Tales of Ancient Egypt Page 15

  Rameses gathered his treasures together in the form of gold and silver and precious stones – and the more he gathered the more anxious he became lest anyone should steal his hoards.

  So he sent for his Master Builder, Hor-em-heb, and said to him, ‘Build me a mighty treasure house of the hewn stone of Syene; make the floor of solid rock and the walls so thick that no man may pick a hole in them; and rear high the roof with stone into a tall pyramid so that no entrance may be broken through that either.’

  Then Hor-em-heb, the Master Builder, kissed the ground before Rameses, crying, ‘O Pharaoh! Life, health, strength be to you! I will build such a treasure house for you as the world has never seen, nor will any man be able to force a way into it.’

  Hor-em-heb set all the stone-masons in the land of Egypt to work day and night quarrying and hewing the stone from the hard rock on the edge of the desert above Syene where the Nile falls from its most northerly cataract near the isle of Elephantinē. And when the stone was hewn, he caused it to be drawn on sledges down to the Nile and loaded on boats which bore it down to Western Thebes, where the temple of Rameses was already rising, which stands to this day and is now called Madinet Habu.

  Under the care of the Master Builder the walls of the new building were reared and a pyramid was built over the whole, leaving a great treasure chamber in the middle. In the entrance he set sliding doors of stone, and others of iron and bronze; and when the untold riches of Pharaoh Rameses were placed in the chamber, the doors were locked and each was sealed with Pharaoh’s great seal, that none might copy on pain of death both here and in the Duat where Osiris reigns.

  Yet Hor-em-heb the Master Builder played Pharaoh false. In the thick wall of the Treasure House he made a narrow passage, with a stone at either end turning on a pivot that, when closed, looked and felt like any other part of the smooth, strong wall – except for those who knew where to feel for the hidden spring that held it firmly in place.

  By means of this secret entrance Hor-em-heb was able to add to the reward which Pharaoh gave to him when the Treasure House was complete. Yet he did not add much, for very soon a great sickness fell upon him, and presently he died.

  But on his death-bed he told his two sons about the secret entrance to the Treasure House; and when he was dead, and they had buried his body with all honour in a rock chamber among the Tombs of the Nobles at Western Thebes, the two young men made such good use of their knowledge that Pharaoh soon realized that his treasure was beginning to grow mysteriously less.

  Rameses was at a loss to understand how the thieves got in, for the royal seals were never broken, but get in they certainly did. Pharaoh was fast becoming a miser, and he paid frequent visits to his Treasure House and knew every object of value in it – and the treasure continued to go.

  At last Pharaoh commanded that cunning traps and meshes should be set near the chests and vessels from which the treasure was disappearing.

  This was done secretly; and when next the two brothers made their way into the Treasure House by the secret entrance to collect more gold and jewels, the first to step across the floor towards the chests was caught in one of the traps and knew at once that he could not escape.

  So he called out, ‘Brother! I am caught in a snare, and all your cunning cannot get me out of it. Probably I shall be dead by the time Pharaoh sends his guards to find if he has caught the Treasure Thief; if not, he is certain to have me tortured cruelly until I tell all – and then he will put me to death. And whether I live or die, he or one of the royal guards will recognize me, and then they will catch you, and you too will perish miserably – and maybe our mother also. Therefore I beg you, as you hope to pass the judgement of Osiris whither I am bound, that you draw your sword and strike off my head and carry it away with you. Then I shall die quickly and easily; moreover no one will recognize my body, so that you at least will be safe from Pharaoh’s vengeance.’

  The second brother tried to break the trap. But at last, realizing that it was in vain, and agreeing that it was better for one of them to die than both, and that if his brother were recognized their whole family might suffer, he drew his sword and did as he had begged him to do. Then he went back through the passage, closing the stones carefully behind him, and buried his brother’s head with all reverence.

  When day dawned Pharaoh came to his Treasure Chamber, and was astonished to find the body of a man, naked and headless, held fast in one of his traps. But there was still no sign of a secret entrance – for the Treasure Thief had been careful to remove all tracks – while it was quite certain that the seals on the doors had not been broken.

  Yet Pharaoh was determined to catch the Treasure Thief. So he gave orders that the body should be hung on the outer wall of the palace and a guard of soldiers stationed nearby to catch anyone who might try to take it away for burial, or anyone who came near to weep and lament.

  When the mother of the dead man heard that the body of her son was hanging on the palace wall and could not be given the sacred rites of burial, she turned upon her second son, crying, ‘If the body of your brother remains unburied, his spirit cannot find peace in the Duat nor come before Osiris where he sits in judgement: instead he will wander for ever as a ghost, lost upon earth. Therefore you must bring me his body – or else I go straight to Pharaoh and beg for it by the love which he bore to your father Hor-em-heb his Master Builder. If he learns that you are the Treasure Thief, I cannot help it; but I will at least bury you with your father and brother in the great tomb of Hor-em-heb.’

  At first her son tried to persuade her that the burial of the head was enough: for this he had set secretly where Hor-em-heb lay. And then he pointed out to her that it was surely better for one of her sons to lie unburied than for both of them to die. But she would not listen to him, and he was forced to promise to do his best to recover his brother’s body.

  So he disguised himself as an old merchant, loaded two donkeys with skins of wine, and set out along the road which ran by the palace wall.

  As he passed the place where the soldiers were encamped he made the donkeys jostle against each other, and he secretly made holes in the wine-skins which had bumped together as if some sharp pieces of metal on their harnesses had done it.

  The good red wine ran out on to the ground, and the false merchant wept and lamented loudly, pretending to be so upset that he could not decide which of the skins to save first.

  As soon as they saw what was happening, the soldiers of the guard came running to help the merchant – or rather to help themselves. This they proceeded to do until the two damaged skins were empty, and the wine was already on its way to their heads.

  By this time the merchant had made friends with his gallant rescuers, and was so grateful to them for saving his wine from being wasted on the desert sand that he made them a present of another skin of wine, and sat down to share it with them. They did not refuse their help when yet another skin was broached; but before it was emptied they were past saying anything, and lay snoring on the ground with their mouths open.

  Darkness was falling by this time, and the false merchant had no difficulty in taking down the body of his brother from the wall, wrapping it in empty wine skins, and carrying it away on one of his donkeys. Then, having cut a lock of hair from one side of each soldier’s head, he went triumphantly home to his mother – and the funeral was completed before the morning.

  When it was light and Pharaoh discovered that the body had gone, his rage was great, and he caused the guards to be laid out and beaten on the feet with rods as a punishment for their drunkenness.

  ‘Whatever the cost, I must have the Treasure Thief!’ cried Pharaoh, and forthwith he invented a new plan to catch him. He disguised one of his own daughters, a royal Princess, as a great lady from a foreign land, and bade her camp before the city gates and offer herself in marriage to the man who could tell her the cleverest and wickedest deed he had done in the whole of his life.
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  The Treasure Thief guessed at once who the strange maiden was, and why she was asking these questions. But he was determined to outdo Pharaoh in cunning. So he went to visit the Princess just as the sun was sinking, and he carried with him, hidden under his cloak, the hand and arm of a man who had lately been executed for treason by command of Pharaoh.

  ‘Fair Princess, I would win you to be my wife,’ he said.

  ‘Then tell me the cleverest and the wickedest things that you have ever done,’ she answered, ‘and I will say “yes” to your offer of marriage if they are wickeder and cleverer than any I have yet heard.’

  As the sun went down behind the hills that hid the Valley of the Kings, the Treasure Thief told his tale to the Princess.

  ‘And so,’ he ended, ‘the wickedest thing I ever did was to cut off my own brother’s head when he was caught in Pharaoh’s trap yonder in the secret chamber of the Treasure House; and the cleverest was to steal his body from under the noses of the soldiers who were set to guard it.’

  Then the Princess cried out to the royal attendants who were hidden nearby as she seized the thief, saying, ‘Come quickly, for this is the man Pharaoh is seeking! Come quickly, for I am holding him by the arm!’

  But when Pharaoh’s attendants crowded in with their lighted torches and lamps, the Treasure Thief had already slipped away into the darkness, leaving the dead man’s arm in the Princess’s hands – and she saw how cleverly she had been tricked.

  When Pharaoh Rameses heard of this further example of daring and craftiness, he exclaimed, ‘This man is too clever to punish. The land of Khem prides itself on excelling the rest of the word in wisdom: but this man has more wisdom than anyone else in the land of Khem! Go, proclaim through the city of Thebes that I will pardon him for all that he has done, and reward him richly if henceforth he will serve me truly and faithfully.’

  So in the end the Treasure Thief married the Princess and became a loyal servant of Pharaoh Rameses III. Nor did he ever have any further need to enter the Royal Treasure Chamber by the secret entrance made into it by Hor-em-heb the Master Builder.

  The Girl with the Rose-red Slippers

  In the last days of Ancient Egypt, not many years before the country was conquered by the Persians, she was ruled by a Pharaoh called Amasis. So as to strengthen his country against the threat of invasion by Cyrus of Persia, who was conquering all the known world, he welcomed as many Greeks as wished to trade with or settle in Egypt, and gave them a city called Naucratis to be entirely their own.

  In Naucratis, not far from the mouth of the Nile that flows into the sea at Canopus, there lived a wealthy Greek merchant called Charaxos. His true home was in the island of Lesbos, and the famous poetess Sappho was his sister; but he had spent most of his life trading with Egypt, and in his old age he settled at Naucratis.

  One day when he was walking in the marketplace he saw a great crowd gathered round the place where the slaves were sold. Out of curiosity he pushed his way into their midst, and found that everyone was looking at a beautiful girl who had just been set up on the stone rostrum to be sold.

  She was obviously a Greek with white skin and cheeks like blushing roses, and Charaxos caught his breath – for he had never seen anyone so lovely.

  Consequently, when the bidding began, Charaxos determined to buy her and, being one of the wealthiest merchants in all Naucratis, he did so without much difficulty.

  When he had bought the girl, he discovered that her name was Rhodopis and that she had been carried away by pirates from her home in the north of Greece when she was a child. They had sold her to a rich man who employed many slaves on the island of Samos, and she had grown up there, one of her fellow slaves being an ugly little man called Aesop who was always kind to her and told her the most entrancing stories and fables about animals and birds and human beings.

  But when she was grown up, her master wished to make some money out of so beautiful a girl and had sent her to rich Naucratis to be sold.

  Charaxos listened to her tale and pitied her deeply. Indeed very soon he became quite besotted about her. He gave her a lovely house to live in, with a garden in the middle of it, and slave girls to attend on her. He heaped her with presents of jewels and beautiful clothes, and spoiled her as if she had been his own daughter.

  One day a strange thing happened as Rhodopis was bathing in the marble-edged pool in her secret garden. The slave-girls were holding her clothes and guarding her jewelled girdle and her rose-red slippers of which she was particularly proud, while she lazed in the cool water – for a summer’s day even in the north of Egypt grows very hot about noon.

  Suddenly when all seemed quiet and peaceful, an eagle came swooping down out of the clear blue sky – down, straight down as if to attack the little group by the pool. The slave-girls dropped everything they were holding and fled shrieking to hide among the trees and flowers of the garden; and Rhodopis rose from the water and stood with her back against the marble fountain at one end of it, gazing with wide, startled eyes.

  But the eagle paid no attention to any of them. Instead, it swooped right down and picked up one of her rose-red slippers in its talons. Then it soared up into the air again on its great wings and, still carrying the slipper, flew away to the south over the valley of the Nile.

  Rhodopis wept at the loss of her rose-red slipper, feeling sure that she would never see it again, and sorry also to have lost anything that Charaxos had given to her.

  But the eagle seemed to have been sent by the gods – perhaps by Horus himself whose sacred bird he was. For he flew straight up the Nile to Memphis and then swooped down towards the palace.

  At that hour Pharaoh Amasis sat in the great courtyard doing justice to his people and hearing any complaints that they wished to bring.

  Down over the courtyard swooped the eagle and dropped the rose-red slipper of Rhodopis into Pharaoh’s lap.

  The people cried out in surprise when they saw this, and Amasis too was much taken aback. But, as he took up the little rose-red slipper and admired the delicate workmanship and the tiny size of it, he felt that the girl for whose foot it was made must indeed be one of the loveliest in the world.

  Indeed Amasis the Pharaoh was so moved by what had happened that he issued a decree:

  ‘Let my messengers go forth through all the cities of the Delta and, if need be, into Upper Egypt to the very borders of my kingdom. Let them take with them this rose-red slipper which the divine bird of Horus has brought to me, and let them declare that her from whose foot this slipper came shall be the bride of Pharaoh!’

  Then the messengers prostrated themselves crying, ‘Life, health, strength be to Pharaoh! Pharaoh has spoken and his command shall be obeyed!’

  So they set forth from Memphis and went by way of Heliopolis and Tanis and Canopus until they came to Naucratis. Here they heard of the rich merchant Charaxos and of how he had bought the beautiful Greek girl in the slave market, and how he was lavishing all his wealth upon her as if she had been a princess put in his care by the gods.

  So they went to the great house beside the Nile and found Rhodopis in the quiet garden beside the pool.

  When they showed her the rose-red slipper she cried out in surprise that it was hers. She held out her foot so that they could see how well it fitted her; and she bade one of the slave girls fetch the pair to it which she had kept carefully in memory of her strange adventure with the eagle.

  Then the messengers knew that this was the girl whom Pharaoh had sent them to find, and they knelt before her and said, ‘The good god Pharaoh Amasis – life, health, strength be to him! – bids you come with all speed to his palace at Memphis. There you shall be treated with all honour and given a high place in his Royal House of Women: for he believes that Horus the son of Isis and Osiris sent that eagle to bring the rose-red slipper and cause him to search for you.’

  Such a command could not be disobeyed. Rhodopis bade fare
well to Charaxos, who was torn between joy at her good fortune and sorrow at his loss, and set out for Memphis.

  And when Amasis saw her beauty, he was sure that the gods had sent her to him. He did not merely take her into his Royal House of Women, he made her his Queen and the Royal Lady of Egypt. And they lived happily together for the rest of their lives and died a year before the coming of Cambyses the Persian.

  Time Chart

  (Approximate dates only until 1570 BC)

  BC

  3200 DYNASTY I Menes unites Upper and Lower Egypt.

  2700 DYNASTY III Zoser: Imhotep builds the Step Pyramid at Saqqara.

  2600 DYNASTY IV Khufu: the Great Pyramid at Giza. The Golden Lotus; Teta the Magician. Khafra: the Second Pyramid and the Sphinx. Menkaura: the Sphinx. Menkaura: the Third Pyramid.

  2080 DYNASTY XI Beginning of the Middle Kingdom.

  2000 DYNASTY XVII Amen-em-het I. The Story of Sinuhe. Amen-em-het II. The Peasant and the Workman.

  1570 DYNASTY XVIII Ahmose expels the Hyksös and begins the New Kingdom.

  1490–1468 Hatshepsut builds her mortuary temple at Der-el-Bahri.

  1468–1436 Thutmose III builds first temple at Karnak. The Taking of Joppa.

  1405 Thutmose IV uncovers the Sphinx.

  1405–1367 Amen-hotep III builds temple at Luxor.

  1347–1339 Reign of Tutankhamen.