Nick Drake - Tutankhamun - The Book of Shadows

We each have our habitual places to sit on the stools around the low table: my father at the far end, Sekhmet and Thuyu down one side, with Khety and his wife, and Tanefert and Amenmose on the other, together with Nakht and Nedjmet, the Sweet One, who likes to sit next to him, hanging her arms around his neck. She watches her audience as she enacts her loving gestures. Where did she learn such flattery? I had cooked our favourite dish-gazelle in red wine-reserved for celebrations.

Sekhmet looked serene and confident in a new pleated robe, displaying the earrings we had given her for her birthday. The self-consciousness of her teenage years is giving way now to a new self-possession. She has read far more than I have, and she remembers everything. She can still recite the nonsense poems we made up when she was a child. Knowledge to her is everything. She once said to me, earnestly: ‘I can’t be an athlete and a scholar.’ And so she made her choice.

As I sit with my family and friends on evenings like this, with the food before us on the table, and the oil lamps lit in the wall niches, I wonder what I have done to deserve such happiness. And in darker moments I worry my work may yet put all this in danger-for if anything were to happen to me, how would they live? I also have to ask myself: why is this life not enough? And how will I manage, when my father has passed on, and the girls have married, and are living in other houses, and Amenmose is studying elsewhere, in Memphis perhaps, and Tanefert and I face each other, in the strange new quiet of our late years?

‘Father, I have been wondering why it is that girls have no opportunities for education and advancement in our society.’

Sekhmet took a mouthful of gazelle while she observed the effect of her statement.

‘And this is delicious, by the way,’ she mumbled.

Nakht, Khety and my father glanced at me, amused.

‘But you have had many opportunities.’

‘Only because Nakht has taught me about things no one else would…’

‘And she is a spectacular student,’ he added proudly.

‘But it seems to me because I’m a girl, I’ve had fewer opportunities than boys, because everything in our society is about the priority of the man over the woman. And that’s ridiculous. This is the modern world. Just because I’ve got breasts now doesn’t mean I’ve lost my mind.’

My father coughed suddenly, as if something had gone down the wrong way. Nakht patted him on his back, but he coughed and coughed, tears in his eyes. I knew they were tears of mirth; but he did not want to embarrass Sekhmet. I winked at him.

‘You are quite right,’ I said. ‘If you decide you are going to achieve something, you have to be determined.’

‘I have decided. I don’t want to marry yet. I want to study more. I want to be a physician.’

She glanced across at her mother. I knew at once they had discussed this. I looked at Tanefert, and she gazed back at me with a silent plea to please be considerate.

‘But, my dearly beloved daughter…’ I said, wishing Nakht would say something to support me in my tenuous position.

‘Yes, my dearly beloved father?’

I struggled to find the best words.

‘Women don’t become physicians.’

‘They do, actually,’ said Nakht, unhelpfully.

‘What difference does it make whether they haven’t in the past? It’s what I want to do. There’s so much suffering in this world, and I want to change that. And there’s too much ignorance as well. Knowledge can alleviate suffering and ignorance. And anyway, why did you call me Sekhmet if you didn’t want me to become a physician?’

‘Why did you call her Sekhmet?’ enquired Nedjmet, sensing her opportunity to get in on the conversation.

‘Because it means she who is powerful ,’ said Tanefert.

‘Sekhmet the Lion Goddess can send illnesses, but she can also recall them,’ said Sekhmet herself.

‘I see you have learned much from your clever godfather,’ I said.

‘I’ve been discussing things with him.’

For some reason, I felt like the only piece on the game board that has not moved beyond the first square.

Suddenly my father spoke from the other end of the table.

‘She’ll make a wonderful physician. She’s calm and methodical and beautiful to look at. Unlike those smelly and cantankerous old men who shake a few burning herbs in the air and make you drink your own urine. I’d certainly trust her to look after me when I get old and sick.’

Sekhmet looked at me, and smiled victoriously.

‘So you are guaranteed your first patient,’ I said. ‘But do you realize what this means?’

She nodded sagely.

‘It means years of study, and I’ll have to do twice as well as everyone else because I’ll be the only girl among all the boys. And I’ll have to endure the opposition of the establishment and the small-minded insults of the old-fashioned teachers. But I’ll survive.’

I could not think of how to oppose her wish, and in truth I was proud of her determination. All that stopped me from supporting her wholeheartedly was the knowledge of the struggle to come-that, and the likelihood of failure-not from any weakness in herself, but from the refusal of the hierarchies to accept her.

I was about to say something when Thoth suddenly barked in the yard. An abrupt knocking on the door silenced us all. I rose and went to the door. A tall, thickset, unfriendly man in the formal dress of the Palace Guard was waiting there. Behind him were guards with swords shining in the light of the oil lamp in its niche beside the doorway.

‘I know why you’re here,’ I said quietly, before he could speak. ‘Give me a few moments, please.’

I turned back into the room. My family were staring at me.

Tanefert says there is always a choice. But sometimes she is wrong. I asked Khety to accompany me, and Nakht to stay and continue the celebrations. Sekhmet came through to the kitchen with me. She peered at the guards waiting outside, and nodded.

‘Don’t worry, Father. Work is important. What you do is important. I understand. And we’ll all be here when you return.’

And she grinned, and kissed me on the cheek.

As we crossed the Great River once again-Khety sitting opposite me, and Thoth crouched down at my feet, for he mistrusts the treachery of boats and water-I gazed up at the black ocean of the night that glittered vastly with mysterious stars. I thought of an old saying my grandfather had told me: that what was important was not the uncountable stars, but the glorious darkness between them. The faded old papyrus scrolls Nakht had shown me that afternoon, with their columns and signs, seemed only the crudest human rendering of this greatest of mysteries.

The oarsmen expertly guided us to the palace jetty, and the black water slapped gently against the moon-silvered stones. Khay was waiting. In the shimmering firelight of the hammered copper bowls his bony face was transformed by an anxiety it struggled to restrain. I introduced Khety as my assistant. He remained at a respectful distance, his head bowed. Khay considered him, and nodded.

‘His conduct and security are your responsibility,’ he said.

I have heard of people who return in dreams to the same situations and dilemmas. The tormenting images of their fears and horrors are repeated night after night: nightmare chases down endless tunnels; or the swift rippling of crocodiles unseen but sensed in deep, black water; or glimpsing the beloved dead, unreachable in a vast grey crowd. And then the haunted dreamer wakes sweating and weeping uncontrollably for something or someone lost over and over again to that Otherworld of visions. This palace, with its long corridors, and many shut doors, and hushed antechambers, reminded me now of something like that. I imagined each closed chamber might contain a different dream, a different nightmare. And yet I did not feel fear; excitement had me once again in its monstrous and glorious grasp. Something unexpected had happened. And so I was as happy as I could ever be.