Men of Bronze (51 page)

Darius raised a hand in farewell. “May the gods of your people and mine have mercy upon you.”

A west wind shredded the clouds, revealing a sunset that transformed the storm-wracked sky into a canopy aflame with color. Inside the ruined chapel sacred to Hathor the air was still; silent, save for the faint drip of water. Motes of dust swirled through golden shafts of sunlight lancing down from the cracked ceiling.

Barca lay in a pool of light. A smear of blood led from the door to that spot, marking the limits of Jauharah’s ability to drag him. She crouched above his thigh and worked furiously to staunch the bleeding. Barca’s face was pale, drenched in sweat.

“C-Callisthenes?”

“Don’t talk,” Jauharah said.

“W-Where is Callisthenes?”

“He has gone on ahead, Hasdrabal,” she replied, stifling a sense of helplessness. There was nothing she could do. Without fire she couldn’t seal the artery.

“They’re all dead,” Barca whispered. “Matthias. Ithobaal. Tjemu. Callisthenes. I killed them. I …”

“Hush. Don’t talk like that.” Jauharah tried to tighten the strap about his thigh and, despairing of that, pressed her hands against the wound, willing the edges to mend and the blood to cease its life-stealing exodus.

“T-Tell me about your d-dream, again,” Barca said, his face screwed up in a rictus of pain.

Jauharah choked back tears. “We lived on a long, green slope beside a crystal river. The land gave us everything we needed. Olives. Pomegranates. Vegetables beyond number. And, there were children. Droves of children.”

Barca smiled. “A good dream …” A shadow crossed his face. “I’m sorry, Jauharah. I-I s-should have t-taken you away from here.”

“Hush, Hasdrabal,” Jauharah sobbed. “Please. Save your strength.”

“No!” the Phoenician said, rising on his elbows. “Listen. T-There’s something I haven’t told you. Something I s-should have said long ago. I have loved you since I first laid eyes on you, Jauharah. You s-saved my soul. You t-taught me what it was like to live again. For that, I-I can never r-repay you.”

Jauharah smiled gently, her hand going to his cheek to brush away the tears. “There’s nothing to repay, Hasdrabal. Nothing. I love you more than you’ll ever know. I love you for your strength, your compassion, your humanity. You —” she choked.

“I m-must go s-soon,” he said, sinking back down. “S-So cold. L-Lay beside me and t-tell me about our children.”

Jauharah stretched out beside him, their bodies woven together as she whispered to him of the laughter of dark-haired little girls, and of the shrieks of young boys with wooden swords. Outside, the sun slipped over the rim of the world, leaving a cold, starless night in its wake …

Ankhkaenre Psammetichus, last pharaoh of the Twenty-sixth dynasty, died not long after the Persian Invasion. In his final hours, it is said he found the will to fight he so lacked at Pelusium.

Cambyses II of Persia, too, did not live long to enjoy the fruits of his conquest. In 522 BC, while returning to the Persian homeland to quell a rebellion of the priestly Magi, Cambyses died of an apparently self-inflicted wound. His short reign would be remembered by his enemies for its brutality and madness.

Prexaspes, who commanded the Persian left at Pelusium, died in the political upheaval surrounding the rebellion of the Magi.

Young Darius, son of Hystapes,
arshtibara
to the King, commander of the vanguard at Gaza and the Persian right at Pelusium, seized the throne from the rebellious Magi. He would achieve lasting fame as Darius I, called the Great, most noble and civilized of all the Persian kings of the Achaemenid dynasty. The tale of his early years, the trilingual Behistun Inscription, is noticeably silent about his doings in Egypt.

The Persians captured Ladice, the Lady of Cyrene. When Cambyses learned of her identity, he returned her to her family in Cyrene as a gesture of goodwill.

The priest Ujahorresnet was rewarded for his perfidy with such diverse titles as
Chief Physician, Companion to the King
, and
Controller of the Palace
. His funerary stela, now in the Vatican Museum, provides the best source for what followed during the Persian Invasion. In AD 1980, Czech archaeologists uncovered his tomb in the sands of Abusir.

History does not say what became of the Arabian slave-woman who dared to love a Phoenician general, nor have archaeologists uncovered a ruined chapel in the desert outside Pelusium (modern Tell Farama). It is as if they never existed …

The End

Ancient Egyptian is a dead language, unspoken for at least two thousand years. As such, there is no consensus among scholars on how it might have been pronounced. Linguists have taken some clues from Coptic — the last stage of Egyptian, developed in the Common Era after Egypt became a Christian country — but even that is inexact. Hieroglyphs and hieratic texts are of little help in deciphering the verbal language, since they only reflect the consonants present in each word. Take, for instance, Canopic jars. In transliterated Egyptian (assigning Roman letters to the sounds represented by hieroglyphs), they are called /qby n wt/, which I have chosen to render into English as ‘qabi-en-wet’. The letter ‘e’ is used in place of unknown vowels, a rule of thumb accepted by most Egyptologists. Unfortunately, I know of no accepted source that translates Egyptian phonetically into English for ease of pronunciation.

The Greek in
Men of Bronze
is presented using a mix of Roman and traditional spellings, with a few Anglicized versions thrown in
(Athens
in place of
hai Athenai)
. As with Egyptian, no agreement exists among scholars on how Greek should best be cited to a modern audience. I have chosen a mixture accessible to most readers while still maintaining the flavor of the original languages.

Adamson, Stephen, Ed.
The Way to Eternity: Egyptian Myth
. London: Duncan Baird Publishers, 1997.

Adkins, Lesley and Roy A. Adkins.
Handbook to Life in Ancient Greece
. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Bares, Ladislav. “The Shaft Tombs of Abusir.”
Archaeology Odyssey
(May/June 2002): 14-25.

Braun, T. F. R. C. “The Greeks in Egypt.”
Cambridge Ancient History
2nd ed. Vol. 3 (1982): 32-56.

Bunson, Margaret.
A Dictionary of Ancient Egypt
. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Butler, Samuel.
Homer: The Iliad
. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1995.

Clapp, Nicholas.
The Road to Ubar
. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1998.

Cook, J. M.
The Persian Empire
. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1983.

David, Rosalie.
Handbook to Life in Ancient Egypt
. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

DeCamp, L. Sprague.
Great Cities of the Ancient World
. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1993.

DeSelincourt, Aubrey.
Herodotus: The Histories
. New York: Penguin Books, 1996.

Dodson, Aidan.
Hieroglyphs of Ancient Egypt
. Barnes and Noble Books, 2001.

______.
Monarchs of the Nile
. Cairo: The American University inCairo Press, 2000.

Fagan, Brian M.
EgyptofthePharaohs
. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Books, 2000.

Glueck, Nelson.
Rivers in the Desert
. New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1959.

Grant, Michael.
A Guide to the Ancient World
. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1997.

Hanson, Victor Davis.
The Wars of the Ancient Greeks
. London: Cassell, 1999.

Hawass, Zahi.
Valley of the Golden Mummies
. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2000.

Hendricks, Rhoda A.
Classical Gods and Heroes
. New York: William Morrow, 1978.

Hitti, Philip K.
The Arabs: A Short History
. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1943.

Hooke, S. H.
Middle Eastern Mythology
. London: Pelican Books, 1963.

Houtzager, Guus.
Complete Encyclopedia of Greek Mythology
. Edison: Chartwell Books, 2003.

McDermott, Bridget.
Decoding Egyptian Hieroglyphs
. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2001.

Oates, Joan.
Babylon
. London: Thames and Hudson, Ltd., 1979.

Ray, John D. “Egypt, 525-404 BC.”
Cambridge Ancient History
2nd ed. Vol. 4 (1988): 254-286.

Rohl, David.
Pharaohs and Kings: A Biblical Quest
. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1995.

Shaw, Ian, Ed.
The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt
. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Silverman, David P., Ed.
Ancient Egypt
. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Stephens, John Lloyd.
Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petraea
,
and the Holy Land
. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1837.

Whiston, William, A. M.
Josephus: The Complete Works
. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1998.

Wilkinson, Richard H.
Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt
. London: Thames and Hudson, Ltd., 2000.

______.
Reading Egyptian Art
. London: Thames and Hudson, Ltd.,1994.

Ahuramazda

Persian god who, with Anahita and Mithra, led the forces of Light against that of Darkness (called “the Lie”). To the Persians, Ahuramazda was the Creator, responsible for the earth, the sky, and man. In his
Histories
, Herodotus notes the essentials of Persian religion, that they had no statues or temples, that they sacrificed to their trio of gods on mountain tops and high places, and that they held fire, earth, and running water sacred. The Greeks likened Ahuramazda to their own Zeus.

Alilat

A goddess of the Arabians often identified with Greek Athena. She was a divinity of the night sky.

Amemait

The Devourer. With the hindquarters of a hippopotamus, the foreparts of a lion and the head of a crocodile, this creature haunted the Egyptian underworld, ready to consume those souls whose hearts could not balance the
Scales of Justice
(q.v.). Such utter destruction of the soul was a real fear to many Egyptians.

Amon

An Egyptian god of the district of
Thebes
(q.v.) who rose to preeminence during the New Kingdom (1550-1069 BCE). Amon co-opted the attributes of the sun god, Ra, and as Amon-Ra became the center of a vast state cult whose temporal power often rivaled that of Pharaoh, himself. Artists normally depicted Amon as a handsome young man wearing a headdress with two plumes, or as a horned ram (a symbol of power and fertility).