Three Novels of Ancient Egypt Khufu's Wisdom by Naguib Mahfouz
Her heart beat fast and furious. “Who?” she cried.
“Some men came,” said the slave, “the finest of Egypt's craftsmen sent by Pharaoh. They looked at the rooms and corridors and halls, and measured the height of the windows and walls in order to make new furnishings.”
“Really?”
“Yes, my lady. Soon this palace will be the wonder of the age. What a profitable deal it is!”
Rhadopis was not sure what the woman meant. Then it occurred to her and she knit her brow. “What deal do you mean, Shayth?” she asked.
The woman winked. “The deal of your new romance,” she said. “By the gods, my lord is worth an entire nation of wealthy men. After today I will not be sorry to see the backs of the merchants of Memphis and the commanders of the South.”
Rhadopis's face turned red with rage. “That is enough, woman!” she shouted. “This is no business deal.”
“I am sorry. If I were brave enough, my lady, I would ask you what you were doing then.”
Rhadopis sighed, “Stop your idle prattle. Can you not see that I am serious about this?”
The slave girl stared at her mistress's beautiful face and was silent for a moment, then said, “May the gods bless you my lady. I am confused, and am asking myself why my lady is serious?”
Rhadopis sighed again and threw herself down on the divan. “I am in love, Shayth,” she said quietly.
The slave girl beat her chest with her hand. “You are in love, my lady!” she said, alarmed and astonished.
“Yes, I am in love. Why are you so surprised?”
“I beg your pardon, my lady. Love is a new visitor. I have not heard you mention his name before. How did he come?”
Rhadopis smiled and said as if in a dream, “It is no cause for surprise, a woman in love. It is a common enough thing.”
“Not here though,” said Shayth as she pointed to her mistress's heart. “I always thought it was an impregnable fortress. How did it fall? Tell me, by God.”
Dreams shone in Rhadopis's eyes, and the memory evoked exuberant feelings in her soul. “I have fallen in love, Shayth,” she said in a voice that was a whisper. “And love is a wonderful thing. At what moment in time love knocked at the door of my heart, how it stole into the depths of my soul, I have no idea. It confuses me enormously, but I knew the truth in my heart, for it beat in violent turmoil, and stirred when I saw his face and when I heard his voice. I never knew it to stir at any of those things before, but a hidden voice whispered in my ear that this man and no other would own my heart. I was overcome by a violent, sweet, painful sensation, and felt an unmistakable feeling that he should be a part of me like my heart is, and I should be a part of him like his soul. I can no longer imagine how life can be good and existence pleasant without this blending of ourselves.”
“How perplexing, my lady,” said Shayth breathlessly.
“Yes, Shayth. As long as I enjoyed total freedom, I took up my seat atop a high hill and my eyes roamed over a strange wide world. I would spend the evening with dozens of men, enjoying pleasant conversation, delighting in works of art, savoring lewd jokes and bawdiness, and singing, yet all the time an inconsolable weariness weighed down on my heart, and an unbearable loneliness lay over my soul. Now, Shayth, my hopes are narrowed down and concentrated on one man — my lord. He is my whole world. Life has stirred again and chased away the weariness and loneliness that lay in my path and shone forth light and bliss upon it. I lost my self in this wide -world and now I have found it again in my beloved. See what love can do, Shayth!”
The slave nodded her head in bewilderment and said, “It is a wonderful thing as you say, my lady. Perhaps it is sweeter than life itself. Indeed, I ask myself what I myself feel of love. Love is like hunger and men are like food. I love men as much as I love food. I don't worry about it, and that is enough for me.”
Rhadopis laughed a delicate laugh like a note plucked on a harp string, and rising to her feet, went to the balcony that looked over the garden. She ordered Shayth to bring her the lyre, for she felt a desire to play the strings and sing. Why not, when the whole world was joined in joyful serenade?
Shayth disappeared for a moment then returned carrying the lyre and placed it before her mistress. “Would it bother you to delay the music for a while?” she said.
“Why?” asked Rhadopis as she picked up the lyre.
“One of the slaves asked me to inform you that there is someone who seeks permission to meet you.”
A look of disapproval crossed her face. “Does he not know who it is?” she asked curtly.
“He says he is… he claims he has been sent by the artist Henfer.”
She recalled what Henfer had said to her two days previously about the pupil he had appointed to take his place in carrying out the decoration of the summer room. “Bring him to me,” she told Shayth.
She felt irritated and annoyed. She held tightly onto the lyre and her fingertips plucked the strings softly, then angrily, playing music with no unity between its parts.
Shayth returned followed by a young man, who bowed his head in reverence and said in a soft voice, “May the gods make happy your day, my lady.”
She put the lyre to one side and looked at him through her long eyelashes. He was of average height, slender build, and dark complexion with handsome features and remarkably wide eyes in which appeared signs of candor and naivete. She was taken by his young age and the sincerity in his eyes, and she wondered if he would really be able to complete the work of the great sculptor Henfer. But she was pleased to see him and the wave of irritation that had come over her moments before disappeared. “Are you the pupil whom the sculptor Henfer has chosen to decorate the summer room?” she asked him.
“Yes, my lady,” said the youth with obvious embarrassment as his eyes wavered between the face of Rhadopis and the balcony floor.
“Excellent. What is your name?”
“Benamun, Benamun Ben Besar.”
“Benamun. And how old are you, Benamun? You look young to me.”
He blushed, and said, “I will be eighteen next Misra.”
“I think you may be exaggerating a little.”
“Certainly not, my lady. I am telling the truth.”
“What a child you are, Benamun.”
A look of unease appeared in his wide, honey-colored eyes, as if he were afraid that she would object to him because of his young age. She read his fears and smiled, saying, “Do not worry. I know that a sculptor's gift is in his hands, not in his age.”
“My master, the great artist Henfer, has borne witness to my ability,” he said enthusiastically.
“Have you carried out important work before?”
“Yes, my lady. I decorated one side of the summer room in the palace of Lord Ani, governor of Biga.”
“You are a child prodigy, Benamun.”
He blushed and his eyes flashed with delight. He was overjoyed. Rhadopis summoned Shayth and ordered her to take him to the summer room. The youth hesitated a moment before following the slave and said, “You should be free for me every day, at any time you wish.”
“I am used to such duties. Will you carve a full image of me?”
“Or half. Or maybe I will just do the face. It will depend on the general design of the work.”
He bowed and followed Shayth out of the room. Rhadopis remembered sculptor Henfer and considered the irony: had it occurred to him that the palace he had asked her to open to his pupil would now be forbidden to him forever?
She felt relief at the effect this naive young man had left in her, for he seemed to have provoked in her heart a new emotion that had not come to life before. It was the maternal instinct, for how quickly compassion for him had glowed in her eyes, from whose magic no man had found salvation. She prayed sincerely to Sothis to preserve his trusting candor and to deliver him from pain and despair.
BENAMUN
THE NEXT MORNING, as she had promised, she went to the summer room in the garden. There
“Thank you, my lady,” said the boy in his shy quiet voice. “But we shall not begin today. I am still -working on the general idea of the design.”
“Alas, you have deceived me, young man.”
“God forbid, my lady. But I have had a wonderful idea.”
She looked at his wide clear eyes and with a hint of mockery in her voice said, “You mean that young head of yours can come up with wonderful ideas?”
His face went red, and he pointed to the right wall in embarrassment and said, “I will fill that space with a picture of your face and neck.”
“How awful. I fear it might turn out frightful and ugly.”
“It will be beautiful as it is now.”
The youth spoke these words with a simple innocence, and she looked at him intently. He was quickly embarrassed and she felt sorry for him and looked straight ahead so that her eyes settled upon the pool beyond the eastern door of the room. What a delicate young man he was, like an innocent virgin. He caused a strange compassion to stir in her heart and awakened the sleeping mother in the deep recesses of her soul. She turned to him and found him bent over his work, but he was not entirely absorbed in it, for the redness of embarrassment still shone on his cheeks. Should she not leave him and go on her way? But she felt a desire to talk to him, -which she gave in to. “Are you from the South?” she asked.
The youth raised his head, his face clothed in a cheerful, happy light and answered, “I am from Ambus, my lady.”
“You are from the north of the South then. So -what brought you together -with sculptor Henfer, since he is from Bilaq?”
“My father -was a friend of sculptor Henfer, and -when he saw my keen interest in art he sent me to him and commended me to his charge.”
“Is your father an artist?”
The youth was silent for a moment, then said, “Not at all. My father was the senior physician of Ambus. He was a distinguished chemist and embalmer. He made numerous discoveries in methods of mummification and the composition of poisons.”
Rhadopis concluded from the way he was speaking that his father was dead. But she was impressed by his discovery of the composition of poisons and asked, “Why did he manufacture poisons?”
“He used them as beneficial medicines,” replied the boy sadly. “Physicians used to take them from him, but sadly, it cost him his life in the end.”
“How was that, Benamun?” she asked him with great concern.
“I recall, my lady, that my father concocted a wonderful poison. He always used to boast that it was the deadliest of all poisons and could finish off its victim in a matter of seconds. For that reason he called it the ‘happy poison.’ Then one sad night he spent the entire night in his laboratory working ceaselessly. In the morning he was found stretched out on his bench, the spirit gone out of him, and by his side was a phial of the deadly poison, its seal broken open.”
“How strange! Did he commit suicide?”
“It is certain that he took a dose of the deadly poison, but what was it that drove him to perdition? His secret was buried with him. We all believed that some devilish spirit had possessed him and caused him to lose all reason and he carried out his deed in a state of incapacity and confusion. Our entire family was devastated.”
A deep sadness covered his face and he lowered his head over his chest. Rhadopis regretted she had brought up this painful subject and asked, “Is your mother still alive?”
“Yes, my lady. She still lives in our palace in Ambus. As for my father's laboratory, no one has entered its door since that night.”
Rhadopis returned to her chambers thinking of the strange death of the physician Besar and his poisons locked up in the closed laboratory.
Benamun was the only outsider to appear on the calm horizon of her world of love and tranquility, as indeed he was the only person to snatch an hour from the time she allotted to love every morning. Despite this, he did not annoy her in the slightest for he was lighter and more delicate than a sprite. The days passed with her madly in love and him bent over his work, while the sublime spirit of art breathed its life into the walls of the summer room.
She delighted in watching his hand as it diffused the spirit of wondrous beauty through the room. She became convinced of his outstanding talents and felt certain that he would be ready to take over from sculptor Henfer before very long. One day she asked him, as she was about to leave the room after an hour's sitting, “Do you never feel tired or bored?”
The young man smiled proudly and said, “Not at all.”
“It is as if you are driven by some demonic power.”
A brilliant smile flashed across his dark face and he said quietly, naively, “It is the power of love.”
Her heart fluttered at these words that awoke in her delicious associations conjuring up in her mind a beloved image surrounded by splendor and radiance, yet he did not comprehend a thing that went on in her soul.
“Do you not know, my lady, that art is love?” he went on.
“Really?”
He pointed to the top of her forehead, which he had drawn on the wall, and said, “Here is my soul pure and unsullied.”
She had regained control of her emotions and said sarcastically, “But it is just deaf stone.”
“It was stone before my hands touched it, but now I have put myself into it.”
She laughed. “You are so in love with yourself!” she said as she turned her back on him; but it was clear after that day that his self was not the only thing he loved. She was walking aimlessly in the garden one day like a lost thought in a happy dreaming head, when she looked out suddenly over the summer room. She felt an urge to amuse herself by climbing the high hill in the sycamore glade and looking through the window of the room where she could see the picture of her face nearing completion directly in front of her on the opposite wall. She saw the young artist at the bottom of the wall and thought at first that he was absorbed in his work, as was his wont. Then she saw him kneel down, his arms folded across his chest, his head raised as if he was deep in prayer, except that his head was turned toward the head and face of her that he had engraved.
Her instinct drove her to hide behind a bough and she continued to watch him furtively with surprise and some alarm. She saw him rise to his feet as if he had finished his prayer, and wipe his eyes with the edge of his wide sleeve. Her heart quivered, and she remained for a moment motionless, surrounded by absolute silence. All she could hear was the intermittent cries of the ducks and their flapping as they swam on the water, then she turned round and raced back down to the palace.
What she had hoped would not happen, out of compassion for him, had happened. She had observed its possibility in his honest eyes every time he stared at her, but she had been unable to avert the calamity. Should she keep him far away from her? Should she close the door of the palace in his face with any pretext she could think to use against him? But she was concerned she might torment his delicate soul. She did not know what to do.
Her dilemma did not last long however. Nothing in the universe was capable of taking possession of her consciousness for more than a fleeting moment, for all her feelings and emotions were the booty of love, possessions in the hands of a covetous and eager lover whose desire for her knew no bounds. He would fly to her palace of dreams, renouncing his own palace and his world, unhindered by regret. Together they would escape existence, seeking refuge in their own love-filled spirits, succumbing to the magic and allure of their passion, consumed by its fire, seeing the rooms and the garden and the birds through its wonder and grandeur. The greatest cause for concern that Rhadopis felt those days was that she might discover, in
KHNUMHOTEP
THE TIMES that had granted happiness and joy to some brought sullen gloom to the face of the prime minister and high priest, Khnumhotep. The man sat in the government house observing events with a pessimistic eye, listening to what was said with keen ears and a sad heart. Then he resorted to patience, as much as patience allowed.
The decree issued by the king to sequester the temple estates had caused him untold anguish, and had placed a number of psychological crises in the way of effective government, for the mass of the priests had received the announcement with alarm and pain, and most of them had been quick to write petitions and solicitations and send them to the prime minister and lord chamberlain.
Khnumhotep had noticed that the king had not been granting him a tenth of the time he had granted him before, and it was now rare that he managed to meet him and discuss with him the affairs of the kingdom at all. It was widely rumored that Pharaoh had fallen in love with the courtesan of the white palace of Biga and that he spent his nights there with her. Moreover, groups of craftsmen had been seen driving to her palace together with gangs of slaves carrying sumptuous furniture and precious jewels. Senior figures were whispering that the palace of Rhadopis was being turned into an abode of gold, silver, and pearl, and that its columns were witness to a steamy love affair that was costing Egypt a fortune.