ISBN: 978-1-936558-14-8 * eISBN: 978-1-936558-15-5 * Paperback $16.95 * E-book $3.99 * Publication: August 9, 2011
Women of ancient Egypt were the freest of any civilization on earth, except for the modern era. In several dynasties of ancient Egypt the God’s Wives of Amun stood tall, priestesses of wealth and power, who represented the pinnacle of female power in the Egyptian state. Many called The God’s Wife of Amun second only to the Pharaoh in dominance.
The God’s Wife follows the adventures of a 16-year-old girl, Neferet, who is thrust into the role of The Gods Wife of Amun without proper training. Surrounded by political intrigue and ensnared by sexual stalking, Neferet navigates the temple, doing her duties, while keeping her family name pristine and not ending up like her predecessor – dead. Her installation ceremony made a point of how grave her position was:
“From the primeval nothingness, proceeded Amun,” was the chant. Fewer people waved them on this time, but she sat still, with her back erect on the unforgiving wood sedan chair, balancing the wig with expert grace. In her confusion, she hung on to what the priests had taught her over her weeks of training.
Door after door gave way to the procession until they faced a hut-sized entrance with a red door allowing passage for only one or two persons at a time. She and Nebhotep had permission to touch it. She descended from the litter, aided by the priests, and stood, legs quivering under her linen gown, before the portal. She pounded once upon the wood, and the priests all bent forward prostrate on the floor. The way opened. She drew herself up, steadied her breath and faced the blue icon of the god Amun. He sat, life-sized, on a granite pedestal. His eyes, of the most uncanny stones, followed her every movement, even the shift of her eyes.
As instructed, she placed an armful of flowers at the god’s feet. Priests, bent over and mumbling apologies to the great Amun, handed her food to lay at the icon’s pedestal. Then, at the door, they covered Neferet with a great, gold-flecked robe and crowned her wig with a diadem. They sang a song of matrimony, and Nebhotep joined her hand to that of the great statue. It was as cold as the night waters. The priest read a long statement, detailing the lands and properties that the temple afforded to her, now that she was the bride of Amun. Her mind swam. All through these declarations, the heady incense threatened to knock her out. The sacred drug didi had her head swimming, because now the room was full of blue – the same color as the faience beads on her full collar necklace. She relaxed and couldn’t take her eyes off the Amun effigy.
Like fleet-footed beings of the night, the priests left. Closing the door behind them, they abandoned her with this husband of rock. In the moment his jewel eyes fastened onto hers, she knew her life was no longer her own.
Meanwhile, a modern-day Chicago dancer, Rebecca, is rehearsing for a role in an ancient Egyptian production and finds herself blacking out and experiencing realistic dreams about life in Egypt. It’s as if she’s coming in contact with Neferet’s world. She dreams about Egypt, sees herself there, dreams about details that she should have no access to at all. She’s called on to dance the lead in a dance production of the opera “Aïda,” and the immersion becomes even worse. One day, she amazes her choreographer.
“Where did you learn to do that?” Emmylou Sailor stood at the front of the class, hands on her hips, casting a look of astonishment at Rebecca.
“What?” Rebecca replied before she could think. What had she been doing? First came the dance of Aïda’s imprisonment and sorrow, then the twisty, spiraling solo in which her character expressed her longing for her Nubian home. Somewhere I had a blackout.
“You did this thing with your hips.” Sailor answered, demonstrating with an odd little shimmy, “and then you spread your arms as if you were holding an instrument.” Sailor’s arms flew wide open and the fingers moved as if strumming or shaking a delicate object.
Rebecca knew she must answer this famous and often imperious New York choreographer. The woman didn’t like to be kept waiting. But Rebecca just stood, rooted to her spot on the floor, slack-jawed like the class moron. A few students in the back began to giggle silenced by a stinging look from Sailor. She turned to Rebecca again, every feature on her long-nosed, haughty face asking, “Well?”
“I, uh, dreamed it.” As she said the words, Rebecca knew they were true. This movement, this odd, exotic dance had been in her dreams for many nights now. Something else existed – the sensation of a presence standing behind her, driving her on.
“Dreamed it.” Sailor snapped her mouth closed and turned up the corners of her thin lips in a pretense of a smile.
“Yeah, I’ve been researching the Egyptians, and it must have entered my subconscious…,” Rebecca said, mumbling as she studied the floor, drawing imaginary circles on the ground with her bare feet.
Sailor clapped her hands, and Rebecca looked up to see a smug toss of Sailor’s head.
“Well, I love it. It’s absolutely perfect. There’s no better way a woman from that time, that place, that complex mix of cultures could move. Of course. The hips, yes, very Mideastern, but the hands, open and African.” Sailor was talking to herself now, going through Rebecca’s turns and tying them together with her own dance craft.
“This thing with the fingers,” Sailor said, brows inching together. “She’s playing some instrument. Cymbals?”
“No, I think it’s a sistrum.” Rebecca had seen a picture of the ancient percussion instrument just the other day.
“Yes, yes. Of course. “ Sailor ran out of the room, leaving Rebecca alone with the dumbfounded class. She shrugged, but no one else moved a muscle. No one dared to breathe. They just stared at her.
Sailor scurried back in seconds, holding a huge, well-thumbed book on Egyptology with a picture of King Tut’s death mask on the cover. She paged through it with authority, while leaning on the mirrored wall.
“There,” she cried. She held up the page so everyone in the room could see the strange little instrument, made of metal and set with jangling discs on wires. It looked like a small harp with tiny cymbals attached.
“It is for calling the goddess,” the choreographer continued. “The Egyptians used it, but archaeologists discovered it was also found all throughout the upper regions of Africa. It was supposed to summon the goddess Hathor in particular. She was also called Hat-her in the Egyptian language.”
She whirled on Rebecca. “Yes, perfect. We’ll leave it in. Okay, class, from the top.” She put down the book and cued an assistant who ran the CD player. And from the top they went, with Rebecca sweating and swirling her way through her dance of capture and lament. The class acted as a chorus, moving in silent, undulating shifts, all straining to see the captured princess, Aïda.
As Neferet plunges into the darkness of Karnak temple taking on the role of God’s Wife, Rebecca hurls herself deeply into the inner life of an Egyptian woman. Neferet’s journey is a metaphor for Rebecca’s life.
“For your harem,” the soldier, who had forced a bound woman into the room, said. She whirled around to look at the Pharaoh and began to protest in her rough language. She didn’t understand much, but she knew who the king was and she tried to make herself understood. King Heratkhy gestured with his hand and told the soldier he had enough concubines. This girl could go free. Her father never visited the concubines and was joined to only one other wife, who was Kamose’s mother. The slain former God’s Wife, Maya, was the daughter of another Pharaoh’s wife who died in childbirth. Unlike many monarchs of the past, Neferet’s father didn’t seethe with libido. He stayed with the two wives he had left and that suited him.
“Surely not, Your Holiness, with all gracious respect,” the soldier protested. “We captured her at great danger to the troops. She is the daughter of the Hittite king, and he will bargain almost anything to get her back.”
The Pharaoh looked at her with her dirty long hair and arrogant manner and began to laugh.
“Are you so sure the king won’t bargain for us to keep her instead?”
Laughter roared up from the crowd. The poor woman, not knowing she was the butt of a joke, ran around in circles, continuing to shout her unintelligible words. Pharaoh called up the captain of the corps and spoke in his ear. The captain, one of the few men in the kingdom who could translate this hideous language, addressed a few phrases to the girl. She answered without delay and at some length, hardly taking time for a breath between words.
“She says she’d rather work in our kitchens than go back to her father,” the translator said. “It seems he has an unwanted marriage arranged for her.”
At that moment, Neferet raised her voice.
“If she would like to attend me and learn our language, I’d be grateful for more help at the temple.”
Her father smiled, and the translator did his work again. The captive gave Neferet a cautious glance before nodding a curt assent. Neferet stepped down off the stage and, with a ceremonial knife, sliced the woman’s bonds, signifying that she was a free woman. The entire room exploded in a cheer, and the girl was led away.
Neferet frees a woman just like Äida. Are the two parallel worlds on a collision course? They seem to be, for Rebecca in modern-day Chicago dreams only of Egypt, and Neferet, keeps seeing eyes of some other world that she prays can help her when the going gets dangerous in her reign as God’s wife. Neferet is besieged by an unwanted suitor who is determined to win her or kill her and Rebecca meets a mysterious Egyptian man who says he’ll whisk her away to Alexandria, threatening her role in her dance and threatening her romance with with her love, Jonas. Can Neferet and Rebecca help each other, millennia apart?
Magic and realism mix for a powerful ending in The God’s Wife.
“A heavenly read.... The God’s Wife is a feast of romance and excitement, keeping the reader in its thrall with suspense.”
“I knew when I read the synopsis that this book had the potential to be great. I think it realizes that potential fully. Lynn Voedisch has done such a wonderful job with this book.”
“I adore it. The ending is absolutely masterful.”
– Angels and Warriors Radio
“I think the backbone of good fiction is good reportage…I'm not a fan of historical fiction, yet I find it fascinating that this (novel) going back so far works for me and it transcends history for me.”
– Rick Kogan, WGN-AM
“The God’s Wife is a brilliant first novel.”
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