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.‘
Young Senu repeats the adage to calm his nerves, but it has become little more than a reflex now – he knows there is nothing that will make this moment bearable. How could there be?
He has just won a great victory, routing his uncle’s army, bringing his insurrection to an end – it should be a time of celebration. Instead, he has travelled all day and all night, not even stopping to clean the blood from his armour or the sweat from his brow.
And still he is too late.
The funerary priests are already there in his father’s bedchamber, with their chemical-bleached hands, their heads cloaked in those spotted hides. Senu pushes them aside. He shouts and threatens. He chases them from the room like a hunter chasing a leap of leopards.
Only when he is alone, does he finally look at the bed.
His father’s shrunken body is marooned in it, a single leaf floating in a marsh pool. He used to be so large. Or perhaps, Senu just used to be so small.
He feels his knees begin to give way then. He feels tears begin to cut rivulets through the dirt and grime that covers his face.
A roar, a sob, a scream begins to bubble in his throat, and that’s when he feels a weight upon his shoulder: the ibis has taken perch there.
Senu half expects some rebuke: he is pharaoh now, and a pharaoh should comport themselves better. But the bird says nothing. It simply remains there upon his shoulder, and every time some fresh wave of grief comes to drown him, Senu feels its talons tighten.
He doesn’t know how long he kneels there before there is a knocking at the door, the priests asking to return.
‘I don’t want them to touch him,’ Senu whispers.
‘You have to,’ replies the bird, not unkindly. ‘You have already beaten your enemy, boy. Death is not another. Let me show you the safe hands to which you entrust your father’s body.’
And when the ibis spreads wide its wings, the story of Anubis is writ there upon a white papyrus of feathers.
It is hard to read that first symbol penned upon the ibis’ feathers. It is something out in the deep desert, among the parched red earth. Something howling. Mewling. Whimpering.
It’s dark – a cool night so black, you’d be picking your way across the dunes by starlight alone. But if you followed that horrible, crying sound, eventually you would find it: an animal lying in a pool of blood. It has gleaming cat eyes, whiskers sharp as needles, fangs curved and keen as a waxing moon.
But those are not what you would notice first: you would notice the red ruin of its flesh. The creature has been flayed, its skin stripped away to show the muscle and bone beneath.
It will recover. The creature is a god after all: Set in the form of an animal, some big cat.
But he will never forget this mutilation.
He will never again cross the god Anubis.
What is Set’s crime? What has led to this punishment?
He is a kin-slayer.
He has not merely betrayed his brother, the pharaoh god, Osiris. He has not merely killed his brother. Set has mutilated his brother. He has dismembered the pharaoh’s body, cut it into fourteen pieces and scattered them far and wide across Egypt.
But gods are not so easy to destroy. Osiris’s wife, Isis, has taken to the wing as a kite and gone in search of her husband’s remains. With each new part, she makes a stitch. With each new piece, a bind. She begins to reconstruct Osiris’s body.
However, to find the last of his limbs, the last of his organs, she must range farther and farther, she must be gone for longer and longer. Weathering distant storms. Riding foreign winds.
And all the while, Osiris’s remains are unguarded. Unprotected.
Set sees his chance to stop this resurrection once and for all.
He begins to warp, to bend and twist until he takes the form of a predator, a hunter with gleaming cat eyes, whiskers sharp as needles, fangs curved and keen as a waxing moon. He heads into the deep desert following a sweet rotting scent.
But Set is wrong to think himself the only creature that skulks and stalks the parched red earth. Another has smelt that scent. Another god.
His name is Anubis.
A snout. A snarl curling over yellowing teeth. Anubis’s head is that of a black jackal, and his devotion to the dead is canine. His is the bark that echoes about tombs and crypts, his is the howl in the night that sends graverobbers running.
And so when Anubis sees Set tearing at the remains of Osiris’s body, he takes to four legs and chases him off.
Set is faster; the god has taken the form of a big cat, a sprinting creature. But every dog has its day, and Anubis is relentless. Every time Set thinks he has outrun him, every time he stops to pant and gasp, the jackal is there upon him.
And the chase continues.
Minutes. Hours. The whole night and beyond. Khepru, the god of dawn, notices the pursuit at daybreak, and Atum, the god of dusk, is still watching at sunset.
Until finally, in darkness – a cool night so black you’d be picking your way across the dunes by starlight alone – Set can flee no longer.
Their fight then is quick: paw matched against claw. But the truth is Set is exhausted. His every muscle is pulled. His breaths are shallow.
When Anubis’s jaws close about his throat, the big cat goes limp, his tail ceases to thrash. Set can only plead then. Only beg.
But Anubis is dogged: an eye for an eye is the rule of the gods, and so there can only be one punishment for Set’s crime: a mutilation. Anubis flays him alive, but not before branding his hide over and over again with a burning iron. Those scorched spots – ink black – they are marks of shame on all leopards for allowing Set to take their form for his savagery. For his barbarity.
When Isis returns from her search, another of Osiris’s limbs held in her talons, she finds Anubis at guard over her husband’s body. A faithful hound.
Together they stitch, together they bind. And when Anubis wraps Osiris’s body in linens – these last rites of a pharaoh – he does it with the utmost care, the utmost precision. His fingers do not shiver in that cool night so black.
No. He has a new cloak to keep him warm. It is a leopard’s hide so fresh that blood still drips onto the sand.
‘Hand him over to the priests now, boy,’ says the ibis, ‘They will take care of your father as Anubis did Osiris. Let him join the King of the Dead in the Duat. Let him join the sun gods upon the solar barge. Let him go.’
And at long last, Senu nods. He blinks away his tears. He pushes himself to his feet, kisses his father’s forehead one final time. And then he turns to the bird.
‘Will you stay with me?’
Instead of a reply, the bird sails gently down to the bed and taps on his father’s curled hand. Senu checks and feels something soft there cupped in the cool palm: a single white feather, a black edge like it’s been dipped in ink.
‘I will stay for as long as you need, Senu,’ the ibis explains. ‘Just as I did for your father. Just as I have for every generation of your family.’
Senu’s voice all but breaks.
‘Was he scared? At the end.’
‘Yes. For a time,’ replies the ibis, the mentor, the god. ‘But then he took a breath and whispered something. An old adage to calm the nerves.’
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