If this writing be known by the deceased upon earth and…be written upon his coffin, he shall come forth by day in all the forms of existence which he desireth, and he shall enter into … the Fields of Aaru in peace…; there shall wheat and barley be given unto him; there shall he flourish as he did upon earth; and he shall do whatsoever pleaseth him, even as do the gods who are in the underworld, for everlasting millions of ages, world without end. – The Egyptian Book of the Dead
The two young brothers were wrapped in a rug as a sandstorm pummeled the tent. They had been joking about sandballs earlier, trying to make the sand stick together with their spit. Their sleeping faces flickered white from the light of a candle. A cat was watching them from the corner. When a large gust hurled sand against the tent, the boys moved, settled in again. The cat looked away. The boys are peaceful and happy now. Would it be always so, thinks the cat, their grandfather.
I am the brother who made it. The golden boy. A member of the Blessed Dead. I get to live on in the Fields of Auru, where my ba soul visits the land of Ra the sun god daily. Everything I loved in the land of the living is here—food, drink, my wife, sex with my wife, swimming, boating, birdsong, views of the mountains. At night, my ba soul returns to my mummified corpse through the false door in my sarcophagus. I am rejoined with my ka soul and with Osiris. And that’s it. Afterlife is good.
My brother Sab is the one who thinks he is without prospects, the one who fertilizes the bitterness in his chest daily, for hours, painting accusations on offering bowls and leaving them at my tomb when he should be bringing me oils, reeds, bread, and beer. My brother accuses me of bad faith, stonewalling, lying, self-interest, and emoluments. “You are a bad person,” he says. “You and your wife. You lied to me. You used me. You stole from me. You didn’t return my letters, and I want the gods and the family to know just how bad you are!”
But I have spoken to the gods. And the gods have judged me worthy.
I have not mistreated cattle.I have not done evil.I have not diminished the offering loaves in the temple.I have not added to nor have I subtracted from the offering measure.I have not neglected the days concerning their meat offerings.I am pure. I am pure. I am pure. I am pure!
I know the names of all forty-two gods in the Hall of Two Truths: Wide-of-Stride, Embracer-of-Fire, Swallower-of-Shadows, Rough-of-Face, Smasher-of-Bones, Eater-of-Blood, Eater-of-Entrails, Doubly-Evil-Viper. To each of them, I swore, I swore I did not, I swore I did not do those things that could make them turn me away. I made no disturbance. I did not copulate unnecessarily. I did not wink. I did not revile the king. I was not verbose. I did not raise my voice. And I did not deliberately commit wrongdoing against anyone, especially against my brother.
Anubis weighed the truth of my heart against the feather. Horus interrogated me till my voice croaked. The gods forced me to endure a thousand pokes and prods to test my sincerity, the pureness of my intentions. I got past the crocodile who was dying to swallow me had I slipped up. I had to memorize the names of all the doorkeepers and recite just the right spells at just the right time. It was not just the doorkeepers but the door parts. The name of the door post at the Hall of Truth was “Plummet of Truthfulness.” The right door-leaf’s name was “Scale-pan which bears the Truth.” The left door-leaf was “Scale-pan of Wine.” The threshold was “Ox of Geb,” and the door bolt, my favorite, was “Toe of his Mother.” The floor needed to know the names of my feet before he would let me walk on him. “He who is inducted into the presence of Min” was the name of my right foot. My left was “He who opens heaven for Hathor.” My brother just doesn’t understand how hard I had to work to get where I am.
And just where is that? Interesting question. I think it’s fair to say that “I” am no longer. “I” am one with the gods and the stuff of the universe. “I” am Osiris. “I” am my mummy, but also my ka and my ba and other ephemeral whisps of beingness. “I” am on the waters of heaven’s Nile with little to do but sing the praises of Ra, enjoy fruits and wines, float along the river. At the same time “I” am in Ra’s boat in the sky. “I” am ploughing the Fields of Offerings with help from my little clay servants stashed in my coffin. “I” does not do justice to what I have become.
Yes, all is well in my universe except for one thing. According to the rules, my pipeline of offerings must keep flowing. And brother Sab has not been doing his part.
This morning at assembly, Ra himself called me out. “It has come to my understanding that some of our relatives are not doing their part. Chike, stand up.”
I smoothed my wrap-around linen skirt, and stood.
“Do something about your brother, Chike. Straighten him out. He’s a bad example who could infect others. And you of course know that your life here is at risk.”
Ten years ago when our father died, my brother and I presumed that we would inherit the estate--the house and the fields and the crops and a thriving family business. After our father’s three-day funeral, the trustee read us the will, and then, the trustee showed us the books. The miserable books. The estate was behind on taxes. The tenant had not been paid his share of dates. There was only a day or two of feed for the horses and nothing but debts to pay for more. The bill for the road was coming due, as well as dockage for the family boat on the Nile. Not to mention the funeral expenses for our father! The date and wheat harvest prospects were not good. We were in a deep hole. The Trustee opened his hands, palms up.
“There is nothing left to do but sell the property, sons, pay off the debts. There may be something left for you. I’m sorry your father let things get to this state.”
Sab went darkly silent. He had devoted his life to running the estate’s operations and maintaining the property. He was the one who answered when the rats got in the grain sacks, when the locusts descended upon the fields, when the Nile got too high in the spring and flooded our storage sheds.
“All of it?” he spat out.
“Yes,” said the Trustee. “There is no way to split the lot. We’ve checked with the deed office and the elders in the planning commission. We even hired a counselor to look into it. This area has a minimum lot size for farming purposes. So the whole thing must be sold.”
While Sab had been busy with the house and farm, I devoted myself to religious studies. I read the holy books daily, prayed for hours, made offerings to the gods, and studied the Book of the Dead backwards and forwards till I knew every one of the spells. I devoted myself utterly to preparing for the afterlife. After all, earthly life is temporary. The afterlife is forever.
This course for my life was not my choice, by the way. My name Chike means “power of God.” It was my grandfather’s choice, codified in his trust. This trust provided for my earthly needs as long as I kept up my studies and embraced my calling. Then it provided for my post-earthly needs as well; as least that was the idea. It was all fine with me.
I began my journey to visit Sab in the land of the living by inhabiting the body of a hawk. I flew down through the white sky along the riverbeds. This was a familiar commute, but it normally happened at dusk, not in the middle of the day. It was hot, but the swirling uplifts meant I hardly had to bat a wing. Boats were ghosting along the Nile. People, everything, moved as little as possible.
When I was alive, we had tried to sell the property. It didn’t happen, and as time went by the main house began to fall apart. The mud walls crumbled. The lotuses in the pool decayed, and the water turned foul. The palms went untrimmed and the fronds filled with rats. We were running out of ways to pay the workers. Since our harvest had been poor that year and the next, I was forced to make trips to the market to trade artifacts, paintings, and furniture for grain, copper, or other deben to keep the workers on the job, but it was impossible to keep up. Sab would come to me, angry about the state of the fields, or the pool, or the grain shed, or the stables. “Of course no one wants this estate,” he said. “Look at it.” Sab had stopped fixing things. He said he wanted out—no way was he going to work for me. But he couldn’t walk away. It was his future too. Sab usually got to work eventually, grumbling about how he was being taken advantage of. In point of fact there was no way to pay him.
“Why don’t you get a job, brother?” I asked him.
“Why don’t you get a job, brother?” was his answer. “Who else will fix this place if I don’t? You’re not doing anything. Besides, I’ve got other things to do. A full-time job would just distract me.” When Sab wasn’t working on the house or the property, he would descend into a storage shed where he’d fixed up a work bench. He had papyri all over the wall with symbols on them. A secret project that only he could understand.
“Look at this,” Sab said to me one day, after dragging me into the shed.
“Yes?” I said.
“What would you say if I told you I had a way to write that same number with three symbols instead of 15?” Sab leaned back against the wall.
“Not much,” I said. “The priests have been writing numbers that way since forever.”
“That’s right,” said Sab. “And it’s ridiculous.”
I stepped back. “Who’s going to pay attention to you when there are scribes and artists and mathematicians all working full-time for Pharoah? Besides, how are you going to make any money? It would seem to me that the scribes and artists like having all the symbols. It ups the pay.”
Sab just grumbled. “You don’t understand.” He went on spending hours every day in the shed working this thing out, telling everyone including his wife to just leave him be. She would see. He would be rich someday. Meanwhile she was the one who had to go work in the commissary for the family’s daily bread. There was no help coming from Sab.
It was beyond my understanding.
A year later, I died. I was out on a boat with the head priests on a hunting junket. We had managed to wound a hippo--a bad idea.
There were of course funeral expenses—heavy funeral expenses—which finally forced a sale of the property. My tomb was finished during my lifetime, but there was one final payment needed to secure the deed. Then the funeral workers had to be paid for seventy days of embalming and wrapping my corpse with linen; the carpenters for building the coffin; the scribes and painters for painting the scenes and the spells on the sides of the coffin and the false door through which my ba soul could find its daily escape; and the priests and the caterers and dancers and musicians for the funeral feast and the Opening of the Mouth Ceremony.
The trustee was finally able to trade the house and the land for enough deben to pay the expenses and buy a small house for Sab in a not-so-good neighborhood. His family had to move immediately.
I didn’t think there is anything I could have done differently. But Sab didn’t see it that way.
My ba as hawk landed on a roof peak near Sab’s adobe house, and I looked around the neighborhood. Dried mud and dust everywhere. Walls of mud brick. Roofs of mud bound with reeds. High, small windows with curtains barely moving in the mid-day heat. I could see shadows in Sab’s house so I knew someone was there. I spied a sparrow nearby and my ba left the hawk’s body for the sparrow’s. I landed on the open windowsill. Inside were Sab and his wife sitting at the table.
“How are we supposed to pay next month’s bills?” she asked in a small voice. “We owe at the commissary and we’re down to our last sack of flour. I can make bread for a few more days but that’s it.”
“Leave me alone, woman,” growled Sab. “How am I supposed to help it if my holy brother robbed us of everything? I’m writing him right now to get him to do something.” Sab was painting a message on a bowl, another one that he no doubt planned to leave at my tomb. He’d been doing this for months, and I had stopped reading them since there was nothing I could say or do.
I flew to a shelf inside the house and cocked my head to get a look at what he was writing now.
Brother, I find it unbelievable that you refuse to talk with me. Why did you force me to take care of our property with no intention of ever paying me? And then you died, you son of a donkey, and everything I worked for had to be sold to pay for your funeral expenses. It is outrageous. I worked for years for nothing. This was my property! At least half mine. There is nothing left! How could you do this to me? You are an evil person. Your wife is evil. Your horse is evil. I demand that you pay me what you owe me.
Sab looked in my direction and noticed the sparrow was looking in his. “It’s you, you monkey turd! It’s you, isn’t it!”
I fluttered toward the window as Sab threw the bowl at me he’d been painting. It shattered against the wall. I could feel the wind as it passed. Sab was looking around for other things to throw when I escaped through the window. He ran outside chasing me and continuing to shout. The neighbors looked out their doors at a man shouting at a sparrow who quickly flew over a neighboring house and alighted on a roof some cubits away.
I stopped to think. Could I get him some deben after all? Would that help? Could his wife help? But, really, was Sab about to change his ways just because he got a payment or two? Would it ever be enough? To save himself, he would have to change more than a little. He would have to live a life of consideration, mindfulness, and balance in accordance with maat. He would have to find a way to forgive me. But his rage was black and deep. Even though he risked being nothing but a ghost wandering the universe for eternity, even though he would have no chance to enter paradise, the Sab I saw today didn’t stand a chance. At least I didn’t see one. And I didn’t see how I could make a difference. In fact, it always made things worse if I came around. Telling him the truth would only stoke his rage. If Sab was ever going to get out of this black fire that was sucking the breath out of him, it would be up to him.
It was getting late. Time to return to my mummy. I hopped into a crow passing by and flew towards the burial chamber. Once there, I dropped down into the sarcophagus and through the false door. There was my beloved khat waiting for my return. My ba became one with my ka as night embraced us. I fell deep into sleep in the keep of Osiris, dreaming of my wife with myrrh unguent melting in her black wig. Ra would be birthed again in the morning. The earth would light up. My ba would once again soar into the world of light and sky. As for my brother, I resolved again to ignore his bowls. His disharmony was affecting me. There are no gods but the true gods. There is only one Ra his holiness most righteous and one Osiris his power most powerful. I am weak but you are strong. Help my brother, oh gods, to maintain the balance of the universe and live a righteous life, now and forever. Help him find the path of maat. And I was thinking right then that maybe in the morning I would do as King Snefru did when his soul was in need of some refreshment. He had his chief lector and scribe Djadjaemonkh round up twenty of the most beautiful young maidens from his palace to row naked back and forth across a tranquil lake. It was a most pleasant sight to behold. It would refresh my soul. It would.
O Lord of Amentet, I am in the presence. There is no sin in me, I have not lied wittingly, nor have I done aught with a false heart. Grant that I may be like unto those favored ones who are round about thee, and that I may be an Osiris, greatly favoured of the beautiful god and beloved of the lord of the world, the royal servant indeed, who loveth him, triumphant before the god Osiris.
--The Egyptian Book of the Dead
Notes
I am indebted to the work of many scholars of ancient Egypt who provided background to this story. Particulars from the spells in this story come from The Egyptian Book of the Dead, specifically, from the translation by E.A. Wallis Budge [1]. Other references stem from his work The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians [2].
1. The Egyptian Book of the Dead: (The Papyrus of Ani), (Dover Ed., New York), c1895, Dover ed., 1967. Egyptian Text Transliteration and Translation, Introduction, etc. by Sir E.A.Wallis Budge.
2. E.A. Wallace Budge (1914) The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians, J.M. Dent and Sons, London.
Kent Wittenburg lives in Charlestown, Massachusetts, with his wife and writes poetry and short fiction. He has published in Beyond Words Magazine, Deep Times Journal, La Piccioletta Barca, and The Prose Poem: An International Anthology (translation).
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