In my later years, going through the records, I discovered that Isithia’s former husband had been an army officer. Perhaps she was terrified of the chaos war might bring. Occasionally I tried to ask her about Mother but she forced a quick smile and told me to keep quiet. I asked about my birth and she pounced like a cat would on a mouse.
‘You were born between the twenty-third and twenty-seventh day,’ she waved her fly whisk at me, ‘so you must always be wary of snakes and crocodiles.’
On reflection, oh how right she was! I asked what god should be my patron? What divine being protected my birth? She pushed her face close to mine in mock sadness. ‘Strange you ask that, Mahu. Strange to answer. No god.’ Again, how right she was!
My memories should be sweet: a clean house with its bathrooms, hard-tiled stoolroom and well-decorated chambers. The air was sweet with the fragrance of kiphye, juniper, cassia and frankincense, and plentiful incense, the divine perfume of the gods, burned in spoons, their handles carved in the form of human forearms. Food was plentiful, delicious meals piled high on reed dishes. Yet I cannot recall anything sweet. No children ever visited us. I was given an education of sorts. The first hieroglyph I drew was the sebkhet, an enclosure with battlements that represented my life as a boy, locked in an enclosure. On rare occasions Father arrived and took both my aunt and me across the Nile to the Todjeser — the Necropolis. I loved such occasions: the fast-flowing Nile, the cooling breezes, the pungent smell from the thick papyrus groves, the flashes of colour as ducks and wild birds rose up and wheeled against the blue sky. Sometimes the roar of the hippopotami would echo along the banks. I’d feel a shiver of fear as my father pointed out the crocodile pools. Occasionally, I’d glimpse the gold-topped obelisks and carved mountings of the temples of Thebes.
‘That is Waset,’ Father would whisper in my ear. ‘Pharaoh’s city. And from here you can see …’ And he’d list the temples but I couldn’t really care. I was just so pleased he was close to me. Eventually the crew would make ready to land at the Great Mooring Place. Above us soared the peak of Meretseger, the brooding goddess, and those craggy cliffs which could change colour so dramatically. These loomed over the City of the Dead and its warren of tombs, the Valley of the Nobles, the Valley of the Kings, the places where the dead came. We’d disembark on the quayside, pass the huge statue of the green-skinned god Osiris and go up through the winding streets of the City of the Dead, a place of horror and delight where the stench of natron, the heavy salt from the embalmers’ shops, mingled with the more pervasive stink of corruption. Yet we’d turn a corner and glimpse beautifully carved caskets and coffins or elegantly sculptured canopic jars. The embalming shops, cabinet-makers and coffin suppliers did a roaring trade. As in life so in death. The rich could buy the best but the corpses of the poor were everywhere, nothing more than dried-out skeletons, draped in skins lying on floors or ledges. Not for them the Osirian rites of the embalmer but the cheap juice of the juniper pumped up through the rectum, the entire corpse pickled in natron. The very poor were given some cheaper, even more corrosive, substance, before being dried out in a natron bath wrapped in a dirty sheet and housed with scores of others in some coffin room. I noticed my aunt’s whisk was even more vigorously at work as the flies buzzed everywhere. Great black clouds of them seemed to haunt her.
At last we were free of the city and going along the rocky, crumbling path to the Valley of the Nobles. At its entrance we were greeted by the Master of the Necropolis carrying his staff, its top carved in the shape of an ankh, the symbol of life. He was flanked by two priests wearing Anubis masks, which the Master introduced as Wabs or ‘Pure Ones’. They took us along to my father’s tomb, the House of Eternity which sheltered his wife’s corpse and would, in time, shelter his, Isithia’s and mine. Even then I uttered a silent prayer that, in death, I would be free, as far away from her as possible. We entered a courtyard. Inside, a small stela proclaimed the message:
This was the first clear reference I had ever seen to my mother. My father squatted down and pointed out the words Ma a Kherou. ‘Do you know what that means, Mahu?’
‘No, sir,’ I replied. My father smiled slightly, a rare occurrence. ‘It means “Be true of voice”. Will you be true of voice, Mahu?’
‘Why, yes, sir.’
That was the first promise I ever really made and the first one I never really kept. ‘Was Mother …?’
‘Your mother was a good woman,’ Father replied.
He took my hand, another rare occurrence, and led me round to the other side of the squat stela to read out the confession from The Book of the Dead.
‘“I have not ill-treated people. I have not taken milk from the mouths of little children”.’ (I glanced sharply at my aunt.)
Under this there was a picture of my mother’s soul being weighed on the Scales of Truth. My aunt took great delight in naming the demons, also carved there, ready to seize my mother’s soul if the Scales went against her: Great Strider, Swallower of Shades, the Breaker of Bones, the Eater of Blood, the Shatterer of Shades. I tried to grasp my father’s hand but he gently pushed me away. Standing up he ruffled my black hair.
‘Don’t worry, Mahu. Your mother is in Yalou, the Fields of the Blessed, under the protection of the great Osiris.’
He led me across the courtyard to the small temple faced with columns. The Master of the Necropolis unsealed the door. For a while we waited for the torches to be lit and my father led me proudly into the vestibule.
‘This, Mahu, is our House of Eternity! We have prepared it well.’
The walls of the entrance chamber were decorated with scenes from Father’s life: being received in audience by Pharaoh to be presented with the Silver Bees. Father hunting out in the desert, driving his chariot towards a herd of antelope. Father in a papyrus thicket, boomerang at the ready, waiting to bring down the gloriously painted water birds which burst out at his approach. Other more touching scenes were recorded: my mother, lithe and graceful, anointing him with perfume or pouring water into his hands.
We left the vestibule and went down a narrow passageway; its walls on either side were decorated with scenes of souls being taken to Abydos, of worshipping the gods, of offering them dishes of fruit above lighted braziers. At the entrance to the burial chamber Father paused to talk to the priests, making sure that the Ka priest, the Priest of the Double, offered prayers and libations to the gods on the anniversary of my mother’s death. At last we entered the burial chamber containing four sarcophagi. To the left stood my mother’s, dark-red and covered with quotations from The Book of the Dead. I was fascinated by the wadjet eyes painted just under the sarcophagus lid. I ignored everything else and went across and pressed my cheek against the cold stone. When I looked up, my father was staring down at me, tears in his eyes. My aunt, however, still stood in the doorway, the only time I had ever glimpsed her really fearful. I wished to crouch down. Burial chamber or not, I could have slept by that tomb. However, my father picked me gently up and led me out.