, with its delicate features, moved through exactly the right range of expressions as he greeted each dignitary according to his stature, and by name (for his memory was famously prodigious): the nobles and priests with poised grace, the overseers with a sly, collaboratively subversive wink, the new magnates with respect. And yet, his topaz eyes, alive with intelligence, seemed to observe the pageant of all this, and indeed of all human life, as a slightly remote spectacle. He had the concentrated hunting eyes of a hawk in the smooth face of a gentleman.

Our friendship was unlikely. We had met when we were younger, at a grand reception in Akhetaten, the new temple city built by Akhenaten and Nefertiti midway between Thebes and Memphis. Nakht had been born into a world of gold and privilege, but despite the differences in our origins we had taken to each other immediately.

And now, all these years later, and despite his eminence in high politics and intellectual life, he still seemed to find something amusing and interesting in me. I, for my part, remained intrigued by his life of the mind, his bladed intelligence, and above all by his warm love for my children. Perhaps he borrowed from me the one thing he lacked in his life-a family. And I was glad to share them with him.

Once upon a time, I had been an invited guest at Nakht’s famous social functions. Tonight I was here because I was working. Nakht had started to employ me occasionally as his personal bodyguard, saying he could trust my discretion in a way he could trust no one else. With his customary tact, he had made it seem as if it was I who was doing him the favour. And given the unreliable and ever-diminishing payments from my Medjay work, and the spiralling costs of even the most basic of foods, I was absolutely desperate for any means to provide for my family. Many of my fellow Medjay officers, alarmed by the increasing murder rate among our own kind, and the worsening violence in the city, had been drawn into private security work: either at rich men’s houses, or rich families’ tombs, loaded with treasures and gold-which were always threatened with violent robbery. Some made money on both sides, by collaborating with gangs of tomb-robbers. Others had also been drawn by need or weakness into blackmail, protectionism and extortion. Many times I regretted refusing the Queen’s offer to become her private guard, which she had made five years before; but the palace was never my world-I was a Seeker of Mysteries, and no matter what the cost, and no matter how absurd it might seem, I had no choice but to remain true to myself.

Up on the roof, the large terrace was set out with many trays on stands, piled high with the finest of foods in ostentatious quantities: whole ducks in thick glazes; big roasted haunches of gazelle, sliced finely to reveal the pink meat; roasted gourds and shallots; bread rolls; honeycombs; olives glistening in oil on decorated platters; lustrous bunches of shining grapes that caught the evening sunlight; and mountains of figs and dates. Servants dispensed fine wine from the Dakhla oasis. I would dearly have loved a goblet of decent wine, as I could no longer indulge such luxuries at home. My mouth watered; I stopped myself from smuggling a handful of almonds from a dish. After the last guests had departed, Nakht would insist that I take as many of the leftovers as I wished home for the children. ‘Otherwise it will just be thrown away,’ he would say, trying to find a way to make his charity acceptable, while pressing a small cask of excellent wine upon me. We would eat like kings for the next few days; and for a little while we would not have to suffer the same old onions, garlic, bony fish and gritty bread that had become our staple diet.

As Nakht made elegantly witty conversation with a rich couple, while they fawned over and flattered each other, I gazed out over the city in the glorious evening light. The grey, red and yellow flat rooftops of Thebes, crowded with drying vegetables and broken bits and pieces of household furniture, spread away in every direction. The Avenue of Sphinxes, the vast, straight, paved processional, ran to the north, joining the Temple of Karnak and the Southern Temple, whose towering, painted mud-brick walls reared up near by. I watched as a temple army phalanx laboriously conducted the handover to the night guards in the open ground before the vast pylon. To the west ran the Great River, the source of all life, like a brown and green serpent, glittering silver now as the sunset flowed on its ever-changing surfaces. Further, beyond the cultivation on the west bank, and the stark borderline where the Black Land of the cultivation and the Red Lands of the desert divided, lay the long stone mortuary temples; and beyond them the hills and valleys, now painted in the blacks, yellows and reds of sunset, where the royal tombs preserved the great kings in their stone sarcophagi and gold coffins, timeless and secret. To the south, also on the west bank, I could just make out the squat shapes of the Malkata Palace, home of the royal family, hidden at the heart of the extensive labyrinth of overseers’, administrators’ and officials’ accommodation. And beyond the city’s boundaries, beyond the green and black fields, beyond all the monuments and statues made by men upon the face of the earth, lay the great unknown of the Red Lands, that other world of dust and sandstorms and dangerous spirits and death, which had always held such power for me.

The evening sun had dropped low now, and the sky was turquoise, indigo, crimson and gold; the sweet northern breeze of the evening hour had begun to cool the air. At a discreet nod from Nakht, the servants took down the exquisitely embroidered awnings, and lit many little oil lamps. The guests settled on chairs-with low chaises for the women-set out for comfort. I looked at their affluent faces and opulent outfits, gilded by the last of the evening light. They lived in a different world from those in the streets all around them.

I shadowed Nakht as he moved over to a small coterie of close friends who frequented his mansion. Hor the poet was talking, as usual; wittily and bitchily entertaining his friends with scurrilous accounts of high-level indiscretions and scandals, usually of a sexual nature. I used to think poets were dreamers of truth and beauty, with their heads in the Otherworld. But Hor was chubby and self-satisfied, worldly and successful. His little fingers were heavy with valuable gold rings. He was famous for a series of verses, circulated anonymously some years ago, which daringly satirized Ay, once vizier, now King. Today such things would earn him summary execution.

‘Friends, I have written a new poem,’ he announced ostentatiously. ‘It is a trifle, but perhaps I may impose it upon you…’

A polite murmur of encouragement followed.

‘I hope it is a cheerful one,’ said someone.

‘There is no such thing as a cheerful poem,’ he replied. ‘Happiness writes in water, not ink.’

Everyone nodded as if this was a very wise thing to say. He assumed his posture of poetic delivery, head tilted, fingers of the right hand raised, and when he had satisfied himself that he had everyone’s attentive silence, he intoned:

Who can I trust today?

Brothers are evil, and friends have no compassion.

Hearts are greedy

And each man steals

His neighbour’s worldly goods.

Compassion has perished,

Violence walks the ways,

Evil runs rampant

Throughout the land-

Evil, endless evil…

And so it went on. When it was over, his cheerless dirge-which I thought truthful, but repetitive and not particularly original-was met with a worried silence, before the audience applauded hastily. Nakht sensed the mood of the evening was threatening to turn the wrong way.

‘Remarkable poem. Concise, memorable and honest,’ he said.

‘I see I have shocked you all a little. But to be a poet is to accept the responsibility of speaking the truth! No matter what the cost to my personal safety,’ said Hor, taking a deep, sustaining gulp from his cup of wine.

‘Your relationship with the truth has always been a very flexible and accommodating one,’ said Nebi, a well-known architect, dressed in an expensive embroidered tunic.

‘Of course it has, in matters of men and this world. I’m a poet, not a complete fool…’ Hor replied.

‘But the truth itself is so complicated these days,’ said another.

‘The truth is always the truth,’ said Nakht, smiling at his own triteness.

Hor waved him away. ‘I can’t bear platitudes. They actually hurt my feelings,’ he said.

All this talk of truth was making me want to go and do something useful.

‘However, I have heard some interesting news, friends,’ continued Hor, smiling his evil little grin. The others huddled a little closer, checking over their shoulders to make sure no one else was listening. And then, after a carefully timed pause, the poet leaned forward, as if among conspirators, and in a theatrical whisper said: ‘He will soon be with the Gods.’

Everyone understood what he meant but could not say. Ay, the hated tyrant who ruled over the Two Lands, had long outlived the expectation of his natural life.

‘But this is hardly new news. And even if he were to pass on, how would anyone really know? He’s looked dead for years…’ joked Nebi’s wife, to a little round of laughter.

‘Mark my words. I have it on authority: it may be only weeks. And none of us will be laughing then.’

The guests glanced at each other and shivered, as if the balmy evening air was suddenly running with strange, cold currents.

‘So the moment we have all feared for so very long is about to arrive! The end of this great dynasty-and the end of the age of peace and prosperity!’ cried another, mournfully.

‘And so at last comes General Horemheb’s chance,’ said Nebi. ‘And with it perhaps the end of the world as we have known it.’

‘The general will claim more than the crowns. He will claim everything. And then he will do what he likes with us…’ said an older man, with his elegantly beautiful young wife sitting subserviently behind him.

‘I heard he has a secret papyrus on which he has recorded a list of the names of all his enemies, and all those who have opposed him, or failed to support him, over the years,’ whispered Nebi.

‘How many of us will be on that list!’ replied the older man, looking around at the company.

‘It is a dismal prospect,’ agreed Hor. Lifting his stubby hand to the west, like a tragic actor, he intoned: ‘Like an army of shadows, his numberless soldiers in their divisions will return from their long campaigns against our arch-enemies, the Hittites, and turn their forces instead upon our own great people, to conquer and dominate and suppress our liberty. I see his ships, under blood-red sails, appearing out of the dark night. I see his troops occupying the streets of our city. I see the best men led forth to execution. I see calamity. I see blood running in the streets. I see the world turned upside down.’

The audience seemed spellbound by his prophecy. I glanced at Nakht, who was observing the poet. We exchanged a slight rise of the eyebrows at the oracular melodrama of the performance. But Hor was serious.

‘I have you all amazed. But Horemheb is famous for his cruelties and his passion for revenge. I heard a story, from the mouth of one who was there, that, once, the general ordered a captive Hittite commander to be boiled alive before him, for his entertainment … while he ate his dinner.’

There were cries of revulsion among the group. More guests had gathered to listen, with their goblets and trays. But at this point, Nakht intervened.

‘Come now, friend. Your poetic imagination is a great gift, but as a prophet perhaps you relish your visions of doom too greatly. The future is not so sure. Nor is it necessarily so bleak. No oracle can decide for certain what will happen. Indeed, we have reasons for imagining a different future altogether.’

‘Such as? The ascension of Horemheb bringing “order” and “a return to the old values” and so on…?’ said Hor, sarcastically.

‘His ascension would, in any case, be entirely illegitimate: he has not one drop of royal blood in him. Even Ay himself could claim a bloodline association with the royal family, however debatable. But Horemheb has simply married his way into the family, driven his poor first wife madly to her death, and then made the Queen, last of the true dynasty, into his sworn enemy,’ said Nakht.

He rose, and walked among the little gathering. ‘Life, prosperity, health to the Queen,’ he intoned loyally, to appreciative murmurs from most of those present. And then he continued. ‘Friends, is Horemheb truly so powerful? Has he no opposition? Yes, he is General of the army of the Two Lands of Egypt; but do we, the leading men of Thebes, have no faith in our own power and authority? Do intellect and morality count for nothing in the way the future unfolds? Does Amun, the God of our great city, and of the royal family itself, have no power to save us? Can we not save ourselves?’

There was a murmur of support for Nakht’s speech from the guests. But only Hor spoke what was on everyone’s mind.

‘We would not be in this position at all if King Tutankhamun had not died in such tragic circumstances. He would have ruled, perhaps gloriously. There would have been heirs. The empire might have been great again. A new king, son of kings, could have emerged, heralding a bright future. Instead of which…’

He held up his squat hands, with their many gold rings, and shrugged helplessly.

‘The King’s death was an accident. No one could have foreseen it, or prevented it,’ replied Nakht, in a manner that warned everyone from contradicting him, or from saying anything further.

Only one person spoke up: ‘It is true, there is a crisis in this land. Outside this bubble of affluence and illusion there is desperation. Poverty, cruelty and injustice have done their work on the people; corruption has replaced justice for the poor, and contempt has replaced respect for dignity, labour and integrity. Greed is our king, and corruption is his servant.’

Everyone turned in astonishment to stare at me, because the angry, bitter voice was mine. Nakht stared at me with a remarkably unfriendly detachment. Everyone else clearly thought I was mad and would be instantly dismissed; a servant dares to speak! But someone was slowly clapping. It was Hor.

‘I remember you, sir; you are that Medjay Seeker of Mysteries who used to write poetry in his innocent youth.’

‘I am Rahotep,’ I replied.

‘There is truth in what you say. Truth is a dangerous muse. One dies for the truth.’

He plucked a silver goblet of wine from a tray, and thrust it into my hand.

‘To the truth! And much good it may do us,’ he cried sarcastically, and drank the toast. Then he nodded at me, and walked away, quickly followed by the other guests.

‘To the truth,’ I muttered, and drank from the goblet. I was in for another shock. The wine was superbly rich, with a dark, melancholy beauty. Such were the pleasures of wealth.

When I looked up I saw Nakht was staring oddly at me, but then he turned his back and began to talk to another guest.