of belly against buttocks as Horus lay inside Osiris and took pleasure of his flesh. The fragrance of the gods was all about us.
I felt fire building inside me.
I took Osiris in my arms and as he penetrated me, I screamed.
Ptah-hotep
They were like gods and I was a god with them. My body was malleable, permeable, soaked in divine essences. I lost my thought and all my fear, poured out my loss in kisses on two mouths which meshed with mine, soft and silky and demanding. Time looked away from us. Khons god of moon and measurement overlooked us. Isis took me into her body and Horus slid inside me and I did not know who lay with whom, my name or where I was. I heard Isis cry out, felt her convulse, felt the throb of seed, mine or another’s? I lay flat on my back, and someone rode me, I caressed skin warm with life and life poured into me, a vessel, a purified offering to the gods of death.
I turned on my side, supporting a head on my arm, while Horus knelt in homage between willing thighs and joined with Isis who received him eagerly, her mouth seeking mine, her hand caressing my phallus. Her legs were locked around his waist, her hips thrust upward to engulf the offered gift. She cried out and he thrust harder; she went limp and he came to me, our hands crossing the body of the goddess, and finally we climaxed together, spreading her belly with semen like a field is spread with seed.
We lay stunned until we grew chilled and stiff. Then we ran to my bed and lay down together, a warm body on each side of doomed Ptah-hotep, and I did not mean to sleep but I slept and they locked their hands over me. I slept so and I woke so, between my guardians, like a dead man between Nepthys and Neith.
I looked at them as the dawn light revealed their faces. Mutnodjme was half hidden by her hair, a tangled mass of ebony ringlets, her eyelids a fringed black line on her olive-coloured cheek, her mouth half-open against my arm. Kheperren lay heavily on my other arm. Even in sleep he seemed to be thinking, a line between his brows, his lips shut on some unwise declaration.
I was overcome with a wave of love and liking and I was suddenly and completely happy. I was about to leave them, but no man was loved as I was loved.
I woke them by trying to get up. I had to get to the wash-place. Kheperren watched me narrowly to make sure that I was not going anywhere else. He sat up, scratching his belly, and the lady woke and kissed the nearest flesh, which was Kheperren’s thigh.
‘All hail to Amen-Re,’ I declared, coming back to see my two dearest people embracing each other, and they both repeated, ‘Hail to the great god at his rising,’ and I was carried back in time.
The years of Amarna and the new god fell away from me. I was Ptah-hotep, named after the Maker Ptah, worshipper of the only gods of Egypt. I was not Great Royal Scribe any more—or would not be after I surrendered my jewels-of-office to Bakhenmut. I need not watch my every word. I might be about to die, but at least I was free.
The others felt my happiness. We rose. I did not wash, as that would remove from me the perfumes of love. I donned a cloth which was no different from any scribe’s, and packed up my palette and my styli, my ink pot and my papyrus. These things I had brought with me, and I would take them into the flames.
Perhaps I would have them, indeed, in an afterlife, if they went with my body into the fire.
Bakhenmut came as ordered and I invested him with the pectoral and arm ring of the Great Royal Scribe. He hesitated, shifting from foot to foot on my threshold, before he gave me an apologetic nod and walked quickly away. Then the soldiers came and they escorted all three of us into the court of the Phoenix.
We came into bright light and blinked. The courtyard had no worshippers. Only the King Akhnaten sat on his high throne, flanked with his advisors. I met the dreamy eyes of the king and the concentrated venom and triumph of his counsellors with no emotion at all. I walked in a