“Is there anything you would change?” Ramesses asked.
“No.” I smiled triumphantly. “I would seal this treaty and dispatch it before sunset.”
“Bring me the wax,” Ramesses commanded. A tablet with heated wax was brought, and when Ramesses was finished, I took my ring and pressed it deep enough to make an impression. Two sphinxes with the ankh of life appeared, the symbol that had belonged to my akhu since the scrolls of Egypt had first recorded history. My family would live on; even when the sands buried Amarna and my mother’s face disappeared from the mortuary temple in Thebes, the cartouche that belonged to our family would endure.
“Our kingdoms are now at peace!” Ramesses declared.
“And the blessing of the treaty?” Paser asked. “Shall we consider the replacement for High Priestess now?”
Asha spoke up from the table beneath the dais. “I would like to suggest Aloli of Thebes,” he offered.
Ramesses looked to me. “I think she would make a fine High Priestess. But the decision to release her must be Woserit’s.”
Woserit was summoned, and when she arrived, I again searched her face for any trace of sadness. Her sister was condemned to be forgotten by the gods for eternity. But she smiled at Paser as she approached the dais. When Ramesses asked her about Aloli, she looked to Asha.
“Aloli would make an excellent replacement,” she pronounced. “If she would like, she may start with morning prayers.”
Asha settled back in his chair, red-faced from his brow to his neck. “And the High Priest of Amun?” Ramesses asked his viziers. “By the first of next month, there must be another High Priest. I have waited two years to crown my queen, and I will wait no longer.”
I CAN remember very little of my coronation in that month of Thoth. For all the anticipation, when the moment came, I felt a strange calm settle over my chamber. Although Merit was rushing from chest to chest, and servants were tearing through boxes to find my best leather sandals and lotus perfume, I sat in front of the polished bronze mirror and thought of the events that had brought me to this day. My bitterest enemies in the palace were gone, and though they say that snakes can’t kill each other with their poison, I saw it happen.
When Rahotep was executed and the news was brought into the Great Hall, the court looked to Iset, but she didn’t cry. Perhaps the shock of her father’s death weighed equally against the murder of Henuttawy. But aside from these thoughts, I remember very little, and in my memory the day seems like an artist’s palette, with colors and scents running into each other.
I know that Merit dressed me in Pi-Ramesses’s finest linen, and that the Dowager Queen gifted me her collar of lapis beads and polished gold. I can recall Aloli coming into my chamber with Woserit, and that both of them had never looked so happy or talked so much. Aloli thanked me for what I had done for her in the Audience Chamber. I told her that it was Asha who had first spoken her name.
“I think he is very much in love,” I said. “Perhaps like someone else I know.”
We both looked to Woserit, who bowed her head like a young bride.
“Will you marry after Nefertari’s coronation?” Aloli pressed.
“Yes.” Woserit blushed. “I believe we will.”
“But as High Priestess—”
Woserit nodded at me. “I’ll have to give up my chambers in the temple and move into the palace. Someone else will perform the morning rites. Then someday, if there are ever any children, perhaps I will have to leave altogether. But . . . but not yet.”
“And Henuttawy?” I whispered. “Do you know what will be done—”
“She is to receive a burial without recognition. But I will place an amulet in her mouth,” she promised. “So the gods will know who she is.”
I nodded quietly, and I understood that even though they had never been friends in life, they had still been sisters, and Woserit would do what was right.
In the Temple of Amun in Avaris, the new High Priest, Nebwenenef, poured the sacred oil over my wig. I closed my eyes, knowing that somewhere below the dais Iset was watching. I imagined her face holding the same bitter expression Henuttawy used to wear. If she had sent Rahotep after Henuttawy, I didn’t want to know. Then came the words. “Princess Nefertari, daughter of General Nakhtmin and Queen Mutnodjmet, granddaughter of Pharaoh Ay and his wife, Queen Tey, in the name of Amun I crown you Queen.”
There was a deafening sound of cheers from all around me. Amunher and Prehir were bouncing and clapping as well, caught up in the jubilation of the crowd. My wig was removed and the vulture crown of queenship placed on my head. The wings of the vulture swept from the diadem over my hair. I would never wear the seshed circlet of a princess again. On the steps of the altar, Ramesses took my hand.
“You are queen,” he said, marveling at the beauty of the vulture headdress that framed my face in lapis and gold. “The Queen of Egypt!”
A thousand courtiers celebrated behind us, and when I looked beyond the Temple of Amun, the faces of the people were filled with joy. The morning had dawned cloudless and brilliant, and the sound of sistrums filled the temple and echoed far beyond the banks of the River Nile. Children held palm branches above their heads, and the women who had come in their finest wigs laughed beneath their white linen sunshades. For as far as the eye could see, there was smiling and celebration, and the scent of roasted duck with barley beer and wine filled the streets. Thousands of people pressed into the roads, wanting to share in the joy of the day. I was their queen. Not the Heretic Queen, but a Warrior Queen, beloved of Ramesses the Great.
“So what will you do first?” Ramesses asked me.
I thought of the Ne’arin who had come to Egypt’s rescue in Kadesh, and when I turned to Ramesses, he knew my request before I said the words.
THAT EVENING, Ramesses announced to the Great Hall that I had expelled the heretics from Egypt. The people rejoiced as if the army had just taken back Kadesh. But across from me, Iset’s face grew pale. “Will every Habiru be leaving?” she asked desperately.
“Only the ones who want to go,” I replied in a low voice.
Iset excused herself early, and though I knew where she was going, I kept my silence.
The next morning, Merit reported that a painter named Ashai would be keeping his family in Avaris while the Habiru journeyed north.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
YOUR AKHU WILL STAND WITH MINE
Nubia, 1278 BC
BEFORE DAWN, IN the third month of Akhet, the court sailed in a flotilla of ships up the River Nile. Gold pennants snapped from the mast of Amun’s Blessing, and on the deck of the ship Ramesses pointed to the west. He had waited two years to show us this. “Do you see them?” he asked, and as the sky brightened behind the eastern hills, light fell across a pair of temples carved into the face of two mountains.
Courtiers flocked to the sides of the ships, awed by the grandeur we had traveled so far south to see. Asha asked the architect Penre, “You created these?”
But Penre shook his head. “They were Pharaoh’s design, from beginning to end.”
When the ships reached the quay, Ramesses took my hand. He led me to the entrance of the smaller temple while the astonished court of Pi-Ramesses followed behind. At that moment I knew what it must feel like to be a beetle in a human’s world. Everything around us made me feel small. Two images of Ramesses and two of myself gazed across the Nile, our colossal legs taller than anything the gods had yet created, and when we stood beneath the entrance, Ramesses indicated the words that had been carved into the stone.
For my queen Nefertari, beloved of Mut, for whose sake the sun shines in Nubia every day.
“For you,” Ramesses said.
After nineteen years I could lay down libations in my own mortuary temple to my akhu. It was a temple that would last until eternity, and as we entered the cool recesses of the hall, I was too overcome to speak. On every wall the artists had depicted me smiling, raising my arms to the goddess Hathor, and offering
incense to the goddess Mut. Statues of my ancestors were carved in granite, and when Ramesses explained how long men had toiled in the desert for this, I let tears roll down my cheeks and ruin my kohl. I touched the limestone statue of my mother, Queen Mutnodjmet, together with my father, General Nakhtmin, and felt for the first time that I had come home. Only Nefertiti had ever possessed her own temple as queen. When I looked across the hall and saw her eyes gazing back into mine, I realized then how much we were alike. “Ramesses,” I whispered, “where did you get—”
“I sent Penre to Amarna to search for their likenesses.”
The ache in my throat made it painful to swallow. “But what will the people think?”
“This temple belongs to you. Not to the courtiers of Avaris or the viziers of Pi-Ramesses. And for as long as there is an Egypt,” he promised, “your akhu will stand with mine.” He led Amunher and Prehir by the hand into the second temple’s innermost chamber, and Penre instructed the courtiers to step back.
Ramesses grinned at me. “This will only ever happen twice a year. Are you ready?”
I didn’t know what to be ready for. Then, through the cool shadows of the early morning, shafts of light crept slowly across the floor of the inner sanctum, and the statues of Ramesses, Ra, and Amun shone in sudden illumination. Only the statue of Ptah, the god of the Underworld, remained in darkness, and cries of wonder echoed through the halls.
“It’s magnificent,” Merit murmured.
Ramesses searched my face for my reaction. These were our mortuary temples, side by side, together for eternity. On every wall in Ramesses’s temple, my image was as tall as his own. There were scenes of us hunting in the marshes with Asha, images of us using throwsticks to catch waterfowl on the river, and on the largest wall, artisans had re-created the Battle of Kadesh.
“The gods will never forget this,” I told him.
“But does it please you?”
I smiled through my tears. “More than you’ll ever know. And someday, when our children are old enough to understand, we will bring them back here to meet their akhu and they will know that they have never been alone in Egypt.”
“Neither have you,” he said, and when he held me in his arms, and I looked from Merit to Woserit and my beautiful sons, I knew that it was so.
HISTORICAL NOTE
RAMESSES II is one of the most well-known and widely written-about kings of ancient Egypt. A copy of his Treaty of Kadesh, written in cuneiform and discovered in the village of Hattusas, hangs in the United Nations building in New York as the world’s earliest example of an international peace treaty. It is also believed that Ramesses is the Pharaoh responsible for some of the most visited sites in Egypt: Nefertari’s tomb, the Ramesseum, much of Pi-Ramesses, Luxor, the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak, and the stunning mortuary temples in Nubia (or modern-day Abu Simbel). Because he outlasted most of his children and lived into his nineties, entire generations grew up and died never having known a different Pharaoh. To them, Ramesses must have seemed like the eternal king. When his mummy was recovered in 1881, Egyptologists were able to determine that he had once stood five feet seven inches tall, had flaming red hair, and a prominent nose that his sons would also inherit. Yet many holes exist in the available knowledge of Egypt’s Nineteenth Dynasty, and while I tried to adhere to known family trees, events, and personalities, I bridged those many gaps in history in the most creative way I knew how, which makes this book, first and foremost, a work of fiction. I regret that not every important person from Ramesses’s life could make an appearance in this novel, but the characters of Seti, Tuya, Rahotep, Paser, and many others are all based on historical personages, and to them I have tried to remain faithful.
Historically, Ramesses is remembered as a great warrior and prolific builder, although his most famous battle—the Battle of Kadesh—ended not in victory, but in a truce. Yet in images from his temple in Abu Simbel, he can be seen racing into this war on his chariot, his horse’s reins tied around him as he lays waste to the Hittites in what he depicted as a glorious triumph. Ramesses was a master at public relations, and on his frequently updated Walls of Proclamation he would depict his latest conquest, whether or not it was technically a success. Nefertari is thought to have accompanied him to this famous battle, and at sixteen years old she was made Chief Wife over Iset.
Like Nefertiti, it is unknown whether Nefertari ever produced twins, but I used this plot element to forge a link between Nefertari and the infamous Heretic Queen. Historically, it is unknown exactly how Nefertari was related to Nefertiti. In order for Nefertari to have been the daughter of Mutnodjmet, Horemheb’s time as Pharaoh would had to have been much shorter than the improbable fifty-nine years that he claimed. After destroying Nefertiti’s city of Amarna and usurping Ay’s mortuary temple at Medinet Habu, Horemheb erased Nefertiti and her family from the walls of Egypt, then added their years of rule onto his own. The Egyptian historian Manetho records Horemheb’s real reign as being only a few short years. If this was the case, then Nefertari could indeed have been the daughter of Mutnodjmet. But all of this is simply conjecture.
What is known for certain about Nefertari, however, is that she and Ramesses were a love match. Buildings and poetry remain today as testaments to this, and in one of Ramesses’s more famous poems he calls Nefertari “the one for whom the sun shines.” His poetry to her can be found from Luxor to Abu Simbel. On a letter to Queen Puduhepa of the Hittites, Nefertari’s name appears at the bottom, and it is clear that she played a distinctive role in Egypt’s foreign affairs. She bore Ramesses at least six children, yet none of them lived long enough to become Pharaoh after him. In fact, it was Iset’s son Merenptah who succeeded Ramesses on the throne. But even though the novel depicts Iset as a disloyal princess, as with so much else, it is impossible to know who she really was in life. Liberties were taken in ascribing Pharaoh Seti’s death to poison, given that he died from unknown causes at around forty years of age. And while many of the Eighteenth Dynasty’s mummies have never been positively identified, including the mummies of Pharaoh Ay and Queen Ankhesenamun, I chose to ascribe their sudden disappearance from the records to fire.
Readers familiar with ancient Egypt will also notice that some of the historical names have been changed. For example, Luxor and Thebes are both modern appellations, but are far more recognizable than their ancient names of Ipet resyt and Waset. And for reasons of simplicity, I chose to use Iset rather than Isetnofret, as well as Amunher instead of the long and much more unwieldy Amunhirkhepeshef. Of course, the most obvious change of all is from Moses to Ahmoses. Readers looking for the biblical Moses within this story will be disappointed. Outside of the Old Testament, there is no archaeological evidence that supports Ahmoses’s existence in Egypt. What is known for certain is that a group of people called the Habiru existed in Egypt at that time, although whether they were related to the Hebrews of the Bible has never been proven. With such scant historical evidence, and given that I was attempting to portray events as they might have been, I chose to create the character of Ahmoses. I mention in the novel the myth of Sargon, in which a high priestess places her forbidden child in a basket, then leaves him on the river to be discovered by a water bearer to the king. This myth predates the biblical Moses by a thousand years, just as Hammurabi’s Code, a set of laws supposedly given to the Babylonian king by the sun god Shamash on the top of a mountain, predates Moses by half a millennium. I wanted these myths to be a part of the novel because the Egyptians would have been familiar with them, just as the Babylonians would have been familiar with Egypt’s most important legends.
Yet for every historical gap I had to bridge, there were many facts that I included that might otherwise seem fictional. For instance, Ramesses really did fight the Sherden pirates, and the Trojan War is thought to have taken place during Egypt’s Nineteenth Dynasty. During the famous Battle of Kadesh, spies were captured who gave information about the waiting Hittite army, and the subsequent death of Emperor Muwatallis r
eally did result in his son’s flight to Ramesses’s court in search of aid. If the world of the ancient Egyptians seems shockingly contemporary in some ways, that’s because they used a variety of things most of us would consider quite modern: cradles, beds, linens, perfume, face cream, and stools that folded to save space. And although the invention that Penre discovers in Meryra’s tomb seems unlikely, it is the first recorded instance of a shaduf anywhere in Egypt.
As for Queen Nefertari herself, she enjoyed at least twenty-five years of rule at Ramesses’s side. In Abu Simbel, Ramesses built her a mortuary temple next to his, and twice a year the rising sun illuminates the statues just as it does in the novel. When Nefertari died, she was buried in QV66 in the Valley of the Queens, and her tomb is the largest and most spectacular of any ever found in the necropolis. On a wall of her burial chamber, Ramesses summed up his love for her as such: “My love is unique and none can rival her . . . Just by passing, she has stolen away my heart.”
GLOSSARY
Aaru: After death, it was believed that a person’s soul entered into the underworld (Duat), where their heart was weighed against Ma’at’s feather of truth. If the heart weighed the same as the feather, the soul was allowed to pass into Aaru, eternal reed fields located somewhere in the eastern sky.
Abi: An affectionate term for father.