ours. We have no reason to fear an attempt to outflank us.”
One of the officers spoke up. “I think, Your Excellency,” he said, “that it would not be wise to leave them as they are.”
“No doubt we will stumble upon quite a few groups like this one,” the youthful commander countered. “If we sent out a unit of soldiers against each of them, we would disperse our forces, so let's keep our eyes fixed on the primary objective. And that is to pierce the wall around their stronghold in the midst of their territory, and to arrest their leader, Khanu.”
Yet Djedef wisely chose to strengthen the force protecting their supplies. Meanwhile, the army advanced on its route, seeing no trace of any tribesmen along the way. News came to them that all those who roamed the desert, when they heard of the approach of the army marching in the peninsula's direction, had turned tail and fled. And so the Egyptians proceeded down the safe, empty road until they reached Arsina.
There they stopped for rest and provisions. Prince Ipuwer came to visit them, and was given a reception befitting his rank. The prince inspected the units of the army, then lingered with the commander and his senior officers, discussing with them the affairs of the campaign. He suggested that they leave a detachment between them and Arsina to communicate their news, and to promptly send them anything they might need. Then he addressed them, “You should know that all the forces in Arsina are buckled up to fight,” said Ipuwer, “and that sizable reinforcements from Serapeum, Dhaqa'a, and Mendes are on their way to Arsina, as well.”
“We beseech the gods, O Your Highness,” answered Djedef, “that we do not require new troops, respecting the — wish of His Majesty, — who is anxious to preserve the lives of the believers.”
That night the army slept deeply and quietly. Then it awoke to the blast of the horns when the cock began to crow.
Pharaoh's army resumed its march, moving east from Arsina with an awful clamor. They kept stopping for rest, then resuming their journey, until there loomed in the distance the huge wall that began in the south at the Gulf of Hieropolis, then bent eastward, tracing the shape of a great bow. The expedition swung toward the north, then turned slightly to the east before encamping in a spot where assailants’ arrows could not reach them.
From their camp, they could observe the firmness of the wall's construction. They could also see the guards perched upon it, bows in hand, ready to defend it against any attacking army.
Djedef and the officers agreed that, in this case, there was no purpose in waiting to launch their assault, as there would be if they intended to take a city by starving its populace. They reached a consensus that it was best to begin with light provocative skirmishes to test their enemy's strength.
Clearly it was dangerous to use their chariots in the first battle for fear of losing their brightly bedecked horses. Therefore, they put hundreds of armored bowmen at the lead, arrayed in a half circle, each one separated by tens of arms’ lengths from his nearest fellow. They approached until they reached a point where the enemy thought that it was practical to launch their arrows at them, and they judged it effective to respond in kind. Thus began the first battle between the two sides, the arrows flying in dense droves, like clouds of locusts, most of them vanishing into the great void between them.
Djedef watched the battle with absolute concentration, admiring the Egyptians’ skill in archery that had long — won them a reputation without peer. Then he spied the gate on the wall.
“What a massive portal that is,” he said to Sennefer, “as though it — were the entrance to the Temple of Ptah!”
“Just wide enough for our chariots — when — we punch through it later,” the zealous officer replied.
The skirmish — was not in vain. Djedef noticed that the tribesmen had not built towers on the fortress's walls from which to shoot arrows down on their attackers. As a result, their bowmen could not respond without exposing themselves to danger. Hence, it seemed profitable to attack with great armored shields, known as “the domes.” Shaped like the prayer niches in the walls of temples, and big enough to cover a soldier from his head to his feet, they each had a small aperture near the top, through which the soldiers fired their arrows. Thanks to their thick plating, the only way these shields could be penetrated was through these same openings.
Djedef ordered several hundred of the men carrying these shields to advance on the wall's defenders. The soldiers were all to line up behind their armor in the form of a wide half circle. They all then moved up toward the wall, indifferent to the hail of arrows falling down upon them. Next, they set their shields on the ground and fired their own arrows, as a fierce and bloody battle began between them and their enemy, the messengers of death flying to and from both sides. The tribesmen succumbed in great numbers, but they nonetheless displayed a strange steadfastness and a rare sort of valor. Each time a group of them fell, another took its place. And despite the Egyptians’ protection behind their peculiar armor, many were struck by missiles piercing the tiny apertures, and were killed or wounded as a result.
The vicious combat continued until the western horizon was stained with the blood-red glow of evening. Then commands went out for the Egyptians to fall back, when exhaustion had sapped them of all that it could.
28
Memphis awaited news of the Sinai campaign — with a confident calm, due to the overwhelming trust she had in the great nation's army, and her overweening contempt for the marauding Bedouin tribes. Yet great hearts still feared for the fate of those fighting on Egypt's behalf.
Among them was the mighty monarch of the Nile, who, in his old age, had turned toward wisdom as he continued to compose, from the inkwell of his soul, his immortal message to his beloved people. Another was Zaya, consumed by pain, tormented by dread, and haunted by insomnia. And there was another heart, which had not before known the meaning of agony or the bitter taste of terror. This belonged to Princess Meresankh, whom the gods had endowed with the most splendid beauty on earth, and with the most pleasing opulence and comfort, rendering the most magnificent of all human hearts subservient to her affection. The gods went so far as to hold her harmless from the powers of nature: the cold of winter did not sting her, the heat of summer did not sear her; the wind from the South did not fall upon her, nor did the rain from the North. All the while she had continued to sport and play until her heart was touched by love, as the newborn infant's fingertips are first touched by flame. Burned by the fire, she opened her breast to its torture, and its humiliation.
Her condition was noted by her handmaidens, and by her servant Nay in particular. One day Nay said to her, as she observed her with a fearful, worried eye, “Did you sigh, My Mistress? What then, would one do, if they were not one to whom the gods and the pharaohs pay heed? Are you kneeling down to beg and plead? But to whom, then, can we do the same? You're lowering your eyes, My Mistress? But for whom was your haughtiness made?”
Yet the princess's dream held no room for her servant's banter. During those long, empty, difficult days, all she thought of was her own plight. If she had been able, she would have wanted to keep to what she said to her sweetheart — that she would not leave the palace until she heard the horns blowing the call of his triumphant return. Yet she found herself yearning to visit the palace of her brother, the heir apparent, to pay a heartfelt tribute to the place where her love used to meet her whenever she came.
When the crown prince received her, he did not conceal feelings that she had not known of before. These were his discontent over the king's policies, to the point that he told her angrily, “Our father is becoming senile very quickly.”
She looked at him with disbelief. “True,” Khafra continued, “he has preserved his physical health and the sharpness of his mind. Yet his heart is getting old and feeble. Don't you see that he's turning his back on state policy, distracted — in both his heart and his mind — by meditation and compassion? He spends his precious time writing! Where is this found among the duties of the powerful ruler?”
“Compassion, like power, is among the virtues of the perfect sovereign,” she replied with irritation.
“My father did not teach me this saying, Meresankh,” he answered sarcastically. “Instead, he taught me immortal examples of the monuments of creative power, the most majestic of works. He utilized the nation of believers to build his pyramid, to move mountains and to tame the recalcitrant rocks. He roared like the marauding lion, and hearts dropped down submissively in horror and fright, and souls approached him, out of obedience — or from hate. He would kill whomever he pleased. That was my father, whom I miss, and whom I do not find. I see nothing but that old man who passes all but a few nights in his burial chamber, pondering and dictating. That old
