Ancient Evenings (40 page)

“You are not only a King, my Lord, but a great rider of the Royal Chariot.’ ”

“ ‘And you are better than the rest,’ He remarked, ‘or can other charioteers also put the reins around their waist?’

“A few are learning from me.’ I could see the First Charioteer coming up the boulevard fast behind us, obviously determined not to let me talk here too long, so I added before the air felt ready for the remark, ‘I think a troop of charioteers could learn to ride in my manner if I were allowed to teach them.’ Being a military man, He saw my point. ‘We could win on every field,’ He said, but added with no pleasure, ‘If you can teach those cowards who couldn’t keep up with us, you’re the son of Amon as much as Me.’

“I would have loved to tell Him my secret, but only said, ‘We are all children of Amon.’

“ ‘Some more than others,’ He said, and added, ‘You’re smart for a good rider. Usually a man has to be dumb as his horse. Like Me,’ and He nudged His wife.

“I dared to laugh with Them, but what I did not know until later was that They were laughing at me. He knew the Temple of Ptah well enough to have had His Coronation there. All the same, the face of the First Charioteer, once he had caught up to us, was pale beneath the dust, and for the best of reasons. I was on my way to replacing him. Of course, it was a longer way than I knew that morning.”

THREE

“He took me back to Thebes, and I was put in charge of a troop. They took to my instruction slowly, however, and years went by. I despaired more than once of my boast that I could show all how to do it, since in the beginning, none could, but for one boy of ten, Prince Amen-khep-shu-ef, the oldest son of Ramses and Nefertiri.”

“Now I am a little uncertain,” said Ptah-nem-hotep. “How old was the Great Ramses when you first met him?”

“He was married to Princess Nefertiri, His sister, when He was thirteen and She was twelve, and Amen-khep-shu-ef was born within the same year. I would think the Prince was eight in the year His father came to Memphi, and that was when Ramses was twenty-one, and Nefertiri twenty.”

“It is not easy to think of this great Pharaoh as young.”

“He was young on the morning I met Him,” said Menenhetet, “but already the father of a boy of eight, and by the time this boy was ten He had become the first of all the riders in Thebes to learn control of two horses with the reins about one’s waist, although with all I taught Him, the Prince never thanked me. A most unusual boy, and stern enough to frighten grown men. Still, if not for His young skill, I think that Usermare, my great Ramses the Second, would have been most unhappy with the poor progress of the other charioteers, but He was proud of His son, and forgave me much for that, and the others also learned—I think in shame—and finally they grew able. So He became more pleased with me, and on the day I showed Him twenty chariots who could ride at a gallop across a field, their line of attack even, the reins about every waist, all chariots able to turn on a signal, so that now each was riding behind the other, then turn front again, yes, He was so pleased that He made me not only His First Charioteer, but His Equerry which meant that I rode behind Him each morning. There was almost never an occasion when He did not go to the Great Temple of Amon in Thebes—He attended every morning—and that became my next duty.

“What a procession we would make through the streets! It was not like Memphi where we went at a gallop, oh no, we traveled no faster than the speed at which foot soldiers run, and two couriers had to go in front and cry out for the populace to stand back. On we would come, chosen soldiers from every regiment of His guard, each in different colors, the red and blue for the Sherdens, the black and gold for the Nubians, colors I still remember, then the lancers, and mace-bearers, the archers, all jogging on foot, and to the front of His horses were the standard-bearer and the fan-bearer. He liked them to stay just ahead.

“In Thebes, He would not often ride with Queen Nefertiri. Usually, She would follow in Her own chariot, and I in mine, also alone, and then every nobleman of the palace came behind, followed by charioteers. Hundreds went every day to the Temple of Amon, yet I was the only one allowed to enter the Sanctuary with Him.

“There is one morning of all those mornings,” Menenhetet went on, “that I remember clearly, for it was the day war was declared with the Hittites. There are dawns that speak of how hot the afternoon will be, and this was such a morning, and the light and heat come forward in separate steps, as if on the padded feet of a beast.

“On the ride to the Temple, in the midst of the early warmth of that fierce day, one rare cloud came toward us out of the East like a ship from a far-off place—almost never did we see clouds in the morning—and it covered the sun. I do not think our horses had taken two hundred steps before the cloud passed, but my Ramses the Second said, ‘At the Temple, there will be unusual events today.’ He was not a Monarch renowned for the quickness of His thoughts, but then He was as strong as three men and His slow thoughts must have allowed Him to hear the voices of Gods that more clever men do not. So, this Pharaoh sometimes knew of events to come. On this occasion He smiled dolefully at His wife and myself, for we had drawn up to Him when He stopped, and He rubbed His long thin beautiful nose.”

Ptah-nem-hotep now murmured: “His nose does not appear thin in the sculptures I have seen.”

“Its shape was to be changed at the Battle of Kadesh. But that was later. Now, He said, ‘This day is the beginning of the end for Me, yet I will live twice as long as other men,’ and He lifted His elbow and took a long whiff of His armpit as if that was the first oracle to consult.”

‘As indeed it should be,” said my father. We all knew the truth of this remark. How could the odors that rose from the body of a King not be close to each change in the fortunes of the Two-Lands? My great-grandfather took the leisure to sniff at his own armpit in imitation of Ramses the Second, and did it with a strong open mouth as if swallowing half ajar of beer. “Then,” said my great-grandfather, “my young Pharaoh having come to a stop, the procession stopped, and that swarm of hundreds of boys who ran ahead of our horses in order to cry up the alarm on every avenue, courtyard, great building, alley, and choked-up slum just back of the Grand Avenue of Ramses the Second (named in honor of His Ascension but a few years before) became aware, as boys will, how in the tumult of their cries that the Pharaoh is coming, the Pharaoh is coming, there was now to be heard an absence of echo. The Pharaoh was not coming. The populace, instead of thronging toward the Grand Avenue, halted instead to watch the silence of my King.

“But having contemplated the passing of the cloud and the root of His arm, He had now decided to cross the river instead and make His sacrifice instead on the West Bank. A most unusual procedure. It would take all of the morning and more. The West Bank, while never as congested as the East, was even then of the same length as it is today from south to north and the New Temple was not near. It would take a while to bring up the Royal Galley and ferry the Nile, not to speak of sending messengers to the High Priest of the First Temple of the East Bank to join us, and wait for that High Priest to order his own transport and pick the order of his First and Second Priests to accompany him—then all the confusion of such esteemed company having to mingle with lesser priests at the New Temple! It could be a most unpopular decision full of acrimony between the Temples. Yet how could He ignore the cloud? I shivered in memory of the chill cast by its shadow. When the Pharaoh looked at me, I knew He was waiting for a word, and so I said, raising my eyes to the sky, ‘The cloud has also crossed to the West Bank.’ In truth, the cloud was only moving north but our great stream took a bend at this point to the east, and that was enough for Him. We could go where He wanted to go in the first place.

“The horses started up again, the pack of boys ran ahead, the people came out of their shops, their kitchens, their work-houses, the girls in the brothels were up from their beds, children were released from school, and men and women ran in every direction trying to guess the route, for Ramses the Second rarely took the Grand Avenue all the way to the Temple but was even known to draw His retinue through many a dirty square that had no more than a few small shops and an old shaduf with a leaking ail. It was His way of seeing the city. The populace, as a result, was on the move to guess which streets might be chosen. If correct, they would take up their stand as close to the procession as they dared—a chariot wheel was known to cut off a few toes now and again—and the lucky men and women in the front rank had to brace their bodies against the surge of all who could not see from the rear.

“On this morning, now moving very fast to make up for the uneasiness of that moment when He did not immediately know His mind, it happened that the crowds pushed too much. There was an unmistakable cry. I heard the screech that lifts from the groin when the great bone of the thigh is broken, and later I heard of some young fellow who lost his leg to a chariot that day.

“Yet, in our hasty march, we proceeded until we came in sight of the pylons and flags of the First Temple, and could enter on the long avenue that leads past the hundred Sphinxes who line the promenade.” My great-grandfather gave these details with a grimace, as though to apologize for the mention of sights the Pharaoh would know well, but I think he described it so in courtesy to me, who had never been to Thebes.

“Then, we entered the gate. Then, as now, many would say that the exterior of the First Temple of Amon of the East Bank of Thebes is equaled by no building in the world. No forest through which I have passed can summon as many Gods as one can hear whispering to one another when the breeze stirs in the Great Hall with its hundred and thirty-six stone pillars, each higher and of more thickness than any giant tree I have seen.

“I would yet go to war in lands where my pride had to grow small before the face of mountain cliffs, the beauty of forest foliage or the magnificence of high waterfalls. I would know that foreign Gods are great because of the extraordinary shape They can give to the land. But, in Egypt, where our country is flat and our mountains, by comparison, are low, the Gods have told us to build the wonders ourselves, and that has cost us much. Instead of feeling an immense pride at what we have done, we are without pride, and terrified of our own works. I know no mountain to inspire me with more awe than the Great Pyramid of Khufu, nor a forest to compare to the Hall of Columns in the Temple of Amon on the East Bank.”

“That is all very well,” said Ptah-nem-hotep, “but the Hall of Columns of which you speak was only finished by Ramses the Second later in His Reign.”

There was a pause before my great-grandfather replied. “To have four lives,” he said, “is to live like the passage of the Nile over its cataracts. Four cataracts have I passed over at my four births, and yet it is all one water. That is why I am often in error when I pass each bend. You are able thus to remind me, You-of-the-Two-Great-Houses, that the Hall of Columns was not finished at the beginning of His Reign, yet it must have seemed completed, at least to me, for the roof was then in place and nearly a hundred columns were already erected; indeed I used to feel as if I wandered, like a child just able to walk, between the thighs of a multitude of Great Gods. There is no sound I have known like the rustling of that Great Hall at night. In my second life, as a High Priest, I used to wander by myself through the aisles and hear the stones communing with each other before dawn.”

He paused. “On this morning, as on every morning, there was a multitude waiting in the open courtyard for a sight of our young Pharaoh, and a smaller group was gathered in the Hall of Columns, engaged, if you would believe it, in commerce of the most advanced sort. Land, cattle, poultry, jewelry, vases, and grain were being sold.”

“You are certainly not saying there was a bazaar on the floor of the Great Temple?” asked my mother.

“More wondrous than that,” my great-grandfather replied. “Business was being transacted between many of the priests and some of the wealthiest merchants and traders of Thebes, yet without an article in sight. Everybody knew one another so well that cheating was not often, I think, attempted. It was impractical. A swindle could be denounced the next day. Then the probity of the trader would be in question for years. Trust was so complete, and the taste for speculation so great, that a piece of land bought one day might be sold the next without the first buyer ever looking at it. If a fraud was thereby passed on, the purchase often had to be traced back through a number of traders before one could find the man who knew the goods were worthless in the first place.”

“Does this still go on in the Hall of Columns?” asked Ptah-nem-hotep.

“Divine Two-House, I have not been often to Thebes in my fourth life. But during my third, when I was one of the wealthiest men of Egypt (by my reckoning at least) the practice still ensued, yet by subtler means. The traders would select certain priests and scribes as their agents. It showed more respect for the Temple. Those loud barterings that once howled like wind between the columns were now whispers. But the commerce still existed. This market where objects were for sale, but no buyer could see them, taught me much about wealth. I learned that it was not gold, nor the command of slaves, but rather the power to use another man’s thoughts faster than he employed yours that went into amassing it. The absence of anything you could see for sale added to the delights of the game. Only the most astute traders could work in such austere surroundings.”