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Authors: Paul Doherty

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BOOK: An Evil Spirit Out of the West (Ancient Egyptian Mysteries)
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Isithia’s servants were
shemsous
, or personal slaves, who wore a collar with a hieroglyph denoting their status – rolled-up matting on a stick. They were as terrified of her as I was – wary of her tongue and fly whisk. There were also a few slaves or
bekous
, men and women captured in war who were made to work in the gardens and live in sheds not fit for cattle. On one occasion two of them escaped. My father pursued them, caught them but never brought them back. Wielding authority over these was Api, Isithia’s
wedpou
or steward, dumb as an ox but just as faithful.
Isithia was undoubtedly rich. Her strongrooms held vases of oils and unguents: henna, iris, fir, mandrake and lotus, all kept in sealable chests with ebony and gold veneer in silver mountings. I don’t know whether Father even recognised the truth about his sister, or the silent terror she instilled in me. Sometimes at night, on the eve of an inauspicious day, Isithia would stand on the portico quoting bloodcurdling verses from
The Book of the Dead
. Flanked by fire cauldrons she would sprinkle the darkness with oils and herbs, Api standing in the shadows behind her. Isithia’s voice would carry low and terrible through the night.
‘Go back! Retreat!
Get back, you dangerous one.
Do not come against us.
Do not thrive on my magic.
Go back, you crocodiles of the South.
Go back, you who feed on faeces, smoke and want!
Detestation of you gnaws at my belly!’
One night I even glimpsed her in the garden squatting over a dish of glowing charcoal strewn with herbs. Her kilt pulled up, she crouched like a woman would over a latrine, mouthing curses into the night. Isithia practised
hek
, the magic of the dark. She was always terrified of the
aataruu
, those evil spirits out of the West. Only the gods know what her past contained; her soul must have been heavy with the nastiness. She hardly spoke to me except to quote proverbs about the need for peace and security. I remember one of the verses well. She made me learn it by rote.
It is so good when beds are smoothed
And the pillows well laid out for the officers,
When the need of every man is filled
with a sheet and a shade
And a securely closed door for someone who slept in
a bush.
In my later years, going through the records, I discovered that Isithia’s former husband had been an army officer. Perhaps she was terrified of the chaos war might bring. Occasionally I tried to ask her about Mother but she forced a quick smile and told me to keep quiet. I asked about my birth and she pounced like a cat would on a mouse.
‘You were born between the twenty-third and twenty-seventh day,’ she waved her fly whisk at me, ‘so you must always be wary of snakes and crocodiles.’
On reflection, oh how right she was! I asked what god should be my patron? What divine being protected my birth? She pushed her face close to mine in mock sadness. ‘Strange you ask that, Mahu. Strange to answer. No god.’ Again, how right she was!
My memories should be sweet: a clean house with its bathrooms, hard-tiled stoolroom and well-decorated chambers. The air was sweet with the fragrance of kiphye, juniper, cassia and frankincense, and plentiful incense, the divine perfume of the gods, burned in spoons, their handles carved in the form of human forearms. Food was plentiful, delicious meals piled high on reed dishes. Yet I cannot recall anything sweet. No children ever visited us. I was given an education of sorts. The first hieroglyph I drew was the
sebkhet
, an enclosure with battlements that represented my life as a boy, locked in an enclosure. On rare occasions Father arrived and took both my aunt and me across the Nile to the
Todjeser
– the Necropolis. I loved such occasions: the fast-flowing Nile, the cooling breezes, the pungent smell from the thick papyrus groves, the flashes of colour as ducks and wild birds rose up and wheeled against the blue sky. Sometimes the roar of the hippopotami would echo along the banks. I’d feel a shiver of fear as my father pointed out the crocodile pools. Occasionally, I’d glimpse the gold-topped obelisks and carved mountings of the temples of Thebes.
‘That is Waset,’ Father would whisper in my ear. ‘Pharaoh’s city. And from here you can see …’ And he’d list the temples but I couldn’t really care. I was just so pleased he was close to me. Eventually the crew would make ready to land at the Great Mooring Place. Above us soared the peak of Meretseger, the brooding goddess, and those craggy cliffs which could change colour so dramatically. These loomed over the City of the Dead and its warren of tombs, the Valley of the Nobles, the Valley of the Kings, the places where the dead came. We’d disembark on the quayside, pass the huge statue of the green-skinned god Osiris and go up through the winding streets of the City of the Dead, a place of horror and delight where the stench of natron, the heavy salt from the embalmers’ shops, mingled with the more pervasive stink of corruption. Yet we’d turn a corner and glimpse beautifully carved caskets and coffins or elegantly sculptured canopic jars. The embalming shops, cabinet-makers and coffin suppliers did a roaring trade. As in life so in death. The rich could buy the best but the corpses of the poor were everywhere, nothing more than dried-out skeletons, draped in skins lying on floors or ledges. Not for them the Osirian rites of the embalmer but the cheap juice of the juniper pumped up through the rectum, the entire corpse pickled in natron. The very poor were given some cheaper, even more corrosive, substance, before being dried out in a natron bath wrapped in a dirty sheet and housed with scores of others in some coffin room. I noticed my aunt’s whisk was even more vigorously at work as the flies buzzed everywhere. Great black clouds of them seemed to haunt her.
At last we were free of the city and going along the rocky, crumbling path to the Valley of the Nobles. At its entrance we were greeted by the Master of the Necropolis carrying his staff, its top carved in the shape of an
ankh
, the symbol of life. He was flanked by two priests wearing Anubis masks, which the Master introduced as
Wabs
or ‘Pure Ones’. They took us along to my father’s tomb, the House of Eternity which sheltered his wife’s corpse and would, in time, shelter his, Isithia’s and mine. Even then I uttered a silent prayer that, in death, I would be free, as far away from her as possible. We entered a courtyard. Inside, a small stela proclaimed the message:
The Great Enchantress has purged and purified her.
She has confessed her sins which shall be destroyed.
Homage to thee, oh Osiris
.
He who hears all our words,
who washed away our sins,
has justified her voice.
This was the first clear reference I had ever seen to my mother. My father squatted down and pointed out the words
Ma a Kherou
. ‘Do you know what that means, Mahu?’
‘No, sir,’ I replied. My father smiled slightly, a rare occurrence. ‘It means “Be true of voice”. Will you be true of voice, Mahu?’
‘Why, yes, sir.’
That was the first promise I ever really made and the first one I never really kept. ‘Was Mother … ?’
‘Your mother was a good woman,’ Father replied.
He took my hand, another rare occurrence, and led me round to the other side of the squat stela to read out the confession from
The Book of the Dead.
‘“I have not ill-treated people. I have not taken milk from the mouths of little children”.’ (I glanced sharply at my aunt.)
Under this there was a picture of my mother’s soul being weighed on the Scales of Truth. My aunt took great delight in naming the demons, also carved there, ready to seize my mother’s soul if the Scales went against her: Great Strider, Swallower of Shades, the Breaker of Bones, the Eater of Blood, the Shatterer of Shades. I tried to grasp my father’s hand but he gently pushed me away. Standing up he ruffled my black hair.
‘Don’t worry, Mahu. Your mother is in Yalou, the Fields of the Blessed, under the protection of the great Osiris.’
He led me across the courtyard to the small temple faced with columns. The Master of the Necropolis unsealed the door. For a while we waited for the torches to be lit and my father led me proudly into the vestibule.
‘This, Mahu, is our House of Eternity! We have prepared it well.’
The walls of the entrance chamber were decorated with scenes from Father’s life: being received in audience by Pharaoh to be presented with the Silver Bees. Father hunting out in the desert, driving his chariot towards a herd of antelope. Father in a papyrus thicket, boomerang at the ready, waiting to bring down the gloriously painted water birds which burst out at his approach. Other more touching scenes were recorded: my mother, lithe and graceful, anointing him with perfume or pouring water into his hands.
We left the vestibule and went down a narrow passageway; its walls on either side were decorated with scenes of souls being taken to Abydos, of worshipping the gods, of offering them dishes of fruit above lighted braziers. At the entrance to the burial chamber Father paused to talk to the priests, making sure that the
Ka
priest, the Priest of the Double, offered prayers and libations to the gods on the anniversary of my mother’s death. At last we entered the burial chamber containing four sarcophagi. To the left stood my mother’s, dark-red and covered with quotations from
The Book of the Dead
. I was fascinated by the
wadjet
eyes painted just under the sarcophagus lid. I ignored everything else and went across and pressed my cheek against the cold stone. When I looked up, my father was staring down at me, tears in his eyes. My aunt, however, still stood in the doorway, the only time I had ever glimpsed her really fearful. I wished to crouch down. Burial chamber or not, I could have slept by that tomb. However, my father picked me gently up and led me out.
On our way back across the Nile, Father asked me to speak with true voice. Was I well? Was I happy?
‘I am, sir,’ I replied.
‘And are you not happy to live in the Land of Tomery?’ He used the old term for the Kingdom of the Two Lands, the realm of Egypt.
‘Of course, Father.’
‘Then what is wrong, son?’
My aunt’s obsidian-like eyes caught my gaze, but sheltering by my mother’s tomb had strengthened me.
‘I am lonely, sir.’
My father laughed and ruffled my hair. I thought he’d ignore me but, in the riverside marketplace, he stopped and bought me a pet monkey, an agile little creature with bright mischievous eyes who clung to me and screeched noisily. My aunt whispered a joke, how it would be difficult to tell us apart. I was delighted. I called my pet Bes after the ugly household god, and when my father left I hardly noticed. I loved little Bes. He truly was a brother. Indeed, I took pride in the jokes, made by my aunt and taken up by the servants, about the resemblance between us. I bought Bes a little shawl and a silver medallion with the
debens
of copper I had saved. I didn’t actually do this in person. An old servant called Dedi went to the marketplace for me. She was a
bekou
, a slave who did the laundry and who somehow knew a great deal about monkeys. Bes was the delight of my life. A greedy creature, the very aroma of duck or meat cooked in onion and garlic would send him chattering wildly whilst a piece of sliced melon made him dance with joy. Where I went, Bes followed.
My aunt came to hate him.
‘He attracts the flies,’ she snapped.
Bes grew very wary of her copper-tipped whisk.
Isn’t it strange where dreams come from? Memories drift in and out of our hearts like incense across a sanctuary. Our memories are traces of ghosts, things that were, or even might have been. My aunt’s house was always dark yet tinted with yellow as if one of those great sandstorms had blown in from the Red Lands. My childhood was like a wall frieze with a yellow background against which all those around me, including Bes, acted out their roles. I can still recall that little monkey, his jerky movements, the silver chain glittering around his neck, the naughty face and darting eyes. I also remember that fateful day so well. Dedi was filling the vase of the water clock: it was decorated with carvings of the baboons of Thoth, ringed with twelve lines to signify the hours of the day. I was explaining all this to Bes, chattering like a monkey to a monkey, one of the few occasions I ever did so in my aunt’s house.
‘You see,’ I pointed with my finger, ‘it takes one hour for the water to sink from one line to the next as it trickles out of that small hole at the bottom.’ Bes jumped up and down on my lap. Dedi started laughing at me, not in a mocking way; her fat face crinkled up, her eyes, like two slivers of black glass, bright with merriment. I rose and embraced her; she was one of the few people I touched. She smelt of dust and soap. Dedi stopped what she was doing, put the jug down and gave me her endearing gumless smile. I heard a patter behind me and looked round. Bes was streaking like a pellet from a sling through the doorway towards a piece of juicy melon lying there. That monkey could never resist melon. I shouted and ran after him, but Bes grabbed the melon and scampered across the courtyard.
I had almost reached the doorway when an agonising scream, followed by a low growl, made my stomach lurch. I could hardly step through that doorway. Even then I knew what had happened. Someone had let Seth the great Saluki hound out. Bes was already dangling between his jaws. The cur was shaking him as a cat would a mouse; blood spattered the pavements. Bes’s arms hung limp, his head strangely sideways, the small medallion glinting in an ever-widening pool of blood. A nightmare image as that hellhound shook the little corpse like some bloodsoaked rag.
My screams seemed to come from far off. Servants came running, led by Api. He grasped Seth’s collar and pulled him away but made no attempt to retrieve Bes from his jaws. Dedi put her arms around me. I pushed her away and looked up. My aunt was staring coldly down through a latticed window. Dedi tried to comfort me but I was inconsolable. She ran away in a patter of sandals and, a short while later, brought back Bes’s corpse wrapped in a green, gold-edged cloth. We buried him beneath the shade of a sycamore tree. Then I wept for the first and last time. Dedi, grey-faced with anxiety, sat cradling me. I was all but eight summers old. My eyes couldn’t leave the freshly dug earth. Dedi had even found a small
ankh
, a life sign, and pressed it into the black soil.
‘Cruel she is,’ Dedi whispered.
I knew what she meant. The melon near the doorway, the waiting Saluki hound, Isithia’s vicious gaze fixed on me.
‘She was always cruel,’ Dedi continued.
Something pricked my memory. I felt a shiver as if I’d been doused in cold water. Dusk was gathering. The sky was scorched with slivers of red. Dedi led me deeper into the garden under the shade of a beautiful willow, its branches curving down as if to drink the water from the narrow canal. Here she knelt and dug at the earth. She brought out a lightly coloured pot-shard and, with stubby fingers, traced its strange markings.
‘I can read,’ Dedi murmured. ‘I am, I was, of To-nouter.’
I recognised the phrase for the Land of Punt, the Incense Country.
‘I was captured in war and brought back here during the Time of Starvation by your father’s father. I can read.’
‘What does it say?’ I asked.
‘“Go away from me, Meret. Let your spirit not haunt me”.’
‘Meret was my mother. Did she,’ I gestured back at the house, ‘leave that there as she left the melon?’
Dedi cackled with laughter and reburied the pot shard.
‘Your mother often came here, that’s why Isithia has placed the curse beneath the tree. Cruel she was to her, cruel as she is to you.’
I heard a sound and turned. Dedi, mumbling in terror, clambered to her feet but there was nothing except the whispering branches in the gathering darkness. Nothing? So I thought, but the next morning Dedi was gone, and I never saw her again.
My aunt left me alone to brood on Bes and Dedi. My anger soon cooled. I decided to hide my feelings and mix with the servants. Akhit, the Season of the Inundation, came and went followed by Peret, the Season of Sowing, and Shemou when the sun burns hot and the servants fight against the vermin which swarm into the house. My aunt hated this time of year as the flies hovered like black clouds and the rats thrived fat and supple. I loved such confusion and did my best to help it. I found a rat’s corpse, bloated with poison, and hid it in the whitewashed toilet, its limestone seat fitted around a hole over brick containers filled with sand. I tunnelled deep and placed the rat beneath the sand. Two days passed before my aunt realised what had attracted the horde of flies and gave off the terrible stench. A short while later I managed to find some poison. I hid some duck, soft and tender and coated with venom, near Seth’s kennel.
‘An accident!’ the servants later cried. ‘The hound must have eaten bait meant for the rats.’
My aunt grieved, but that night I went out in my linen shirt, stood beneath the willow tree and whispered softly to the breeze about Dedi and Meret.
The death of the Saluki hound was only the beginning of my aunt’s troubles and my own liberation from her. Two days later a dusty, sweat-streaked messenger bearing the cartouche of Pharaoh arrived at the house. He was taken into a hallway to be cleaned but, even as a slave bathed his feet, he gabbled out his message: my father was dead! He had recently been promoted to a full Colonel of the Chariot Squadron known as the Vengeance of Anubis with the direct responsibility for the protection of the tombs in the Valley of the Nobles. A gang of skilled robbers had broken into one of these through the adjoining mortuary temple. Once inside, the robbers had stripped the gold sheets from the faces, fingers and toes of the mummies, seized the amulets and ointment jars. They had compounded their blasphemy by setting fire to the mummies of children so as to provide light for their plundering. The fire had burned fiercely, and smoke had curled out through a venthole so the alarm was raised. The robbers fled out into the Red Lands, my father following in hot pursuit.
‘Like a hawk,’ the messenger proclaimed loudly, ‘plunging on its quarry.’
The robbers, a sizable gang, eventually took refuge in a rocky outcrop served by a spring. My father laid siege. Aided by Sand Dwellers, he had eventually stormed the outcrop. Those robbers who were not killed in the skirmish were impaled on stakes thrust up into their bowels or bound in thornbushes drenched in oil and set alight. A few were sent into Thebes to await punishment whilst my father returned triumphant. He had only been slightly wounded; an arrow had clipped the side of his neck. However, its barb had been drenched in snake venom and, despite the help of the regimental leech, by the time they reached Thebes, Father was dead. My aunt didn’t cry but, gnawing at her lip, demanded my presence and, escorted by a retinue of servants, led me across the Nile to the
Wabet
, the House of Purification, up above the Libyan plateau just beyond the Necropolis. Our journey was fruitless. We arrived only to find that a great honour had been bestowed on my father by the express order of Pharaoh the Magnificent One. My father’s corpse was already across the Nile being cared for in the House of Death at the Temple of Anubis, a soaring temple which lay just east of Ipetsut, the most perfect of places, the great temple complex of Karnak where Amun-Ra the Almighty, the All-Seeing Silent One, or so they said, dwelt in dark mystery.
I did not know why my aunt dragged me to these places of death. Oh, I know what the priests say, they are also the Springs of Life, the first part of the journey to the Fields of the Blessed. Isithia didn’t care about that. Perhaps it was revenge? Yet, on reflection, it was an enjoyable day. I was taken through the
Waset
, the City of the Sceptre, the splendid Thebes – what an experience! Most boys of my age knew the city like the back of their hands but, for me, it was like entering another realm. An experience I’d never imagined: the throngs of people, the dust haze, and the marauding flies against which Isithia’s notorious whisk was used like a weapon.
BOOK: An Evil Spirit Out of the West (Ancient Egyptian Mysteries)
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