Lion Head Mesa Two Auguries

An altar for the goddess Hathor stands in the desert. In the curve of Eset’s jaw are meager offerings, a patch of cloth and a marrow-filled sacrum. In the past the gods had been distant, indifferent, giving little light of a kind for those laborers watching.

Here the gods are close, they are listening. She assembles the tributes at Hathor’s feet and closes her eyes in prayer, to petition for Senmut’s exaltation.

Fears spun tighter with the arrival of every new prince, wrenching her own farther from the throne of Pharaoh.