“I told you not to touch my things,” said Ramose angrily. “If you’ve stolen anything—”
“Who are you?” Karoya asked calmly.
“You know who I am.”
“I know that you have a fine set of scribe’s tools inlaid with ivory and jewels, yet you use the plain, old worn tools given to you by scribe Paneb.” She picked up the gold rings. “And this gold must be worth a year’s food rations for a whole family.”
“I don’t have to explain my possessions to a barbarian slave!” Ramose was trying to sound calm, but he wasn’t.
“I’ve always felt there was something curious about you. When you first came, you hardly even knew how to tie your own kilt. And no orphan boy is used to drinking gazelle’s milk. I want to know who you are.”
Ramose snatched back the gold rings and wrapped them up again.
“And there’s another thing about you,” said the girl.
“What?”
“You are very rude. Egyptians are strange people, but they are polite. They always say thank you, even to a slave girl. You never do.”
“If you tell anyone about this, I’ll…” He could not think of anything to do to Karoya.
He needed time to think. He ran out of the house, out of the village and didn’t stop till he got to the lion rock, his chest heaving, his breath rasping. He thrust his hand into the hollow. He had an awful feeling there would be no message for him, but his groping hand found not only a roll of parchment, but also a knotted linen parcel. He pulled them out with relief, broke the seal on the papyrus and read the message.
My prince, my heart is in mourning, I am crouched with my head on my knees. The news I have will bring you nothing but grief. Heria, your beloved nanny, is resting from life. She did not suffer but died peacefully in her sleep. There is other news, less sorrowful but still unwelcome. The queen has been in your father’s ear. She has appointed a new tutor for her son, Prince Tuthmosis. I have been posted abroad to the land of Punt. I have said farewell to the Princess Hatshepsut. By the time you read this letter, I will have left. Your secret is safe still. I do not know when I will be able to contact you again. My prayers will be with you every day.
Ramose’s shaking hands untied the linen bundle. Inside was a beautiful blue jewel, almost too big to fit into his hand. It was made from lapis lazuli and shaped like a large beetle. It was edged in gold and had two red garnets set in the stone for eyes. On the beetle’s back were carved the three hieroglyphs that made up Ramose’s name. He turned over the jewel. The flat bottom was covered with more hieroglyphs, tiny and finely carved. It was his heart scarab, made to be buried with his mummified body, wrapped tightly next to his heart. There was another scribbled note with it. It told briefly how Heria had managed to take this heart scarab from the dead body of the village boy. She had replaced the scarab with a ceramic one with the boy’s own name on it. Hopefully the priests would not notice. Ramose looked at the scarab. It was so bright and so beautiful out there in the bleak, colourless desert.
Ramose sank down on his knees in the sand. In the last weeks he had held back his sadness, he had buried his loneliness, he had hidden his fears. Now he couldn’t hold it in any longer. He had believed that his two friends would save him, now they were both gone. Heria, the nanny who had cared for him all his life, was lost to him forever. Keneben, his tutor, was far away in a foreign land. His father believed he was dead, and so did his beloved sister. The queen who hated him was still in the palace, still the pharaoh’s favourite. He was alone in the world. Tears dropped one by one into the sand and disappeared, sucked into its dryness. Ramose wept and wept until the sand beneath his face was wet.
A hand touched his shoulder. Ramose looked up, startled. His first thought was that the palace guards had been sent to get him. It was Karoya.
“What’s wrong, Ramose?” she asked.
Ramose wiped his face on his kilt.
“Why does the writing sadden you so?”
Karoya stroked his arm gently, just like Heria used to do when he was upset. She looked at him with what seemed like real concern. Then she suddenly stopped stroking. She was staring at the scarab in Ramose’s hand.
“Where did you get that? I’ve never seen such a jewel.”
Ramose sat back with the scarab in his lap, but said nothing.
“What sort of an apprentice scribe has such a thing and two handfuls of gold and scribe’s equipment fit for a king?”
Ramose said nothing.
“Who are you?” asked Karoya peering at Ramose.
“You ask a lot of questions,” he said.
Ramose felt that he had nothing more to lose. He needed to know that there was at least one person in Egypt who knew who he was and why he was in hiding.
“I am Prince Ramose,” he said, trying his best to sound royal even though his face was streaked with dirt and tears. “Third son of the pharaoh. Heir to the throne of Egypt.”
“The prince is dead. Even I know that.”
“He’s not dead. I’m not dead.”
Karoya looked at the scarab, then at Ramose.
“Do you believe me?”
“That would explain a lot of your strangeness. Why would a prince be hiding in the village?”
Ramose told her the whole story, all about the deaths of his brothers, the evil queen, and his friends’ fears for his life.
“My friends were supposed to be collecting evidence against the queen and the vizier, to convince the pharaoh that they had murdered my brothers and tried to murder me. Now my friends are gone there is no one in the world I can trust, apart from my sister, Hatshepsut, and she thinks I’m dead.”
“You can trust me,” said the slave girl. “I won’t tell anybody.”
Ramose looked at her and believed her.
“Thank you.”
9
CARVED IN STONE
Karoya had kept her word and told no one what she had learned about Ramose. “Why do you have a jewel that is shaped like a beetle?” she asked as she kneaded bread dough in a large clay bowl.
“It’s a heart scarab,” replied Ramose who was sitting in the kitchen garden watching her.
“What’s it for?”
“It’s made to be buried with me when I die.”
“It’s very beautiful. It seems a shame to bury it in a tomb.”
“When an Egyptian dies, their body is preserved so that it can travel into the afterlife.”
Karoya glanced at him dubiously and started to shape the dough into flat round loaves.
“I’ve heard about this. They take out all the insides and wrap the body in strips of cloth.”
“Not all of the insides—the heart is left in. In the afterlife Osiris, the god of the underworld, judges whether the person is fit to enter. Anubis, the jackal-headed god, takes the heart and weighs it against the feather of truth. If the heart exactly balances the weight of the feather, then Anubis knows the owner of the heart has been a good and truthful person and allows him to enter the afterlife.”
Karoya fanned the small fire under the conical oven and added dry reeds and pats of animal dung to the flames.
“What happens if it doesn’t balance?”
“Then the person is not fit for the afterlife. There is a monster called Ammut with the head of a crocodile, the front legs of a lion and the rear of a hippopotamus.”
Karoya stopped fanning the fire.
“The monster comes and eats the heart of the bad person.”
“And the beetle-shaped jewel?”
“It has my name on it. So that Osiris knows it is truly my heart. On the bottom of the scarab there is a prayer that no one will speak against me on that day of judgement.”
Karoya took the rounds of dough and stuck them on the outside of the conical oven.
“Have you been a good person?” She didn’t look him in the eyes as she usually did when she spoke to him.
Ramose had never really considered whether he was a good person or not. Would
Osiris really question the goodness of Pharaoh’s son?
“I’m not dead yet. When I am older, I will be pharaoh and I’ll be a good pharaoh like my father. I’ll treat my people well.”
“And kill and enslave all foreigners,” added Karoya.
The air was fragrant with the smell of baking bread.
“Maybe not.”
The first loaf, now cooked, dropped to the ground.
“What are you going to do now?” Karoya asked quietly.
It was something Ramose had tried to avoid thinking about. The truth was he had no idea what to do.
“You only have two choices, as I see it,” said Karoya picking up the hot bread with the tips of her fingers. “You stay here and work in the Great Place or you go back to the city and let your father and sister know you are alive.”
Ramose watched the other loaves fall from the oven one by one as they cooked. The thought of seeing his sister again lifted his heart.
“I have to go to the palace,” he said after a while. “There’s nothing else I can do.” It felt good to make a decision. “I’ll stay here until my father returns from his campaign.”
Karoya picked up the other loaves and wrapped them in a cloth.
Ramose had begun to think that there was nothing he could do but stay forever in the Great Place counting chisels and recording absent workers. He’d imagined himself eating gritty bread and hearing people laughing at his clumsiness and making jokes about his fear of enclosed places till he was old and fat like Paneb. Talking to Karoya had helped him work out what he had to do. All he needed now was a plan, a way to get back into the palace.
In the meantime, he would stay where he was and wait till his father returned from Kush. He had to work another shift at the Great Place.
Ramose decided to keep away from the other boys as much as he could. He would concentrate on the work he had to do and try and stay out of trouble. He found a quiet spot behind the storehouse and started working on a stone flake. He was writing out a list of the provisions that had arrived from the city: sacks of grain, piles of smelly fish, several oxen ready to be slaughtered and fresh vegetables too. All of this had to be allocated to the workers according to their roles in the tombs.
They were paid once a month. The scribe and the foreman earned the most, seven or eight sacks of grain, then came the sculptors and painters, who earned six sacks. The labourers who hauled blocks of stone and baskets of stone chips each got four and a half sacks. Finally came the apprentices who earned two sacks of grain each. The perishable food was divided up more or less equally among the workers. Ramose wrote down his own earnings: two sacks of grain, a dozen fish, one and a half deben of oxen meat, a jar of oil and a basket of vegetables.
Ramose wouldn’t be seeing any of his earnings though. He had to pay for the three copper chisels he’d damaged and the oil he’d wasted staying up half the night rewriting. He also had to repay Paneb for his scribe’s tools and for feeding him while he had no income. It would be several months before he would actually get any payment himself.
Ramose’s concentration was broken. He could feel someone watching him. He looked up. It was Karoya.
“What are you doing up here?” he said. “Why aren’t you back in the village?”
“I have to fillet and salt the fish,” she said. “It has to be dried before it can be given out to the workers.”
“So will you be staying here in the Great Place?”
“For a few days. I go where I am told.”
“It will be a change to have a friend here,” Ramose said. “Ever since I arrived, all I’ve done is make enemies.”
Samut came over. “Get back to your work, slave girl,” he shouted at Karoya and raised his hand to hit her.
“I told her to come over here,” said Ramose. “I need to record how many fish she has gutted.”
Samut walked away grumbling. Karoya smiled at Ramose and went back to her work.
Now that he was used to the work and the walking up and down the tomb ramp every day, Ramose wasn’t ready to fall into bed as soon as his day’s work was over. He was bored. In the evenings, the workers sat around in small groups talking. Some worked on private sculptures either for their own tombs or to sell to others. They made small statues of the gods or stelae, inscribed stones telling the gods all about the good things they had done in life. The painters sometimes brought up stools or small chests that they had made in the village. They painted them in their spare time and would sell them when they got home. The other boys often spent the evening playing games, but lately Weni had been working on a chest.
Ramose came back from the tomb carrying some stone flakes he wanted to check over before the sun set. Weni was sitting outside the hut carefully painting texts on the side of his chest in neat hieroglyphs. Ramose wasn’t looking where he was going. He stumbled on a rock, staggered sideways to stop himself from falling over, and stood on Weni’s chest. It was made of soft tamarisk wood, not hard imported wood. The chest splintered to pieces.
Weni was furious. His face turned red and he shouted angrily at Ramose, calling him every name he could think of.
“I’m sorry, Weni,” said Ramose. “I didn’t mean it. Truly.”
“What difference does it make whether you meant it or not?” shouted Weni. “It’s ruined anyway. Do you think I care whether you’re sorry or not?”
After that incident Ramose decided to keep away from the hut until it got dark. He went for a long walk. He climbed the hills behind the Great Place. Not that there was anything to see. In those bare hills the most exciting thing that Ramose came across was a tuft of dry grass or a lizard slithering under a rock or a scorpion boldly warming itself in the lowering rays of the sun. Walking gave him time to think.
Ramose knew that when he went back to the palace, his problems wouldn’t all be over. His father would welcome and protect him, he could be sure of that. His sister would rejoice that he was still alive, he was certain of that as well. Queen Mutnofret and Vizier Wersu would pretend they were pleased that he was well, but secretly they would still be plotting his death. He might not survive there for long.
He was getting used to the idea that he might die, but he hated the thought that his story would never be known. One evening after the day’s work was over, Ramose decided to go for a walk up the mountain which rose up from the valley on the western side.
The peak of the mountain formed a natural pyramid shape. It was a sacred place known as the Gate of Heaven, which reached up to the sky and the realm of the gods. It was the home of the cobra-goddess, Meretseger.
There were no paths leading up there. No one ever climbed the Gate of Heaven, they had no reason to.
Ramose picked his way through the rocks and watched the workers’ huts shrink and disappear into the sand as he climbed. He climbed up around the cliffs that surrounded the valley until he was higher than the rim of the Great Place. He could see over into the valley of the tomb makers’ village and beyond that to the Nile Valley. If he squinted his eyes he could see a glint of white from the temples on the eastern bank of the river. He thought he might have seen a flash of gold from a flagpole. It was probably his imagination though. What he definitely could see was the sun getting lower in the sky. He would have to hurry.
After the suffocating tomb and the cramped and crowded hut, it was good to be alone and with space around him to breathe. He kept climbing. A vulture described slow, lazy circles above him. He came to a second cliff face. There was an untidy pile of twigs and dried grass perched on the top of it. It was the vulture’s nest. He looked up at the great bird, symbol of the goddess Nekhbet, protector of the pharaoh. The bird must have flown many miles to bring the materials for its nest to this desert place. It was a good omen. He decided the place would suit his purposes well.
He unslung his reed bag and pulled out a copper chisel and a stone flake covered in his own untidy writing. He selected an area of the rock face, one that was set back in a fold of the cliff. For
most of the day it would be in the narrow band of shade cast by the surrounding cliffs. At that time though, the rays of the setting sun shone onto it, burnishing it with an orange glow.
Before he set to work, Ramose said a short prayer to Thoth, the god of writing, and sprayed some drops of water on the cliff face. The text on the stone flake was the brief story of his escape from the palace. Now he was going to transcribe it onto the rock face. He got out his palette and a reed pen. First he marked vertical charcoal lines to help him keep the columns straight. Then, holding the stone flake in his left hand, he copied out the text in hieroglyphs. He wrote the words carefully in ink first.
In the eleventh year of the Pharaoh Tuthmosis, the first month of the season of peret, day seventeen, Prince Ramose, son of Pharaoh Tuthmosis and Queen Ahmose, beloved brother of Hatshepsut, lives. His enemies tried to end his life, but failed. Soon he will avenge their evil deeds. When his great father flies to heaven, Ramose will take his place as Pharaoh of Egypt.
The sun was getting low. Ra was about to start his perilous journey through the underworld again. Before the sun rose again, the sun-god would have to defeat the serpent-god, Apophis. Ramose had to stop his work and get back to the valley. He scrambled down the cliffs in the gathering dark.
The next evening he returned and started to carefully chisel out the hieroglyphs. He had little experience at carving and it was slow work. He wanted it to be neat. He carved each hieroglyph with care. The work made him feel good. If Vizier Wersu and Queen Mutnofret succeeded and killed him, his story would be marked in stone forever. Somewhere in the world the truth would be written. Even if it was in a hidden fold of a cliff, high in the hills, deep in the desert where no one would ever see it.
He was concentrating hard, carving the first column of hieroglyphs.
“Why do you come all the way up here to write?” said a voice behind him.
Ramose nearly jumped out of his skin.