PROLOGUE
Upper Egypt,Fourth Dynasty, 2590 BC, rule of Pharaoh SneferuTemple of Osiris, Island of Elephantine Menkaure sat cross-legged on a little plateau in front of the temple, enjoying his lunch. Behind him, two stone djed pillars, resembling sycamore tree trunks with their horizontal branches lopped off, flanked a cavernous entrance in the side of the cliff at the shore of a small island. The island was called Elephantine and, although small, it was the biggest of the many small islands that dot the surface of the upper Nile, the river which is the source of life in Egypt. If Menkaure had turned around, he would have seen a long corridor leading down into the depths of the temple. Inside, other novice priests were busy learning how to perform spells to protect a deceased pharaoh on his journey to join the barge of the sun god, as well as performing the more mundane tasks that were necessary for the smooth functioning of the temple.
The temple was dark; the bright sun outside hurt Menkaure’s eyes and would turn his shaved head red whenever he forgot to put on an ointment. His short kilt could not protect his skin, which had lost its tan during his studies. Still, he savored his beer and bread, which were in plentiful supply, as long as he worked here. Life was much better here than it had been at his previous post studying at the Temple of Khnum, with its tight-fisted overseer. Much as he felt the priestly calling burning bright and hot within him, in the end he asked permission to leave Khnum’s service. To his joy, he had immediately been given a home among those who served Osiris. Yet in the time he had served here, he had observed things that troubled him.
He had served her for several moons, and now an entire moon had waxed and waned since the temple’s chief priest Harderef had summoned Mankaure to his inner sanctum. This is not going to be good, Menkaure thought to himself as he bowed deeply before Harderef. The chief priest’s short temper was famous even beyond the shore of Elephantine. I did not realize he knew my name. My overseer must have complained. Instead of finding himself on the short end of Harderef’s fuse, he came out of his bow to find a chief priest rearranging his face into something resembling a smile. “I am told you speak fluent Sumerian, my son,” said the old priest.
Menkaure did not contradict his superior, mainly because it was true. In his childhood, he had traveled extensively with his merchant father, and they had spent a year in the Sumerian capital. Enough to learn a language, he thought.
“We will be welcoming visitors,” announced Harderef. “Our Pharaoh, the Lord of the Two Lands, sends us visitors. They are a delegation from Mesopotamia. They came to Memphis to make obeisance to our ruler and to humbly request permission to study under our learned Egyptian priests the magic that protects a person on the journey to the Netherworld. Where would be a better place to perform this task than our Temple of Osiris, located at the very place where the Nile flows from the Netherworld? In return, they offer to teach the Egyptians all Sumerian knowledge, which of course, cannot be compared to Egyptian. I have decided to grant their wish,” Harderef finished majestically, fingering the Pharaoh’s letter. “I do not have a choice,” he mumbled to himself. Menkaure’s sharp ears caught the last comment and he quietly agreed. Refusing Pharaoh’s wish usually carried a stiff punishment. “I have assigned you, Menkaure, to assist these visitors—there are three of them—with their quest. Answer all their questions, and if you do not know the answers, direct them to senior priests. Also, try to learn from the Sumerians, too. We will record their beliefs, even if there is not much truth in them, and send our report to Pharaoh.”
Initially, Menkaure had been proud of his assignment. His prestige among the novices rose, and many were jealous of what they saw as an opportunity to learn the magic of a nation that was even older than Egypt and whose magic, Harderef’s grandstanding aside, could be more advanced than Egypt’s. Nowadays, though, Menkaure’s initial enthusiasm was beginning to wane. The Sumerians proved to be very secretive. Yes, they were eager to learn and constantly asked questions about the Netherworld. Yet Menkaure’s answers did not satisfy them. When he arranged for them to ask their questions of the temple’s highest-ranking priests, the Sumerians dismayed him by looking down on the most powerful spells ever created by Egypt’s priests. And they incessantly demanded proofs that these spells worked. “As if anybody could descend into the Netherworld and personally test them!” Menkaure thought.
Even worse, they would not share any useful Sumerian knowledge. The most Menkaure could get out of them were dark hints that demons of the Netherworld were strong and their names should not be spoken loud, lest they appear. Rubbish, as far as Menkaure was concerned. Menkaure disliked particularly the youngest of the Sumerians. He must have been in charge, since the other two deferred to him. Yet he asked the most ignorant questions of the three. Menkaure sighed. His own studies had slowed down because he had to fit them around the schedule dictated by his tasks with the Sumerians, and other novices were getting ahead. He was beginning to hate these foreigners.
As he worked on his lunch, the wailing of mourners distracted him from his thoughts. He looked up and saw the curved prow of a passing funeral barge. The barge carried the body of the Lord of the Door of the South, the great leader who had spent his life defending the borders of Upper Egypt from the Pharaoh’s enemies here at the first cataract of the Nile. He was respected by all, and the priests of Menkaure’s temple loved him, since he generously supported the great edifice. The scores of slaves who were taken by the Lord in border raids to Nubia and sent to Memphis impressed even the notoriously difficult Pharaoh Sneferu, who in turn showed his good will by not executing the Lord of The Door like those predecessors who displeased him. To everybody’s surprise, Pharaoh even appointed the deceased’s son to the post held by his late father.
Menkaure had heard whispers from the court in Memphis that the divine Lord of the Two Lands must be losing his divine marbles, creating a hereditary nobility at such a distant place as Elephantine. Only three dynasties had come and gone since Pharaoh Menes united Upper and Lower Egypt, and the fight for unification had not yet passed into legend. A dynasty of powerful nobles could mean a clear danger to the central power in Memphis.
However, he had heard whispers of another sort: that the Pharaoh’s decision was influenced by the current spate of visions reported by the high priest of Ptah. There were even those who reported that the Living God that was Pharaoh was afraid: afraid of entering the Hall of Judgment after his death, afraid that when his heart was weighed against Ma’at, it would be found wanting, afraid that his soul would not pass the door and join the solar barge of Re. To make sure the divinities of the underworld granted him passage, he lavished gifts on Menkaure’s temple. Under the direction of Menkaure’s priests, Sneferu also kept building his pyramid temples near Memphis and appointing priests of Osiris as the temples’ administrators.
“I’ll bet he thinks that we can learn something from the Sumerians that will help him when he faces the gods in the Hall of Judgment,” thought Menkaure. “And if he does not learn anything, he will be upset and…” He banished the thought. “I must get something out of them.” He finished eating and turned back to the temple.
At the entrance, he was stopped by an old temple guard, whom he had befriended. “How are our visitors?” the older man asked amicably.
Menkaure shrugged. “They keep to themselves.”
“Have they learned our tongue yet?”
“Not a word.”
He grunted. “Don’t they know they would only improve themselves if they learned the cultured Egyptian language? But what can one expect from an Asiatic rabble like these? Perhaps our Pharaoh wants them to learn the civilized Egyptian manners and take these back to Sumer to teach other natives. A wasted effort, if you ask me,” he concluded.
Menkaure walked slowly down the long corridor, curving to his left and north as he descended deep into the bowels of the earth. The smooth walls were covered in plaster and painted with scenes depicting the life, death, and rebirth of Osiris. Torches and long vents ascending to the surface provided light. Finally, the corridor opened into a square hall, surrounded by rows of pillars. Behind the pillars, numerous doors opened into the working and living quarters.
He passed the House of Life on his left. Menkaure’s team, including friends and enemies, lived and worked there. They copied sacred texts to satisfy the needs of the high-ranking priests of the temple. Wab priests, assigned more menial tasks, lived and worked to the right. Farther down, also at the right, lay the quarters of the High Priest. Facing them, on the other side, were doors to the temporary apartments of the Sumerians.
Instead of proceeding directly into the Sumerian apartments to offer his services, Menkaure dawdled. He stopped and contemplated the entrance ahead of him, which lead to the Inner Sanctuary. He was not yet ready to enter this chamber and would do so in the future only in the company of the High Priest. Still, Menkaure’s eyes, now accustomed to the dark, could see the statue of Osiris. It had been carved so far into the room that it almost touched the rear wall. The god held the crook and flail, symbols of the royal power. On his head sat the tall atef crown with the two plumes. Whatever the carver’s intent, Menkaure always found in the statue’s gaze a sense of serenity.
Menkaure listened. His ears picked up a faint sound of flowing water. The sound appeared to be coming from deep within the womb of the earth. Menkaure knew that this was the sound of the Netherworld Nile. He was again overcome with awe, just as he had been the first time he heard the waters of the underground stream. He knew it flowed deep under the surface of the earth, under the island itself and under the bed of the Nile, and then through the Netherworld. The underground river came to close to the surface only here, under Elephantine, where its waters separated and one of its branches fed the Earth Nile, the other remaining branch continuing its path through the Netherworld. And our Earth Nile feeds the whole of Egypt, Menkaure finished his thought and nodded to himself in satisfaction. This is how things ought to be.
The sound reminded him that no temple in the world was so close to the domain of Osiris. The Sumerians might be arrogant, but they had made the right choice in deciding to study here. With this thought, he remembered his task and turned toward the Sumerians’ quarters. He had walked only a few steps, however, when he stopped abruptly. The sounds of an argument met his ears. The stonework here was thick, but the voices were so loud they were penetrating even the closed door.
“Why did you do that?” he heard a terrified voice say.
“I had to,” a second retorted. “Don’t you understand?” This second voice was both speaking and breathing heavily. Menkaure realized he was overhearing an argument between the two lower-ranking Sumerians. “I feel Him coming, don’t you? Do they not say that once He sees and smells a person, he never lets go? He will always get him? I suspected as much when King Gilgamesh asked us to accompany his son to Egypt. Have you never thought it strange, this whole mission? Why would the King need to know what these ignorant Egyptians think of the Netherworld? Why would he send his own son away? I am telling you, he simply wanted his son away from Sumer.”
“I think he expected us to learn a counterspell,” said the first voice.
“Did you?” asked the other one sarcastically. “Now that the Prince is gone, we are safe from Him. He does not care about us.” Menkaure heard the slight emphasis on the word “him,” heard the edge of dread that touched the speaker’s voice. “Him” and the Sumerian prince were not the same person.
After a short pause, the first voice announced, “Let’s move. Look at all the blood. They will discover it shortly. There is no time to waste.”
Menkaure backed away, horrified. Suddenly, the door burst open and the two Sumerians shot out and ran directly into Menkaure, knocking him down. Menkaure stayed down, badly shaken, listening to the receding stampede and the shouts of the temple’s guard. Finally, he got to his hands and knees and crept toward the door to the Sumerians’ apartments. He looked inside and reeled back. The Prince’s body was cut open and his heart removed. He felt his gorge start to rise and stumbled toward the exit.
Suddenly, the Earth heaved. Menkaure fell again. The walls shook, as if they were being struck at regular intervals by the powerful blows of a giant hammer. Plaster fell off the walls and Menkaure heard screams of the other priests and guards. The floor in front of him split apart, and a river of huge snakes, their albino bodies glistening, spilled out of the crack and moved toward the exit. Behind him, he heard the statue of Osiris crash to the floor; the sound of running water became stronger. He looked around and saw that the back wall where the statue had stood had vanished to be replaced by a yawning black hole.
Dust obscured his sight; he tried to rise, but by now his efforts were being hampered by the other priests, who were trying to escape the shock zone. They were running toward the exit. Some stepped on Menkaure, who repeatedly tried to get up, only to be knocked down again. At last, he just covered his head and waited for the end. When he could no longer hear the noises of the chaos and when the earth stopped shaking, he opened his eyes.
The darkness had become absolute. Menkaure carefully got up and crept toward the exit. After a few steps, he ran, not into the familiar corridor, but into a wall of fallen rocks. He moved to the right, expecting to find a door of the House of Life. Yet another rock wall met him. At last, he started to stumble, first slowly, then faster and faster, around the northern and eastern walls, touching the walls, looking for an exit. He found none. Finally, it hit him.
He had been buried alive in the temple.
Slowly, he turned around, toward the sound of water swirling behind the eastern pillars.
BUY SPEAR OF SETH FROM AMAZON (PAPERBACK, OR KINDLE FOR ONLY $2.99) BY CLICKING ON THE IMAGE BELOW:
OR GET A PDF HERE (click on the link): www.newfantasynovel.com
Upper Egypt,Fourth Dynasty, 2590 BC, rule of Pharaoh SneferuTemple of Osiris, Island of Elephantine Menkaure sat cross-legged on a little plateau in front of the temple, enjoying his lunch. Behind him, two stone djed pillars, resembling sycamore tree trunks with their horizontal branches lopped off, flanked a cavernous entrance in the side of the cliff at the shore of a small island. The island was called Elephantine and, although small, it was the biggest of the many small islands that dot the surface of the upper Nile, the river which is the source of life in Egypt. If Menkaure had turned around, he would have seen a long corridor leading down into the depths of the temple. Inside, other novice priests were busy learning how to perform spells to protect a deceased pharaoh on his journey to join the barge of the sun god, as well as performing the more mundane tasks that were necessary for the smooth functioning of the temple.
The temple was dark; the bright sun outside hurt Menkaure’s eyes and would turn his shaved head red whenever he forgot to put on an ointment. His short kilt could not protect his skin, which had lost its tan during his studies. Still, he savored his beer and bread, which were in plentiful supply, as long as he worked here. Life was much better here than it had been at his previous post studying at the Temple of Khnum, with its tight-fisted overseer. Much as he felt the priestly calling burning bright and hot within him, in the end he asked permission to leave Khnum’s service. To his joy, he had immediately been given a home among those who served Osiris. Yet in the time he had served here, he had observed things that troubled him.
He had served her for several moons, and now an entire moon had waxed and waned since the temple’s chief priest Harderef had summoned Mankaure to his inner sanctum. This is not going to be good, Menkaure thought to himself as he bowed deeply before Harderef. The chief priest’s short temper was famous even beyond the shore of Elephantine. I did not realize he knew my name. My overseer must have complained. Instead of finding himself on the short end of Harderef’s fuse, he came out of his bow to find a chief priest rearranging his face into something resembling a smile. “I am told you speak fluent Sumerian, my son,” said the old priest.
Menkaure did not contradict his superior, mainly because it was true. In his childhood, he had traveled extensively with his merchant father, and they had spent a year in the Sumerian capital. Enough to learn a language, he thought.
“We will be welcoming visitors,” announced Harderef. “Our Pharaoh, the Lord of the Two Lands, sends us visitors. They are a delegation from Mesopotamia. They came to Memphis to make obeisance to our ruler and to humbly request permission to study under our learned Egyptian priests the magic that protects a person on the journey to the Netherworld. Where would be a better place to perform this task than our Temple of Osiris, located at the very place where the Nile flows from the Netherworld? In return, they offer to teach the Egyptians all Sumerian knowledge, which of course, cannot be compared to Egyptian. I have decided to grant their wish,” Harderef finished majestically, fingering the Pharaoh’s letter. “I do not have a choice,” he mumbled to himself. Menkaure’s sharp ears caught the last comment and he quietly agreed. Refusing Pharaoh’s wish usually carried a stiff punishment. “I have assigned you, Menkaure, to assist these visitors—there are three of them—with their quest. Answer all their questions, and if you do not know the answers, direct them to senior priests. Also, try to learn from the Sumerians, too. We will record their beliefs, even if there is not much truth in them, and send our report to Pharaoh.”
Initially, Menkaure had been proud of his assignment. His prestige among the novices rose, and many were jealous of what they saw as an opportunity to learn the magic of a nation that was even older than Egypt and whose magic, Harderef’s grandstanding aside, could be more advanced than Egypt’s. Nowadays, though, Menkaure’s initial enthusiasm was beginning to wane. The Sumerians proved to be very secretive. Yes, they were eager to learn and constantly asked questions about the Netherworld. Yet Menkaure’s answers did not satisfy them. When he arranged for them to ask their questions of the temple’s highest-ranking priests, the Sumerians dismayed him by looking down on the most powerful spells ever created by Egypt’s priests. And they incessantly demanded proofs that these spells worked. “As if anybody could descend into the Netherworld and personally test them!” Menkaure thought.
Even worse, they would not share any useful Sumerian knowledge. The most Menkaure could get out of them were dark hints that demons of the Netherworld were strong and their names should not be spoken loud, lest they appear. Rubbish, as far as Menkaure was concerned. Menkaure disliked particularly the youngest of the Sumerians. He must have been in charge, since the other two deferred to him. Yet he asked the most ignorant questions of the three. Menkaure sighed. His own studies had slowed down because he had to fit them around the schedule dictated by his tasks with the Sumerians, and other novices were getting ahead. He was beginning to hate these foreigners.
As he worked on his lunch, the wailing of mourners distracted him from his thoughts. He looked up and saw the curved prow of a passing funeral barge. The barge carried the body of the Lord of the Door of the South, the great leader who had spent his life defending the borders of Upper Egypt from the Pharaoh’s enemies here at the first cataract of the Nile. He was respected by all, and the priests of Menkaure’s temple loved him, since he generously supported the great edifice. The scores of slaves who were taken by the Lord in border raids to Nubia and sent to Memphis impressed even the notoriously difficult Pharaoh Sneferu, who in turn showed his good will by not executing the Lord of The Door like those predecessors who displeased him. To everybody’s surprise, Pharaoh even appointed the deceased’s son to the post held by his late father.
Menkaure had heard whispers from the court in Memphis that the divine Lord of the Two Lands must be losing his divine marbles, creating a hereditary nobility at such a distant place as Elephantine. Only three dynasties had come and gone since Pharaoh Menes united Upper and Lower Egypt, and the fight for unification had not yet passed into legend. A dynasty of powerful nobles could mean a clear danger to the central power in Memphis.
However, he had heard whispers of another sort: that the Pharaoh’s decision was influenced by the current spate of visions reported by the high priest of Ptah. There were even those who reported that the Living God that was Pharaoh was afraid: afraid of entering the Hall of Judgment after his death, afraid that when his heart was weighed against Ma’at, it would be found wanting, afraid that his soul would not pass the door and join the solar barge of Re. To make sure the divinities of the underworld granted him passage, he lavished gifts on Menkaure’s temple. Under the direction of Menkaure’s priests, Sneferu also kept building his pyramid temples near Memphis and appointing priests of Osiris as the temples’ administrators.
“I’ll bet he thinks that we can learn something from the Sumerians that will help him when he faces the gods in the Hall of Judgment,” thought Menkaure. “And if he does not learn anything, he will be upset and…” He banished the thought. “I must get something out of them.” He finished eating and turned back to the temple.
At the entrance, he was stopped by an old temple guard, whom he had befriended. “How are our visitors?” the older man asked amicably.
Menkaure shrugged. “They keep to themselves.”
“Have they learned our tongue yet?”
“Not a word.”
He grunted. “Don’t they know they would only improve themselves if they learned the cultured Egyptian language? But what can one expect from an Asiatic rabble like these? Perhaps our Pharaoh wants them to learn the civilized Egyptian manners and take these back to Sumer to teach other natives. A wasted effort, if you ask me,” he concluded.
Menkaure walked slowly down the long corridor, curving to his left and north as he descended deep into the bowels of the earth. The smooth walls were covered in plaster and painted with scenes depicting the life, death, and rebirth of Osiris. Torches and long vents ascending to the surface provided light. Finally, the corridor opened into a square hall, surrounded by rows of pillars. Behind the pillars, numerous doors opened into the working and living quarters.
He passed the House of Life on his left. Menkaure’s team, including friends and enemies, lived and worked there. They copied sacred texts to satisfy the needs of the high-ranking priests of the temple. Wab priests, assigned more menial tasks, lived and worked to the right. Farther down, also at the right, lay the quarters of the High Priest. Facing them, on the other side, were doors to the temporary apartments of the Sumerians.
Instead of proceeding directly into the Sumerian apartments to offer his services, Menkaure dawdled. He stopped and contemplated the entrance ahead of him, which lead to the Inner Sanctuary. He was not yet ready to enter this chamber and would do so in the future only in the company of the High Priest. Still, Menkaure’s eyes, now accustomed to the dark, could see the statue of Osiris. It had been carved so far into the room that it almost touched the rear wall. The god held the crook and flail, symbols of the royal power. On his head sat the tall atef crown with the two plumes. Whatever the carver’s intent, Menkaure always found in the statue’s gaze a sense of serenity.
Menkaure listened. His ears picked up a faint sound of flowing water. The sound appeared to be coming from deep within the womb of the earth. Menkaure knew that this was the sound of the Netherworld Nile. He was again overcome with awe, just as he had been the first time he heard the waters of the underground stream. He knew it flowed deep under the surface of the earth, under the island itself and under the bed of the Nile, and then through the Netherworld. The underground river came to close to the surface only here, under Elephantine, where its waters separated and one of its branches fed the Earth Nile, the other remaining branch continuing its path through the Netherworld. And our Earth Nile feeds the whole of Egypt, Menkaure finished his thought and nodded to himself in satisfaction. This is how things ought to be.
The sound reminded him that no temple in the world was so close to the domain of Osiris. The Sumerians might be arrogant, but they had made the right choice in deciding to study here. With this thought, he remembered his task and turned toward the Sumerians’ quarters. He had walked only a few steps, however, when he stopped abruptly. The sounds of an argument met his ears. The stonework here was thick, but the voices were so loud they were penetrating even the closed door.
“Why did you do that?” he heard a terrified voice say.
“I had to,” a second retorted. “Don’t you understand?” This second voice was both speaking and breathing heavily. Menkaure realized he was overhearing an argument between the two lower-ranking Sumerians. “I feel Him coming, don’t you? Do they not say that once He sees and smells a person, he never lets go? He will always get him? I suspected as much when King Gilgamesh asked us to accompany his son to Egypt. Have you never thought it strange, this whole mission? Why would the King need to know what these ignorant Egyptians think of the Netherworld? Why would he send his own son away? I am telling you, he simply wanted his son away from Sumer.”
“I think he expected us to learn a counterspell,” said the first voice.
“Did you?” asked the other one sarcastically. “Now that the Prince is gone, we are safe from Him. He does not care about us.” Menkaure heard the slight emphasis on the word “him,” heard the edge of dread that touched the speaker’s voice. “Him” and the Sumerian prince were not the same person.
After a short pause, the first voice announced, “Let’s move. Look at all the blood. They will discover it shortly. There is no time to waste.”
Menkaure backed away, horrified. Suddenly, the door burst open and the two Sumerians shot out and ran directly into Menkaure, knocking him down. Menkaure stayed down, badly shaken, listening to the receding stampede and the shouts of the temple’s guard. Finally, he got to his hands and knees and crept toward the door to the Sumerians’ apartments. He looked inside and reeled back. The Prince’s body was cut open and his heart removed. He felt his gorge start to rise and stumbled toward the exit.
Suddenly, the Earth heaved. Menkaure fell again. The walls shook, as if they were being struck at regular intervals by the powerful blows of a giant hammer. Plaster fell off the walls and Menkaure heard screams of the other priests and guards. The floor in front of him split apart, and a river of huge snakes, their albino bodies glistening, spilled out of the crack and moved toward the exit. Behind him, he heard the statue of Osiris crash to the floor; the sound of running water became stronger. He looked around and saw that the back wall where the statue had stood had vanished to be replaced by a yawning black hole.
Dust obscured his sight; he tried to rise, but by now his efforts were being hampered by the other priests, who were trying to escape the shock zone. They were running toward the exit. Some stepped on Menkaure, who repeatedly tried to get up, only to be knocked down again. At last, he just covered his head and waited for the end. When he could no longer hear the noises of the chaos and when the earth stopped shaking, he opened his eyes.
The darkness had become absolute. Menkaure carefully got up and crept toward the exit. After a few steps, he ran, not into the familiar corridor, but into a wall of fallen rocks. He moved to the right, expecting to find a door of the House of Life. Yet another rock wall met him. At last, he started to stumble, first slowly, then faster and faster, around the northern and eastern walls, touching the walls, looking for an exit. He found none. Finally, it hit him.
He had been buried alive in the temple.
Slowly, he turned around, toward the sound of water swirling behind the eastern pillars.
BUY SPEAR OF SETH FROM AMAZON (PAPERBACK, OR KINDLE FOR ONLY $2.99) BY CLICKING ON THE IMAGE BELOW:
OR GET A PDF HERE (click on the link): www.newfantasynovel.com
