Death: A Life (17 page)

Me on the Nile.

Yes, I thought, the Egyptians really understood me, and themselves. But of course there were misunderstandings. I remember the soul of Tutankhamen laughing and laughing at one of my jokes until the ethereal tears ran from his incorporeal eyes.

“I will always remember you when I become a god,” he said.

“When you become a what?” I responded.

“A god, Death,” he said. “As I was in life, so shall I be in death.”

I just nodded my head and let the Darkness take him. I couldn’t bear to tell the poor kid the truth.

Of course, not everyone was pleased with the special treatment I gave the pharaohs. Many of the slaves who died during the construction of the pyramids felt particularly aggrieved. They always had chips on their shoulders when I came to spirit them away.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather be taking the soul of a pharaoh?” a few would sneer as I shucked out their souls. “Why no animal masks for us?” It was very awkward.

Of course, the slaves had good reason to be angry, since so many of them had been tricked into slavery. They had been told that if they enrolled to build the pharaohs’ tombs, and got six of their friends to do likewise, they would in turn have a pyramid built for them. In Ancient Egypt, obsessed with dying as it was, a pyramid was the height of desirability. Well, as long as the number of slaves kept growing, everyone worked happily, but inevitably the number of new slaves signing on simply dried up, and only a few pyramids ended up being built before the ruse was discovered.

A slave revolt ensued. The slave leaders decreed that rather than just one pharaoh being buried per pyramid, thousands of workers should be entombed therein. These inverted pyramids, carefully balanced on their tips, represented the pinnacle (or pedestal) of the slave rights movement in Ancient Egypt. They were, however, highly susceptible to strong winds, and the vast majority of them were sent whirling into the desert like spinning tops, never to be seen again.

The Great Inverted Pyramid of Giza
(right).

As the number
of civilizations grew, so did the number of gods, and scuffles began to break out in the desert between rival bands of believers. For the most part the gods themselves didn’t have anything to prove. It was their followers who were the problem.

I remember one time a god named Yahweh, one of the many minor manifestations of God who had been left to look after things in His absence, was dragged out into the desert by his followers to battle the god Baal. The problem was that the two gods were on friendly terms.

“Hello, Baal,” rumbled Yahweh. “How’s tricks?”

“Not bad thanks, Yahweh,” roared Baal. “Same old, same old. Yamm sends his best.”

“Still god of the sea, is he?”

“Yes, he’s sharing it with Poseidon. Yamm’s doing waves at the moment while Poseidon’s busy with the creatures of the deep. I believe there was some argument about who controlled long-shore drift, but I think that’s settled now.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” rumbled Yahweh. “Look, I am sorry about all this, Baal, but my boys are so damned devout.”

“Oh, I understand,” roared Baal. “You let them build a couple of temples to you and suddenly they think they own you.”

While the gods chatted, their worshippers were brokering rules for a contest between the two supreme beings. Baal’s priests had pushed for a pentathlon, but this was swiftly ruled out by Yahweh, who was nursing an old harvest-festival injury. After a while, the prophet Elijah, who was leading the supporters of Yahweh, approached his god.

“If you’re the greatest god, the one true god,” said Elijah, “then you must crush the false god Baal into the dust.”

“But he’s my friend,” rumbled Yahweh. “Besides, if I’m the one true god, what’s he doing standing right there?”

Baal gave a friendly wave at Elijah.

“This isn’t funny, you know,” snapped Elijah. “Would you prefer we didn’t believe in you?”

“Oh, stop being such a stick-in-the-mud,” Yahweh rumbled, and turned back to Baal to resume his conversation. “You know, Baal, wouldn’t it be fine if we could somehow get rid of worshippers?”

“Well,” roared Baal, “I hear it said that soon they’ll have belief machines that pray much faster than humans, and with more feeling, too. Plus they’ll be much smaller, so you can just carry them around in your pocket—Hey! You’re disappearing!”

Yahweh had indeed started to shrink.

“Stop that!” rumbled Yahweh, spinning around to Elijah, who stood there smiling smugly.

“I’ve told them not to have faith in you until you crush Baal in your mighty hand, O Great One.”

“But you’re talking to him!” cried Baal, desperately trying to stretch Yahweh back to his full size.

“That doesn’t mean that I have to believe in him,” said Elijah.

I must admit I felt quite sorry for the gods, regardless of which mythology they came from. To begin with, they had wowed humans with tricks and miracles and sopped up the spiritual adoration. Slowly but surely, however, the believers came to realize that the real power resided with them. As I’ve mentioned before, gods theoretically can’t die, but they need to be believed in, otherwise they just blink out of existence. Wary of this, many of the more cunning gods had a devout hermit or two tucked away in desert caves, just in case their entire belief system suddenly went apostate.

So it was that Yahweh and Baal were soon bullied into facing off against each other. It wasn’t pretty. The air rang with obscenities and incense from both sets of supporters as they threw rocks at one another and then hid behind the hems of their gods’ garments. Taking a deep breath, Baal turned to Yahweh’s believers and roared, “I am Baal, son of Dagon and Ashtoreth, bull-horned king of gods, destroyer of Mot! Feel my wrath, unbelievers!” He bared his teeth and flames shot from his eyes. He winked at Yahweh who gave him a surreptitious thumbs-up.

Hermits: Spiritual Backup.

“Well, set fire to these logs then,” cried out Elijah. On one side of the battleground lay a pile of logs in a pool of water.

Baal looked upset. “But they’ve been soaked in water!” he roared.

“He’s right, you know, Elijah,” rumbled Yahweh. “They’re completely drenched.”

“That’s the point,” said Elijah sharply.

“Oh, very well,” roared Baal, and sitting his giant form down, picked up two sticks and began to rub them together. His followers began to look at one another.

“Not like that,” yelled Elijah. “Use your so-called divine powers, false god!”

Baal looked at Elijah as if he could just devour him then and there.

“I did mention the logs were
wet,
didn’t I?” he roared, before stepping toward the woodpile and staring at it very hard. There was a divine grunt, and a tiny wisp of steam wafted up from the top of the logs.

“Oh, well done!” rumbled Yahweh. “That was good, wasn’t it?”

“No, it wasn’t,” said Elijah. “That was probably just evaporation caused by the sun.”

“Oh, give him a break,” rumbled Yahweh, as Baal sat down on the ground with his head in his hands. “What do you want from us?”

“Look,” said Elijah, “all we need to know is which one of you is the greater god.”

Yahweh and Baal looked at each other. You could see what they were thinking: “Bloody humans. Never content with what they have.” I had always found that the saying that all gods were jealous was not true. Many gods rarely minded who their followers worshipped as long as there was enough belief to go around. Nevertheless, there was a certain divine code that had to be followed in situations such as this. Sighing, the two gods rumbled and roared in unison, “I am.”

A murmur broke through the crowd, and I could see the gods beginning to flicker a little as belief in them wavered.

“Oh, this is ridiculous!” roared Baal. “Why do you have to choose between one of us? Why can’t you see that we’re both special in our own different ways? Why can’t you appreciate us for what we are, rather than what you want us to be? Why can’t we just rule over our people as before? Those who like horns can worship me, and those who like beards can worship him. Why not?”

“I’m sorry,” said Elijah, “that’s not going to cut it anymore.”

“But there’s enough room for both of us in the heavens,” rumbled Yahweh.

“No can do,” said Elijah. “We’re cutting our costs and downsizing to monotheism. Everyone’s doing it. All those sacrifices add up, you know?”

“Well, if you insist that one of us must perish, let us go about this in the ancient manner,” rumbled Yahweh. “The way that was foretold in the scriptures, that was marked by the mystical stones, that was seen painted in the sky by the desert prophets millennia ago.” With some flair, Yahweh pulled a coin out from behind Elijah’s ear and declared, “Heads or aqueducts?” before flicking it into the air.

“Aqueducts,” roared Baal. The coin fell to the ground. Elijah stepped forward. “It’s heads, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, fiddlesticks,” roared Baal as Yahweh’s followers cheered, and whooped, and hoisted Elijah onto their shoulders. Yahweh was quite forgotten about. The chief priest of Baal dropped dead from disappointment, and I quickly went to work on his soul. Meanwhile the other Baalites began to drift away, tearing off their talismans and scouring themselves with thorns. Already peddlers were running among them, selling garments emblazoned with the legend
I BELIEVED IN BAAL AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY HAIR SHIRT.
As for Baal, he was shrinking by the second.