“I care not what this one does.”
And so Paneah, virtual master of the mightiest house in
Thebes, became the only slave of Khamat, chief jailer of the
king’s prison. Each morning Khamat lowered a rope into the
Hebrew’s cell and Paneah climbed forth to do his bidding. The
unruly warriors from Potiphar’s guard were excused from
emptying buckets of waste from the prison cells, for Paneah
cleaned them. He also carried fresh water and food from the
prison gate to each individual cell.
Pharaoh’s prison contained two different types of cells:
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dungeonlike pits to confine the lowest criminals, and stone
buildings to house noblemen’s servants and Egyptian citizens.
Paneah served the inmates of both. When he had finished
with his prison duties, he worked in Khamat’s stone lodge,
scrubbing floors, grinding corn or cleaning the stall that held
the jailer’s donkey. On slow afternoons when the sky glared
hot and blue, Khamat ordered the slave to stand behind him
and fan away pesky flies as the jailer napped in the sun. When
the sun-god’s Boat-of-Millions-of-Years finally finished its
journey across the sky, Khamat escorted the Hebrew back to
his cell and pulled up the rope.
The other prisoners, accustomed to giving Khamat a mea-
sure of surly respect, took pleasure in belittling the new per-
sonality that had entered their small world. This bearded and
bedraggled scarecrow, obviously a slave and apparently de-
serving of his fate, accepted the bitterness they spewed on him
without comment. When he knelt to slide baskets of food
beneath the iron bars, the prisoners in the walled cells spat on
him and cursed him for the food’s poor quality and limited
supply. Even the criminals in the pits scorned him, routinely
calling him vulgar names and deriding his manhood because
he had been reduced to serving them.
“Surely you are the son of a scared rabbit!” one man called
as Paneah pulled up his bucket. “Why else would you haul
filth for the men who imprison you? What sort of woman gave
birth to you?”
“One who wears bells on her skirt and sells her favors,” the
man in the next pit called. He made an obscene gesture in
Paneah’s direction. “I enjoyed her company the week before
I came to this place.”
No matter how crude or lewd the comments, Khamat
noticed that Paneah did not respond in word or deed. He
moved through a hailstorm of indignities and insults as though
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his thoughts were focused on another world, one in which
men did not surrender to the vilest inclinations of their
natures. While he worked, the slave neither glanced toward
nor made reference to the barred door leading to Potiphar’s
house…and freedom.
Paneah never offered his opinions unless asked, but once
Khamat asked for them, he discovered the slave possessed the
organizational skill of a military officer and the wit of a royal
courtier. Strength and honor supported the skills that were
wasted on menial labor, but Paneah did not once hint that his
situation should be reevaluated or improved. Khamat could find
no trace of ambition or ulterior motive in the slave’s conversa-
tion; nor did the man’s words ever contain less than total truth.
In time, Khamat neglected to carry his sword while Paneah
worked, then he put aside his whip. The slave’s silent en-
durance won the respect of the other prisoners; the ribald
taunting eventually ceased. Within a year, Khamat stopped
supervising Paneah altogether; within two years, he made it
a common practice to leave the long rope dangling in Paneah’s
cell. “Why should I get up early every morning to drop a rope
to you?” he asked his servant. “You would tell me if you were
planning to escape, wouldn’t you?”
Paneah looked up from the sandy floor and regarded the
chief jailer with a wistful smile. “God has a purpose for me
here,” he said, rubbing his hand over the crumbling stone
walls as if he felt some affection for the place. “I will not leave
until he opens the door for me.”
After his brief exchange with Paneah in the pit, Potiphar
did not venture into the prison again. The slave’s words ran-
kled in his brain, urging him to do something, but Potiphar
had no idea what he should do. Paneah had talked of his god,
but Potiphar had no use for gods, visible or invisible.
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Peace and Paneah had departed from Potiphar’s home on
the same night. The house that had once brought Potiphar
pleasure became a hellish place. Sagira, her charm and culti-
vated good looks destroyed by an overindulgence in food and
wine, flirted brazenly with every man who crossed the thresh-
old. More than once Potiphar had seen sheepish-looking
suitors, slaves and noblemen departing from her bedchamber
in the dark of night.
He regarded such things with indifference, silently wishing
that Pharaoh had ordered him to lose an arm rather than re-
ceive a bride. Ramla, the iron-willed priestess whom Potiphar
had endured for Sagira’s sake, had not returned to the villa.
Alone and forsaken, Sagira whined incessantly, returning
handmaid after handmaid to the slave market, unable to find
a single girl capable of serving as her companion.
Potiphar possessed all he had ever wanted: a fine house,
treasure in his coffers, a sterling reputation as a warrior and
friend of Pharaoh. The Gold of Praise hung about his neck,
prompting all who met him to kneel in reverent respect for
one who had been admired and honored by the king.
But his house, which had once been a haven of rest,
hummed with tension and distrust. After Paneah’s departure,
Sagira refused to have anything to do with running the house-
hold. Potiphar extracted stern but capable taskmasters from
his army and set them over his household, but the estate
limped along, barely making a profit, the backs of its slaves
bruised and broken by the whip.
No longer was singing heard in his house. The only laugh-
ter was drunken and coarse, and usually spilled from Sagira’s
bedchamber in the darkest hours of the night.
Potiphar retreated to the palace, preferring to spend his
time with the king. But Pharaoh had tired of military con-
quests and spent his days overseeing the craftsmen who were
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building his tomb in the Valley of the Kings. Thoughts of
eternity pressed on the royal mind, and Amenhotep’s concern
did not lie with his armies, but with the stonecutters and
artisans who were fashioning the tools and treasures he would
take with him into the next world.
And yet Pharaoh was forty-two; the captain of his guard,
fifty-three. Potiphar knew he was closer to eternity than the
king, but he was not eager to prepare for it. How could the
future hold anything for a man who had no faith in it?
Chapter Twenty-Three
Two years later, in the grand central hall of Pharaoh’s
palace at Thebes, the entire royal family gathered to cele-
brate the gifts bestowed by a group of visiting foreigners.
Tuya sat on a chair beside Abayomi, her hand resting pro-
tectively on the gentle swell of her belly. The priestess of
Montu had declared that she would bear a son, and Tuya was
careful that the proper offerings be offered every day to
ensure her child’s safety. She had lost one love because she
neglected to placate the gods with proper sacrifices. She
would not lose another.
Abayomi, caught up in the music, clapped and occasion-
ally glanced in her direction. She smiled in approval, and he
turned again to the musicians, his confidence bolstered. At
thirteen, her husband was still much a boy. He had matured
enough to earn her respect and father a son, though one had
little to do with the other.
She had come to respect her young husband because the
prince was a student of life. Anxious to understand the world
around him, his insights into natural, divine and human law
were curiously creative. He often struggled to communicate his
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fanciful ideas to others, but Tuya, who had been mother, sister
and wife for four years, gave voice to his insights and feelings.
Neither his elder brother, the crown prince Webensennu,
nor his father the king understood Abayomi, for their thoughts
centered around military ideas of right and might, but Tuya
was quietly glad that Abayomi would rather ponder the way
of an ibis in the air than plunder an Asiatic village. Instead of
swords and shields, her husband’s chamber was crowded with
scrolls, art and animals, living and mummified. His name
meant ‘he brings joy,’ and after the grief of her former life,
Tuya had to admit her husband-child had brought a measure
of sunlight to her dark heart. She still dreamed of Yosef, but
not as often as she once had.
Pharaoh and Queen Merit-Amon sat across from a dark-
robed quartet of Syrian dignitaries, and Tuya found herself
studying the strangers’ faces. They wore short, pointed beards,
heavy robes and no jewelry. For a moment she thought she
gazed into a transforming mirror, for they were opposites of
the clean-shaven, bejeweled, lightly clothed Egyptians. Awed
by the ostentation of Pharaoh’s palace, the visitors spoke little
and looked much, their dark eyes darting up, down, right and
left. Of course they were impressed. Tuya had learned enough
to know no palace in the world could rival the beauty and
opulence of Pharaoh’s court. Thebes was the center of the
world, and the center of Thebes was this room. From it Pha-
raoh’s divine glory shone like radiant sunlight.
The crown prince sat at Pharaoh’s right hand with two of
his wives. Three years older than Abayomi, Webensennu
behaved as though he were Pharaoh already, nodding with
grave dignity at a pair of wrestlers who competed for his at-
tention while acrobatic dancers in sheer veils whirled before
the royal chairs. Though he still wore the prince’s single lock
of hair on his right temple, Webensennu gripped an ivory-
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handled flywhisk as though it were the flail or the crook, the
symbols of Pharaoh’s office.
The Master of the Banquet clapped his hands; the dancers
stopped, the wrestlers prostrated themselves before Pharaoh.
Without warning, a bevy of male slaves spun into the room,
each bearing a bowl of roasted meat or honey-glazed fruits.
The delicious aromas of goose, duck, teal and pigeon rose
from the steaming bowls, and Tuya thanked the gods that the
nausea of early pregnancy had passed. She now had the
appetite of a field slave at harvest time, and she intended to
enjoy this meal to the fullest.
Pharaoh’s family, his noble guests and the visiting Syrians
plucked food from the bowls while a group of women musi-
cians danced to their playing of the harp, lute and flute. As a
white-robed priestess of Amon-Re strummed the sacred
sistrum, Tuya leaned forward to inquire if her husband found
the meal pleasing.
The words never left her lips. A sudden shriek interrupted
the musicians and the women scattered as one of the king’s
food-tasters knocked a bowl to the floor and staggered for-
ward, his hands clutching at his throat. As the crowd gasped
in horror, the terrified slave tottered toward his god and king,
then collapsed as blood ran from his nose and mouth.
In an instant, Abayomi’s arm encircled her waist. “To your
chamber,” he said, pulling her from her chair as his eyes swept
the room. “Wait there. You will be safe, I swear it.”
Alone in her chamber, Tuya knelt before the stone statue
of Montu and numbly gazed at the figure. What power would
such a statue have against one who wanted to poison her
husband or her soon-coming son? Montu’s strong arm had
done nothing to aid Yosef, and only blind luck had saved
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Pharaoh’s life tonight. If the poison that struck the innocent
slave had worked more slowly, Pharaoh would be well on
his way to the underworld. Yet thousands of priests through-
out Egypt offered daily sacrifices to protect their king, the
divine one.
Which of the gods of Egypt could help her? She despised
Bastet, Sagira’s goddess, and Montu had failed her in the past.
Amon-Re was Pharaoh’s divine father, but though she would
not admit it aloud, she felt nothing but contempt for a god who
would allow death to come so close to the anointed king.
Yosef had spoken of and prayed to El Shaddai, the invisible
god in whom the world lived and moved and breathed, and
yet Yosef now passed his days in Pharaoh’s prison. Yet there
had been no announcement of a child born to Potiphar’s wife,
so perhaps Yosef had managed to escape the trap Sagira laid