II
Khnumhotep was an honest and god-fearing man.
He welcomed Dio in his house as though she had been a member of his own family, not because she was under the patronage of Tutankhaton, who had power and influence at court, but because exiles were under the protection of the immortal gods. While he was the chief superintendent of Amon's granaries he might have taken bribes like everyone else; but he did not. When Amon's sanctuary was closed and Khnumhotep lost his post, he might have received another and a better one, had he been false to the faith of his fathers; but he remained true to it. At the time of famine he might have sold at an exorbitant price the corn from his estates in the Lake country, Miuer, which had not suffered from drought, but he sold it cheaper than usual and gave away one granary-full to the starving.
He lived in this way because he remembered the wisdom of his fathers: "a man lives after death and all his works with him"; he remembered the scales with the heart of the dead man upon one of them, and the lightest feather of the goddess Maat, Truth, upon the other,—the sharp eye of the god Tot, the Measurer, watching the pointer of the scales.
In his youth he doubted whether the short day of life was not worth more than the dark eternity and whether those who said "a man dying is like a bubble bursting on the water—nothing is left" were not right. But as he grew older he felt more and more clearly—grasped it, as it were, as a hand grasps a wrapped-up object—that there was something beyond the grave, and that since no one knew anything about it for certain, the simplest and wisest thing to do was to believe as his fathers had done.
Khnumhotep, or Khnum, was over sixty, but he did not consider himself old, hoping to live the full measure of man's life—a hundred and ten years.
Some forty years before he began building for himself 'an eternal house,' a tomb in the Hills of the West, Amenti, also according to the ancient commandment 'prepare a fine tomb for thyself and remember it every day of thy life, for thou knowest not the hour of thy death.' For forty years he had been digging in the rock a deep cave with subterranean halls and passages, adorning it like a wedding chamber and collecting in it a dowry for his soul, the bride. He did it all cheerfully according to the saying, 'coffin, thou hast been made for a feast; grave, thou hast been dug for merriment.'
On the afternoon when Dio and Pentaur were talking on the flat roof of Khnum's summer house, Khnum was sitting in a light wooden shelter, supported by four pillars, near the winter house at the other end of the pond. He sat in a carved ebony chair that had a leather cushion and a footstool; his wife Nibituia sat beside him on a small folding chair.
Both were dressed in robes of finely pleated white flaxen material, not too transparent, as became elderly people; hers was narrow and reached to the ankles and his was wider and shorter; their feet were bare. The brick floor of the shelter was covered with mats for warmth and a servant boy was holding in readiness papyrus slippers.
Khnum took the wig off his closely cropped grey hair and hung it on a wooden stand close by; men took off their wigs like caps; but Nibituia's huge black wig, shiny as though it had been lacquered, with two thick twisted cords at the sides, rose above her head, pushing the ears forward and making the old woman's wrinkled face look like a bat's.
Khnum was so tall that his wife, who was short, looked almost a dwarf beside him; straight, spare, bony, he had a face that seemed carved of hard brown wood and had a sullen, angry look; but when he smiled it grew very kind.
On week days Nibituia was busy with housekeeping from morning till night, looking after the weaving, the mat-making, the cooking and the washing, but on holidays, such as that day—the day of Khonsu, the god of the Moon, she gave herself a rest, engaging in a light and at the same time pious occupation. Two little pots and two baskets stood before her on a low round table: out of one of them she took dead beetles, scarabees, butterflies, bees, grasshoppers, ripped them open with a flint knife, and taking with a bone spoon a drop of Arabian gum out of one pot and a drop of Lebanon cedar resin out of another, embalmed the dead creatures; then she wrapped them up in tiny white linen bandages, like real little mummies, and put them into the other basket. She did all this quickly and neatly as a work she was accustomed to do. In the garden there was a sandhill of Amenti—Eternal West—a cemetery for these little mummies.
A middle aged man with a sly and merry face, Inioteph or Ini, was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of Khnum; he was a clerk in the Surveying Department, managed Khnum's estates and transacted legal business for him. Bare to his waist, he wore nothing but an apron; there was an inkpot on his belt and a writing reed behind his ear, and in his hand he held a roll of papyrus with the account of sacks of grain which had just been brought down the river in barges from Miuer.
"When was the decree received?" Khnum asked.
"In the night and it must be carried out to-day, that the sun may not set on disobedience to the king," Ini answered.
"Quite, quite, quite," Khnum rapped out like a woodpecker tapping, as was his habit. "They persecuted the Father, they persecuted the Mother, and now it is the turn of the Son!"
The Son was Khonsu—the Osiris of Thebes, born of the Father Amon and the Mother Mut.
"But how is he to be destroyed? He is made of gold," Khnum said.
"They will throw him into the furnace, melt him, make coins out of the gold, buy bread and give it to the starving: eat the god and praise the king!" Inioteph explained.
"Surely this is very wrong? Uhuh have mercy upon us!" Nibituia said with a sigh.
Uhuh was a very ancient god forgotten by everyone; he had no idols, no temples, no sacrifices, no priests—nothing was left of him but a name. People remembered merely that there had been a god Uhuh, but they had long forgotten what he ruled over and what he looked like. And this was the very reason why Nibituia liked him and pitied him and at difficult moments called not upon the great Amon, but upon the obscure Uhuh. "No one prays to him, poor Uhuh, but I will pray and he will have mercy upon me," the old lady used to say.
"And what do the people say?" Khnum asked.
"They haven't much hope of the bread," said Ini, screwing up his eyes with a sly air. "'The king's clerks, Aton's hangers-on, will steal it all,' they say, 'and we shan't get a morsel!' And the priests incite them, of course: stand up for the god, do not allow the holy image to be defiled! And saying such things to the people is like setting fire to straw. You know yourself, my lord, what times these are; I shouldn't wonder if there were a mutiny."
"Quite, quite, quite! Mutiny is a dreadful thing,"
"Nothing could be worse! It is said: 'the earth will tremble, unable to endure that slaves should be masters.' But indeed what is one to expect of slaves when the king himself...."
"Don't presume to speak about the king; you will be food for fish," Khnum restrained him.
That meant: if anyone found fault with the king he would be thrown after death into the river to be eaten by fishes.
"And what is the second decree about?"
"About making burial grounds crown property. They are to be taken from the rich and given to the poor: 'it is time the dead stopped taking food out of the mouths of the living.'"
"Quite, quite, quite," Khnum repeated, and said nothing more, watching Nibituia's little hands move rapidly as she wrapped up the mummy of a grasshopper.
"Uhuh have mercy upon us!" she sighed again and, leaving the grasshopper, looked at her husband with round, frightened eyes. "How can this be, Khnum? What will the dead live by?"
"Keep quiet, old woman, that's beyond you, you mind your beetles!" he grumbled, patting her on the shoulder with a smile, and his face suddenly became very kind and curiously like his wife's face in spite of the difference in their features; they seemed to be brother and sister: happily married couples often develop a likeness in their old age.
"The dead will have enough to live on, don't you fear; we, the living, might fare worse!" he added, gloomily.
He really was not much concerned about the dead. If a decree were issued forbidding people to eat and drink they would go on eating and drinking just as before; the same thing would happen about this decree: the living would not stop feeding the dead, for the very being of Egypt rested upon this, that the living and the dead had the same food, the same drink—the body and blood of Khonsu Osiris, the Son of God.
"I expect we shall have to bribe Aton's spies after all," Inioteph went on.
He did not like Khnum's fearlessness; like all servants who are a little too forward, he had the bad habit of frightening his master in order to gain importance in his eyes.
"They have sniffed out, the dogs, that in your honour's tomb two images of Amon have not been effaced. 'We must inspect it,' they say. And if they discover it, there will be trouble; they will spoil everything and defile the tomb or prosecute you—there will be no end to it!"
"How did they find out?" Khnum asked in surprise.
"Someone must have informed against you."
"Who could it have been? No stranger has seen it."
"It must have been one of your own people, then."
"It is he, he, Yubra, the villain, the snake!" Nibituia cried in alarm. "I told you, Khnum, don't keep that plague in the house, send him to the Red Mountains to break stones or to dig canals in the Delta, so that he may get the ague, the wretch! It is not for nothing he has made friends with Aton's servants. Just think what he has done! It is dreadful to think of—raising his hand against the holy Ushebti, the godless creature! And you spare him...."
"I have thrown him into the pit, what more do you want?"
"What does the snake care about the pit? He likes being there better than working. I know, Khnum, you gave orders for him to have two loaves of bread and a pot of beer a day, though you tried to hide it from me. He is eating his fill, the swine, growing fat and laughing at you for all your kindness! He sleeps all day or sings hymns to his unclean god, fie upon him!"
"Whatever is the matter with you, little beetle?" said Khnum, looking at her in surprise.
They exchanged a deep look and he turned away from her, frowning sternly. Nibituia got up and bowed low to her husband:
"Forgive your servant, my lord, if I have said anything wrong in my foolishness. You know better. But I am uneasy—" she could not resist looking at him significantly once more, "I am very uneasy about you, Khnum! You are fond of him, you spoil him, and he is sharpening a knife against you, nursing malice in return for all your kindness—and such malice is worse than any other."
Ini was smiling to himself: he had gained his object and alarmed his masters, though he himself did not know how he had done it. Yubra was not of sufficient consequence for them to be alarmed on his account.
"Well, that's all right," said Khnum, as though coming to himself. "I have known Yubra long enough: he is as stupid as an ass but he would not do .... such a thing: he is a faithful servant."
And breaking off suddenly, he asked Ini: "Are they storing the corn?"
"Yes, master."
"Let us go and see; they are sure not to spread it evenly."
He got up and walked across the garden to the threshing yard. "Dead flies spoil a fragrant ointment, so a little folly spoils the whole life of an honourable man," Khnum had often thought of late, with a bitter smile. This was what had happened in his house.
Wise men knew that the next world, 'the second Egypt,' was exactly similar to this one, though the semblance was reversed as in a mirror: here everything was for the worse and made for death, while there everything was for the best, for everlasting life. But there, too, in the heavenly fields of Ialu, the shadows of the dead, the blessed Ka, ploughed the land, sowed, reaped, gathered in the harvest, dug canals and built houses. For all this work masters needed slaves. This was why they placed in each tomb three hundred and sixty-five clay figures—according to the number of days in the year—each with a spade in its hand, a set of tools in a bag on its back and a hieroglyphic inscription on the breast: "Thou, Ushebti, Respondent so and so, belonging to such and such a master, come up instead of me, say for me 'Here am I,' if I am called out to work." At the resurrection of the dead, when the masters came to life, the slaves came to life, too, and went to work in the fields of Ialu, for there, as here, slaves worked and masters enjoyed themselves.
Khnum had ordered a sample two dozen Ushebti of the modeller who worked at adorning tombs. He made them so cleverly that from the clay dolls' faces one could tell which of Khnum's servants they represented: this was to enable each soul to find its body.
When the modeller brought the figures Khnum's slaves ran out to meet him at the gate, by the box of old Yubra, the porter, jostling, shouting and laughing, pleased as children: each was in a hurry to find and recognize his own doll. "Which is me? Which is me?" they all kept saying.
Yubra came up, too, and also asked "Which is me?" The potter gave him his doll. Yubra took it, examined it, asked to have the inscription read to him, and, suddenly, he seemed like one possessed. Those who were present said afterwards his face turned quite dark, he trembled all over and, shotting "I don't want to, I don't want to!" flung the clay figure on the ground and broke it to bits. All stood still, spellbound with horror, while Yubra went on breaking the other dolls arranged on an ironing board from the laundry. Then they rushed at him, but could not master him at once—he fought like a fury. At last, when he had broken more than half the dolls, he was overpowered, and, with his hands bound, brought before Khnum for judgment.
It was a terrible act of sacrilege: every mummy, not only of man, but even of a beast, was the body of the dead god himself, Osiris-Amenti.
When Khnum asked Yubra why he had done it, Yubra answered firmly and quietly:
"To save my soul. Here I am a slave, but there I shall be free."
He would say nothing more.
Khnum thought that Yubra had suddenly lost his reason or was possessed by the devil. He was sorry for his old and faithful servant. He could not pardon Yubra completely, but he punished him lightly and did not even have him beaten; he merely had him put into the pit; he thought Yubra would come to his senses. But Yubra had been in the pit for four days and was as obdurate as ever.
There was a special reason why Khnum was so kind to him. In his youth Khnum liked to hunt crocodiles in the Lake country, Miuer, where he had a large estate by the town Shedet, consecrated to the crocodile-headed Sun god, Sobek. He used to spend several days there during the hunting season.
Every morning, while he was still in bed, a freshly washed and pleated white robe was brought to him by the fifteen-year old Maïta, a clever laundress—wife and sister of the young gardener Yubra: poor people often married their sisters so as not to divide the property.
At dusk Khnum used to hear in the back yard, where some planks ran out from the laundry into the pond, the loud squelching of the bat over the wet linen and Maïta's girlish voice singing:
"My sister is on the opposite bank
The river flows between us,
And a crocodile lies on the sand.
Fearless I go into the water,
Water is to me like the dry land,
Love gives me courage and strength,
Love—the all-powerful magic."
But one could hear from her voice that she did not yet know what love meant. "She will soon learn," Khnum thought with quiet pity.
One day she sang a different song:
"The pomegranate tree spoke and said:
My round fruits are her breasts,
The seeds in the fruit are her teeth,
The heart of my fruits are her lips,
And what the sister does with the brother,
Gladdened by the sparkling wine,
Is hidden by my branches thick."
And for the first time Khnum detected something not childish in Maïta's childish voice. "She will be like the rest," he thought, without any pity, and all of a sudden the flame of Set breathed into his face and lust stung his heart like a scorpion.
He knew that neither men nor gods would condemn him if he, the master, said to his slave "come into my bed," as simply as on a hot day he would say to her, "give me a drink." But Khnum was indeed a just and pious man. He remembered that besides his wife Nibituia he had twelve concubines and as many beautiful slaves as he liked, while Yubra had only Maïta. Was the master to take his servant's only lamb? "This shall not be," he decided, and he left the Lake country never to return.
But he could not forget Maïta. The flame of Set scorched his bones as the wind of the desert scorches the grass. He could not eat or drink or sleep and grew thin as a lath.
He had said nothing to Nibituia, but she guessed the truth. One early morning, while he was still asleep, Maïta came into the bedroom of his country house near Thebes, bringing freshly washed clothes. He woke up thinking he saw her in a dream or a vision, and when he understood she was real he asked:
"Where is Yubra, your brother?"
"Far away beyond the sea," she answered and burst into tears. Then she came up to him slowly, sat on the side of the bed, and with downcast eyes said, blushing and smiling through her tears:
"My mistress has sent me to my master. Here I am, your slave."
And Khnum asked her no more about Yubra.
That year was the happiest year of his life; and the best of all was that Nibituia had grown just as fond of Maïta as he was, perhaps even more so. She was jealous not of her but of other women and, strange to say, reproached him for preferring herself to Maïta. And Khnum did not know whom he loved most—the mistress or the slave: both these loves merged into one like two scents blending into one fragrance.
When he recalled it now, after thirty years, he whispered with tears of tenderness for the old companion of his life: "My poor little beetle!"
Nibituia had sent Yubra, the gardener, to Canaan to collect foreign flowers and plants for Khnum's gardens. And when, after a year's absence he returned, Maïta was no more: she had died in childbirth.
Khnum treated Yubra handsomely: he presented him with a fine plot of land, four pairs of oxen and a new wife—one of his own concubines. No one knew whether Yubra remembered Maïta or had forgotten her with a new wife, for he never spoke of her and behaved as though nothing had happened.
When Yubra had grown old and could no longer work in the fields Khnum took him into his house and gave him the honourable post of doorkeeper.
For thirty years Yubra had been an obedient slave and now all of a sudden he rebelled and said:
"I don't want to! Here I am a slave, but there I shall be free." For thirty years Khnum had not thought that he had done any evil to Yubra and now, all of a sudden, he thought: "Dead flies spoil a fragrant ointment and so a little folly spoils the whole life of an honourable man!"