Egypt (20 page)

May you flow forth who comes in darkness and enters furtively
…

Spell for the protection of a child

We sailed out of the harbour of Ugarit aboard a Hittite merchant vessel fully loaded with Egyptian grain, and turned north once more. The sparse coastline of the land to our east remained always in view, because, for all sailors, the open seas of this voyage were notorious for their perils: pirates from the island of Alishiya, who could ram, board, rob and murder; and perhaps even worse, sudden disastrous storms that could wreck a ship in moments. But we were lucky with the weather, for the sky remained clear and the wind reliably strong. However, the boat struggled with the contradictory waves, and the rolling rise and fall affected everyone; for the first few days I felt sick, and could only find relief on deck, in the open air, with my eyes set upon the horizon. Nakht suffered greatly; he remained confined to his pallet in the airless cabin of the ship, where he lay sweating, unable to eat or move, his eyes closed, in silent surrender to the unrelenting power of the waters.

But under the protection of Ra, after four days at sea, we safely reached the port of Ura in sparkling sunlight. A wide green plain spread around the port and its extensive domains. Not even pausing for one night of rest, we set off immediately in a long caravan towards the Hittite heartlands. Ambassador Hattusa took command of the journey from this point; he seemed impatient to return to his home again.

We passed through small, carefully cultivated fields and meadows; I saw several kinds of wheat and barley, together with beans and peas, carrots, leeks, garlic and herbs. Their olive trees were gnarled with age, and their neat orchards dense with unfamiliar fruits. Every house or shack raised its own pig, hens, sheep, goats and, perhaps, if they were unusually affluent, a cow. Smiling children came to barter respectfully, with figs and apricots, pomegranates, tamarisk, honey and cheeses. We replenished the food cart for the journey ahead.

Then we left this verdant plain behind us, and began to trek up winding routes of grey, dusty, well-maintained tracks that rose through stony valleys. Dense stands of thin silver trees with rustling green leaves in the shape of hearts grew beside rushing waters, which tumbled down impassable crevasses. By bridges and at crossroads, we came upon little shrines to the deities of the place: crudely carved statues of shapeless females, which Nakht pronounced fertility Goddesses, and offerings of wild flowers left in cracked jars. As we ascended higher, strange mists gathered and drifted among the sharp green angles of the forests, resolved into sudden, light rains that refreshed our faces, then vanished again into sunlight. When we rested, we gazed back down at the vast empty valleys below us–wildernesses of forest and rock and barren brown land, under blue skies and drifting temples of pure white clouds.

Finally, after three days of climbing, we found ourselves on a high, windswept plateau. It was liberally scattered, as if by a careless builder-god, with handfuls of huge, spare rocks and the rubble of innumerable leftover stones. Richly scented, woody herbs grew in every nook and cranny in dense, thorny bushes, throwing up intensely bright red and white blooms on bristling stems; unseen streams argued their way through narrow declivities, and the muscular, buffeting wind carried a sharp, chilling freshness. We camped for the night near an escarpment, and in the grey light of the next day's dawn we stood together, gazing in astonishment at an ocean of fog and mist that had risen up in silence in the darkness, and now covered the world below; it moved slowly in massive divisions that swept over our heads, but had no power to harm us at all. I looked at us: a band of weary Egyptian travellers, strangers in a strange world.

We moved on into a lost, high land, yellow and brown and grey under blue skies, where the wind swept its great hands over and through the wild grasses in huge waves. We passed large flocks of sheep and herds of cattle being driven to the higher pastures by shepherds, their wrinkled faces tanned by the sun and wind; they whistled to their capable, intelligent dogs, who accomplished dizzyingly complex manoeuvres to corral the animals. We passed outcrops of red and grey rocks jutting out of green slanting fields; and we paused to stare at misty valleys falling away to the left or the right, into sunlight or shade. Wild horses, nut-brown and silver-grey, grazed on the gold and silver grasses, flicking their tails and ignoring us unless we came too close–and then they cantered away, kicking and tossing their manes, and rising up on their hind legs. We came upon a lake of dark, cold water, still as a bronze mirror, cupped in the huge rocky hand of a mountain God, his head far, far away in the sky, crowned with the whiteness of snow.

And then, one afternoon, as we crossed a vast dry plain of gold grasses, up ahead through the heat haze we saw a strange cloud of dust; Hattusa raised his hand and pointed. His bodyguards cantered forwards, away around a curve in the way, and disappeared. We waited in silence. Simut and his guards were on alert, and swiftly took up positions, their weapons flashing in the sunlight. I stood close to Nakht, my dagger and a long spear ready in my hands. We listened intently; we heard the whispering of the wind through the sea of grasses, and the singing of unseen tiny birds, high in the clear sky. But there was something else too: a faint, distant murmur, as of many animals, sighing and moving.

Then the Hittite guards reappeared, and signalled us forward. Simut's guards maintained their alert, and I insisted on riding before Nakht. But as we rounded the corner, instead of a long train of animals on their way to pasture, we saw a multitude of the most dismal, desolate people: long columns of foreign captives, men, women and children, taken from plundered and besieged towns and cities, and now being driven like cattle to Hattusa. They stumbled, groaned and shuffled, goaded and pushed ever onwards by Hittite soldiers.

‘These are booty people,' said Nakht, quietly. ‘They are being taken to a life of indentured labour in the Hittite homeland.'

‘If they survive,' I added.

Even as we passed, an emaciated woman collapsed, and was simply left where she fell, as carrion for the menacing dark hawks that continually hovered and swooped in the blue sky. The booty people turned away from us instinctively; none were permitted to look in our direction. I glanced at Hattusa, who rode ahead, apparently impervious to this spectacle of misery.

‘What sort of people treat their prisoners in this way?' I said quietly to Nakht.

‘With so many able-bodied men at the wars, they are always short of manual labourers. These people will live out their lives as best they can,' he replied.

‘But there's something inhuman about this–look at them. They're less than animals.'

‘We are not here to criticize the practices of the Hittites,' he replied. ‘But I admit, the sight is distressing. The Hittites are not perhaps as advanced as we are in their treatment of slaves.'

Suddenly, one of the captives surged out of the column of men, and caught my foot in his grasp. He was younger than I, and something about his features, and his black hair, however dirty with dust, reminded me of Khety. I realized his eyes were the same colour as Khety's, and they were staring at me desperately. He uttered some words in a language I could not understand, but I knew they were pleas for help. He gripped my leg again, as if to pull me from my horse. Instinctively, in shock, and determined to protect Nakht against any danger, I kicked back against him, but he held on with the strength of despair. All at once, he was enraged, calling upon the other men close to him to join him; but to his despair they merely gazed on in a kind of apathy. A young woman, presumably his wife, clutching a bundle that must have held a baby, began to scream; and then very quickly his captors closed in on him, and one clubbed the man's skull, and he loosened his grip, and with a low moan fell away from me, into the dust.

‘Don't look back,' commanded Nakht, but I felt that man's desperate eyes on me every step of the way. What could I have done? I asked myself, over and over. I told myself, nothing. And yet he haunted me, and his face blurred with Khety's. I could have saved Khety, too, if I had listened to him more carefully.

The landscape ahead seemed to mirror my dark mood, for the open plateau now gave way to dense, endless forests of dark trees with sharp, viridian needles. Their strange angular shadows fell across the way, creating worrying unseen hiding places, where birds and creatures rustled, and sudden crickets let off their alarms. Everything made me nervous now; such forests could easily disguise bandits or enemies waiting in ambush. And then, one morning, as we rode, suddenly we were surrounded by a group of men on horseback. They appeared out of the forests, before and then behind us, shouting orders in an incomprehensible language. Simut's guards immediately deployed into a defensive cordon around Nakht, and I raised my spear in readiness. My heart was beating fast. I looked around for any possible route of escape, but all I saw were the impossible depths of the dark trees.

But the ambassador called out in his own language, and raised his hand in salute, and the leading horseman of the group responded with the same gesture. Then the ambassador turned to Nakht.

‘There is no need for alarm. These are Hittite soldiers. They were just doing their job, and we appeared unexpectedly. They will accompany us the rest of the way. Tell your men to stand down.'

All the Hittite soldiers wore conical leather helmets with ear-flaps, and leather shoes with curled-up toes; and they carried spears, scimitars and hide-covered shields. Their black hair was worn long, and was as glossy and well-combed as a woman's. And they were clean-shaven, too. Their sharp eyes flickered over us, curious and hostile. They quickly fell in before and behind our company, and we moved past a wooden watchtower, its guards regarding us carefully, and on through the endless, dark forest of the Hittite homeland, towards their capital.

Finally, towards the evening of the following day, covered in dust, weathered by the harsh light and the buffeting wind of the high world we had traversed, we saw the dark green forests unexpectedly give way to open, rolling land bathed in sunlight; in the distance were the pale-yellow mud-brick towers and the tall city walls of Hattusa. It was built on long green hillsides, surrounding an impressive summit of rock that rose high above everything else in the landscape.

As we came closer to the city, workmen carrying long, lightly coloured stripped timbers on their shoulders paused to watch us, and gangs of foreign labourers–just like those we had passed on the way–roped together, toiled in the fields. But something was wrong with them; they held on to each other, and seemed uncertain of the world around them. And then I realized: most of them had been blinded–even the children. They moved like lost, hopeless people, going about their interminable labour.

‘What has happened to them? Why are these people blinded?' I asked.

Hattusa was not impressed by my reaction. ‘To stop them fleeing for their homelands,' he replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. ‘And what do they need sight for now? They can labour perfectly well without it.'

And he turned his haughty face to the towers of Hattusa.

‘Welcome to my city,' he said proudly.