The Goddess's Refusal

In the pale hour before dawn, when a soft north wind came breathing along the Nile, Pesejet stood on the threshold of her rite of passage.

How long she had waited for this moment—the instant she would become a formal member of the village guild and, with it, be assured a life unwed.

Deir el-Medina. This was the artisans' village, where craftsmen cut the tombs of the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens and fashioned the grave goods meant to go into them. Its people married within the village and bore their children there, raising them to become artisans, priests, or soldiers who guarded the walls. Those children married inside the village in turn, became artisans or priests or soldiers, and married inside the village again… In a word, it was a place as airlessly closed as the royal house itself.

Men overflowed the village, heaping every flourish of praise upon the beauty of Pesejet's blue eyes—eyes like turquoise, the jewel of the goddess Hathor; eyes blessed by the gods—and begging her to marry them. Yet for all their talk of beautiful eyes, few ever met her gaze when they spoke. Their attention slid far lower, to the full swell of the breasts that waited well beneath those celebrated eyes.

And so she had counted the days until she might swear her vow of dedication to the temple of Hathor. Beyond the simple mercy of erasing any chance of marriage to the village's unremarkable men, the vow carried a splendid further gift: the chance to attend rites in other regions and, at last, to see something of the world beyond these walls. If, as the rite of passage into this secretive place required, she won only the leave of Meretseger, the cobra goddess who dwelt atop the rocky peak, she might slip deep into Hathor's temple, where the burning stares of men could not follow. She was swollen with that hope.

To come to the rite with a clean body, Pesejet stepped into the bathhouse, let the fine translucent linen that had wrapped her slip with a soft whisper onto the limestone paving, and dashed clean water over herself. Droplets ran down her golden skin and trickled away through the copper pipes set into the floor. When she worked smooth unguent into her hands and drew it over every inch of her body, her soft golden skin shone all the brighter, as if a clear film had been laid upon it.

Wrapped in a long length of spotless white linen, she sat before the table where her cosmetic chest waited and lifted the lid, carved in relief with a naked woman—the image of Hathor, goddess of death and of the love that gives life back to the dead. From among minerals of every color and oils of subtle fragrance she took an elegant shard of green malachite, set it on a palette of white marble, and ground it fine with a pestle, tap by tap. A cosmetic reed brush, its tip charged with the green powder and worked into unguent, passed beneath her eyes; a piece of black galena, treated the same way, drew a dark line above them. She stained her lips with a blend of red hematite and ocher, hung at her throat a carnelian necklace to ward off harmful influences, and last of all fastened a lapis lazuli bracelet and light earrings shaped like the white lotus.

She studied the face in the mirror and smiled, satisfied. Every preparation was complete. Now, in the temple of Hathor, a solitary life would begin that no one would be able to disturb.

From the outsider recommended for exceptional skill and passed through the guild's strict examination, to one born and raised here like Pesejet, everyone had to undergo a single rite before becoming a formal member. One had to receive the permission of Meretseger, the cobra goddess of the sharp peak above Deir el-Medina, and the method was simple. One went to the rocky valley where the artisans' tombs lay and drove the first pick into the place that would one day be one's own grave.

Legend held that if the serpent goddess refused, the pick could not so much as nick the stone of the valley. In truth, no one had ever failed to drive it in. Why should anyone be unable to strike soft sandstone?

Pesejet followed the priests, treading the barren red sand as she drew near the valley where the pick must go. They passed a desert road that was nothing but sand, then a gravel path that crumbled dryly underfoot, and after a long walk the priestesses and Pesejet at last reached the artisans' burial ground.

Nenefer was already there—Nenefer, as close to Pesejet as a sister of the same blood. Raised together at the hands of the wet nurse Alida, she too meant to undergo today's rite and then swear her vow of dedication to Hathor's temple. Unlike Pesejet, who dreamed of travel and of a solitary life within the sanctuary, Nenefer's piety was genuine.

"Receive into the village guild Pesejet and Nenefer, who have resolved to give their lives to the temple of Hathor."

To give one's life to the temple meant something other than the path of ordinary priests, who might marry freely and keep a household. It meant vowing to offer one's whole life to the sanctuary without ever marrying, founding a family, or bearing a child.

"Nenefer, begin the first stroke of the pick."

Nenefer took the pick from the hand of the high priest of Hathor and, her face grave with care, struck the first blow toward the cutting of her own tomb. Even her stroke, which had no great strength behind it, was swallowed by the sandstone valley of the artisans' graves with a great sound.

"The goddess Meretseger has accepted Lady Nenefer as a formal member of our village. Now it is Lady Pesejet's turn to strike the first blow."

After the solemn declaration, the high priest passed the blessed pick into the hands of the next in line: Pesejet.

She shut her eyes tight and brought the pick down with every ounce of strength she had—and a sharp sting rang through her wrist. The feeling was wrong.

"Th-this—!"

"It can't be!"

"The goddess Meretseger has refused!"

The pick in Pesejet's hand had not left so much as the smallest flaw in the rock of the valley.

Those present floundered, at a loss before the goddess's refusal. But who among them suffered a feeling as dreadful as the woman the refusal had been dealt to? They would call it the tale of the first guild member the goddess had ever turned away, and from birth to death Pesejet's life would be set down on papyrus and passed from mouth to mouth for generations.

"Everyone, be calm. The goddess may simply have stepped away from her place for a moment and been unable to receive the pick. Once more—just one more chance…"

By the high priest's earnest appeal, she was fortunately granted another stroke.

So that she would not become the heroine of some tragic tale that began Once there lived a woman named Pesejet, she put all her strength into the swing of her arm.

The sound was loud, but the feeling that traveled into her hand was worse than before. She opened the eyes she had clenched shut in order to pour out every bit of her strength, and saw the pick crumble—softly, into powder.

"Impossible!"

"There has never been a case like this."

"We will have to search the ancient records."

Pesejet stood blank with despair. She had never imagined she would become the subject of an incident in which one born in the Place of Truth was forbidden to cut a tomb among the artisans' graves. What had happened today would be written on papyrus and, thousands of years from now, still be called an ancient document and treasured in the temple.

She wanted nothing more than to sink to the ground and weep. But she had no wish to add to the record the line that Pesejet, stricken by the goddess's refusal, sank down where she stood, and so she forced her tears back and turned toward home.

If only she could drink, jar and all, the good beer her friend Sebua made, cry herself drunk, wear herself out, and fall asleep.

But Sebua had divorced over some ugly matter and been banished from the village, and there was no longer any way to obtain her beer in Deir el-Medina. And so for days Pesejet had been unable to sleep, left to toss and turn the night through.

It was the same on the night of the festival honoring Hathor, goddess of death and of love. That day her father, Raherka, a guardsman of the company that kept the village walls, and her mother, Tamit, a singer of hymns in the temple of Hathor, were both away from the house. Though it was night, the village, lit by lamps great and small, shone as bright as day. From every house packed tight against the next—none of them proof against sound—laughter spilled, and sounds more intimate still. Beneath the village trees, in the stables, beside the well, the place was full of people drinking, of unmarried men and women kissing and searching one another.

But Pesejet, sunk in gloom, had no heart at all for Hathor's festival and had shut herself inside.

"Pesejet! Pesejet!"

She had not set a foot outdoors, and still the trouble was that men kept coming, endlessly shaking the thin linen curtain drawn across her window. One man would leave and another arrive, calling her name again and again. This was the Night of Hathor, when one gave oneself freely to the joy of the flesh and tasted in advance the paradise of the afterlife, and they could not help being far bolder than usual.

"Pesejet! Just look at me a moment!"

She had not been sleeping anyway, and she was sick of hearing her name called. She flung the curtain aside to see who the uninvited guest was. This time it was Menna, who worked in metal.

"Why are you clinging to someone else's window at this hour?"

Instead of answering, he grinned, baring white teeth, and held out a bouquet of white lotus bound with papyrus. Set beside the other bouquets already laid upon her table, Menna's was large—but its freshness was wretched.

"Pesejet, come live with me now."

"I have no thought of marrying."

"Look at me. I waited for you until I turned twenty-three. The goddess rejected you too, so let's live together. Hmm?"

"Don't wait for me. I truly have no wish to marry, so please—meet someone else."

To say outright that he held no charm for her seemed too cruel, and so she had spoken around it. At that, Menna shot out both arms, seized her two shoulders hard, and shook her.

"Don't make me laugh! You've been refused by the god. If you want to be buried in the artisans' tombs and find your rest, the only way is to marry an artisan! You'll never find a groom as fine as me. I bring in plenty of work from the nobles outside, and I've got the wealth to show for it."

"I don't want you. And let go of my shoulders first—or I'll bring a charge against you."

"Playing coy, when even the gods have cast you off! Hah—ptoo!"

When his words failed to take hold, Menna, who had been shouting savagely, spat a yellow gob of phlegm onto Pesejet's linen dress and left the window.

He was already the fourth man that night alone. Even after the Night of Hathor had passed—the night when everyone grew bold—the men's sickening, clinging pursuit would go on, differing only in degree, until the beauty of her own body had withered away. On and on.