House of Scorpion Read online

  “Every one of us has a connection to Nekhen,” I said, glancing at my companions.

  “Anyway, Abar ordered her traders to intermarry with the natives and raise their children as Nekhenians raised theirs, thereby exporting Nekhen’s culture and beliefs and god directly into those settlements.”

  “Which is why we at Nubt know Horus.” Now it made sense.

  “Over the centuries, Tjeni and Nubt were indeed transformed into versions of Nekhen,” Iry said.

  I recalled Sabu and Hetshet’s conversation about Pe and Dep just before Hetshet’s murder. “What about the delta?”

  Just then what I took to be a very short girl led a small laden donkey into the court. As she came closer I saw she was a dwarf. She couldn’t have been more than three feet tall. I’d heard about dwarves; I’d never seen one before. All of my companions stared.

  She came to a halt in front of us. “I’ve brought wine and honeyed cakes, Majesty, as you ordered,” she told Heket, bowing.

  I’d never seen anyone with such short legs.

  “This is Hunur. She attends me,” Heket told us. “Hunur, distribute the cakes and pour the wine. Quickly. We’re hungry and thirsty.”

  Hunur removed two pouches and one jar from a net slung over the donkey’s back. She handed each of us a honeyed cake from one pouch. Then she pulled cups from the second, and after we all had one she filled them with wine.

  Heket took a long drink. “Waddle on back to the per’aa now, Hunur,” she said dismissively. “Leave the wine.”

  “As you command, Majesty.”

  I took a long drink as well. The wine was very good.

  “To answer your question about the delta, Matia, Sety told me the North’s quite different from the South,” Iry said as Hunur placed her pouches back in the nets “Our elites spend their lives accumulating fine objects that they take with them to the Afterlife. By removing them from circulation, they make the objects that remain above ground rarer and more precious. Our rulers and elites rest in special cemeteries set apart from commoners, denoting that even in death they’re more important than those who serve them. Northerners, on the other hand, invest their profits in expanding trade and are buried with hardly anything.”

  Finished loading her donkey, Hunur bowed again, then led her beast from the court.

  “Most people who live in the delta are either descended from its original ancient settlers or migrated there from the lands along the seacoast to the north,” Iry continued. “However, a few are like us. Settlers from Nekhen founded estates in the delta after Abar’s execution, and some migrated to existing delta hamlets and insinuated themselves among their inhabitants. So there are small areas of the delta that are much like us in the South.”

  “How did that happen, and when?” I asked.

  “Actually, Ma-ee was responsible, if Sety’s to be believed,” Iry replied. “You see, Sety’s ancestress Amenia was Abar’s rival for Nykara.”

  “Wait! Abar was married to Ma-ee but she was in love with Nykara?” Heket shook her head. “No wonder she betrayed her husband.”

  “It’s a very complicated story and Sety would tell it better than I can,” Iry said. “I seem to recall that Ma-ee stole Abar away from Nykara in the first place. But I’m not sure I remember all the details exactly. What’s important is that for some reason Ma-ee sentenced Amenia and her family to be executed in this court. Nykara rescued them a few hours beforehand and transported them to the delta on his boat. To mask their escape, Abar set the rulers’ cemetery atop the terrace on fire.”

  I glanced up at the ruler’s cemetery again. Obviously, many rulers had died and been buried there since the fire. Thus the many structures.

  “Nykara and Amenia founded an estate in the delta. Sety still lives there,” Iry continued. “Nykara’s first wife, Bakist – again, a long story – had ties to Farkha, the second most important settlement in the delta both then and now. Sety’s family maintains those ties to this day. Anyway, in the years that followed, many Nekhenians, chafing under Ma-ee’s despotic rule, fled north too and, with Nykara’s help, founded estates of their own. What should have taken centuries – to make the delta into a version of Nekhen – happened virtually overnight in numerous localities – thanks to Ma-ee’s malevolence.”

  So… Iry had multiple ancestral ties to Nekhen. That meant what I assumed would be his assignment to rule it after Scorpion conquered it would make it easier for Nekhen’s elites to accept him. Another piece in a puzzle. “You said your ancestor Shery, Abar’s son, settled in Tjeni instead of remaining in Nekhen, Iry. Why?”

  “Ma-ee figured out that Abar had helped Nykara and Amenia escape and, as Heket said, he executed her. Several months later one of her handmaids spirited her sons with Ma-ee, Shery and Shepseska, to Tjeni. She knew Abar wouldn’t have wanted them raised by their monster of a father.” Iry gazed into the distance. “Abar’s execution marked the exact moment Nekhen started its long slow decline. Both Tjeni and Nubt turned against Nekhen because of what Ma-ee had done, prompted by the traders Abar had settled among them.”

  “Including my ancestor Pabasa?”

  “Yes. Tjeni thereafter focused on trading with Nubt and the settlements in the delta and ignored Nekhen. Tjeni became rich. Since Tjeni and Nubt were positioned to control what reached and left Nekhen by river, and because they wouldn’t let Nekhen’s traders travel any farther north than Nubt, and because many of its farmers had fled to the delta to form estates like Nykara’s, Nekhen shrunk in size and importance.”

  “Which Father will rectify once he’s on the throne,” Heket insisted.

  Another bit of information to pass on to Father. If Heket knew her father’s ambition he must not be keeping it a secret.

  “Perhaps,” Iry said noncommittally. “In the two centuries since Abar’s time many settlements throughout the valley have risen to prominence and created small regional alliances with their neighbors, only to fade away and disappear. There was once a coronation at Tjeni attended by almost fifty regional rulers – from Inerty and Abu and Abadiya and Abdju and Gebtu and Nekhbet and Edfu and more. But now only Tjeni and Nubt and Nekhen remain as powers. The rest have been absorbed or melted away. Anyway, that’s all I know.”

  An awful lot, I thought. Far more than I’d have ever found out about Nekhen and the valley and its past any other way. And possibly more than you intended for me to know, Iry. Do you even care that I might have figured out your father’s ambitions and your future because of a few offhand remarks? Do you think I’ll keep what I’ve learned to myself? That’s the one advantage a woman has over a man – you always underestimate us. I counted myself fortunate I’d fallen in with the least prepossessing of Scorpion’s sons. He’d been very talkative so far. I wondered if he was always that way or if I’d triggered his verbosity. I’d caught Iry staring at me several times during the afternoon when he thought I wasn’t looking. I knew the signs – he was attracted to me. Most men were. I’d learned to use their attraction to my advantage years ago. Men were so simple; all I ever had to do was feign interest and they fell all over themselves trying to please me. Iry had something I wanted – information. Why not flirt a little, see if he’d let down his guard even more, possibly even boast about his future to try to impress me? In the best case, he’d let even more slip about Scorpion’s intentions, something that might help me stop Sabu. Flirting wouldn’t be a chore – Iry was actually pleasant and surprisingly interesting, and seemingly without guile. But I was going to be cautious – Iry was the son of a king who’d be my master or at the least my enemy if Sabu got his way. And if Scorpion was my enemy Iry would be too.

  Iry rose and the rest of us with him. We headed toward the entrance of the oval court, following Heket. I noticed a sherd of decorated pottery lying amidst the bones that ringed the court and bent and picked it up. On one side was an image of an ancient cow goddess, Bat, now the patroness of a small settlement beholden to King Scorpion, Hiw. On the reverse was a woman, her arms bound b
ehind her, being held captive by a bull. I held it up for the others to see. “Any guess what this is?”

  Iry took it, studied it for a long time. “A bull symbolizes the power of a king. If I was to guess – and I may be completely wrong, or perhaps wishful – this sherd might commemorate Ma-ee executing Abar.”

  That simple sherd suddenly made an ancient story very real to me. And credible.

  “Would you like to keep it?” I asked Iry.

  He shook his head no. “It should stay here, where you found it, Matia. For all we know, Ma-ee burned Abar’s body after he killed her. He was vindictive enough. If so, this image might be where her spirit comes to reside at night.”

  Iry handed me the sherd. I let my fingers linger against his for a moment longer than necessary. He noticed. I bent down and replaced it.

  We continued up the wadi path, deeply worn from centuries of travel. To either side were scraggly grass and sand and scrawny shrubs and a few groves of twisted trees. The path itself was yellow; apparently, clay washed off the plateau during infrequent rains. I managed to “inadvertently” stumble on a stone at one point and Iry grabbed me around my waist to keep me from falling. He was surprisingly strong and nimble. And embarrassed afterwards. Numerous smaller wadis intersected the main one. The end of one to our left was blocked by a wooden fence and brush. I heard the lowing of cattle.

  “That’s where we keep the herd that supplies milk to the settlement,” Heket said. “Women line up with jars every morning. Of course, we have many more cattle than those. They graze on the floodplain most of the year, and on the plateau during the inundation.”

  Heket led us to another intersecting wadi on the opposite side of the path.

  “This is our ruler’s zoo,” she announced proudly. “Kings have maintained it for hundreds of years as a sign they control the natural world.”

  Iry perched beside me on the fence. The wadi was divided by smaller fences into many pens. Men were carrying fodder and water pouches into some of them, shoveling dung out of others. I spotted a lion, a hippo, many gazelle and oryx, several ostriches, a hyena, baboons, a hartebeest, several Barbary sheep, and most spectacular of all, an elephant.

  “Did your father capture any of these?” I asked Heket.

  She shook her head no. “Mostly descendants of beasts captured by earlier kings. A few were captured by my great-grandfather. Father’s going to take all the visiting kings and rulers hunting two days from now to see what they can add.”

  A small pen was to one side, holding two newborn donkeys and one that couldn’t be more than a couple of weeks old. “Why donkeys?” I asked.

  “They’re going to be buried with my brother,” Heket replied.

  A sad fate for the beasts.

  Heket led us from the zoo back to the path. We soon reached the foot of the outcrop of rock that jutted upward from beside the path near its apex. Boulders were jumbled there, some as much as ten feet high.

  “We’ll climb,” Heket said. “There’s a wonderful view of the valley from the top.”

  The climb was easy, aided by handholds and footholds that spiraled around the outcrop. On a few flat rock faces I noticed ancient etchings, boats mostly. We gained the top and were met by a warm strong wind thick with the scent of cultivated fields and river water. The top was oval-shaped and nearly flat and we all sat along one edge and dangled our feet over the side. I sat close enough to Iry that our arms occasionally touched and my long hair blew against him. The entire valley was laid out before us – the path we’d climbed, Dedi’s hall, the settlement, the cultivated strip, the river, the island, the quays with dozens of boats bobbing and swaying with the current.

  “The hamlet on the opposite side of the river is Nekheb,” Heket informed us.

  It was much smaller than Nekhen, a scatter of huts climbing a low slope towards the east.

  “Nekheb’s people worship Nekhbet, the vulture goddess,” Heket said. “There’s a particular rock face beyond the hamlet etched with hundreds of vultures, and many more in the hills to its east.”

  Not surprising that people in this region would worship both the vulture and falcon. Dozens of both were swooping and circling over the river, riding updrafts, occasionally diving towards the surface.

  “The terrace to our right holds the upper settlement,” Heket said.

  It was covered by a handful of rude huts, several mud-brick houses, and numerous overgrown foundations. Smoke was spiraling from among the huts. Some large work areas were shaded by sunscreens of reeds laid atop wooden frames.

  “What’s in that large mud-brick building?” Iry asked.

  “It’s where we process meat and fish for the settlement,” Heket replied. “There’s a brewery on its far side – it supplies beer for everyone who lives on the upper terrace. More people used to live here in the past. Now it’s mostly potters whose kilns are up on the heights to catch the breeze. Nekhen’s pottery is traded throughout the valley,” Heket said proudly. “Has been for hundreds of years. We have special clay that’s only found here. When it’s fired some turns reddish and is decorated with designs in white. Some turns buff, the images on it dark red or red-brown.”

  “Like the jars we saw that are going to be buried with your brother.”

  “Yes.”

  “Sety’s ancestress Tiaa invented both pottery styles at her kiln somewhere at the base of the plateau behind us,” Iry said. “I’m going to try to find it while I’m here.”

  “Good luck,” Heket said. “There are dozens of kilns on the terrace, some in use, as you can tell by the smoke, most abandoned. Anyway, the terrace behind us and to our left holds the rulers’ cemetery.”

  “Everything we know and are familiar with in the valley started right here at Nekhen,” Iry said. “We all have roots here. And Abar’s dream of unity still persists. Amazing.”

  Sabu was convinced Iry’s father wanted to conquer Nubt. Had Iry just let slip that Scorpion wanted even more? Did Scorpion intend to conquer the entire South? If he had that, would he turn his attention to the North? That was a sobering thought. Even likely, if my inference that Iry intended to rule Nekhen and Mekatre Nubt was correct. “Do you think unification will ever be more than a dream, Iry?” I probed. “Do you think the valley’s kings will ever yield to a single one?”

  “If they do it won’t be to me,” he laughed.

  “Because you’ll never be a king, Iry,” his sister Weret proclaimed.

  Iry’s disappointing answer had revealed nothing about Scorpion.

  “Every king should pledge fealty to my father,” Heket insisted brightly. “After all, Nekhen’s the settlement of Horus, and Horus is the protector of kings. Nekhen’s king should have primacy, as in the ancient times Iry told us about.”

  Heket was delusional, and if her father was he’d be dangerous. Nekhen abutted Nubt’s southern border. Nubt would be in real trouble if Tjeni and Nekhen ever became allies – we’d be surrounded by enemies. From what I’d learned so far today, it seemed that Khab was more likely to have designs on Nubt than Scorpion. Khab was the man out to prove himself. Sabu might be worried about the wrong enemy. Maybe Scorpion was actually content to rule his current stretch of the river. Or maybe he wasn’t and Nubt was a target of two separate enemies.

  Heket had more to show us. We descended the outcrop and followed her farther west up the wadi path to the ruler’s cemetery, passing through a gate in its surrounding mud-plastered reed wall. I’d never seen such an impressive collection of buildings anywhere – tall, made of wood, their outsides plastered and painted white, decorated with images in yellow and blue and green and black, many surrounded with wooden fences, some with clay masks hanging beside their doors. The cemetery may have once been orderly but now the graves were jumbled together, with newer halls interspersed among the older. The ground between the halls was drifted with sand, but sand had been cleared from around a brand-new hall. Probably that of the recently-buried king.

  This cemetery was far differ
ent than Nubt’s. Our elites and rulers were buried atop an elongated gravel ridge located in a wide wadi, close by a similar ridge where commoners lay. Our elites’ graves were large enough to hold many grave goods – tools, slate palettes, cosmetic items, clay and ivory figurines, stone vessels, pottery. By comparison, commoners were buried in round pits in the fetal position with a few pots and personal possessions – even in death we elites were superior. Unlike this cemetery, every bit of our graves were underground, covered over with brushwood and low mounds of dirt. The dirt had collapsed into the oldest burials, leaving sections of the ridges pockmarked.

  “The newest hall covers the grave where my great-grandfather, King Khayu, is buried,” Heket said, pointing. “Father erected it in the tomb precinct of a long-forgotten ancestor. Some of these structures shelter underground graves, but some are columned halls where we come to remember our ancestors.” She pointed again. “There’s a stone statue in that chapel, supposedly of Abar’s father, Aboo. We believe it’s the first life-sized stone statue ever created in the valley.”

  Several men were placing mud bricks against the east wall of a newly-dug grave, perhaps sixteen feet long and eight wide and four deep.

  “What are they doing?” I asked.

  “It’s my brother’s grave,” Hetshet said. “Workmen extended the plateau eastward with sand topped with mud-brick debris and stone so they could make his grave that large. As you can see, the pressure from the fill’s buckling the wall. They’re trying to shore it up with bricks.”

  “What about the acacia planks?” Iry pointed to an orderly pile.