The Pharaoh’s Scribe

Thebes, Egypt, 1320 BC.

The Nile glimmered beneath the dawn, its waters turning gold as the sun rose over the Valley of the Kings. In a small chamber beside the temple of Amun, a young scribe named Neferet bent over a scroll, her reed pen dancing across the papyrus. Her task was sacred: to record the words of Pharaoh Ramsen, ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt.

She was known for her beauty, though she never sought attention. Her hair was dark as obsidian, her eyes quiet and watchful. What set her apart was not her face, but her hand. The priests said her writing carried life, that the gods smiled upon every mark she made.

One morning, as she worked in the shade of the temple columns, a tall man entered. His robes were white, his arms strong, his eyes filled with the calm of the desert.

“I am Khemet,” he said. “Captain of the Pharaoh’s guard. I have come for the decree you were ordered to write.”

She handed him the scroll without a word. As he turned to leave, a gust of wind from the river caught the edge of the parchment, unrolling it slightly. He saw the characters, their lines graceful and alive, as if written by the hand of a goddess.

“You write as though you breathe with the gods,” he said.

“And you speak as though you have met them,” she replied softly.

From that moment, he returned often. Sometimes with messages from the palace, sometimes with no reason at all. They would talk beneath the palm trees by the river, sharing bread and stories of the stars. He spoke of battles and oaths, of the burden of loyalty. She spoke of the scrolls, of the power of words to outlast empires.

One evening, when the desert sky burned with red light, he said, “If I were not bound to the Pharaoh, I would ask you to leave this city with me.”

She smiled sadly. “And if I were not bound to the temple, I would go.”

Fate, however, is not moved by words of longing. The next day, a messenger brought news that a plot had been uncovered against the Pharaoh. A traitor among the guards. Khemet was accused, though he swore his innocence. He was taken to the dungeons beneath the temple to await judgment.

Neferet begged the High Priest to let her write his testimony, but the Pharaoh ordered silence. “No ink will defend the guilty,” he said.

That night, she crept into the archives, her lamp trembling in her hand. She took a piece of papyrus and wrote a secret scroll, addressed not to men, but to the gods.

“If his heart is pure, let the river bear witness. Let his name be cleansed in the eyes of the sky.”

At dawn, before his execution, she slipped the scroll into his hand through the bars. Their fingers touched for the last time. He looked at her, and in his eyes she saw not fear, but peace.

When the sun rose, the Nile overflowed its banks without warning. The priests called it the tears of Isis. The flood washed through the lower chambers of the temple, and when the waters receded, Khemet’s cell was empty. The guards found no trace of his body, only the papyrus she had written, floating on the water, the ink untouched by the flood.

Years passed. Neferet became the chief scribe of the temple, her name recorded in the Book of Writers. But every year, when the Nile rose, she would walk to the river’s edge and whisper his name to the water.

On the day of her death, a strange thing happened. The priests who tended her chamber found a single reed pen resting beside her hand, and on the wall above her bed, words appeared in fresh ink:

“The heart is eternal. The river remembers.”

And so they buried her beside the Nile, where the reeds sway like whispers and the current never stops. Some say that on moonlit nights, two figures can be seen walking along the shore, their hands entwined, the stars reflected in the water around them.