The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. The Nile flows north and the wind blows south. These things will always be.‘
It is an adage to calm the nerves, and Senu has every reason to be nervous.
Today is his marriage ceremony.
He looks in his mirror, a disk of polished bronze, and hardly recognises himself. Eye paint, a lion pelt draped over one shoulder, the royal blue and gold cloth covering his head.
None of this finery has succeeded in making him look older. He’s little more than a child still.
‘Too young to marry,’ he mutters.
‘You don’t have a choice, boy,’ replies the ibis perched beside him. The bird – Senu’s teacher, it calls itself – it’s been with him all morning, leaving discarded feathers all over his bedchamber.
‘Your soon-to-be wife is rich,’ the ibis says, taking a break from its preening, ‘Her family are the largest grain holders in the land. Your father will need their support if his reign is to weather this revolt.’
Senu nods; had his father not told him the same from his sickbed? Had the pharaoh not explained how, despite his uncle’s armies, gold shipments from the Upper Kingdom have been seized on the Nile by outlaws; how the crown is now struggling to pay for grain to feed its subjects; how whispers of rebellion are spreading across the land.
In the face of all that, Senu feels too embarrassed to voice his real worries – the truth that he has known few girls in his life and spoken to even fewer. The truth that he is scared.
So he overcompensates. He parrots the things he’s heard his father’s hard-nosed advisors say. Rants about power and fealty.
‘Loyalty and greater strength for the throne – that’s all that matters,’ Senu repeats.
Of course, he knows better by now than to lie to a god, but the ibis doesn’t nip him as he expects. Instead, the bird cocks its head and locks him with those depthless black eyes.
‘Perhaps, there is a lesson in this,’ it crows. ‘Great royal wives have often been the pharaoh’s fiercest defenders. They have stood loyally beside the throne since the gods walked this world.’
And when the ibis spreads wide its wings, the story of Hathor and Sekhmet is writ there upon a white papyrus of feathers.
Those first symbols penned upon the ibis’s feathers almost seem to glitter.
They speak of skin that shines like beaten gold, of bones shaped from purest silver, of hair carved from lapis lazuli. They speak of Ra, the greatest of the gods.
These are the days when he still ruled the land himself. When mortals made pilgrimage from all across Egypt to stand before his limestone throne and present their pleas, their prayers, their petitions.
At first, Ra would answer them. He would offer some divine indulgence, some immortal insight. But no longer. Now he doesn’t respond. He doesn’t even move.
Did he wish to see how mortals might fair for themselves? Did he simply grow tired? His subjects never did know the reason. Only the sight of the sun crown melting Ra’s gilded skin till it began to drip down his throne as liquid gold.
The whispers of rebellion start with that image; not all the peoples of Egypt are prepared to make pilgrimage to a molten idol. In the deep deserts of the Upper Kingdom, where they eke out a harsh life amid the parched red earth, they speak of a need for change. For a new ruler, a younger god king who might respond to their pleas, their prayers, their petitions.
It is treachery. It is heresy. It is enough to raise Ra from his torpor.
Humanity was born from the sun god’s emotions – from tears of sadness when his children were lost to the waters of Nun, from tears of joy when finally they were returned. But now the only tears shed are in rage.
There is little debate, little dispute, among the council of gods that Ra calls – revenge must be had. And it is Hathor – Ra’s great royal wife – who will wreak it.
She is a gentle goddess: the warm kiss of sun on a summer evening, the dance of dust motes in a ray of light. She is beloved by all the people for the joy she brings to their lives.
But Hathor has that other self too.
She stands before a mirror, a disk of polished bronze, and at first, it shows simply her glittering gaze, the bloom of her cheeks, the rouge of her lips. Then the reflection begins to warp, to bend and twist, and another shows: gleaming cat eyes, whiskers sharp as needles, fangs curved and keen as a waxing moon.
Sekhmet, the lion goddess.
The rebels are gathering in the deep desert when they hear her low growl, bass all body and bruising. The kind of noise you feel not hear.
It means it is already too late.
Sekhmet pounces and paws. She rampages and roars. Her tongue rasps skin from bone, and she gorges herself on red ruin. Her jaws open wide, and she spills forth sun flares that blister and boil.
The deep desert is a bloody massacre; the earth remains red, but it is no longer parched.
When all the rebels are dead, enough blood has been spilled to douse the flame of Ra’s rage.
But it is not enough to douse Sekhmet’s; her loyalty to the throne goes beyond reason. She feels humanity’s insult – this treachery, this heresy – like a splinter in her paw. A redness. A rawness. An irritation that drives her to madness. Only when she has reduced all men to meat will she have some relief.
And so she loses all semblance of sense and all sense of time until she does not even remember her butchery of the Lower Kingdom. When she skulks down onto the fertile plains, it is to find the fields already awash with blood, as if they were irrigated by vein and artery.
The red ruin tastes sweet and heady.
Sekhmet sips and slurps. She guzzles and gulps. Her world begins to spin, and then, quite suddenly, all goes to black.
Ra’s trick to calm her has worked. It is not blood Sekhmet has drunk; it is beer. Every drop of every barrel in the entire Lower Kingdom dyed with red ochre and spilled across the Nile delta.
When Sekhmet finally awakes, it is to a mirror, a disk of polished bronze. Her reflection begins to warp, to bend and twist, and finally another shows: the gentle goddess Hathor has returned.
‘Do you see, boy? Blind loyalty is a weak currency.’ And then the last symbols drain from the ibis’s feathers.
‘Now, are you ready to admit the real reason you’re worried?’ the bird asks.
Senu stares at his reflection one last time – at how small and young he is – and then he nods.
‘What if…what if my wife doesn’t like me? What if she thinks I’m weak?’
The ibis flutters over to him.
It opens its wings wide as if an open embrace.
And then it prods him hard in the chest with its beak.
‘Did you not understand a single thing I’ve just told you, boy? Gentleness should never be confused for a lack of strength. So it was for Hathor and Sekhmet. And so it is for you too.’
Commissioned by HistoryHit for The Ancients podcast
Written by Andrew Hulse