Day of the False King Read Online Free Page B

captain call them? —
his “sea legs.”
    In the prow, beneath an awning, Pharaoh’s
cousin Elibar was praying, with his shawl drawn around his head.
Semerket waited for the man’s muttering and keening to cease before he
spoke.
    “Your sons are very passionate,” Semerket
said when Elibar opened his eyes.
    Elibar canted his head to regard the four
young men. “It’s a good thing for men to be passionate about their
beliefs,” he said with his usual deliberateness. “Sometimes, only a
deeper conviction gives us an advantage over our enemies. Sometimes,
it’s all we have.”
    “I would have thought it was your god who
gave you the advantage.”
    Elibar shrugged, indicating that the
sentiment was understood.
    “They certainly despise Egyptians, though,”
Semerket said, looking back at the youths.
    “Perhaps you didn’t know that the Habirus
were once enslaved by the Egyptians,” explained Elibar, “or so our
tradition tells us. But we prayed to our god, and he sent a hero to
rescue us; his name was Moses.”
    Semerket, who had never heard this story
before, shook his head doubtfully. “But Moses is an Egyptian name, or
at least half of one.”
    “Moses was a Habiru who was drawn from the
Nile and raised as a prince in Pharaoh’s Golden House. So, yes, you can
say that he was an Egyptian — or at least half of one.”
    “Why have I never heard of your ‘hero’?”
    “Perhaps because he lived over three hundred
years ago.”
    “Elibar,” said Semerket with a trace of
condescension, “in Egypt, that’s like saying ‘yesterday.’ ”
    Elibar regarded him skeptically, smiling to
himself, but saying nothing.
    “Do you believe the story?” Semerket asked.
    At that moment, a school of fish suddenly
swarmed near the surface, breaking the water in a flurry of froth and
furious spume. Their silver flanks sparkled in the rays of the rising
sun. A few sailors took a moment to cast lines into the sea in the hope
of snagging a meal.
    Elibar answered Semerket in a low voice, so
that his words would not carry on the winds to his sons. “I will tell
you what my cousin Ramses believes, if you’re of a mind to listen, for
he claims to have read the suppressed scrolls.”
    Semerket shifted uncomfortably. All too
often knowledge of the truth brought with it its own kind of penalty.
Nevertheless, he nodded, indicating that Elibar should speak.
    Elibar leaned in close. “Ramses says the
Habirus first invaded Egypt alongside the Hyksos. One of them, Youssef,
even rose to become high vizier under the Hyksos king. He was given the
task of exterminating the native Egyptians in the Delta, and drove
their survivors south into Thebes. Ramses insists the Habiru legend is
actually wrong side up — that it was the Egyptians who were oppressed
by the invaders.”
    Semerket shrugged. Every Egyptian knew of
the Hyksos. Their invasion was the national scar on the nation’s
conscience, and their expulsion Egypt’s greatest victory.
    “When the native southern kings at last
prevailed,” Elibar continued, “they enslaved those Habirus who had
stayed behind and slew their every male child.”
    “The usual punishment dealt to Egypt’s
invaders,” said Semerket reasonably. “It’s told about the Libyans, the
Shardanas, Danites, the Sea Peoples — any of the tribes who invaded
Egypt.”
    “But only the Habirus produced a Deliverer.”
    “Ah, yes,” said Semerket ironically, “the
Slave King raised in a palace.”
    Elibar regarded him patiently. “Will you
hear more?”
    “Go on.”
    “Ramses believes Moses was one of his own
ancestors, a Prince
Thut
-moses, a nephew of Queen Hatshepsut.
My cousin says that Prince Thut-moses made common cause with the
Habirus, planning to use them as warriors in his attempt to take the
throne. But the coup failed. Only the intervention of Hatshepsut
allowed him to escape Egypt, together with a handful of Habirus. It was
then that he began to worship a single god of the desert, where