Sunrise on the Mediterranean (63 page)

Cheftu pushed Dion away, sending the man staggering back in surprise. “Do not corner me again, or lust after me, or think
you have any hope with me. Not now, not ever. No.”

He turned around, rewet his brush, and continued his dictation.

“You will regret these words, Egyptian,” Dion said. And left.

T
HE NEXT NIGHT BAFFLED ME
. I thought I knew the Ten Commandments. Most Western law had come from these simple but binding pronouncements. I was all
prepared to hear N’tan expound on adultery or murder, or lying, when he started in on festivals.

Festivals?

He discussed how the tribespeople were to remember Pesach and the Feast of Unleavened Bread for seven days. Then he said they
were supposed to celebrate Shavu’ot, the Feast of Weeks, and Sukkot, the Feast of Ingathering— which we were currently enjoying.
For these three feasts, the men of the tribes were to stand in Shaday’s presence.

The next law, N’tan said, was simple. “Don’t cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.”

That was it. Finito. Those were the laws of the tribesmen. A bunch of stuff about vacations, the no other god, the no image
of god part, then some information about redeeming with blood … and a law not to cook a young goat in its mother’s milk. I
had to fight myself to not scream, “What the hell is that about?” Instead I joined everyone else and said,
“Sela.”

We were walking home when I erupted, “Where are the Ten Commandments? I thought that is what you would be transcribing! The
Commandments that N’tan recited, the ones he’s teaching the tribesmen, are not the ones I was taught. How about you?”

“Given the difference in languages,” Cheftu started.

“
Lo.
Even the difference in language can’t explain why there is no ‘Thou shalt not covet,’ ‘Thou shalt honor thy father and mother,’
‘Thou shalt not murder.’ ”

He kissed the back of my hand, but it wasn’t a leading kiss, it was a thinking kiss. “There is the statement about no gods
before Shaday.”

“
Ken.
Because his name is Zealous, he is a Zealous god.”

“The statement to not cast an image of him.”

“True. Especially after the disaster of them worshiping HatHor only months after Shaday got them through the Red Sea.” How
could they have doubted? I wondered. I’d seen the sea part, and my life had been changed forever.

Well, tweaked, at any rate.

Okay, so I was no different. I doubted, too, even after seeing the seas part.

“Then, instead of the laws about friends and family, honesty and covetousness, there are all these laws about sacrifices and
holidays,” I said.

“Memory is the tool to perpetuating this faith,” Cheftu said. “Just as N’tan explained. If they remember Shaday, remember
him in all the little ways—from blessing wine and bread before consumption, to keeping their lives separate from foreigners
just like they keep apricot orchards separate from pear—then they will remember Shaday more easily in the large ways.”

We walked into our still-undecorated, because almost everything was undecorated, house. Cheftu lit the lamp while I went straight
to our view.

I didn’t doubt the point he was making. That those Commandments were missing, how they were, was my question. “How could they
go from being about one thing, to being about another?” I turned to look at Cheftu. He was staring over my shoulder, fixed
on some private horizon.

“Perhaps … ,” he mused. “Perhaps we have it backward.”

I watched him, waiting. His eyes were circled with kohl, the little bit of light flickering off his earrings. How could it
be backward? This was the Ten Commandments we were talking about.

“These laws formed a group of slaves into an organized army,” he said slowly.

“Ken?”
I encouraged.

“Perhaps these were the first laws, the first try at the organization.”

He’d lost me. My expression must have said as much. “They came from Egypt, having been slaves for decades. What does a slave
do?”

“Slave?” I asked jokingly.

Cheftu raised a brow at me.

“
B’seder.
They serve, they wait, they—”

“They don’t make decisions for themselves,” he said.

I fell silent. Slaves don’t get a chance to think for themselves. We’d been slaves for only a few months. We’d been fed, clothed,
sheltered, told where to be and when. After a few hundred years of that, people would become untrained in making decisions
and following through. Not because they couldn’t, but because it had been beaten out of them. So the Apiru always had someone
telling them what to do: then overnight they were responsible for themselves?

“So they had exchanged an overseer for Shaday?” I asked. Dadua and his theory of Shaday being a slave owner was popping up
again.

Cheftu sat on the ledge, pulling me beside him. “Think on it. The first laws were simple, basic. Mostly dealing with sacrifice,
because that is something, as slaves, they would have understood and seen.

“Because they lived among people who revered their firstborn, the laws about redeeming one’s firstborn, about not appearing
before Shaday without a gift, these laws gave them the feeling of worshiping a god who was similar to, though not identical
to, their neighbors. It was a familiar pathway.”

He kissed my shoulder, then continued speaking. “Other laws dealing with holy days were another concept they comprehended
because of their Egyptian heritage. The religious calendar and the taboo against following idols were the first things to
learn.”

“Because they were foremost in their minds?” I asked. “
Ken.
They had recently served HatHor, the golden calf. They had to be told what was right and wrong in what they had done.”

I nodded, following.

“These other laws you recite, the ones I recall from catechism, were more complex. They were for a people who had adapted
to the idea that they owned themselves.”

“So Moshe didn’t write those?” I asked. “Shaday did.”

“Then I’m confused,” I said in English. “The first tablets, Shaday wrote them,
nachon?”
Cheftu asked.

The Ten Commandments movie flickered through my brain, the face of the actor replaced with the dark-eyed visage of Moshe,
former crown prince of Egypt. Lighting, ostensibly the finger of God, had written the laws on stone tablets. Then Moses had
walked down the mountain, thrown down the stones, and broken them.

“According to the Sages,” I said hesitantly.

Cheftu laughed, kissing my neck, tightening his arms around me. “
Ken.
That is what the
tzadikim
say. Then after punishing the tribesmen,
ha
Moshe climbed the mountain again, taking down the Commandments in his own hand.”

I turned to him. “Are you saying they dumbed them down, second go-round? Just because the people were too simplistic? So the
Ten Commandments that I know, the ones my Mimi used to quote to me, these were the first given, but they were too complicated
so Moses and God came up with a learner’s version?”

He shrugged, the epitome of Gallic nonchalance. “Abraham bargained with Shaday about other things, so who is to say?”

It was a startling thought. “Do you think that the rules Shaday handed, the broken pieces, were the Ten Commandments we eventually
got? So the ones
ha
Moshe ended up reading to the populace are the ones that he received the second time around?”

I couldn’t be still. I hopped up. “These laws that N’tan is reciting, they are the ones Moses received second? These are the
simple ones, the training Commandments? These are the ones he wrote down?”

Cheftu was silent for a long moment. “It would be reasonable, for the Ten Commandments we know as such were far too complex
thought processes for a herd of slaves.” He smiled, catching the ends of my hair in his hand. “It would be like Shaday to
make two plans, one for right then and one for posterity, yet neither contradictory. These we are observing now, these are
very physical commands. Later, the laws become spiritual, they govern our inner selves. Those are the ones you recognize,
but both are in the Holy Writ.”

I wasn’t sure whether I agreed with that or not. “What language did God write them in, you think?”

“One is tempted to say Hebrew,” Cheftu said. “The Urim and Thummim are inscribed in Hebrew, so we know it was around. Written
by then.”

“What did Moshe write his in?” I asked.

Cheftu opened his mouth; just then I felt the kick he did. “Hieroglyphs?” His voice rose an octave, incredulous.

It was another thing I’d been thinking through. “Where are the pieces that God wrote?”

“In the Ark of the Covenant.”

R
A
E
M WOKE UP TO THE SOUND OF
A scuffle outside her tent door. Instantly alert, she crept forward. The soldier on duty sighed as his neck was slit. She
was panicked a moment until she heard the words of the killer. “I come from Horetaten, My Majesty.”

“Did you have to murder him?” she asked, opening the door, gesturing to the body on the ground.

“Aye. It was necessary.” When the person stepped into the tent, RaEm saw that he was a she. A young, flat-chested woman, shaven
headed and adorned like a priest, but female.

“What is the meaning of this?” RaEm asked.

“Horetamun, I mean—” She stumbled. “He was my master, My Majesty.”

RaEm’s eyes narrowed. “Go on.”

“He was—” The girl inhaled raggedly. “They killed him, My Majesty.”

RaEm felt terror. He was her sole ally! Her only tool! “Killed him?”

“The priests of Amun-Ra are on the rise, My Majesty. They seek to destroy the Aten and Pharaoh.”

“Tell me everything,” she said, gesturing for the girl to seat herself.

“The Inundation was poor.”

“This I knew.”

“The gold you sent, it wasn’t enough.”

RaEm winced against that thought. The tribesmen had thought themselves so clever to bury the gold with the rotting corpses.
However, RaEm had personally lashed any soldier who would not dig. They had retrieved a lot of gold—armor and weapons inscribed
with Hatshepsut’s cartouche, a pharaoh none of the soldiers had ever heard of. RaEm had whipped them again, just for that
oversight.

But it wasn’t enough gold.

Then she had sent the tribute from Dadua, a nice contribution, but not enough to bribe all the nobles, all the priests, who
had greedy palms.

“What happened?”

“He was praying to Amun in the god’s room. He had dismissed the other priests, so as he prayed he dug out the stones, the
gold, the riches that only he would know were missing.”

It was a desperate measure. RaEm hoped the god would understand his reasoning was because of his love for Egypt.

“The, the other priest”—the girl wiped her nose with the back of her hand—“he was always jealous. He broke in with the guards
and caught Horetamun in the act.”

RaEm’s eyes closed. She could imagine the scene, the jealousies, the rivalries. Temples were highly charged places for people
who lusted for power. He had been kneeling, probably digging at the floor, when the door would have burst open.

“Did they kill him there?”

The girl shook her head. “He was executed.”

“
Aii
, Isis, nay!” RaEm whispered. That meant he had endured a week of torture, ten full days of experiencing different “hells”
that it was believed his soul would endure once he died.

He would have been covered with honey, left for ants. His fingers severed and fed to Sobek, the crocodiles, while he watched.

Whipped in strips until he was a mass of blood, then left in the sun.

His tongue cut out, his teeth torn from his head.

Surgically eviscerated as he watched, but kept from dying.

His sex cut off, stuffed in his mouth.

Then blinded.

His body dipped in pitch and set aflame.

Nothing would remain; his name would be removed from every papyri, his seal sealed over, his ashes scattered on the winds
in the desert, then his household sold to foreigners into the meanest slavery.

RaEm wept for him. She tore her clothes, beat her breast, covered her face and head in ashes, and sat in the darkness for
three days, mourning him. But before she did that, she made sure the girl had gold, clothing, and sent her to Yaffo, to sail
for the farthest island.

On the way, RaEm’s agents, disguised as priests of Amun-Ra, would overtake her, kill her, and leave the body. The real priest
would have trailed the girl. It would not do to have them connect the deposed high priest and the reigning co-regent of Egypt.

However, her death would be quick, painless. RaEm herself would see that she was mourned, her name written in many scrolls
so she would live forever.

At the end of three days RaEm adorned herself as Smenkhare, summoned her traveling chair, and set off for the audience chamber
of Dadua.

She’d lost her ally; she needed another.

Time had come for action. The golden totem would enter the city in a month. RaEm wondered if Akhenaten had that much time
left. If he was assassinated, without her being behind it, then she would be viewed as the enemy also. Her priest Horetamun
was supposed to have done it, then given the credit to her, the reigning pharaoh of Egypt. As Hatshepsut had treated her nephew
Thutmosis, RaEm would have placed Tuti under house arrest and usurped his reign.