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Someone had tended him—probably this slave. Yosef lifted
his head to look at the fine shape of her mouth and the slender
column of her throat. A blush colored her cheeks when her
dark gaze caught his, but she didn’t look away. A half-hearted
smile tugged at his lips and she returned it, her face shimmer-
ing like sunbeams on the surface of the ribbon of river that
ruled this land.
Perhaps, Yosef thought, steeling his heart against grief and
despair, God had shown mercy by bringing him to a girl who
could be a well of understanding and hope in this heathen
wilderness.
After her arrival at Potiphar’s house, Tuya was spared from
her new master’s attention because the sick slave needed a
nurse and no one else in the household seemed willing or able
to care for him. And during the days that she nursed Paneah,
Tuya discovered that although Potiphar owned a vast villa with
many rooms and many servants, the poorly organized estate
barely functioned. Because he spent most of his time on
military expeditions or in the presence of Pharaoh, Potiphar had
neither the time nor the inclination to oversee his own property.
But Tuya’s first concern was for her patient. On the day the
master placed him into her care, the young man from Canaan
was flushed with fever beneath the stubble of his beard. Under
the dirty bandage around his arm, Tuya found an oozing
wound from which bare bone protruded. While the young man
was unconscious, she sent for a surgeon to set the bone and
pour wine over the broken skin. After manipulating the bone
and wrapping the arm in clean bandages, the surgeon assured
her he had done all he could do. Now the young man’s fate
rested in the hands of the gods.
Tuya sat by the side of her fellow slave and worried. She
had tended to this young man’s physical body, but what if the
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gods wanted appeasement before he would be healed? She
knew she could never make an offering to Bastet. Though that
goddess had been the favorite in Donkor’s house, Ramla’s
cool betrayal had hardened Tuya’s heart against the cat god-
dess. Finally she begged one of the kitchen slaves for a stone
statue of Montu, the war god and guardian of the arm.
The statue depicted a man with a hawk’s head surrounded
by the golden disk of the sun. Tuya took the statuette to the sick-
room, where she placed it in a shaft of sunlight and began a
healing chant: “As for the arm of Paneah, it is the arm of Montu,
on whose head were placed the three hundred and seventy-
seven Divine Cobras. They spew forth flame to make you quit
the arm of Paneah, like that of Montu. If you do not quit the
temple of Paneah, I will burn your soul, I will consume your
corpse! I will be deaf to any desire of yours. If some other god
is with you, I will overturn your dwelling place; I will shadow
your tomb, so you will not be allowed to receive incense, so you
will not be allowed to receive water with the beneficent spirits,
and so you will not be allowed to associate with the Followers
of Horus.
“If you will not hear my words, I will cut off the head of
a cow taken from the forecourt of Hathor! I will cut off the
head of a sacred hippopotamus in the forecourt of Set! I will
cause Sebek to sit enshrouded in the skin of a crocodile, and
I will cause Anubis to sit enshrouded in the skin of a dog!
Then indeed shall you come forth from the temple of Paneah!”
Every morning Tuya threatened the statue of Montu with
her fierce refrain, and every morning the young man on the
bed seemed stronger. He ate gruel from her bowl before the
first week had ended, sipping the broth from the wooden
spoon without speaking, his dark eyes flickering with a re-
serve Tuya couldn’t understand. Why didn’t he seem more
grateful? He was a slave, as she was, and slaves were not often
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61
blessed with the tender care he had been allowed to receive.
He could have been sent immediately to work in the fields;
few masters would care if a slave costing only twenty deben
weight of silver dropped dead over a furrow.
As he slept, Tuya studied the stranger. Though his illness
had left him wafer-thin, finely defined muscles slid beneath his
skin’s golden tan. A head taller than most Egyptians, his dark
hair flowed in gentle waves to his shoulders and was perfectly
matched by the beard that had filled in the clean purity of his
profile. His hands, with long, sensitive fingers, were well-kept,
and Tuya noticed the lack of calluses on his palms. Perhaps she
was wrong in assuming that he had been born to slavery.
After a few days he began to speak and gesture with his
good arm. In the weeks that followed, he proved to be a will-
ing pupil as Tuya schooled him in the basics of the Egyptian
tongue. He had a sharp and clear mind; rarely did she have to
explain anything more than once.
“Who is that you pray to?” he asked one morning when she
had finished bowing to the statue in the sunlight.
Tuya rose and reverently put the statue away. Montu had
met all her requests; he deserved to be handled with respect.
“Only the king has access to the gods. Only he can pray. I
was chanting before Montu, an ancient war god. He has
healed your arm.”
Horror flashed in the young man’s eyes. “Please don’t
think such a thing! It is an abomination for my people to bow
before any stone object. We worship the invisible god, the one
and only creator of heaven and earth.”
Tuya sank to a papyrus mat on the floor. Only one god!
Despite his quick intellect, this youth was utterly unsophisti-
cated. She tilted her head and looked at him. “Does your god
have a name?”
“The god of Avraham, Yitzhak and my father Yaakov spoke
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to my forefathers as El Shaddai,” he answered, lifting his
chin. “He is God Almighty, the unseen god.”
Tuya shook her head. “Amon is the invisible god,” she ex-
plained in the voice she would have used to teach an ignorant
child. “He is Amon-Re, king of the gods, the chief god of our
king’s empire. He is the creator, the one who rose from chaos
and created maat, the principle that guides our actions. He
created all things that move in the waters and on the dry land,
then he took a form like ours, becoming the first pharaoh.
After a long life, he ascended to the heavens and left the other
gods in charge of the earth.” She couldn’t resist smiling.
“There are many gods, Paneah. Our land grows gods as freely
as it grows grain.”
The young man gave her a quick, denying glance. “My god
is not Amon-Re. And my name is not Paneah. It is Yosef.”
Tuya lowered her voice. “Our master gave you a new name
in the hope that you would survive. The name is a gift, for
Paneah means ‘he lives.’ This Yosef is foreign to our ears, and
the master will not like it.”
The young man did not answer, but regarded her silently
for a moment. Then a shy smile tweaked the corner of his
mouth. “If my master will not call me Yosef, then you must.
I give my true name to you and you alone, for you are the only
one in this land who has shown kindness to me.”
His eyes touched her with warmth, and Tuya struggled
with the inner confusion his smile always elicited. “All right,
Yosef,” she said finally, managing the foreign pronunciation
as best she could. “But I will not speak that name in front of
the master. I will do nothing to offend him, for a slave who
offends will be sold.”
His heavy eyelids closed. Outside the small chamber, dark-
ness approached with the silken slowness of a languid tide.
Shadows lengthened in the room, and Tuya shifted uncom-
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63
fortably as she looked out at the fading light. Sunset had been
her favorite time of day in Donkor’s house, the time when she
and Sagira relaxed and settled down to sleep. Now darkness
brought nothing but phantoms of the past.
She swallowed hard, over a throat that ached with sorrow.
“Was it so terrible?” Yosef asked, his voice quiet and low
in the darkening room.
Tuya started; she had assumed he slept. “What?”
“Whatever it is that fills your face with sadness.”
His gaze held her tight, and Tuya had an odd feeling that
he had forgotten himself and cared only for her. No one had
ever made her feel that way before. She shivered, recalling her
overwhelming feeling of helplessness, her fear of facing
Pharaoh as a concubine, her still uncertain future. “Why does
the past matter?” she finally answered, whispering in the
gloom. “You have faced terrible things, too. Your hands tell
a story, Yosef, and they say you were not born a slave.”
His nod was barely perceptible. “I was betrayed and aban-
doned by my brothers,” he said, his voice somber and flat. “I
once dreamed of greatness, and now I am a slave on an in-
valid’s bed.” In his eyes Tuya caught a glimpse of some internal
struggle, but he did not weep or grow angry. “All I have seen
teaches me to trust El Shaddai for all I have not seen.”
Bitter tears stung her eyes. “I was abandoned by one who
called herself my sister,” she whispered, tearing her gaze
from his face. She stared into the darkness, reliving those
terrible hours. “During the one night I spent in Pharaoh’s
house I dreamed that I stood on a round disk while the sun-
god threw his arms around me. In that moment I felt pro-
tected, safe and loved.”
She looked up at Yosef again. “I don’t believe in dreams,
because we slaves always wake up to a new fear. There is no
escape, because a slave cannot know what lies ahead.”
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“God knows,” Yosef answered, his hand reaching for hers.
Stung by the unexpected gesture, Tuya withdrew her arm, then
relented and placed her fingers in his strong grip. She did not
want to become attached to this youth, for Potiphar might sell
him once his health had been restored.
But for now, she felt blessed to have a friend.
Chapter Seven
Tuya had entered Potiphar’s household at the beginning of
the inundation, the four winter months of the year. Within two
weeks the fever had left Yosef’s body, but since he could not
work in the house or the fields with a broken arm, Tuya began
to teach him the written language of the Egyptians. She had
learned the seven hundred signs of the hieroglyphic language
along with Sagira, and though her rendering of the pictorial
elements would never be as perfect or as elegant as those of
a professional scribe, Yosef had no trouble understanding the
meaning of her scratchings.
As the Nile receded and the fertile silt-laden land reap-
peared, his mind became occupied with learning. Tuya found
that Potiphar did not care what his slaves did; his concerns
centered on Pharaoh, the prison and his guards. So each morn-
ing after bringing Yosef his breakfast of bread and parched
corn, she spread before him several shards of broken pottery
and a basket filled with flakes of limestone. A papyrus reed
made a fine pen, and Yosef often detained her, asking ques-
tions as he practiced his writing and honed his understand-
ing. His brain was like a sponge, always absorbing, always
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demanding more. In a few months he would master what the
royal scribes took years to learn.
“What is the sign for ‘captive’?” Yosef asked one day,
looking up from the shards he had covered with scrawlings.
Tuya peered over his shoulder. “It is the sign of a kneeling
man that you have drawn, but the hands extend behind him
and are bound,” she said. “The sign can also mean ‘enemy’
or ‘rebel.’”
Yosef chewed on the end of his pen. “What is the sign for
‘Pharaoh’? And how may I show it with other signs?”
“You wouldn’t dare.” Tuya took a step back. “Pharaoh’s
name is sacred. To write it is almost a sacrilege. If it is abso-
lutely necessary to write his name, you must enclose it in a
circle, the sign of the sun.”
Yosef turned back to his writing, and Tuya hurried out the
door with the breakfast tray. Distracted by her thoughts, she
nearly stepped into a pile of dung in the courtyard. She gritted
her teeth, annoyed that someone had left the cattle pen open.
She’d have to speak to the stockyard boys.
Donkor’s prosperous household and Potiphar’s estate were
like a tree and its reflection on the Nile, Tuya decided. The
former thrived in prosperity, the latter, being insubstantial,
only appeared to flourish. Though Potiphar’s large estate was
well-situated, his slaves were a disjointed mass of workers, a
hive without a queen. After a week of trying to function in
total disorganization, Tuya called the servants together, an-