the Dead, the guide to the underworld, between her legs, and dressed her with necklaces and amulets, as well as finger stalls for each finger and toe, rings and sandals, all for her long journey to the other bank of life. All of this was new jewelry that he had had made after her death. He had a winged scarab with the goddesses Isis and Nephthys carved as the supporters, and then engraved the back with the words, “O my heart, heart of my mother, heart of my forms, set not thyself up to bear witness against me, speak not against me in the presence of the judges, cast not thy weight against me before the Lord of the Scales. Thou are my ka in my breast, the Khnoum which gives wholeness to my limb. Speak no falsehood against me in the presence of the god!” He added other engraved scarabs, not mounted, but with hearts of lapis lazuli, and all carrying his dead wife’s name.
He had amulets and statuettes of the gods Anubis and Thoth, which he hung around her neck and attached to the pectoral. Besides the ornaments, he placed tiny reproductions of walking sticks, scepters, weapons, for he left nothing to chance in his wife’s house of eternity. The next world, he knew, was no place of peace and quiet. It was full of hidden traps and dangers, and Roudidit must be prepared for her journey.
When he was done, he stepped back and let the embalmers wrap her again in linen bands and place a gold mask over her face. Then, turning to him, they nodded. She was ready for the cortege.
His servants went first, carrying cakes and flowers, pottery and stone vases. Behind them came the furniture: beds and chests, cupboards, and the chariot, everything that Roudidit would need in the other world. Behind them came his wife’s jewelry, all Roudidit’s necklaces and jewels, carved human-headed birds and other valuables, displayed on dishes so the crowds would see her wealth, the wealth he had given Roudidit and which would travel now with her to the other side.
The idlers watching the procession could not see Roudidit herself. The stone sarcophagus containing her body was hidden beneath a catafalque drawn by cows and men, all of it mounted on a boat and flanked by statues of Isis and Nephthys.
The women followed, his sisters and relatives, and all the hired mourners, who had smeared their faces with mud and bared their breasts as they wailed and rent their garments, lamenting Roudidit’s departure.
At the Nile they were met by a priest with a panther’s skin draped over his shoulders. He carried with him burning incense, and the bare-breasted mourners bowed and stood back, letting the boat bearing the catafalque be lowered into the water.
Amenhotep, too, stood aside, and watched in silence as the catafalque was launched into the Nile River. He stood thinking of his wife, of when they were young and first in love. She had been promised to an Ethiopian monarch, and he to Tamit, the daughter of Nenoferkaptak. He had beseeched Pharaoh, and the gods had said he could marry Roudidit if he won her in battle, if he defeated the Ethiopian and brought the kingdom of Kush as ransom. He had gone off to do battle with an army of Nubians fully armed with coats of mail, swords, and chariots. And when he reached Egypt again, he drafted the Nubians into his army, gave them command of the archers and leaders of their people, and branded them all slaves under the seal of his name. And Pharaoh, seeing the wealth he had gathered, gave him Roudidit to wed.
He had never loved another woman in his life, and he knew now he would never love another, though already he had been offered the young sister of his brother’s wife. He was too old, Amenhotep knew, to let another come into his heart.
As the boat bearing the catafalque slipped away from shore, he and the mourners stepped into a second vessel to follow close behind, accompanied by two boats full of Roudidit’s possessions. The women went at once to the roof of the cabin and continued to cry, sobbing in the direction of the catafalque. Their dirge carried across the wide river:
Let Roudidit go swiftly to the west, to the land of truth.
The women of the Byblite boat weep sorely, sorely.
In peace, in peace, O praised one, fare westward in peace.
If it please the god, when the day changes to
eternity,
we shall see thee that goest now to the land where
all men are one.
From the eastern shore came the reply from others, wishing their farewells, their voices carrying clearly over the calm Nile:
To the west, to the west, the land of the just.
The place thou didst love groans and laments.
Amenhotep stepped to the bow of the boat, into the hot Nile sun, and shouted in the direction of the catafalque, to where his lost wife lay wrapped in her scented linens:
O my sister, o my wife, o my friend!
Stay, rest in thy place, leave not the place where thou dost abide.
Alas, thou goest hence to cross the Nile.
O you sailors, hasten not, let her be:
Ye shall return to your houses,
but Roudidit is going to the land of eternity.
When he had sung the dirge, he moved again into the shade of the cabin and out of the blazing sun. The cries and laments of the female mourners rose up, filling the air, but he turned toward the western shore and saw that a group had already gathered on the sand bank. A number of little stalls had been set up to sell goods, food, and devotional objects.
Everyone profits from the crossing over, Amenhotep thought, everyone but myself. I am the one who has lost his world.
She had almost died once, in childbearing when they were first married, and he had prayed to the goddess Hathor, the Lady of Imaou and of the Sycamore, to save Roudidit’s life and that of his newborn son. And then the baby had cried “Mbi” and turned his face to the earth, and Amenhotep knew then that nothing but evil would prevail. And he had taken his son out then, and without naming the boy, without entering it in the House of Life, killed the infant, before more harm could come to his family.
She had never given birth to another child.
The four boats were docked and unloaded, and the procession was gradually reformed. They moved up the bank and away from the booths, following behind the catafalque, which, across the flat, cultivated land, was being hauled on a sledge by two cows. Ahead of them all was the priest, sprinkling water from a ewer.
There was only the funeral procession now, all the elders had fallen away, left behind at the bank. Amenhotep moved ahead to greet the goddess Hathor, who, in the shape of a cow, emerged from a clump of papyrus at the entrance of the tomb.
The catafalque was brought to the entrance and the sarcophagus removed. He stepped to the sarcophagus and placed a scented cone on its head, as if greeting a guest in his own home. Behind him, the female mourners began again to weep and beat their heads in anguish. There were more priests now, coming forward with bread and jugs of beer, as well as an adze, the curved knife shaped like an ostrich feather, and a palette ending in two scrolls.
All these, he knew, were objects to empower the priests to counteract the effects of the embalming, to restore his dead wife on the other side so she could use her limbs and her missing organs, so she could see, could open her mouth and speak, could eat and move once again.
The long months of mourning, of suffering his losses, were over.
Amenhotep cried out, “O my sister, it is thy husband, Amenhotep, that speaks. Leave me not! Dost thou wish that I should be parted from thee? If I depart thou wilt be alone, and none will be left to follow thee. Though thou wast wont to be merry with me, now thou art silent and speakest not.”
He turned away from the women and stepped down into the tomb, down to the square stone receptacle that had been carved out, and watched as his servants carried his wife and lowered her into place. He placed Roudidit’s amulets beside her, then moved away so that the heavy stone lid could be set in place. The jars containing her organs had been put in a chest, and this chest was set down in the tomb by the priests; the funeral furniture had been arranged, and then boxes of oushebtiou, the small statuettes of all her loved ones, were placed in the vault.