Ancient Evenings

  “From the Hittite leaders came forth a Prince with a terrible face. His beard was lean, and one eye was as flat as a stone, the other was bright. He, too, was dismounted, and in the moment Usermare saw him, I think my King was not at ease.

  “They began to fight. The Hittite was fast and his movements were quicker than my Good and Great God. If this Prince had been as strong with his blade as my King, it would have ended soon, but Usermare attacked with such force that the other went back in a circle away from His great arm. Still, the Hittite’s parries blocked the sword of the Sun from above and below, and now, given the chance, he struck back. Behold, there was blood on my King’s leg. He limped now, and moved more slowly, and the look in His eye was not good. He breathed like a horse. I could not believe it—the sword of the Hittite grew bolder. Soon he began to attack, and my Lord retreat. The weight of all these hours of fighting was on His mouth, and, then, fending an overhead blow from the Prince, my Ramses’ nose was broken by His own shield. I thought He was lost, and it may be that He was, but the end of the fight was interrupted. For the lion had become so agitated that I had to cut him loose from the tether or he would have turned on the horses.

  “The Hittite, seeing the beast bound toward him, lost no time running back to his own people, and, Usermare, much fatigued, leaned on His sword. The lion licked His face. A sound like the bellowing of hippopotami came forth from the Hittites, and I was certain they would charge us where we stood. If so, we were done. Usermare might not have the strength to lift His sword, and then the lion and I would be alone. Yet at that moment, a Hittite trumpet blew. I heard a call for their retreat. Now, to my astonishment, they moved out quickly, leaving their royal tent behind.

  “I was certain of a trap. I could not believe they would leave such spoils for us. Not when they were so strong. Yet in the next moment, I saw their reason. The Division of Ptah had come on to the field at last. The phalanxes of its chariots were moving up fast from the south. So the Hittites were now in a rush to reach the gates of Kadesh before Ptah crossed the line of their retreat. We had been left alone on the field.

  “I think my King had a vision then. It was other sights He saw. I can only tell you that He staggered across to the abandoned tent and emerged with a bull in His arms made of gold. It was the God of these Asiatics, and had great furled wings, and the face, not of a bull, but of a beautiful man with a long Syrian beard. It also had the pointed ears of a monster, and a castle in the shape of a tower was its hat. I had never seen a God like this. He was screaming now, in some harsh language of the Asiatics, a hideous host of lamentations, and must have been naming all the larger catastrophes, locusts and boils for being deserted by His troops. In truth, it was the most horrible voice I ever heard. It spoke through the blistered lips of my Pharaoh, the oaths resounding in Usermare’s throat until He threw the God to the ground. Whereupon fumes came from the mouth, yes, from the golden mouth of this bull-beast came smoke, I swear it. I did not know how my Pharaoh could be called the Mighty Bull of Amon, yet here before us was another bull, also a God, with wings, and a beard. It was then I saw the face of the secret whore of Kadesh. It was her features I saw on the winged bull, a beautiful woman’s face with a beard. So I knew that the cries of this voice came from Metella’s God. We were hearing His agony that the battle was lost. Maybe it is in war that you come to the place where the rainbow touches the earth, and much that has been hidden is simple.”

  TEN

  “With the departure of the Hittites, the fields were empty. We were alone, as I say, and Hera-Ra raised his head and gave a lonely cry. It was a sound of much confusion as if the animal did not know whether we were victorious or desolate. In the distance I could see the legions of Ptah give up their attempt to reach the gates of Kadesh before the Hittites. They wheeled instead toward the King’s square. Yet my Pharaoh disdained to raise an arm to greet them. We returned over these bloody anguished fields to the sound of many an injured cry and more than a few of the dying to give us a cheer. One fellow even managed to make a sound with his head half off. You saw nothing but the hole in his neck out of which he seemed to speak. My Pharaoh, however, ignored the pandemonium with which our soldiers cheered and as we came through the opening of our square, He drove to the ruins of His Pavilion in silence. He did not dismount.

  “Even as His officers came toward us, bowing, then crawling forward on their knees, so did He speak only to the horses. ‘You,’ He said, ‘are My great horses. It is you who rode with Me to repulse the nations, and you were under My hand when I was alone with the enemy.’ If there had been sparks when He struck the sword of others in combat, now there was flame in His eye as He looked at His officers. They did not even dare to beat their heads to the ground. ‘Here,’ He said, pointing to the horses, ‘are My champions in the hour of danger Let them know a place of honor in My stables, and let their food be given to them when I am fed.’ Now, He stepped down from His Chariot and caressed each of their noses. They gave an answer in voices full of pleasure. Their feathers were in shreds and their hides were red, their legs shivered in fatigue, but they called forth a thanks to Him. Then my Ramses heard the voice of His officers.

  “ ‘O Great Warrior,’ they cried out. It was a babble, however, of one hundred names of praise in six or seven languages, and all in a rush. ‘O Twice-a-Great-House,’ they cried, ‘You have saved Your Army. There is no King that fights like You.’

  “ ‘You,’ He said to them in return, ‘did not join Me. I do not remember the names of those who are not beside Me when I am in the midst of the enemy. But here is Meni who is My shield,’ and He put His arm about me, and patted my buttock as if I were a horse. ‘Look,’ He said to all those officers. ‘With My sword I have struck down thousands, and multitudes have fallen before Me. Millions have been repulsed.’

  “They all cheered,” said my great-grandfather. “Some had fought, and some had even fought a lot. Many were bloody with their wounds. Yet they listened in shame and lowered their heads and when the Generals of the Division of Ptah came forward to greet our Monarch at this reunion, He did not thank them for saving the day, nor reward His son Amen-khep-shu-ef for the rigors of that ride to join the legions of Ptah, but only remarked, ‘What will Amon say when He hears that Ptah left Me alone on this great day? I slaughtered the enemy beneath My wheels but other chariots were not there, and neither was My infantry. I, and I alone, was the tempest against their chiefs.’

  “We could only bow. A desolation worse than the swords of the Hittites was being felt. His officers touched the ground, they struck their heads, they lamented. I, in the most peculiar of positions, also bowed, but out of caution, and tried to keep from smiling. I thought that perhaps I was in error and should, unlike the others, remain standing so that my King should never mistake me for them, and I wondered if His mind had not taken a wrench from the screams of that Asiatic God who roared out of His throat. I did not know, but my King was soon silent and sat by Himself, alone by the blackened statue of Amon, and with the linen of His own skirt cleaned the soot from the belly and limbs of Amon, and pressed His forehead to the golden brow in a long embrace.

  “We surrounded Him in silence. We waited. As the gold of the late afternoon lowered with the sun, and evening was near, He said, ‘Tell the men they may begin the counting of the dead.’ By these words the officers knew they might speak to Him again.

  “Yet, I know He lifted His head from the brow of Amon with the greatest regret. So long as He sat with His forehead touching the golden forehead of the Great God, so did He see a sunset behind His closed eyes and feel the peace of our Egyptian wisdom enter His mind and pass into the scourged flesh of His throat and mouth. I could not believe it but when He looked up, the blisters were gone from His lips. (They still remained on mine.) So I could see that in all the splendor of the pure gold out of which Amon was made, there was also balm as cool as dew. What merits in this metal of the Sun!

  “Soon, the counting of the hands was begun. We used t
o lay the hands of thieves in a heap outside the gate of the palace, even as we do now, but, in that time of Ramses the Great, the counting of hands was also done after battle. Usermare-Setpenere stood in His Chariot and soldiers came forward in a line from the Household troops to be followed by the soldiers of Amon. Many hundreds, then thousands of these soldiers passed one by one before the Pharaoh on this night even though we did not know yet if all of the battle had taken place or it was only the first day. Metella still had his infantry and his chariots, and both were inside the gates of Kadesh. They might come out tomorrow. So we could not say whether we had won or must get ready for the dawn. But the field where we fought this afternoon was ours for tonight, and that is like having another man’s woman. She may go back to him tomorrow, but no one can tell you tonight that you have lost. So the longer this evening went on, the more it became a night of pleasure. As if in contempt for that enemy who had gone behind his walls, we lit so many campfires that the field was scarlet and gold and its light prevailed through the darkness like a glow of sunset on one of those miraculous evenings when night itself still hovers, or so it seems, on the last, and then the very last, and then beyond the last light of evening and nobody loses their shadow. So was our field luminous on this night, and the light came from that part of the sun which entered the trees in their youth, and now came forth again while the wood was ablaze.

  “All through the night, our fires burned, and through the same night, Usermare-Setpenere stood in His Chariot under a full moon and received the severed hands of the slain Hittites one by one. Since He spoke to no one but the soldier who came before Him on His right hand, and then to the scribe who sat at His left hand entering the name of the fellow bringing in the trophy, so was I able to move away often and come back. Yet on all that long evening, for so long indeed as the line tasted, so did Usermare-Setpenere stand in the same place on His Chariot and never move His feet. I realized once again how to be near Him was to gain all knowledge of how a God might act when He is in the form of a man. He looks so much like a man and yet reveals divinity by even the smallest of His moves. In this case, it was that He did not move His feet. To receive a thousand men, and another thousand, then another, to take into one’s right hand the severed hand of a man dead since this afternoon, or dead in the last hour—we were still killing our prisoners—to inquire the name of the soldier who has given over to you this cold hand, or this warm hand, then tell it to the scribe, then throw the hand on the pile without ever moving one’s feet, was an exhibition of such poise that one saw the mark of a God. He never moved His feet. Each time He cast another hand onto the pile, and may I say the pile grew until it was the size of a tent, He threw it with the same grace by which He steered Maat and Thebes when the reins were about His waist, that is, He did the task perfectly. One could not think of another way to have done it. He was showing us the nature of respect. The right hand of a dead warrior, the same right hand that might have seized His own in a treaty, having been given to Him, so did He cast it onto the pile with care, and to the place where by His eye it belonged. The pile grew like a pyramid whose corners are rounded, and never did He allow the base to become too broad nor the top too blunted. Yet He was also careful to avoid the vanity of building too fine a peak, for then one misplaced throw could destroy the shape. No, these hands were added to the pile in a harmony between the height and the base that was equal to the harmony with which our Ramses received His soldiers.” Here Menenhetet closed his eyes as if to recollect whether it was all so perfect as in his description

  When he began to speak again, he said, “You may be certain that the calm of this ceremony was not matched by the scenes on our campground so recently a battle field, and now a campground again. It is one matter to kill a man in battle, another to find time at that instant to cut off his hand. Oh, there were sights even in the worst of it when your chariot was overturned, yet through the spokes you’d still see one of ours on his knees sawing away at the wrist of some Hittite he’d just dropped. You’d even see some fellows so blind and red-faced for their trophies that they did not see the Hittite who came up behind, killed them, and started to cut off their lips, the lips! Can you imagine if we had lost the battle to the Asiatics this day?

  “You can see then that no good soldier would stop to claim a hand during the tides in and out of such a battle. Figure then the disputes that arose among us that evening when men who had been the bravest on the field were without a prize at night. Those hands were worth much to a soldier. You were able to say your name to the Pharaoh, and have it put on a list. Benefits, even a promotion, could follow. Besides, it was humiliation to go through battle and not have a hand to show. What, after all, were you doing? I can promise that fights broke out. When one squadron of chariots who had fought with the King’s Household discovered that a company of infantrymen from Amon, the first to run, were now approaching the Pharaoh’s line with a larger collection of hands than the charioteers themselves, a second war nearly began among our own. Soon the officers were in a council to make peace on this matter.

  “They knew there would be terrible argument unless they agreed on some allotment. A fracas could spew forth in front of the Pharaoh. So, forcibly, we had to declare how many Hittites were slain by each company. That way we could determine the numbers of hands to be passed out, platoon by platoon. If it came to five for every eight soldiers in one company, you may be certain the five strongest men then seized their hands regardless of how they had fought that afternoon. Let me tell you—more than one ear got bitten off in the little fights that continued. Given the outrage of real warriors who had been passed over, not to speak of the bravado of many a big fellow who had been a coward earlier but was not remembering it that way now, we embarked on a night I will not soon forget. Another fifty of our own must have perished before the darkness was done.

  “It was worse with the captured Hittites. Wherever one was not guarded by brave and responsible officers, he soon lost his right hand. More than a few bled to death. More than a few had the stump bound with a leather thong and went on to live and be brought back to Egypt. Naturally, they could expect the prosperous future of a slave with one hand. All the while, those of our men who had not been allotted a trophy went searching the bloody ground with their torches, and some even dared to cut the hands off our own slain, although to be caught in such an act was equal to losing your arm. After all, everyone’s trophy would be tainted tomorrow if some of the hands proved to be Egyptian, so, count on it, every dead soldier of ours who was found mutilated at the wrists was stripped of his few clothes and his face soon made unrecognizable—I will spare you more. Even so, the corpse still looked like one of ours in the morning. With or without a face, a dead and naked Egyptian does not look like a naked Asiatic. We have less hair on our bodies.

  “Speak of hair, these poor Hittites had beards like thickets and probably hoped to protect their necks from a sword. They also had hair on their head as tough as the hide of a helmet and that may have been to shield their skulls from our clubs. Small use now. Even a helmet cannot protect you from all blows. As the night went on, we used these captives, we gorged on them, we devoured them, of that I will speak. Everywhere was the comic if piteous sight of ten or twenty Hittites all tied with their hands behind their necks, the same cord binding them to the throat of the next fellow, until when told to walk, twenty would hobble along in a lockstep, their eyeballs squeezed out of the heads by terror, their necks at an angle, yes, so hunched up and bound together you could mistake them for a clump of figs on a string, except that these figs groaned frequently from the pain of their bonds. May I say their captors guarded them poorly. Any gang of soldiers who came blundering along could cut off the first or last on the line—it was too much work to untie a captive in the middle. Then you would see some sights in the blaze of the campfires. Many a poor Asiatic’s beard was treated like the groin of a woman, and his buttocks as well; why, you would see five men working on one fellow who had already been t
urned into a woman, and one poor captive was even put into harness like a horse while our soldiers played with him as they would never dare play with a horse. This Hittite could not even get his mouth open to scream—it was filled near to choking. Picture the fury of the man who straddled his head.

  “You would have thought with all the blood we had seen this day that some would want no more. But blood is like gold and feeds the appetite. You could not smell it enough and some could not even taste it to their full content. All of us, despite the discomfort of being covered by it, sticky with it, crusted over, came, sooner or later, to want more. It was like fresh cosmetic over old. Blood was now as fascinating as fire and nearer to us. You could never travel to the center of a fire, but the blood was here in everybody’s breath. We were like the birds who collected in a million and infinity on this battlefield and would feed through the night on all they could tear from the flesh of the slain. They would fling themselves into the air with a heavy tilting of the earth as we came near and give a clap of sound like thunder, but it was only the uproar of their wings breaking away from us and the blood. Then there were the flies. They enraged us with their bites as if they now carried the fury of those we had killed. In the pestilence of those insects, I brooded much on the nature of wounds, and thought of how a man’s power goes out of his flesh when he is injured, and travels into the arm of the man who gave the wound. On the other hand, so soon as you laid a cut into a man, you could treat his pain. If you were sorry for what you had done, you could spit on your hand and that might reduce the suffering of your victim. The Nubians had told me so. But if you wished to irritate his wound, you did well to drink hot and burning juices, or wine heated over a fire. Then would his wound be inflamed. So I was thinking of the Hittites who had given me the cuts and slashes I knew on my chest, my arms, and my legs, and I looked about until I could find a Hittite sword. All through the night, I oiled this blade and took care to bury it in cool leaves so that it would ease the festering of my body tomorrow. I also drank hot wine to irritate the wounds I had left on my enemies.