House of Scorpion Page 5

  Weret and Heria echoed him.

  “Would you like to see what’s been finished so far?” Heket asked.

  She led us to a small hut. The guard moved aside at her order and we went inside. Sunlight streaming through the door fell on marvelous objects. Heket pointed to a large jar holding a dozen arrows. “My brother liked to hunt. In fact, that’s how he died – trying to kill a hippo.”

  The arrowheads were ivory, with barbs on opposite sides and tiny flint blades inserted above the barbs. Another jar held a collection of random items – a copper adze blade, ivory casting sticks used in a popular strategy game, carnelian beads, obsidian and beige flint fishtailed knives. I counted almost three dozen jars, buff, circled by net designs painted in dark red. They’d probably be filled with beer and foodstuffs before they were placed in the grave.

  “This is my brother’s coffin,” Heket said. The box was long, made of acacia. “The carpenters just finished it yesterday. Took a long time to make the planks.”

  I’d never seen a coffin before. Nubt’s dead were wrapped in linen and placed on reed mats at the bottom of an oval grave, then covered with dirt.

  We exited the storage hut and moved to the nearest workshop. Women were steeping flower petals and spices in resin to make perfumed unguents. The fragrance was appealing. I promised myself I’d obtain a jar before I returned home. I watched men drilling carnelian beads, and working gold into jewelry, and chipping flint. One man was painting images of boats on a length of linen, one was forming a model boat out of clay with oarsmen perched on each side. His companion was making a gaming table out of clay. Another craftsman was shaping a pregnant hippo amulet out of pink limestone, probably to protect an expectant mother. Nubt had some fine craftsmen, especially those who worked copper, but I had to admit that Nekhen’s were far better.

  “These ivory carvers are working on numerous objects for my brother’s grave,” Heket told us as we entered.

  I saw men chipping small figurines – donkeys and Barbary sheep and elephants. I peered over a craftsman’s shoulder and caught my breath. I’d never seen such a magnificent and delicate carving in my life. “May I?”

  He carefully handed me a rectilinear plaque that had originally been a solid sheet of ivory. He’d cut the majority away, leaving a number of animals attached by their backs to the interior of the frame on all four sides, their feet pointing towards the center. Each animal had been separately and painstakingly carved. I picked out a leopard and wild dogs. In one corner of the frame an antelope on one side trod on the trunk of an elephant on another. Green malachite supplied highlights, brilliant against the white ivory. But the plaque wasn’t the only spectacular item in the workshop.

  “This ivory knife handle illustrates the king’s control over the natural world,” the craftsman said, handing me the nearly completed object. “I’m finished with the carving. Now I’m smoothing it.”

  On one side animals were facing the end of the handle where the flint blade would be inserted – a row of saddle-bill storks terminating with a heron, individual rows of leopards and hyenas and lions and wild cattle. Below the cattle was a decorative border of lines set in groups of four that I assumed represented landscapes. I turned the handle over. In the center portion were two rows of boats – three in the first row with upturned bows and sterns followed by a pelican, one with a reed pavilion on its deck, two in the second row, large, with antelope-headed prows. Behind the last boat were trunks of palm trees, no doubt representing mooring posts. Animals circled the boats, beginning at the bottom left of the handle with a large scorpion trailed by a griffin and leopard and Barbary sheep. Along the rounded end the craftsman had incised a lion followed by two birds. Across the top were four ibex and crested ibis. The images had been incised and the surrounding ivory cut away, with details added by further incision and pecking.

  “Will smoothing remove the striations?” Iry asked, closely inspecting the handle.

  “No need. The goldsmith’s going to cover it in gold foil,” the craftsman replied.

  I’d never heard of a craftsman making anything like that, and we in Nubt had unlimited amounts of gold to work with.

  We thanked the ivory carvers and moved to the next workshop. I noted a pile of siltstone cosmetic palettes, shaped like fish and birds and turtles, and one like a boat with upturned ends. And then the most amazing object – a nearly foot-and-a-half long oval cosmetic palette of dark siltstone.

  “Is this going in your brother’s grave?” I asked Heket.

  “No. It’s for Father’s coronation. One of the elites is going to carry it in front of him when he enters the oval court.”

  At first glance the palette appeared to illustrate the frenzy of a hunt. A reservoir for grinding cosmetics was in its center. Two cape hunting dogs framed the outside edges of the upper half of the palette. Serpopards, felines with long snaking necks, encircled the reservoir, their tongues working at a fallen gazelle. A bird spread its wings above their heads. Below the serpopards, occupying the bottom portion of the palette, were three saluki hounds chasing gazelle, ibex, oryx and hartebeest.

  “May I see the other side?”

  The craftsman turned it over. At the top two lions confronted gazelles. Below them a serpopard was biting a horned oryx, a leopard was attacking a Barbary sheep as a wild dog looked on, and a winged griffin was pursuing an aurochs. I caught the theme – hunter-prey, carnivore-herbivore. This palette wasn’t about frenzy – it was about control, a ruler’s main responsibility.

  “What’s this figure?” Iry asked the craftsman.

  “A man wearing a jackal mask and a long tail, playing an end-blown flute. He’s dispensing hunting magic – see the giraffe and ibex prancing to the sound?”

  “This is truly amazing,” I said.

  “It will be when it’s finished,” the craftsman said. “The last step will be to inlay all the animals’ eyes with precious stones.”

  Heket led us past the workshops to the oval court’s monumental entrance. Four tall thick posts, made from the trunks of trees taller than any I’d ever seen, supported a long wide sunshade of reed mats laid atop a lattice. Red linen banners streamed from the posts. We passed under the sunshade into the court. Its surface was packed clay, tilted slightly from one end to the other.

  “At the left end of the oval is the stone dais and throne where Father will preside during festivals,” Heket said. “The stone was brought here from the cataract by Dedi centuries ago. That thin pole at the opposite end topped with a copper falcon is where we deposit our offerings to Horus. The ditch ringing the oval, full of whitened bones? That’s where we drag carcasses after we sacrifice animals.”

  “There must be tens of thousands,” I observed.

  “This court was constructed by my ancestor Aboo when he ruled Nekhen,” Heket said. “Before that it was just a patch of packed clay where people celebrated, without the surrounding wall or entrance or dais. The bones go all the way back to Aboo’s time.”

  “Is this where your father’s going to be crowned?” Heria asked.

  “It is.”

  “It’s where the first ruler equivalent to what we now call a king was crowned in the entire valley, according to Sety,” Iry told us. “His ancestress, Tiaa, confirmed the man, Kairy, using a talisman supposedly hurled from the sky in a fireball by the falcon god thousands of years ago. Maybe you noticed it around Sety’s neck when he got off Father’s boat – a falcon-shaped object, not quite stone, not quite metal.”

  “I noticed,” I said. I recalled Sety boldly staring at me. “It’s so understated, compared to what kings and elites wear.”

  “Do you believe Sety?” Heket asked Iry, skeptical. “That a god gave his family a talisman?”

  Considering that Heket believed her father was about to become a god, and that the kings before him had been, it must be unsettling to believe some non-royal family had been singled out by Nekhen’s god. It was a bit unsettling for me as well, since Father also considered h
imself sacred. Remarkable too that King Scorpion, the most powerful of all the valley’s kings, would keep Sety close knowing Sety’s supposedly special relationship with Horus. But there were, after all, a multitude of gods in the valley – every settlement and hamlet had its own. Who could say for certain whether a god had or hadn’t favored a particular family?

  “According to Sety’s stories, more than seven hundred years ago Tiaa was called upon by Nekhen’s elites to confirm their ruler because they believed her claims about the talisman, and that she had the favor of the falcon god,” Iry said. “Tiaa confirmed Kairy as ruler of not only Nekhen but all the hamlets in the surrounding region after she arranged for the patriarchs of those hamlets to pledge Kairy fealty. No man in the valley had ever ruled more than a single hamlet or settlement before that.”

  “Back then Nekhen was the most important and dominant settlement in the valley,” Heket said. “Father says he’s going to restore us to our rightful place once he takes the throne.”

  Based on everything I’d learned over the years as I’d served Father in his audience hall, and what I was seeing with my own eyes today, that was wishful thinking. Nekhen was nothing compared to Nubt – far less populated, far less cultivated land, less wealthy – and if my brother Sabu was to be believed Tjeni was at least as large and prosperous as Nubt. Memories of a glorious past would never overcome today’s realities. “If Nekhen was truly so powerful, why is it so diminished now?” I asked.

  Heket bristled at the question, offended.

  “That’s a very long story,” Iry said.

  “And why is every settlement in the valley so similar in beliefs and culture?” I continued. “We know about Nekhen’s god Horus in Nubt, for example. You obviously do in Tjeni, Iry. I saw the falcon standard on your father’s boat.”

  “Let’s sit. I’ll try to explain, based on what is my admittedly limited knowledge.”

  We seated ourselves on the bottom step of the stone dais, shaded by the linen sunscreen that arced over the throne atop the platform.

  “Not only has the talisman been handed down in Sety’s family for more than two thousand years, so have stories, all the way back to Aya, Sety’s original ancestress, who watched the talisman streak across the sky in a fireball and who was led to the crater it created by the falcon god himself,” Iry began. “Aya’s band was typical – hunters and gatherers who wandered the savannah east and west of the valley, for in those days the land bordering the river wasn’t desert like today. Those bands followed herds across the plains and only came into the valley in season to harvest wild grain that grew along the river. Aya’s band was the first to both farm and herd, on the shore of a great lake a few hours walk west of the river near the foot of the delta. Eventually, of course, bands settled in the valley and took up farming full-time at promising spots, their land renewed each year by the inundation. Each band was led by a patriarch, its eldest male.”

  “Always a man,” I muttered.

  “Not always,” Iry corrected. “According to Sety, Aya served as her band’s patriarch for many years.” His eyes met mine. “She was, by all accounts, a bold and spirited woman.”

  “No man would follow a woman today,” Heket averred. “It wouldn’t be right.”

  No, because men are so forthright and trustworthy and full of themselves.

  Iry shrugged. “Some locations, like Nekhen and Tjeni and Nubt, attracted multiple bands who lived a little apart from each other. In time, members of the bands intermarried, and their camps expanded and began to merge, and the camps eventually became hamlets and in time settlements. Nekhen was by far the largest anywhere in the valley. Now, because the floodplain at Nekhen produced grain in abundance, not everyone had to spend their days tending crops. Some men could fish full-time, some hunt, some herd, some brew, some make pottery. Those who specialized traded their goods with Nekhen’s farmers for food, and vice versa.”

  “How do you know any of this is true?” I asked. “Simply because Sety told you?”

  “And one of my father’s advisors, Khabash, though he died a few months ago. He’d been preparing me to rule a settlement on Father’s behalf ever since I was five years old.”

  “Which settlement?” I asked casually, though I desperately wanted to know. Sabu was convinced that Scorpion wanted to conquer Nubt. If Iry’s future settlement was one currently beholden to Tjeni that might mean Scorpion didn’t have ambitions beyond Tjeni’s region and Sabu was wrong. But if it was Nubt…

  “Probably a small one,” Iry replied. “The consequences of being a third son. Lagus will succeed Father and rule Tjeni. Mekatre will oversee a settlement far more important than mine.”

  Either Iry really didn’t know or he was being purposefully vague. I had a very strong feeling it was the latter. Given how much Iry knew about Nekhen and how excited he seemed about everything we were seeing, it was entirely possible this was the very settlement Scorpion planned for him to oversee. Why else would Iry have taken the time to learn so much about it? That meant, if Lagus held Tjeni and Iry Nekhen, that Scorpion expected Mekatre to rule Nubt. Speculation on my part. But speculation with the ring of truth. In light of Sabu’s claim about Scorpion’s ambitions it was a speculation I determined to pass on to Father. Not that he’d pay any attention, given the source. At his peril.

  “In time, the men who controlled the specialties in Nekhen became the settlement’s elites, replacing the bands’ patriarchs,” Iry continued. “The elites chose a man from their midst to rule them all. That was necessary, for as Nekhen grew someone needed to allocate farm fields after each inundation, and collect grain to guard against famine, and render justice, and intercede with the falcon god. When one ruler died the elites chose another, for rule wasn’t hereditary in those days.”

  “Every one of Nekhen’s rulers for the past two hundred years is descended from my ancestor Ma-ee,” Heket said.

  “My brother Sabu will succeed my father as king of Nubt, even though Father was appointed,” Nebetah said.

  Only because Sabu had murdered Father’s rightful heir, Hetshet. Something Nebetah didn’t know and wouldn’t believe.

  “My brother Lagus will be the next king of Tjeni,” Heria interjected.

  “Only Tjeni?” I asked casually.

  “Why would Father care about the rest of the valley?” she asked.

  I wondered if Heria was telling the truth, or was simply uninformed. Probably the latter. I doubted that Scorpion would tell his daughters anything of importance. My father certainly didn’t. At least not wittingly.

  “In the six hundred or so years after Kairy became Nekhen’s ruler, Nekhen continued to increase in size and power,” Iry continued. “The craftsmen who worked beside this oval court created the finest objects of ivory and bone and stone and wood and precious stone anywhere in the valley.”

  “They still do!” Heket exclaimed.

  “If there’s one thing elites crave that their ruler must provide it’s fine objects that set them apart from lapwings,” Iry said. He looked at me. “Sorry, Matia. Commoners.”

  Elites’ thirst for luxuries was something all royal children knew about. And shared.

  “Nekhen’s ruler at some point seized control of the craftsmen and himself began to distribute what they made to elites, making those elites loyal to and dependent on him. Similarly, he began sending traders beholden to him to barter Nekhen’s goods as far north as Tjeni and as far south as the cataract. Soon hamlets and settlements throughout the South relied on Nekhen for elite luxuries, as well as flint knives and microdrills and such to aid the lives of commoners. Nekhen grew wealthy, its boatmen traveling the region in reed boats, delivering goods. Its ruler became ever more powerful.”

  “More powerful than Tjeni’s or Nubt’s?” Weret asked.

  “Very much more,” Iry said. “As far back as Tiaa’s day, men from Nekhen began dreaming of unifying the valley under one ruler. Six hundred years after Tiaa confirmed Kairy, when Dedi was alive, Nekhenians began
pursuing unification in earnest.”

  “Why did they wait so long?” I asked.

  “Because unification’s an extraordinarily difficult proposition, Matia. No ruler in those days – there weren’t any kings – had men enough to conquer who knows how many hamlets and hold them and more than six hundred miles of territory between the cataract and the sea. Especially because vast stretches were then, as now, virtually uninhabited, meaning no fields of grain for an army bent on conquest to live off.”

  “So these days a king who covets territory is more likely to seize it from a neighbor than try to take the whole valley?” I asked.

  “I guess it depends on the king, Matia,” Iry said noncommittally. “Unification’s a grand ambition. It’s bound to happen sometime. But it’ll probably take hundreds of years to fully realize. Anyway, pursuit of unification was actually initiated by a woman.” Iry smiled at me. “As it happened, that woman was Abar, ancestress to me and Heria and Weret.”

  “Abar the Traitor!” Heket exclaimed.

  “Traitor?” I asked.

  “She betrayed her husband, Ma-ee, Nekhen’s ruler,” Heket said. “He executed her in front of this very dais.”

  “That’s awful!” I exclaimed.

  Heket shrugged. “I’m descended from Ma-ee and his second wife.”

  “As I said earlier, Abar’s father, Aboo, ruled Nekhen after Dedi,” Iry informed us. “Abar was forced to marry her cousin Ma-ee, Aboo’s successor. Now, in the years she was growing up, Dedi had filled Abar’s head with thoughts of a unified valley, a dream he held particularly dear. After Abar became Ma-ee’s wife, and was thus in a position of power, she decided to take the first steps on the path to unification. She decided the time was right because of Nykara’s wooden cargo boat.”

  “Which you claim transformed the valley,” I interjected.

  “That’s right, Matia. Wooden boats could travel great distances without falling apart and carry far larger loads than reed vessels. With Abar’s backing, Nykara began to trade more widely in the valley than anyone ever had before. He went all the way to the sea, over and over. He returned each time to Nekhen with ever more rare and exotic Northern goods – including olive oil and wine and lapis lazuli and obsidian. To answer your question, Matia, why all settlements in the valley are so similar – it’s because of Abar. She was the first person to truly recognize the transformative power of trade. She sent traders from Nekhen to live permanently in Nubt and Tjeni and operate trading posts in both places, like your ancestor you told me about, Pabasa.”