Ancient Evenings (41 page)

“The priests had no fear of sacrilege?” asked my mother.

“Some did. But it is the severity of the Hall of Columns that makes the value of what one is selling most believable. One hesitates to swindle another in such a place. Besides, the smell from the sacrificial chambers surrounding the Hall of Columns adds to the excitement of this barter. Even as one swears to the authenticity of one’s goods, so from the cool of these deep shadows comes the odor of blood and meat and the smell of fifty smokes to remind you that the Gods have Their own market, and it looks down upon ours.”

“Did Ramses the Second know of such activities?”

“He used to sweep through the Hall of Columns with never a look at the traders. His mind was on His devotions. We would stop to wash our hands in the Sacred Pool, but then He would rush by chapel after chapel, until He came up to the oldest temple in the compound which in those years was the Sanctuary (until its walls collapsed during the period when I was High Priest) a gloomy room, I must say, built in the reign of Sesostris near to a thousand years ago, large, empty, narrow, of a high ceiling and gray stone walls with an opening in the south wall near the roof, so there was light near the altar from morning to mid-afternoon.

“I would, as I say, be selected to accompany Him into the Sanctuary and on the threshold He would leave the Queen—then, as now, no woman could enter the Holy of Holies, unless, like Queen Hat-shep-sut, She had become the Pharaoh Herself. Nefertiri was conducted, therefore, to a large gilt chair and golden footstool in the Hall of Columns, and there She would wait with the King’s retinue in ranks about Her, a woman surrounded by a company of nobles, and yet not a morning would go by that I did not feel Her anger follow me to the Sanctuary. Through all of the sacrifices that would follow, through the chants and prayers that came from other chambers, the pleas for restitution of damage, and contrition for wrongdoing, of all this multitude of whispered requests and invocations and murmurings, of scoldings, laments and litanies that curled through the smoke and burning blood of the altars of the chapels around us, I could still feel the wrath of Queen Nefertiri, more intent than any prayer. I would wait in silence, my head ringing at the woe that came out of these supplications, one woman pleading to Amon for life to be given to her womb, another bemoaning the death of her son”—Hathfertiti, who by now had moved from her couch to mine, put her arm at this point around me—“while next to such sorrow could be heard the pride of a landowner giving over his tithe of cattle and wine and grain and furniture and one slave per month in honor of the contract made by him on the promotion of his son to the rank of Third Priest in this Temple. I would hear all of it, even a beggar’s voice full of old sores long-crusted in his throat while he snuffled forth his request of some priest passing him by, and to all of this, Ramses the Second was separated by His Sanctuary, and by His pious mind, but so soon as He entered the Temple and could feel the presence of Amon, my Ramses the Second was no longer a friend or a fellow-charioteer, but a Monarch, as grand and remote from oneself as the sky. Indeed, as we came to the great copper doors of the Sanctuary, it was only in a mood of the most profound solemnity that He broke the clay seal, and we entered.

“Inside, in the middle of the stone floor was a circle of silver soil, that is, some white sand with many shavings of silver, and Ramses would kneel upon it, and stare in contemplation on the Sacred Bark which rested on the silver sand. I, kneeling beside Him, would feel these filings cutting my knees. The King, however, did not move. Ramses the Second had little patience in other matters, yet there was no time of day happier to Him than resting on His knees before the Bark of Amon. That boat, if I may describe it for my family, was no more than six paces long, but covered with gold leaf, and ornamented by a ram’s head of silver in the prow, and another in the stern. We looked at these wonders and rested our knees on the silver sand in this great stone room old as the centuries, and therefore possessed of the chill of great age even on a hot day. Besides, the presence of Amon was enough to bring cold to the air! It was dark, all but entirely dark in that place if not for the single shaft of light that came down from the small opening high in the south wall to light up the monumental bulk of the old altar, but now in the near-darkness it was the ark that kept our attention more, for its gold sides glowed with fire in the gloom like the rich light one can sometimes see in one’s heart. Kneeling, I could feel the presence of Amon in His cabin on that ark. In His small cabin, not so high as the space from my knees to my breast, was the Greatest God, there within! And we could know Him, for His mood was more powerful than the coming of night to the Nile, indeed we always could say as we knelt before Him whether He was happy with us or much displeased.

“Soon, the High Priest, Bak-ne-khon-su, would come into the Sanctuary with two young priests—the one who was Tongue, and the one called Pure.”

Ptah-nem-hotep asked, “Are these the Superintendents of Prayer and Purity?”

“Their titles have changed,” said Menenhetet.

“Ever so much”

“It was different then. Bak-ne-khon-su would wear no more than a white skirt; his feet were bare. Tongue and Pure would oil their scalps. Their heads would gleam. I would be impressed by the cleanliness of their dress, for many a priest had linen spattered with the blood of sacrifice. Some even smelled of burnt meat. But not the High Priest. He was a man with a simple manner and now he said no more than, ‘The clay is broken and the seal is loosed. The door is open. All that is evil in me, I throw on the ground.’ With that, he prostrated himself before the Pharaoh and kissed His toe, even as Tongue and Pure kissed the ground to either side of Bak-ne-khon-su. All three kept looking up with adoration.

“I can tell you that despite their rank, they were not brothers to know much of matters outside the Temple. Bak-ne-khon-su was most unlike Khem-Usha. If he was a Third Priest by the age of twenty-two, he had to wait until he was near to forty before becoming a Second Priest. During all those years, it was said he remained a vessel of innocence, but little more. No one thought of him with great regard until my Pharaoh made him High Priest. I think his loyalty to Ramses the Second may have been his first virtue. I might also say he conducted all services with exceptional care.

“So, for instance, when Pure opened the door of the cabin, Bak-ne-khon-su not only kissed the ground, but did it with his arms behind him so that he was obliged to incline himself forward until supported by no more than his knees and his nose, yet from this awkward position, he was able to roll his face on the ground in genuine terror at the awesome act of opening the cabin and this was true even if they did it every day.

“My eyes had grown used to the dark of the Sanctuary, so I could see the statue. The gold of Amon’s skin was smooth; His hair, and the chin-phallus of His beard, were black; and the black stone of His eyes looked at me carefully. I could swear to that. I felt a new fear this morning, for it may be that I had never dared to look into the face of Amon before, yet He seemed less like a God than a small man, with features not nearly so handsome as Ramses the Second and certainly not so fine as the delicate and somewhat sunken cheeks of Bak-ne-khon-su. Indeed, Amon looked like a wealthy little fellow you might see in the streets. He was certainly being treated with intimacy. The High Priest stood up, bowed in four directions, took a cloth and said, ‘Let Thy seat be adorned and Thy robes exalted,’ and he reached into the cabin and wiped the old rouge from Amon’s cheeks. With another prayer he applied new rouge. Amon now looked more cheerful.” I hardly wished to stop listening to my great-grandfather, but it was impossible to ignore my father at this point, who smiled at Ptah-nem-hotep as if he would call attention to the importance of those moments when he, as Chief Overseer of the Cosmetic Box, would apply rouge to the Pharaoh’s cheeks.

“Now Bak-ne-khon-su removed yesterday’s garment from the golden limbs and plump golden belly of Amon, and replaced it with fresh linen and new jewelry. Each piece removed was blessed by Tongue and kissed by Pure, then laid away in a chest of ebony and ivory. A perfume of sandalwood was sprinkled upon Anion’s brow and a cup of water was set before Him with a plate containing a few fine bites of meat and duck and honey. Then the priests lit the incense, and prayed aloud, ‘Come, White-Dress,’ they said, ‘come, White-Eye of Horus. The Gods dress with Thee, and Thy name is Dress. The Gods adorn Themselves, and Thy name is Adornment.’

“I was young then and had no idea I would ever die and live again, and become a High Priest, but even in that early hour, the smell of incense in the Sanctuary was like no odor I knew, for it was scalding to the nostrils, yet sweet and mysterious, and with good reason. I came to learn when I was High Priest that there was much in the incense. I tell it now because You are my Pharaoh, but in my second life as a priest, I would not have dared to speak of what was in it. Of course, even as I tell this now, I do not recite the prayers that accompany the mixing, only that this subtle powder held the balm of resin, and onycha and galbanum and frankincense, and there were lesser quantities of myrrh, cassia, spikenard and saffron. I can say there were also carefully chosen amounts of aromatic fruit rind powdered with cinnamon, then marinated with lye and wine and salt, plus salt of copper to give a blue flame. Indeed, the lye was best taken from the root of leeks wherever leeks could be found to grow in high stony places. This was a secret of the High Priest of those days.”

I wished to hear more, but Menenhetet paused. He would wait—so his manner said—while those who desired could muse over the salts and powders he had described. These herbs could bring back memories, after all, of funerals, or perfumed couches, and so his audience was likely to be distracted by many thoughts. But I had no need to brood on galbanum and frankincense. I waited to hear the story. My great-grandfather’s tale might be full of bends but like our Nile, it did not matter if the river flowed south for a time since we knew it would always turn to the north again.

So, I was patient. I knew that the four lives of my great-grandfather were like the four corners that make the foundation of a box. His mind could hold what any of us might wish to put within it—there was no matter on which he had not thought. Even as one can step into a boat and float down our river, thinking at first only of how far one has gone, so after hours of travel one begins to see that it is not really a large distance one has traversed but yet the river is longer by far than the greatest journey one has taken before—that way, too, did the long slow current of my great-grandfather’s mind give promise to pass every palace and cave I had encountered in my sleep.

Now when he began to speak again of the presence of Ramses the Second in the Sanctuary, I could feel the attention of my mother and father return, then of Ptah-nem-hotep, for He had pondered the longest over the ingredients of the incense.

“In other places than the Temple,” said Menenhetet, “Ramses the Second was, as I say, impatient. Indeed, He had the impatience of a great lady just so much as of a great man. His face, as I believe I have related, would have been as perfect on a woman as on a man. It was therefore a pure expression of Maat that He had so great an Estate below. One knew what a man He was when offered a glimpse through His robes of the stoutest longest friend any man ever carried. The dissatisfaction of beauty may have been on His face, but the authority of Egypt dwelt between His thighs.”

“I have heard as much,” said Ptah-nem-hotep in a voice as dry as the sands of our desert.

“Yes,” said my great-grandfather, “and I have observed that most of those who are so fortunate as to have been given the great member of a God often show an uncontrollable lack of patience. Our Usermare, Ramses the Second, on any ordinary occasion, could wait for delay no more than a lion can be taunted, but in the Temple, He was as peaceful as the shade of a tree.

“So when Bak-ne-khon-su asked of my Pharaoh which question the Lord of the Two-Lands might like to present to the Hidden One this morning after the sacrifice, the Chosen-of-Ra replied only, ‘In the curl of My tongue is the question still sleeping.’ In truth, how could He know His true question after the cloud crossed the sun?

“The door to the Sanctuary was now opened by Tongue and Pure, and a white ram came through the portal, led by two young priests, one at each horn. Two priests followed at the rear holding pointed sticks to prod the ram’s flanks. Then, as now, gold cords tied the beast’s front feet close to each other. He could walk but not run. I may say, however, that in those days more care was taken with the animal itself. His horns were covered with gold leaf, and his skin was powdered until he was sweet smelling and whiter in appearance than our linen.

“This animal was, however, distraught. Some beasts are at peace with Amon when they enter the Sanctuary, which is in itself a good sign. For then their entrails usually prove firm, and do not excite any dispute concerning the shape. This animal, however, must have seen the same cloud, because on encountering the altar, he gave one mournful sound, as though wounded by the knife already, and defecated. Three large wet deposits were laid on the stone.

“It was three and that is the number of change. We would have preferred four, the base of good foundation. The priests waited, therefore. But when no further tremor showed in the animal’s hide, and the ram’s mouth relaxed, we could feel Amon stirring in the manner of a guest getting ready to leave. Tongue and Pure came forward then with two handfuls of silver sand from the sacred circle on which the Bark was laid, and they drew smaller circles of silver around each dropping.

“Now the animal was brought to the sacrificial stone. I have not described the altar, but I think it is because I never liked to look at it. The Sanctuary, being the old Sanctuary—it is all rebuilt now—was a thousand years old, old as Sesostris, I say, yet the altar was more ancient. I do not believe it had been washed in that thousand years. Old blood lay upon older blood—you shiver, Hathfertiti, and make a face,” said my great-grandfather, “but there is much to be studied, for this ancient blood was darker than the night and harder than stone. The Gods may race through our veins, but They make Their home where blood has dried on the rock.