Moses Read online

  Moses

  The Epic Story of His Rebellion in the Court of Egypt

  Howard Fast

  Contents

  PART ONE: The Prince of Egypt

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  PART TWO: The Captain of Kush

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  PART THREE: The Wanderer

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  For

  Bette, Rachel & Jonathan

  Introduction

  To think of either Judaism or Christianity without Moses is impossible; and even Islam rests on this mighty, towering, half-mythical figure. I am a Bible student, and have been one since my teens, reading it for its beauty and literature, for its magnificent cadences, and for its wonderful, ruthless history. Of all people, only the Jews wrote their history without apology, putting down their worst moments, their best moments, and every violation of the law and code that had been given to them by Moses. They worshipped a God that rewarded the good and punished the evil.

  What follows is the biblical introduction to Moses, taken from the beginning of the Book of Exodus:

  “And there went a man from the house of Levi,

  and took to wife a daughter of Levi. And the woman

  conceived, and bore him a son; and when she saw him

  that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months.”

  (Pharaoh had ordered that male children of the Jews be put to death.)

  “And when she could no longer hide him, she took for

  him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime

  and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she

  laid it in the flags by the river’s brink. And his sister

  stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him.”

  “And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself

  at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river’s

  side; and when she saw the ark among the flags, she

  sent her maid to fetch it. And when she had opened

  it, she saw the child; and, behold, the babe wept. And

  she had compassion on him, and said, ‘This is one of the

  Hebrews’ children.’”

  “Then said his sister to Pharaoh’s daughter, ‘Shall I go and

  call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may

  nurse the child for thee?’

  And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, ‘Go!’

  And the maid went and called the child’s mother,

  And Pharaoh’s daughter said unto her, ‘Take this child

  away, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages.’

  And the woman took the child, and nursed it. And the

  child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh’s daughter,

  and he became her son. And she called him Moses; and

  she said, ‘Because I drew him out of the water.’”

  The next thing we hear about Moses, in Exodus, is this:

  “And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was

  grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked

  on their burdens….”

  Thus, from his birth to that moment when he strikes down an Egyptian overseer and is forced to flee Egypt, we know absolutely nothing of Moses, of his childhood, his youth, and his young manhood.

  Forty years ago, when I wrote this book, I steeped myself in Egyptian history and ancient Egyptology; but that was forty years ago. Much of the incident was suggested by the large mythology created for Moses by those Rabbis who wrote of him in the Talmud, but I have no notion of what this is worth as history.

  I am far from sure that the Rabbis of a thousand years later knew much about the life of an Egyptian prince, but their tales are enchanting and I made full use of them, particularly those related to Southern Egypt, the Nile, and the mysterious land of Kush. Other parts of the book are fictional inventions, but I tried to stay as close to what was reasonable as I could.

  Of all my historical fiction, this book, I feel, is the richest and most colorful. When I wrote it, I envisioned a second narrative to cover the years of Moses, the liberator, but I never got to it, and now, at the age of eighty-five, it is not likely that I ever will.

  So here it is at the millennium. Read it slowly and savor it, and be with me in ancient Egypt—a fabulous, colorful civilization where monotheism began and where a man called Moses searched for God.

  Howard Fast

  December 1999

  Note

  Ancient Egyptian writing was hieroglyphic, that is, picture writing developed to a point where it could record the spoken language completely and exactly. In order to accomplish this, the pictures or signs had to be employed in three different ways: first, as direct pictures of an object, an idea or word; second, syllabically, representing part of a word as direct picture or parallel sound; and third, as a limitation of a word already pictured.

  While this method of writing was later modified to what is known as the hieratic, and still later the demotic, for most of the ancient era and for the time of which I write, the hieroglyphic was dominant. While these pictures defied translation for many centuries, the key to them was finally discovered, as most people know, through the Rosetta Stone; and today scholars in this field read Egyptian as well and completely as Latin scholars read Latin.

  Nevertheless, there is a difference; for many questions of pronunciation are still unresolved, and the transliteration from pictures to our alphabet is chaotic, many scholars developing their own system of transliteration independently. For example, Amen-Hotep, the king who introduced Aton worship and changed his name to Akh-en-Aton, is so rendered by the eminent authority, John A. Wilson; another scholar of equal importance renders the names thus: Amenophis and Ikhnaton. Being unable to read heiroglyphics, I have taken the liberty of choosing those forms which appear to be most pronounceable and therefore most readable. I have tried to be both exact and consistent in rendering texts that exist in translation, but since I feel that modern usage best expresses the feeling of a time, I have eliminated thee and thou in speech.

  I have not used the word Pharaoh as it is commonly used, since at the time of Ramses II, Pharaoh quite literally was the name of the enormous palace he built. Ramses was usually called the God Ramses, of the God-King. The literal meaning of Pharaoh is Great House, and it is only after the time of Ramses that it came into common usage as the king’s title.

  Most scholars in the field seem to agree that Moses is an Egyptian word, meaning a child is given. Connected with a prefix, it would mean has given a child. It should be remembered that Moses is an Anglicization; in Hebrew the name is pronounced Mosheh; in ancient Egyptian the pronunciation of Mose was probabl
y identical. Just as Mosheh is Anglicized to Moses, so is the Egyptian “has given a child” most often rendered Mose, as in Ka-Mose and Thut-Mose. In order to avoid confusion and to strike a specific chord in my readers, I have spelled the word Moses in all cases.

  The “Hymn to Aton” has been slightly changed for purposes of style. Kosen is rendered Goshen, both to avoid confusion and because the latter rendition is common to our literature; both are, of course, references to the same place. The substitution of modern measurements for the royal cubit and modern time measurements, as well, for the Egyptian terms has been done for the convenience of the reader. Because the word is still current, and because it has so much color of the time, I use as a measure of weight the shekel—then—common to all the countries of the ancient Near East.

  A List of the Main Characters in the Book

  MOSES

  ENEKHAS-AMON: The sister of Ramses II

  RAMSES II: God-King of Egypt

  AMON-TEPH: A priest in the Great House

  SETI: Enekhas-Amon’s physician

  SETI-HOP: Chief arms instructor in the Great House

  RAMSES-EM-SETI: One of the sons of Ramses

  NEPH: An engineer in the service of Ramses

  RE-KOPHAR: Priest in charge of surgery in the Great House

  SETI-MOSES: Chief steward of the Great House

  SETI-KEPH: Captain of Hosts under Ramses

  HETEP-RE: A Captain of Chariots

  NUN: Servant of Moses, a Levite

  SOKAR-MOSES: Second in command of the expedition to Kush

  ATON-MOSES: A physician of Karnak

  MERIT-ATON: The daughter of Aton-Moses

  IRGEBAYN: King of Kush

  IRGA: One of the daughters of the King of Kush

  MIRIAM: The sister of Moses

  DOOGANA: A witch doctor

  PART ONE

  The Prince of Egypt

  [1]

  WITH HIS TENTH year, on the day of his birth, his royal uncle agreed to receive him, look at him, lay a hand upon his head, and perhaps even say a word or two to him.

  He was afraid. When his mother told him what was in store for him, he stared at her fixedly, his dark eyes wide and open, and she realized that he was very much afraid; but she was in no mood to offer sympathy. She was too much concerned for herself, and for months now this concern had deepened. The truth of it was that she had difficulty in remembering the old days when her health was good. If it wasn’t a headache, it was a pain in the stomach; if it was neither, it was a general feeling of fatigue, an ache in her joints, a drawing sensation in her groin. “You’re getting no younger,” her physician had remarked, and she replied peevishly that thirty-nine was not old, not in a man and not in a woman, and that she paid him not for philosophical observation but for the practice of medicine. But her petty lie, born out of annoyance and anxiety-she was forty-two, a year younger than her royal brother-brought just a shade of a smile to the doctor’s lips.

  Afterward, she had looked in the mirror and wept for herself. Others had specified this or that tragedy in her life; but the truth of it was that she was a vain and selfish woman, and the only tragedy she had ever felt truly was the loss of her beauty; not even her illness, not even the pain and fatigue, but the loss of the beauty that had been held more dazzling than even the beauty of Nefertiti of the cursed name and memory. Because of this, there had been a period of months now during which her pity for herself had become an obsession. Who would ever know the agony of the long, dark nights when time stretched out for ever, and when alternately she wept and prayed? And what of the hours she spent with unguents, salves, creams, medications and magic preparations, and with obscene spells directed at the whore goddesses of Kadash and Arzawa and other distant and savage places? Who was to be pitied more than herself? When her doctor bad come, earlier this very day, she said to him, more pleadingly than bitterly,

  “Look at me! Look at my, skin, my arms! And my face! Black pouches under my eyes—lines, wrinkles, bags! Please … Please,” she begged him. “Help me!”

  The doctor, who was a fat little man with spindly legs, with Seti for his name—a king’s name for a pompous little man—a commonplace man out of village mud and only the good fortune that his mother in her young and attractive years had been seduced by a priest and thereby gained her son a sponsor toward a well-paid profession—this doctor reflected that after all they were out of the same cloth, priest and peasant, royal princess and village harlot, all of them fashioned out of the same corrupt and decaying flesh—the princess who would have spices, sarcophagus and life everlasting, and his own mother who went to her simple extinction and burial in a wooden box and without wrappings or embalming—the one as weak and plaintive and helpless as the other.

  These were his thoughts—thoughts which in the olden times a man like himself would never have dared think, for in those days a princess was a goddess and even thoughts are not safe from goddesses; but the olden times were gone forever and few enough people, much less a physician, considered Enckhas-Amon a goddess. He gave her a purge to loosen her bowels and he told her to eat grapes, which are good for fatigue. About her skin, his science provided no competent knowledge, but knowing that she was buying creams and salves from various priestly fakers who peddled their wares at a good price to the royal family, he promised a miraculous salve of his own on his next visit.

  She was lying on her couch eating grapes when Moses was summoned to her, and even through her veil of self-concern she could not help noticing how long-legged and straight the boy was growing. With his black hair cut straight across his brow and long and square at the back, he stood like a rod, the way a prince was taught to stand; and with his flat shoulders and brown skin he looked very much an Egyptian. Even his high-bridged nose was typical of the people of Upper Egypt, although less common here on the Delta, and it was only his height and the weight and bulk of his bones that separated him from his many brothers. But his health and youth and vitality accented her own sense of malaise, and she demanded querulously,

  “Why did it take you so long? You’re not a good boy! You’re not an obedient boy! Another boy would have run to his mother lying sick and weak the way I am I But not you. You dillydally everywhere—any excuse not to come to your mother.”

  “I am sorry,” he gasped. He had actually run all the way, through the gardens, through the endless, high-pillared halls of the palace, and now he was panting for breath. “I came as soon as I could, my mother. Please don’t be angry with me, my mother. Please love me, my mother. I came as soon as I heard you had summoned me.”

  “Silly boy.” He knew how to flatter her and he somehow sensed how much she needed flattery. “I wasn’t angry, only a little provoked. Illness makes one short-tempered and nasty, I suppose. But that can’t mean anything to you. All you know is play and laughter and sunshine, so why should you have sympathy for a sick and ugly old lady?”

  Her plea was so pathetic and transparent that even the little boy saw through it, and told her that, far from being ugly and old, she was young and beautiful. And to him, in a measure, she was, for he was no exacting judge of beauty; and as she lay there, her limbs brown and full under a throw of transparent gauze, her round breasts hardly hidden by a netlike jewelled brassière, with her earrings and necklaces and bracelets of gold all sparkling and shimmering in the sunlight that blazed down through the open roof of her chamber, she seemed as beautiful as any woman he had ever seen. So he would remember her. His praise and adulation were the praise and adulation of a child, but at this bleak moment she gloried in it, and at the same moment, suddenly and for the first time in his life, he saw her sexually as a woman, consciously as a naked woman and an object of excitement and desire. The thought sobered him, and when she asked him to come to her and kiss her, he held back as if afraid.

  Enekhas-Amon recognized his moment of manhood without particular awareness of her recognition; but it was in her voice as she said archly, “Silly boy, come to your mother and kiss h
er.” She embraced him as he kissed her. “Your mother has wonderful news for you. Can you guess? Surely you can?”

  But he couldn’t guess, and what would there be that a prince would want? Being a prince was not to want. Others wanted but not the princesses and the princes. He was already old enough to sense how much some men wanted—the greed and avarice of so many of the swarm of priests and clerks and stewards and physicians who were a living part of the vast palace; but with a prince it was different—or so it still seemed to him.

  He was and yet he was not the prince. For although it was never said, certainly never proclaimed, he could not help but know that more than any of the others, he was the prince, the legendary and godlike result of a union between a royal brother and sister—between the God-King Ramses and his own mother. But this was something he knew only as a part of doubt, knowledge that was no more confirmed than the gossip which hinted that he was no son of Ramses at all. The palace housed at least a hundred more of his brothers and sisters—or cousins—of all ages, and it seemed that every week or so another squalling infant joined their ranks. Yet in spite of their numbers, each of them was princely and royal.

  Like the others, what could he possibly want, unless it was that blasphemous notion that occasionally wrenched his heart—the notion that he would want not to be a prince? How often would he and his royal brothers hang over the wall of the great terrace swept by the Nile itself and there watch the ships poling up from the wide sea and the great rafts of tied bulrushes drifting down from Upper Egypt, down from the distant mystery of cataracts and mountain, the carefree—as it seemed—families that lived upon the rafts, and the naked brown children as wild and free as the birds in the sky! Little enough awe of royalty these children had, for when a raft drifted near to the terrace wall, they would shout a familiar greeting to the royal progeny, a shrill, unmannerly greeting not unmixed with contempt, and they would shout about the wonders they had seen—the painted black men of the South, the lions and the leopards and the giant elephants next to which a man was no larger than an ant, and the monkeys and the bright waterfowl and the endless herds of antelope—and much more that was a mixture of truth and fancies and lies concocted out of envy and frustration. But this Moses and the others did not know.