When Nemu, riding on an ass this time, reached home, he found neither
his mistress nor Nefert within.
The former was gone, first to the temple, and then into the town;
Nefert, obeying an irresistible impulse, had gone to her royal friend
Bent-Anat.
The king’s palace was more like a little town than a house. The wing in
which the Regent resided, and which we have already visited, lay away
from the river; while the part of the building which was used by the
royal family commanded the Nile.
It offered a splendid, and at the same time a pleasing prospect to the
ships which sailed by at its foot, for it stood, not a huge and solitary
mass in the midst of the surrounding gardens, but in picturesque groups
of various outline. On each side of a large structure, which contained
the state rooms and banqueting hall, three rows of pavilions of
different sizes extended in symmetrical order. They were connected
with each other by colonnades, or by little bridges, under which flowed
canals, that watered the gardens and gave the palace-grounds the aspect
of a town built on islands.
The principal part of the castle of the Pharaohs was constructed of
light Nile-mud bricks and elegantly carved woodwork, but the extensive
walls which surrounded it were ornamented and fortified with towers, in
front of which heavily armed soldiers stood on guard.
The walls and pillars, the galleries and colonnades, even the roofs,
blazed in many colored paints, and at every gate stood tall masts, from
which red and blue flags fluttered when the king was residing there.
Now they stood up with only their brass spikes, which were intended
to intercept and conduct the lightning.--[ According to an inscription
first interpreted by Dumichen.]
To the right of the principal building, and entirely surrounded with
thick plantations of trees, stood the houses of the royal ladies,
some mirrored in the lake which they surrounded at a greater or less
distance. In this part of the grounds were the king’s storehouses in
endless rows, while behind the centre building, in which the Pharaoh
resided, stood the barracks for his body guard and the treasuries. The
left wing was occupied by the officers of the household, the innumerable
servants and the horses and chariots of the sovereign.
In spite of the absence of the king himself, brisk activity reigned in
the palace of Rameses, for a hundred gardeners watered the turf, the
flower-borders, the shrubs and trees; companies of guards passed hither
and thither; horses were being trained and broken; and the princess’s
wing was as full as a beehive of servants and maids, officers and
priests.
Nefert was well known in this part of the palace. The gate-keepers let
her litter pass unchallenged, with low bows; once in the garden, a lord
in waiting received her, and conducted her to the chamberlain, who,
after a short delay, introduced her into the sitting-room of the king’s
favorite daughter.
Bent-Anat’s apartment was on the first floor of the pavilion, next
to the king’s residence. Her dead mother had inhabited these pleasant
rooms, and when the princess was grown up it made the king happy to feel
that she was near him; so the beautiful house of the wife who had too
early departed, was given up to her, and at the same time, as she
was his eldest daughter, many privileges were conceded to her, which
hitherto none but queens had enjoyed.
The large room, in which Nefert found the princess, commanded the river.
A doorway, closed with light curtains, opened on to a long balcony with
a finely-worked balustrade of copper-gilt, to which clung a climbing
rose with pink flowers.
When Nefert entered the room, Bent-Anat was just having the rustling
curtain drawn aside by her waiting-women; for the sun was setting, and
at that hour she loved to sit on the balcony, as it grew cooler,
and watch with devout meditation the departure of Ra, who, as the
grey-haired Turn, vanished behind the western horizon of the Necropolis
in the evening to bestow the blessing of light on the under-world.
Nefert’s apartment was far more elegantly appointed than the princess’s;
her mother and Mena had surrounded her with a thousand pretty trifles.
Her carpets were made of sky-blue and silver brocade from Damascus, the
seats and couches were covered with stuff embroidered in feathers by the
Ethiopian women, which looked like the breasts of birds. The images of
the Goddess Hathor, which stood on the house-altar, were of an imitation
of emerald, which was called Mafkat, and the other little figures, which
were placed near their patroness, were of lapis-lazuli, malachite, agate
and bronze, overlaid with gold. On her toilet-table stood a collection
of salve-boxes, and cups of ebony and ivory finely carved, and
everything was arranged with the utmost taste, and exactly suited Nefert
herself.
Bent-Anat’s room also suited the owner.
It was high and airy, and its furniture consisted in costly but simple
necessaries; the lower part of the wall was lined with cool tiles of
white and violet earthen ware, on each of which was pictured a star, and
which, all together, formed a tasteful pattern. Above these the walls
were covered with a beautiful dark green material brought from Sais, and
the same stuff was used to cover the long divans by the wall. Chairs and
stools, made of cane, stood round a very large table in the middle
of this room, out of which several others opened; all handsome,
comfortable, and harmonious in aspect, but all betraying that their
mistress took small pleasure in trifling decorations. But her chief
delight was in finely-grown plants, of which rare and magnificent
specimens, artistically arranged on stands, stood in the corners of many
of the rooms. In others there were tall obelisks of ebony, which bore
saucers for incense, which all the Egyptians loved, and which was
prescribed by their physicians to purify and perfume their dwellings.
Her simple bedroom would have suited a prince who loved floriculture,
quite as well as a princess.
Before all things Bent-Anat loved air and light. The curtains of
her windows and doors were only closed when the position of the sun
absolutely required it; while in Nefert’s rooms, from morning till
evening, a dim twilight was maintained.
The princess went affectionately towards the charioteer’s wife, who
bowed low before her at the threshold; she took her chin with her right
hand, kissed her delicate narrow forehead, and said:
“Sweet creature! At last you have come uninvited to see lonely me! It is
the first time since our men went away to the war. If Rameses’ daughter
commands there is no escape; and you come; but of your own free will--”
Nefert raised her large eyes, moist with tears, with an imploring look,
and her glance was so pathetic that Bent-Anat interrupted herself, and
taking both her hands, exclaimed:
“Do you know who must have eyes exactly like yours? I mean the Goddess
from whose tears, when they fall on the earth, flowers spring.”
Nefert’s eyes fell and she blushed deeply.
“I wish,” she murmured, “that my eyes might close for ever, for I am
very unhappy.” And two large tears rolled down her cheeks.
“What has happened to you, my darling?” asked the princess
sympathetically, and she drew her towards her, putting her arm round her
like a sick child.
Nefert glanced anxiously at the chamberlain, and the ladies in waiting
who had entered the room with her, and Bent-Anat understood the look;
she requested her attendants to withdraw, and when she was alone with
her sad little friend--“Speak now,” she said. “What saddens your heart?
how comes this melancholy expression on your dear baby face? Tell me,
and I will comfort you, and you shall be my bright thoughtless plaything
once more.”
“Thy plaything!” answered Nefert, and a flash of displeasure sparkled in
her eyes. “Thou art right to call me so, for I deserve no better name. I
have submitted all my life to be nothing but the plaything of others.”
“But, Nefert, I do not know you again,” cried Bent-Anat. “Is this my
gentle amiable dreamer?”
“That is the word I wanted,” said Nefert in a low tone. “I slept, and
dreamed, and dreamed on--till Mena awoke me; and when he left me I went
to sleep again, and for two whole years I have lain dreaming; but to-day
I have been torn from my dreams so suddenly and roughly, that I shall
never find any rest again.”
While she spoke, heavy tears fell slowly one after another over her
cheeks.
Bent-Anat felt what she saw and heard as deeply as if Nefert were her
own suffering child. She lovingly drew the young wife down by her
side on the divan, and insisted on Nefert’s letting her know all that
troubled her spirit.
Katuti’s daughter had in the last few hours felt like one born blind,
and who suddenly receives his sight. He looks at the brightness of the
sun, and the manifold forms of the creation around him, but the beams of
the day-star blind its eyes, and the new forms, which he has sought to
guess at in his mind, and which throng round him in their rude reality,
shock him and pain him. To-day, for the first time, she had asked
herself wherefore her mother, and not she herself, was called upon to
control the house of which she nevertheless was called the mistress, and
the answer had rung in her ears: “Because Mena thinks you incapable of
thought and action.” He had often called her his little rose, and she
felt now that she was neither more nor less than a flower that blossoms
and fades, and only charms the eye by its color and beauty.
“My mother,” she said to Bent-Anat, “no doubt loves me, but she has
managed badly for Mena, very badly; and I, miserable idiot, slept and
dreamed of Mena, and saw and heard nothing of what was happening to
his--to our--inheritance. Now my mother is afraid of my husband, and
those whom we fear, says my uncle, we cannot love, and we are always
ready to believe evil of those we do not love. So she lends an ear to
those people who blame Mena, and say of him that he has driven me out
of his heart, and has taken a strange woman to his tent. But it is false
and a lie; and I cannot and will not countenance my own mother even, if
she embitters and mars what is left to me--what supports me--the breath
and blood of my life--my love, my fervent love for my husband.”
Bent-Anat had listened to her without interrupting her; she sat by her
for a time in silence. Then she said:
“Come out into the gallery; then I will tell you what I think, and
perhaps Toth may pour some helpful counsel into my mind. I love you,
and I know you well, and though I am not wise, I have my eyes open and a
strong hand. Take it, come with me on to the balcony.”
A refreshing breeze met the two women as they stepped out into the air.
It was evening, and a reviving coolness had succeeded the heat of the
day. The buildings and houses already cast long shadows, and numberless
boats, with the visitors returning from the Necropolis, crowded the
stream that rolled its swollen flood majestically northwards.
Close below lay the verdant garden, which sent odors from the rose-beds
up to the princess’s balcony. A famous artist had laid it out in the
time of Hatasu, and the picture which he had in his mind, when he sowed
the seeds and planted the young shoots, was now realized, many decades
after his death. He had thought of planning a carpet, on which the
palace should seem to stand. Tiny streams, in bends and curves, formed
the outline of the design, and the shapes they enclosed were filled with
plants of every size, form, and color; beautiful plats of fresh
green turf everywhere represented the groundwork of the pattern, and
flower-beds and clumps of shrubs stood out from them in harmonious
mixtures of colors, while the tall and rare trees, of which Hatasu’s
ships had brought several from Arabia, gave dignity and impressiveness
to the whole.
Clear drops sparkled on leaf and flower and blade, for, only a short
time before, the garden by Bent-Anat’s house had been freshly watered.
The Nile beyond surrounded an island, where flourished the well-kept
sacred grove of Anion.
The Necropolis on the farther side of the river was also well seen
from Bent-Anat’s balcony. There stood in long perspective the rows of
sphinxes, which led from the landing-place of the festal barges to the
gigantic buildings of Amenophis III. with its colossi--the hugest in
Thebes--to the House of Seti, and to the temple of Hatasu. There lay
the long workshops of the embalmers and closely-packed homes of the
inhabitants of the City of the Dead. In the farthest west rose the
Libyan mountains with their innumerable graves, and the valley of the
kings’ tombs took a wide curve behind, concealed by a spur of the hills.
The two women looked in silence towards the west. The sun was near the
horizon--now it touched it, now it sank behind the hills; and as the
heavens flushed with hues like living gold, blazing rubies, and liquid
garnet and amethyst, the evening chant rang out from all the temples,
and the friends sank on their knees, hid their faces in the bower-rose
garlands that clung to the trellis, and prayed with full hearts.
When they rose night was spreading over the landscape, for the twilight
is short in Thebes. Here and there a rosy cloud fluttered across the
darkening sky, and faded gradually as the evening star appeared.
“I am content,” said Bent-Anat. “And you? have you recovered your peace
of mind?”
Nefert shook her head. The princess drew her on to a seat, and sank down
beside her. Then she began again “Your heart is sore, poor child; they
have spoilt the past for you, and you dread the future. Let me be frank
with you, even if it gives you pain. You are sick, and I must cure you.
Will you listen to me?”
“Speak on,” said Nefert.
“Speech does not suit me so well as action,” replied the princess; “but
I believe I know what you need, and can help you. You love your husband;
duty calls him from you, and you feel lonely and neglected; that is
quite natural. But those whom I love, my father and my brothers, are
also gone to the war; my mother is long since dead; the noble woman,
whom the king left to be my companion, was laid low a few weeks since
by sickness. Look what a half-abandoned spot my house is! Which is the
lonelier do you think, you or I?”
“I,” said Nefert. “For no one is so lonely as a wife parted from the
husband her heart longs after.”
“But you trust Mena’s love for you?” asked Bent-Anat.
Nefert pressed her hand to her heart and nodded assent:
“And he will return, and with him your happiness.”
“I hope so,” said Nefert softly.
“And he who hopes,” said Bent Anat, “possesses already the joys of the
future. Tell me, would you have changed places with the Gods so long
as Mena was with you? No! Then you are most fortunate, for blissful
memories--the joys of the past--are yours at any rate. What is the
present? I speak of it, and it is no more. Now, I ask you, what joys can
I look forward to, and what certain happiness am I justified in hoping
for?
“Thou dost not love any one,” replied Nefert. “Thou dost follow thy own
course, calm and undeviating as the moon above us. The highest joys
are unknown to thee, but for the same reason thou dost not know the
bitterest pain.”
“What pain?” asked the princess.
“The torment of a heart consumed by the fires of Sechet,” replied
Nefert.
The princess looked thoughtfully at the ground, then she turned her eyes
eagerly on her friend.
“You are mistaken,” she said; “I know what love and longing are. But
you need only wait till a feast day to wear the jewel that is your own,
while my treasure is no more mine than a pearl that I see gleaming at
the bottom of the sea.”
“Thou canst love!” exclaimed Nefert with joyful excitement. “Oh! I thank
Hathor that at last she has touched thy heart. The daughter of Rameses
need not even send for the diver to fetch the jewel out of the sea; at a
sign from her the pearl will rise of itself, and lie on the sand at her
slender feet.”
Bent-Anat smiled and kissed Nefert’s brow.
“How it excites you,” she said, “and stirs your heart and tongue! If two
strings are tuned in harmony, and one is struck, the other sounds, my
music master tells me. I believe you would listen to me till morning if
I only talked to you about my love. But it was not for that that we
came out on the balcony. Now listen! I am as lonely as you, I love less
happily than you, the House of Seti threatens me with evil times--and
yet I can preserve my full confidence in life and my joy in existence.
How can you explain this?”
“We are so very different,” said Nefert.
“True,” replied Bent-Anat, “but we are both young, both women, and both
wish to do right. My mother died, and I have had no one to guide me, for
I who for the most part need some one to lead me can already command,
and be obeyed. You had a mother to bring you up, who, when you were
still a child, was proud of her pretty little daughter, and let her--as
it became her so well-dream and play, without warning her against the
dangerous propensity. Then Mena courted you. You love him truly, and
in four long years he has been with you but a month or two; your mother
remained with you, and you hardly observed that she was managing your
own house for you, and took all the trouble of the household. You had
a great pastime of your own--your thoughts of Mena, and scope for a
thousand dreams in your distant love. I know it, Nefert; all that you
have seen and heard and felt in these twenty months has centred in him
and him alone. Nor is it wrong in itself. The rose tree here, which
clings to my balcony, delights us both; but if the gardener did not
frequently prune it and tie it with palm-bast, in this soil, which
forces everything to rapid growth, it would soon shoot up so high that
it would cover door and window, and I should sit in darkness. Throw this
handkerchief over your shoulders, for the dew falls as it grows cooler,
and listen to me a little longer!--The beautiful passion of love and
fidelity has grown unchecked in your dreamy nature to such a height,
that it darkens your spirit and your judgment. Love, a true love, it
seems to me, should be a noble fruit-tree, and not a rank weed. I do not
blame you, for she who should have been the gardener did not heed--and
would not heed--what was happening. Look, Nefert, so long as I wore the
lock of youth, I too did what I fancied--I never found any pleasure in
dreaming, but in wild games with my brothers, in horses and in falconry;
they often said I had the spirit of a boy, and indeed I would willingly
have been a boy.”
“Not I--never!” said Nefert.
“You are just a rose--my dearest,” said Bent-Anat. “Well! when I was
fifteen I was so discontented, so insubordinate and full of all sorts
of wild behavior, so dissatisfied in spite of all the kindness and love
that surrounded me--but I will tell you what happened. It is four years
ago, shortly before your wedding with Mena; my father called me to play
draughts.
[At Medinet Habu a picture represents Rameses the Third, not Rameses
the Second, playing at draughts with his daughter.]
You know how certainly he could beat the most skilful antagonist;
but that day his thoughts were wandering, and I won the game twice
following. Full of insolent delight, I jumped up and kissed his great
handsome forehead, and cried ‘The sublime God, the hero, under whose
feet the strange nations writhe, to whom the priests and the people
pray--is beaten by a girl!’ He smiled gently, and answered ‘The Lords of
Heaven are often outdone by the Ladies, and Necheb, the lady of victory,
is a woman. Then he grew graver, and said: ‘You call me a God, my child,
but in this only do I feel truly godlike, that at every moment I strive
to the utmost to prove myself useful by my labors; here restraining,
there promoting, as is needful. Godlike I can never be but by doing or
producing something great! These words, Nefert, fell like seeds in my
soul. At last I knew what it was that was wanting to me; and when, a few
weeks later, my father and your husband took the field with a hundred
thousand fighting men, I resolved to be worthy of my godlike father, and
in my little circle to be of use too! You do not know all that is done
in the houses behind there, under my direction. Three hundred girls
spin pure flax, and weave it into bands of linen for the wounds of
the soldiers; numbers of children, and old women, gather plants on
the mountains, and others sort them according to the instructions of
a physician; in the kitchens no banquets are prepared, but fruits are
preserved in sugar for the loved ones, and the sick in the camp. Joints
of meat are salted, dried, and smoked for the army on its march through
the desert. The butler no longer thinks of drinking-bouts, but brings
me wine in great stone jars; we pour it into well-closed skins for the
soldiers, and the best sorts we put into strong flasks, carefully sealed
with pitch, that they may perform the journey uninjured, and warm and
rejoice the hearts of our heroes. All that, and much more, I manage
and arrange, and my days pass in hard work. The Gods send me no bright
visions in the night, for after utter fatigue--I sleep soundly. But
I know that I am of use. I can hold my head proudly, because in some
degree I resemble my great father; and if the king thinks of me at all
I know he can rejoice in the doings of his child. That is the end of it,
Nefert--and I only say, Come and join me, work with me, prove yourself
of use, and compel Mena to think of his wife, not with affection only,
but with pride.” Nefert let her head sink slowly on Bent-Anat’s bosom,
threw her arms round her neck, and wept like a child. At last she
composed herself and said humbly:
“Take me to school, and teach me to be useful.” “I knew,” said the
princess smiling, “that you only needed a guiding hand. Believe me, you
will soon learn to couple content and longing. But now hear this! At
present go home to your mother, for it is late; and meet her lovingly,
for that is the will of the Gods. To-morrow morning I will go to see
you, and beg Katuti to let you come to me as companion in the place
of my lost friend. The day after to-morrow you will come to me in the
palace. You can live in the rooms of my departed friend and begin, as
she had done, to help me in my work. May these hours be blest to you!”