Reflections in the Nile (64 page)

“Why?” Chloe asked, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Why now? She is beyond you.”

“Someone must take the blame for the Apiru god's works!” he hissed. “Someone must have bloodied hands from the death of thousands! It will not be me! Since those things happened,
technically,
while she was on the throne, her accepting blame for them is natural, and we can purge Egypt. This destruction was due to the unnatural state of affairs: a woman on the throne. I will erase her name from the King's List, and it will be a lesson to not interfere with the laws of Ma'at.”

Chloe looked at Cheftu. His face was like parchment, tears streaking his kohl into black-and-gray stripes down his face. He dropped to one knee, as if too weak to stand. Soldiers moved around him, and Chloe cried aloud when she saw the spears pressing red points into his neck and chest. Cheftu reached up, holding one away from his jugular.

In the end there was no time for tears, no last words, no lingering touch. She knelt, her eyes fixed on his, not speaking, just chinking in the last sight of him, her
ka.
Already a wind whipped around her. She crossed her breast with a trembling hand, and they stretched left hands toward each other as Cheftu closed his eyes in anguish.
There is no greater love than to lay down your life for a friend….
The words floated through her brain.

Time snapped.

Cheftu's agonized cry faded into the roar of jumbled sound, tearing, separating, dividing her soul and body. Painful currents leapt through her scrambled senses until, at last, blissful, peaceful darkness enveloped her, warming, comforting… like a beloved embrace.

EPILOGUE

Thutmosis, Egypt's Mighty Bull of Ma'at, Lord of the Two Lands, Lord of the Horizon, Horus Hakarty, Men-kheper-Ra Tehuti-mes III, Ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt, Beloved of Buto, Son of the Sun, Living Forever! Life! Health! Prosperity! stormed through his chambers, restless in the hours of night. When he slept, dreams came to him—dreams based on reality yet tinged with horrors from the
Book of the Dead.
He stepped onto his balcony, inhaling the fresh air and listening to the chink of chisel and hammer that floated up on every breeze in these days. The removal of Hatshepsut was almost complete. The council had finally declared her dead after he had ruled in her name for five Inundations. The
rekkit
were no longer fearful of the gods’ wrath; his enemies inside Egypt were dead or gone.

“Gone,” he said out loud. His mind moved back, involuntarily, to the Nophite chamber. He'd been so glib, so certain he had the key in his hand. Not only would he get all that Hat had secreted away, but he would have the satisfaction of a broken and willing Cheftu. Vengeance on the man who had sworn fealty and then broken it would be restorative. Cheftu had been held tightly, a dare to move toward the woman in the alcove.

Then, in a shorter time than an eyeblink, they were gone. The torches were extinguished as if a mighty, rushing wind had blown through. Both were gone. Even as the soldiers dismantled the room, finding a dozen secret passageways, not a clue to their whereabouts had ever shown up. Still, a guard stood watch, waiting, hopelessly, Thut thought, for RaEm and Cheftu to resurface.

He stepped inside and lay on his couch. He needed to rest. Before dawn he and the new might of Egypt would set forth across the desert, purging the sands of those who did not worship Egyptian gods or follow Egyptian customs. A tribe would either assimilate or die. In their dying, Egypt would take their gold and spices, and gain. He would build an empire, a mighty empire that stretched far beyond the Egypt of his forefathers. Thut knew without a doubt that from this moment on he would be successful in all he did. He smiled grimly, thinking of the Presence that gave him such confidence. He had served his time as a tool of the Unknowable and was now free to live as he would.

He closed his eyes as exhaustion shook him.

Tomorrow would begin a new life for the land of Egypt.

D
ARKNESS ENGULFED ME
. It was pitch, like night. I sat up slowly, my hand to my pounding head where it felt slightly disconnected. My sense of direction was shot; I had no clue as to where I might be. The silence was consuming as the last images from the temple played back in my mind… and with their viewing came searing pain.
Haii,
Cheftu! Oh, God, Cheftu!

Then I froze as the ghost of a voice echoed, rich and velvety, in the blackness around me.

“Chloe?”

GLOSSARY

ab
—ancient Egyptian for heart

ankh
—the Egyptian key of life; a loop-headed cross

AnkhemNesrt
—name of the goddess of the eighth hour of night; HatHor priestess eight o'clock

anu
—a wanderer

Apiru
—the enslaved races in Egypt, Israelites among them

Apis
—a sacred bull

atmu
—twilight

ba
—the psyche and soul of a person

bukra
—tomorrow

calèche
—a horse-drawn carriage

cartouche
—the ring surrounding and protecting a pharaoh's name

Chaos
—creation

corvée
—slaves or serfs attached to the land

crook
—a symbol of Pharaoh's power in the shape of a shepherd's crook

cubit
—measurement from elbow to fingers, approximately eighteen to twenty-two inches

decans
—the twenty-four designations of night and day; charted by the stars

Deir El-Bahri
—Arabic name for Hatshepsut's mortuary temple; called the-Most-Splendid in her reign

djellaba
—a traditional Egyptian garment

electrum
—a blend of gold and silver, used for plating statuary and walls

Elohim
—Hebrew word for Lord

emmer
—a cheaper grade of grain

erpa-ha
—a hereditary title in ancient Egypt

fellahin
—Arabic for common workers

felucca
—a Nile boat

Gerchet
—a personification of the night; HatHor priestess ten o'clock

hemu neter
—first physician-priest

henhet
crown
—one of Pharaoh's crowns, covering the head and ears

henti
—Egyptian measurement of distance

Herit-tchatcha-ah
—name of the goddess of the seventh hour of night; HatHor priestess seven o'clock

Hyksos
—the conquerors of Egypt in the Middle Kingdom; vanquished at the beginning of the eighteenth dynasty

hypostyle
—the Greek term for a hall of columns

Inshallah
—Arabic for “As God wills it”

inundation
—the annual flooding of the Nile valley; used to count the years

jinn(s)
—Arabic for demon(s)

ka
—a person's individual and spiritual power

khaibit
—a bloodsucking shadow

khamsim
—a killing windstorm from the desert that brings extreme heat and sometimes sand tornadoes

kheft
—enemy, opponent

khetu
—an Egyptian measurement of water weight

magus, magi
—magician(s)

Meret Seger
—name of the mountain at the mouth of the Valley of the Kings

natron
—natural salt; main ingredient in mummification

nome
—the districts that Egypt was divided into

neter
—a priest

Neter
—the beginning, the creator, the unknown

Osiris
—resurrected king of the netherworld

ostraca
—pieces of stone used for everyday writing

RaAfu
—means “night form of Ra”; HatHor priestess nine o'clock

RaEmhetep
—means “a lunar form of Ra”; HatHor priestess eleven o'clock

rekkit
—common people; common language (as in “low” Egyptian)

ReShera
—means “the little sun”; HatHor priestess five o'clock

Ruha-et
—means “evening”; HatHor priestess six o'clock

sa'a
—“son of the heart” (beloved son)

Sekhmet
—lion-headed goddess of vengeance

sem-priest
—the first rung of priesthood

senet
—an ancient Egyptian board game

shadoof
—an irrigation tool used as far back as 2000
B.C.E.

shenti
—a calf-length Egyptian kilt

shesh-besh
—Arabic for backgammon

Shores of Night
—euphemism for Hades

sistrum
—stringed instrument used in worship

souq
—Arabic for marketplace

tef-tef
—a kind of plant

tenemos
—the mud-brick walls surrounding every temple complex, symbolically making it the original mound of earth from which creation began

ushabti
—figurines placed inside the tomb; in the event the deceased was called to a task in the afterworld, they served as the deceased's proxies

wadi
—Arabic for canyon/valley

Wadjet/Udjet
—names of the cobra and vulture who were supposed to protect Pharaoh from his enemies; hence their presence on the crown

web
-priest
—the lowest-rung of the priesthood

w'rer
-priest
—the second rung of the priesthood

THE MAJOR GODS AND GODDESSES

Amun
—god of Thebes; his name means “Hidden or Unknowable One”

Amun-Ra
—synthesis of Amun and Ra; king of the gods

Anubis
—jackal-headed god of the dead and embalming

Aten
—god of the sun disk, raised to monotheism by Ankhenaten

Atum
—the creation god of Heliopolis; a form of Ra

Bastet
—cat goddess; a personification of Sekhmet

Bes
—child-protecting dwarf-god

Hapy
—god of the fruitful Nile; shown with man's body and woman's breasts

HatHor
—goddess of love and music; often represented as a cow

Heqet
—frog goddess of fertility

Horus
—falcon god; son of Isis and Osiris; the animation of the present pharaoh

Imhotep
—builder of the step Pyramid, later deified

Isis
—wife of Osiris; divine mourner

Khepri
—Ra in the form of a scarab beetle

Khnum
—ram-headed god of creating man

Khonsu
—creator god associated with the moon; child of Amun and Mut

Ma'at
—representation of justice and universal balance; the dead's heart was weighed against her “feather” of truth

Min
—ithyphallic fertility god

Mut
—wife of Amun

Nuit
—goddess of the sky; said to swallow and give birth to Ra every night and day; wife of Geb, personification god of the earth

Nun
—the personification of primordial chaos

Osiris
—god of the dead and the afterlife; always shown as green-skinned mummy

Ptah
—creator god of craftsmen; temple in Noph

Ra
—the great sun god

Sekhmet
—goddess of vengeance, war, and terror; wife of Ptah; shown as lioness or lion headed

Set
—murderer of Osiris; Horus’ rival

Shu
—god of the air

Sobek
—crocodile-headed god

Thoth
—god of writing and knowledge; shown with an ibis-head

LOCATIONS

All Names Are Ancient Egyptian

Abdo
—modern Abydos, a town in Lower Egypt on the Nile

Aiyut
—town in Lower Egypt

Avaris
—capital of Lower Egypt in the delta

Aztlah
—empire in the Aegean

Canaan
—modern Israel, Jordan area

Fayyum
—an oasis in the western desert

Gebtu
—an Upper Egyptian town; doorway to the eastern desert

Goshen
—Lower Egypt's fertile plains

Hatti
—modern Turkey

Kallistae
—the island of Santorini; center of Aztlan empire

Keftiu
—Crete

Kemt
—what the Egyptians called Egypt

Kush/Kushite
—country/countryman of modern-day Sudan

Midian
—modern Arabia

Noph
—classical Memphis

On
—classical Heliopolis

Pi-Ramessa
—literally “House of Ramessa”; building project in Lower Egypt

Punt
—modern Somaliland

Retenu
—modern Syria, Lebanon area

Waset
—modern Luxor (classical Thebes)

Zarub
—RaEmhetepet's hometown