Osiris Read online

Osiris

  By Ben Manessis

  Copyright 2012 Ben Manessis

  You have found my home. I am Sennefer, once vizier to king Userkaf. My life is inscribed here.

  I came to this island in exile - this island at the bottom of the world. My existence here was not altogether unpleasant. I lived in a villa with my wife. Her name was Tawi. We had a shady courtyard garden centred around a small fish pond. I remember looking down from the villa’s flat roof, where I would often write in the evening, and seeing Tawi tending the garden. It is always sunset in my memory. She has her hair knotted together loosely at the back. Her white dress, dirt smudged, flows gently along her figure, departing at the waist and rippling lightly in the breeze.

  Our whitewashed villa was built high on the island: from my perch on the roof I could see both banks of the River, east and west. Every year I saw the River flood. I heard it approaching, coursing over rock, writhing and churning as it rushed forth from below. I watched the water rise, eventually spilling over the banks and drowning the earth. And I watched as the sated earth emerged again, as it did the First Time, black and new. It was my official duty here to mark the height of the flood so the year’s bounty could be anticipated and taxes could be set accordingly. I watched the sky, seeking signs that would tell of times to come.

  When Intef was king, and I was a boy, Father showed me the stars. He woke me before dawn and guided me out into a clear summer night. I lived in Thebes then - the mudbrick vertices of the city lay dormant, regressing into dream as I drifted past them that night beside my father. We headed eastward to the city’s edge and slipped our sandals off. The fine sand - the day’s warmth breathed out into the night - gripped my feet coldly, did not compel me forward.

  The vast desert spread before us still and lifeless. Rooted to the ground like trees, we looked up at the inscrutable silver god-words inscribed above. Gazed upon the imperishable ones, forever turning; upon the great mother arched over us, and the milky sea in which she bathes. My father pointed to one star, low in the east, which outshone the others. He told me this was Sothis; this meant the flood was near.

  Half awake, I looked upon my father’s face, bathed in pale star light, as he looked toward that distant light. And my thoughts followed his far-off. Gradually a quickening came across the world. Leaves gently rustled and I breathed in the day’s first breath. For a time Sothis remained - even as the light welling in the east washed the other stars away.

  My childhood was happy. I grew up in a cloistered world of sandstone and blue sky among princes and courtiers. My father had become Overseer of the Harem Palace, an expansive estate near Memphis where the king housed his many wives and children. It overlooked fertile fields where farmers grew wheat and barley. And beyond the fields the River coursed.

  The palace itself was an elegant whitewashed structure of four stories with a retinue of stately date palms standing crooked sentry around its perimeter. A grassed expanse spread out before it and framed a rectangular pond in which lotus flowers rose up to greet the sun. Near one corner of the grounds stood a tall sycamore, its sturdy limbs splayed out in a manner that demanded climbing - we often obliged. Userkaf, son of Intef and heir to the throne, was my constant companion.

  For many years I have considered what scenes I would have painted in my tomb, what life I wished to prolong. I have seen many tombs. The owner generally has himself depicted as a vigorous specimen enjoying the benefits that his status allows - hunting in one scene perhaps and travelling in the comfort of his palanquin in another. Servants would be depicted providing his every need. I would break from custom, though, and give expression to the youthful days I spent at the Harem Palce, when all was still possibility, when pride and ambition were nebulous things for adults. There would be day and season, there would be all one’s life ahead always, and no youthful folly would not quickly be forgiven.

  It begins with the sun. Re, ram-headed, aboard his day barque, casts off with a stately push of the oar. There is a blooming in the East. Delicate light brims over, seeps through apertures, washes languidly across the palace grounds. Flour and water mingle, congeal. Bakers stoke bleary fires, cup the warmth within their shapely doughs. The valley below is all marsh. Day begins. The world is new; everything is yet to be discovered.

  Perhaps I should have given more of my life prior to this time. I must have been around six years old when I first met Userkaf. We had just made the journey to Memphis, my father, mother, and I. Until then I had never left Thebes. We left behind a cosy little house, as my mother described it, as well as friends, relatives and a cat my mother often spoke fondly of. I have no recollection of Thebes now. I did not fully comprehend what was occurring. I had no idea how far the world extended, did not understand how irrevocable this change. I do remember seeing the royal ship arrive. It was the grandest thing I’d ever seen: a wooden moon-cresent, a tamed thing bound by taut ropes, proudly remaining afloat and erect as the myriad oarsmen coaxed it along the River. We boarded the ship and Thebes drifted away.

  In the next scene, Re looks upon the world brilliantly. The world is filled with his seeing. Little Sennefer and Userkaf with their sidelocks spend a morning recumbent beneath the giant green sycamore, taking turns to move wooden game pieces. (I always considered my moves for a long time; Userkaf would move as soon as I did.) Were they to glance toward the valley they would note oxen-drawn plows turning the fertile black earth, now neatly divided by mud walls and canals.

  We invested the little wooden game pieces with life, saw ambitions and fears in the blank expressions carved into their little faces. Often the pieces, the little men oblivious to the great forces influencing their fates, would migrate off the game board, their universe expanding to the entire estate. Stories would coalesce around them. Great hero-kings would stalk ivory hippopotami statuettes, or whatever miniature beasts we could acquire, across vast plains of grass and dirt, return to their villages triumphant, having restored order once more. The villagers would rejoice, thank their gods for installing such fine and beneficent rulers, and redouble their efforts on the fields in recognition. Then the construction projects would begin: the rulers would require a monument of tremendous scale to be erected in recognition of the Two Great Gods who looked over the village. All resources would be diverted to these works, the villagers gladly leaving their fields to lend their hands to the project.

  We imagined the marvellous structures we would one day commission when Userkaf was king. Such things that would make the existing pyramids seem like mere building blocks, like spare tiles in a monstrous mosaic. We towered over our mud works, looked down over our little universes and were pleased by the villagers’ attempts to be noticed by such powers as us. We imagined the great reverence the populace would have for its king and his trusted adviser one day safely distant, at this point, in the future.

  Further along the wall of my imagined tomb, Re as scarab is seen to be pushing the life-giving solar disk toward its summit. Its rays shine down on the palace grounds, where Quaenum, a large severe man with a meticulously crafted beard that sprouts from his chin like an ebony horn, instructs the children in archery. Userkaf looks on admiringly as the tan archer prepares to arc an arrow toward an impressively distant target. Far below, farmers may be seen treading tenderly between rows of green shoots, netherworld offerings cradled by the midday rays.

  From the roof of the villa on Elephantine where I spent my last years, I would see at sunset a solitary pyramid in the west, a geometric tear in the luminous fabric of the sky. It was the house of Pepi II. I wondered this: could he see from there where the sun went each night? I don’t know how long I’ll last in this state: things change under the sun.

  My skin was the colour of cedar but it darkened as I grew - went like clay. When you heat clay it
becomes like rock - it changes in the oven like bread dough, becomes another way. Once it has set it can no longer be shaped: it is finished. This will be my final shape. I will fashion it how I wish.

  When I thought myself a man I adorned myself as the courtiers did - with wig, fine linens, and jewels - and worried how I looked. Userkaf, the young prince, was striking. He was tall and well rounded. The smooth curve of his forehead swept into a taut aquiline nose, behind which his dark leonine eyes were set. His skin moulded over structural elements which seemed purposely designed to obscure the inadvertent expression of the machinations brewing within: he was imperial. I, of course, was jealous.

  We competed in all things. With hindsight I can say that I sought validation in this way. I sought to gauge myself against one divinely vouchsafed with kingship. He was especially good with a bow. When he drew the string back he would instantly become the artist’s subject, ready to be captured in stone, one imperious eye aimed forward, gazing across the centuries.

  The next scene depicts the afternoon. In an upper floor of the palace, my father, not quite at ease, faces the harem children, who sit cross-legged resting wooden scribal palettes on their knees. Through the room’s window, golden fields of barley can be seen rolling distantly in an afternoon breeze.

  Though I was unaware of it at the time, sheltered as I was, Userkaf’s father, in his death, bestowed upon his son a languishing kingdom. Once the appropriate burial procedures had been carried out and the old man was interred, Userkaf, taking the throne, appointed me vizier as he had promised - as we had planned. An extravagant ceremony was held in the garden of the Harem Palace - a place we had left years ago when we had married and which now seemed much smaller to us, like a scale model of our memories.

  I remember that evening well. Seasoned courtiers were lining up to speak with me, all claiming to have urgent business, all, in my estimation, simply vying for the king’s attention. Round lamps shaped like bulti fish speckled the garden, little stars glowing in the crisp gloom. The pond was a viscous slab of polished night, the heavens, upside down, its silver grain. All about me stark visages loomed in shadow. Oiled skin glistened. Fragrances mingled: a brief sharpness, sweat and earth, a sweet intricacy. Bejewelled courtiers laughed and drank wine procured from distant shores. A sustained metallic chirr of heavily-bangled gesticulation suffused the garden. Looking over the shoulder of one administrator or another - the Overseer of the King’s Breakfast or perhaps the Controller of the Robing Room (I was not paying much attention) - I watched Userkaf, the king. I had, I think, expected some sudden change in his bearing, but it was still Userkaf beneath the tall hat, the Double Crown, that bobbed above the crowd. His new status had arranged itself around him. Attendants hovered behind him, swooping in to fill his cup lest he be for a moment empty - his father had enjoyed wine. I watched from a distance as he appraised the fit of his new vestments. He appeared slightly bewildered - though perhaps it was just me - as he discovered some further fold, but was quickly becoming accustomed to the arcane design, adapting to his new role. My role, too, was not as I expected. But it was not something I would have considered giving up.

  I do not wish to dwell on my death (for that is what that night was). I’ll say this: the floods were meagre, our projects were over-ambitious, and Userkaf’s reign was short-lived. I was banished from that life.

  It is dusk in the final scene that I have imagined for my tomb wall. Outdoors again, Userkaf and Sennefer run, the moist earth compacting beneath their feet…Userkaf is close behind me; I hear his lightly sighed exhalations. Our backs are bathed in golden sunlight and long slanted shadows protrude from our feet. The dark apparitions bend up the smooth outer wall of the palace as we approach, span the divide to stand upright. We look upon our faceless counterparts and we think their distant thoughts. The solemn figures begin to dance in the day’s last light. (This may have been a dream.)…Farmers in the valley below return from war - scythes resting on weary shoulders, bundled spoils held aloft - across the spent earth, all in shadow now. The ram-headed one, standing tall, is unperturbed as, with one final stroke of the oar, his barque comes to shuddering rest on the fine desert sands of the western shore. And closes his eye.