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’s an old adage to calm the nerves,’ Senu’s father told him. Then another bout of the coughing came, and attendants had to shuffle the pharaoh back to his sickbed.
Young Senu has been whispering the adage to himself all afternoon now. Come dusk, he is supposed to lead his first royal ceremony as prince, as heir-apparent; instead, he’s hiding on the temple balcony. From time to time, he peaks his head and watches the crowds gathering down by the bank of the Nile. They are many. The last years have seen repeated droughts, weak floods, the parched red earth encroaching on the good black mud, and so hundreds have come in hope of a blessing from his father. From the pharaoh.
‘They’ll be disappointed then, won’t they.’
Those are Senu’s thoughts, his worries and anxieties, given voice. Just not his voice.
He looks about suddenly – who would dare to speak such sacrilege? But he is alone here on the balcony.
So who spoke?
‘Up here,’ comes the voice again. ‘Up here, boy.’
An ibis is perched on the roof above him. It locks Senu with a gaze, bowing its head and that black beak, curved and keen as a waxing moon.
But birds cannot speak.
‘Except, I am speaking.’ And though the beak does not open, true, that movement of its wings is unmistakably a shrug.
No. No. Senu turns his back on the bird. He’s imagining it. He’s overtired and troubled. Maybe he’s even unwell, the first signs of that same long illness that has laid low his father. Maybe he’s-
Senu lets out a yelp. The ibis has floated down on those milk white wings and nipped his ear.
‘Real enough for you now, boy?’ it says, landing gracefully in front of him.
‘How…what are you?’ Senu cries.
‘An advisor. A teacher,’ the bird replies. ‘No matter how much you might want to avoid thinking about it, your father is dying. You will be pharaoh soon. You have much to learn. Much to fix.’ And when the bird beckons with its beak out to those people gathered on the Nile bank, Senu sees them properly. They haven’t come simply to be blessed. They’ve come to beg. They’re frightened. They’re gasping and starving.
‘Disorder in the royal house is disorder in the world,’ explains the bird. ‘As pharaoh, it will be your duty to safeguard maat, the right order of all things. To do that, you must understand how all things began.’
And when the ibis spreads wide its wings, the story of creation is writ there upon a white papyrus of feathers.
Waves – they are the first symbols penned upon the ibis’s feathers. They speak of Nun. They speak of that primordial ocean. Endless. Boundless…Lifeless.
Nun’s currents are chaos incarnate, swells and eddies that not even the oldest salt could navigate.
And so no one, not even the gods, can say how the change happens. Perhaps it is some fusion – some consequence of tide crashing against tide. Perhaps it is the repetition of crest and trough – a pattern that is the first hint of order.
Whatever its cause, a change does come. Something rises from the waters of Nun and instead of fluid, it has form. Instead of vortices, it has vertices.
It is a new state, this primordial mound: not liquid, but solid. The parched red earth on which the first god takes form.
Does he grow? Hatch? Blossom? Does he speak himself into existence? His origin is as debated as his name, these symbols that ink and inch upon the ibis’ feathers.
They come to a stop as Atum.
And Atum, well, he is lonely.
He searches the parched red earth and finds no other. He scans the horizon and sees nought but the endless ocean. He peers into the depths of Nun and is met only by his own visage. Skin of beaten gold, shinning bright as the sun.
But reflection is inspiration.
So he takes himself into his hands. He takes his lifeforce into his mouth, and he speaks company into being. They are a son, Shu, and a daughter, Tefnut.
Tefnut is the moist breeze, the dew upon the reeds. Shu is the dry air, the breath in your lungs. They are lovers, the wind to each other’s sail, and so conception is easy for them. She gusts. He gulls. He billows. She brews. They storm, hot air meeting cool, and give birth to a son, Geb, and a daughter, Nut.
But the personalities of their children are not nearly so complementary.
You see, Geb is a god of practicalities, of all things tactile. Muddied hands, dusted knees, sweated brows – he is always starting some new creation. He’ll furrow fields into his limbs, a patchwork of cells and seedbeds, irrigated by vein and artery. He’ll whittle his bones into peaks and plateaus, mesas and mounts. But he can be fickle too, changeable as the seasons.
Nut on the other hand, she is stalwart. Stubborn. She has her mind set on higher mysteries, on theory and philosophy, on deliberations of their divinity. Her skin is her chalkboard. She scratches out proofs, theorems, symbols that twinkle and shine like constellations. And though she ponders questions without answers, she is dogged in their pursuit.
Geb, he sees it another way. His wife’s contemplation of those stars that freckle her body? It’s little more than navel-gazing.
And Nut? She believes Geb an incurious dullard – he’d carve out a beach just so he could stick his head in the sand.
You may think it some mere squabble, but disorder in the royal house is disorder in the world. It is a chaos that frustrates the cycle of all things. As Shu laid with Tefnut, so Geb lies with Nut, but their clash is so fierce, so all-consuming, that it hinders the birth of their children – the next generation of gods: Osiris and Isis; Seth and Nephthys.
And so Shu and Tefnut must intervene.
She gusts. He gulls. He billows. She brews. They storm, hot air meeting cool, and with looks black as thunder, the parents drive themselves between their quarrelsome children. Forever, then, Geb and Nut are separated.
Geb is hurled down. His fertile flesh becomes that good black mud. Nut is heaved up. Her star-studded skin becomes the sky, a firmament to keep out the primordial ocean.
It is the birth of the world as you know it – a sliver of order, of maat, amidst an endless chaos.
It is the world that the Ennead, the nine gods, rule.
It is the world that the pharaoh must maintain on their behalf.
‘The world you must maintain,’ the ibis tells Senu. Then wings stretched wide, it catches a gust and lifts itself clear from the balcony.
As it climbs, the boy watches that story writ on the feathers drain away like running ink, till only the fringe of the ibis’ wings are black.
The bird sets a westerly course and Senu recites his father’s adage one last time.
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.
Commissioned by HistoryHit for The Ancients podcast
Written by Andrew Hulse