FOUR

“I Had much to think about,” my great-grandfather told us, “as we were rowed across to the Western Bank of Thebes. I had just heard the most powerful voice ever to enter my head, and my ears rang. In other years, when I became a priest and was instructed in the mysteries of language, I came to learn that the sounds uttered by a God are equal to what He desires. So in ancient days, a God could say: ‘chair,’ and lo!, there was a chair.

“Of course, in these years, we are not close to the Gods. We can roar like a lion, but we can never call the beast forth.

“I, however, on this morning of which I speak, had just heard a mighty voice issue from a heart of gold. It had captured the lips and throat of Bak-ne-khon-su, and made him serve as the voice of Amon. So we knew that victory would be ours if we were faithful.

“That, all the same, was what dismayed me now. Today, our religious ceremonies had been different from other occasions. Usually, ten or more priests entered with a bull, not a ram, and a Reciter-Priest would stand at my Pharaoh’s elbow to whisper which prayer came next, or how many steps to take.”

“They have such a fellow today,” said Ptah-nem-hotep, “but his manner is not altogether civil.”

“It was otherwise, then,” said Menenhetet, “and done with great respect. Once, I counted a hundred separate gestures accompanying one prayer and, in my ignorance, missed another hundred I would learn later as a priest. How then could a Monarch like Ramses the Second, with His mind fixed on war, remember the order? Yet if the King could avoid all mistakes during the service, it was our belief—we were simple in those days, I repeat—that Amon would not ignore our request. In truth, I remember how at the beginning of many a service, Bak-ne-khon-su would often place into the golden hand of Amon a roll of papyrus on which the High Priest had written a petition. Then, at the completion of prayers, Bak-ne-khon-su would take it back. Feeling its presence in his palm, he would be able to state whether the Great God wished to say yes or no to the request. Of course, I always believed Bak-ne-khon-su could interpret the word of Amon. There were other High Priests, however, in other years whom I did not trust as well. I thought the answers to their petitions told me more about the servant than about the wisdom of Amon. All the same, when I became a High Priest myself (and I was, I must say, no model of purity like Bak-ne-khon-su, but reached such a position only by my nearness to Ramses the Second in my second life when I was young and He was very old) I learned that I, too, was not ready to pass over the word of the God. No, the feelings of Amon were too fearsome to ignore when the roll of papyrus quivered in one’s hand.”

“Your lives are as strange as the taste of a new spice,” said our Pharaoh and smiled at my mother. At this sign of attention given to her, first in some time, she was quick to smile back, but in her mind (and I, listening to our great-grandfather with all of my attention, had not been near to her mind for a while) now saw her hand move forward in her thoughts to touch her Fingertips to a surface as lovely as her own skin, but it was under the skirt of Ptah-nem-hotep that her hand would travel, and His thigh was the one she stroked in her thoughts, upon which the Pharaoh sat up in His chair and felt for His leopard tail. “You were speaking,” He said to Menenhetet, “of the power of petition of a High Priest.”

“Yes,” said my great-grandfather. “If my request asked the Pharaoh to enrich the Temple of Thebes, I would know the answer I desired. A High Priest must increase the wealth of his Temple. Amon’s confidence being gained by gifts, it is gained best by great gifts. So, my petition might beg Amon to instruct our old Ramses to give over to the Temple a tenth more of the tribute He had received from Libya in the last year. My hand, as it touched the petition, expected to hear no response from Amon but Yes, yet with all my desire for such a result, I could feel the clear displeasure of the Hidden One if on a given morning He did not desire such added tribute.”

“Did you then announce this conclusion?” Ptah-nem-hotep asked.

“I cannot remember, my Lord. My only recollection is that I would dread such a reply when it came on me. How awful was the touch of the petition when it said: No! The papyrus could feel as unpleasant as a snakeskin.

“Now, I, of course, on the day we crossed the river to visit the tomb of Ramses the Second, knew little of these fine matters. I only understood that nothing had taken place as on other mornings.

“I was not surprised, therefore, that it became a day where every event was unexpected. No sooner had we landed at the wharf on the Western Bank of Thebes than my Pharaoh invited me into His Chariot for the first time, and the horses were as shocked as myself to recognize that Nefertiri was not present. The names of these horses, I remember, were Strength-of-Thebes and Maat-is-Satisfied, a stallion and a mare, and the mare, as you would expect, was remarkably like Nefertiri. She never liked to be separated from her mate. You had only to command Strength-of-Thebes and it was as if you had spoken to the eight legs of both beasts. Nor were these horses ever happier than when the Queen rode with the King.

“But, my Ramses drove off with me, leaving all who had come with us behind. So I now learned that the people of Western Thebes, accustomed to see their King only in a procession, did not know to look up when His Chariot was unaccompanied. They were left with no more than a glimpse of the War-Crown on His head, thereby to realize that the Good and Great God had passed, O Double-House of Egypt,” said my great-grandfather, as if apologizing that a Pharaoh could ride anywhere in Egypt without everyone being aware of His passage. Menenhetet then struck the table seven times with his hand as if to ward off any disrespect in what he would next say. “On this, the Night of the Pig, I could speak of many Pharaohs. I have known Them as Gods and I have known Them as men. Of Them all—if it please Your interest—”

“It does.”

“—Ramses the Second was least difficult to know as a Pharaoh, and most difficult to comprehend as a man. Of His piety I have just given You good measure, yet when He was away from the Temple, He was indifferent to who might hear His voice. He swore as simply as a soldier. And when with Nefertiri, He was more like a man in love than a King. Yet if She was not with us, He hardly spoke of Her with respect. On this morning, as we started off in His Chariot, He even said, ‘Do you know She had a Fit because I told Her to stay on the Eastern Bank? “Go back,” I told Her. “Nurse what You must nurse. I want to be alone.” ’ My Pharaoh laughed. ‘She does not like to nurse,’ He added, ‘She doesn’t even like Her wet-nurse,’ and He gave a great whoop to the horses, and a crack of the reins on their back so we were in a gallop right out of a trot and tearing down the Boulevard of Osiris on the Western Bank like two charioteers with an afternoon to spend on beer, yes, now I see how He was different from other Kings. The weight of other Pharaohs can be seen in Their presence on all occasions, but my good Ramses the Second thought little of that. Like a boy, He would take off His clothes if it suited Him. He had a mouth that would look at you as if it did not know whether it wanted a kiss or a bite out of your best parts.”

My mother gave a laugh so full of the depths of her own flesh that I could all but feel the black hair between her legs and the red face of a young man with golden hair and lips as red as my mother’s smiling at the sight. I felt Sweet Finger again—except there were a hundred sweet Fingers up her belly and down mine and I wondered if this man with the golden hair could be Ramses the Second come forward from the dead, and that confused me so thoroughly that I only returned to what my great-grandfather was saying on these words: “I never liked the Western Bank.”

“Well, I do not like it today,” said Ptah-nem-hotep, and with such vehemence that I saw the picture in His brain, that is, saw the Western Bank as it would look to me now from a boat in the middle of the river. Thereby, I had the sight of a plain with high cliffs to the west and many temples in the valley. There were great broad avenues going in every direction. Yet it did not look like a city so much as a park, and then not at all a royal park for there were swamps between some of the avenues, and long empty diggings of foundations where great buildings must have been planned and never finished. I could see very few people on the boulevards and only one or two wagons. This meant the Western Bank must be altogether different from the East Bank of Thebes which, if it were at all like Memphi, had to be crowded and friendly and full of narrow alleys. Whereas on the Western Bank, there was so much space that you could see a number of new towns built in regular rows between the great boulevards, and climbing into the foothills. But since each stone house in these places had a little pyramid for its roof, I realized they were not houses but tombs in the Great Necropolis of Western Thebes, and indeed looked like a thousand hats planted in the desert, with over there, another thousand hats. Yet the plan of each street was so much the same that my eyes began to water, and I wondered if living people really thought the dead liked to live on streets that did not curve.

My great-grandfather must have heard each of my thoughts (unless I was living in his) for now I heard him say: “The streets of the Necropolis were laid out in right angles on the calculation that the best return is brought back from land sold in small square pieces.”

“Menenhetet, you are wicked,” the Pharaoh remarked. “I always thought these streets were kept straight to discourage thieves and evil spirits.”

“That is also true,” said my great-grandfather. “Fewer guards are necessary when one can see from one end of a lane to the other, and spirits are certainly weakened when they cannot dodge and turn. Yet when the decision was first made in the Temple of Amon at Karnak to lay out square plots, none of us knew they would prove so popular. I was High Priest at the time, and can tell You we needed the revenue. I speak of a period fifty years and more after the Battle of Kadesh when Ramses the Second was very old and had no interest in war. So, the Temple could only count on the tribute that still came in from the sons of old conquered Princes. Thereby, we had fewer gifts for Amon. Contemplate the labors of a High Priest like myself when each morning the Great God sneered at me each time I wiped off His old rouge, and Tongue and Pure put on the new.

“I came to the simple conclusion that gifts to make Amon happy did not have to come only from the Pharaoh. Many of the people were wealthy enough to buy plots in the Necropolis.

“Now, I must explain that even on the strange morning of which I speak when Ramses the Second gave me the honor of accompanying Him, there was a Necropolis on the Western Bank. Only it was not like the one today with its thousands of tombs. In that time, there were only a few great avenues. The Necropolis itself was small, and no one but nobles of the best family could be buried in it. I remember the envy I felt at the thought I would never rest on the Western Bank. It seemed to me that a man who has been welcomed into the company of a Pharaoh ought to be entitled to a tomb, and have the history of his life written on the walls. But I knew that was impossible. If you were not a great noble, you could not begin in those years to think of a life in the Land of the Dead. Among the peasants with whom I grew up, we always heard that the pits of Khert-Neter were so terrible, and you encountered such serpents, scorpions and evil Gods, that only a Pharaoh or a few of His royal brothers would dare to make the trip down the Duad. For any ordinary man, the journey was impossible. So, as soon as you died, you expected your family to take you out in the desert, dig a hole, and cover you with sand. If you were a peasant, you did not even brood about it much. But when I became a charioteer, it irked me how many relatives of the Pharaoh had a tomb and could take treasures with them through Khert-Neter, and after this day when I rode in His Chariot, the desire to have a plot in the Royal City of the Dead arose in me.

“So, when I became a High Priest many years later, I knew that rich commoners would want to purchase land in this Necropolis. Because of a special element, however—if I may so speak—in the character of Ramses the Great which developed after the Battle of Kadesh, we did not have to sell to commoners after all. For by His old age, thousands of people in Thebes could claim to be His children, grandchildren, or great-grandchildren. At the least, they were married to His descendants. By then, only the poorest commoner could not claim to be some kind of kin to Usermare-Setpenere, that Sun-who-is-powerful-through-Truth, Ramses the Second.

“That, however, was after the Battle of Kadesh. On this day, riding with pride in His Chariot, who could think of all that was to come? I merely looked at what there was to see while He took us along on a fast gallop down the empty boulevards of Western Thebes. There were not many people there then, as I say, and they all worked for the Necropolis and in the mortuary temples and looked sicklier somehow to my good eyes than people of the East Bank. Even the priests of the mortuary temple seemed thin and drawn compared to those priests who came walking through the Great Hall that is like a forest in the Temple of Karnak. Although these fellows at Karnak also live much in the shade, they grow plump from the sacrifices they consume and the gold they weigh in the vaults, whereas, the ones of the Western Bank, while quite free to enjoy the quiet sun of all their fine gardens and plazas, were bored, I think, by the peace of the ages that you had to breathe in Western Thebes. I think most of these priests wanted to be across the river at Karnak and so their unhappiness came into the air. By late afternoon, I knew it would be mournful. So long as the sun was still high, it was all right, but soon terrible shadows would flow like water from the cliffs to cover the temple gardens with gloom.

“All the while I did not know where my Pharaoh was taking me, but He had decided to visit no place less splendid than the Temple of Hat-shep-sut, and as we drove up, there were, to my surprise, not a dozen priests to turn out. But then there was not even the smell of a sacrifice burning. I think we might have been the first people to visit in days. Of course, it had been built by a woman and looked more like a palace than a temple. My Pharaoh said, ‘I used to laugh at this place. Only a woman would build a temple with nothing but cocks,’ and clapped me on the back like we were two infantrymen. I was shocked at how He spoke, but then He did say, ‘Count the cocks,’ and I did, and there were twenty-four columns all holding up a roof, and above was another row of shorter columns, altogether a white and beautiful temple and very large, and the cliffs went straight up to the sky just back of the temple. When my King had chased away the priests who came to greet Him, we mounted onto a patio above the first roof, and there was a garden with hundreds of myrrh trees. I had smelled myrrh in every incense that ever smoked in a temple and knew the power of its odor, but here in the shadow of these cliffs which must have been higher than a hundred men standing on top of each other’s shoulders, in the sun of midday with the desert-yellow of the hills all around us, the scent of myrrh from each of these little trees was an odor to fill my head and make me think that the middle of my thoughts could be as clear and empty as the sky. When a priest brought out two gold stools, one for the Pharaoh, and one, to my delight, for myself, together with a golden cup of wine for each of us, I could also taste the myrrh in the wine and it was like a sniff of funeral wrappings with their spices. So, all the while that I felt as alive as the light in the sky, I was still drinking a wine which spoke to me of the middle of the night and strange thoughts.

“ ‘These myrrh trees,’ said Ramses the Second, ‘are from Her,’ and I thought at first He could only mean His own Queen Nefertiri, but He added, ‘Hat-shep-sut,’ and was silent. Then He told me they had been carried here for Amon Who had ordered Queen Hat-shep-sut shep-sut to bring this Land of Punt to His House. Despite the heat, I shivered as I listened, for the scent of myrrh made me cold, and my King told me that a good many expeditions had failed before Hat-shep-sut sent Her fleet. The Queen’s five ships came back, however, with myrrh, and ebony and ivory and cinnamon wood and the first baboons and unique monkeys never seen before as well as new kinds of dogs, the skins of the southern panther, and natives from Punt with skins so black they looked more purple than the snails of Tyre. ‘Hat-shep-sut was that pleased She told Her lover Sen-mut to build this temple to Her honor. Two rows of cocks.’ He started to laugh, but then grasped me by the arm and said, ‘One night, I came here with Nefertiri and We were alone on this terrace. Amon spoke to Me and said: It is dark but You will see My Light. When Nefertiri and I made love, I saw Our first child, being made, for We were connected as a rainbow to the earth. So I do not laugh at this temple all the time, although I hate the odor of myrrh.’ With this He stood up, and we left, and He rode at such a gallop I could not speak a word. I did not know why, but He was as furious as if we were in battle already.

“Then, with His eyes, which were quick like the eyes of the hawk, He saw a movement across a field, and took our chariot off the boulevard, and over rough ground until we passed through a small ravine where there were many bushes, and two peasant girls walking ahead. I can tell you that as they stood to the side for us to go by, so was my Usermare off the chariot, and in the bushes with one girl leaving the other for me—such was His rush. (He could swing a sword faster than anyone I knew.) Quick as He spent the vigor of His Double-Crown to her front and back, He was ready with another set of salutes for my girl, and offered me His. Of course the new one, like the one before, smelled of mud, but I fell upon her with more gusto than the first as if, like my Pharaoh, I was in a charge of chariots. Of course, never in my life had I been more excited than at the thought of trodding into a cave where the Pharaoh, so to speak, had just been stepping in His bare feet”

“You felt no hesitation?” asked my mother. Ptah-nem-hotep nodded. “I am curious,” He said, “that you knew no fear. These adventures, after all, took place only in your first life.”

“But I could not have felt more awe if I had gone into battle,” my great-grandfather replied.

“Yet,” said Ptah-nem-hotep, “if one is afraid, is it not easier to join a battle than to make love? In battle, you need only raise your arm.”

“Yes,” said my great-grandfather, “except that I was joined to that girl in battle. I struck her thighs many times with my soft club. In truth, I felt some shame. My member, by comparison with what she had just known, was not what you would call mighty. Besides, the first girl was now screaming with joy at the force with which Usermare-Setpenere was jamming her. Still, I thumped my way into position, and then felt the great call of the chariot. My toes dug a hole in the ground before I was done. For my member was bathing in the creams of the Pharaoh. How good was the smell of the earth. ‘I love the stink of peasant women,’ the Pharaoh told me as we rode off, ‘especially when it lives on My fingers. Then I am near to embracing My great Double-Land itself.’

“I was still feeling a pleasure as brilliant as awakening in the fields with the sun in my face. Even as I had come forth into that peasant girl, her heart came into me. I saw a great white light, as if from her belly, and the waters of the Pharaoh flew across my closed eyes like a thousand white birds. I felt my member had been anointed forever.”

“And all,” said Ptah-nem-hotep, “from one share in common with a peasant girl.”

“Look, the child is sleeping,” said my mother.

I was pretending to. I had noticed that as my great-grandfather told more, everyone present took less notice of me, and by now I had only to close my eyes and they would forget I was there. That was agreeable. They did not trouble any longer to cover their thoughts. But then, in truth, I was near to sleep, for I found myself comprehending matters I had never seen, and for which I knew no name.

“We rode off again,” said my great-grandfather, “as if nothing had happened, but so soon as we quit the ruts of the field for the greater ruts of one of those unfinished boulevards, He stopped and said, ‘In the Sanctuary this morning, in the middle of our prayers, I saw Myself. I was alone, and I was dead. In the middle of the battle I was surrounded, and I was alone, and I was dead.’ Before I could reply, He had the horses galloping again. My jaws were slamming against my head.

“I did not know where He would take us, but before long we were out of the town and riding along a narrow road that soon became a trail through a break in the cliffs. Now it grew so steep that we dismounted and sometimes had to stop to lift stones that had fallen on the trail from the heights on either side. Once or twice, I thought He was ready to tie the steeds, but after we climbed through the notch, it widened a little, and I could see it had once been a road.

“When we stopped to rest, we were all alone in the middle of a ravine, and it was then He said, ‘I will show you a place that is as secret to Me as My Secret Name, and you will not live if you betray this place.’ He looked at me with such warmth that I felt as if I were in the presence of Ra Himself.

“ ‘But first,’ He said to me, ‘I must tell you the story of Egypt. Otherwise you would be ignorant of the importance of My secret.’ ” With this, my great-grandfather came to a complete pause, looked at all of us, and sighed, as though to comment on his ignorance then. “You cannot know, Great Ninth,” he said, “how little I understood by my Pharaoh’s remark. I had never known that Egypt had a story. I had a story, and there were charioteers I knew with stories, and a whore or two, but the story of Egypt!—I hardly knew what to say. We had a river and it flooded each year. We had Pharaohs, and the oldest man I knew could remember one who was different from all the others because He did not believe in Amon, but I didn’t remember His name. Before that, there had been Thutmose the Third for whom our Royal School of Charioteers was named, and Queen Hat-shep-sut, and a Pharaoh, thousands of years ago, named Khufu but He lived in Memphi, not Thebes, and built a mountain higher than anyone had seen in the Two-Lands and two other mountains built by two other Pharaohs were next to it. That was all the story of Egypt I knew.

“He told me of other things, however. We sat side by side on the rocks of the ravine looking out to the Eastern Bank. In the distance, across the river, Thebes was thriving, and we could hear the sounds of its workshops as clearly as the echo of a rock falling in the next canyon. So it is hard to think of myself as dreaming, although I could not separate the stories He told me about Thutmose the Third, and Amenhotep the Second, and the Third. Yet when He went on to speak of His own Father, Seti, I could see one Pharaoh clearly at last since Seti’s picture had been chiseled into the stone of many a temple wall, and this allowed me to understand how the days of Usermare-Setpenere were different from my own when we were boys. I always saw the back of my father. I looked at his elbows while he worked in the fields, but Ramses the Second saw His Father on many temple walls holding a prisoner’s head by a hank of hair, there, cut into the stone. I used to feel whenever I looked at such a picture as if the breath of Seti was about to burn the back of my neck, and that I was the prisoner. I used to wonder whether Ramses the Second felt the same when He was a boy but I did not dare to ask Him.

“Then He began to tell me of Thutmose the Third who was supposed to become King but Hat-shep-sut reigned in His place because She had been married to the second Thutmose. So the Third had to live in the Temple as a priest, and was required to tend the incense pots whenever Hat-shep-sut came to pray. He grew such a great anger that when She died and He became Pharaoh, He was not only as mighty in battle as a lion released from its cage, but also ordered His stonemasons to chip away the name of Hat-shep-sut from all the temples. He cut His own name in Her place.

“ ‘Why,’ I remember asking of my Pharaoh, ‘was the Temple of Hat-shep-sut not destroyed instead of Her name?’ and He told me that Thutmose did not wish to enrage those Gods Who loved Hat-shep-sut most—He wished merely to confuse Them. I remember Ramses the Second looked at me and seized my knee with His fingers and gripped it. ‘I, too, will be a King to cut His name into stone,’ He said, and told me more about the greatness of Thutmose the Third and how many battles He won and the plunder He took. I was told of the ebony statue of the King of Kadesh, for there was such a Monarch in those days, too, and Thutmose defeated him, and took his statue back to Thebes. Then Ramses the Second told me, The name of the warrior who stood with Thutmose on His Chariot was Amenenahab. Like all who are named after Amon, he was bold. He understood the desire of Thutmose the Third before the King knew His own longing. You will come to understand as well.’ With that, He gave me a kiss. My lips felt as radiant as His Chariot, and I could hardly listen while He told me of other Pharaohs not strong enough to hold the sword of Thutmose the Third such as the Pharaoh Who did not like Amon, the Fourth Amenhotep, a man of odd appearance with a soft round belly, a large nose, and a high head. Yet He must have remembered what Thutmose did to Hat-shep-sut for He did the same to Amon. A thousand stonemasons cut away the name of Amon in the temples, and with their chisels wrote a new name: Re-Aton. That, Ramses the Second told me, is God said backwards, even as Re-Aton is the opposite of neter. This Amenhotep the Fourth then changed His own name to Akhenaton, and He built a city in the middle of Egypt that He called the Horizon of Aton. I could not believe all I heard. It seemed strange to me. So soon as it was done, it was undone. For so soon as Akhenaton was dead, Aton’s name was struck from the stone, and the name of Amon was put back. ‘All this,’ said my Pharaoh, ‘caused such a weakness in the land, that by now, we paint our sacred marks on wood and do not cut them into the rock. For that reason My Father Seti told His artists to work only in stone. There are many drawings of My Father where He holds the heads of prisoners before He strikes them dead, and they are on stone.’ With that, He gave a great laugh, stood up, grasped my hair as if to strike me, laughed again, said, ‘Come, I have something to show you,’ and we moved up the road.

“Soon we came to a place where we had to tie the horses, leave the chariot, and go up a trail so narrow we were near to climbing the cliffs straight up. For certain, we lifted ourselves from rock to rock and often had to offer our arm to the other. I was glad for the difficulty since His stories of Pharaohs who changed the names on the walls of temples had left me in confusion. If there was one thought as sure to me as the stones of the Temple of Karnak, it was that Amon-Ra was our greatest God. So how could there have been a time when He gave way to another God? And that the Pharaoh of this Aton had been a funny-looking man with a big belly—well, I was short of breath from my thoughts more than the climb.

“When we came to the top of the cliff, I was expecting to find the desert on the other side but saw instead only a descent into a new valley and another rough trail. Standing on the ridge, my King pointed back to the river. ‘There is a place named Kurna out there,’ He told me, ‘where they breed nothing but thieves. It may look like a poor town, but wealth is buried under every hut. Someday, if those thieves make Me angry enough, I will dig up the town of Kurna and cut their hands off. For they are grave robbers. Every family in that town is descended from grave robbers.’

“I soon learned why He said this. If my head was tired from stories of Thutmose the Third, and Hat-shep-sut and all the Amenhoteps, my Ramses now told of the first Thutmose Who had come to visit the mortuary temples of His ancestors here, and saw how many of Their tombs had been entered and robbed of gold furniture and other treasures. Beholding this desecration of dead Pharaohs, the first Thutmose cried aloud to the sky. For when He died, His tomb could also be robbed. Like His ancestors, He might wander homeless in Khert-Neter. ‘Then,’ said my Ramses, ‘He came to this valley.’

“We looked at it together. I wondered if an underground river had shaped the place. For a more uneven ground I had never seen. There were many holes before us that opened into other cavities beneath, and many a large cave. I could feel how water had once come twisting through with a roar, carrying away sand and the softer clay, until only rock was left. Now this rock had holes large as a King’s chambers, and halfway up many of the vertical walls in this wilderness of boulders and ledges were what looked to be great caves.

“Now, my Ramses, Usermare-Setpenere, told me how this First Thutmose had found a cliff with a small entrance that you could only reach by climbing straight up, but, once within, was one cave after another behind this entrance and He said, ‘Here I will build a secret tomb,’ and He had the caves enlarged by the King’s Architect until there were twelve rooms.

“The rock from those chambers was carted away to the desert, and the laborers were given no opportunity to speak of their work. My Ramses said no more, but I knew what had happened to the workmen. I heard their silence. ‘Nobody ever discovered the hiding place of King Thutmose the First,’ Usermare said. ‘Not even the Pharaohs know the burial place of other Pharaohs. Behind any of these rocks, high up on the walls, you might find one of Them, but there are a million and infinity of rocks in this place. I do not know if that is why it is called the Place of Truth, but here will be hidden My tomb.’

“Since I lived in the greatest awe of my Pharaoh, I did not want to hear of His secret. So I thought to change the subject. Yet, like black-copper-from-heaven, I was drawn back to talk of it nonetheless. If, I asked, these tombs are difficult to find, then how had the grave robbers of Kurna been able to prosper? Here He took me by the arm, and said, ‘Kiss My lips. Vow that you will not speak of these matters. If you do, your tongue is cut from your throat.’ We kissed again, and I knew what it was, great Ramses the Ninth, to live in the royal body of a Pharaoh, for again I felt a radiance in my head, and the burden of the secret was on me before it was told, even as His tongue was on mine. I knew the life of my own tongue and how I would never want to lose it.

“ ‘No Pharaoh thought it wise to let other Pharaohs know His burial place in this valley,’ He said. ‘Still, someone had to have knowledge. Otherwise, a tomb could be robbed, and the theft not discovered. So each High Priest learned the tomb of His Pharaoh, and before he died, he would give such knowledge to the next High Priest.’

“Now, He told me that a High Priest in the time of Amenhotep the Fourth revealed one tomb to the families of Kurna, and shared the spoils. Then these thieves had a quarrel. The sacrilege was discovered. ‘The men of Kurna,’ said Usermare, ‘brought such fear to the heart of Amenhotep the Fourth that He changed His name to Akhenaton and moved halfway up the river between Thebes and Memphi.’

“I could not believe these thieves of Kurna held so strong a curse that even a Pharaoh would fear them, but as I pondered it, I decided these robbers had been able to invade the tomb because of special prayers said for them by the High Priest, and for the first time I understood how there might be much unholy advantage in being holy. Still, I wondered how these thieves of Kurna had been able to touch the mummy of the Pharaoh. Had any of them died from the fear that bursts your heart?

“Oh, the heat. The trail was open to the last of the sun and my body grew feverish. I was cold in the shade. It was late afternoon, and we were climbing upward in the second valley, in this Place of Truth, which meant—if its name could be right—that the Truth was hot and ugly indeed. Over the next ridge the sun began to quiver. There was a high hill before us with a peak not unlike the little pyramid on top of each tomb in the Necropolis, The Horn, was what Usermare-Setpenere called it—and the sun now passed behind The Horn and was gone.

“It was here, in the deep gloom of this last valley, that Ramses the Second showed me a pinnacle of stone as high as an obelisk. It stood no more than a cubit from the cliff, looking as if it had been split away from the rest of the rock by a blow from lightning. In that cleft, Ramses the Second now put Himself, and by much pushing of His back against the wall, and the clever use of His hands and feet against edges in the pinnacle no wider than my finger, I saw Him climb until He was above my height and then twice and three times above it, a sight such as I had never expected, since His white linen was filthy from the effort, yet He wore His War-Crown all the way, never removing it. Once or twice I thought He could not reach the next grip for need of moving around an overhang that kept threatening to tip His helmet, indeed, it almost fell off when, from one position of great strain, He had to lean back so far that I saw it begin to tilt, but believe me, He held to the pinnacle with one arm and saved the Crown with the other, then reached a ledge on the wall where He could perch, and hooted to me to come up. He was now as removed as the height of one of the columns in the Temple of Karnak, which is like the height of ten men, and I began the ascent with the thought that my King was as high above me as my own life, but then, the climb proved not so difficult as it looked, and was almost like going up a ladder most irregularly built. I grew to love the rock that pressed against my back for I could lean on it when I became tired from the pain in my fingers of a poor grip or a sharp grip, and the rock before me in the pinnacle became as intimate to me as the crevices of a man or a woman. I knew I would dream of it on many a night since I felt closer to Geb holding myself to these wrinkles in His rocky skin than I had known you could come to a God without prayer.

“It took me a while to reach the ledge, long enough to learn that living on the side of a wall is not so different from walking on the ground, no more different than sleep from daylight, and I gave a whoop as I joined Him, and received a quick embrace for the pleasure of our accomplishment. I must say I liked Him then as much as any soldier I had known, and thought of Him as my friend, not my Pharaoh.

“ ‘Here,’ He said, ‘this ledge is like any of a thousand ledges, yet there is none like it. For see what is behind the corner of this boulder.’

“It was a stone almost as tall as Himself, of a good thickness, and it nearly divided the ledge in two, but at the rear was a hole large enough for a man to crawl through, and when at His nod I tried it, a lizard went clawing up the walls of a cave inside, and I was in blackness but for the little light that entered.

“In the next instant, Ramses the Second was there beside me, and we sat in the heat, trying to rest despite the scratchings and wails of every creature we had disturbed by our entrance. Bats flew past like whips, and I heard that cry they make so close to the sound of a dying man’s breath—that whistle of panic. They spewed us with dung, yet the odor was forever altered by my nearness to the Pharaoh. In the dark, I could feel the nobility of His Presence, and that was as large as the cave, by which I mean His nearness was like a heart beating in the cave, and so the mean smell of bat dung was made sweeter by my Pharaoh’s own odor full of royal sweat from the climb. To this day, over all my four lives I cannot despise the odor of the bat altogether since it always recalls to me the warm generous limbs of that young Ramses. Yes.

“We did not sit on the floor of the cave for long, however, before the luminous strength of His body gave vision to my eyes, and I could see better in the gloom, and recognized that this cave was more a tunnel than a chamber, and He laughed at the ingenuity of His scheme, for He would build a tomb of twelve rooms here. Then He added, ‘All this is true if I return from the wars to come,’ and we were silent within this cave. The lizards still scuttled away from us in a clatter and I knew their Gods were terrified of smelling the sunlight on our limbs.

“ ‘It is the Hittites we will meet,’ said Ramses the Second sitting beside me on the floor, ‘and they fight with three men in each chariot. They are strong, but slow. They fight with bow and arrow, and with the sword and spear and,’—He took His time to say the next—‘sometimes they fight with an axe. They live in a country that has many trees, and they know how to use the axe.’

“In this darkness, I could not be certain of His expression, but I felt a new kind of fear. How wonderful is a new fear! It is like a face one has never seen before. It gives a thrill to new parts of one’s flesh. While it was one thing to be killed by a sword, and that was bad enough, there were now lamentations along my back and in my arms and thighs at the thought of being mangled by an axe.

“ ‘The Hittites have long black beards,’ said my Ramses, ‘and there is old food in such growth, and vermin, and their hair is matted on their shoulders. They are uglier than bears, and cannot live without the blood of battle. If they capture you, they are the worst foe of all. They will put a ring through your lips to jerk your head as you march, and some will flay you alive. So, of the Hittites I capture, I will bring back a hundred, and they will build My tomb.’ He smiled, and while He did not speak His thought, I saw those Hittites as they would look when the work was done, and they were without their tongues. ‘Yes,’ He said, ‘it is better than using Egyptians.’

“Now He stopped, and looked at me, and on His face was the same smile He had when He saw the peasant girl. If I could have moved, perhaps He would have done no more than smile, but I did not wish to, I could not, and He stood up then and seized the hair of my head even as His Father Seti held the head of captured slaves, and His member was before me. Then He came forth into my mouth from the excitement of looking into my face. No man had I allowed to do this to me before. Then, still holding my hair, He threw me to my knees, grasped me about the waist, and with not a scruple, thrust up the middle of me tearing I know not what, but I heard a clangor in my head equal to the great door of a temple knocked open by the blow of a log carried forward at a run by ten good men, it was with the force of ten good men that He took me up my bowels, and I lay with my face on the stony soil of the cave, while a bat screamed overhead. I heard Usermare cry out, ‘Your ass, little Meni’—even though I was near to His height and could equal His weight—‘your ass, little Meni, is Mine, and I give you a million years and infinity, your ass, little Meni, is sweet,’ wherefore He came forth with such a force that something in the very sanctuary of myself flew open, and the last of my pride was gone. I was no longer myself but His, and loved Him, and knew I would die for Him, but I also knew I would never forgive Him, not when I ate, not when I drank, and not when I defecated. Like an arrow flew one thought through my mind: It was that I must revenge myself.

“ ‘We shall never be destroyed in battle,’ He said. ‘We are now the beast that moves with its own four legs.’ And He gave a last kiss and sighed as if He had eaten all of a banquet. But I knew the taste in my mouth of the Very Green and the blood of my bowels kept knocking on my heart.

“We climbed down and walked back in the moonlight, watching the clouds pass over the stars. I could hear their voices. You can hear the voice of a cloud if you are silent enough on a quiet night although that whisper is near to the most quiet sound of them all. In the dawn as we came back with our chariot to the boat on the riverbank, we stopped to watch the flight of a hawk, and I knew that bird of Horus was most intimate to the sun, for it would see the first rising to the east while we still breathed in the dark to the west.”