since Pharaohs stand above even the gods, and when all is said and done, neither good nor evil deeds exist; but good is that which succeeds and evil that which fails and is exposed. Nevertheless, my heart quakes at times, and my bowels are as water when I reflect on my actions for I am but a woman, and all women are superstitious, but I hope that in this matter my blacks will be able to help me. It especially quakes me to see Nefertiti bearing one daughter after another, since four times in a row she has given birth to a daughter and I feel each time as if I had thrown a stone behind me, only to find it lying in the path ahead, and I cannot explain this but fear my deeds have created a curse that creeps before me.”
She muttered some invocations between her thick lips and shifted her feet uneasily on the floor, but all the while her fingers knotted nimbly the bright rushes into a mat, and as I looked at her dark fingers, my heart was chilled. For the knots she tied into a mat were those of a fowler and familiar to me. Indeed, I knew them for they were rare knots of the Lower Kingdom, and as a boy I had seen them in the sooty reed boat that hung above my mother’s bed. When this flashed upon me, my tongue froze and my limbs numb. On the night of my birth, a mild west wind had been blowing, carrying the boat down the flood waters and bringing it to rest on the shore near my father’s house. The thought that dawned on me as I watched the Queen Mother’s fingers was so outrageous and terrible that I strove to put it from me, telling myself that anyone might use fowler’s knots in making a reed boat. Yet fowlers plied their trade in the Lower Kingdom, and I had never seen such knots tied by anyone in Thebes. As a boy, I had often examined the sooty boat with its broken strands and marvelled at the knots that held it together, though at that time I was unaware how that reed boat linked with my own destiny.
But the great Queen Mother never noticed how I suddenly stiffened and needed no answers, but plunged into her own thoughts and memories and said, “I may appear to you an infamous and repulsive woman, Sinuhe, now that I have spoken so openly, but do not judge me too sternly because of my deeds, but seek to understand me. It is not easy for a young fowler girl to enter Pharaoh’s women’s house, where everyone despises her for her dark skin and broad feet and where she is
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pricked by a thousand needles and has no refuge but a whim of Pharaoh and the beauty and youth of her body. Can you wonder if I did not look too closely into the ways and means to be used when I sought to bind Pharaoh’s heart to me and when night after night I accustomed him to the strange practices of the blacks until he could no longer live without my caresses, and until it was me in him who ruled Egypt. In this way I defeated all intrigues in the golden house, avoided all snares and tore aside the nets that were spread about my path, nor did I shrink from revenge when I had cause for it. I stilled all tongues with fear and ruled the golden house according to my will, and my will was so that no other wife should bear a son to Pharaoh until I had done so. Therefore, no other wife did bear him a son, and the daughters that were born I married off at birth to eminent men, so strong was my will. Yet I dared not bear children at first lest I become ugly in his sight, for in the beginning I kept my hold over him by my body alone and had not yet entangled his heart in a thousand other nets. However, he started ageing, and the embraces by which I dominated him made him weak so that, when at last I judged the time ripe for breeding, I bore him, to my horror, a girl. This daughter grew up to be Beketaten, whom I have not yet married off but she is still an arrow in my quiver for the wise keep many arrows in their quiver and never trust to one alone. Time passed, and I was in great agony of mind until at last I bore a son, although I have taken less delight in him than I had hoped since he is mad, for which reason I fasten all my hopes on his son, though yet unborn. So great was my power that not one wife in Pharaoh’s women’s house bore him a son during all those years but only daughters. As a physician, Sinuhe, must you not acknowledge that this skill and magic of mine is remarkable?”
Trembling, I looked into her eyes and said, “Your magic is of a simple and despicable order, great Queen Mother, because your fingers braid it into the bright rushes for all to see.”
She dropped the work as if it had burned her, and her beer-reddened eyes rolled in her head in dismay as she said, “Are you also a magician, Sinuhe, or is this matter already known to all the people?”
I said to her, “Eventually nothing can be hidden from the people, but the people come to know everything even if no one tells it to them.
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