GIVEN LIFE FOREVER

KIEL BRYANT HOSIER

Ankhesenamun wept. The suns rusted dusk dragged shadow-fingers down the valley. Dying lotus petals seesawed to the earth, swirling on capricious gusts. The cooling air was damp with the perfume of Osiris sick-smelling nectar. Kohl ran in watery streams down her delicate golden cheeks. Renyseneb had urged her not to stay, not to wait. She couldnt help it. Shed tried to hide her eyes in the incense smoke of the high priests swaying thurible but the stinging fumes had only made it worse. Her Most Beloved should not see her so weakened, so ruined. She struggled to summon a countenance of hope and the reed-straight posture he had taught her. Were the example-setters now, hed always say, with a grin and a kiss. Thoughts of the lessons brought a fleeting smile to her griefshattered face. She inhaled a long, tremulous breath. She was alone now, lying against the still-warm stone, sixteen steps below the wadi. She thought shed counted more guards than usual they hadnt gone, their profiles detectable on the mountain ridge, sharp silhouettes against the perfect sky. Brawny sentinels proudly defending this space, her space, as if solely to protect this fragile moment. Was there more to their shining pride than duty? Did they sense the secret unjust, slumbering like a King Cobra beneath the surface of things? To herself she thought: I hope so. And another wave of shuddering sobs coursed through her body.

73 DAYS EARLIER
Neb Kepheru Re, Lord of the Two Lands, was dead. The news spread like an emaciating cancer, hollowing the life out of every nome it touched. Horemheb, the kings mentor and dearest friend, for all intents and purposes impervious to sudden attacks of emotion as his occupation demanded felt a physical blow to his solar plexus and crumpled on his mat. At first his eyes stared blankly, vision wavering psychotically between focus and out-of-focus, the world a distorted, pulsating smudge. The loss had lanced him like a spear through the heart. Grief swiftly transmogrified into hatred of the deepest kind, every cell of his being crying out in concert AVENGE. A crashing sound roused Horemhebs mind to immediate, dagger-sharp attention. His battlefieldhoned reflexes were instantly drawn tight. Suddenly alert, he noticed the papyrus scroll hed involuntarily hurled across his room. The wooden dowel had shot free, pulverizing his wifes beloved alabaster vase. Lamp oil now spilt out freely, its flame guttering, dying. The metaphor could not be clearer. It took every ounce of his training to control the overmastering emotions surging through him. After several minutes concentration, Horemheb breathed deeply, made up his mind, and exited his house with a determined stride. . . .

The mood was disturbingly nonchalant at Thebes. Horemheb! Ay cried, plucking dates from a blue lapis bowl. How are the soldiers at Tharu?

Ay was old, and not elegantly so he stooped from ever-present back pain and unconsciously clutched at it, as though he could pinch his curse out of the air. His paunch had grown since last Horemheb had come. That had been a warm time, full of amber light and happiness Fit and fierce as crocodiles. Upset at the news. A slight downcast expression Horemheb couldnt read. As are we all. To what do I owe the pleasure? A private matter, he said, and added, The Good God and I. Ay paused, mid-bite. Oh. Do you mean now? No. One day before will do. Ay squinted at him, skeptical. Of course. Horemheb proffered the expected bow and turned to exit. Oh! Horemheb . . . I wanted you to know: Im keeping you as military advisor and mentor. Nones proven himself more. The overt propitiation stabbed at Horemhebs concealed hatred, threatening to disclose it. He forced himself to nod gratefully, and left. Ay had no inclination that hed just signed his own death warrant.

71 DAYS LATER
Ankhesenamun was nowhere to be found. Rumors flew that a secret re-marriage had been staged to strengthen Ays already forceful case for regency. Horemheb couldnt dwell long on the matter. The time had arrived. The training gardens looked wrong, somehow, too pristine. Unused, he realized. Without thinking he found the spot and started to dig. Six inches down, it was still there, waiting. Just as he and the king had laid it months before. He collected the box and donned a disguise. The disguise consisted of a lower-class kalasiri and a very authentic merchantmans beard. Horemheb didnt like to think how the latter had been acquired. As planned, no one noticed him at the wharves. He pushed and shouldered his way to the predetermined slip. The boat was there. The eternal Nile lapped at his gunwales as he pushed off lusty, accusatory. I know, Horemheb said solemnly. I know. Miles downriver he sighted the landmark a red-painted shaduf overhanging an abandoned dock. Clambering ashore, a primal, childhood fear briefly surmounted him. Hed come West. He was in the West. He should leave. He should turn back. Before the shadows smother him No. His training returned. The hardpan ahead became his only thought. Hours later the mountains much nearer he began to catch a sound on the wind, a sound of . . . something big. It was a single sound, at first, punctuated by clanging noises metal against metal. And there were voices in it.

Close now. The sound rose with the terrain until exactly at the moment Horemheb breasted the final drumlin it broke into a familiar din: the busy cacophony of life. Below him spread Set Maat The Place of Truth. The sight sent a shiver down his spine. This was a place no Theban ever saw: a secret, self-sufficient city, sealed from the rest of the Black Land, where lived and worked the Architects of Eternity. He marveled a minute more and descended to the gate. A quizzical look fell over the gatekeepers face. Horemhebs faux beard had slipped in the heat, giving his head a deformed aspect. Casting the disguise aside, he reached under his kalasiri and brought out the box, opening its lid. The gatekeepers eyes widened. Inside the perimeter wall, Horemheb made a quick inventory of the streets. He squinted as his eyes found the sign hed been looking for. Everything was normal here except the blazing, blinding-bright center square. Gold was piled there seemingly impossible amounts of it. Horemheb shook himself from his reverie and strutted to the shopfront. A genial old goldsmith greeted him from the shops dark reaches. He smiled in recognition of the box. When Horemheb began to talk, gesturing very slowly, the old man leaned forward to listen. Hours later, Horemheb emerged from the shop. He looked about, decided on a direction, and headed toward the center of town. Gold, everywhere the glint of gold. It was all Horemheb could think as he stepped clumsily into the sunlit square. Great shrines all thickly gilded crowded the space, edge to edge. There were statues, statuettes, couches, beds, chariots, chests of drawers all shimmering gold or gold-accented. Everything had been elevated by the divine flesh of the gods. Horemheb recognized the name emblazoned hugely, exquisitely across each item and the sudden nearness caused him to bow his head in deference. This was real. He saw where white-robed priests were gathered, gyrating rhythmically, their huddle describing a man-sized rectangle. Horemheb held his breath as he got close.

And there lay the king. Not the boy-man he had known, smiling and handsome and real, and not the pitch-black husk hed seen beneath a hill of sand, either, but the goldwrights apotheosis, a full-scale portrait of pure polished gold. Expression set, stony, and Horemheb had to confess: godlike. The priests parted for him, eyes closed, chanting. Horemheb looked at the boy, his dearest friend. Without opening his mouth, he said: I love you.

She loves you. It will be made right. That is my oath. It will be made right.
He lifted the contents from the box: two daggers, ones blade iron and the other of gold. The ironbladed dagger he lay beside the kings thigh where Neb usually liked to tie it. The action startled him. Here, there was no gold armor. His hands grazed the sacred linen directly he could feel a rigid surface beneath, not at all like flesh. He shook, found his center again and moved on to the last and most important gift.

I added an inscription to your birthday dagger. It is my promise to you. His will be a brief victory. His machinations will have been for naught. I promise. That is my oath to you, Neb Kepheru Re, Tut Ankh Amun my vow. You will outlive him forever fold.
And he gazed one last time at the wondrously crafted dagger, its pristine golden blade, its seductively contoured pommel. The elegant lily-palmettes dancing gaily about its haft. He read the whole inscription aloud: The Good God, Possessor of a Strong Arm, Nebkepherure a pause before concluding with his recent addition, his promise: Given Life Forever. The priests suddenly split into two columns Horemheb quickly tucked the dagger into the beads and garlands festooning his friends chest. Strongmen came carrying something extraordinarily heavy: a coffin lid of solid gold. They set it gingerly into place. It would stay there for 3,300 years. Within hours, the funeral procession had begun. From a vantage within Set Maat, Horemheb

watched as it wound itself dreamily up the mountain, a sparkling caterpillar. Somewhere up there, Ankhesenamun wept. . . .

Ay had indeed married Ankhesenamun, his own granddaughter. But it didnt last. Ay too usurped Tutankhamuns original tomb as his own, and was buried there. But it didnt last. Of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings, Ays is worse off than most, thought to almost certainly have endured systematic annihilation. Even his stone sarcophagus something grave robbers dont usually vandalize was utterly obliterated, smashed to crumbs. We dont know what happened to Ankhesenamun. A tomb cache the first discovered since Tutankhamuns, directly across from his found in 2006 by Otis Schaden and his KV10 team contained several coffin cases bearing her heartbreaking likeness and fragments of her Amarna name, Ankhesenpaaten. Her real tomb may lie waiting. I like to think she wound up with Horemheb. At least one ring was found with an inscription confirming the marriage of Ankhesenamun and Ay. He evidently wasnt very covert in his interest. Ankhesenamun wrote an astonishing letter to the Hittite king, Suppiluliuma I, immediately after Tutankhamun died:

My husband has died and I have no son. They say about you that you have many sons. You might give me one of your sons to become my husband. I would not wish to take one of my subjects as a husband . . . I am afraid.

The king, Hittite records confirm, did in fact send a prince Zananza. He never reached Egypt. It is believed Ay had him killed en route. Horemheb succeeded Ay. A move I believe he needed to make. He really was Tutankhamuns military advisor and trainer. Several of the artifacts in

Tutankhamuns tomb are attributed to him funerary gifts. Horemheb is also the one who enacted

damnatio memorae on the Akhenaten family tree. Most scholars perceive this as piety for the old religion.
I see it as a favor to his friends, Tutankhamun and Ankhesenamun. In some cases Horemheb even usurped Tutankhamuns statues, writing his own name directly over Tutankhamuns as if to personally shield him from effacement and desecration. I believe he recognized erasure in the public consciousness as the only route to true immortality. An ancient Egyptian was eternal only so long as his or her name was spoken thus the very concept of necropolises, pyramids, monuments. Who speaks Ays name today? No one knows the real story behind Tutankhamuns golden dagger. Howard Carter, when hed completed clearing the tomb in 1932 (ten years after its discovery!), lamented that he hadnt really learned anything about the man despite the vast treasures buried alongside. Apart from the fact that it is a singular work of art there are one or two other ancient Egyptian daggers in existence, none of them identical to Tutankhamuns, none of them nearly so fine the blades one slightly surprising feature appears in its ornamentation, the stylizations of which embody both ancient Egyptian and Assyrian convention. On a strictly aesthetic level, I find the dagger absolutely resplendent. It is thoroughly Egyptian: from the Horus falcon circlets, the cartouches, the unmistakable cymatia, and the shape of the knife itself. It reads well up close and at a distance. Its proportions are immaculately balanced against each other. One extra microgram of gold to the hilt, or to the blade, and youve thrown the compositions grace. It is a jawdropping testament to human ability, not unlike the entirety of ancient Egyptian civilization.