Noreen
Doyle
Egyptology
Nautical Archaeology
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Noreen
Doyle
Egyptology
Nautical Archaeology
Fiction
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The Chapter of
Bringing a Boat into Heaven For the sake of my own immortality, which is by no means assured despite all that I am about to tell, I will write my name here in red hieroglyphs: Ankhesenast. It is a good name and was borne by two of my sisters, both of whom lived and died before me. Therefore I came to be called Ankhesenast-tashery, or Little Ankhesenast. I had a brother, born to our mother Nefert during the Intercalendrical Days when I was four years old. I hesitate to write his name, because immortality did not suit him very well the first time, and I do not believe that he would want it again. Nevertheless, as it would impede my tale to write again and again "my brother" and never his proper name, and as I did indeed love him, I shall set his name down here: Harkhuf. Harkhuf loved nothing better than shipyards. One day he said to me, "Tashery, I am going to build a ship. It will be more beautiful than the solar barque of Amon-Ra!" He pointed to the Sun God sailing on celestial currents high above our heads. "We'll sail up the Nile on the wind, and we'll drift down the Nile on the current, and then, someday, we will take it into heaven. More than anything, Tashery, this is what I want, my beautiful ship." For all his other faults, my brother Harkhuf was no liar. He kept his word, and I will tell you how he did so. #
Our father Intef son of Maya was chief of shipwrights at the royal shipyards in Perunefer, which is not far from Memphis. It happened that I came from bearing Intef's mid-day bread and beer when priests of Amon-Ra visited Perunefer. They had just received sacred geese for the Great Temple in Thebes. These were noisy creatures in cages, sticking their long necks between the wooden bars and hissing evilly at everything. I offered my service as a porter because I had only an empty basket and the geese seemed more than a burden for these skinny old men. The priests recoiled. "These are sacred geese, one of which bears upon his sacred skin the mark of Amon-Ra! Keep your impure hands from the God's birds or the God himself will deal with you! Be of some use to us. Take us to Intef son of Maya." The priests were shaven and immaculate, smelling of gloomy myrrh from Punt and of foul soil from geese. I did as they requested; our father offered them bread and beer, baked and brewed, he declared, by his own daughter Tashery, because his wife Nefert had died. They declined, explaining this was a fast-day for them, and besides, they were here on temple business. "Ah," said our father, leading them away. "Yes, yes, it is done." Our father had built for them one of the little boats borne upon the shoulders of priests during high festivals, having amidships a shrine in which the sacred image of the God sits shrouded. They came all this way from Thebes to Intef son of Maya, they had said, because he constructed the great ship User-Hat which travels the river during the Festival of Opet. It was only fitting that the same man should construct the little ship for the God. Intef accepted these accolades easily. "It is only with exaggeration that a man should be uncomfortable," he would say. I sat beside my brother Harkhuf in the thin, dusty shade of a palm, while he chiseled mortises into the edges of discarded planks. He had been coming to Perunefer since he was a very small child and had grown up with shipbuilding as a farmer's son grows up with the harvest. Everyone, including the King (life! prosperity! health!), knew Intef as the greatest craftsman in all Egypt. Harkhuf basked in this praise, dreaming and making promises of his own greatness, for it was pleasant in our father's shadow. Sometimes the shipwrights taunted him: "Harkhuf sits like a royal prince in the shade of that tree over there, playing with scraps of wood and a toy chisel!" "Soon I will have real work," Harkhuf said to me. "I am to become like our father, the greatest shipwright in all Egypt! Amon-Ra himself will envy the boat I build and want it for his own!" Intef came up to lay a hand upon Harkhuf's shoulder. "Let the God see this wonder before he envies it. Fancy speech is good for a magician, but not for a shipwright. You've spent most of your twelve years watching, Harkhuf, which is quite enough. Make yourself useful now. Go to Widiya. And you too, Tashery. Fetch water for Widiya and do whatever else he asks of you." I shuddered at the order, smiled at our father and obeyed. Once, Widiya had surprised me in our garden, where he had waited until I returned from market. He assaulted me, but only spilled his seed on our lettuce patch. When Intef came home and found Widiya red-faced, the foreman explained that he was here to purchase some linen I had woven and I was driving a hard bargain. "Purchase? I give it to you," Intef had said. Then he admonished me: "Shame, Tashery, for making such trouble for Widiya. How can you expect ever to become his wife if you behave so!" I remained silent because Widiya was our father's best foreman. Intef wanted Widiya to succeed him as chief of shipwrights at Perunefer, which would not be an easy thing because Widiya was foreign-born and worshiped strange Gods. An Egyptian wife might make things easier for him when time came to plead his case in the royal court. But I cheered myself that day. Intef son of Maya had built a sacred barque for Amon-Ra! This would make Harkhuf proud. Intef put Harkhuf into the care of his shipwrights, most of whom were, like Widiya, hairy men from Byblos and other Syrian cities. They were building a very ordinary little boat for the inspector of cattle. It was fourteen cubits long and made of acaciawood. The shipwrights allowed Harkhuf to work alongside them. They gave him good planks in which to cut mortises and drank the water I brought in a heavy skin bag. When it was empty, Widiya took it and put it on his head. "When will you put on your wig for me, Tashery?" he said. Widiya was shorter than most men, even shorter than Harkhuf. He tried to make himself an Egyptian by shaving his beard and half his head. Today he had forgotten and looked a little like a baboon with an Asiatic nose. Widiya laughed with his men and made obscene gestures with chisels. Harkhuf turned on the shipwrights, the chisel held like a knife toward them. "You'll leave my sister alone, or you will have no head on which to put a wig!" And he rushed at Widiya, very nearly circumcising the Syrian then and there. Widiya fell into the dirt, as if to accommodate Harkhuf's intent. Harkhuf menaced him until I pulled him away. "This is our father's best foreman," I whispered. "What will Intef do without him?" Widiya picked himself up, arranging his skirt in a cool manner but his eyes burned into Harkhuf like coals upon linen. "Harkhuf wants his sister for himself." Widiya picked up his tools. He and his men went back to work, leaving Harkhuf quite to himself. "You should be careful," I said. "Intef wishes Widiya to become an important man someday. You know that our father won't tolerate any abuse of him." "Oh, I know, Tashery. I am Intef's son," Harkhuf replied. "And you are my sister. No man may speak of my sister that way." Then he went about his work. Later that day a fleet came upriver and cheer returned to the hearts of the shipwrights. It brought cedarwood from the mountains around Byblos, which are higher and colder than any we have in Egypt. Whenever cedarwood comes into Egypt, men rejoice. I do not know why the Gods have denied Egypt cedar trees, which provide the only wood suitable for the sacred ships which carry the Gods in processions. Perhaps it is punishment for having allowed Osiris, the Good God who was king of Egypt, to be murdered on Egyptian soil. As everyone knows, upon his return from good works throughout the world, Osiris was thrown into the Nile by his jealous brother Set. Yes, I think it is on account of a kinsman's treachery that there are no cedar trees in Egypt. And I think there never will be. The shipwrights fell upon that cedarwood like starving men upon bread. Acacia is a crooked tree. You cannot get a very big plank from it, so you have to build a ship as you would a brick wall, joining very short planks end to end until you are satisfied with the length. With cedar, however, you can have planks almost as long as you would like. So every shipwright is eager to work this aromatic wood, the most wonderful on this earth. It is no wonder that the mountains where cedars grow as thick as bulrushes are called the God's Land. The King's men drove the shipwrights back with whips. "Hey, are you common thieves trying to steal the King's new ship before it's built?" Intef became furious and whipped the King's men with his tongue. "No one lays one blow upon these shipwrights without first laying a blow upon me!" Of course, the King's men dared not touch the royal shipwright, but they warded away the workers nonetheless. Then Intef gathered his men again. "Get back to work! Would you show yourselves to be like Harkhuf, whose laziness you're so fond of mocking? Look, he alone kept to his place. There will be no cedarwood ship for the King until the inspector of cattle has his acaciawood boat, so get to it!" They did as they were told, grumbling, "Prince Harkhuf should have stayed in the shade." Widiya did not grumble. He grinned, small-eyed, like a mouse in a grain bin. Intef's men made room for Harkhuf in the acaciawood hull and handed up the next strake. Harkhuf had cut its mortises himself, to match the tenons protruding from the strake below. My brother brought the pounder down once, then again. He was not making very much progress. Smiles lurked behind the beards of the foreign men. Harkhuf beat down on the strake again and again and again, becoming stronger and angrier with each chuckle from the Syrians. When the wood squealed everyone knew something was wrong. Intef tried to seize the pounder from Harkhuf's hands. Like the king smiting a foreign foe with his mace, Harkhuf laid the final blow. It produced a terrible crack, and a cry went up from the shipwrights. Others came to help pry up the strake. Beneath it, two of the tenons were splintered. An inspection revealed that mortises in the new strake were askew and much too shallow. "Hey, that's not how we'd marked them to be cut! A blind man could see that," Widiya said. Harkhuf balked at this charge. He had done only as the foreman instructed, he swore, and pointed to the markings Widiya had made on the plank. Intef did and was unimpressed. They indicated that the mortises were to be straight and deeper than Harkhuf had cut them. "Widiya lies," Harkhuf cried. "He tricked me and added those marks because I beat him!" Intef flew into a rage. "What is this! We are honorable craftsmen who can keep our hearts cool, not desert dust-makers with hearts always afire. In twelve years you have learned nothing here, Harkhuf: neither to build ships nor to respect honest workers." Our father chased Harkhuf away. At the gate Harkhuf collided with the priests of Amon-Ra. To save their precious boat from falling off their shoulders the priests dropped their cages and many of the geese got away. The priests wailed and chased the sacred birds all through the shipyard, shrieking for the shipwrights and porters to keep their impure hands from their sacred birds or else the God himself would deal with all of them! As Harkhuf fled and the priests bayed like dogs I heard the Syrians say, "Aia, mourn for Intef who has no son!" #
When I arrived home, Harkhuf was waiting for Intef in the garden. That was Intef's usual punishment for Harkhuf; my brother knew what was expected of him. Behind the garden's high wall he could see no river boats to inspire him to fancy. How my heart ached while Harkhuf sat there, weeping at the injustice done to him. He sat on his knees, staring up at the only boat he could see: the sun-barque of Amon-Ra. Intef came home bristling and hot-hearted. He threw a toy sword at Harkhuf. "You have grievously embarrassed me, Harkhuf. Foreign ambassadors say to me, 'Intef son of Maya, there are secrets our own Sea Gods would wring from you if they could!' Priests say, 'Only Intef son of Maya can build the God's sacred barque.' Yet Harkhuf can't even chisel a little mortise and then must lie about it afterward! What will people say? Ask anyone, and people will say that there is no such a child as 'Harkhuf son of Intef.'" "I have watched you work," Harkhuf protested, "and all your shipwrights too. Since I was a child I have cut mortises and fashioned tenons from pieces of wood you have given me. Widiya --" "Do not tell me of Widiya. Tell me only of Harkhuf. No, I will tell you of Harkhuf: he has seen and has not learned. He is fit only to be a soldier." Harkhuf fell upon his knees and prostrated himself before our father. "O Intef son of Maya! Let me show you what I know!" "O Harkhuf, I would prefer that you show me what I know." Intef walked away. Harkhuf ran to me. "Oh, Tashery! I do not want to become a soldier. I want to build ships, just like Intef son of Maya." "Be patient. Not everyone's moment of glory comes when he'd like it, or even as he'd like it," I said. Having witnessed the foolish runabout of the skinny old priests, I was feeling very wise. "You held that chisel as if it were a sword, the pounder as if it were a mace. Perhaps you'd make a fine general." Like a lion caged for the amusement of the royal court and not bred for it, Harkhuf tore apart bushes and flowers and lettuces which he and I had carefully tended. "I am not a soldier!" he wailed, beating the toy sword against the wall. In the shadows, I saw that he had scratched pictures of men into the bricks. Most had beards like foreigners, but one did not. Harkhuf flayed them with his toy sword, pummeled them with bare fists until his flesh bled. "I want to know how you do these things! What are you hiding from me? Tell me!" With the sword he hacked away the figure of the beardless man until there was nothing left. read the rest of the story in the February 2005 issue of Realm of Fantasy
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 Historical antasy short story Realms of Fantasy February 2005 illustrated by Ken Graning Realms of Fantasy
"meticulously written and deeply affecting. . . vivid and powerful. . .
unfolds to a surprising conclusion that is both inevitable and moving.
. . . a work of great power and resonance. . . ."
-- Mark
Kreighbaum,
Tangent 10, Spring 1995
"a wonderful story, much recommended for its exploration of Egyptian
mythology and its engaging style."
-- Bill
Allen,
Tangent 10, Spring 1995
Honorable Mention
--
Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling,
The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror 9 (St. Martin's Press, 1996) other excerpts: Ankhtifi the Brave is dying. Callum's Feast The Chapter of Coming forth by Night The Chapter of the Hawk of Gold The Dovecote The Execration Horizon The Rope Shadow of the Pyramid Trading Places |
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