1. Get a map.
Tutti gets so cross with me when I get things wrong, especially when I get lost or go the wrong way. So I’m going to get really organized for this lovely holiday. One of the nice priests called Twink Eltwinkel is helping me. He is very good at finding his way about. He knows how to use the stars to find where the north is. Apparently that’s terribly important. Once you know where north is you can work out where everywhere else is. At least I think that’s what he told me. Anyway I am travelling north on my holiday and he gave me a map which is awfully useful because he says it will show me where I’m going and where I am when I’m there.
I suppose that makes sense.
2. Pray to Hapy.
Hapy, as I learnt when I was a very little girl, is the god of the River Nile. So I must remember to say a few prayers to him if I want to enjoy my holiday. I don’t want the river to leave me high and dry on a mudbank. Neither do I want an enormous flood that would sweep me right down to the Mediterranean Sea.
Of course Hapy gets quite a lot of prayers because without HIM we’d all be in the black and sticky, as Tutti would say. Actually that’s not quite right, because it’s Hapy who brings wonderful black mud down the river every year when the Nile floods. That’s why we call the soil beside the river ‘black earth’. I’ve heard that other people don’t think much of having their fields covered with black mud, but we ancient Egyptians (and the young ones too) love it because it makes our crops grow marvellously. When the crops grow well there’s a good harvest, with plenty to eat and everyone’s happy with Hapy.
I may not be the greatest geographer in Egypt but I do know the difference between the Black Land and the Red Land. Naturally, I wouldn’t dream of going into the Red Land myself. It’s a terrible place – wild and empty with only sand and dust and rocks as far as you can see. There’s not a drop of water, so I can only imagine what the people there must smell like if they can’t wash! And, as any Egyptian will tell you, smelling nasty is very sinful. The gods don’t like it and neither do I.
3. Decide when to come back.
Time is something that Tutti and I don’t always agree on. He says I have no idea about time. Listening to him you’d think the most embarrassing thing for a pharaoh is to have a mother who is always in the wrong place at the wrong time. Is that why he’s sending me on this holiday? Well I shall let him know exactly when I am coming back and I shall stick to it, whatever happens. One thing I’m sure about is that I must be back by New Year. Well, no one in Egypt would want to miss New Year unless they were really stupid – or lived right out in the middle of the dreadful Red Land.
My friend the god Hapy makes sure that New Year always comes at the beginning of summer. He sends a special sign, just in case people like me get a bit confused. At New Year Hapy makes the water in the river start to rise. As the water gets higher that’s when the river floods all the fields bringing that nice thick black, squidgy, sludgy mud that everyone has been waiting for. So, I must be back for the New Year Celebrations to have that very special mud facepack and to sing Old Long Nile with all my friends. I’m not sure that Tutti will think it’s a long enough holiday though. It’ll only be about forty days and forty nights and the dear sweet boy wants me to have a really long holiday. He said something about being off my trolley, some kind of slang for needing a rest, I dare say.
4. Say goodbye to my old friends.
While the servants are finishing my packing and getting everything ready on the royal barge, I thought I would just pop over the river to the other side to say goodbye to a few old ‘friends’. They’re not friends in the way that my friends in Thebes are friends. These ones are rather special. For one thing most of them are kings. They’re also very old. And they’re buried underground because they’ve all gone to their afterlife in the Underworld.
The place where I go and visit them is called the Valley of the Kings. Only the very top people get buried there. Tutti will go there one day, though knowing him he’ll hide himself away and no one will find where he is for thousands of years.
I hope that if I visit there often enough I might find a nice place to go myself when the time comes to make my journey to the Underworld. Tutti’s often saying he wishes I would stay in the Valley of Kings for good – he must think such a lot of me to have such a sweet idea.
Thousands of years ago pharaohs and other important people (like me) used to build great big pyramids for themselves. Pyramids are very grand, but they’re not very comfortable. I wouldn’t like to spend my afterlife inside one. I know I’d get lost and the idea of having all the stone piled up on top of me would give me the creeps. No, I’d be much happier in a nice cosy rock tomb, cut into the hillside, like the ones in the Valley of the Kings. It’s a very nice neighbourhood too – a very good address when people come to see you.
Of course there’s one tomb there we’d all love to move into. That’s the fabulous temple built by a ‘king’ who must have been very much like me – anyway that’s what I think.
This ‘king’ was actually a queen. Her name was Hatshepsut and she lived only 150 years ago. She showed them who was boss when she ruled Egypt! Oh, yes, they knew who gave the orders when Queen Hatshepsut was running the country. And her temple shows it. It’s the first thing you see when you go to the Valley of the Kings. It’s very grand. It would suit me very well. I must have a word with Tutti about it.
5. Be a good mummy.
It must be having to leave Tutti for a long time that set me thinking about what it takes to be a mummy, and how I must be a really good mummy from now until I go away. I expect anyone can become a rotten mummy. To be a good mummy, one that people will still be talking about long after you’ve gone to the Underworld, that takes some doing. Naturally I want to be an extra-special mummy, so I looked up ‘Mummies’ in the Yellow Papyri and found this advertisement.
With an invitation like that I was round at Karnak Way like an arrow from