Pharaoh (Ancient Egypt 6) by Wilbur Smith

Author:Wilbur Smith [Smith, Wilbur]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2016-09-21T16:00:00+00:00

It seemed that the obtuse and uneducated Utteric had by some strange chance selected the thirty-two persons for execution with extreme prejudice who almost perfectly made up a superior government cabinet ideally suited to assist and advise Pharaoh Rameses on the administration of greater Egypt.

Included in their ranks were experts and innovators in the fields of agriculture, food, animal welfare, education, fisheries and forestry, mining of metals, building, wealth and taxation, water supplies and – most valuable of all – the army and the navy and the art of waging war. They took to the roles they were offered by Pharaoh with gusto and mostly good sense. My life was not made easier and more relaxed by the fact that these acknowledged experts appealed to me for my advice at every turn of the road, especially if that turn led them to a dead end.

Every now and then new prisoners arrived at the gates of the Garden of Joy, consigned to us by Utteric the Invincible for summary execution. Very soon we had several hundred recruits from this source. From amongst their ranks Weneg and I selected carpenters and boat-builders. We set them to work on the manufacture of four fast sloops and a pair of cutters from designs drawn up by me. These vessels were to be used to communicate with King Hurotas and our allies in Lacedaemon. As we were making the first of these boats ready to put to sea Serrena sought me out in great excitement with the tidings that the three pigeon eggs that had been produced by the female, with a little assistance from the bird she had named Uncle Hui, had now hatched. In a few weeks the chicks would have matured and learned to fly so strongly that they could be dispatched to Serrena’s parents in Lacedaemon to commence their life’s work of ferrying messages back and forth between our two camps.

Serrena herself was busy every night until long after most of the rest of us were asleep. She was compiling what she referred to as her Codis Brevus, a form of writing that was twelve times shorter than the traditional hieroglyphics and totally secure. It comprised a single symbol for the two hundred basic words of our Egyptian language, sufficient to formulate most messages. For other rarer words there was a code to replicate the sound. When she explained the basic principles of the code to me I was immediately intrigued by the simple beauty of the system, and appalled by the fact that I had not thought to develop it for myself. With me to assist her we had a first draft to send to her parents in Lacedaemon with the initial shipment of pigeons. Two superior minds working in unison are often more effective than fifty working individually.

We launched the first of our sloops, which we named Artemis’ Promise, a little after midnight, when the full moon had slipped below the horizon and only the stars gave light for navigation of the river.

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