‘Shall we bury them?’ Djarka asked, his voice sounding hollow. He was kneeling in the light of the torches; I wondered if he was praying in what he considered to be a holy place.
‘As the tree falls, so let it lie.’ I quoted the proverb. ‘Tutu wished to die here; let him remain so.’
I was about to move away when my foot brushed a leather sack concealed in a cleft between the floor of the cave and the wall. I pulled this out and gently emptied its contents: a long bronze cylinder, the type to be found in a temple chancery or writing office. I undid the stopper and shook out the documents inside. The first was a map of the valley itself, showing the location of the cave in which we now stood. The second was a detailed chart showing paths and wells in the eastern desert. It marked routes across the Sinai, far away from the Horus Road, as well as the Egyptian garrisons which guarded the mines. The third comprised simple jottings. In the light of the torch I recognised Tutu’s own hand; I had seen enough documents from him. It revealed nothing new, except a list of towns in southern Canaan. The fourth, however, was truly puzzling. Tutu had been an expert scribe, whose command of writing had first brought him to the attention of Akenhaten, yet this piece of smoothed papyrus bore nothing more than a picture of an old man surrounded by leaves. I stared in astonishment. At first I thought my eyes betrayed me. I passed it to Djarka.
‘Why,’ I asked, ‘should the picture of an old man surrounded by leaves be so important to the Lord Tutu? It’s scrawled in his own hand.’
Djarka studied it, then lifted his head, staring at something beyond me. When I looked, I glimpsed the paintings, and the terrible secrets they held, on the wall behind me.
Unemui Bain
(Ancient Egyptian for ‘the Eaters of Souls’)
Chapter 17
I rearranged the torches and studied the wall friezes. They were the work of a professional artist, who had first plastered the rock face before telling his story. The first tableau showed a Pharaoh preceded by his standard-bearers and other officers in war chariots. They were pursuing a sheepskin-clad enemy who had advanced to meet Pharaoh but who now, routed and overthrown, were seeking the protection of a large hill fort on the banks of a river. The citadel was defended by soaring walls and towers with square windows. In front of it some of the enemy who had been captured were in the process of being impaled. Others were stretched out on the ground, wrists and ankles manacled in bronze clamps, waiting to be skinned alive. This grisly ceremony was being watched by the occupants of the fort. Men pierced by arrows fell from the walls whilst Pharaoh’s foot soldiers advanced under the cover of tall shields.
In the second tableau, Pharaoh, attended by his parasol-bearer, was questioning prisoners whilst a tally was made of the enemy slain by counting the severed heads heaped in front of Pharaoh’s chariot. In the third, the background had changed, and was dominated by hills, some steep, others shallow. The sheepskin-clad enemy, pursued by Pharaoh’s soldiers, had arrived before a fortress; its gates had been set alight, and bright red flames were licking hungrily upwards. In other minor paintings, warriors, naked except for loincloths, carried round shields and long spears against Pharaoh’s troops. They were led by a warrior who looked as if he had stag horns on his head. In the last tableau, the citadels had been taken; the ground was covered with corpses, heads impaled on poles. Pharaoh and his charioteers were leaving; behind them trundled carts filled with booty and slaves carrying baskets of the severed heads of his enemy.
I examined the paintings most carefully, Djarka standing quietly behind me.
‘These were not painted by an Egyptian,’ I remarked. ‘He is not celebrating an Egyptian victory but the defeat of his own people.’
I looked at the enemy again.
‘They are Hyksos,’ I whispered. ‘These paintings describe the Season of the Hyaena, when Pharaoh Ahmose drove the Hyksos out of Egypt. You know the story, don’t you, Djarka? How the Hyksos were a violent and vicious enemy, a motley collection of peoples, an army of mercenaries made up of various tribes, many of them from Canaan.’
I gestured around this makeshift sepulchre and grasped Djarka tightly by the shoulder.
‘You should have told me about this!’
He didn’t try to break free, but simply wiped a bead of sweat running down his nose.
‘Do you know what these paintings say, Djarka? Amongst the Hyksos were shepherd kings from Canaan, aggressive and warlike. These paintings show how they were driven out. Your people were the shepherd kings! They returned to Canaan, where successive Pharaohs pursued them. When warfare failed, your people, these shepherd kings, the Apiru, amongst whom is the tribe of Israar, gave up their weapons of battle and returned to Egypt as travellers and herdsmen. This time they won the favour of Pharaoh. Years had passed, so memories had dimmed. They had brought their God or Gods with them.’ I let go of his shoulder. ‘This is not in the paintings, but one such group settled at Akhmin. They became more Egyptian than the Egyptians. Rich and powerful, they gained high office. One of them, Lady Tiye, caught the eye and undying affection of the great Pharaoh Amenhotep III. Now your people had their opportunity. Queen Tiye, with her ideas of one, omnipotent, invisible God, began to teach her husband the secret knowledge of her people. By then, everything described here was history, dim folk memory. Amenhotep the Magnificent never realised the connection between his lovely young wife and the shepherd kings who once terrorised Egypt. He didn’t care if she worshipped the One God under the guise of the Aten, nor did he really care if she made this the staff of life for his younger son, the one he had rejected, the boy I met, the Veiled One, who later became Akenhaten.’
I went and sat on a rocky plinth, gazing up at Djarka.
‘I wonder, Djarka, what Generals Horemheb and Rameses would make of these paintings. They’d quickly realise that the Apiru are the descendants of the shepherd kings, the allies of the cursed Hyksos. That they present a great danger to Egypt, with their notions of One God, of a Messiah, of being a chosen people. They’d declare war on the Apiru. They’d exterminate them as well as launch the most ferocious campaigns in Canaan to wipe out your people root and branch. Did you know of this?’
Djarka went across and picked up his quiver of arrows and his powerful composite bow.
‘What are you going to do, Djarka? Kill me? Are you frightened I’ll send a message to General Horemheb in Memphis or the priests of Amun in Thebes? About this sacred place, where your people used to stop as they crossed Sinai into Egypt? A place where they could recall the deeds of the past and bury their dead? That’s why Meryre and Lord Tutu came here! I don’t know whether they are of your tribe; if not, they are still prime examples of how the ideas of you people can suborn the souls of even the most educated Egyptians. This is what Lord Ay sent Nakhtimin to discover. What do you want to do with it, Djarka?’
Djarka plucked the string of his bow. ‘What will you do, my lord?’ He stepped back so his face remained hidden in the shadows.
‘I am going to lose my temper if I think my friend, a man I regard as a son, is thinking of killing me.’
‘I don’t threaten you,’ Djarka stepped into the pool of light, ‘but I beg you by all that’s sacred …’
‘To destroy it? Of course I will. This valley is now polluted. It is only a matter of time before one of my merry boys amongst the mercenaries babbles about these caves, and how the Lord Mahu and Djarka took a great interest in one of them. Sooner or later General Rameses will send his own troops here, and they’ll comb the valleys till they find it. So, Djarka, put down that bow and bring as many oil skins as we can spare.’
We worked hurriedly. By early evening we had soaked that cave and all it contained: the mummies, the corpses of Tutu and his companions, and above all, those paintings. We threw in torches and the valley side burst into flame, the fire leaping out, burning the gorse and bushes around. Black columns of smoke curled across the valley before rising up against the dark blue sky. I never stayed to see how effective that fire was; I was eager to return to the camp and prepare for the next morning’s march. The troops were restive, desperate to be gone, tired, as one of them shouted, of the dead and the hideous night prowlers.