Desert God (15 page)

Aton and I had to examine and discuss every word we received, evaluating it carefully before we relayed it on to Pharaoh and his general staff.

One critical piece of intelligence was a report of the cremation of King Beon whom I had arrowed to death in the Nile before Memphis. The Hyksos have the barbaric custom of burning the bodies of their slain heroes to ashes rather than embalming them as we more advanced and civilized peoples do.

At the same time they also make human sacrifices to placate their monstrous gods, of which Seth is the chief. Aton and I learned that one hundred of our own Egyptian warriors who had been captured by the Hyksos were thrown into the flames of Beon’s funeral pyre while they still lived, and that these had been followed by one hundred virgins to serve Beon’s pleasure in the other world. Some of these virgins were as young as five years of age, just old enough to know what was happening to them as they entered the flames. After hearing this account how can any sensible person try to argue that the Hyksos are not the basest form of animal life?

I was the first person in Thebes to learn that after the cremation of Beon his younger brother Gorrab was crowned as the new King of the Hyksos.

Gorrab’s first concern seemed to have been to avenge the death of his elder brother. He pulled ten thousand of his first-line troops out of the line of battle that faced our Egyptian forces on the border between Sheik Abada and Asyut. Gorrab’s decision was a happy one for Egypt. Pharaoh was being bitterly engaged along this entire front. The Hyksos are never parsimonious with the lives of their own troops, and are always prepared to engage in a battle of attrition if the opportunity presents itself. Up until that point Pharaoh was inflicting heavy losses on Beon’s army, but his own men were taking bitter punishment in return.

Now at a stroke the pressure was lifted and Pharaoh was given the opportunity to reconsolidate and make good his position as Gorrab ordered almost a quarter of his army northwards to attack the Cretan force which I had left intact at Tamiat.

Gorrab had been a witness to his brother’s death. He had been the commander of the guards on board the royal barge. He had watched the three Cretan triremes bearing down upon them and he had seen the Minoan uniforms of the officers and crew as they launched that unprovoked and treacherous attack.

Gorrab had seen one of the Cretan archers deliberately shoot three arrows at his unarmed brother as he struggled in the water. Later he had retrieved King Beon’s arrow-riddled corpse from the river, and wept for him as he set the lighted torch to his cremation pyre. Then he had placed the Hyksos crown on his head with his own hands, and declared a full-scale war on Crete.

Aton and I followed Gorrab’s campaign against the Minoans with glee. We learned from our spies that the senior Minoan commanders had sailed back to Crete from Tamiat in the galley that I had left for them. The small galley could accommodate only forty men, the others were left at the fort. When the galley reached Crete the commander reported to the Supreme Minos the shameful and dastardly attack by the Hyksos on the fort, and the capture of the Cretan treasure ships. He informed the Minos that the pirates had made no attempt to disguise their identity, but that they had worn full Hyksos uniforms and he had heard them conversing in that language.

The Supreme Minos immediately despatched a squadron of his war galleys to Tamiat to rescue the two thousand Cretan troops that were stranded there. However, his ships arrived too late.

King Gorrab had been there before them with his ten thousand. The Cretans put up a gallant resistance, but Gorrab slaughtered most of them. The survivors surrendered. Gorrab beheaded all of these and made a pyramid of their heads on the wharf below the fort. The relieving squadron arrived from Crete only after King Gorrab had returned to Memphis, leaving the pile of human heads rotting in the sun and the vultures devouring what was left of the Minos’ men. The relieving squadron sailed back to Crete to inform the Minos of the massacre.

The Supreme Minos swore an oath of vengeance at the altar of his bizarre gods and sent his fleet to ravage the Hyksos ports and bases along the entire northern African coastline.

King Gorrab retaliated by conducting a pogrom on all those Minoans living under his sway in northern Egypt. The Minoans are a clever and industrious people. They are highly skilled in all the crafts and trades. However, they are above all traders and entrepreneurs. Wherever there is the sweet smell of silver and profit, there you will find the Minoans.

How else could the inhabitants of such a small island as Crete have become the dominant power in all the lands surrounding the Middle Sea?

There were several thousands of these Minoans living in northern Egypt. King Gorrab fell upon this local population with all the cruelty and animal ferocity for which the Hyksos are notorious. They dragged the Minoans from their homes and raped the women and children of even the most tender age. Then they herded them, men women and infants, into the temples which the Minoans had erected to their Gods and burned the roofs down over their heads.

Although they tried to flee the country, very few of the Minoans were able to escape. The ships of the Supreme Minos rescued some of the more fortunate ones who lived in the towns and ports along the coast of the Middle Sea. Others who lived further inland escaped into the deserts that enclose our very Egypt. There they died from thirst and from the attentions of the Bedouin, who are also a cruel and rapacious people.

However, a few hundred Minoans fled with their families southwards from Memphis and Asyut and some of these were able to evade the pursuing Hyksos chariots and reach our battle lines. Lord Kratas ordered our men to give the refugees shelter and protection and to treat them kindly.

As soon as I heard of this I mounted up and rode as swiftly as I was able to the front lines of our legions facing the Hyksos.

There were some of our senior commanders in these legions whom I had known as striplings. I had tutored them in the science and art of war, and my influence had helped to lift them to their present exalted military ranks.

Lord Remrem had been ennobled by Pharaoh on the battlefield at Thebes and now he commanded a regiment under General Kratas, the supreme commander.

Hui, who had been an outlaw when I captured him, was now a senior officer commanding five hundred chariots. All these old friends and acquaintances were delighted to welcome me into their camp, including even that reprehensible old reprobate Kratas, who was commander-in-chief under Pharaoh. On the evening of my arrival Lord Kratas attempted to drink me insensible. Later I was one of those who carried him to his cot, and I held his head while he puked it all up. The next morning he thanked me brusquely and sent his orderly officer to parade before me the Minoan refugees who had managed to escape the wrath of King Gorrab and reach our lines.

There were some forty or so of these unfortunates. They were a sorry lot, having fled with only meagre possessions and with their families decimated by the Hyksos.

I moved slowly down their ranks, treating the fugitives with respect and kindness, but also questioning them shrewdly.

There was one family group of three huddled together at the furthest end of the line whom I came to at last. The father spoke passable, but heavily accented, Egyptian. His name was Amythaon. Up until three weeks previously he had been a merchant in Memphis, trading in corn, wine and leather. He was so successful that even I had heard of him through my agents in that city. The Hyksos had burned his home and warehouse, and raped his wife in front of him until she bled to death.

His son was nineteen years old. His name was Icarion. I liked him immediately. He was tall and strongly built. He had a mop of thick curling dark hair, and a cheerful face. He had not been overwhelmed and crushed by misfortune as seemed to be the case with his father.

‘Of course, you flew from Memphis on wings that you made for yourself?’ I asked him.

‘Of course,’ replied Icarion, ‘but I kept well clear of the sun, lord.’ He had picked up my allusion to his name immediately.

‘Can you read and write, Icarion?’

‘Yes, lord. Although I do not enjoy it as much as my sister does.’

I looked at his sister, who stood behind the two men of her family, and I studied her face. She was rather pretty, with long dark hair and a bright intelligent face, but not as pretty as either of my two princesses. Then again there are very few who are.

‘My name is Loxias and I am fifteen years old.’ She anticipated my questions. She was almost the same age as my darling Tehuti. Her Egyptian was perfect, as though she had been born to it.

‘Can you write, Loxias?’

‘Yes, lord. I am able to do so in all three systems: hieroglyphics, cuneiform and Minoan script.’

‘She keeps my accounts and writes all my correspondence,’ Amythaon, her father, interjected. ‘She is a clever girl.’

‘Can you teach me to speak Minoan and write with Linear A?’ I asked her.

She thought about that for a few moments then she replied, ‘Maybe, but it will depend on your ability, Lord Taita. Minoan is not an easy language.’ I noted her use of my full name and title. It indicated to me that she was as clever as her father boasted she was.

‘Test me. Say something in Minoan,’ I invited her.

‘Very well,’ she agreed and then uttered a long sequence of lisping and exotic phrases.

I repeated them. I have a musician’s ear for sounds; both instrumental and spoken. I am able to replicate the cadence and accent of any human speech faultlessly. In this case I had no idea what I was saying but I said it perfectly. All three of them looked startled and Loxias flushed with annoyance.

‘You are mocking me, Lord Taita. You do not need my tutelage. You speak it almost as well as I do,’ she accused me. ‘Where did you learn?’ I smiled mysteriously, and left her guessing.

I commandeered horses from Hui’s regiment and the four of us rode south to Thebes that same day. I found comfortable accommodation for the little lost family a short walk outside the city walls, in one of the small villages on my newly granted Mechir estate.

I spent several hours every day with Loxias learning to speak and write in Minoan. Within a very few months Loxias admitted that there was nothing more she could teach me.

‘The pupil has outstripped the teacher. I think that probably there is much you can teach me, Lord Taita.’

My two princesses were not such eager or adept students as I was. In the beginning they were both adamant that they wanted nothing to do with such a stupid and uncouth language as Minoan. Nor did they wish any truck with a Minoan peasant girl of humble birth. They informed me that this was their joint decision, and that it was absolutely final and irreversible, and there was nothing that I could do about it. Tehuti did all the talking and her little sister stood by and nodded her head in concurrence.

I went to speak with their big brother, Pharaoh Tamose. I outlined for him the necessity of us Egyptians developing and exploiting our burgeoning relationship with Crete, and how this depended in a large measure upon the ability of the two girls to communicate with the Supreme Minos and his courtiers. Then I set out in detail the plans I had for his sisters.

Pharaoh sent for the two little rebels and remonstrated with them. He ended this one-sided discourse with such dire and convincing threats that even I was worried that he might carry them out. The princesses forthwith reversed their absolutely final decision. But for several days thereafter they sulked at me with a practised intensity.

Their rancour was rapidly set aside when I set up a prize for the student who showed the most improvement over the previous week as judged by their new language teacher, Loxias. The prize was always a piece of highly desirable feminine frippery which Amythaon found for me in the bazaars of the city.

Soon they were able to chatter, argue and emote in fluent Minoan, and Loxias exceeded her brief by teaching them a number of words and expressions that were better suited to the taverns and brothels of the city slums than to the palace. Over the following months these three little hellions delighted in shocking me with these utterances.

They soon became such a closely knit trio that the princesses took Loxias to live with them in the royal harem.

O
wnership of Mechir estate provided me with an excuse to escape from the palace whenever the fancy took me and to ride free and unfettered over my own lands, usually with my princesses and the ubiquitous Loxias for company. I had taught them to ride astride, which is a remarkable achievement for any Egyptian man or woman, and even more so for the sisters of Pharaoh.

In addition I made special bows for the three girls which I carefully matched to their strength. With practice they were able to draw the bowstring to their lips and place two arrows out of three in the target I set up for them at a hundred paces. I kept alive their enthusiasm for this sport by awarding prizes and super-abundant praise for the best lady archer of the day.

When my people were sowing my fields with corn, the wild birds descended on us in flocks to steal the seed. I paid the girls an extravagant bounty for every bird which they brought down with an arrow. Each of them soon became a formidable huntress, able to hit the plumed pests high on the wing.

Riding and shooting were skills that I knew would stand the girls in very good stead in later life.

I truly revelled in the time I was able to spend with my charges, because once I was back in the palace I was firmly under Pharaoh’s dominion once more. There was seldom a day that passed without him calling me to his presence at least once in order for me to solve a problem or to give him my advice or my opinion. I learned not to be put out of countenance when he rejected my counsel, only to resurrect it some little time later as his very own idea.

O
ne of the other problems that I was faced with at this time was the disposal of the treasure that I had brought to Pharaoh Tamose from the Minoan fort at Tamiat.