on the marble wall and exclaimed, pulling back as the hot stone scorched her tender arms.
‘I don’t like Egypt,’ she said, ‘you were my only friend and now you’re going away.’
‘Not for years,’ said Teacher Khons consolingly. ‘She cannot enter the temple until her moon-blood comes, and even then the priestesses may send her home if she is not mature enough. Isis deals with the great mysteries, birth and death, and they cannot be contemplated by anyone who is still a child. We will go on as we have been doing, Princess, and learn as much as we can. And anyway, you must go and be a Great Royal Wife in truth when the time comes for you.’
‘That’s true, Teacher,’ Merope appeared to be comforted. ‘What is this Lady Isis, anyway?’
‘Come and sit down under the awning, pupils, and I will try and tell you, but first I will call for some small-ale and some fruit and Mutnodjme will tell us what she knows about the Lady Isis.’
‘She is the Lady of a Thousand Names,’ I said as I sat down next to Merope in the thick shade. ‘Lady of Bread, Lady of the Wheat Field, Star of Mariners, gentle and learned. When Set the Destroyer murdered her husband she sought for him and saved him and rules the Land of Sekhet-hetepet, the Field of Offerings, with him. Her child is Horus and her sisters are the Ladies of Motherhood, Hunting and Protection: Tawert, Neith and Nepthys.’
‘A very good start,’ encouraged Teacher Khons. ‘Do you know the tale of the theft of the Name?’
‘No, tell us,’ we said, our invariable answer.
‘First, tell me why Great Royal Nurse Tey said that Isis would give you your dowry,’ asked Merope.
‘Because a woman learned in the mysteries of Isis needs no dowry,’ I answered. ‘Women of that temple can deliver babies, tend the sick, make spells, draw down Khons by the hair,’ I added, referring to the God of the Moon and Time and grinning at Khons the teacher, who slipped off his Nubian wig and revealed an entirely bare scalp.
‘You might have trouble pulling this Khons down by the hair,’ he chuckled.
‘She is a wise woman, a skilled woman, and worth a great dowry. That is, if she lasts for the whole time. Priestesses are required to stay in the temple until they are eighteen, and I may not live that long, of course.’
‘If the gods are kind, you may survive and become a good magician. Do not take to sorcery, Mutnodjme, I beg,’ said Teacher Khons, replacing his wig.
‘Because I mightn’t be good at it?’ I asked.
‘Because you might be altogether too good at it,’ he responded.
Then we settled down with a cup of small-ale each, Khons produced the papyrus, and we read it by turns. Merope, who still had trouble with Egyptian, began:
Behold the Goddess Isis lived in a woman’s body skilled-with-words. Her heart turned away from millions of humans and turned to millions of gods. How could she become esteemed on earth, how could she make herself Lady of Knowledge by means of the knowledge of the Great Name?
‘This is too difficult, Teacher,’ Merope begged. ‘Can I give it to my sister? In any case, she reads better.’
‘Very well,’ said Khons, giving me the roll. I took up the tale:
Behold Re came each day in the sacred ship, lord of the double crown. Divine Re had become old. He dribbled at the mouth. Now this Lady Isis took his spittle and earth and moulded it into a serpent in her hand, even a serpent with fangs sharp as arrows, and she placed it on the path before the Lord Amen-Re’s foot.
When the Most High walked on his way, the serpent drove its fangs into his ankle, and the life began to depart from the Eternal’s body, and the creature of Isis began to destroy the Lord of the Sun.
Then that mighty god opened his mouth and cried aloud.
The gods said, ‘What is the matter?’
And the Lord Amen-Re found that he could not speak, for the poison was running in all his limbs as the Nile conquers the lands through which it flows.
Then the great god steadied his heart and spoke, and said, ‘I have been stung by some deadly thing of which I have no knowledge, which was not made by me and is not of me. Never have I felt such pain. Can it be fire? Can it be water? My heart is burning, my limbs are shivering,