Hatshepsut: Daughter of Amun

CHAPTER 2-2

Whenever the boat was sighted the buzz of excitement rose to a crescendo, but as it came nearer the crowd fell silent and listened to the gradual swelling of the music that wafted to them over the water. Two rows of choristers, female and male, raised their voices high in praise of the great Pharaoh, while behind them the lutes wove a sweet melody, and the drum and sistrum marked the beat of oars and song.

It was all Hatshepsut could do to keep from singing herself. They visited cult centre after cult centre on their journey, but she never tired of the excitement of arrival, the feeling of being on the edge of a great adventure.

She knew her father had his reasons for introducing her to the priesthood of the various gods. He had plans for her that would need their support, knowing that his son by Mutnofre would be an ineffectual and indecisive ruler. His health had never been good and his chances of a long life were small.

Hatshepsut had never been allowed into the Holy of Holies of the temples, but now she stood beside the Pharaoh, face to face with the divine beings. At first she was disappointed. When the veil was drawn back she was shocked to see that the god was no more than a statue. Then as she stood, in silence and contemplation, the significance of “the opening of the mouth” ceremony was revealed to her. The god was not the statue, and the statue was not the god! The god used the stone image of himself as he used the living image of himself as Pharaoh, so that the people might have something which they could understand. If the great spirit beings of other realms were to reveal themselves as they really were, the people would run and hide, would shut their ears and their hearts, would not understand what needed to be understood.

At Khemnu she encountered Djehuti, the god of knowledge, and his female counterpart, Seshat, she with the seven-pointed star shimmering above her head, and he with the head of the sacred ibis. As she stood in the shrine, only half listening to the words of her father and the priest, she looked at the hieroglyphs on the walls behind him. She felt she was not reading the mundane and familiar images carved by scribes and craftsmen, but was experiencing ancient and magical symbols that burned in the heart and revealed the secret thoughts of the gods. Djehuti had given language and writing to the world to increase wisdom and understanding. How sad it would be if the world misused it.

At Men-nefer, when her father momentarily drew the veil from the face of Ptah, creator-craftsman god, she thought she glimpsed a vision, a vista so magnificent that she fell on her face on the stone floor in awe and terror. She saw universes, even greater than the one she knew, being continually formed and reformed, a vast and complex pattern in continual change and motion.

The Anmutef priest in his panther skin stooped down and lifted her to her feet, but now, as she looked fearfully into the god’s shrine, she saw nothing but the statue of a man grasping a sceptre of divinity firmly with both hands, gazing steadily out ahead to the horizon of the world and beyond it to whatever mysterious realms lay out of sight.

Still trembling, she forced herself to look into his eyes — and it seemed to her that he lowered his gaze for a moment and was looking deep into hers. He understood what she had experienced and was telling her not to forget it. “You cannot live with that vision,” he was saying, “but you cannot live without it.”

As though in a dream, she heard the words her father and the priest were intoning. Ptah was silent now. His gaze had gone back to the horizon.

“I promise,” she whispered. “I’ll never forget it.” But already it was fading, and the sense she had had that her own life and the life of her whole land was infinitesimal compared to what lay beyond was almost gone. The sense of her father’s importance and her own was reasserting itself. The god before her was no more than a being not unlike herself — perhaps a little more powerful — to be cajoled and bribed for favours.

Perhaps at Yunu, the centre of sun worship, she would experience the true nature of the god again. She both feared and desired it.

The great sun altar was open to the sky, not enclosed in the usual dark and airless sanctuary. The images of the mighty Ra in his three forms — Kheper at dawn, Ra in full power at noon, and Atum in the evening — were carved on the sides of the altar, but the god himself blazed down on their heads from above, so hot and bright that not even the First Prophet of his temple could lift his head and look at him. At the entrance to his court stood two obelisks, their tips blazing with gold.

Hatshepsut stood beside her father, feeling the heat of the paving stones burning through her sandals. Her eyes watered with the brilliance of the light reflecting off the dazzling white and gold — but she dared not move. The chief priest’s invocation seemed interminable and the rows of junior priests bringing offerings and piling them up on the altar endless. She blinked away the water in her eyes and tried to ignore the sweat trickling down her body. On the stone before her she read:

I am the Eternal Spirit,

I am the sun that rose from the Primeval Waters.

My soul is god, I am the Creator of the Word ...

I am the Creator of the Order wherein I live,

I am the Word, which will never be annihilated ... [2]

It was happening again! In spite of her discomfort she could feel herself leaving her body and reaching after something only her own eternal spirit could hope to understand.

Once again she had seen behind the mask of the god.

Once again the memory of it was slipping from her.

Her father touched her arm and pushed her gently forward. There were words she had to say, motions she had to make. How inadequate they seemed in the light of what she had just experienced. But it was the custom. It was what was expected. It was part of the order the god had created. She could feel the eyes of the priests upon her, watching her every move, judging whether she was worthy of the role she was destined to play. She spoke the words clearly. She made the ritual motions confidently.

“She is strong,” the High Priest thought. “Her father was right about her. If she supports us, we will support her.” And he accepted without hesitation the offering the King had made in her name.

* * * *

In spite of Hatshepsut’s expectations after the journey she had taken with her father, he declared his son by Mutnofre his heir. She was betrothed to the prince, and though the Great Royal Wife and Queen had great status and power, Hatshepsut was bitterly disappointed.

Her betrothed, Aa-kheper-en-Ra, found himself at a disadvantage in every respect in his relationship with her.

One day he stood beside her in the garden, looking down at her as she lay asleep under her favourite tree. The servants had brought out a light couch for her in the heat of the day and, after a long morning of hunting with her father in the desert, she had flung herself down to rest. He could see the air vibrating around her. She was the sort of person who walked into a room full of people and from that moment no one in the room was aware of anyone else. Beautiful women faded into the background. Men became shadows. It was not that she was so beautiful, but she gave the impression of beauty, the impression that beauty was actively being created before their eyes. Every movement of hers seemed to draw the world with it. He couldn’t explain it. He had tried to resist staring at her, resenting her effect on him, but time and again he had found himself tongue-tied and awkward in her presence. He knew she half-despised him because his mind was not as quicksilver as hers, because words stuck like flies in honey to his tongue, and because no one noticed him the way they noticed her. He knew she had affection for him as her father’s son, but never love, never respect, never admiration.

He pursed his lips. He tried to imagine taking that lion body to bed, touching that smooth feline form, feeling the powerful beat of her heart under his hand. She was lying now with only the finest film of fabric over the rise and fall of her breast, and her firm and slender thighs. With his eyes he removed the film and took a step nearer. He didn’t touch her with his hands yet he could feel how it would be if he were stroking her skin, his hands following the curves of her body, his fingertips pausing on her n*****s. His mouth dropped open and he could hardly breathe for the wave of desire that flooded through him. He wanted to take her now before her eyes opened. When she looked into his eyes, he knew, he would feel himself dissolving like one of those scent cones on a woman’s wig. He would become nothing ... nothing.

He took a step closer, sweat glistening on his body, his breath coming in short bursts. “One day she will lie in my bed like any other woman,” he told himself. “But first, first I must conquer my fear of her. I must take her on my terms, not on hers.”

The garden was deserted apart from the two of them. No breeze stirred. Flowers hung limp. The tree itself seemed to be holding its breath. With a hand that he had to force not to tremble he reached out. Even before it touched her flesh he could feel her energy almost like a physical thing, a vibrant cocoon that surrounded her. He hesitated. Would he be able to handle this woman? Would he be able to keep his own identity, his own power?

He dropped his hand and stepped back with a start. She had opened her eyes and was looking directly into his. She knew what he had been about to do, and he shrivelled under the blaze of her anger. She said nothing. She didn’t move. Only her eyes saw him and everything about him.

He turned and walked away as fast as he could. The moment had gone and he was still afraid of her. “One day,” he promised himself bitterly, “I will conquer her. I will reduce her! She will lie in my bed and I will be master! One day!”

He could not wait for the time he would be Pharaoh and she would have to walk behind him, head down, in humility. Sometimes he chuckled bitterly to think of it. She would never be humble — but she would have to give the appearance of humility, and that would really irk her proud spirit.

Hatshepsut propped herself up on her elbow and looked after him, amused. She tolerated his presence on formal occasions because she knew that in the eyes of the world she had to, but in private she treated him with impatience and ill-disguised contempt. Without her, he would be nothing. It was the purity of her royal blood from her mother, Aah-mes, that would give him the status of Pharaoh, son as he was of a non-royal mother. She found it unjust that this was the tradition, and argued against it at every opportunity until even her father, who adored her, snapped impatiently that that was the way it was and she would have to accept it.If Aa-kheper-en-Ra survived him, he would be King, and Hatshepsut would have to content herself with being the power behind the throne. If he did not survive, one of his other sons by one of his minor wives would be King, and again Hatshepsut would have to be content to be Queen. He knew the real power in the Two Lands would always be hers, and that is why he had made such a point of associating her so often with him on state occasions, but he had thought better of changing the time-honoured form of things for her. It would be too dangerous. The Two Lands were balanced precariously over the Void, and if this balance were not meticulously kept, who knew what disasters might befall.