Kiss me and tell me that I'm beautiful

'You are, but I can't do that. I mean, that face isn't you, isn't...' I shudder but I don't let her see.


KV35. That's where I lie, she says, with my face smashed in. I was the most beautiful.


'Callistea,' I try to soothe her, 'Please, don't cry.' She won't cry, she is as dry as dust I tell myself. But she sounds as though she is crying out of a broken mouth, words on the wind.


I who was the most beautiful, I, whom the gods adored, the true pharoah when he was too weak to fight our enemies, smiting with my beautiful face above them, lightning and thunder and the gods at my feet and blood below the gods and sand below the blood.

Now I am below the sand in KV35 where they found me at rest and smashed in my face.

They smashed in my face. I cannot breathe the air of the otherworld. I cannot speak my name before the gods. I cannot name myself, and no-one recognises my beautiful face.

'You are on so many medallions and pendants and rings,' I told her, 'On vases and in sculpture, you are seen everywhere, a treasure among men, and while these things survive, you will always be able to find your image and never die.'

But she didn't hear me. Even when I promised to kiss her perfect face as it is kept in the museum, she didn't hear me.

So I kissed her as best I could in KV35 under the Valley of the Kings: I set her broken arm across her ribs in majesty. She asks me even now among the ashes to kiss her, not for life renewed, or speech before the gods or peace in the underworld. The sockets of her skull, the ruins of her teeth and splintered bone move for me, pleading. I hear her and obey, and never let her see my pity when she says


Kiss me and tell me that I'm beautiful.




Copyright Debbie Gallagher 2009