The Age of Ra

9. Palace

There are worlds within worlds within worlds. A god may be in any of them and all of them. A god may, to take an example, be voyaging aboard his Solar Barque, that aspect of him fully present there, conversing, laughing, brooding. He may at the same time be elsewhere, in another aspect. To be a god is not to be limited to one specific location or moment. Even the least among the Pantheon may manifest in two or more places at once, and Ra is anything but the least among the Pantheon.

Ra is at the palace of Osiris and Isis. He stands in a courtyard that is both as large as might be imagined and as large as can be imagined. Colonnades surround him in a rectangle, leading to halls, which lead to countless other halls. The columns are topped with palm-leaf capitals. Their sides are plated with electrum. Garlands of white jasmine are wreathed around them.

At the centre of the courtyard a fountain plays, and in its crystal-clear arcs and jets of water can be seen glimpses of life on earth. Images of humans appear and disappear, shimmering within this limpid liquid screen. A baby being born. A child at school. A pair of young lovers, coupling. A man and woman getting married. A worker receiving a promotion. A mother paying tribute at a temple. A grandfather on his deathbed. Fleeting moments, there then gone. Like human lives. Over in a blink.

Osiris and Isis enter the courtyard hand in hand. At home they prefer to go naked, apart from their headdresses, which are things of golden light that float above them rather than things that are worn, more halo than hat. Osiris bears the Atef crown, a double-plumed mitre with a small solar disc at the tip. Isis's headdress shifts between a throne and a vulture, depending on which angle it is viewed from.

The couple kneel in obeisance to their great-great-uncle.

''You honour us with your presence, O Giver of Life,'' says Osiris.

Isis claps her hands. ''Mead!'' she commands. ''Olives! Dates! Figs! Okra!''

The victuals are brought in immediately on salvers, which are carried by childlike creatures, darting, nebulous beings, sibilant-footed and with something of the bird of prey about them.

The three gods sit, eat and drink.

''You are heavy-hearted, Great-Great-Uncle,'' Isis says at last, once the obligations of both host and guest have been discharged — stomachs are full, cups are empty. ''Tell us what is on your mind.''

Ra heaves a sigh. ''In truth I do not know where to begin.''

''So many sorrows?''

''Just one, but it is formless and seems to have neither head nor tail nor middle. I cannot fathom the shape of it.''

''Is it us, All-Father?'' asks Osiris. ''Your family? That would be my guess.'' Across Osiris's bare skin can be seen a series of fierce red scars. One encircles his arm, just below the shoulder. Another rings his neck. Several criss-cross his torso. His body was torn asunder, split into fourteen pieces, and those pieces flung to different locations across what was once called Egypt. They were eventually reunited, the flesh fused together again, but the imprint of the ghastly dismemberment remains. Osiris possesses a perfect physique, gorgeous in itself. The scars add a strange, savage beauty of their own.

''Our disagreements have always pained you, Ra,'' Isis says, taking up her brother-husband's theme. ''I see it in both of your eyes when you watch us. Your sun eye dims. Your moon eye wanes. You wish we could learn to set aside our differences and live in harmony.''

''That may be it,'' says Ra. ''I had thought myself resigned to your endless grudges and enmities, but perhaps, in my dotage, I am finding them more upsetting than I used to.''

The word dotage sparks a flurry of polite protest from the married siblings: no, no, you are not old, your mind is as sharp as ever, you have many an eon left in you.

Ra swats the supportive comments aside. ''It aggrieves me that the very act which was intended to beget unity has merely exacerbated the divisions between you. When the First Family handed control of the earth to all of you, it was meant to bring you together, a shared responsibility. Instead, it seems to have had the opposite effect, providing you with yet another bone of contention.''

''It is early days still,'' Isis points out. ''Barely a century has passed since the First Family finally destroyed the last of the other gods. A hundred years — you might say that our reign is only in its infancy. Perhaps in another hundred years things will have settled down.''

Osiris looks unconvinced. ''I would never wish to contradict my beloved bride, She At Whose Teat Every Newborn Suckles,'' he says. ''However, I, for one, cannot foresee a time when I shall not hold my brother Set in utter contempt. How can I contemplate forgiving what he did to me, let alone forgetting? That son of a hyena tried to overthrow me. He tricked me into a coffin he'd had made for me. He told me it was a gift, built to fit only me. I climbed in, he slammed the lid and nailed it down, and then he threw the coffin into the Nile and left me to drown. And that was just the start of it.''

Isis pats her husband's knee. She has heard this tirade of his a thousand thousand times. Osiris never tires of it, nor of the righteous indignation it allows him to feel.

''You have to admit, my husband, it was partly your own fault,'' she says, in a tone of gentle wifely mockery. ''It was rather obvious that our brother was setting you up for something. Do you not know Set? Deceit is second nature to him.''

''Pardon me for being so trusting!'' Osiris snaps. ''You might have seen a trap. All I saw was a gesture of fraternal kindness.''

''But you knew how jealous Set was of you. You knew how he resented the way the people of Egypt loved and worshipped you. Anyway, you weren't stuck in that coffin for long. I came and found you at Byblos, on the Lebanese shore. The moment I heard about a mystical, miraculous tree growing there, I knew it was you. I took the coffin back to Egypt and was preparing to give you a proper burial…''

''When Set turned up again,'' says Osiris, ''and snatched the coffin and cut me up into pieces.'' Reliving the memory brings a hardness to his face and voice. ''Do you know what that feels like? Trust me, you don't want to.''

''But then we found you again, dear. Nephthys and I. We searched high and low and we gathered all the bits of you together and we made you whole once more.''

''Nearly whole.'' Osiris peers sullenly down at his lap, where used to reside the one piece of his body that the two goddesses failed to recover. A fish had devoured his penis. Now in its place a wooden phallus has been fitted. Handsomely proportioned, a fine specimen of polished cedar, but not, of course, the real thing. A fully functioning substitute but not the same.

''And I,'' says Ra, ''breathed life back into you, so that you and Isis might lie together again, an event from which issued a son. The tale has a happy ending, Osiris. Harm was done but not, I feel, irreparable harm.''

''Not irreparable!?'' scoffs his great-great-nephew. ''I have a fake cock that might argue otherwise.''

''Well, I have no complaints in that department,'' says Isis with a sly smile. ''None at all.''

The comment soothes her husband. ''Thank you, my love,'' says the ever-uxorious Osiris. ''I live to please you. But even so, were it not for Set I would be intact, a whole person.''

''And Set is doing his best to atone for it,'' says Ra. ''It and many other crimes. Can you not be content with that? Can you not simply let the matter lie now?''

Osiris considers the suggestion — for all of a second.

''By killing me Set condemned me to be ruler of the dead,'' he says. ''It's a position I am honoured to hold and I discharge my duties gladly.''

What duties? Ra thinks to himself. Anubis does all the work. You are nominally in charge but it's your nephew who actually supervises the labourers in the Field of Reeds.

''But,'' Osiris goes on, ''it's something I'd rather have accepted by choice than had thrust upon me. Given that and Set's other offences against me, am I willing to let bygones be bygones with the so-called Lord of the Desert? No.'' He thumps his fist on the bench. ''No I am not.''

''And in the meantime,'' says Ra, ''down on earth, humankind is engulfed in a maelstrom of conflict, largely because you and Set cannot sort things out between you.''

''So be it,'' says Osiris. ''The mortals worship us, hence they must act in accordance with our wishes and desires. That is the way it is and must be.''

Spoken with finality. No room for compromise.

Ra stands and takes his leave. Osiris and Isis escort him off the premises with every courtesy and good wish.

Ra is back on the Solar Barque. Ra is a single being in a single place. He always has been.

Maat, at the tiller, says, ''My lord? All is well?''

Sombrely Ra nods. ''I now know what I have to do. It is a hard undertaking, perhaps an impossible one, but I must attempt it anyway. Somehow I must end my descendants' warring. It has all gone far enough. I must unite them in peace.''

Maat smiles to herself, a calm, wise smile. Ra has decreed it. So will it come to pass.

Ra rubs his face.

''Peace?'' he says to himself. ''I must be mad.''