Authors: Jackie French
Battles were easier than their aftermath, thought Narmer wearily.
Daylight drenched the battered town of Yebu. The fighting was over. Prisoners stood with bound wrists, ankledeep in the muddy water that still flowed through the streets. Soon some of his men would march them out into the fields and up the rise, to fill in the channel and build another dyke to keep the River from Yebu.
So much to organise. A kingdom to hold together.
How did you do it? he asked his father.
But even as he helped his men haul up the wounded before they drowned, and drag the corpses to the marketplace for their families to collect, new plans were rising in him, like the yeast in baker’s dough. Two towns were stronger than one; four towns made a nation, just as it was in Sumer.
And suddenly a vision burst through his mind: the entire River, united, trading and working as one country, a land of such peace and prosperity that people would talk of it for more than six thousand years.
Meanwhile, all around him joyous reunions were taking place, as the Thinis slaves greeted their loved ones.
‘He has saved us! The Golden One has saved us!
‘He moved the River! Even the River obeys the Golden One!’
‘Your Majesty?
Narmer turned. It was Jod. ‘Majesty’? thought Narmer. Jod had always called him ‘Master’, or ‘Young Master’ perhaps. ‘Majesty’ was what you called a king.
‘Your brother…’ said Jod quietly.
They waded through the remnants of the flood. The silt had stained the water so it was impossible to tell what was blood.
Someone had laid his brother on a table in Yebu’s marketplace. Perhaps last night the table had held pottery or fresh bread. Now it held the body of a king.
His brother’s face looked strangely peaceful. One hand still held his javelin, so that it rested across his breast.
Had he fallen protecting Narmer from the war club? Narmer would never know how his brother had lost his life. But he knew that Hawk had died, finally, as a king.
So now
I’m
king, thought Narmer. No, not king. Yebu’s king can rule his town. Min’s king will still rule too. Each town we conquer will have its own ruler. But I will be leader of them all.
Pharaoh. The Golden One.
The thought brought no elation. It just seemed right, as though Narmer had slipped on a pair of sandals made to fit his feet.
He gestured to two of his men. ‘Carry his body to the palace. Find Berenib, the woman who was his wife. Tell her to dress him with all honour. He is a king, and will be buried as one.’
The energy of battle was seeping away. Nitho will know what to do now, he thought. Nitho can help me organise…
Nitho…
Where was she? Why hadn’t she come to join him?
He began to wade through the water, avoiding the floating bodies. ‘Nitho? Nitho!’
Men cheered him as he passed. Min men, Thinis men: they were all one army now. A group of Thinis slaves bowed low. ‘My Lord, thank you! Thank you!’
‘Wherever you lead we will follow, my Lord!’ yelled one of the Min men.
‘The girl on the cart! Find her!’ he shouted.
‘Yes, my Lord. Anything!’
Narmer rushed through the muddy colonnades. A woman peered at him from a doorway.
‘The trader!’ he called. ‘Have you seen the trader? The girl who rode behind the donkeys? Have you seen her?’
The woman shook her head, her eyes wide with fear.
He entered a courtyard, then another, where two children hid behind a giant pot. He pretended not to see them. No sign of Nitho here.
He made his way slowly back to the marketplace. Where was she?
Suddenly his skin grew cold.
He began to help the men haul up the bodies from the mud again, frantic, his tiredness gone. But now he was
looking for one face alone. A scarred face, with a twisted lip, dearer to him than any other could be.
‘Hurry!’ he yelled desperately. A tide of emptiness washed through him. There was triumph, glory—but no Nitho.
He yelled out her name, as though sheer noise might make her reply. But no voice answered him. Men gathered round him, helping too. Body after body…
A man’s body, its drowned face white except for the mud and a bruise on its head. A boy’s body, the clothes so like the boy’s dress Nitho had worn that he felt a stab of terror. But she had been wearing a woman’s dress—
‘
Hissssss! Yooowl!
’
Narmer spun round. It was Bast. The animal was bedraggled, the black and orange of her coat the colour of mud. She was sitting on a giant basket that had once held fish or barley, batting her paws at a fool who had tried to come too close.
A mass of once-white robes lay slumped beside her.
Narmer felt his breath freeze within his body, then begin to gallop again, like wild camels after rain. At least Nitho hadn’t fallen in the water. At least she hadn’t drowned.
He splashed towards her and lifted her up against him.
Blood. Blood everywhere, soaking into her dress, dripping over the gold she wore at her wrists and neck. Dried blood, almost black. Fresh blood oozing down her face from a great ripped cut above her eye.
Fresh blood. She was alive!
It was as if his heart had stopped beating, then crashed to life again like a flood surging down a wadi.
He yelled for help, tore a strip from his tunic and pressed it against the cut, then searched for other injuries. A blue bruise on her forehead; her eye would be black tomorrow. But no other wound that he could find.
She would live, then. She
had
to live!
The cat glared at him, as though it were all his fault. And she’s right, thought Narmer.
He sat on a nearby table with Nitho on his lap. She
had
to wake up. For a moment his life stretched before of him, a life without Nitho, as dry as the world without the River.
Then her eyes opened. She blinked, confused, and smiled faintly as she recognised him.
‘You’re safe,’ she whispered.
He stroked her muddy cheek. ‘Yes.’
‘It’s over? We won?’
‘Yes. Shh, my darling Nitho. All’s well. Shh.’
But her eyes stayed stubbornly open.
‘What now?’ she whispered.
He almost smiled. How could he find the words, at a time like this, for all that was in his mind?
And then he had them.
‘Now you will be my queen. You will, won’t you?’
She muttered something, too low for him to hear. He bent closer to her mouth.
‘Stupid…’ she murmured. And then, ‘Of course…always loved you…’ she added, the words almost lost in the noise around them.
‘I love you too,’ he said, even though her eyes had drifted shut again. But he knew she heard him, as her fingers clasped his hand.
‘Bring our father here,’ she whispered. ‘Teach them traders’ writing. Teach them traders’ routes…Trade…proper ships along the River…will bring the River towns together.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But shh now. We can talk about this later. We have all the time in the world.’
‘Later…’ she breathed.
She seemed to sleep. But the hand that held his stayed warm and firm.
I always loved you! he thought. My oracle, friend, sister, companion…queen. How could I rule without you?
He sat there holding her, feeling her heartbeat next to his, listening to the bustle all around: the joyful calling of the Thinis slaves, his men marching the prisoners off with their spades, Jod hurrying towards them—and old Seknut, her face lit up with the widest smile of pride and happiness she had ever given him, hobbling up with clean water and linen. She too was alive, and safe!
But Narmer’s eyes fled back to Nitho’s injured face. ‘You’ll be fine in a day or two,’ he told her softly, as Seknut, understanding the situation at a glance, began to press a bandage to Nitho’s wound. ‘And if your face has another scar—well, it was you who told me once that all princesses are beautiful. They’ll call you beautiful too, when we are married. And you are.
‘We’ll teach them to control the River, to bring water to the desert. And we’ll bring our father here. Perhaps he can work out other words to write, not just for trading, so that our knowledge can be remembered—and our names will live for six thousand years.
‘I will be the pharaoh, and you my queen. The first in my heart. My dearest friend. And when the gods come to judge us in the Afterlife, we’ll walk together.’
The following account is written by me, Hesyre, Scribe to the mighty Narmer, first Pharaoh of all Egypt, wearer of the Dual Crown of North and South, who united our land as one Kingdom, diverted the might River Nile, built cities and invented the papyrus on which I write. Our glorious Pharaoh died aged sixty-three while hunting hippopotamus. His great queen Nithotep ruled after him as regent, with their son, Djer. Long may Narmer and Nithotep rule together in the Underworld. Long may their names be remembered.
This book takes place about 3000 BCE, long before the pyramids of Egypt were built, or Jerusalem, and before Egypt had mummies, scribes, hieroglyphics or irrigation.
When we think of ‘ancient Egypt’ we think of the pyramids. But the times of the Pharaoh Narmer were ‘ancient history’ to the builders of the pyramids too. Most of the information you’ll find about ancient Egypt is far too modern to be relevant to this book.
Yet five thousand years ago was one of the world’s most fascinating times, especially in the Middle East and Egypt, where this book is set, and around the Mediterranean.
It was the beginning of civilisation as we know it now. Instead of being nomads, travelling from place to place gathering wild food, people were learning new ways to farm and starting to build cities, instead of just small villages. In the early days of farming, tribes would camp for months by the fields of grain, waiting for it to ripen, then pick and thresh it—getting rid of the stalks and the husks around the seeds. Then during the colder months of the year they’d have to lug around all the wheat they’d gathered. So slowly
people decided to stay put instead of wandering around—and the world’s first settlements grew up around the wild wheat fields.
It was the age of domestication, too, as humans realised that instead of hunting wild animals they could farm them, and train them to work. Such animals included horses, dogs, camels and cats.
The landscape of Egypt and the Middle East was very different from today, with forests, marshland and grasslands instead of today’s vast deserts. The deserts in this book would have been smaller than the ones in the same areas today, and probably had more springs and scattered grass where animals could graze. But this also seems to have been a time when these areas were becoming drier, forcing farmers to learn how to irrigate, and more and more nomads to seek moister pastures.
Life was growing harder in other ways too. Now that people were living in one place and their water was becoming polluted with their sewage, they started to catch diseases, especially from the animals they lived so close to—measles from cows, tuberculosis from cows and goats, and influenza from pigs and ducks. In earlier times humans were too spread out for disease to travel from group to group. Now for the first time many illnesses really got a hold on our lives.
Wars grew more serious, as people fought for land near water and there were more people living in one place to fight, though there were still no professional armies. People who owned land—or controlled it—were better off than those who didn’t, so for the first time there was a real difference between the wealthy and the poor. Rich people now had
slaves captured in battle, or servants: people who owned no land and had to work for someone else for their food.
Above all, this was the time when humans learnt to write down their knowledge, their myths and their history, so that all these new wonders could be passed on to other people they would never meet.
It was possibly the time of greatest change that humanity has known.
Cats:
Wildcats were probably first domesticated in Egypt about six thousand years ago, to help control mice and rats. These wildcats were much larger than today’s house cats. They replaced the earlier pest control species—ferrets, one of the earliest domesticated animals.
Cubit:
About half a metre.
Donkeys:
The donkeys in this book were really wild asses, or onagers. I have used the word ‘donkey’ because it’s more familiar.
Wild asses were possibly first domesticated near Sumer. Early carts and perhaps chariots were used in Ur too, long before horses were tamed in that area. Chariots, carts and riding didn’t really catch on until horses were domesticated. This happened around 3500 BCE, but far from the Middle East, probably by herders in what’s now the Ukraine, who had already been riding reindeer and using them to pull sleighs, but started to use horses instead. The idea of riding and taming horses spread via horse-riding nomads from the high steppelands of central Asia into central and western Europe and then down into the Middle East between 3000 and 2000 BCE.
Ka’naan:
This was later to become the holy land of the Israelites. The ancient Egyptians used the word
ka’naan
or
kan’an
to refer to merchants, or traders.
Medicine:
Quite a few ancient Egyptian medical documents survive. The ancient Egyptians and Sumerians had skilled doctors, though many illnesses were treated with spells and prayers too. They used plants like poppy, garlic, chamomile, artemisia, deadly nightshade, camphor, caraway, frankincense, myrrh, saffron, spearmint, turmeric, henna, lavender, gum Arabic and rose oil to stop pain or cure or prevent diseases. Often medicines were mixed with vinegar, flour, egg white or milk and applied to the patient’s shaved head. Other treatments were given through the mouth or nose or other bodily openings.
Some ancient Egyptians, like Narmer and Nitho, lived well into their sixties. But ordinary workers were lucky to live more than thirty-five years, and water-borne diseases from the River and parasites from animals were common. Many people also suffered from breathing difficulties such as the sand cough, caused by the clouds of irritating dust and sand from the desert. Eye diseases were common too, but the eye cosmetics used by wealthy people may have helped prevent them.