Sitefnut is forty-eight years old, a ripe old age in her time and place. She was born in a small village on the banks of the Nile, and was married when she was twelve to a man ten years her senior, a fisherman and occasional farmer. The marriage was an arranged one, and while it eventually worked out reasonably well, the couple often clashed over the years. Sitefnut's first child was born a few months after she turned fourteen, and her second and third followed soon after.
Sitefnut's husband died when she was twenty-seven. He'd taken the boat out on the river to fish, and never came home. Pieces of the boat were found, some stained with blood and with black hair snagged in the wood, but the body was never recovered. It was assumed that he'd found a final resting place in the belly of an alligator--there was a large man-eater haunting the river around her village that year.
Sitefnut had always had an interest in herbalism, and after she was widowed she turned her interest into a small but thriving business, a necessity as she was regarded as much too old to remarry, and she had no other way of bringing in money. She dabbled in some hedge witchery, even, and often people assumed that she knew much more than she did about magic. She has trained a young apprentice in her ways, her children are all grown and her grandchildren are all young adults, and Sitefnut has found herself with a burning desire to see the wonders of the world she has always heard about and no reason to stay at home.
So she sets out, accompanied by her over-pious granddaughter Mayet, down the Nile. Her stated destination is Thebes and then Giza. After that, who knows? There is a whole world outside the borders of Egypt...
