AKHNATON
KING OF EGYPT
[Illustration: Pre-title page]
AKHNATON
KING OF EGYPT
By DMITRI MEREZHKOVSKY
Translated from the Russian by
NATALIE A. DUDDINGTON
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 FIFTH AVENUE
[Illustration: Title page]
Copyright, 1927
BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
_All Rights Reserved_
_Printed in the United States of America_
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
THE BIRTH OF THE GODS
_E. P. Dutton & Company_
[Illustration: flowers]
Thou Father art in my heart and there is no other that knoweth Thee
save Thy son Akhnaton. "I ... called My Son out of Egypt." Hosea,
XI, 1
[Illustration: flowers]
AKHNATON
KING OF EGYPT
PART I
[Illustration: Part I]
AKHNATON, KING OF EGYPT
I
Tutankhamon-Tutankhaton, the envoy of Akhnaton, the king of Egypt,
brought him a marvellous gift from the island of Crete--Dio, the
dancer, the pearl of the Kingdom of the Seas.
He boasted that he had saved her from death: but it was not he who
saved her. When she killed the god-Bull in the Knossos arena to
avenge her friend Eoia who had been sacrificed to the Beast, she was
sentenced to be burned at the stake. But Tammuzadad, a Babylonian
who loved Dio, went to the stake in her place and Tutankhaton merely
hid her in his ship and brought her to Egypt.
Before bringing Dio to the king in the new capital, Akhetaton, the
City of the Sun, he settled her near Thebes, or Nut-Amon, in the
country house of his distant relative Khnumhotep, formerly the chief
superintendent of the granaries of Amon's temple.
Khnumhotep's estate was enclosed by high brick walls that formed an
oblong quadrangle making it look like a fortress. Within it were
granaries, cattle-yards, wine-presses, hay-lofts, barns and other
buildings, vineyards and gardens divided into regular squares:
kitchen garden, orchard, flower garden, woods of pine and other trees
and a palm plantation with three ponds, one large and two small ones.
Two high three-storied houses, a brick one for winter and a wooden
one with a brick bottom storey for the summer, stood facing each
other on opposite sides of the big pond.
Dio spent a couple of months in this quiet country place resting from
all that had happened to her in Crete and learning Egyptian dances.
One afternoon, in the middle of winter, she was lying on carpets and
cushions on the flat roof of the summer house, in a light trellised
shelter supported by a row of cedar pillars, carved, gilded and
brightly painted. She was looking at the sun in the dark, almost
black-blue sky, so abysmally clear that it seemed there never had
been, nor ever could be, a cloud in it. The sun of southern
winter--of winter's summer--bright but not dazzling, warm but not
scorching, was like the smile of a child asleep. Half closing her
eyes, she looked straight at it and the light broke into a diamond
rainbow like a tear on the eyelashes.
"Ra the Sun, the Sun Ra--no better name than Ra could be invented for
the sun: Ra cleaves the darkness with a sword," thought Dio.
The winter swallows cleaved the radiant darkness of the blue with the
sword of their whirring flight: they sang to the sun, crying and
shrilling with joy: 'Ra'!
Everything was good and joyous. There was goodness and joy in the
air, pure and dry as nowhere else in the world, giving long life to
the living and making the dead incorruptible, air so divinely light
that one breathing it for the first time felt as though a stone which
had lain on his breast all his life had suddenly been lifted and he
understood for the first time what a joy it was to breathe.
Close by stood a monstrous tree, covered with thorns and prickles,
with dull leaden-coloured thick joints that seemed full of poison,
and a huge blood-red flower like the open mouth of a snake. But the
tree, too, was good: the fragrant flowers breathed of the sweetness
of paradise--the joy of Ra.
Beyond the talc-like streak of the shallow, wintry Nile the hills of
Amenti, the Eternal West, yellow as lion's hair and honeycombed with
innumerable tombs, lay drowsy in the rosy haze of sunshine. But even
death here was good: the souls of the departed, like bees, collect
the honey of death--the eternal life.
"And perhaps on our Mount Ida the wind is howling, the pines creak
and the snow is falling in big flakes," thought Dio, and the blue sky
seemed to her still more blue, the bright sun still brighter; she
wanted to weep with joy and to kiss the sky, the sun, the earth, like
the faces of loved ones after a long parting.
She was smiling at the familiar feeling: it was not for nothing that
she had felt the touch of death as she lay on the pyre, a victim
ready to be slain. It was as though she had died then, and now
another life, a life after death had begun: a different sky, a
different sun, a different earth--alien? oh no, more like home than
her own native land.
"Sick with sorrow I lie on my bed
Wise physicians are trying to heal me.
My loved one comes to my bedside,
My sister--she mocks the physicians.
Well does she know what ails me."
sang in an undertone a man of thirty, with a face fine as a woman's
and large sad eyes like the eyes of a sick child; his head was shaven
like that of a priest and he was wearing a white linen robe and a
leopard's skin thrown over his shoulder. This was Pentaur, a former
priest of Amon and the master of the temple dancers, who was teaching
Dio Egyptian dances.
Kneeling down, he lightly touched with the tips of his fingers the
crossed strings of a tall Amon's harp that stood on a hollow
resounding box, adorned with two rainbow-coloured sun discs and a
four-horned head of the god Ram.
The dulcet notes of the harpstrings accompanied the voice of the
singer. He finished one song and began another:
"Each time that the door
In my sister's house opens
My sister is displeased.
I wish I were her doorkeeper,
She would then be displeased with me.
Each time that I heard her voice,
Frightened as a child I should be."
"Is that all?" Dio asked with a smile.
"That's all," said Pentaur, flushing slightly as though ashamed of
his song being too short. He flushed often and easily like a little
boy; it was strange and almost absurd in a man of thirty, but Dio
liked it.
"Frightened as a child I should be," she repeated, this time without
a smile. "Yes, hardly anything is said and yet all is said. With
you in Egypt love is wordless, just as the sky is cloudless...."
"No, we have longer songs, too, but I don't like them so well; the
short ones are better."
He struck the strings and sang:
"I long for you more
Than a starving man longs for bread,
Than a sick one longs for health,
Than a woman in travail for the baby's cry."
The strings sobbed passionately, almost brutally, as men sob with
hunger, thirst, or pain. And all of a sudden came a subtle, cunning
tune:
"I love truth, of flattery I scorn to think
I would rather see you than eat and drink."
"Love compared to eating and drinking," she said in surprise and she
pondered. "How coarse--coarse and tender at the same time! But of
course that is the very subtlest flattery."
"Why flattery?"
"Why? Ah, my dear brother, that is just what is so bitter in life,
that without bread and water men die, but without love they live."
"No, they die, too," he said quietly, and was going to add something,
but merely gazed at her in silence and his eyes looked sadder than
ever. He blushed and hastened to change the subject.
"I must send the pleater to you: the feathers don't lie properly."
He put out his hand to straighten the tiny pleats--'feathers'--on her
sleeve. Dio took his hand; he tried to draw it away, but she kept it
in hers almost by force, roughly and tenderly at the same time,
looking into his eyes with a smile. He turned away and this time,
instead of turning red, he turned slightly pale under his
bronze-coloured skin, frightened as a child.
This happened at every meeting: her charm, always new, seemed to him
a miracle. Oh, this body, much too slender, the narrow hips, the
angular movements, the rebellious curls of bluish-black hair cut much
too short, the colour in the cheeks, dark-skinned like a boy's and
girlishly tender, the colour of the rosy almond blossom in the
gathering dusk, and the darkish down on the upper lip--an absurd
little moustache! A girl who was like a boy. This was always so;
but it was new that all of a sudden the girl did not want to be a boy.
She let his hand go, blushed and spoke of something different.
"It is not the pleater's fault, it is simply that I do not know how
to wear these clothes--one can see at once I am not an Egyptian."
"Yes, but it is not the dress--it's your face and hair."
Dio did not wear a wig or plait her hair in small tight plaits as was
the custom in Egypt.
"And Tuta ... Tutankhaton says that the bell suits me better."
"The bell" was the Cretan women's skirt, widening towards the hem.
"Oh, no! In our dress you are still more..." he broke off; he wanted
to say 'still more like a sister' and dared not: in Egyptian 'sister'
also meant 'beloved.'
"Still more beautiful," he added with cold politeness. They were not
speaking their thoughts; both were thinking of what was important and
speaking of trifles, as often happens when one is already in love and
the other does not yet know her mind.
Dio remembered the vow of the virgin priestesses of the Mount Dicte
goddess:
"I would rather choose the halter
Than the hateful marriage bed."
A man's love was still as hateful to her as the hot sun to the
flowers under water. But it was the same with love as with
everything else: she had died and another life had begun, another
love--love through death, like sunlight through water, having no
terrors for the flowers in the depths; or like this winter sun--the
smile of a child asleep.
"When are you going?" he asked about the most important thing as
though it were a trifle.
"I don't know. Tuta hurries me, but I am quite happy here." She
looked at him with a smile and again the boy disappeared and only the
girl remained.
"I am happy with you," she added so low that he need not have heard.
"You will go away and we shall never meet again," he said, looking
down as though he had not heard.
"My timid, absurd little boy--the winter's sun!" she thought with gay
tenderness and said:
"Why never? Akhetaton is not far from Thebes."
"No, _his_ city is the other world for us."
_His_--King Akhnaton's, she understood.
"And you don't want to go to the next world--not even with me?" she
asked, with provocative slyness.
"Why do you talk like this, Dio? You know I cannot..."
He broke off, but she understood again: "I cannot relinquish the
faith of my forefathers; step over my father's blood." She knew that
his father, an old priest of Amon, was killed in a popular rising
against the new god Aton.
Tears trembled in his voice when he said 'I cannot,' but he
controlled himself and said calmly.
"Do not go out to-day."
"Why?"
He answered after a pause:
"Maybe there will be a riot."
"Come, come, riot in a country like yours!" she laughed. "You
Egyptians are the most peaceable people on earth!"
She looked at him as though he were a little boy and said: "And you,
too, will go rioting?"
"Yes, I will," he spoke as calmly as before, but there was a light in
his eyes that made her think once more of his father's having been
killed in a riot.
"No, don't go, dear!" she begged with sudden anxiety.
He made no answer and began singing again in a low voice, lightly
touching the strings.
"Death is now to me like sweetest myrrh,
Death is now to me like healing,
Death is now to me like refreshing rain,
Death is now to me like a home to an exile,"
"Aïe-aïe-aïe! What is it?" cried a little girl who was sleeping in
the shelter.
A little tame monkey was sitting at the top of the tree eating yellow
pods. It threw the skins into the shelter trying to hit the little
girl or the tame gazelle asleep at her feet. It missed its aim every
time. At last, hanging on to a branch with one paw, it threw with
another a handful of skins, hitting the gazelle. The animal jumped
up, and bleating ran to the girl and licked her face.
The girl jumped up, too, and shouted in a fright.
"Aïe-aïe-aïe! What is it?"
She was about thirteen years old. Her brown bronze-coloured body,
slender and supple like a snake, showed through the transparent web
of her dress 'the woven air.' She was a strange mixture of woman and
child; the rosy-bronzed nipples of her breasts, firm and round like a
grown girl's, lifted the linen as though they would pierce it, but
there was something childishly mischievous in the eyes and childishly
piteous in the thick, pouting lips. Her face--ugly, charming and
dangerous like a serpent's head--seemed tiny under the mass of
dull-black fluffy hair, powdered with blue.
Miruit was one of Pentaur's best pupils; he was training Dio to
imitate her. She threw back her arms, stretched and yawned sweetly,
still failing to understand what had happened. Suddenly a handful of
pods fell at her feet. She looked up and understood.
"Ah, you bare-back devil!" she cried, and seizing an earthenware jug
from which she had drunk pomegranate wine at dinner--that was why she
had slept so soundly--threw it at the monkey.
The animal hissed maliciously and, snapping its teeth, jumped on to
another palm tree and hid itself; only a dry rustle among the leaves
betrayed its presence.
"It is too bad! As soon as I begin dreaming of something nice they
are sure to wake me!" Miruit grumbled.
"And what were you dreaming of?" asked Dio.
"Oh, all sorts of things. Too good to tell." Suddenly she came up
to Dio, bent down and whispered in her ear:
"It was about you. I dreamt that you ... No, I can't say it before
him; he will hear and pull my ears."
"I will do it anyhow, you fidget! Do you imagine I don't know where
you go gadding every day?"
"Oh, thank you for reminding me. I am late! My merchant must be
waiting for me and raging, and he had promised me a necklace for
to-day. Mine is so shabby that I am simply ashamed to wear it."
"You nasty hussy!" Pentaur shouted at her with sudden anger. "Mixing
yourself up with an unclean dog, an uncircumcised!"
"He may be an unclean dog, but he is rich and he feeds me and there
is no making broth with your holiness!" the girl answered back
insolently, imitating old market women. "It is four months since we
have had any flour or grain or beer or oil, it's no joke! We've
tightened our belts on the hunger rations, we've got as thin as
locusts on the Salty Lakes. A well-fed devil is stronger than a
hungry god; other people's Baal may be of avail and our own Ram is
meek but not sleek!"
"Ah, you wretch! Do you want to be thrown into the pit?"
"Into the pit? No, sir, that's more than you can do! Times have
changed, you can't throw innocent people into the pit nowadays. If
you try to lay hands on me I'll run away and you won't catch me! I
am a free bird--wherever there is food, there is my home."
"Oh, birds of Araby,
Oh, myrrh anointed!"
she sang, turning the tambourine above her head as she ran towards
the staircase. The gazelle followed her like a dog.
At the top of the stairs she ran into Zenra, Dio's old nurse, and
nearly knocked her down.
"Plague take you, you giddy goat!" swore the old woman and going up
to Dio handed her a letter. Dio opened it and read:
I am going to-morrow. If you want to go with me, make ready. I must
see you to-day before sunset. I will wait for you at the White
House. I will send a boat for you. May Aton keep you. Your
faithful friend,
Tutankhaton.
"The messenger is waiting, what shall I tell him?" Zenra asked.
"Tell him I will come."
When Zenra had gone, Dio looked at Pentaur. Like all the priestesses
of the Great Mother she was skilled in the art of healing; she had
seen people die and remembered the fateful sign--the seal of
death--which sometimes appears in a face when the end is near.
She suddenly fancied she saw that sign in Pentaur's face. 'He is
young, healthy, there is no danger in sight. Riot? No, it is
nonsense,' she thought, and as she looked at him more intently the
sign disappeared.
"Are you going?" he asked quietly, but so firmly that she understood
she must not deceive him.
"Tuta is going to-morrow and I do not know yet. Maybe I will not
go...."
"Yes, you will. You wanted to go as soon as possible, you know."
"I did and now, all of a sudden, I am afraid."
"What of?"
"I don't know. I was not burned at the stake then, and now--it is
like going from one fire to another.... You remember what you told
me about the king...."
"Don't, Dio. What is the good? You will go anyway."
"No, you must tell me. Taur, my dear brother, if you love me, tell
me all you know about him. I want to know all."
She took his hand and he did not draw it away this time.
"You will go anyway, you will go!" he repeated sadly. "You love him,
that is why you are afraid; you know you will not escape; you fly
like a moth to the flame. You were not burned in that other flame,
but you will be in this...."
He paused, and then asked her:
"Will you go to see Ptamose?"
"Certainly, I will not leave without seeing him."
"Do see him. He knows everything--he will tell you better than I
can."
Ptamose, the high-priest of Amon and King Akhnaton's bitterest enemy,
had long asked Dio to come to him, but she had not done so yet and
only now, before going away, decided to see him.
"Ptamose is nothing to me," she went on. "I want to know from you.
You had loved him once, why do you hate him now?"
"It is not him I hate. Do you know, Dio, I sometimes fancy..."
He looked at her with the smile of a frightened child looking at a
grown-up person.
"Well, tell me, don't be afraid, I understand!"
"I sometimes fancy that he is not quite human...."
"Not quite human?" she repeated in surprise: there was something
knowing, something clairvoyant in his face and voice.
"There are dolls like that," he went on, with the same smile. "If
you pull a string, they dance. That's what he is like, he does not
do anything of himself, but somebody does it for him. Don't you
understand? Perhaps you will when you see him."
"Have you seen much of him?"
"Yes. We were pupils of the Heliopolis priests together--he, Merira,
who is now the high priest of Aton, and myself. I was thirteen then
and the prince fourteen. He was very handsome, and gentle, very
gentle, like the god whose name is Quiet Heart."
"Osiris?"
"Yes. I loved him as my own soul. He often went to the desert to
pray or, perhaps, simply to be alone. One day he went--and
disappeared. We looked and looked for him, and thought he was lost
altogether. At last he was found among the shepherds in the fields
of Rostia where the Pyramids are and the Sphinx--the ancient god of
the sun, Aton. He was lying on the sand like one dead, probably
after an epileptic fit--it was then he began having fits. And when
they brought him to the town I did not know him; it was he, and not
he, his double, a changeling--as I have said just now, he was not
quite human. Perhaps it was there in the desert that _he_ entered
into him...."
"Whom do you mean?"
"The spirit of the desert, Set."
"The Devil?"
"You call him the devil and we--another god. Well, that was the
beginning of it all."
"Wait a minute," she interrupted. "You say Aton is an ancient god?"
"Yes, more ancient than Amon."
"And you worship him?"
"Yes, just as we worship all the gods: all the gods are members of
the One."
"Then what is your quarrel about?"
"Why, did you think it was about this? Come, we are not such fools
as not to know that Amon and Aton are one and the same god. The
visible face of the Sun is Aton, its hidden face is Amon, but there
is only one Sun, only one God. No, the dispute is not between Aton
and Amon, but between Set and Osiris. Set has killed and dismembered
Osiris and he wants to kill and dismember the holy land of Osiris,
Egypt. This is why he has entered the king.... You are not
listening, Dio."
"Yes, I am. But you keep telling me by whom the king is possessed
and I want to know what he himself is. Simply wicked?"
"No, not wicked. It is just like the devil's cunning to possess a
saint and not a man of evil. The country is perishing in a
fratricidal war, the fields are empty, the granaries plundered, the
people's skin is black with parching hunger, the mothers cook their
own children for food--and it is all his doing, the saint's. And he
has done more: he has killed God. 'There is no Son,' he said. 'I am
the Son.'"
"Never, never has he said that!" cried Dio, and there was such a fire
in her eyes as though she, too, were possessed by Set. "'There has
been no Son, but there will be'--this is what he said. Has been or
will be--the whole question is in that."
"Cursed is he who says there has been no Son, said Pentaur, turning
pale.
"Cursed is he who says there will be no Son," said Dio, turning pale
also.
Both were silent--they understood that they had cursed each other.
He buried his face in his hands. She went up to him and, without
speaking, kissed him on the head, as a mother kisses a sick child.
She looked into his face and it suddenly seemed to her again that
there was the seal of death upon it:
Death is now to me like sweetest myrrh,
Death is now to me like healing,
Death is now to me like refreshing rain,
Death is now to me like a home to an exile!
II
Khnumhotep was an honest and god-fearing man.
He welcomed Dio in his house as though she had been a member of his
own family, not because she was under the patronage of Tutankhaton,
who had power and influence at court, but because exiles were under
the protection of the immortal gods. While he was the chief
superintendent of Amon's granaries he might have taken bribes like
everyone else; but he did not. When Amon's sanctuary was closed and
Khnumhotep lost his post, he might have received another and a better
one, had he been false to the faith of his fathers; but he remained
true to it. At the time of famine he might have sold at an
exorbitant price the corn from his estates in the Lake country,
Miuer, which had not suffered from drought, but he sold it cheaper
than usual and gave away one granary-full to the starving.
He lived in this way because he remembered the wisdom of his fathers:
"a man lives after death and all his works with him"; he remembered
the scales with the heart of the dead man upon one of them, and the
lightest feather of the goddess Maat, Truth, upon the other,--the
sharp eye of the god Tot, the Measurer, watching the pointer of the
scales.
In his youth he doubted whether the short day of life was not worth
more than the dark eternity and whether those who said "a man dying
is like a bubble bursting on the water--nothing is left" were not
right. But as he grew older he felt more and more clearly--grasped
it, as it were, as a hand grasps a wrapped-up object--that there was
something beyond the grave, and that since no one knew anything about
it for certain, the simplest and wisest thing to do was to believe as
his fathers had done.
Khnumhotep, or Khnum, was over sixty, but he did not consider himself
old, hoping to live the full measure of man's life--a hundred and ten
years.
Some forty years before he began building for himself 'an eternal
house,' a tomb in the Hills of the West, Amenti, also according to
the ancient commandment 'prepare a fine tomb for thyself and remember
it every day of thy life, for thou knowest not the hour of thy
death.' For forty years he had been digging in the rock a deep cave
with subterranean halls and passages, adorning it like a wedding
chamber and collecting in it a dowry for his soul, the bride. He did
it all cheerfully according to the saying, 'coffin, thou hast been
made for a feast; grave, thou hast been dug for merriment.'
On the afternoon when Dio and Pentaur were talking on the flat roof
of Khnum's summer house, Khnum was sitting in a light wooden shelter,
supported by four pillars, near the winter house at the other end of
the pond. He sat in a carved ebony chair that had a leather cushion
and a footstool; his wife Nibituia sat beside him on a small folding
chair.
Both were dressed in robes of finely pleated white flaxen material,
not too transparent, as became elderly people; hers was narrow and
reached to the ankles and his was wider and shorter; their feet were
bare. The brick floor of the shelter was covered with mats for
warmth and a servant boy was holding in readiness papyrus slippers.
Khnum took the wig off his closely cropped grey hair and hung it on a
wooden stand close by; men took off their wigs like caps; but
Nibituia's huge black wig, shiny as though it had been lacquered,
with two thick twisted cords at the sides, rose above her head,
pushing the ears forward and making the old woman's wrinkled face
look like a bat's.
Khnum was so tall that his wife, who was short, looked almost a dwarf
beside him; straight, spare, bony, he had a face that seemed carved
of hard brown wood and had a sullen, angry look; but when he smiled
it grew very kind.
On week days Nibituia was busy with housekeeping from morning till
night, looking after the weaving, the mat-making, the cooking and the
washing, but on holidays, such as that day--the day of Khonsu, the
god of the Moon, she gave herself a rest, engaging in a light and at
the same time pious occupation. Two little pots and two baskets
stood before her on a low round table: out of one of them she took
dead beetles, scarabees, butterflies, bees, grasshoppers, ripped them
open with a flint knife, and taking with a bone spoon a drop of
Arabian gum out of one pot and a drop of Lebanon cedar resin out of
another, embalmed the dead creatures; then she wrapped them up in
tiny white linen bandages, like real little mummies, and put them
into the other basket. She did all this quickly and neatly as a work
she was accustomed to do. In the garden there was a sandhill of
Amenti--Eternal West--a cemetery for these little mummies.
A middle aged man with a sly and merry face, Inioteph or Ini, was
sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of Khnum; he was a clerk
in the Surveying Department, managed Khnum's estates and transacted
legal business for him. Bare to his waist, he wore nothing but an
apron; there was an inkpot on his belt and a writing reed behind his
ear, and in his hand he held a roll of papyrus with the account of
sacks of grain which had just been brought down the river in barges
from Miuer.
"When was the decree received?" Khnum asked.
"In the night and it must be carried out to-day, that the sun may not
set on disobedience to the king," Ini answered.
"Quite, quite, quite," Khnum rapped out like a woodpecker tapping, as
was his habit. "They persecuted the Father, they persecuted the
Mother, and now it is the turn of the Son!"
The Son was Khonsu--the Osiris of Thebes, born of the Father Amon and
the Mother Mut.
"But how is he to be destroyed? He is made of gold," Khnum said.
"They will throw him into the furnace, melt him, make coins out of
the gold, buy bread and give it to the starving: eat the god and
praise the king!" Inioteph explained.
"Surely this is very wrong? Uhuh have mercy upon us!" Nibituia said
with a sigh.
Uhuh was a very ancient god forgotten by everyone; he had no idols,
no temples, no sacrifices, no priests--nothing was left of him but a
name. People remembered merely that there had been a god Uhuh, but
they had long forgotten what he ruled over and what he looked like.
And this was the very reason why Nibituia liked him and pitied him
and at difficult moments called not upon the great Amon, but upon the
obscure Uhuh. "No one prays to him, poor Uhuh, but I will pray and
he will have mercy upon me," the old lady used to say.
"And what do the people say?" Khnum asked.
"They haven't much hope of the bread," said Ini, screwing up his eyes
with a sly air. "'The king's clerks, Aton's hangers-on, will steal
it all,' they say, 'and we shan't get a morsel!' And the priests
incite them, of course: stand up for the god, do not allow the holy
image to be defiled! And saying such things to the people is like
setting fire to straw. You know yourself, my lord, what times these
are; I shouldn't wonder if there were a mutiny."
"Quite, quite, quite! Mutiny is a dreadful thing,"
"Nothing could be worse! It is said: 'the earth will tremble, unable
to endure that slaves should be masters.' But indeed what is one to
expect of slaves when the king himself...."
"Don't presume to speak about the king; you will be food for fish,"
Khnum restrained him.
That meant: if anyone found fault with the king he would be thrown
after death into the river to be eaten by fishes.
"And what is the second decree about?"
"About making burial grounds crown property. They are to be taken
from the rich and given to the poor: 'it is time the dead stopped
taking food out of the mouths of the living.'"
"Quite, quite, quite," Khnum repeated, and said nothing more,
watching Nibituia's little hands move rapidly as she wrapped up the
mummy of a grasshopper.
"Uhuh have mercy upon us!" she sighed again and, leaving the
grasshopper, looked at her husband with round, frightened eyes. "How
can this be, Khnum? What will the dead live by?"
"Keep quiet, old woman, that's beyond you, you mind your beetles!" he
grumbled, patting her on the shoulder with a smile, and his face
suddenly became very kind and curiously like his wife's face in spite
of the difference in their features; they seemed to be brother and
sister: happily married couples often develop a likeness in their old
age.
"The dead will have enough to live on, don't you fear; we, the
living, might fare worse!" he added, gloomily.
He really was not much concerned about the dead. If a decree were
issued forbidding people to eat and drink they would go on eating and
drinking just as before; the same thing would happen about this
decree: the living would not stop feeding the dead, for the very
being of Egypt rested upon this, that the living and the dead had the
same food, the same drink--the body and blood of Khonsu Osiris, the
Son of God.
"I expect we shall have to bribe Aton's spies after all," Inioteph
went on.
He did not like Khnum's fearlessness; like all servants who are a
little too forward, he had the bad habit of frightening his master in
order to gain importance in his eyes.
"They have sniffed out, the dogs, that in your honour's tomb two
images of Amon have not been effaced. 'We must inspect it,' they
say. And if they discover it, there will be trouble; they will spoil
everything and defile the tomb or prosecute you--there will be no end
to it!"
"How did they find out?" Khnum asked in surprise.
"Someone must have informed against you."
"Who could it have been? No stranger has seen it."
"It must have been one of your own people, then."
"It is he, he, Yubra, the villain, the snake!" Nibituia cried in
alarm. "I told you, Khnum, don't keep that plague in the house, send
him to the Red Mountains to break stones or to dig canals in the
Delta, so that he may get the ague, the wretch! It is not for
nothing he has made friends with Aton's servants. Just think what he
has done! It is dreadful to think of--raising his hand against the
holy Ushebti, the godless creature! And you spare him...."
"I have thrown him into the pit, what more do you want?"
"What does the snake care about the pit? He likes being there better
than working. I know, Khnum, you gave orders for him to have two
loaves of bread and a pot of beer a day, though you tried to hide it
from me. He is eating his fill, the swine, growing fat and laughing
at you for all your kindness! He sleeps all day or sings hymns to
his unclean god, fie upon him!"
"Whatever is the matter with you, little beetle?" said Khnum, looking
at her in surprise.
They exchanged a deep look and he turned away from her, frowning
sternly. Nibituia got up and bowed low to her husband:
"Forgive your servant, my lord, if I have said anything wrong in my
foolishness. You know better. But I am uneasy--" she could not
resist looking at him significantly once more, "I am very uneasy
about you, Khnum! You are fond of him, you spoil him, and he is
sharpening a knife against you, nursing malice in return for all your
kindness--and such malice is worse than any other."
Ini was smiling to himself: he had gained his object and alarmed his
masters, though he himself did not know how he had done it. Yubra
was not of sufficient consequence for them to be alarmed on his
account.
"Well, that's all right," said Khnum, as though coming to himself.
"I have known Yubra long enough: he is as stupid as an ass but he
would not do .... such a thing: he is a faithful servant."
And breaking off suddenly, he asked Ini: "Are they storing the corn?"
"Yes, master."
"Let us go and see; they are sure not to spread it evenly."
He got up and walked across the garden to the threshing yard. "Dead
flies spoil a fragrant ointment, so a little folly spoils the whole
life of an honourable man," Khnum had often thought of late, with a
bitter smile. This was what had happened in his house.
Wise men knew that the next world, 'the second Egypt,' was exactly
similar to this one, though the semblance was reversed as in a
mirror: here everything was for the worse and made for death, while
there everything was for the best, for everlasting life. But there,
too, in the heavenly fields of Ialu, the shadows of the dead, the
blessed Ka, ploughed the land, sowed, reaped, gathered in the
harvest, dug canals and built houses. For all this work masters
needed slaves. This was why they placed in each tomb three hundred
and sixty-five clay figures--according to the number of days in the
year--each with a spade in its hand, a set of tools in a bag on its
back and a hieroglyphic inscription on the breast: "Thou, Ushebti,
Respondent so and so, belonging to such and such a master, come up
instead of me, say for me 'Here am I,' if I am called out to work."
At the resurrection of the dead, when the masters came to life, the
slaves came to life, too, and went to work in the fields of Ialu, for
there, as here, slaves worked and masters enjoyed themselves.
Khnum had ordered a sample two dozen Ushebti of the modeller who
worked at adorning tombs. He made them so cleverly that from the
clay dolls' faces one could tell which of Khnum's servants they
represented: this was to enable each soul to find its body.
When the modeller brought the figures Khnum's slaves ran out to meet
him at the gate, by the box of old Yubra, the porter, jostling,
shouting and laughing, pleased as children: each was in a hurry to
find and recognize his own doll. "Which is me? Which is me?" they
all kept saying.
Yubra came up, too, and also asked "Which is me?" The potter gave
him his doll. Yubra took it, examined it, asked to have the
inscription read to him, and, suddenly, he seemed like one possessed.
Those who were present said afterwards his face turned quite dark, he
trembled all over and, shotting "I don't want to, I don't want to!"
flung the clay figure on the ground and broke it to bits. All stood
still, spellbound with horror, while Yubra went on breaking the other
dolls arranged on an ironing board from the laundry. Then they
rushed at him, but could not master him at once--he fought like a
fury. At last, when he had broken more than half the dolls, he was
overpowered, and, with his hands bound, brought before Khnum for
judgment.
It was a terrible act of sacrilege: every mummy, not only of man, but
even of a beast, was the body of the dead god himself, Osiris-Amenti.
When Khnum asked Yubra why he had done it, Yubra answered firmly and
quietly:
"To save my soul. Here I am a slave, but there I shall be free."
He would say nothing more.
Khnum thought that Yubra had suddenly lost his reason or was
possessed by the devil. He was sorry for his old and faithful
servant. He could not pardon Yubra completely, but he punished him
lightly and did not even have him beaten; he merely had him put into
the pit; he thought Yubra would come to his senses. But Yubra had
been in the pit for four days and was as obdurate as ever.
There was a special reason why Khnum was so kind to him. In his
youth Khnum liked to hunt crocodiles in the Lake country, Miuer,
where he had a large estate by the town Shedet, consecrated to the
crocodile-headed Sun god, Sobek. He used to spend several days there
during the hunting season.
Every morning, while he was still in bed, a freshly washed and
pleated white robe was brought to him by the fifteen-year old Maïta,
a clever laundress--wife and sister of the young gardener Yubra: poor
people often married their sisters so as not to divide the property.
At dusk Khnum used to hear in the back yard, where some planks ran
out from the laundry into the pond, the loud squelching of the bat
over the wet linen and Maïta's girlish voice singing:
"My sister is on the opposite bank
The river flows between us,
And a crocodile lies on the sand.
Fearless I go into the water,
Water is to me like the dry land,
Love gives me courage and strength,
Love--the all-powerful magic."
But one could hear from her voice that she did not yet know what love
meant. "She will soon learn," Khnum thought with quiet pity.
One day she sang a different song:
"The pomegranate tree spoke and said:
My round fruits are her breasts,
The seeds in the fruit are her teeth,
The heart of my fruits are her lips,
And what the sister does with the brother,
Gladdened by the sparkling wine,
Is hidden by my branches thick."
And for the first time Khnum detected something not childish in
Maïta's childish voice. "She will be like the rest," he thought,
without any pity, and all of a sudden the flame of Set breathed into
his face and lust stung his heart like a scorpion.
He knew that neither men nor gods would condemn him if he, the
master, said to his slave "come into my bed," as simply as on a hot
day he would say to her, "give me a drink." But Khnum was indeed a
just and pious man. He remembered that besides his wife Nibituia he
had twelve concubines and as many beautiful slaves as he liked, while
Yubra had only Maïta. Was the master to take his servant's only
lamb? "This shall not be," he decided, and he left the Lake country
never to return.
But he could not forget Maïta. The flame of Set scorched his bones
as the wind of the desert scorches the grass. He could not eat or
drink or sleep and grew thin as a lath.
He had said nothing to Nibituia, but she guessed the truth. One
early morning, while he was still asleep, Maïta came into the bedroom
of his country house near Thebes, bringing freshly washed clothes.
He woke up thinking he saw her in a dream or a vision, and when he
understood she was real he asked:
"Where is Yubra, your brother?"
"Far away beyond the sea," she answered and burst into tears. Then
she came up to him slowly, sat on the side of the bed, and with
downcast eyes said, blushing and smiling through her tears:
"My mistress has sent me to my master. Here I am, your slave."
And Khnum asked her no more about Yubra.
That year was the happiest year of his life; and the best of all was
that Nibituia had grown just as fond of Maïta as he was, perhaps even
more so. She was jealous not of her but of other women and, strange
to say, reproached him for preferring herself to Maïta. And Khnum
did not know whom he loved most--the mistress or the slave: both
these loves merged into one like two scents blending into one
fragrance.
When he recalled it now, after thirty years, he whispered with tears
of tenderness for the old companion of his life: "My poor little
beetle!"
Nibituia had sent Yubra, the gardener, to Canaan to collect foreign
flowers and plants for Khnum's gardens. And when, after a year's
absence he returned, Maïta was no more: she had died in childbirth.
Khnum treated Yubra handsomely: he presented him with a fine plot of
land, four pairs of oxen and a new wife--one of his own concubines.
No one knew whether Yubra remembered Maïta or had forgotten her with
a new wife, for he never spoke of her and behaved as though nothing
had happened.
When Yubra had grown old and could no longer work in the fields Khnum
took him into his house and gave him the honourable post of
doorkeeper.
For thirty years Yubra had been an obedient slave and now all of a
sudden he rebelled and said:
"I don't want to! Here I am a slave, but there I shall be free."
For thirty years Khnum had not thought that he had done any evil to
Yubra and now, all of a sudden, he thought: "Dead flies spoil a
fragrant ointment and so a little folly spoils the whole life of an
honourable man!"
III
The conical clay granaries stood by the back wall of the granary
yard. Every one of them had a round opening at the top for pouring
in the grain and a window with a board that lifted for pouring it out.
Slaves, brown as brick and naked but for white aprons and caps, were
climbing up the ladders to the upper windows of the granaries,
pouring into them grain that glided down with a gentle rustle like
liquid gold.
This was the new corn from the Miuer Lakes. Looking at it Khnum
remembered the starving and gave orders that a whole granary-full
should be given to them.
Then he walked to the cattle-yard where the prison-pit was. It was a
square hole dug in the ground, with brick walls and a brick
bridge-like roof with a grated window in it.
Khnum went up to the pit, bent down to the window and heard quiet
singing.
"Glory be to thee, Aton, the living and only God,
Who hast created the heavens and the secrets thereof!
Thou art in heaven and here upon earth is thy son
Akhnaton, the joy of the Sun!"
The man in the pit must have caught sight of Khnum, for he suddenly
sang aloud and, it seemed to Khnum, with insolent defiance:
"When thou descendest beyond the sky
The dead come to life in thy life;
Thou givest their nostrils the breath of life,
And the air to their stifled throats,
Glorifying thee from their narrow tombs
The dead stretch forth their hands,
And they who are at rest rejoice."
Khnum walked away and, returning to the shelter by the big pond, sat
down in his old place beside Nibituia who was still wrapping up her
beetles. Inioteph began reading a new endless account of sacks of
corn. Khnum felt dreary. He was conscious of the ominous weight in
his right side, under the last rib; he suffered from his liver. His
father had died of the same complaint at the age of eighty--"Perhaps
I, too, will die before I have fulfilled my span of days," thought
Khnum.
He liked to have something of his tomb dowry brought to him every
day. To-day they brought him the sacred Beetle, Kheper, made of
lapis-lazuli.
The great beetle of the Sun, Ra-Kheper, rolls along the sky its great
ball as the dung beetle rolls its small ball along the earth. The
Sun is the great heart of the world; the human heart is a small sun.
This was why they put inside the mummy, in the place of the heart
which was taken out, the Sun beetle Kheper with a hieroglyphic
inscription--the prayer of the dead at the Last Judgment: "Heart of
my birth, heart of my mother, my earthly heart, do not rise against
me, do not bear witness against me!"
"I shouldn't wonder if mine did rise against me," thought Khnum,
recalling Yubra, and he smiled: "Extraordinary! Fancy comparing the
sun to a dung beetle!"
He recalled another prayer of the dead: "May my soul walk every day
in the garden beside my pond; may it flutter like a bird among the
branches of my trees; may it rest in the shade of my sycamore; may it
rise up to heaven and come down to earth unhindered."
"And perhaps it is all nonsense," he thought as he used to think in
his youth. "A man dies--like a water bubble bursting--and nothing is
left of him. And, indeed, it may be as well, for what if one grew
bored there also?"
He had once seen an eclipse of the sun: the day had been fine and
bright and suddenly everything grew dim and grey, as though covered
with a layer of ash, and all was dull, numb and dead. It was the
same now. "It's my liver," he thought, "and Yubra, too."
"I must put an end to it," he said aloud. "Go and fetch him!"
"Whom, master?" Inioteph asked, looking at him in surprise.
Nibituia too raised her eyes in alarm.
At that moment Dio and Pentaur came into the garden from the roof of
the summer house: Zenra had told her mistress that Tuta had sent a
boat for her.
As they were passing the shelter by the big pond, Khnum called to
them:
"I am just going to judge Yubra, my slave. You be judges, too."
He made Pentaur sit down beside him and Dio sat on the mat by
Nibituia.
Yubra, with his arms tied behind his back, was brought in and made to
kneel before Khnum. He was a little old man with a dark wrinkled
face that looked like a stone or a lump of earth.
"Well, Yubra, how much longer are you going to sit in the pit?" Khnum
asked.
"As long as it is your pleasure," Yubra answered, with downcast eyes
and, Khnum fancied, with the same defiance with which he sang Aton's
hymn in the pit.
"Look here, old man; I have spared you and not handed you over to the
magistrates, but do you know what the lawful penalty is for what you
have done? To be buried alive or thrown into the water with a stone
round your neck."
"Well, let them put me to death for truth's sake."
"For what truth? Say plainly what possessed you to raise your hand
against the holy Ushebti?"
"I have told you already."
"Surely you can take the trouble to say it again."
"I did it for my soul's sake. To save my soul. Here I am a slave,
but there I shall be free."
He paused and then said in a changed voice: "There the wicked cease
from troubling and the weary are at rest; the prisoners are at peace
and do not hear the gaoler's voice; there the great and the small are
equal and the slave is free from his master."
He paused again and asked:
"Do you know the parable of the rich and the poor?"
"What parable?"
"Shall I tell it you?"
"Do."
"There were two men in the world, a rich one and a poor one. The
rich lived in luxury and the poor was wretched. They both died and
the rich received an honourable burial and the poor was thrown away
like a dead dog. And they both appeared before the judgment seat of
Osiris. The works of the rich man were weighed and, behold, his evil
deeds outweighed his good deeds. And they put him under a door so
that the door hinge entered his eye and turned in it each time that
the door opened or shut. The poor man's deeds were weighed, too,
and, behold, his good deeds outweighed his evil deeds. And he was
clothed in a robe of white linen, called in to the feast and placed
at the right hand of the god."
"Quite, quite, quite. And to whom does the parable refer? To you
and me?"
"No, to everyone. I have seen all the oppressions that are done
under the sun and, behold, the tears of such as were oppressed and
they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was
power; but they had no one to defend them. The poor are pushed off
the roads, the sufferers are forced into hiding, the orphan is torn
away from its mother's breast and the beggar is made to pay a pledge.
Moans are heard from the city and the souls of the victims cry unto
the Lord...."
He raised his eyes to heaven and his face seemed to light up.
"Blessed is He who cometh in the name of the Lord! He shall come
down like rain on the freshly cut meadow, like dew upon the withered
fields. He shall save the souls of the humble and the oppressors he
shall lay low. All the peoples shall worship him. Behold He comes
quickly!"
Khnum felt dreary; everything was as grey and dull as when the sun
was eclipsed. And it was all Yubra's doing. He had called him to be
judged and now it was as though Yubra were judging him, his master.
"Who comes? Who comes?" he cried with sudden anger.
Yubra did not answer at once. He looked at Khnum from under his
brows as though again with mocking defiance.
"Second Osiris," he said quietly at last.
"What are you talking about, you fool? There is only one Osiris,
there will be no second."
"Yes, there will."
"He must have heard from the Jews about their Messiah," Inioteph
remarked, with a jeer.
Yubra glanced at him in silence and then said, lower still: "There
has been no Son yet; the Son is to come."
"What? There has been no Son? Ah, you infidel! So it's against Him
you have rebelled?" Khnum shouted furiously.
"The liver rushes to his head," his doctor used to say about these
sudden fits of fury.
Turning purple he got up from his chair heavily, walked up f o Yubra
and, seizing him by the shoulder, shook him so that the old man
staggered.
"I see through you, you rebel! Take care, I will have no nonsense."
"A slave's ear is on his back; a good whipping would soon make him
drop this folly," Inioteph incited him.
Yubra said nothing.
"Oh, the snake, he holds his tongue and lies low," Khnum went on, and
bending still lower over him looked into his face, "What have I done
to you? What have I done to you? Why do you hate me?"
Had Yubra answered simply "because you robbed me of Maïta," Khnum's
anger might have died down at once: his heart would have risen
against him and denounced him as at the Last Judgment. But Yubra
answered slyly:
"I bear you no evil."
And he added so low that only Khnum heard him: "God shall judge
between us."
"What do you mean? What are you thinking of?" Khnum began and broke
off, unable to look his slave in the face; he understood it was not
easy to take dead flies out of the fragrant ointment.
"Ah, you stinking dog!" he shouted, beside himself with fury: the
liver rushed to his head. "You bear me no evil, but who is it
informed against me, who told the king's spies that two images of
Amon in my tomb have not been effaced? Tell me, who?"
"I have not told, but even if I had I would not have been to blame:
it is the king's command that images of Amon should be destroyed,"
Yubra answered, it seemed to Khnum, with insolent defiance.
"So you try to threaten me, you dog! Wait a bit, I'll give it you!"
He raised his stick. It was a thick, heavy stick of acacia wood,
hard as iron: had he brought it down on Yubra's head he would have
killed him. But God saved them both. Their eyes met and it was as
though Maïta had looked at Khnum.
He slowly lowered the stick without touching Yubra's head, staggered
and fell into his chair, burying his face in his hands. He was
motionless for a few minutes, then he uncovered his face and said,
without looking at Yubra:
"Away with you! Begone! You are not a slave to me any more. Untie
his hands and let him go, no one is to interfere with him. I have
pardoned him."
"Perhaps I was wrong," said Dio to Pentaur, as she walked with him
across the garden to Tuta's boat in the canal. "Perhaps you
Egyptians can rebel after all...."
"You judge by Yubra?" Pentaur asked.
"Yes. Have you many such?"
"Yes, we have."
"Well, then, there is sure to be rebellion. How strange it is, Taur:
you and I have just been disputing whether the Son had come already
or is to come, and here is the same thing over again..."
"It is the same thing everywhere."
"And the rebellion is about this, too?" Dio asked.
"Yes, it is. You are glad?"
Dio did not answer, she seemed lost in thought. Pentaur paused, too,
and then said:
"Perhaps the world will perish through this...."
"Let it!" she answered, and it seemed to him that the fire of
rebellion was already burning in her eyes. "Let the world perish if
only He will come!"
IV
The boat was brought to the gates of Khnum's garden by the Big Canal
which united the southern part of the city with the
north--Apet-Oisit, where the throne of the world, the Temple of Amon,
stood.
Hearing that Tuta had put off his meeting with her for a few hours,
Dio decided to pass these hours--perhaps the last--with Pentaur: she
had not made up her mind yet whether she was going away the next day.
She wanted, too, to say good-bye to Amon's Temple; she had grown to
love this house of God, the largest and most beautiful in the world,
because it was through it she had entered Egypt.
Surrounded by walls, three enormous sanctuaries of Amon, Khonsu, and
Mut--the Father, the Son, and the Mother--towered above the endless
multitude of low, grey, flat houses made of river mud, like swallows'
nests. Within the walls there were copses, gardens, ponds,
cattle-yards, cellars, granaries, breweries, perfumeries and other
buildings, a town within the town, the City of God in the city of men.
During King Akhnaton's reign the place fell into decay: the holy
enclosures had been destroyed, the treasuries robbed, the sanctuaries
closed, the priests driven away and the gods desecrated.
Having reached by boat the holy Road of the Rams, Dio and her nurse
Zenra, stepped into a litter and Pentaur walked by their side.
Turning to the right into a by-road to the sanctuary of Mut, they
entered it through the northern gates.
The sacred lake of the god Khonsu, Osiris the Moon, shone,
crescent-shaped, with a silvery brilliance. The rosy granite of the
obelisks, the black basalt of the colossi, the yellow sandstone of
the pylons, the green tops of the palms, bathed in the molten gold of
the afternoon sun, were mirrored in the water with such clearness
that one could see every feather in the rainbow-coloured Falcons of
the sun at the top of the pylons and every hieroglyphic in the
multi-coloured inscriptions on the yellow sandstone; it was as though
there were another world down there, the reverse of this one, exactly
like it and yet quite different.
By the shores of the lake some sandpits had been dug, probably in
order to defile the holy waters, and bricklayers were getting clay
from them. The lake in those places was shallow, its slimy bottom
could be seen and the stagnant water in the pools had a dull rainbow
glitter on the surface. A huge statue of the god Amon, of dark-red
sandstone, had been thrown near by, face downwards, and an ox,
standing knee-deep in water, was scratching its mud-coated side
against the sharp end of one of the two feathers in the god's tiara;
the smell of the pig-sty came from the animal.
Next to the pits was a sanctuary of immemorial antiquity consecrated
to two goddess-mothers, Hekit the Frog, and Tuart the Hippopotamus.
At the beginning of the world the divine Frog, the midwife, crawled
out of the primaeval slime and at once began to help all women
labouring of child; she helped the birth of Khonsu-Osiris, the son of
God; she helped every dead man to rise again and be born into eternal
life. Tuart, the Hippopotamus, was as efficient a help in labour.
The copper doors of the sanctuary were locked and sealed, but in the
entry the two goddesses were hidden from the king's spies in two
vaulted niches in the wall, behind torn curtains. The huge frog made
of green jade with kind and intelligent round eyes of yellow glass,
was sitting on its cubical throne. The pig-faced Hippopotamus, in a
woman's wig, was ferociously showing its teeth; made of grey
obsidian, with hanging breasts and monstrous belly, it was standing
on its hind legs, holding in its forepaws the sign of eternal
life--the looped cross Ankh.
A little girl of twelve, an Ethiopian, in the last stage of
pregnancy, had placed a wreath of lotus flowers round the neck of the
goddess and, kneeling before her, was ardently praying with childish
tears for easy travail.
Zenra wanted to sacrifice to the mother-goddesses two turtle doves
for Dio, that the virgin might at last become a mother.
They went into the portico. An old priestess, who looked rather like
her goddess, the Frog, was bathing in a copper basin of warm water
two sacred ichneumons, water animals something between a cat and a
rat, beloved by the god of the floods, Khnum-Ra. After the bath the
creatures ran away, playing; the male chased the female.
"Pew-pew-pew!" the priestess called them quietly and began feeding
them out of her hands with bread soaked in milk, muttering a prayer
about a propitious flood.
Then she went down to the lake and called:
"Sob! Sob! Sob!"
There was a splash at the other end of the lake and, thrusting out
its shining, slimy black head, a huge crocodile, some nine feet long,
sacred to Sobek, the god of the Midnight Sun, rapidly swam across in
answer to the call. Brass rings with bells glittered on its front
paws, there were rings in its ears and a piece of red glass was stuck
into the thick skin of the head in the place of the ruby that had
been stripped from it. The crocodile was so tame that it allowed its
attendant to clean its teeth with acacia charcoal.
It crawled out of the water and stretched itself at the feet of the
priestess. Squatting before it she fed it with the meat and the
honey cakes brought by Zenra, fearlessly thrusting her left hand into
the open jaws of the beast; her right hand had been bitten off by the
crocodile while she was still a child.
"I wish it had eaten me altogether," the old lady used to say, "I
then wouldn't have to see what is going on now."
She did not go on to say "under the apostate king."
To be devoured by a sacred crocodile was regarded as a most happy
death: there was no need to embalm or bury the body--one went
straight from the holy belly into paradise.
With motherly tenderness the old priestess stroked the monster on its
scaly back, calling it 'Sobby,' 'little one,' 'ducky.' And it was
strange to see the beast's pig-like eyes gleam with responsive
affection.
"Well, how did you like our crocodile mother?" Pentaur asked Dio with
a smile when they came out of the portico, leaving Zenra behind and
telling the litter to go on.
"I liked her very much," Dio answered, smiling also.
"Does it make you laugh?"
"No. Your Mut and our Ma is the same Heavenly Mother who blesses all
the creatures of the earth."
"How then could you...." he began and broke off. But she understood
'how then could you have killed the god Beast?'
"Our secret wisdom teaches," he said hurriedly, in order to hide her
confusion and his own, "that animals are nearer to God than men,
plants are nearer to God than animals and the dust of the
ground--Mother Earth--is nearer to God than plants; a mass of flaming
dust, the sun, is the heart of the world--God."
"Doesn't he know this?" Dio asked.
"No," Pentaur answered, guessing that she was speaking of King
Akhnaton, "if he knew he would not desecrate the Mother."
"Perhaps there is something that I, a childless virgin, don't know
either," Dio thought.
From the sanctuary of Mut they walked towards the Temple of Amon,
along the sacred road of the Rams, huge creatures of black granite
placed in a row on either side of the pathway. On the top of the
head between the horns that curled downwards, each ram had the sun
disc of Amon Ra, and between the doubled up front legs a tiny mummy
of King Amenhotep, Akhnaton's father: the god-beast was embracing the
dead king, carrying him, as it were, into eternal life.
It seemed to Dio they all looked at her as though they would say
"Decide!"
They came up to the pylon--the huge gates shaped like a pyramid cut
off at the top, with a rainbow-coloured sun disc with rays and high
posts for flags; it stood at some distance from the Temple. On
either side of it were two granite giants, exactly alike,
representing King Tutmose the Third, Akhnaton's
great-great-grandfather, the first world-conqueror. Wearing gods'
tiaras, they were sitting on their thrones with their arms folded in
everlasting rest, with an everlasting smile on the flat lips. Above
them the wretched tatters of old flags fluttered on the broken posts.
The birds nesting in the tiaras chirruped loudly, as though laughing,
and the black faces of the giants were streaked with white.
Pentaur read aloud the hieroglyphic inscription on the gates--the
words of the god to the king:
"Rejoice, my son, who hast honoured me. I give thee the earth in
length and breadth. With a joyful heart pass through it as a
conqueror."
And the king's answer to the god:
"I have made Egypt the head of all nations, for together with me it
has honoured thee, god Amon on high."
From the way Pentaur read the inscription Dio understood that he was
comparing the great ancestor with the insignificant descendant.
Passing through the gate, and leaving the road ta the Khonsu
sanctuary on their left, they came out into the square. Men of all
classes--beggars, slaves and grand gentlemen--were standing there in
separate groups without speaking, as though waiting for something,
and when the town guards on duty went past looked at them sullenly
from a distance. All was quiet, but Dio suddenly remembered:
"Rebellion!"
Someone came up to Pentaur stealthily from behind. The man's woollen
striped Canaan cloak, worn over the Egyptian white robe, his reddish
goat's beard, the curly hair hanging down his cheeks, the prominent
ears, hooked nose, thick lips and the hot glitter in his eyes, made
Dio recognize him at once for a Jew.
Pentaur whispered something in his ear; the man nodded silently,
glanced at Dio and disappeared in the crowd.
"Who is this?" Dio asked.
"Issachar, son of Hamuel, a Jewish priest of Amon."
"But how can an unclean Jew be a priest?"
"He is a Jew on his father's side, but an Egyptian on his mother's.
Their prophet, Moses, was also a priest in Heliopolis."
"But why is he not shaven?"
Dio knew that all Egyptian priests shaved their heads.
"He is hiding from the king's spies," Pentaur answered.
"What did you speak to him about?"
"About your meeting Ptamose."
They came to the western gates of Amon's temple; the leaf gold that
covered them glowed like fire in the light of the setting sun. Three
words had been inscribed on them in hieroglyphics of dark bronze:
"Amon, great spirit." The word Amon was effaced, but that made the
other two words glorify the Unutterable the more.
Guards were standing by the closed and sealed gates. People going
past knelt down and kissed the dust of the holy flagstones, praying
in a whisper; they would be thrown into prison for calling on the
name of Amon aloud.
Dio showed the chief of the guards the ring with Tutankhaton's seal
and he let her and Pentaur through the side door of the gates.
They entered the inner court that had rows of such gigantic columns,
shaped like sheaves of papyrus, that it was hard to believe they were
the work of human hands: it seemed as though the Great Spirit had
piled up these everlasting stones as a mute praise to himself, the
Unutterable.
From the yard they came into a covered antechamber, where the
daylight came sparsely from narrow windows right under the ceiling.
There was sunshine in the yard, but here it was half dark already and
the thick forest of columns, saturated with the fragrance of incense
like a real forest smelling of resin, seemed all the more huge in the
twilight. And it was quiet as in a forest; only up at the top one
could hear a faint tapping that sounded like woodpeckers.
"Knock-Knock-Knock!"--and there was stillness, and then again:
"Knock-knock-knock!"
Dio raised her eyes and saw masons hung up in hammocks on long
strings, like spiders on cobwebs, hammering on the walls and the
pillars up above.
"What are they doing?" she asked.
"Effacing Amon's name," Pentaur answered with a smile. Dio smiled,
too; the knocking seemed to her absurd: how could one efface the name
of the Unutterable?
As they went further into the temple the walls narrowed down, the
ceilings grew lower, darker and more menacing, and at last an almost
complete darkness enveloped them; only somewhere in the far distance
a lamp was burning dimly. That was the Holy of Holies--Sehem, the
tabernacle, cut out in a block of red granite, where in the old days
a golden statuette of god Amon, a foot high, had been kept behind
linen draperies--the sails of the holy boat. Now Sehem was empty.
A narrow passage led from it to another tabernacle where in the past
Amon's great Ram, the sacred Animal--the living heart of the
temple--lay on a couch of purple in clouds of the ever-burning
incense. But now this tabernacle too was empty; people said that a
dead dog's bones had been thrown into it to defile the holy place.
"He does not know God's darkness either?" Dio asked.
"No," Pentaur answered, understanding again that '_he_' meant the
king. "He knows that God is light, but he does not know that
darkness and light go together...."
He knelt down and Dio knelt beside him; he began to pray and she
repeated after him:
"Glory to thee, who dwellest in darkness,
Amon, the Hidden,
Lord of the silent,
Help of the humble,
Saviour of those in hell!
When they cry aloud to thee,
Thou comest to them from afar,
Thou sayest to them 'I am here!'"
They bowed down to the ground and Dio felt that the hair on her head
moved with awe: 'He is here!'
They left the temple through the eastern gates where the litter was
waiting for them. They got into it and were carried to the small
temple Gem-Aton--Sun's Radiance--which had only just been built by
King Akhnaton.
It had taken a thousand years to build Amon's temple of huge blocks
of rock, and this one had been built quickly of small stones; Amon's
temple was dark and mysterious, and this one was all open and sunny.
There were no divine images in it except Aton's disc, with rays like
hands descending from it.
They entered one of the porticos, on the wall of which there was a
bas-relief of King Akhnaton making a sacrifice to the Sun god.
Dio looked at it dumb foundered. Who was it? What was it? A human
being? No, it was some unearthly creature in human form. Neither a
man nor a woman, neither an old man nor a child; a eunuch, a decrepit
still-born baby. The arms and legs were so thin that they seemed to
be nothing but bone; narrow childish shoulders and wide, well-covered
hips; a big belly; a huge head shaped like a vegetable-marrow, bent
down under its own weight on a long thin neck, flexible like the stem
of a flower; a receding forehead, a drooping chin, a fixed stare and
the smile of a madman.
Dio gazed at this face, trying in vain to recall something. All of a
sudden she remembered.
In the Charuk Palace near Thebes, where Akhnaton was born and spent
his childhood, she had seen his sculptured head: a boy looking like a
girl; an oval, egg-shaped face, childishly, girlishly charming, quiet
and gentle as that of the god whose name is Quiet-Heart.
A man dreams sometimes a dream of paradise, as though his soul
returned to its heavenly home; and long after waking he refuses to
believe that it had only been a dream and is full of sadness and
yearning. Such was the sadness in that face. The drooping eyelids
were heavy as though with sleep, the long eye-lashes seemed wet with
tears and the lips wore a smile--a trace of paradise--heavenly joy
through earthly sadness, like sunshine through a cloud.
"Can it be the same face?" Dio wondered. As in delirium the
beautiful face was distorted, grown decrepit and monstrous, and, most
awful of all, one could still see that young face in this changed one.
"Well, don't you know him?" Pentaur whispered. There was horror in
his voice and mockery, too--triumph over an enemy. "No, he is not
easy to recognize. But it is he, Joy of the Sun, Akhnaton!"
"How did they dare insult him like this!" Dio cried out.
"No one would have dared if he had not asked for it himself. It is
he who teaches painters not to lie, not to flatter. 'Living in
Truth'--Ankh-em-Maat--so he calls himself, and this is what truth is;
he did not want to be a man, so this is what he has become!"
"No, that's not it, that's not it!" a voice said behind Dio.
She turned round and recognized Issachar, son of Hamuel. "No, that's
not it. The deception is worse and more subtle!" he said looking at
the face of the bas-relief.
"What deception?" Dio asked.
"Why, this: listen to the prophecy. 'As many were astonied at Him:
His visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than
the sons of men. And we hid our faces from Him. But He has borne
our griefs and carried our sorrows. The chastisement of our peace
was upon Him: and with His stripes we are healed.' Do you know of
whom this has been said? ... And who is this man? Accursed,
accursed, accursed is the deceiver who said 'I am the Son'!"
Slowly, as though with an effort, he averted his eyes from the
bas-relief and looking at Dio bent down to whisper in her ear:
"The high priest of Amon expects you to-day at the third hour after
sunset." And covering his head with his cloak he walked out of the
temple.
For a few minutes Dio stood as though spellbound. She was so lost in
thought that she did not hear Pentaur call her twice and when he
gently touched her hand, she started.
"What is it? What are you thinking of?" he asked.
"I hardly know myself..." she answered, with a shy, as it were,
guilty smile, and then added, after a pause:
"Perhaps we don't any of us know the most important thing about
him...."
She paused again and then cried with such agony that Pentaur thought
she was like one dying of thirst and asking for water:
"Oh, if I only knew, if I only knew who he is!"
V
Tutankhaton had spread a rumour that he was the son of King Amenhotep
IV, Akhnaton's father. Tuta's mother, Meritra, was one of the king's
concubines for a day--he had numbers of such. Gossips said, however,
that Tuta's father was not the king, but the king's namesake,
Amenhotep, the chief of the Surveying Office. Thanks to his mother,
Tuta had obtained, as a child, the rank of the prince's play-fellow,
and he rapidly made a career: royal chamberlain, chief fan-bearer on
the right hand of the divine and gracious king, treasurer of the
king's household, bread-giver of the Two Kingdoms, defender of Aton's
faith and, finally, the king's son-in-law, husband of Ankhsenbatona,
Akhnaton's twelve-year-old daughter.
No one could look up to heaven as devoutly as he did, whispering in a
honeyed voice:
"Oh, how salutary is your teaching, kind Uaenra, the only Son of the
Sun!"
Or compose such pious inscriptions for tombs: "Akhnaton, the Son of
the Sun, rose early in the morning to lighten me with his light for I
was zealous in carrying out his words," said one of those
inscriptions. "I have followed thee, O Lord Aton--Akhnaton!" said
another.
This identification of the king with God seemed absurd and
blasphemous, since everyone knew that Aton was the Father and the
king the son. But when it was known that these words expressed the
king's secret doctrine about the perfect unity of the Father and the
Son, people marvelled at Tuta's cunning.
The courtiers vied with one another in trying to revile the old god
Amon. But Tuta surpassed them all: he ordered for himself a pair of
plaited sandals made of golden straps, with Amon's face on the soles
so as to tread on the unholy one with every step he took. And
everyone marvelled again--they understood that he would go far in
those sandals.
Tuta had been sent to Thebes with the title of Viceroy to carry out
the decrees about taking away burial grounds from the priests and
desecrating the god Khonsu, Amon's Son.
When Dio came to the Viceroy's white house the old servant, who knew
her, met her with low bows and wanted to tell His Highness at once
about her. But hearing that Tuta was having lunch with the chief of
the Lybian mercenaries, Menheperra, a man whom she disliked, she said
she would wait and going into an inner room, lay down on a low
day-couch. Watching the slanting pink oblongs cast by the setting
sun on the white ceiling through the long narrow slits of windows
high up on the wall she sank into deep thought, as in the antechamber
of Gem-Aton's temple: was she to go or not to go?
She grew tired of thinking and dozed. Two big flies were buzzing by
her very ear as though disputing "to go or not to go?"
She woke up suddenly and grasped that it was not the buzzing of flies
but a whisper, somewhere quite close to her ear. She looked round,
but there was no one there. The whisper came from the next room,
which was divided off by a latticed partition covered with a carpet;
Egyptian rooms were sometimes arranged in this way for the sake of
coolness. The speakers were probably sitting on the matting-covered
floor just by the side of Dio's couch.
"This heartburn will be the death of me," whispered one of the
voices, dignified and elderly.
"It's the goose's liver, father," answered the other voice,
high-pitched and respectful. "Would you like some telek? There is
nothing like it for indigestion; with lemon and cardamon it is most
refreshing."
There was a sound of liquid being poured out
"Have a drink too, Sparrow?"
"Your health, father!"
"Why do you call me 'father'?"
"Out of respect: you're my benefactor and that's as good as a father."
"It is a good thing you respect old people. And why do they call you
'Sparrow'?"
"Because I pick up a grain out of every bit of business like a
sparrow out of a manure heap."
"Come now, don't be so modest about it: you must have grabbed 'the
man with the pig' from the cemetery thieves the other day...."
Dio remembered that a man holding a pig by the tail was the
hieroglyphic of lapis-lazuli, the Egyptian officials' favourite
bribe--Hez-Bet: hez--to hold and bet--a pig, and that the tomb of the
ancient King Saakerra had been robbed recently.