Chapter 7: Beyond the Second Pylon

In the dark of the temple’s inner sanctuary, Nofret sprawled languidly on a couch. Kneeling at her side, one of her bewitched male acolytes was holding a tray that carried a thin pottery mug of a beer brewed from barley and sweetened with honey. Another was crouched by her feet, massaging them with scented oils. A third slowly waved a fan of ostrich feathers providing her with a cooling air. A fourth, Ahmose, the subject of her despising look was prostrate on the cold stone of the sanctuary floor in front of her, having been ordered to her presence.

Nofret was angry. Ahmose had failed in the simple mission she had given him. Obedience was not too much to ask, she felt.

“Perhaps I should feed you to Sobek – the teeth of the crocodile might be a righteous punishment – or you could be crushed by Taweret. Would that be fair for failing in such a simple task?”

The prospect of being thrown to the hippopotamus goddess was no more attractive than the crocodile but he could not deny Nofret. “More than fair, Handmaiden of Isis.” The man didn’t dare lift his head. He barely dared to ask to be spared such a fate. “I just beg for more time.”

“Begging is a just course for those that have failed. But I expect more. Isis expects more. There must be atonement. Crawl closer. Keep your head to the floor.”

As the man reached her she lifted her feet from in front of him and placed them down on his head, pressing his face into the dirt of the temple floor with soles of her sandals.

Nofret sneered at the cowering man beneath her feet, knowing that he could not resist the power of the ring. It was not his fault that he was weak and foolish, she thought, but she was no less contemptuous of him for that. The more she wore the ring, the more she saw the weaknesses of men, the more she knew that women had to take control of their destiny as Isis had done for Osiris.

She became bored. Some time in shackles might persuade him of the need to meet her demands. Then, when his vigour and desire to please were restored, he could be of use again in her bed. She summoned two of the temple servants, young women learning the rituals of Isis. “Take him and chain him. Secure him as the captives of Ramses on the temple and lead him to the small kiosk. He can await me there.”

In normal times, Ahmose could have thrown off the two young women with ease but his will and strength were sapped by the power of the ring. He could only submit as they dragged his elbows close together behind his back and chained them there. Then with a halter around his neck he was led off like a dog as Nofret smiled with satisfaction.

From the side of the sanctuary Medhu, Overseer of the Temple Servants, watched as the man she had once taken to her own bed was humiliated beneath the feet of Nofret and then dragged away. Should she take advantage of her power in this way? This Nofret was no priestess. At times she seemed to use her power to defend the goddess but at others for her own pleasure. Should she use the temple for the satisfaction of her carnal lusts? It seemed that this was not in the right order of things; the way that the gods had decreed for ritual to be carried out for millennia. Contradicting the order of things put at risk the great cycles that made the country what it was; the daily passage of the sun, the monthly changing of the moon and the annual flood that brought the wealth of the harvest. To disturb the natural order by subjecting men to these rituals perhaps would lead to disastrous crop failure or social turmoil. It was an offence against Ma’at; the natural order that sustained the kingdom.