The Horned Viper (14 page)

‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘There’s something I want to show you.’

He began to walk up the hillside with its view of the river. Isis followed him, skipping lightly from rock to rock as they climbed. They reached the brow of the hill, and Hopi flopped on to the dry ground.

Isis sat down next to him. They surveyed the riverbank below, and the wind billowing the sail of a passing pleasure boat. Hopi was reaching for his bag when Isis spoke.

‘Hopi,’ she said, ‘there’s something I want to say.’

‘Oh?’ Hopi looked at her quickly. She sounded serious.

Isis studied her fingers. ‘It’s just that . . . you were right about Hat-Neb,’ she said. ‘And I’m sorry.’

Hopi smiled. His sister might be impulsive, but she was always very fair. ‘And Nebo?’ he asked.

Isis frowned. ‘I was wrong about him, too,’ she said. ‘But it’s funny. Some bad people have good bits, too.’

‘And the other way round,’ agreed Hopi. He sighed. ‘Well, the same goes for Tutmose. I was wrong about him.’

‘We were both wrong, and neither of us wanted to see it. It was horrible,’ said Isis. ‘And that’s what I’ve been thinking about. I never want to disagree with you again. Not like that. Never, never, never.’

Hopi grinned. ‘Maybe we won’t be able to help it.’

‘We
have
to help it.’ Isis sounded very determined. ‘I won’t let it happen again. Not if you won’t.’

‘Sounds fair to me,’ said Hopi.

Isis smiled. ‘Good.’

They turned their faces to the breeze for a moment, and listened to the voices drifting up from between the swaying doum palms.

‘Was this what you wanted to show me?’ asked Isis. ‘The view?’

‘Oh! No. I nearly forgot,’ said Hopi. ‘This is where I caught the horned viper. Well, not far from here.’ And he reached again for his basket.

‘You still have it!’ exclaimed Isis.

‘Of course. There hasn’t been anywhere to release it,’ said Hopi.

He lifted the lid off the papyrus basket, and placed it on its side so that the snake could escape. Together, they watched as it slithered out, testing the air with its tongue. The bulge of the rat inside it had gone down, and it moved steadily up towards a cluster of rocks.

‘Welcome home,’ murmured Hopi.

The viper passed the rocks, its tongue still flicking. It reached a patch of golden dune that stretched out to the desert beyond, and paused for a moment. Then, with deft sideways movements, it vanished beneath the sand.

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CAST OF CHARACTERS

Chronicle Characters

Hopi
The thirteen-year-old brother of Isis. Ever since surviving the bite of a crocodile in the attack that killed their parents, Hopi has had a fascination with dangerous creatures, particularly snakes and scorpions. He is training to be a priest of Serqet, which will qualify him to treat bites and stings.

Isis
The eleven-year-old sister of Hopi. She is a talented dancer and performs regularly with Nefert and Paneb’s troupe. Her dance partner is Mut.

Mut
The eleven-year-old daughter of Paneb and Nefert, and dance partner to Isis.

Paneb
Husband of Nefert, father of Mut, Ramose and Kha, and the head of the household where Isis and Hopi live. He organises bookings for the dance and music troupe.

Nefert
Wife of Paneb, mother of Mut, Ramose and Kha, and sister of Sheri and Kia. She plays the lute and is head of the dance and music troupe.

Sheri
One of Nefert’s widowed sisters, and a musician in the troupe. She has a particularly loving nature.

Kia
The second of Nefert’s widowed sisters, also a musician living with the troupe. She is slightly more cold and distant than Sheri, but is hardworking and practical.

Ramose
Eldest son of Nefert and Paneb, aged five. Mut’s brother.

Kha
Younger son of Nefert and Paneb, aged two. Mut’s brother.

Menna
Hopi’s tutor, and a priest of Serqet in the town of Waset. (A priest of Serqet was someone who treated snake bites and scorpion stings.)

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Other Characters in This Story

Hat-Neb
A powerful overseer of public works. He is currently the overseer at the new temple being built for the god Horus in Djeba. He has a reputation for great cruelty.

Nebo
Hat-Neb’s fan-bearer and guard. He is from Nubia, the area just to the south of Egypt, and part of the ancient Egyptian empire.

Tutmose
A qualified doctor who has worked in the royal court, but now treats wealthy men.

Kerem
The head of a group of Sea People sailors, who hire themselves out to work on boats on the Nile. They also act as mercenaries, which means they will fight for whoever pays them.

Senmut
The leader of a group of rowers who know of Hat-Neb’s reputation.

Ipuy
A young scribe who works at the temple site in Djeba.

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FASCINATING FACT FILE ABOUT ANCIENT EGYPT

The World of Isis and Hopi

The stories of Isis and Hopi are based in ancient Egypt over 3,000 years ago, during a time known as the New Kingdom. They happen around 1200–1150BC, in the last great period of Egyptian history. This is about a thousand years after the Old Kingdom, when the pyramids were built. Waset, the town in which Isis and Hopi live, had recently been the capital of Egypt, with an enormous temple complex dedicated to the god Amun. By 1200BC, the capital had been moved further north again, but Waset was still very important. Kings were still buried in the Valley of the Kings on the west bank, and the priests of Amun were rich and powerful. Today, Waset is known as Luxor; in books about ancient Egypt, it is often referred to by the Greek name of Thebes.

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A Little Bit about Horned Vipers

The snake that Hopi finds in this book is a desert horned viper, also called the Sahara horned viper. These snakes have a sandy-coloured body with brown blotches, a wide, triangular head, and two big scales that stick up behind the eyes to create ‘horns’.

Horned vipers are desert snakes. They tend to live in dry river beds and among sand and rocks. They are usually nocturnal – in other words, they are active and do their hunting at night. During the day, they bury themselves in sand or hide somewhere shady, though they are sometimes seen basking in the sun. They move by ‘sidewinding’, which means pressing part of their body down while throwing another part sideways and forwards. This leaves an unmistakable track in soft sand.

As venomous snakes go, horned vipers are not very aggressive – but when they strike, they strike fast. Hopi’s viper would have had no problem catching a rat in the hold! The bite of a horned viper is dangerous, but it does not often kill people.

When it is cornered, a horned viper sometimes curls into C-shaped coils and rubs its scales together as a warning. This makes a rasping, hissing sound. What’s interesting is that the ancient Egyptian hieroglyph for a horned viper is also the letter ‘f’. People now think that this might be because of the sound the snake makes with its coils:
fffff
.

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Boats and the River Nile

The ancient Egyptians didn’t bother building lots of roads, because the River Nile was like a big highway running from one end of Egypt to the other. Away from the Nile, there was only desert, where no one wanted to go. Because the Nile flooded every year, covering the fields, roads close to the river got washed away. So to travel up and down the length of Egypt, people used boats.

The Nile flows from south to north, emptying out into the Mediterranean Sea. Luckily, the wind in Egypt usually blows in the opposite direction, from north to south. So to travel north, boats could go with the current, often with the help of oars. To travel south, boats had sails to catch the wind and carry them against the current. Because of this, the hieroglyph that meant ‘travel north’ was a picture of a boat without a sail, and the hieroglyph for ‘travel south’ was a picture of a boat with a sail.

For pottering around close to home, fishing or hunting in the marshes, people made little boats out of papyrus reeds bundled together. By the New Kingdom, some of these would have been made of wood instead.

For religious ceremonies and to carry the king, there were elegant, brightly painted boats that we now call
barques
. These were slender boats with a beautifully carved prow. The Egyptians believed that the sun god Re sailed across the sky in a barque every day. Wealthy people, like Hat-Neb in the story, might own pleasure boats built of wood. Like barques, these would have been brightly painted, with a cabin to keep the owner sheltered from the sun.

There were big rowing boats to carry cargoes, and massive barges to carry very heavy loads, like blocks of stone. These barges were so large that they had to be towed by smaller boats, like the one in the story.

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Egypt’s Temples

Temples were central to religion in ancient Egypt. They were built for the glory of the gods and king, and only priests and priestesses could enter the inner areas. Ordinary people had to stay outside, but they could still make offerings and pray to the gods, using the priests and scribes attached to the temples as go-betweens.

There were two main kinds of temple – cult temples and mortuary temples. Cult temples were for the worship of a particular god, like Sobek or Amun. The temple being built in the book is a cult temple dedicated to the god Horus, in a place that is now called Edfu. The ancient name for the temple site was Djeba, and there was a temple there from Old Kingdom times. Kings in the New Kingdom added to this temple to make it more impressive, but it’s difficult to say exactly how much. This is because from 237BC onwards, the Ptolomies (Greek invaders) built a big new temple on the same site. You can still visit this temple today.

Mortuary temples were for the worship of a dead king. For this reason, they were usually built on the west bank – the Kingdom of the Dead – not too far from the tombs where the kings were buried.