Imhotep Read online

  Re was not expected to arrive at six a.m. or to depart at eight p.m. Instead, his arrival brought the start of the day and his departure ended it. Events defined time, they were not ordered by it.

  It was true that Paneb made plans each day, but he did not watch a clock. The tasks he set for himself were completed in the time they demanded, they didn’t expand to fill a schedule or contract to squeeze into a slotted time.

  Tim, who never wore a wristwatch, thought this view of time seemed more right than the frenetic pace of his world, his time. For him, the slower tempo meant there was more time for each new experience.

  He remembered when he and Addy had taken walks she always ended up shifting her weight from one foot to the other, eager to reach their destination but forced to wait as Tim paused to test the rubbery sturdiness of a fan-shaped tree fungus or to sketch the jagged edge of a broken tree stump.

  Her mind always had been on the destination, Tim’s on the journey.

  And what a strange journey he was on, he thought. The wall in the tomb of Kanakht had opened into a world that had existed almost five thousand years before he had been born. It was hard to accept or understand.

  But he was positive that the Step Pyramid didn’t exist in this here and now; he had seen the empty plateau. Paneb had told him that Djoser had been king for seven years now, something he easily remembered because of the lack of flooding and the diminished harvests that followed.

  Tim knew about the famine. It was recorded on a famous stele from Setet Island. The stone inscription had been ordered by Djoser to record his anguish over the pain the long famine caused the people of Kemet and to remind them of how he had ended it through a sacrifice to the ram-headed god Khnum.

  There wasn’t much else that Tim knew about Djoser’s era. The king had lived long before the huge pyramids at Giza had been built and more than a thousand years before King Tut. The only other name Tim recalled from Djoser’s era was that of the famous architect Imhotep, but Paneb hadn’t heard of him.

  When Tim had asked him about Imhotep, the artist had frowned and shrugged. Seeing Tim’s disappointment, Paneb tried to cheer him up by telling him about someone famous who would be at the ceremony: the high priestess of Re, a wise and beautiful woman named Hetephernebti.

  They began walking to Iunu just after daylight.

  Tim, Paneb and his family traveled with a small group of villagers who also had decided to go to the festival. Paneb told Tim the journey would take from three to six days, depending on the heat, on how fast the oldest cared to walk and on how many diversions they encountered.

  Tim’s modern map was little help, but from Paneb’s description of the trip, gathered from neighbors who had been at Iunu before, the temple was not far inside the delta of the Nile, or Iteru, as Paneb called it. Tim estimated the trip was no more than thirty or forty miles, less than an hour’s drive in his time.

  But by mid-morning he understood why Paneb had allowed so much time for the trip.

  At the outskirts of Ineb-Hedj, even before the trip had begun properly, two of the men began a debate about the best place to cross the river. There were many small boats and barges by the city that the younger man, a father with three little children with him, wanted to use.

  The other man, named Jarha, was older and had no children in his group. He argued that the trail was easier to follow on this bank.

  “But the boats are here,” the young man said. “We should use them.”

  “No, no, no. There is less shade over there. You’ll burn your feet off.”

  “It looks fine to me,” the father said, shielding his eyes as he looked across the slow moving water.

  Jarha shook his head. “Here, sure, it looks fine right here, but, trust me, this side is better once we get away from the city.”

  “But we need to cross.”

  “They have boats at Iunu. Do you think there are only boats at Ineb-Hedj? And see, we don’t cross the whole river. It splits apart. Iunu is in between. So, if we cross here, we’ll have to get back in boats, and barter with the ferrymen again once we’re there.”

  Jarha’s wife joined in the argument now.

  “But I think they ask for more at Iunu,” she said.

  “That doesn’t matter,” her husband answered. “Either way you have to cross half the river up there.”

  “Not if we cross it here,” the young man said.

  “We don’t have to cross all of it at Iunu, because it breaks apart,” the woman said, talking to her husband. “So it should be closer. But I think the boatmen there are greedy, not like our boatmen.”

  “Either way,” Jarha said, shrugging as if that ended the conversation.

  Paneb touched Tim’s arm and led him into the shade where the rest of the family was patiently waiting with some friends. While the two men continued to argue, one of the men in Paneb’s group opened a jar of beer and began to pass it around.

  “What are they arguing about?” Tim asked Paneb. “I understand that it was about the river, but I didn’t understand. Why do we wait while they argue? Why don’t we move on and let them catch up?”

  Paneb scrunched his face and frowned as if Tim’s question raised an idea that had never been considered before.

  “Why would we want to separate when we could stay together?” Paneb answered.

  “Together for safety?” Tim asked.

  “Safety? Safe from what?” Paneb said. “No, we want to be together. We’re friends, why should we separate?”

  “We go faster if we don’t wait for them.”

  Paneb smiled at Tim’s foolishness.

  “But we’re going to the same place.”

  Tim nodded his understanding. “And no one is in a hurry.”

  Tim wanted to ask more, but his limited command of the ancient language made it too frustrating, so he accepted a cup of beer and leaned back in the shade feeling very Egyptian.

  The villagers walked on in fits and starts. If someone tired, they all stopped and rested, everyone making a show of acting as tired as the one who had stopped.

  On the second day one of the men caught sight of a herd of gazelles along the riverbank so they formed a hunting party. Although the travelers waited most of the day for the hunters’ empty-handed return, the time wasn’t wasted. The older men who had stayed behind took the children fishing, using a wide net, its edges weighted with stones. When the hunters returned, laughing and blaming each other for their futile chase, they found freshly roasted fish and flat emer wheat bread waiting for them.

  They walked in the mornings and again in the evenings, taking long breaks in the afternoons when the day was hottest. During the breaks the children played and swam, the adults sat and talked or napped in the open air under the shade of trees along the riverbank.

  They found that Jarha had been right about the trees. Across the river the thin line of growth along the bank quickly gave way to scrubby grass and then bright sand.

  On the fourth night they camped along the river overlooking a long, green island. They had walked past several smaller islands near the end of the day’s hike. Looking at his map, Tim decided that they were camping where Cairo would eventually lie.

  The large island upstream was Roda, where the Meridien Hotel would be built. The longer island to the north, just across from the group's encampment, would eventually hold the Nile Sheraton and the Cairo Tower. On the other bank of the river, the Egyptian Museum would some day display four-thousand-year-old mummies of pharaohs who had not yet ruled the ancient land where Tim found himself. The New Palace Hotel where he had been staying was just a block away from the museum and five thousand years distant.

  According to his map, the river, which was growing wider, divided into two main branches just north of the islands. The east branch flowed toward the area where the Suez Canal would be built. The left branch turned northwest, flowing in the general direction of Alexandria.

  The next evening they decided to move away from the expanding river
to camp.

  “The ground is too wet there,” Paneb explained as he and Taki pulled dried food from the sling he carried.

  “Jarha said there would be crocodiles there. And hippos,” Ahmes said excitedly. Hapu’s eyes grew wide and Taki protectively put her arm around her young daughter.

  “That Jarha,” Paneb said, “he tells big stories, Ahmes. Why he once told us he had ridden a hippo, that it took him under the river and he saw a whole city of hippos living there, with a king hippo that had a golden necklace.”

  “Was there a queen?” Hapu asked.

  Paneb nodded. “A queen, servant hippos and even dancing hippos.”

  Taki held her hand over her mouth to hide her laughter.

  “Did they sing?” Hapu asked.

  Ahmes understood that his father was trying to distract his little sister. “I heard a hippo sing once, Hapu,” he said. He arched his arms and blowing out his cheeks he waddled toward his little sister. “He sounded like this, ‘Blub, blub, blub, roar, roar,’ “

  Hapu shrieked in pretend fear and then started to imitate him.

  Later, as the children wandered from campfire to campfire, visiting with their friends, Paneb told Tim that they would arrive in Iunu tomorrow.

  “Jarha said there is a river crossing just an hour’s walk ahead. Iunu is across the river there.”

  “Jarha?”

  Paneb nodded. “He shouldn’t have told Ahmes about crocodiles and hippos, but he does know the river.” Paneb rubbed his back against the rough trunk of a palm tree. “I’m told that even if you do see them, they usually are far away. But still, we’ll watch for them.” He paused, his eyes focused on the distance. “It would be exciting to see a hippo. I’ve drawn them, but always from the drawings of other artists.”

  Tim nodded, happy to talk with his new friend. Even if he didn’t understand every word, he felt the camaraderie in Paneb’s voice.

  “I draw from other’s drawing, too, Paneb. It is better to see the thing. I hope to see a hippo tomorrow. I hope it is far away.”

  Paneb smiled. “But not too far.”

  Tim woke before dawn.

  He had always been an early riser and now that he went to sleep as night fell, he found himself waking before sunrise.

  Quietly he left the encampment and headed for the river, following the slight reddish glow that marked the east. Even though the sun was announcing its arrival at the horizon, the sky above remained dark and blazing with stars.

  When he got close to the river, he turned left, looking to the north toward Iunu. Even as he looked, he knew there would be no light glow, no indication that a town lay waiting up there in the darkness.

  In the thousands of years stretching forward from this night it will only be in the last hundred years that man will conquer the night. He looked at the bright, sparkling jewels of light above him. And lose all of this, he thought.

  The ground grew soft and mushy as he got closer to the river, so he turned to follow the bank northward looking for firmer footing to approach the water for his morning bath.

  A slight breeze drifted from the water toward the cooling desert sand. It carried the richness of the river mingled with the exhalations of the palm trees along the riverbank and the scent of the damp earth. Drawing a deep breath, he said to himself, “It smells green and alive.”

  The sun was over the horizon now. Rose-colored light washed across the sky, filtering down through the leaves of the palm and sycamore trees that lined the riverbank. Short willow trees and papyrus stalks rose along the water’s marshy edge, hiding the water.

  Walking slowly, crocodiles and hippos in mind, Tim approached a willow that stood on a small mound by the water. He sat by its trunk and opened his sketchbook. He had started to take time each morning to write down what he had seen or learned the previous day.

  As he stared out across the water, wondering about what he would see at the festival tomorrow, he noticed movement on a small island a dozen yards off to his left.

  A curved boat made of bundles of reeds, was pulled out of the water. Standing beside it, in knee-deep water among floating blue water lilies, a naked teen-age boy was smearing himself with mud.

  With his back to Tim, he stretched out a thin arm and spread the dark river mud across it, carefully working it between his fingers. He had swiped an uneven coat of mud across his shaved head and down his neck.

  Tim knew that the Egyptians gave their children adult responsibilities and freedom at an early age. Girls often married at thirteen and had a child a year later. Boys joined in their father’s trade before they were ten years old, and usually married by age sixteen.

  Even though he no longer wore the side lock of youth, the boy across the water seemed young to be out by himself at this early hour. Tim wondered if he were preparing himself for a hunt, using the mud to hide his scent or as camouflage.

  Looking at him with an artist’s eye, Tim thought that the boy’s back and shoulders were not muscled yet.

  The boy bent to pick up another handful of mud and twisted sideways to start spreading it on his back. As he turned he saw Tim, and Tim saw that the boy was clearly a young girl.

  Mud was smeared across her small breasts and down her flat belly. Her hands, cupped and filled with mud, were poised by her narrow, boyish hips. She stopped as she saw Tim watching her.

  For a moment they looked in each other’s eyes. Tim was embarrassed to be caught spying on her; she seemed surprised, but not offended or frightened. Tim turned away first, his eyes stopping on the reed boat by her feet.

  “Hello,” she called across the narrow watery divide. Her voice was light and cheerful.

  Tim wanted to slink away and hide.

  She looked down at the mud that was oozing out of her hands and began to smear it across her buttocks and the back of her thighs.

  “I must leave,” Tim said, as much to himself as to the girl.

  She looked up, a smile playing on her mouth. “Where?”

  Tim put his sketchbook back into the sling bag and got to his feet. Suddenly his voice felt thick and he didn’t trust himself to talk.

  “Re has appeared,” she said, nodding toward the growing light. “His strength will soon dry this mud and I am not ready.”

  “Ready?” Tim managed to say, his eyes still averted.

  “Yes,” she said. “The water is not deep here. Come help me.”

  Tim looked at the water and then back at the boat. Hesitantly he took a step toward the water.

  “Your kilt will get wet,” she said.

  Tim waded into the water. Mindful of the scolding he would get from Taki, he raised the hem of the kilt above the water level and walked toward the island. As the river bottom sloped up to the island, he let the kilt’s hem fall back in place, covering his now wet boxer briefs.

  She turned away from Tim, presenting her naked back.

  He looked down at his feet and then scooped up a handful of the heavy mud.

  “Hurry,” she said. “Along the middle.” As she spoke she quickly bent down and gathered more mud to cover her other arm.

  Tim glanced at her tapering back and quickly put the mud on the areas she had left uncovered. He tried to keep the mud thick between his hands and her tawny skin and his eyes from looking at her mud-caked skin.

  He was still wiping mud between her delicate shoulder blades when she glanced up at the sky and then darted off through the reeds, skirting the small island. “Bless you,” she called as she pushed through the leaves.

  He sighed in relief that the strange encounter was over and then turning, he stepped on the edge of her reed boat, lost his balance and fell face first into the mud.

  The Feast of Re in his Barge

  Unlike Ineb-Hedj, Iunu had no walls around it. A scattering of mud-brick huts marked the outskirts of the town. Jarha led them along a worn dirt trail that wound past the huts. Soon there were more homes, built closer together. The trail widened and became a street.

  The pilgrim
s had arrived in Iunu.

  They followed the street to a large open plaza. In the center of the plaza, atop a low stone mastaba stood a short obelisk covered in electrum, a combination of gold and silver. Hieroglyphics filled its gleaming surface.

  “The Radiant One,” Jarha said reverently to Tim and Paneb as they looked at the obelisk. It was a four-sided tapering shaft. Tim realized that the Washington Monument from his time was a larger version of it, without the precious metal coating.

  Jarha pointed across the plaza to an opening at the end of a covered causeway.

  “Re comes out there, floating in his barge. See the canal, there?” Jarha swept his arm across the plaza, following the path of the canal, which led to the central mastaba and then continued past it to a temple entrance at the far end of the plaza.

  “Where should we stand?” Paneb asked, looking around at the crowd that was milling around the edge of the plaza.

  “Close to the beer and food,” Jarha said with a laugh. He clapped Paneb on the back. “After an hour or so, it won’t matter where we are, we’ll be too drunk to see anything anyhow.”

  It was late afternoon. The festival would begin at dawn tomorrow. In the meantime, Paneb and the other pilgrims were expected to enjoy the hospitality of Re.

  Awnings had been raised around the perimeter of the plaza to provide shade for tables filled with food, beer and wine, all provided for the pilgrims by the temple of Re.

  The south wall of the courtyard was given over to sellers of souvenirs: gold amulets of Re, small scrolls of papyrus filled with magical hieroglyphics, carvings in cedar wood of the sun god, and bouquets of flowers. Taki and her daughters took their pouch of rings and gemstones to those tables to begin haggling with the sellers.

  Tim followed Paneb and Jarha to the food tables. Ahmes tagged along with them, his head swiveling about as he looked at the crowd and took in the noise and commotion. A juggler walked by, tossing five gold colored balls and chanting, “Praise to you, oh Re, great of power.”