Chapter 1: Busiris - 45BCE

The townspeople of Busiris busied themselves with the day’s work, the exchanges of gossip and the observances of custom and ritual that were the common round of existence in their prosperous community beside the Nile. The low, whitewashed mud brick buildings, where most of the populace lived, provided cool shade. Public buildings including fine temples in bright limestone, monumental statuary and impressive obelisks set up in public squares gave a sense of splendour. The markets were noisy with livestock and the streets pungent with the smell of donkey dung. The inhabitants, for the most part, carried themselves proudly as citizens of the birthplace of Osiris, god of the underworld. Their home might be far from the great centres of power at Thebes, Heliopolis and Alexandria but it was still renowned throughout the country.

Nofret, eldest daughter of Ity, the Chief Scribe of the 9th Andjety Nome in the Kingdom of the Two Lands, leaned back on a gilded wooden chair. She was sitting under a fine white canopy held aloft on ebony poles. The canopy shaded her from the fierceness of the Egyptian sun. Her arms were resting on the sculpted forms of Nubian lions. She was wearing a long, white, kalisiris robe that clung to her body more tightly than would normally be considered proper for everyday wear. With her brightly beaded usekh collar, her jet-black wig with its centre parting evoking the style of the time of the pyramid builders, and her proud posture – a legacy in part of her Nubian heritage - she presented an intimidating figure, looking almost as though she had stepped out of a carving on a temple wall.

In front of Nofret, two naked men crouched with their heads to floor, bowed in worship, inches from her feet and not daring even to glance up as far as the golden straps of her sandals. Nofret sat impassively, enjoying their veneration. She took particular delight from the fact that these were not slaves. To earn the devotion of a slave was hardly an achievement. What choice did they have? No, these men were freeborn and high born too – one the son of the Nomarch himself, the other a prince of a foreign power. And yet worship her was what they did.

Of course, Nofret had a little help. Even with the beauty she undoubtedly possessed – her name itself meant ‘beautiful’ - it was not easy to inspire such extreme adoration. She held no rank that would compel a man to behave so. She was not wealthy, certainly such as she had was not enough to inspire fawning behaviour like this. Her help was from the gods themselves.

She looked down at the ring she wore on her first finger. It was solid gold, the gift of Queen Cleopatra a few years before. It was a token of affection and a remembrance of a bawdy night when the two girls had shared wine and lovers. “This ring was endowed with its power by Isis herself,” the queen had said. “As Isis gathered up the fragments of Osiris’s body so shall the wearer of this ring control the manhood of any that she chooses.”

Nofret had chosen many. She had always enjoyed the company of men, especially where their attention was directed to her sexual pleasure. She took delight in using the suppleness of her body to accentuate her own stimulation. More than that, she found excitement in men sexually submitting to her. And somehow, since she had been given the ring, she found it easy to compel them to obey her. She took gratification from the act of bending them to her will and the extent to which she could have them debase themselves. It seemed the ring both gave her the power to do it and drove her to use the power too. She looked down at them men cowering in the dust, thinking they were like scarab beetles pushing the dung ball of the sun across the heavens. Their denigration served to demonstrate her greatness.