mats had been spread out for us on the floor, and we took our seats and waited for the priests. I whispered to Asha, “I’ll bet Ramesses is sitting in the Audience Chamber right now, wishing he was with us.”
“I don’t know. He’s safe from Tutor Oba.”
I snickered as seven priests entered the chamber, swinging incense from bronze holders and intoning the morning hymn to Amun.
Hail to thee, Amun-Ra, Lord of the thrones of the earth, the oldest existence, ancient of heaven, support of all things.
Chief of the gods, lord of truth; maker of all things above and below.Hail to thee.
As the incense filled the room, a student coughed. Tutor Oba turned around to look fiercely at him and I elbowed Asha in the side, bent my mouth into a mean, angry line, then imitated Oba’s snarling. One of the students laughed out loud, and Tutor Oba twisted around. “Asha and Princess Nefertari!” he snapped.
Asha glared at me and I giggled. But outside the temple, I didn’t ask him to race me to the edduba.
“I don’t know why the priests don’t throw us out,” he said.
I grinned. “Because we’re royalty.”
“You’re royalty,” Asha countered. “I’m the son of a soldier.”
“You mean the son of a general.”
“Still, I’m not like you. I don’t have a chamber in the palace or a body servant. I need to be careful.”
“But it was funny,” I prompted.
“A little,” he admitted as we reached the low white walls of the royal edduba. The schoolhouse squatted like a fat goose on the hillside, and Asha’s footsteps slowed as we approached its open doors. “So what do you think it’ll be today?” he asked.
“Probably cuneiform.”
He sighed heavily. “I can’t afford another poor report to my father.”
“Take the reed mat next to mine, and I’ll write big enough for you to see,” I promised.
Inside the halls of the edduba, students called to one another, laughing and exchanging stories until the trumpet sounded for class. Paser stood at the front of our chamber, observing the chaos, but when Iset entered, the room grew silent. She moved through the students, and they parted before her as if a giant hand had pushed them aside. She sat across from me, folding her long legs on her reed mat the way she always did, but this time, when she swept back her dark hair, her fingers seemed fascinating to me. They were long and tapered. At court, only Henuttawy surpassed Iset’s skill with the harp. Was that why Pharaoh Seti thought she’d make a good wife?
“We may all stop staring now,” Paser announced. “Let us take out our ink. Today, we translate two of the Hittite emperor’s letters to Pharaoh Seti. As you know, Hittite is written in cuneiform, which will mean transcribing every word from cuneiform to hieroglyphics.”
I took out several reed pens and ink from my bag. When the basket of blank papyrus came to me, I took the smoothest one from the pile. Outside the edduba a trumpet blared again, and the noise from the other classrooms went silent. Paser passed out copies of Emperor Muwatallis’s first letter, and in the early morning heat the sound of pens scratching on papyrus settled upon the room. The air felt heavy, and sweat beaded behind my knees where I sat cross-legged. Two fan bearers from the palace cooled the room with their long blades, and as the air stirred, Iset’s perfume moved across the chamber to tickle my nose. She told the students she wore it to cover the unbearable smell of the ink, which is made from ash and the fat boiled off a donkey’s skin. But I knew this wasn’t true. Palace scribes mixed our ink with musk oil to cover the terrible scent. What she really wanted was to attract attention. I wrinkled my nose and refused to be distracted. The important information in the letter had been removed, and what had been left was simple to translate. I wrote several lines in large hieroglyphics on my papyrus, and when I’d finished with the letter, Paser cleared his throat.
“The scribes should be done with the translation of Emperor Muwatallis’s second letter. When I return, we will move on,” he warned sternly. The students waited until the sound of his sandals had faded before turning to me.
“Do you understand this, Nefer?” Asha pointed to the sixth line.
“And what about this?” Baki, Vizier Anemro’s son, couldn’t make out the third. He held out his scroll and the class waited.