Nick Drake - Egypt

We came to the cemetery, and the tomb. The lector priest was waiting for us, chanting prayers and spells from the papyrus roll he held out before him. Khety’s mummy was propped upright, and the priest set about preparing the instruments he would need for the Opening of the Mouth ceremony. The lector priest began to recite the Instructions, and the priest approached the tomb statue of Khety. I tried and failed to find his face in the generalized features the embalmers had given him. He was one with the innumerable dead, now. Following the prescribed gestures, the spells and libations, the priest took his instruments from their alabaster tablet, one by one, and touched the face of the statue with the forked pesesh knife, the chisel, the adze and the rod ending in the snake’s head-restoring the senses to the dead man so that he might live again in the Otherworld, and eat, and speak his name. He made offerings of incense and natron, of food and wine, and the traditional cuts of meat-the foreleg and the heart. All this was intended to reunite the parts of the body and the spirit; and I could only hope the magic would work powerfully, restoring the butchered parts of Khety’s body to his new, whole self, in the beautiful light of the Otherworld.

It was hot. The children, who had been awed and fascinated, began to look around, slightly confused and bored. Tanefert gave them each a drink of water. Intef looked dazed. Kiya stared straight ahead, holding her daughter’s hand. The child must have been puzzled by the elaborate rituals, and by the disappearance of her father into this anonymous wooden shape.

Finally, the rites were concluded; Khety’s coffin was carried down the small steps into the tomb chamber. The canopic chest was settled in its niche. I descended into the small space of the tomb; there, around the mummy, I placed his senet game board, over which we had spent many hours of play, and his staff of office, and his knife, which, according to ritual, I broke so that it could not be used against him in the afterlife. And then I laid in front of Khety the papyrus scroll of the Book of the Dead which I had commissioned especially for him, with his name written throughout, and whispered my earnest prayer for his afterlife, that he should pass the trials of death, and arrive at the Field of Reeds, and that it should bring him all the pleasures and the peace he dreamed of, but never quite achieved in this life; and that, if he could, he might one day forgive me my failure of friendship.

Kiya and Intef kissed his headrest, and then passed it to me to place gently beside the coffin. But when her daughter gave me his favourite old sandals, Kiya suddenly began to weep in terrible and uncontrollable jolts. Her daughter embraced her, and Tanefert went to her support. Then all the girls began to cry together. Quickly, the funeral feast was prepared; back up the stairs, in the light of day, they stood at the chapel door together, eating and weeping, weeping and eating. I could do neither.

The priests and embalmers whispered their condolences and excuses, and made their way back to the river, with all the tools and paraphernalia of the rites. The professional mourners had already gone to another engagement, another burial. Death was everywhere, of course.

There was nothing more to do. There was nothing else to be achieved. Tanefert came to my side. We didn’t speak. Very carefully I took her hand in mine, and this time she allowed me to do so. We remained like that for a few, vital moments. Then, with a brief squeeze, she withdrew hers, gathered the children together, and led them away.

Kiya remained behind, unwilling to leave. We stood together in the heat. She looked at me.

‘I loved him,’ I said.

She nodded.

‘He knew that.’

She touched her belly. Her words, and the sorrow on her face, and the sadness of the unborn child inside her who would never know its father, suddenly passed into me, into my dead, black heart. And then bitter tears poured out of me, despite myself; my cries of grief were wordless and helpless as a child. I wept for what I had risked, and what I had lost, and for who I had become. She held me, as I buckled, as best she could.

As we walked back to the Great River, arm in arm, we were silent. But just before we came to the boat, she turned to me.

‘When the child is born, if it’s a boy, I will name him after his father.’

‘It is a fine name to carry through life,’ I said.

‘He will live for his father. He will be a good man, too. You will take care of him. You will stand in for his father,’ she said simply.

Year 1 of the Reign of King Horemheb, Horus is in Jubilation

Thebes, Egypt

Our skiff lolled on the edges of the Great River, among the reed beds, a little way south of the city, in the dappled shade. It was a quiet afternoon. Amenmose and I lay back with our fishing rods in our hands. Thoth crouched in the prow, gazing suspiciously down his long nose at us, and glancing swiftly aside at the sudden ripples made by the fish as they snapped at insects. He hated the open water. Ducks argued and birds sang invisibly within the dense stands of papyrus; across the water we could hear the calls of other fishermen, and further off the farmers and their children at work in the fields. I offered my son some bread, which he took and chewed thoughtfully.

‘Father?’ he said, in the way he usually commenced a long enquiry into philosophical matters.

‘Son…’

‘What happens when we die?’

‘Well, it’s a long story. First our hearts must be judged in the presence of Osiris himself, and the forty-two judges.’

‘Why?’

‘To see whether we have lived a good life,’ I answered.

‘And how can they tell?’

He squinted up at me in the strong sunlight.

‘Your heart is weighed in the scales, against the feather of the truth, which belongs to the Goddess Maat, and you have to make a denial of wrongdoing,’ I said.

‘And then what?’ he insisted.

‘If your heart is heavy with evil or wrongdoing, then it will tip the scales against the feather, and it will be gobbled up by Ammut, who stands waiting by the scales; she’s a monster with the head of a crocodile and the hind legs of a hippopotamus. But, if you’re clever and quick, before she gets it, you can also ask for forgiveness,’ I said.

‘How?’ he asked, curious.

‘You have to make an offering to Osiris, because he is God of Truth. You have to say: “Oh lords of justice, put away the evil harm that is in me. Be gracious to me and remove all anger which is in your heart against me.”’

‘So next time you’re angry with me, or with any of us, we can say that?’

‘You can try…’ I said, smiling.

He was silent for a long moment.

‘So what’s it like in the Otherworld?’ he asked.

I looked around, at the wide sky and the shining waters, and the city in the distance, with its temple pylons, and its stone palaces and poor districts. I looked to the east, and the mystery of Ra’s rebirth, and to the west, the great desert, where Ra set each night in the place of the dead. I looked up at the dark, perfect shape of a falcon silently sweeping across the face of the sun. I thought about the future in which my son would live his life, under a new King, and a new dynasty. I looked down into the green waters of the Great River, ever flowing, and remembered my dead. I remembered my father, and the dead Nubian boys, and Khety, and Ankhesenamun. But their faces didn’t haunt me now. I could look them in the eye. I thought about Horemheb’s offer. Perhaps, after all, I could make a difference to the world my children would grow up in.

I looked at my young son, staring at me, waiting for a good answer.