Khu: A Tale of Ancient Egypt (5 page)

The procession entered a courtyard
and proceeded up a ramp to a terrace, then up a second ramp leading to the inner chambers of the beautiful temple, finally arriving to Henhenet’s tomb. All work on the sprawling tomb-temple complex had been redirected to Henhenet’s tomb so it could be completed within a timely manner. The construction of her burial chamber had only recently been finished. It was a small room adjoining what would eventually become the king’s larger burial chambers.

The priests took their places before the entrance of the tomb as musicians plucked the haunting notes of a dirge on an arched harp.
A single melancholic voice rose from the poignant melody, prompting fresh tears from the mourners, as it invoked the aid of Anubis in judging Henhenet and her daughter with mercy so they might be regarded as worthy of Eternal Life, and granted admission to the Hereafter:

Come, O Anubis, Leader of Souls, Tester of Faith

Come, Guardian
of the Scales, Weigher of Hearts

Come to our beloved sister Henhenet Latif-et
, She of the Gracious Heart

And to her innocent child
, as yet unborn to the earthly realm

Judge them worthy and commend them to the gods

Guide them in their journey

Admit them
to the Field of Reeds

Protect them in the Hereafter, in
the Eternal Dominion of the Just

For they are pure in heart

Blameless and without reproach

Their souls do rise as a sweet perfume, pleasing to the gods

Rebuffing all malevolence and evil

Come,
Mighty Anubis, Protector of the Deceased

As we commend our beloved ones to
Thee

Khu bowed his head as the heavy weight of the mourners’ collective grief pressed upon him, and hot tears fell from his eyes. The last rites were held, more prayers were chanted, more incense was burned, and the symbolic Opening of the Mouth ritual took place to reanimate the senses so the deceased could eat, speak, hear and see again in the Afterlife. A forked blade carved of black agate was touched to the mouth, eyes and ears of their coffins to also allow the immortal soul
Ka
to come and go freely. Then the ceremony was concluded with a formal burial dance and followed by a feast.

And the tomb
, which now housed the remains of Henhenet and her child, as well as all those things deemed necessary to their comfort and well-being in the next life, was shut and sealed tightly against the robbers, reprobates and rogues who dwelt in the shadows of the land of the living.

In the darkest hour of night, a boat glided stealthily over the Nile.
A band of thieves pulled their oars through the cool waters that shone like obsidian under the gibbous moon. The dark water sluiced and swirled as the men slowly plowed their oars into the river. They passed a float of crocodiles submerged by the marshes where they were hunting for waterfowl sleeping in nests by the reeds. The beasts watched the boat moving through the night, their yellow reptilian eyes glittering fiercely in the moonlight.

The men
were scouting the banks of the river in Thebes, their dark eyes wide and watchful as they hunkered warily within the vessel whose sail was tightly furled. They rounded a bend in the river and drew in their oars as they neared the rocky shore. One of the men stood at the stern and poled the boat forward through the shallow waters.

A pair of great white pelicans flapped their wings in the dense reed beds where their nests
were hidden, but then settled back down quietly. A soft chorus of chirping crickets and croaking frogs lent their voices to the night. Then a splash sounded, momentarily startling the men, as an osprey swooped down from the air and plunged feet first into the water where it caught a small fish, gripping the scaled prey with its long dagger-like talons.

“There,”
one of the men whispered with a tilt of his head. “The storage houses.” They had arrived close to the village which lay just northeast of Mentuhotep’s palace compound.

“Wait,” another stood up in the boat, his
hand raised for them to stop. A rustling among the reeds caught his eye and he pointed to a man stepping out from a cluster of branches. Then he whistled very softly and the man returned his signal with a wave. “Stop here,” he told the rest of the men in the boat. “We have arrived.”

Among
the many mud-brick homes sheltering the people and serving as their workshops, were the granaries where wheat and barley were stored. They were set back from the river within the walled village sitting higher above the floodplain, to protect them from the rising waters of the annual inundation.

The other men turned to look at the
silos which housed grain from the fields. More precious than gold was the food that nourished the people. Bread was one of the things crossing all social boundaries. It was a staple in the diets of peasants, priests and princes alike. All the people—from those in the nobility, to the ones toiling at the bottom of the pyramid-structured socio-economy—relied on its sustenance.

The men swallowed against the greed that made them salivate. They were hungry, but not
to fill their stomachs. They hoped to steal some of the grain and trade it elsewhere for a profit.

Times had been hard
on many of the settlements which eked out a living on the Nile Valley’s floodplains. Although the settlements and villages under Mentuhotep’s authority had not suffered during his reign, many others had. Famine and hunger afflicted the people who toiled in vain under a hot sun which scorched the crops in the fields. Those harvests that had not withered were drowned in the waters which flooded the plains like the hungry tide of the sea washing over the shoreline. Without the carefully constructed canals, ditches and dykes lying useless from disrepair and hardship, the life-giving water of the ancient river could be transformed into a ravenous and unappeasable glutton, destroying all laying in its path during the river’s annual inundation, including the storage houses where the harvested grains were kept.

Over the c
enturies, flooding sometimes destroyed entire villages whose homes and workshops were built of mud-bricks. New villages were then built right on top of the remaining debris from the previous structures, so that with time, the newer villages rose higher on a kind of artificial mesa. But if the natural elements were not conspiring against those villages which managed to survive, raiders and disease often took whatever had been left.

***

Somewhere inside the palace Khu stirred in his sleep. He tossed and turned in his bed as he sensed the danger lurking nearby. Then he awoke and sat up at once to seek out his mother Tem.

“Are you certain?”
Tem eyed Khu with doubt.

She
had been sleeping in the women’s quarters of the palace when the boy woke her. She had opened her eyes to find him standing quietly by her bedside. He was barefoot with nothing but a white linen loincloth wrapped about his bottom. His plaited sidelock of hair hung by his shoulder. The feeble light of the moon drifted in through the window cut high into the wall, but only seemed to accentuate the shadows draping the room. A ceramic oil lamp sat on a low table in a corner of the room, its reed wick unlit. No sounds echoed through the palace. No dogs barked in the night. It was deathly quiet.

“
Yes, Mother,” he nodded, “I am sure.”

He was fidgeting. Tem had not seen him do this before. His usual calm demeanor was tense
, and he picked at his fingers with a restlessness that unnerved her.

Tem did not feel like moving.
Hazy remnants of sleep numbed her senses with a thick sluggishness, and her limbs felt weighted by the resulting inertia. Her eyes were the first to move as they darted about the room, roaming over the wooden cabinet against the wall where her clothes were kept, then to a small table where an elegantly carved cosmetics box stored the miniature alabaster pot of
kohl
eyeliner she applied with a stick applicator to her eyelids each day, along with the green
udju
eye shadow made from ground malachite. Next to the box was an alabaster jar covered with a strip of leather to keep the oil-based perfume within from evaporating into the dry air. The cosmetics and perfumes were prized by the people for their mystical and healing powers. But even they could not stop evil from entering the hearts of men.

Tem’s eyes
finally came to rest on the window. Its reed shade lay rolled up on the ground below to allow the night air to circulate through the room. She took a deep breath, got out of bed, and lit the lamp’s wick before turning back to face her son.

The lamp’s
light reflected golden pools in Khu’s eyes. He looked upset, worried.

Tem
thought of what Khu had just told her while she slipped on a pair of leather sandals. She did not bother to change out of the simple linen dress she wore to sleep. Perhaps Khu was being plagued by frightening dreams, she thought to herself. Such things were common after traumatic events. Maybe his mind was reliving the horrors he had suffered before arriving here. Some dreams were a way of attempting to process certain things which could not be faced in the waking hours; a repository deep within the mind that would fracture when obstructed by repressed fears and memories too frightening to contain.

“You do not believe me,” Khu
shifted from one foot to the other. He closed his eyes a moment, lowering his head and swallowing hard. Then he drew himself up and opened his eyes again to look at Tem.

Tem
was watching him, her mind working. She was trying to decide whether to send the boy back to bed, or go and warn the king. But there was an urgency in Khu’s eyes that finally persuaded her into action.

“
I believe something is troubling you,” she admitted.

“But you don’t know if it is just in my head.”

Tem nodded.

“And you aren’t sure what to tell the king.”

She nodded again, and Khu looked away frustrated. He studied the small yellow flame of the oil lamp throwing large shapeless shadows on the wall. Then he turned back to her.

“Tell him, M
other.” His voice was low and insistent. “Tell him.”

Tem watched him with a curious expression, pursing her lips in indecision.
“Very well,” she said after a short while.

But she looked unsure.
And as they left to tell the king, she hoped she had not made a mistake by believing Khu.

Mentuhotep wasted no time in sending guards to investigate. He did not wish to take any
chances, especially given the circumstances in the northern territories. He grabbed his dagger and tucked it in the strap tied about his kilt. But he paused before leaving the room, and turned around to face Tem and Khu once again.

“Come with me, Khu,” he told the boy.
“I want to know where the sounds came from.”

Tem had told the king that it was Khu who informed her of the danger. Mentuhotep then simply assumed that the boy might have heard a noise. He was not yet aware of Khu’s heightened perception. Besides, if Tem had said so, the king might not have been convinced
enough to believe them. He would have brushed them both away and sent them back to their quarters. People are far quicker to believe that which is experienced through the senses.

Tem
looked frightened when Mentuhotep told Khu to join him. She did not want any harm to befall her son. Khu looked up at Tem before moving toward his father. He could feel the anxiety within her, and he squeezed her hand reassuringly before stepping away.

“I will keep him safe,” the king said
, as he ran a hand over his smooth-shaven head in an anxious gesture. “Do not worry.”

Tem
was biting her lip behind her folded hands which she pressed against her mouth as though in prayer. But she said nothing. She simply nodded her head in a perfunctory bow before her child left with the king. Then she closed her eyes, touched the amulet hanging from her neck on a golden chain, and said a silent prayer to the gods for their protection.

Mentuhotep was well aware of the dangers that
had beset many of the settlements. Lower Egypt was not only divided from the kingdom of Upper Egypt, it was divided against itself. There had been as many pretenders ruling as there were scattered communities spreading out like the branches of the Nile Delta. And the thrones of those territory-kingdoms rested on foundations that were not unlike the soft silt and marshlands saturating the land. It was unstable and chaotic.

T
he stability Egypt had once enjoyed, had disintegrated into a number of
sepats
—local territory divisions—at least in the north. And without political stability there had been much pillaging throughout those lands which had also been plagued by drought.