Khu: A Tale of Ancient Egypt (39 page)

Mentuhotep stood up at once, t
he blue war crown still on his head. “Seize him!” he shouted, pointing to Ankhtifi while stepping down from the platform.

Two
guards immediately moved to grab Ankhtifi but he kicked them away, using the priest as a shield.

Khu
ran across the courtyard and tackled Ankhtifi just before the wolf-man would have slit the priest’s throat.

Ankhtifi dropped his dagger, and it fell to the ground before
another guard kicked it away. When Khu saw that Ankhtifi was no longer armed, he left his own dagger sheathed by his thigh. Then he punched Ankhtifi hard, squarely in the face, breaking his long nose, and the priest scrambled away free.

“That’s for my father,” Khu said before Ankhtifi
fell and rolled on the ground.

Ankhtifi scowled, wiping the blood from his
nose with the back of his hand. He had no idea what Khu was talking about, nor did he care. His plans had been thwarted, and he was enraged. He was crouched on the ground with his black eyes fixed on Khu.

“
No, not yet!” Mentuhotep shouted, raising a hand to stop some men who were readying to help Khu by attacking Ankhtifi. “Let them fight.”

Mentuhotep was well
aware of Ankhtifi’s many crimes, especially of the massacring of Khu’s family and entire village so many years before. Every time he looked at his son and saw the jagged scar on his head he was reminded of the monster that almost took Khu’s life.

“
Do not interfere. Let them be,” the king ordered again.

He wanted
Khu to avenge the deaths of his family. He wanted vengeance for his beloved son. And although the retribution could never right the wrongs of the past, nor bring back the loved ones he had lost, it would be a reckoning of all Ankhtifi’s deeds according to the divine principles of
maat
, so that the serving of justice would last for all eternity in the inextinguishable Lake of Fire that waited in the Slaughtering Place.

The Theban king
furrowed his brow and set his jaw as he ascended the platform once more, so that nothing would block the view of his son, and of his son’s mortal enemy.

The army
crowding the courtyard closed in, forming a circle around the two fighting men. They watched with eyes riveted to the scene, murmuring nervously amongst themselves.

Mentuhotep knew that fortune favored his son, and that Khu needed to face and defeat this demon
by himself once and for all.

Khu gripped Ankhtifi by the shoulders, lifting him up to his feet,
before thrusting his knee into the man’s groin. “That’s for my mother and my little sister,” he hissed.

Ankhtifi
doubled over, wheezing from the assault.

Khu paced around him, giving
Ankhtifi a moment to catch his breath. But in an unexpected instant, Ankhtifi lunged for the dagger belonging to one of the men standing nearby. He pulled it from its sheath, and then whipped back around on Khu. And as he sprung toward Khu with the blade, Khu parried and snatched the weapon away, gripping Ankhtifi’s arm and breaking it with a brutal twist, before ramming the blade in his belly, just above the groin.

Ankhtifi’s
mouth twisted into a rictus of savagery, camouflaging his pain beneath a fiendish mask. But his black eyes showed nothing. No emotion, no remorse, no life in their fathomless depths that reached as two pits into an abyss.

As the wolf-man
sank to the ground, Khu ripped the blade upwards, slitting his belly as he whispered, “And that’s for every innocent life you ever took,” his gold eyes were shining brightly. “Burn in the slayers’ cauldrons,” he added just before Ankhtifi died, “burn in the Slaughtering Place.”

***

An execration ritual was performed on the spot where Ankhtifi had died, and where his blood pooled on the ground at the court. It was a spell recited to ensure the eternal damnation of his blackened soul, and to keep the evil that had possessed him from defiling anything else.

A scribe was commissioned to write Ankhtifi’s name on a
clay bowl before it was placed in the congealing blood drawing flies over the ground where it had spilled. Then three priests recited the incantation from an ancient text to condemn Ankhtifi’s
ka
spirit to the Slaughtering Place. It invoked the help of Anubis himself to see that the weighing of Ankhtifi’s heart would prove him unworthy beyond any doubt, so that Osiris could pass the final judgment upon him before he plummeted into the jaws of the crocodile-headed, soul-eating demon Ammit. From there he would be led into the Temple of Anguish and Despair where the demon Apep ruled, torturing wicked souls in all their senses for eternity.

After the
powerful spell had been cast, the blood-stained clay bowl was smashed into tiny bits, and the whole lot of it—including the sand that had been sullied by Ankhtifi’s blood—was spat upon three times and then thrown into a blazing fire, the ashes of which were buried in the desert. Incense was then burned over the court to ward away evil and to cleanse the very air from iniquity. It was a solemn moment as many of Mentuhotep’s men gathered in the large, open space. A moment filled with relief for the battle that had been won, and with cautious optimism for what it all meant for their revered monarch.

Khu
was not present at the execration ritual, and had left the court as preparations were undertaken to cast the powerful spell. The sun-god Re was beginning his fiery descent into the realm of the shadows, igniting the sky in shades of red and gold, and its beauty filled Khu with a certain nostalgia. While he would never have traded the life he had led for the one which might have been—if the Seven Hathors had decreed differently—he still felt an ache for the family he once had. Nevertheless, he was hopeful for the future of his father’s kingdom, and relieved that some of the evil plaguing the land had been purged through the death of his mortal enemy.

Khu
slipped quietly away from the court to the lavish home of an official where Khety had been staying in the town, and he found the Deshret Red Crown of Lower Egypt that had belonged to the northern king. Although the formal coronation ceremony and feast would be held much later in Thebes, after the remaining northern settlements had been rightly secured under Mentuhotep’s control, and after most of the bureaucratic matters and final arrangements regarding the unification of the kingdoms had been settled, Khu wanted to honor his father for the great victory he had won. So he got the Deshret Red Crown and returned to the court carrying it in his hands.

Men drew back to part a way
for Khu’s path as he walked to where his father was seated. Qeb saw Khu first, and nodded his acknowledgement and approval, as he stepped down from Mentuhotep’s side to join Khu. Then Nakhti joined his brother as well, and all three of them stood before the king. An expectant hush fell over the large gathering; a hush charged with excitement and triumph. It was the moment all had been waiting for with great eagerness; the moment Mentuhotep himself had dreamed about since he was a small child.

“Hail
to you, Lord of the White Crown, Ruler of Upper Egypt,” Khu said in a loud and clear voice.

“HAIL
LORD KING,” shouted the men in reply, “LORD OF THE WHITE CROWN, RULER OF UPPER EGYPT.”

Mentuhotep’s face was solemn and dignified. The emotions within him were evident, but his bearing was regal.

“Hail to you, He Who Gives Heart to the Two Lands,” Khu continued.

“HAIL
LORD KING,” the men echoed, “HE WHO GIVES HEART TO THE TWO LANDS.”

Khu ascended the platform where Mentuhotep was seated, and he gently removed the blue war crown from his
father’s shaven head, and handed it to Nakhti. Qeb gave him the Hedjet White Crown of Upper Egypt, and Khu placed it reverently on Mentuhotep’s head, followed by the Deshret Red Crown of Lower Egypt, so that it formed the
Pschent
Double Crown symbolizing the unification of the kingdoms. Then Khu stepped back down between Qeb and Nakhti, and everyone present got down on their knees and bowed low to the ground before the king.

“Hail to you,
King of Egypt, Unifier of the Two Lands!” Khu shouted.

“HAIL KING
OF EGYPT,” the men thundered, “UNIFER OF THE TWO LANDS. HAIL!”

A
nd the men howled their joy and exhilaration, cheering wildly as they had never done before, for their elation was too great to contain. One by one, they each proclaimed their loyalty to King Nebhepetre Mentuhotep II, prostrating themselves once again before their brave monarch who had led them to victory. The mood was euphoric, for the great rift that had divided the kingdoms for so long, had finally been closed. The division that had long afflicted the lands had been mended and made whole.

Egypt was
finally united.

A
new era of peace and prosperity had begun.

King Nebhepetre Mentuhotep
II of the Eleventh Dynasty is credited with having reunified the divided kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt at the end of the First Intermediate Period, giving rise to the Middle Kingdom, of which he is the first ruler. Although the exact dates of his reign have been debated by historians, he had a long and prosperous rule of about fifty years from around 2050 BC to 2000 BC.

While the early part of
King Mentuhotep’s reign was peaceful, that changed about the fourteenth year of his rule, for the First Intermediate Period was a time of much civil disorder and political unrest during which the split powers of the north and south competed for dynastic dominance of Egypt. Famine and hardship were rampant, as were raids from domestic and foreign nomads.

Mentuhotep led numerous military campaigns to crush opposition from
northern-led revolts, and from Kush. Two momentous events in Mentuhotep’s military history were his success in quashing a revolt in Abdju, and in surmounting a blockade in Zawty, after which he succeeded in overcoming remaining hostile forces on a path which ultimately led to the reunification of the divided lands.

Once Mentuhotep
had control of the Upper and Lower Kingdoms of Egypt, he further expanded Egypt’s territories through additional military conquests in Kush. He also conducted foreign trade by land and sea, as far as the Phoenician coast and the Land of Punt, while organizing numerous mining expeditions. Mentuhotep strengthened the kingdom through numerous repairs to irrigation systems including canals, dykes, and catch basins, so that the Nile’s floodwaters could be harnessed and utilized efficiently, thus ending the widespread famine which had plagued the people before. He also undertook the restoration of many temples that had been left in ruin, particularly those in Abdju, Dendera, Swentet and Tod.

The Theban ruler had
several wives and lesser consorts including his chief wife Tem, Neferu, and Henhenet who is believed to have died in childbirth, and he was succeeded to the throne by his son Sankhkare Mentuhotep III. He possessed numerous titles including
Lord of the White Crown
,
Ruler of Upper Egypt
,
He Who Gives Heart to the Two Lands
, and finally
Unifier of the Two Lands
, after having reunited the kingdoms.

Mentuhotep’s grand
mortuary temple complex in the western desert across from Thebes at Deir el-Bahari now lay in ruins. But one can almost imagine its magnificent splendor when it was first built with ascending terraces, sandstone colonnades, pillared halls, tree-lined courts with shimmering pools, and a pyramid and temple that included a ramp, gallery, peristyle court, chapel, and a hypostyle hall with corridors and chambers hewn right into the rocky limestone cliffs that gleam brilliantly under the desert sun. The walls were decorated with hieroglyphic texts and numerous battle scenes which were fought in reuniting the kingdoms. The valley of Deir el-Bahari was called
Djeseret
meaning “Holy Place” by the ancient Egyptians, for here was the gateway leading to the Afterlife.

Two
photographic reproductions of the best preserved remnants of what is left of Mentuhotep’s extensively damaged funerary temple at Deir el-Bahari are included at the end of this book. The first one is a painted limestone relief fragment depicting Mentuhotep wearing Upper Egypt’s conical Hedjet White Crown. The second is the massive seated sandstone statue of the king looking regal and dignified, wearing the white Heb-Sed dress, the Deshret Red Crown of Lower Egypt, and the false beard of Osiris.

The Prophesy of Neferti
dates back to the fourth dynasty of the Old Kingdom. It foretold a time of chaos and the breakdown of the power structure of Egypt, and how a king would rise from the southern lands in Upper Egypt to subdue and slay enemies, rebels and traitors. He would then reestablish unity and order by rejoining the lands and wearing both the White and Red Crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt. The author has taken creative license by embellishing the Prophesy of Neferti with Khu’s role as the golden-eyed boy who would assist Mentuhotep in reunifying the lands, and by naming King Mentuhotep II as the king foretold in the prophesy.