CHAPTER 4
THE FRIENDSHIPThe long night of my half-life is over. I stand as a free man stands beside my prince. The sun shines on our friendship, and he has forged a name for me in its fire and pinned it on my forehead, that anyone with eyes to see might see it. Djehuti-kheper-Ra. Now, when my name is called, I answer. Now, when people ask who I am I say my name is Djehuti-kheper-Ra, and they go away satisfied, thinking that they have been given an answer. It has always been believed that without a name the spirit returns at death to the great void and is as if it had never been. The worst punishment a criminal can suffer is that he be declared nameless: the greatest honour a man can receive is to be endowed with a new name. From the words a mother cries out at a child’s birth the first na
