Tales of Ancient Egypt Read online

  When Imhotep had finished speaking Zoser was glad, rejoicing that he had learned the secrets of Khnemu, god of the Nile. Yet he was still perplexed as to how he might win the favour of Khnemu and bring the Inundation once more to Egypt. So he spent the night in prayer and incantation in the great temple at Memphis, and in the darkness before the dawn Khnemu appeared to him, wearing the likeness of a tall man with a ram’s head whose curling golden horns shone until the darkness of the shrine glowed as with molten fire.

  ‘Know, you who for a little season dwell on earth as the Pharaoh of Egypt, that I am Khnemu the Fashioner!’ cried the god. ‘I guide the Nile and cause it to rise in the Fountain of Life and gush out through the Two Caverns beneath my sacred island of Elephantinē. When I lead the Nile over the fields of Egypt I give life to the corn – both barley and wheat grow rich and plentiful, there is spelt and emmer in abundance; the vines and the fruit trees flourish also – the grapes grow round and juicy to make the rich wines of Tanis and Mareotis; the figs and mulberries, dates and pomegranates grow large and sweet; the flowers bloom in the gardens and by the sacred pools of the gods – lotus and chrysanthemum, cornflower and mandrake. With my waters I bring life to men and women, by my power I fashion the shape of each even before their birth.

  ‘But you have neglected the gods, and me you have not honoured at all: therefore the Nile has not risen and there have been seven lean years in Egypt. Bring back to the gods the honour and worship which is their due, and build for me such a temple as should rightly be mine, and the Nile will rise once more! It will pour forth for you year after year, nor ever cease to water and fertilize the fields of Egypt. Plants will grow, bent down by the weight of their fruits. Renenet, the goddess of harvest, the Lady of the Double Granary, will smile upon you as your fields grow golden with the ripening corn, and as you reap it and beat out the fat grains of wheat and barley on your threshing-floors. There shall be no more years of starvation and the granaries will never again be empty. Egypt will be a land of plenty and the hearts of your people shall be happier than ever before.’

  When morning came Zoser ordered the Royal Barge to be made ready, bade Imhotep attend him, and set out in state up the Nile. Day and night his rowers bent to the oars, and oftimes the gentle breezes from the north filled the silken sails and helped him on his way.

  Past Thebes he went and yet further to the south, beyond Edfu where Horus had slain Set, beyond Nubit (which we call Kom Ombo) where stands the Temple of Harmachis and of Sobek the crocodile god, until he came to the island of Elephantinē that rises out of the Nile a little below Philae and the First Cataract.

  And when he stood upon the high summit of sacred Elephantinē the Pharaoh Zoser uttered his decree.

  ‘Let there be built here such a temple as was never before seen in Egypt. Let Imhotep the great architect lavish all his skill upon it, nor spare my treasuries to make it richer than any other temple. And when it is built, let it be the shrine and dwelling-place of Khnemu for ever. Moreover, the land on either side of the river, on the east and on the west, for many leagues, even from here to the neighbourhood of Nubit shall belong for ever to Khnemu, the good god who loves Egypt. And the wealth of the harvests gathered from his lands shall be offered to him and bring treasure to his temple so long as there is a Pharaoh in Egypt to guard the shrine of Khnemu on the sacred island of Elephantinē.’

  Imhotep set to work to draw out the plans of the temple; and when mid-June of that year came the Nile began to rise and the waters to rush out of the Two Caverns until the whole land of Egypt was blessed with a great and fertile Inundation.

  When the temple was built, Imhotep cut smooth the rock where it fell sheer into the river on the eastern side and marked it so that men might tell ever afterwards how high the Nile rose each year, and give thanks to Khnemu accordingly, or make greater sacrifices to him if the river were lower than usual. And this ‘Nilometer’ is there still, though the Temple of Khnemu is now but a heap of ruins.

  But whenever Khnemu was neglected, the Inundation was small, and it was said that when men ceased to honour him and sought to cultivate the land of the Nile without his aid, a great misfortune would fall upon Egypt.

  The Great Queen Hatshepsut

  Amen-Ra, the King of the Gods, sat upon his throne and looked out upon Egypt. Presently he spoke to the assembled council of the gods – to Thoth and Khonsu and Khnemu, to Isis and Osiris, Nephthys, Horus, Harmachis, Anubis and the rest – saying: ‘There has been many a Pharaoh in the Land of Khem, in the Double Land of Egypt, and some of them have been great and have pleased me well. Khufu and Khafra and Menkaura long ago who raised the great pyramids of Giza; Amen-hotep and Thutmose of today who have caused the peoples of the world to bow down at my feet. Now is the dawning of the golden age in Egypt, and it comes into my mind to create a great queen to rule over Khem: yes, I will unite the Two Lands in peace for her, I will give her rule over the whole world, over Syria and Nubia besides Egypt – yes, even to the far-distant land of Punt.’

  Then said Isis in her silvery voice that sounded like the shaken bells on her sistrum, ‘Father of Gods and Men, no queen has yet ruled in Egypt, in the holy land of Khem, save only I, when the good god Osiris had passed into the Duat, and the good god Horus was still but a child, while Set the Evil, the terrible one, stalked unchained up and down the land. Father of Gods and Men, if you create such a queen, my blessing and wisdom shall be upon her.’

  Then Thoth spoke, Thoth the thrice-wise from whom no secrets were hid: ‘O Amen-Ra, Lord of the Two Lands, King of the Gods, Maker of Men, harken to my words. In the royal palace at Thebes set in the Black Land, the rich country that Khnemu has made fertile with the dark mud of the Inundation, dwells a maiden. Ahmes is her name, and none in all the world is fairer than she nor more beautiful in all her limbs. She is the new-made bride of the good god Pharaoh Thutmose, who has but now returned to Thebes after his conquests beyond the Great Green Sea in the lands of the Syrians and the Apura. She alone can be the mother of the great queen whom you are about to create as ruler of the Two Lands. She rests alone in the palace of Pharaoh. Come, let us go to her.’

  So Thoth took upon himself his favourite form, that of an ibis, in which he could fly swiftly through the air unrecognized by any. In this guise he flew into the palace of Thutmose at Thebes, to the great chamber with its painted walls where Queen Ahmes lay asleep.

  Then Thoth cast a spell over the palace so that every living thing slumbered. Only the Pharaoh, King Thutmose himself, seemed to be awake – and yet it seemed that it was only his body which did not sleep. For, as if he were already dead, his three spiritual parts: the Bai, or soul; the Ka, or double, and the Khou, or spirit, left his body and gathered about it where it lay on the royal bed as they would in days to come when the good god Pharaoh Thutmose would be left to lie in his deep tomb chamber beneath the Valley of Kings until the coming of Osiris.

  Yet the body of Thutmose now rose up from the bed, and the Ka took its place, lying there in the likeness of the King himself, while the Bai, like a bird with a human head, and the Khou in a tongue of flame, hovered over it.

  Now for a space the body of Thutmose was the dwelling-place of Amen-Ra, the greatest of the gods, the maker and father of gods and men, and of all the earth. Great was his majesty and splendid his adornments. On his neck was the glittering collar of precious stones that only Pharaoh might wear, and on his arms were Pharaoh’s bracelets of pure gold and electrum; but on his head were two plumes – and by these alone might it be known that here was Amen-Ra. Yet it seemed as if light shone from him, for as he passed through the dark palace, hall and chamber and corridor gleamed and faded in turn as if the sun shone in them for a space and then was veiled behind a cloud. And as he passed and faded there lingered behind him a scent as of the richest perfumes that come from the land of Punt.

  He came to the sleeping-place of Queen Ahmes, and the double doors of ebony bound with silver opened before
him and closed when he had passed. He found the Queen lying like a jewel on a golden couch that was shaped like a lion; he seated himself upon the couch, and he held to her nostrils Amen-Ra’s divine symbol of life, and the breath of life passed into her as she breathed, and the couch rose and floated in the air. Then, waking or asleep, it seemed to Queen Ahmes that she was bathed in light so that she could see nothing above or below or round about her but the golden mist, save only the form of her husband the Pharaoh Thutmose who spoke in a voice that seemed to echo away into the distance, saying: ‘Rejoice, most fortunate of women, for you shall bear a daughter who shall be the child of Amen-Ra, who shall reign over the Two Lands of Egypt and be sovereign of the whole world.’

  Then Queen Ahmes sank into deep and dreamless sleep, while the form of Thutmose hastened back to where the Bai and the Khou hovered above the bed on which lay his Ka. A moment later Thutmose lay there sleeping as if nothing had happened, while the Bai, the Ka and the Khou had faded from mortal sight.

  But Amen-Ra, Father of Gods and Men, summoned to him Khnemu the Fashioner and said, ‘Mould clay upon your wheel, potter who forms the bodies of mankind, and make my daughter Hatshepsut who shall be born to Ahmes and Thutmose in the royal palace of Thebes.’

  And when the time came Hatshepsut was born amid the rejoicing of all Egypt, and lay in her cradle beside the royal bed in the great room lit only by the moonlight.

  Then once again the silence of deep sleep fell upon all the palace of Thebes. And presently the double doors opened of themselves and Amen-Ra entered in his own likeness attended by Hathor the goddess of love and her seven daughters, the Hathors, who weave the web of life for all who are born on this earth.

  Then Amen-Ra blessed the baby Hatshepsut, taking her up in his arms and giving her the kiss of power so that she might indeed become a great queen, as his daughter should. And the Hathors wove the golden web of her life as Amen-Ra directed; and as they wove it seemed to pass before the eyes of Queen Ahmes so that she saw her daughter’s life laid out before her.

  She saw Hatshepsut as a beautiful girl kneeling in the temple at Karnak or Eastern Thebes while Amen-Ra and Horus poured the waters of purification upon her head, while the other gods and goddesses gathered in the shadows between the great columns to bless her. Then she saw Hatshepsut beside her human father Pharaoh Thutmose journeying through all the land of Egypt from Tanis on the Delta to Elephantinē in the south, hailed by all as the Great Queen to be. She saw Hatshepsut being crowned as Pharaoh of Egypt, the only woman ever to wear the Double Crown – save for Cleopatra the Greek who was to bring about Egypt’s fall fifteen hundred years later. Then she saw her seated in state while the kings of the earth bowed down before her, bringing her gifts from the ends of the earth. And she saw Hatshepsut’s great expedition to distant Punt – the ships sailing out of the Red Sea and far upon the waters of the ocean beyond to reach it on the coasts of central Africa: she saw the beehive huts of the black dwellers in Punt built on piles in the water and overshadowed by palms and incense trees with ladders leading up to the entrances. And then she saw the expedition returning to Egypt and bringing all the treasures from Punt to the Pharaoh Hatshepsut, and of how she dedicated them to her father Amen-Ra – Horus weighing the gold in his scales and Thoth writing down the measures of incense; and ‘the good god’ Hatshepsut herself offering the best of all she had before the ceremonial Boat of Amen-Ra that was carried by the priests of Thebes.

  Last of all she saw the masons and the carvers and the artists fashioning the great mortuary temple of Hatshepsut, cutting out and painting on its walls all the pictures that she had seen in the Web of Fate the Hathors were weaving before her on this night of Hatshepsut’s birth.

  All things were fulfilled even as Queen Ahmes had seen, and Egypt reached its greatest glory under Hatshepsut and under her nephew Thutmose III who succeeded her. And all the tale is told in pictures and hieroglyphs in Der-el-Bahri, the mortuary temple of Hatshepsut in Western Thebes which still stands for all to see.

  The Prince and the Sphinx

  There was once a Prince in Egypt called Thutmose, who was a son of Pharaoh Amen-hotep, and the grandson of Thutmose III who succeeded the great Queen Hatshepsut. He had many brothers and half-brothers, and because he was Pharaoh’s favourite son they were forever plotting against him. Usually these plots were to make Pharaoh think that Thutmose was unworthy or unsuitable to succeed him; sometimes they were attempts to make the people or the priests believe that Thutmose was cruel or extravagant or did not honour the gods and so would make a bad ruler of Egypt; but once or twice the plots were aimed at his very life.

  All this made Thutmose troubled and unhappy. He spent less and less of his time at Thebes or Memphis with Pharaoh’s court, and more and more frequently rode on expeditions into Upper Egypt or across the desert to the seven great oases. And even when Pharaoh commanded his presence, or his position demanded that he must attend some great festival, he would slip away whenever he could with a few trusted followers, or even alone and in disguise, to hunt on the edge of the desert.

  Thutmose was skilled in all manly exercises. He was a bowman who could plant arrow after arrow in the centre of the target; he was a skilled charioteer, and his horses were fleeter than the wind. Sometimes he would course antelopes for miles across the sandy stretches of desert; at others he would seek out the savage lions in their lairs among the rocks far up above the banks of the Nile.

  One day, when the court was in residence at Memphis for the great festival of Ra at Heliopolis a few miles further down the Nile, Thutmose escaped from all the pomp and pageantry to hunt on the edge of the desert. He took with him only two servants, and he drove his own chariot up the steep road past Saqqara where the great Step Pyramid of Zoser stands, and away through the scrub and stunted trees where the cultivated land by the Nile faded into the stony waste and the stretches of sand and rock of the great Libyan desert.

  They set off at the first glimmer of dawn so that they might have as much time as possible before the great heat of midday, and they coursed the gazelle northwards over the desert for many miles, parallel to the Nile but some miles away from it.

  By the time the sun grew too hot for hunting Thutmose and his two followers had reached a point not very far away from the great Pyramids of Giza which the Pharaohs of the Fourth Dynasty had built over twelve hundred years before.

  They stopped to rest under some palm trees. But presently Thutmose, desiring to be alone and wishing to make his prayer to the great god Harmachis, entered his chariot and drove away over the desert, bidding his servants wait for him.

  Away sped Thutmose, for the sand was firm and smooth, and at last he drew near to the three pyramids of Khufu, Khafra and Menkaura towering up towards the sky, the burning sun of midday flashing on their golden peaks and glittering down their polished sides like ladders of light leading up to the Boat of Ra as it sailed across the sky.

  Thutmose gazed in awe at these man-made mountains of stone. But most of all his attention was caught by a gigantic head and neck of stone that rose out of the sand between the greatest of the pyramids and a nearly-buried mortuary temple of huge squared stone blocks that stood on either side of the stone causeway leading from the distant Nile behind him right to the foot of the second pyramid – that of the Pharaoh Khafra.

  This was a colossal carving of Harmachis the god of the rising sun, in the form of a lion with the head of a Pharaoh of Egypt – the form he had taken when he became the hunter of the followers of Set. Khafra had caused this ‘sphinx’ to be carved out of an outcrop of solid rock that happened to rise above the sand near the processional causeway leading from the Nile to his great pyramid. And he had bidden his sculptors shape the head and face of Harmachis in the likeness of his own.

  During the long centuries since Khafra had been laid to rest in his pyramid the sands of the desert had blown against the Sphinx until it was almost buried. Thutmose could see no more th
an its head and shoulders, and a little ridge in the desert to mark the line of its back.

  For a long while he stood looking up into the majestic face of the Sphinx, crowned with the royal crown of Egypt that had the cobra’s head on its brow and which held in place the folds of embroidered linen which kept the sun from head and neck – only here the folds were of stone and only the head of the serpent fitted on to the carved rock was of gold.

  The noonday sun beat mercilessly down upon Thutmose as he gazed up at the Sphinx and prayed to Harmachis for help in all his troubles.

  Suddenly it seemed to him that the great stone image began to stir. It heaved and struggled as if trying in vain to throw off the sand which buried its body and paws, and the eyes were no longer carved stone inlaid with lapis lazuli, but shone with life and vision as they looked down upon him.

  Then the Sphinx spoke to him in a great voice, and yet kindly as a father speaks to his son.

  ‘Look upon me, Thutmose, Prince of Egypt, and know that I am Harmachis your father – the father of all Pharaohs of the Upper and Lower Lands. It rests with you to become Pharaoh indeed and wear upon your head the Double Crown of South and North; it rests with you whether or not you sit upon the throne of Egypt, and whether the peoples of the world come and kneel before you in homage. If you indeed become Pharaoh whatever is produced by the Two Lands shall be yours, together with the tribute from all the countries of the world. Besides all this, long years of life, health and strength shall be yours.