The river took on a greenish hue, which I was told is actually called "Nile green," because there is no other shade in the world exactly like it.
"But as the Nile rises, the color changes," said Nebamun. "The life-giving material is brown, and Hapi, the Nile god, brings it from the source of the river far to the south. When it settles on our fields, it mixes with our old soil and rejuvenates it, by a miracle. Soon the rise will begin. It always happens just after the rising of Sirius in the eastern sky."
I smiled. Did he really believe in Hapi, the Nile god, with his pendulous breasts? I knew that one of my ancestors, Ptolemy III, had tried to discover the source of the Nile. Greeks believed in science, not gods, to explain things. Or, rather, they tried science first, and gave credit to the gods only when they could not find out the answers for themselves. Ptolemy III had failed in his quest. So perhaps it was Hapi after all.
I lay back, trailing my hand in the water as we moved gently along, a boat seemingly sailing in green fields. As far as the eye could see, it was flat, and so fertile it looked like paradise. A thousand irrigation canals spread the Nile water everywhere, and the slow turns of the donkeys pulling the water wheels kept bringing the water up.
There were clusters of mud-brick houses here, there, everywhere. The fields were full of people. It was all so different from Alexandria, with its blue sea and white marble; here the colors were green and brown. It was different in another way as well: the people looked all alike. They had the same skin color, the same hair, and wore the same type of clothes, whereas in Alexandria we had so many different nationalities that every street resembled a bazaar.
The river was full of boats of all sizes: little reed ones with curved prows; wide, workaday barges carrying grain and building-stone; fishing boats with tiny sails; and cabin-boats with reed awnings for shelter from the sun. There was a holiday air on the river, as if we were all at the same party.
Suddenly, Nebamun pointed to a trampled area of a vineyard. "Hippopotamus damage. Look!"
A big swath indicated the path of something as big as an oxcart. "How do you know?" asked Mardian.
"Ah, my nephew, I see you are now truly a creature of the court. Had you grown up alongside the Nile, where you began, you'd know a hippo's tracks well enough! Look how it came out of the water, see the path--it headed straight for the fields. Then you can see it doubling back again, turning--it must have been chased. Then, far ahead of us, see where it returns to the water. We'd best be careful. This means it could be waiting for us up ahead. I hate hippos! They make river travel so dangerous!"
"Aren't crocodiles worse?" asked Olympos.
Nebamun looked amused at our ignorance. He pointed to where some brownish green shapes were lying, half invisible, in the reeds by the riverbank. I also saw some eyes looking out above the waterline; whatever was attached to them was well hidden. "Look where they lie, sunning themselves. They are dangerous for swimmers, or for anyone walking along the riverbanks, but not for boats. But the hippos! They lie half submerged, and suddenly rise up and overturn a boat! And when they are disturbed, or perhaps only hungry, they decide to go marauding in the fields! A croc will gobble up a swimmer, but he doesn't invade your territory and wreck your boats and your crops.
Give me a crocodile any day."
"If a hippo is so nasty, why then did you Egyptians make a hippo the goddess of childbirth?" asked Olympos, the young scientist-mind.
"Taueret," said Nebamun. "I really don't know. I must admit, I don't think of a hippo, even a pregnant one, as very motherly."
"Then what about the crocodiles?" Olympos persisted. "Isn't there a crocodile god?"
"I think there's even a place where they're kept, and worshiped!" cried Mardian. "Tell us!"
Nebamun had to think. "That's near Memphis, in the Moeris Oasis," he finally said. "I have never been there. I have heard, though, that pilgrims go to make offerings at a lake with sacred crocodiles, where some of the animals wear gold and jewels on their forelegs and head-bumps."
We all began to laugh, uproariously.
"Sobek is the name of the god who is manifested in the sacred crocodiles," said Nebamun. "And the name of the landing where the temples are, and where the sacred creatures are fed, is Crocodilopolis."
Now we began to scream with laughter. A crocodile bedecked in jewels-- imagine its crafty eye peeping out from under a golden bauble--its wrinkled, crooked legs wearing bracelets! And living near Crocodilopolis!
"You are teasing us," I finally said. "There is no such thing as a place called Crocodilopolis."
"I swear, by Amun himself, that it is true!" cried Nebamun.
"Then you must promise to take us there!" said Mardian. "Yes, prove it to us!"
"We won't have time," he said.
"You just said it was near Memphis!"
"The place where the Nile has a small branch going to the Moeris Oasis is more than fifty miles upstream, and then one has to go to the far side of the oasis. It would be almost as far as going back to Alexandria. We do not have that much time. People will begin to question our absence."
"But if we do have time?" said Olympos.
"We won't," said Nebamun. "And once you see the pyramids and the Sphinx, you won't care about Crocodilopolis."
At the sound of the name, we burst out into laughter again.
We stopped that evening by the banks of the river, near a waterwheel and a well-trodden pathway leading down to the water. It looked as though it would be safe from crocodiles, for there was too much human activity. The hippo Nebamun had been on the lookout for remained submerged.
Just at sunset, we clambered over the side of the boat to swim. In the past year I had become a respectable swimmer. The water was moving slowly past us as it made its unhurried way to the sea; we floated little reed boats on it and then tried to outswim the current. It was easy enough going downstream, but coming back up took all our strength. We played hiding games in the reeds, and pretended to be Horus attacking the evil Seth in the papyrus marsh, disturbing a large number of ducks and kingfishers in the process. The whir of their wings felt like gigantic fans as they flew away.
Once again we were on our way before dawn, and before the day was over we had come to the place where all the branches of the Nile knitted themselves together and the river became one. The setting sun-^Re in his form as Atum, the decrepit old man sinking in the west--bathed the wide bosom of the river in his magic gold, and as we sailed on it I felt a divine stirring.
"We will rest here tonight, and then tomorrow--you will behold the pyramids!" said Nebamun.
"I hope I won't be disappointed," said Olympos, echoing all our thoughts. It would be so unbearable if they were not worth the journey. Something would die in me, and I might never undertake a long journey again for the sake of the unknown.
"Always the Greek," said Nebamun. "Never willing to believe, always holding back, worrying in advance that something will not be what it claims to be."
"Yes, that is our curse and our glory," Olympos said.
"The Romans just take things as they are, and figure out a way to use them," I said, thinking out loud.
"Destroy them, you mean," said Mardian.
"I don't think they decide that in advance," I said. "I think their actions are pure that way--not bound by prior decisions."
"Yes, they just decide each time, independently, to destroy. There's no suspense there. Look what they did to Carthage--leveled it and sowed the ground with salt."
"But, Olympos, they didn't destroy Greece."
"No, only in spirit."
I laughed. "As if anything could destroy the Greek spirit! You are hardly spiritless!"
"Something of the Greek spirit survives around the world, and a little may even have seeped into some Romans, but--what was truly Greek has perished. Except in Alexandria, which has more of the Greek spirit than Athens itself now."
"All things pass away," said Nebamun. "Except the pyramids."
Very early, b
efore there was any stirring on the boat, I was awake. Excitement had kept me from sleeping much all through the night; now that I was on the brink of seeing the pyramids and the wonders of Old Egypt, I was seized with trembling expectation. We were famous the world over for our enormous monuments and statues, the size of which made it seem we once must have been a race of giants, to have created them and set them up. They made us seem different from all other people, with a secret knowledge or power.
But when it came down to it, what secrets did we possess? And of what use would they be against Roman power? Whatever knowledge had raised the pyramids that might still reside in Egyptians today--how did that help against Roman legions, Roman siege machines, Roman catapults?
Only the power of the gods could stand against them. I knew that even then, O Isis. Only you, and Amun, and Osiris. And yet they had Jupiter, and Hercules. . . .
In the fresh morning gold of sunshine, thin and without heat, we sailed up the Nile, looking to the western bank for our first glimpse of the pyramids. The seemingly endless green of the Delta fields had been replaced by a narrower ribbon of green on either side of the river, and just beyond that, as if someone had drawn a line, the desert began. The golden sand lay flat and expressionless, like the face of a god, stretching into eternity beyond our eyesight.
The sun rose higher; the air on the horizon shimmered. Then, from a great distance--their tips caught the light and flashed. Three of them, winking in the sun.
"Look!" cried Mardian. "Look! Look!"
At first they seemed to be supernaturally huge, or we could not have seen them from afar. But as we glided upstream, coming closer, they shrank into just large buildings, like the Lighthouse. As we made for the landing, and the pyramids were framed behind farmers with donkeys and carts, they seemed to shrink still further, becoming almost ordinary.
We hired donkeys to take us the three or so miles to the monuments, and very glad we were to have done so, for as the sun rose higher and there was no shade anywhere, the sands heated to a foot-burning temperature. We were plowing through the golden sea of sand to what looked like piles of exactly the same material, except that the corners were very sharp. There was no wind, just the stillness and the heat.
The pyramids grew until they seemed to fill the sky; and when at last we stood at the base of one and looked up, it seemed entirely possible that the tip touched the sun. I know now that it looked like a mountain; but then I had never seen a mountain, and it staggered me. I knew only flatness, only the horizontal--the smoothness of the ocean, the straight, wide streets of Alexandria, the level fields surrounding the river--and this mound, this vertical thrusting, I could not understand.
The polished stones gleamed, reflecting the sun like an amber mirror. It was hard, vast, impenetrable. Nowhere was there a single ornament, facing, detail, window, ledge--just this sloping, shining ramp of stones, vanishing into the sky. I felt dizzy. The heat, rising from the sand and blazing down from the sun overhead, and the fierce light made my head spin. Suddenly I knew it was dangerous to remain there. The pyramid wanted to do us harm, strike us down.
"Shade!" I said. "Is there no shade anywhere?"
The sun was almost directly overhead, and the giant structures cast no shadows.
Nebamun brought forth parasols. "Only this," he said. I gave thanks that he had thought of them. "There is shelter under the chin of the Sphinx," he said. "We can wait there."
He mounted his donkey and set out toward the Sphinx^ its head peering above the sand. We should have felt the same awe and fear in its presence, but it seemed almost friendly in comparison to the pyramids. It offered us shelter, and it looked like a person, and it did not house anything long dead and hostile.
We spread out our blankets on the sand between the creature's paws and kept the parasols over our heads. There was little talking; it was as if the vast silence of the place forbade it. We could see a raised causeway off to one side, and knew it was an abandoned road to a pyramid, perhaps used to push stones along in the building of it. But no one walked it now.
We watched the day pass from under the shadow of the Sphinx. Occasionally a black shape would fly through the deep blue sky--a vulture. Or the sands would move a little, and we would see a small snake burrowing deeper to escape the heat. But other than that, there was no movement. This was a place in the grip of death.
I wondered who lay inside the pyramids, and what was there with them. There must surely be jewelry, food, books, and instruments. Somewhere in that utter darkness and isolation in the heart of the pyramid would be paintings of stars and Nut, goddess of the sky, as if to fool the dead Pharaohs into believing they lay outdoors under the night sky, rather than imprisoned in stone and surrounded by stale, stifling air for eternity.
The pyramids gradually began to change color. At noon they had been almost white, but that softened to a tan and then, as the sun sank lower-- Atum again--they took on a warm glow with a rosy tinge. Little creatures-- lizards, snakes, mice--began to stir and leave their hiding places all around us. We also emerged from the paws of the Sphinx and walked around the pyramids again. Now great, long shadows stretched on one side, and the slant of the light showed all the irregularities of the surfaces. Here and there the stones were crumbling; time was eating away at their fabric. Even they, the most immortal things anyone knew of, were not proof against the relentless enmity of time.
The setting sun picked out the pebbles and ripples of the sands all around, showing the pyramids to lie not in a featureless frame but in a richly textured one, whose writing is invisible except under certain light conditions.
The sky was pink and purple, a twisted mixture of colors spreading upward from a bright red spot at the horizon. A breeze suddenly sprang up out of nowhere, warm like melted ointment, and as sweet as a long-ago death.
"Come," said Nebamun. "We should leave. It grows dark very quickly, and we should not be here when the light fades." He hopped on his donkey with surprising speed.
What would the pyramids be like at night? Darkness against darkness?
I wanted to stay. But I was young, and must obey.
Chapter 7.
Nothing is ever the same twice. I expected that the journey back would be exactly like the one coming. And for a while it was--the same riverbanks, the same canals, the same clumps of date palms. But as we neared Alexandria and saw the white towers of the city walls blinking in the sun, we saw an unusual amount of movement, and crowds of people. Nebamun called out, "What's the news?" as we approached the dock.
"Cleopatra's dead!"
Although I knew it was not I, it is chilling to hear the death of someone with your name announced so nonchalantly.
"Poisoned!" cried another man on the dock. "I'm sure of it!"
"Where is Berenice?" asked Nebamun.
"In the palace. Where else should she be?"
"She hasn't fled, if that's what you're asking," his companion added. "But she might well have to. One of the other children already has--the younger Cleopatra. They're out looking for her everywhere. The Romans are coming."
"The Romans? What Romans?" I cried.
"The Romans from Rome," said the man with sarcasm. "What other kind are there?"
"Not true," said his companion smugly. "These Romans are coming from Syria--three legions--to try to restore Ptolemy to the throne. He bought them, after all."
"But the prophecy? What of the prophecy?" I asked. By that time we were out of the boat and scrambling out onshore. "Supposedly the Sibylline books forbade any armed help from Rome."
"Money finds a way," said the man. "Clever child, if you know about Sibylline books, you should know that money overrules all prophecies."
"Come!" said Nebamun, herding us toward the street of the Soma. He was alarmed, and realized he should return us to the palace as quickly as possible. As it was, he would probably be lashed as punishment for taking us.
"Nebamun, don't be afraid," I said. "It was my idea to go; I will take the blame a
nd the punishment." My sister would be pleased enough to order mine, that I knew; but whether she would forgo Nebamun's lashing as well was not so certain.
Had she poisoned Cleopatra? Would she destroy me, and Arsinoe as well? I felt weak with fear.
Once back in the palace, I did not wait for her to send for me, but went straight to her quarters. They were filled with professional mourners, weeping and beating on their breasts, and wailing in high, ghostly moans. I begged leave to go directly to the Queen's rooms, and, flinging myself down in sorrow--and trepidation--awaited her. I heard her footsteps come nearer and stop.
"Oh, sister!" I cried. "Is it so? Is Cleopatra dead? And have I added to your grief by being absent? Forgive me!" I did not have to feign my distress.
"Get up; stop sniveling. Yes, our sister is dead. Mushrooms have been her entry into the realm of Osiris. One must be careful with mushrooms. I avoid them entirely."
I looked at her, stolid and seemingly unmoved by the death. No one should be unmoved by death, I thought. Then, as I looked closer, I saw that there was a half-smile on her face, which she was trying hard to keep under control.
"Where have you been?" she shot at me. "How dare you leave the palace and stay away for days without informing me? You are only a child! Who is behind this?"
"It was I who planned it, and forced Nebamun, Mardian's uncle, to take me, and several others. We did it to him, not he to us." Please let her believe me!