Anton Gill: City of the Dead

The year had turned round and the Black Land had entered the season of sbemu again. After the enervating activity of the harvest, which in this good year had filled the granaries and taken even the workers from the valley, where the great tombs of the departed lay on the west bank of the River across from the Southern Capital, to help gather the generous crop of emmer, barley and flax, the country lay in grateful exhaustion. The king’s heart could not rest, though, because it dwelt with an unwelcome tirelessness on the fact of his wife’s empty birth-cave, and on the imminent gift from Nut and Geb of a child to Horemheb and Nezemmut. It took two seasons and one passage of the moon for a child to grow in the birth-cave, and the time was almost up.

But Nezemmut’s child was born early and dead. To the king’s secret satisfaction, it had been a boy. That would be vinegar on the general’s lips. The little corpse, with its huge head, curled like a baby crocodile in the egg, was swiftly dried and embalmed, and set aside in a cedar box for the time to come when it would join its unlucky parents in their tomb. They would know the same pain the king had.

The next month Ankhsi’s bleeding stopped. She showed Tutankhamun the linen towel. It was as clean as when her maid had bound it to her loins. The king hardly dared breathe.

The news quickly spread from a household which had been divided between hope and despair for years now. Happy body servants told their wives, husbands and lovers – there was no interdict of secrecy from the king. Sorrow at the queen’s dead womb gave way to speculation about the royal child’s sex. The betting odds down in the harbour quarter settled cautiously in favour of a son, and the former scribe Huy put a golden piece down in the hope of a male child. The sunlight at long last seemed to move across the palace compound and settle on the king’s house instead of Horemheb’s. The general and his household made their congratulations, and the king formally commiserated with their misfortune. Both publicly accepted the will of the gods, and secretly made contingency plans.

At first Tutankhamun was fearful that he had tempted the gods’ anger by premature celebration, but a second month passed and the linen wad was as free of dark blood as ever. The queen’s guard was doubled, and Horemheb’s special Medjays were banished from the precincts of the palace. The general wore a fixed expression, and was seen less in public. Ay, on the other hand, became a more frequent visitor to the king.

By the third month, the pharaoh decided he had been away from the hunt long enough.

‘You must be careful.’ Ankhsenpaamun had never liked hunting. It was dangerous and bloody. The king was half a stranger for a hour after his return. Sometimes he was away for weeks.

‘Don’t worry.’

‘How long will you be gone?’

‘Three days at the most.’

‘And where will you go?’

‘Where the quarry lies.’

‘What will you hunt?’

‘It depends what we see. I want to fetch something special for you.’

‘Do not hunt lions,’ said the queen. She was fearful of the new, light chariot. It was faster, she knew, than many of the animals the king loved to chase, but she also knew that it overturned easily. If the king fell near a furious wounded animal like a lion, or, worse, a wild bull, he would die. Alone, she knew she would not be able to stand up to their enemies. Like her sisters, she would be condemned to a luxurious prison and an empty life. Or, worse, there was the threat of marriage to Ay.

‘Do not go unattended,’ she added. ‘Take many bowmen with you.’

‘Of course,’ the king reassured her. Privately, he had it in mind to hunt lion. His ancestor Nebmare Amenophis had bagged one hundred as a young man. It was his ambition to pass that record.

He went to inspect his animals. His lean hunting dogs bounded to the gates of their pen to see him, jostling each other to put their great sand-running paws against the wooden crossbar, thrusting eager heads forward, red tongues flickering in open mouths, brown eyes keen, long tails wagging. He stroked their soft ears and cradled their pointed snouts.

The cats, trained to retrieve fish and small game-birds, were more sedate, but they left off washing, and their ears became alert as they paced the limits of their pens, occasionally scrapping with one another. Nearby, his two cheetahs, captured young and trained for the chase by Nubian huntsmen, stretched and eyed him half watchfully, half expectantly. He paused to reprimand their beast-slave for not yet refreshing their water that day, then made his way to the far end of the vast cedar enclosure, to where his riding and chariot horses were corralled.

These costly animals, the third generation to be bred in the south, were the king’s pride and joy. He adored their strength and their loyalty, and they were guarded with almost as great care as himself. He gave them slivers of honey cake, and real apples expensively imported from the lands to the north.

‘What game is there?’ he asked his chief huntsman.

‘Nearby, ibex, gazelle.Plenty of ibex, not half a day’s ride.’

‘I am interested in lions, Nehesy.’

The man considered. ‘Not near. It is too dry now. Perhaps south of the First Cataract, or out by the Dakhla Oasis.’

The king shook his head, disappointed. Both places were too far away. He thought of the half-promise he had given Ankhsi not to be absent longer. He wanted to bring her back trophies worthy of a king, knowing that the spirits of the animals would enter him, their vanquisher, and build his strength; but he was anxious too that she should not be alone too long. Since the Ahmose episode the king had not known whom to trust, and he had given orders to his personal guard that only blood relatives should be allowed to see her; but he knew he could not deny access to Horemheb or Ay.

‘Are you sure there are none nearer?’

‘If you took the horses by river you could be at the First Cataract in two days.’

‘It is still too long.’

‘How long does the king intend to hunt?’

‘I cannot spare more than three days.’

‘It is a pity we have no lions corralled.’

‘That is not hunting,’ said the king contemptuously. Very seldom now did any of the nobles hunt in the old way, spearing animals already trapped in a corral from the top of the palisade. The horse and the light electrum chariot had brought speed and mobility and danger to the sport.

‘Will you hunt on the River?’ suggested Nehesy, seeing the tightness on the king’s face, which however quickly recovered its customary, dangerously bland expression. ‘I could call the wildfowlers. Or perhaps we could go after river-horse or crocodile?’

‘No. I want to use the chariot. We will go after ibex. Where are the good herds?’

‘They are in the Eastern Desert.’

‘Good. We will save time by not having to cross the River.’

‘When shall we go?’

‘As soon as the heat of the day is past. I will take my usual team and the new chariot.’

‘And what dogs?’

‘Give me Pepi, Ypu and Ruttet. Sherybin will be my charioteer.’

The king spent the rest of the morning pleasurably choosing hunting spears, and discussing with Nehesy and Sherybin the best bows to take. The new chariot was drawn out into the yard and propped up on its shaft, gleaming red-gold in the sun while they tested the leather footstraps and handholds for firmness. They discussed the pros and cons of the machine’s heavier floor, which created greater stability at the expense of speed.

‘But we will not need so much speed for ibex,’ said Sherybin.

‘I know,’ replied the king, sullenly.

‘There is a bull in the herd with the finest horns I have ever seen,’ Nehesy put in quickly. ‘I can see them now on the prow of your falcon-ship.’