Abraham and Sarah (23 page)

Abram was given Pharaoh’s quarters, and the women were led to the rooms for the harem. Lot, Eliazer, and the rest of the men were in rooms designed for the steward and government officials.

Abram walked around the room, enjoying its simplicity and breathing in the subtle odor of incense. Everything reminded him of Amenemhet. He almost expected to see him walk into the room with his fan bearers, pages, and the ever-present dwarf. He walked out on the open balcony and rested his elbows on the parapet. As he watched the sun set, the sky darkened and the evening star gradually blossomed in single splendor much as he had observed it in Ur.

How strange, he thought. I have come so far, yet the same star shines here just as it did in Haran and at home in Ur. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised to find the same God in charge here just as in Ur.

Again he felt a burst of joy. Sarai had not been killed or married to the pharaoh, and he had not been executed or imprisoned. They had been banished from Egypt, but there seemed something right about that. Perhaps he should never have come down to Egypt.

As he looked into the courtyard below, he realized it must open off the harem quarters. He wondered if Sarai was there getting her things arranged. Are the changes all on the outside, he wondered, or are there also subtle changes in her thinking? She had made a point of avoiding him, and on sudden impulse he decided to call her. Perhaps they should celebrate their miraculous rescue.

He went to the door and shook the servant awake. “Go to the steward and have him prepare an intimate repast of the finest dried fruits and sweet cakes with some of his prize wine,” he ordered. “Then go to the women’s quarter and give the old woman in charge a message for my wife. Tell her I will be waiting in my rooms for her.”

He was surprised at how soon he heard footsteps in the hall and saw the dark curtain lifted as Sarai came hesitantly into the room. “My lord,” she said, “you called for me.”

Abram noted the new formality and winced. She stood before him barefoot but wearing a flowing robe of light Egyptian linen. Her hair, still in the shoulder-length braids, was held back from her face by a golden band that peaked with the familiar cobra. She was obviously prepared for bed but looked as foreign and strange as she had when he first saw her that morning in the palace.

“Has Egypt altered your heart as much as your looks?” he asked, perhaps too sharply.

She pouted. “I thought you would like how I look.”

“We’ll talk of that later. Now is the time for celebration.”

“Celebration?”

“We must celebrate the miracle, the way our God rescued us.” As he spoke he started to move toward her but stopped when he saw her face clouded in anger.

She spoke up in a burst of frustration, “I’ve never been more humiliated. They thought I was evil. They knew I had been cursed. It’s all the fault of your God. I want nothing more to do with Him and His promises.”

Abram was stunned. “I don’t understand.”

“This would never have happened if your God had kept His promise.”

“His promise?”

“You said we were to have children.”

“Sarai, Sarai.” He reached out and tried to take her in his arms, but she pulled away from him.

“Can you imagine what it feels like to be stared at—even feared?” Sarai stomped her foot and glared at him. “They all had children, lots of children, and when I came, many were pregnant and then …”

“No, no, Sarai,” Abram said with growing alarm. “I’ve heard, I know. It was our God who shut up the wombs to rescue you.”

“To rescue me? If I’d had leprosy, they couldn’t have been more afraid of me. None of the sacred cats had kittens, the holy cows had no calves and gave no milk, none of the concubines or wives conceived, and even the servants were smitten. All that was blamed on me.”

“I know it must have been very hard for you.”

“Hard for me!” She glared at him in exasperation. “I suffered … how I suffered.”

“But Sarai,” Abram spoke softly and compassionately, “don’t you see that our God rescued you?”

“No, I don’t. Pharaoh did more to rescue me than your God ever did.”

“Oh, Sarai! How can you say such a thing?”

“He gave me a handmaiden to have a child for me.”

Abram drew back in astonishment. He knew that was the custom in both Ur and Egypt, but he had never imagined Sarai would agree to such a thing. For himself, he had never lost faith in the promise. It was obvious that Sarai had changed. Egypt had changed her.

Eventually they sat and tried to eat the delicious fruits the servants brought. Dish after dish was set before them and then removed without being eaten. They could think of nothing to say to each other, and so finally Sarai begged to be excused. She insisted she would be in a more amiable mood after a good night’s sleep, and Abram let her go, hoping it would be so.

After the sound of her footsteps had died away along the hall, Abram paced restlessly back and forth, thinking of all Sarai had said and wondering what he should do. He knew he couldn’t sleep, and he longed for someone to talk to.

He walked over to the parapet, and this time he looked down on the
other side into an enclosed sunken garden extending from the chapel. A lone figure sat beside the lily pond, and he knew it must be one of the priests. He quickly dismissed his problems and hurried down the winding stairs that led out into the garden. He wanted to see the Great Sphinx by moonlight, and he hoped the priest would have time to go with him.

To his delight, the man was just the person he was looking for. Abram had spotted him earlier in the day and remembered his face. It was kindly, and the eyes were a strange blue-green like those of the pharaohs.

The priest was meditating, but when he saw Abram, he stood up. “Can I help you?” he asked in the soft, cultured tones of Egypt’s elite.

“We will be on our way tomorrow and I wanted to see the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx by moonlight. Can you show me the way out of the villa?”

“I will do more than that. I’ll go with you and answer any questions.”

It was not long until the two were walking across the hard-packed sand to where they could stand in the shadow of the Great Pyramid. It rose above them, giving off a silver glow in the bright moonlight. “The pyramids give off different colors depending on the time of day,” the priest said. “At dawn they are gray, gold at noon, and rose colored at sunset.”

“They are tombs?” Abram asked.

“You might call them tombs, but we don’t think of the pharaohs as being dead. Pharaoh goes in and out at will.”

“How strange. Where does he go?”

“Where he goes is known only to the priests. It is one of the secrets of the pyramids.”

“So there are secrets. It is not as simple as it looks.”

“Of course. They are carefully built. We know the secrets only because they have been passed down to us.”

“Does Pharaoh Amenemhet know the secrets?”

The priest chuckled and said, “He insists on certain designs. There are spells and magic sacred to the pharaohs. There are incantations such as, ‘You will regularly ascend with Orion from the east and descend with Orion into the west.’”

“How can he do this?”

“There is a shaft built into the pyramid that points to Orion’s constellation. Once every twenty-four hours, three stars in this constellation pass directly over this shaft, and at this time the pharaoh can follow the shaft out into
the sky and the celestial regions. It is also possible for the pharaoh to visit the polestar through the northern shaft. In this way he can come and go at will.”

Walking on toward the Great Sphinx, Abram was impressed with its height and the awesome silence, almost palpable, that surrounded it. “They say there’s a mystery about the Sphinx. No one really knows why it was made and what it is trying to tell us,” he said.

“Ah, yes, it’s one of the great mysteries. Some say the face is that of Khafre. If that’s true, the creature would have been carved out of this limestone outcropping hundreds of years ago.”

“Khafre?” Abram said, looking puzzled.

“He was one of the early pharaohs. However, others say the sphinx is much older.”

“I had heard one of the priests in Memphis say it represented the beginning and end of the zodiac.”

“That has at times been a popular theory, but the beginning of the zodiac is a virgin with a shaft of wheat in her hand; the end is a lion, and this face is obviously that of a pharaoh.”

“Then …”

“For many of us it symbolizes the union of man’s two natures, the physical and the intellectual.”

“So it isn’t Khafre.”

“Perhaps not Khafre, but it is obviously the face of a pharaoh. I like to imagine this pharaoh as one who wanted to remind Re of his existence. He wanted to make it impossible for the god to forget him, so he ordered a giant image of himself constructed that will stand forever, welcoming the sun.”

“But why so large?”

The priest smiled. “Don’t you see? He knew Re’s chariot rode high in the sky, and it would take a very large image to get his attention.”

They stood looking at the enormous creature now washed in moonlight, and Abram could imagine how the sun coming out of the eastern hills would flash on the rough features of the Sphinx and bring it to life.

Neither one spoke as they turned to walk back to the palace. In contemplating the mystery of the Sphinx, Abram had for a short time forgotten his problems. When he remembered, he was too tired to mull over them. He had Sarai back, and they were on their way out of Egypt. Everything would work out in time.

The next morning Abram and his entourage set out for the Nile and the barge that was to take them on to Tanis. They had started just before dawn when on the horizon faint streaks of light appeared behind the eastern hills. The air was crisp and cool with the only sounds coming from the soft jangling of the mules’ harness decorations and the muted commands of the drivers.

As they left the sandy area for the green of the Nile, the sun came up and Abram looked back to see an unforgettable sight. The morning sun, rising over the eastern hills, burst upon the great stone head with a suffusion of brilliant light. It was indeed as the priest had said, an eternal tribute to the sun god.

Abram wondered what Amenemhet would have said. He had confided in Abram that he worshiped the god Amon, the invisible god, the god of the air. “He’s no doubt the same as your God, the Elohim you worship,” Pharaoh had said.

Abram had found that Amenemhet had even joined the god’s name to his own, meaning “Amon leads.” Furthermore, he had shown Abram the plans for a small temple he intended to build at Karnak to honor the god.

All this Abram pondered as the barge sailed up the Nile. “Is the pharaoh’s god the same as Elohim?” He had tried to explain about the promises and hearing his God speak, but Pharaoh couldn’t understand. Perhaps the problem was that the pharaoh was too impressed with being a god himself.

Hagar was happy with the turn of events. She had miraculously escaped not only from the boredom of the palace but also from the hostility of the pharaoh’s favorite. She liked Sarai and had begun to view her as a sister, if not a mother. Everything was strange and new. There seemed to be no routine, no formalities. As it turned out, even the clothes she would wear were to be very different.

Before leaving the delta where Abram’s herds had been waiting, Sarai gave her some new clothes. The shift was of wool and linen with a handsome fringe around the hem. It seemed clumsy and heavy compared to the lighter linen garments of the Egyptians, but Sarai assured her that in the desert it would be cooler. They laughed as they tried various methods of wearing the fringed shawl. It didn’t fit over the ornate Egyptian headdress, but neither one wanted to change her hair and the ornaments she was used to wearing.

In the end, the fine Egyptian clothes and most of the jewelry and headdresses
were packed away in chests to be worn only on special occasions. The clothes they would wear were of the Sumerian design but suited life in the desert and among the local people better.

Hagar also found the food different from anything she had ever eaten before. There was roast lamb or cracked wheat and herbs with white leben made from goat’s milk; the fruits were mostly dates, figs, and dried grapes. She learned to build a fire with nettles or, for a steady, lasting fire, dung patties. She loved the sense of leisure. To Hagar, who had been used to the hurry and prodding of the palace, this was delightful. Everything moved with the rising of the sun and stopped when it set.

Most interesting of all for her was the contemplation of her new role. She was to be Sarai’s handmaiden. The pharaoh had said she would bear Abram the son that Sarai had not been able to provide. With that in mind, Hagar had observed Abram closely.

She had always been independent and proud. She would never give herself to any man just because it was expected of her. Even to please her new friend Sarai, she would not submit to Abram. Pharaoh was far away and would never know what happened. He would never know if she refused to comply with his decree. If she didn’t like this Abram, she could easily refuse to have anything to do with him. No one had ever made her do anything she didn’t like, and she was sure that this would be no different.