good will come of him," the old man's voice went on. "You may pound
a foolish man in the mortar, but his foolishness will not leave him,
and it is better to meet a savage bear in a field than a foolish man
in the house!"
"But in what way is he foolish, father?"
"Why, because he never knows which way the wind is blowing. There is
trouble brewing up in the town and the Lybian soldiers are mutinous
because they haven't had their pay for the last six months. And he,
the fool, is afraid of a rising, so he was delighted when the
pay-money was sent the other day from the king's treasury and ordered
it to be distributed straight away. But I was too sharp for him--I
said nothing to him but kept back the money and at once reported the
whole thing to His Highness the Viceroy. And what do you think? He
thanked me, said 'well done,' patted me on the cheek and promised to
get me a job in his service. What do you think of that now?"
"Splendid, father! There is no one like you for giving one a hint!
... But if there really is a rising, it will be bad, won't it?"
"Bad for some and good for others. A fool burns in the fire and a
clever man warms his hands at it...."
The whisper became so low that Dio could not hear. Then it grew
louder again:
"Impossible, impossible, father! Who could presume to do such a
thing?"
"Do you know Issachar, son of Hamuel?"
"But he is a coward, it isn't for a dirty Jew like him to do it!"
"He is a coward, but he can work himself up to a frenzy. They are
all like that, the Jews: they are cowards, but if it is anything to
do with their God they are frantic. And it is not only he--he is
merely the knife, and the hand that holds the knife is strong. Soon
there will be things happening to make one dizzy, my lad."
"It is dreadful to think of, father."
"Don't be uneasy, Sparrow--you may be a falcon yet."
Dio listened with her heart beating so violently that she was afraid
they would hear it behind the partition. She understood that a vile
and evil plot was being hatched against the king--and she seemed to
have a share in it; perhaps that was why she suffered so, unable to
decide whether to go or to stay.
Suddenly there was a sound of footsteps in the next room--not in the
one where they were whispering. Both halves of the door were flung
open and a huge hunting-cat, half panther, glided in noiselessly like
a shadow; behind it, as its guard of honour, came the runners, the
fan bearers, the bodyguards, and, last of all, walking barefoot as
noiselessly as the cat--shoes were taken off indoors--a slender and
graceful young man of medium height, with an ordinary pleasant face.
He was wearing a plain white robe, a smooth black wig, a broad
necklace that came half way down to his waist, and he held in his
hand a long gilded wooden staff adorned with a golden figure of the
goddess Maat--Truth. This was the King's son-in-law, the Viceroy of
Thebes, the real or supposed son of King Amenhotep--Tutankhaton.
He walked up to a carved ivory and ebony chair that stood on a
platform in between four pillars in the middle of the room, and sat
down. Approaching him Dio knelt before him. He kissed her on the
forehead and said:
"Rejoice, my daughter! The grace of the god Aton be with you! Leave
us," he added, addressing his suite.
When all had gone out of the room he moved to the day couch and, half
reclining on it, motioned to Dio to sit down beside him; but he did
it unobtrusively so that there was no need for her to notice the
gesture unless she chose to do so. She did not notice it and sat
down opposite him on a folding chair with a seat of plaited leather
straps.
The cat walked up to her and rubbed itself against her legs,
thrusting its head between her knees and mewing loudly, unlike a cat.
Dio disliked cats and especially this one: she fancied it was a huge,
black, slimy reptile. The cat never left Tuta's side and followed
him about like a shadow.
"Why are you sitting here alone? Why didn't you send in your name?"
he asked in a low caressing voice that sounded like a cat purring.
"You had a visitor."
"It was only your admirer Menheperra. Was that why you did not come
in?"
"Yes, it was."
"Ah, you wild creature! ... Come here, Ruru," he called to the cat,
"You have had enough of it?" he asked Dio.
"No, I don't mind," Dio said politely, but she would gladly have
thrust the clinging creature away.
"It is marvellous," he said, smiling and looking at her in the
peculiar masculine way she hated: 'just like spiders crawling about
one's naked body,' she used to say about these looks. "One cannot
get used to you, Dio! Each time I see you I cannot help marvelling
at your beauty.... There, forgive me, I know you don't like it!"
The cat lifted its face and looked straight into Dio's eyes with its
fiery pupils. She pushed it slightly away with her foot, afraid that
the cat might jump on to her lap.
"Come now, you are being a nuisance!" Tuta laughed, seized the cat
by its collar and, dragging it on to the couch, made it lie down,
spanked it and said "Sleep!"
"Well, how do matters stand? Are you coming?" he began in a
different and business-like voice. "Stop, wait, don't answer at
once. I am not hurrying you, but just think: what are you doing
here, what are you waiting for? Learning our dances? What for?
Dance in your own way--they will like it all the better. Foreign
things are more fashionable with us nowadays than our own...."
"I have decided..."
"Wait a minute, let me finish. I shall go away and you will remain
alone here and in these times you don't know from day to day what
might happen...."
"But I am coming!"
"Are you? Really? You won't play me false again?"
"No, now I want to go as soon as possible."
"Why so suddenly?"
She made no answer and asked:
"Are you going to-morrow for certain?"
"Yes. Why?"
"They say there may be trouble in the city."
"Oh, it's nothing. All will be over to-morrow. Of course it is a
big town and there are many fools about; they may want to die for
their puppet and then there is bound to be bloodshed, there is
nothing for it...."
Dio understood that puppet meant the image of the god Khonsu.
"And does the king know it?" she asked.
"Know what?"
"That there may be bloodshed."
"No, he does not know. Why should he know? That he might revoke the
decree? If he revoked this one, others would still be in force. And
what is one to do? There is no teaching the fools without bloodshed!"
He sat up suddenly, put his feet on the floor, moved up to her, took
her by the hand and smiled in the ambiguous way, with a sort of wink,
which, again, there was no need for her to notice unless she chose to.
"You know, Dio, I have long wanted to ask you, why do you dislike me?
I have always been a friend to you. Tammuzadad saved you, but I,
too, have done something..."
Dio started and drew her hand away. Tuta pretended not to notice it
and continued to smile.
"Why do you think?...." she began, and broke off, blushing and
looking down. As always when she was alone with him she felt stiff,
awkward--as though she had done some wrong and been caught unawares.
"What do you want me for?" she asked suddenly, almost rudely.
"There, you treat me as you do Ruru: I am being nice to you and you
push me away," he laughed good-humouredly. "What do I want you for?
Feminine charm is a great power..."
"You want to get power through me?"
"Not through you, but with you!" he said quietly with deep emotion,
looking straight into her eyes.
"And I want you because of him," he went on, after a pause. "He is
very difficult to get on with; you will help me: you love him and so
do I--we shall love him together...."
She understood that he was speaking of King Akhnaton and her heart
began to beat as violently as when she was listening to the whisper
behind the partition. She felt that she ought to say something, but
she was spell-bound as in a nightmare: she wanted to push away the
clinging reptile and could not.
"You haven't been to see Ptamose yet, have you?" he asked suddenly,
as though they had often spoken about it, while, as a matter of fact,
they had never exchanged a word on the subject. Once more he caught
her unawares like a naughty little girl.
"What Ptamose?" she pretended not to understand, but did it so badly
that she was ashamed of herself.
"Come, come!" he said, with the same winking smile. "I won't betray
you, no one shall know of it. And even if they did know, what of it?
I would send you to him myself. He is a wise old man, a sage. He
will tell you everything; you will know what the war is about. Only
babblers and court flatterers imagine that we have won already. No,
it is not so easy to conquer the old faith. Our forefathers were not
any stupider than we are. Amon--Aton: is the dispute about a letter
only? No, about the spirit. And indeed Amon is the Great Spirit!"
When he had moved from the armchair to the couch he had taken with
him the staff with the gold sandals strapped to it. All of a sudden
Dio bent down, took up one of them, turned it sole upwards and
pointed with her finger to the image of Amon.
"And what have you here, prince? 'Amon the Great Spirit'?" she
asked, smiling with almost undisguised contempt, as though she were
really talking to a 'reptile.'
"There, you have caught me!" he laughed, good-naturedly, again. "Ah,
Dio, priestess of the Great Mother, you are still living on your
Mountain and refuse to come down to the earth to us poor men. And
yet one day you will come down, will get your feet muddy and bruise
them against the stones and be glad even of such sandals as these.
One must have mercy, my friend. Be sober and fast by yourself, but
eat with the glutton and drink with the drunkard. And as for the
Great Spirit, I hope he will forgive me: my sandals won't hurt him!"
He went on speaking at great length of the secret wisdom of the
chosen and the folly of the mob, of the greatness of King Akhnaton
and of his loneliness--"he, too, does not come down to earth from the
Mountain"--of their future triple alliance and of how he, Tuta, will
help them both "to come down."
Dio listened and the same spell came over her--she could not awake or
cry out.
"No, he is not stupid," she thought. "Or he is both stupid and
clever, crude and subtle. Very strong--not he, though, but the one
who is behind him. 'He is only a knife in the hand and the hand is
strong.' He talks to me as to a child, and I expect he talks to the
king in the same way; and perhaps he is right: we are children and he
is grown up; we are 'not quite human' and he--quite. He is all for
the world and all the world is for him. A man like that is certain
to reign. You will be king over the mice, you cat! Akhnaton will
disappear, Tutankhaton will remain. He will go through the ages in
his Amon's sandals, trampling on the Great Spirit. And the kingdom
of this world will be Tuta's kingdom!"
There was a knock at the door.
"Come in," Tuta said.
The centurion of the palace guards came in and, kneeling down, handed
Tuta a letter. He opened it and, after reading it, said:
"A chariot!"
When the centurion went out, he got up, walked across the room in
silence, then sat down in his chair, and resting his head on his
hand, heaved a deep sigh.
"Ah, the fools, the fools! I knew there was bound to be
bloodshed...."
"Rebellion?" Dio asked.
"Yes, there's a rising on the other side of the river. It seems the
Lybian mercenaries have joined the rebels." His face was sad, but
joy was shining through the sadness.
Dio understood: the rising was the beginning and the end was the
throne.
He got up and turning to the couch took up his staff, untied the
sandals from it, put them on and said:
"Well, there is nothing for it, let us go and put down the rising!"
VI
There will be a great rebellion and the earth will be turned upside
down like the potter's wheel." Recalling these words of the ancient
prophet Ipuver, Yubra eagerly awaited the fulfilment of the prophecy.
"What if it begins without me!" he thought, sitting in the pit. And
when Khnum turned him out of the house he took a staff, slung a
wallet behind his back and set off at random, looking as though he
had been a homeless wanderer all his life.
He remembered his old friend Nebra, the boatman, and decided to go
and see him at the Risit Harbour. But at the harbour he was told
that Nebra had finished work and was having supper in a tavern next
door, in the Hittite Square.
Yubra was tired; his legs ached with the stocks that he had been
wearing. He sat down to rest on a heap of stones on the quay.
The sun was setting behind the bare yellow rocks of the Lybian
Mountains, honeycombed with tombs. The low-lying meadows beyond the
river and the City of the Dead, where the embalmers' cauldrons were
perpetually boiling and black clouds of asphalt smoke rose in the
air, were already in shadow; only by the funeral temple of Amenhotep,
at the end of the sacred Road of the Jackals, the golden points of
two obelisks shone with a dull glow like smouldering candles.
The left bank was in shadow, but the right still lay in the evening
sun, which threw a coppery red glow on the dark-skinned, naked
bargemen who carried from the boats down the planks earthenware pots
and sacks of styrax and balm from Gilead, Arabian sandal and myrrh,
fragrant incense from Punt, and cloves--burnt offerings to the gods
and ointments for the dead. The quay was saturated with the fragrant
odours, but through the fragrance came the smell of a carcass thrown
up by the river and lying on the bank. An emaciated dog, with ribs
that stood out under the skin, was devouring it.
Suddenly two white eagles pounced on the carcass with loud flapping
of wings and greedy cries. The dog, frightened, jumped away with a
squeal, and watched them from a distance, its tail between its legs,
its teeth bared in an angry growl, its body shaking with hungry envy.
But a still greater envy glittered in the eyes of a starving beggar
woman, who had come in search of food from the province of the Black
Heifer, where men were devouring each other in their hunger.
She put her wrinkled, black, charred-looking breast to the lips of
the baby perched in a wicker basket behind her. It was biting and
chewing it furiously with its toothless gums but could not suck out a
single drop of milk, and, no longer able to cry, it only moaned.
"Bread, please, sir; I have had no food for three days!" the beggar
woman moaned in a voice as small as her baby's, stretching out her
hand to Yubra.
"I have none, my poor woman, forgive me," he said, and he thought
'soon the hungry will be filled.'
He got up and walked on. The woman followed him at a distance as a
stray dog follows a passer-by with a kind face.
Alongside of them on the smooth road, specially made for carrying
heavy weights from the harbour to the town, some fifteen hundred
convicts and prisoners of war were dragging, by four thick cables,
something like an enormous sledge with a huge granite statue of King
Akhnaton that had just been brought down the river. The
superintendent of works, an old man with a stern and intelligent
face, looked like a dwarf as he stood on the knees of the giant
statue seated on its throne; he clapped his hands, beating the
measure of the song the men were singing and sometimes he shouted at
them and waved his stick, driving all this mass of men as a ploughman
drives a pair of oxen. In front of them a man was watering the road
with a watering can so that the runners should not be set on fire by
the friction.
The cable, taut like a string, cut into men's shoulders even through
the felt pads; perspiration dropped from their faces bent low over
the ground; their muscles were strained; the veins on their foreheads
were ready to burst; their bones seemed to crack with the incredible
effort. And the giant, at rest for ever with a gentle smile on the
flat lips, was only slightly moved from time to time. A doleful
song, accompanied by laboured breathing, broke out like a moan from a
thousand breasts:
Heigh-ho, pull and drag, pull and drag!
Heigh-ho, step along, step along!
When we've pulled an inch or two
We'll have earned a drink of beer,
We'll have earned a loaf of bread.
On and on with steady tread!
Make the heavy burden fly.
Now, brothers, here we go!
Have another try--
Oho!
"These, too, will not have long to suffer: the slaves shall be set
free," Yubra thought.
From the road he turned into Teshub Street. This part of Thebes, by
the Apet Risit harbour, was populated by the worshippers of the god
Teshub--boatmen, carpenters, rope-makers and other working people, as
well as by tradesmen and inn-keepers.
The dark grey huts, looking like wasps' nests, made of the river mud
and reeds, were so flimsy that they came to pieces after a good rain.
But it only rained once in two or three years and, besides, it cost
next to nothing to build such a hut afresh. Not only the poor, but
people of moderate means, lived in them, in accordance with the
Egyptian wisdom: our temporal home is a hut, our eternal home is the
tomb.
The walls giving on to the street had no windows, except a little one
with a movable shutter in the front door for the porter; the name of
the owner was written over it in coloured hieroglyphics. All the
other windows were at the back. On the flat roofs could be seen the
conical clay granaries and the wooden frames over the skylights,
facing north, "wind-catchers" for catching the north wind--"the
sweetest breath of the north."
The inn of Itacama the Hittite, where Nebra was having his supper,
stood at the very end of Teshub street, not far from the Hittite
Square.
Instead of a signpost there was over the door a clay bas-relief
representing a Canaan labourer sucking beer through a reed from a
jug, and an Egyptian woman, probably a harlot or a tavern keeper,
sitting opposite him; the hieroglyphic inscription said: "He comforts
his heart with the beer Haket, Heart's seduction."
As he was going into the tavern Yubra turned round to the beggar
woman and called to her:
"Wait a minute, my dear; I will bring you some bread!"
But she did not hear: his voice was drowned by the song of two tipsy
scholars. Thinking that he was driving her away she walked off. And
the two scholars--one long and thin, nicknamed the Decanter, and
another short and fat, the Beer-Pot, tumbled into the tavern nearly
knocking Yubra down. Both were bawling with all their might:
"Little geese are fond of water
But to us wine is better.
We are a merry crew
Drunken scholars bold and true.
Sages may grow old with study
Our wisdom is to drink.
Give us beer, pale or ruddy
Then we have no need to think."
Yubra walked into the dark, low-pitched room full of smoke and the
smell of cooking: Itacama was roasting a goose on a spit. All sorts
of men of different races sat on the matting on the floor listening
to two girls playing the kinnar and the flute; some were throwing
dice, playing chess and 'fingers'--guessing the number of fingers
opened and closed very rapidly; others were eating out of earthenware
pots with their fingers--each had a washing bowl by him--and sucking
wine and beer through reeds.
When Nebra saw his friend Yubra, he came forward to embrace him--the
old men were very fond of each other--and ordered a luxurious supper
for him: lentil broth with garlic, fried fish, sheep's cheese, a pot
of beer and a cup of pomegranate wine--_shedu_. As often happens in
times of famine even poor people--as though to give themselves
courage--liked being extravagant with their last farthings.
Before sitting down to supper Yubra thought of the beggar woman; he
broke off part of a loaf and went outside. But she was no longer
there and he returned to Nebra disappointed.
The beggar had walked down the street and turned the corner; she
stopped there smelling newly baked bread. A middle-aged woman with a
wrinkled, sickly and cruel face was squatting on the ground baking
barley cakes: she did it by sticking thinly rolled-out paste on the
outside of an earthenware pot filled with charcoal embers.
"Give me some bread, dear, I have had no food for three days!" the
beggar moaned.
The woman raised her hard eyes to her:
"Go along! There is no end of you beggars tramping about; one can't
feed you all."
But the beggar stood still, looking at the bread greedily. "Give me
some, please, please!" she repeated, with frenzied, almost menacing
entreaty, and when the woman turned away to take some dough from
another pot, she suddenly bent down and stretched out her hand.
"Ah, you plague of Canaan, you scorpion's sting, you snake, thief,
robber, may you have no coffin for your body!" yelled the woman,
striking her on the hand.
The beggar answered back, showing her teeth as the dog had done and
retreating slowly, her eyes still fixed greedily on the bread.
The woman picked up a stone and threw it at her. The stone hit the
beggar on the shoulder. She gave a dreadful dog-like howl and ran.
The baby in the basket began to cry, but stopped at once as though
realising that tears were of no avail now.
Running to Hittite Square, where there was the god Teshub's old
timber chapel that looked like a log hut, she fell exhausted by a
heap of sun-dried manure bricks for fuel. She leaned against them
sideways uncomfortably: the basket was in the way but she had not the
strength to take it off. The baby was so quiet that it did not seem
to breathe; she had not the courage to see whether it was asleep or
dead.
She suddenly remembered her neighbour in the province of the Black
Heifer, a twelve-year-old child-mother who had stolen somebody else's
baby, calmly cut its throat as though it had been a lamb, fed her own
child with it and had some herself. "That's what I ought to have
done," thought the beggar woman.
The pain in her stomach was gnawing her like a wild beast. She
suddenly felt weak all over, melting with weakness as it were. "I
shall soon die," she thought, and remembered: "may you have no coffin
for your body." She smiled: "no coffin--no resurrection.... Well,
so be it! Eternal death--eternal rest..."
She, too, though in a different way than Yubra, felt that the world
had turned upside down.
And in the tavern Yubra was whispering with his friend:
"Has it begun?"
"Yes. The other side of the River people are assembling already and
walking about with the holy tabernacle, singing glory to Amon. And I
expect it won't be long before they start here," Nebra answered, and
added, after a pause: "But what is it to us? The rebellion is about
their god--not ours."
"Never mind," Yubra said. "Whichever way it begins, the end will be
the same: the earth will turn upside down--and glory be to Aton!"
"Don't talk so loud, brother--if they heard you they would give you a
beating."
"No danger of that!" a stupid looking youth said, with a grin,
lisping as though his tongue were too big for his mouth; he was Zia,
the Carpenter, nicknamed the Flea. "It is all one to us--Amon or
Aton. So long as bread is cheaper than fish let the rest go hang!"
"You are a stupid man, Flea!" said the cauldron maker, Min, a sullen
and pompous old man, with colorless eyes that looked very light in
his face black with soot. "Who is Amon's son, Khonsu? Why,
Osiris-Bata--the Spirit of Bread. If the Spirit leaves the earth,
there will be no more bread and we will all perish like midges!"
"And is it true, mates," the Flea lisped, "that our dear golden
Khonsu is to be melted into money to buy bread for the poor?"
"What is heavier than lead and what name has it, other than
foolishness?" said Decanter, the scholar, looking at him with the
self importance of a learned man.
"And are you going to eat that bread?" Min asked, also looking at
Flea with contempt.
"I? It's all one to me! I will do what everybody else does," he
answered, smiling cautiously and shrugging his shoulders.
"Everybody will eat it, everybody!" the consumptive little cobbler
Mar said hurriedly, waving his hands and coughing. "The pig gulps
down a baby and doesn't care--it goes on grunting just the same; and
so the people will eat the god and say 'that's not enough, give us
some more'!"
"Well, we shall indeed be scoundrels if we give away the holy image
of god to be defiled!" cried a giant with the face of a child--Hafra,
the blacksmith, striking his right fist on his left palm.
"There is one thing I can't make out," Min, the cauldron-maker said,
sighing heavily. "We are told that the king is a god. How can one
god rise against another?"
"It's not the king, but the high and mighty gentry, greedy
bloodsuckers!" the cobbler again put in hurriedly, going off into a
fit of coughing. He brought up some blood and went on:
"They ought to be hanged, the lot of them, like salt fish, on one
string. And the chief mischief maker is Tuta, the purring cat--he
ought to be the first to be hanged!"
"Mice burying the cat," said Min, smiling bitterly. "No, my man,
there's no way of doing it. The gentry talk and the people are mute;
he who has the sword has the word."
"A knife may be as good, but the trouble is that the hare has the
knife in its paw but cannot move for awe! That's why the fat-bellied
ride rough-shod over us. And if we weren't a set of fools we might
do great things at a time like this!" said a short, thick-set,
broad-shouldered man of forty, with a terribly disfigured but calm
and intelligent face, who had been playing dice without taking part
in the conversation. He was Kiki the Noseless, the thief who had
lately plundered the tomb of the ancient King Saakerra and obtained
thousands of pounds worth of leaf gold and precious stones off the
king's mummy. He had been seized and brought to trial, but acquitted
for a large bribe.
Kiki was an assumed name and no one knew what his real name was. It
was rumored that in his youth he had committed an awful crime; he was
punished by being buried up to his neck in the ground, but by a
miracle he escaped and ran away; then he became the chief of a robber
band in the marshes of the Delta, was caught, had his nose cut off by
the hangman and was deported to the gold mines in Nubia; he escaped
and became a brigand once more; was seized again and sent to the
copper mines of Sinai, escaped again and, after hiding for some time,
appeared in Thebes just before the mutiny under the name of Noseless
Kiki.
As soon as he spoke everyone was silent and turned to him. But he
went on playing dice, looking as though all that was being said here
were empty babble.
The musicians who had stopped for a moment began strumming the kinnar
and playing the pipe again. The scholars struck up a drunken song.
It had grown dark. They lighted a copper lamp suspended from the
ceiling and filled with evil smelling vegetable oil, and on the floor
earthenware lamps with mutton fat.
"Zen is speaking, Zen is speaking! Listen!" voices were heard
suddenly.
Zen--or Zennofer--a man of thirty with a sad, gentle and sickly face
and dreadful cataract on his blind eyes, was a junior priest 'uab' in
the sanctuary of the god Khonsu-Osiris. He was reputed to be a seer
because he knew by heart the writings of the ancient prophets and
himself had visions and heard voices.
The musicians were told to stop, the drunken scholars were pushed out
into the street and in the stillness that followed the gentle voice
of the prophet sounded as though coming from a distance.
"To whom shall I tell of my sorrow? Whom shall I call to weep?" he
spoke as though crying in his sleep. "They do not hear, they do not
see, they walk in darkness; the foundations of the earth are shaking
and there is no wise man to understand and no foolish man to bewail
it!"
Suddenly he stretched out his arms and cried in a loud voice: "So it
has been and so it shall be, so it has been and so it shall be!
There shall be endless evil. The gods will grow weary of men; the
gods will forsake the earth and go to heaven. The sun will be
darkened, the earth will be waste. The flowers of the fields will
set up a moan, the heart of the beasts will weep for men; but men
will not weep--they will laugh with sorrow. An old man will say 'I
would I were dead,' and the child 'That I had not been born!' There
will be a great mutiny throughout the earth. The towns will say 'let
us drive out the rulers!' The mob will rush into the courts of
judgment; the scrolls of the law will be torn, records of estates
scattered, the boundaries between fields wiped out, the frontier
posts knocked down. Men will say 'nothing is private, all things are
in common; other people's things are mine; I take what I like!' The
poor will say to the rich, 'Thief, give me back what you have stolen
from me.' The small will say to the great 'all are equal!' Those
who have not built the houses will live in them; those who have not
tilled the land will fill the granaries; those who have not woven
will be clothed in fine raiment, and she who looked at her own
reflection in water will now gaze at herself in a mirror. Slaves
will wear gold, pearls and lapis-lazuli, and the mistress will go in
rags, begging for bread. The beggars will be as gods and the earth
will turn upside down as does a potter's wheel!"
Suddenly he stood up and fell on his knees, raising his blind eyes to
the sky as though he already saw the things of which he was speaking.
"So it has been and so it shall be--there shall be a new heaven and a
new earth. There the lion shall lie down with the lamb and the
sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp and the weaned child
put his hand on the cockatrice's den. Blessed is He that cometh in
the name of the Lord! He will come down like rain on a freshly mown
meadow, like dew upon the parched fields. Lo, He cometh!"
He stopped and all were silent. "That's all nonsense," the Noseless
Kiki's voice was suddenly heard in the stillness. "Why do you listen
to a fool's talk?"
"And why do you revile God's prophet, you dog?" said Hafra the
blacksmith, laying his hand on Kiki's shoulder so heavily that Kiki
staggered. Freeing himself with an agile movement, he seized the
knife that hung at his waist; but glancing at the giant's childish
face he evidently changed his mind and said calmly, with a twinkle in
his eye,
"Very well, if he is a prophet, let him tell us when this is to be?"
"For such as you--never; but for the saints--soon!" Zen answered.
"Soon? You are wrong there. No, brother, it will take a good long
time for fools to grow wise."
"But do you know when it shall be?" Hafra asked.
"Yes, I do."
"Tell us then, don't beat about the bush!"
"Do you remember the inscription on King Una's tomb?" asked Kiki, the
same mocking smile in his eyes.
Zen said nothing, as though he had not heard the question, but his
face quivered like the face of a child in a fit of terror.
Yubra, too, was trembling: he felt that the fate of the world were
being decided by this argument between the saint and the criminal.
The blacksmith scowled more and more menacingly.
"You have forgotten? Well, I'll remind you," Kiki went on. "Once
upon a time, very long ago, there lived a king called Una. He was a
clever man, cleverer than anybody in the world, but he was a brigand,
a thief, a scoundrel, no better than we are. He died and was buried
and they put over his tomb the inscription he told them to write: The
bones of the earth are cracking, the sky is shaking, the stars are
falling, the gods are trembling: King Una, the devourer of gods comes
forth from his tomb and goes hunting; he sets traps and catches the
gods; he kills them; stews them, roasts them, and eats them; big ones
for breakfast, middle-sized for dinner, little ones for supper, and
old gods and goddesses he uses to make fragrant incense. He devoured
them all and became the god of gods.'"
"What rubbish is this, you fool? Speak straight, don't wriggle!"
cried Hafra, clenching his fists in a fury.
"Have it straight, then: it won't be soon, but the hour will come
when the poor and wretched will say 'we are no worse than King Una,
the devourer of the gods.' Scoundrels, pickpockets, brigands, dirty
Jews, men with torn nostrils, the flogged, the branded, the cursed
will say 'we are nothing--let us be everything! Then the earth will
turn upside down and he will come..."
"Who is he?" Hafra asked.
"God and devil, the Blacky-whity, two gods in one!"
"Stop or I'll kill you!" the blacksmith shouted, raising his fist.
Kiki jumped back and pulled out his knife. There would have been a
fight but shouts came from the street:
"They are coming! They are coming! They are coming!"
"Rebellion!" the cobbler was the first to guess what had happened and
rushed to the door. All the others followed him.
There was a crush. The Flea was pressed to the wall and nearly
suffocated. Min was knocked down. Hafra stumbled against him and
fell down, too. Kiki jumped over both and, whistling like a brigand,
shouted: "Have you got any knives?"
"Yes," someone in the street shouted back. Everyone was running in
one direction--from the Risit Harbour to the Hittite Square.
It was dark; the moon had not yet risen; the stars twinkled in the
sky and there was the red glow of a fire on the horizon.
VII
People were crowded in the Square. In the vague hubbub of voices one
could distinguish at times the phrases:
"Glory be to Amon on High! Glory be to Khonsu, Amon's Son!"
Suddenly there came the sound of melodious singing, far off at first
and then nearer and nearer. The Square was lit up with the red glow
of the torches and a solemn procession appeared.
The Lybian mercenaries walked in front followed by fan-bearers and
censer-bearers; then came the _horemhebs_--officiating priests, and
finally twenty-four senior priests--_neteratephs_, with shaven heads,
leopard skins across the shoulder and wide, stiffly starched white
skirts. Walking twelve in a row they carried on two poles the holy
tabernacle--Userhet--a boat of acacia wood with linen curtains like
sails, that hid a figure of Amon a foot high. Its shadow could be
seen through the fine material in the flickering light of the
torches: but people did not dare to look even at the shadow of the
god: to see him was to die.
A crowd followed the tabernacle, singing in a chorus:
"Glory be to Amon on High
Glory to Khonsu, Amon's son!
Exalt ye them above the heavens,
Exalt ye them above the earth.
Proclaim to all their glory!
Tell men to fear the Lord
Throughout all generations,
Tell it to the great and small,
To every creature that draws breath.
To fishes and fowls of the air;
Tell those who know not and who know:
'Fear ye the Lord!'"
Yubra sang, too, saying 'Aton' instead of 'Amon'; no one heard him in
the general chorus. And sometimes he made a mistake, glorifying the
god of his enemies and rejoiced: he knew that where they were going
there would be no more enemies; the lion and the lamb would lie down
together and the child would play on the hole of the asp.
The beggar woman from the province of the Black Heifer walked by
Yubra's side. He had found her half-dead with hunger by the heap of
manure-bricks in the Square, restored her to life and given her some
food: Nebra procured bread for her and milk for the baby from a
boatman friend of his. When she had eaten and seen that the baby was
alive and sucking a comforter that Yubra cleverly made for it, she
revived and followed him as a dog follows the man who has given it
food. She followed him in the procession, too.
He was holding her firmly and kindly by the hand, as though he were
leading this sorrowful and perishing daughter of the earth to the new
earth, to the Comforter. She understood but vaguely what was going
on, and not daring to look at the shadow of the god behind the veil,
simply repeated with the rest of the crowd:
"Glory be to thee, god of mercy,
The Lord of the silent,
The help of the humble,
The saviour of those in hell!
When they call unto thee
Thou comest to them from afar
Thou sayest to them 'I am here.'"
She, too, was in hell; perhaps He would come to her, too, and say 'I
am here,' she thought joyfully, as though knowing that in the place
where they were going there would be no famine and the mothers would
not have to steal other people's children and kill them like lambs in
order to feed their own.
Pentaur was walking on the left in the first row of the twelve
priests, neteratephs, who carried the tabernacle. Yubra saw him and
they looked at one another. "How did you come here, servant of Aton?
Are you a spy?" Yubra read the question in Pentaur's eyes. "Come,
there can be no spies now! We are all brothers," was the answer in
Yubra's eyes, and Pentaur seemed to understand--he smiled at him like
a brother.
Zen, the prophet, was also with the crowd; a little boy was leading
him by the hand. His face was sorrowful unto death: maybe he knew
that Kiki was right and that the earth would turn upside down only in
order that the worst might come.
After passing Coppersmiths' Street they came into the sacred Road of
the Rams. At the very end of it the dull red disc of the moon, cut
across by the black needle of the obelisk, like a cat's eye by the
narrowed pupil, was slowly rising behind the sanctuary of Mut.
Suddenly the procession stopped. The blast of trumpets and the
rattle of drums was heard in front; arrows and stones from slings
flew about with a hissing sound: it was an ambush of the Nubian
soldiers sent against the rebels.
One arrow struck the foot of the tabernacle. The priests lowered it
to the ground; men crowded round it, defending the body of the god
with their own bodies.
The attack of the Nubians was so violent that the Lybian mercenaries
flinched and would have run away had not help arrived just in time.
Kiki, with a few desperadoes like himself, had gone from the Hittite
Square to the raised road where the workmen, who had been dragging
the giant statue of King Akhnaton during the day, had gone to sleep,
some on straw and others on the bare earth. Kiki could not wake many
of them: they slept so heavily that if the very earth under them had
caught fire they would hardly have wakened. But he did rouse some
three hundred by the mere cry of 'Plunder!'; leading them against the
Nubians' ambush he attacked it from behind and so won the battle for
the rebels.
The procession moved on with a song of victory:
"Woe to be to thine enemies, Lord!
Their dwelling place is in darkness,
But the rest of the earth in thy light.
The sun of them that hate thee is darkened,
The sun of them that love thee is rising!"
Reaching Amon's temple they walked past it and turned to the right,
to Khonsu's sanctuary, easily scattering a small detachment of Midian
archers on the way. But at the sanctuary they learned that at the
first news of mutiny the golden figure of Khonsu had been removed and
hidden in the treasury of Amon's temple.
"Come, good people, you have been saving the god long enough, it is
time you thought about yourselves!" Kiki the Noseless shouted to the
crowd, jumping on the empty pedestal of Khonsu's statue. "There is
nothing to be got here, Aton's rabble have cleared the place, but on
the other side of the river in the Chanik Palace there is still
plenty of stuff left. Let's make for the river, mates!"
There arose a dispute, almost a fight, as to what they were to
do--save the god or plunder.
As Yubra listened, he grew uneasy: was this what he had been hoping
for or something utterly different?
After much wrangling the crowd divided into two: the bigger part went
to the other side of the river with Kiki and the smaller set out
towards Amon's temple.
Pentaur led them. Expecting another ambush they put out the torches.
Men walked in silence, with stern faces; they knew that perhaps they
were going to their death. "We shall all die for Him!" Yubra
thought, with quiet joy.
When they reached the temple they saw there were no guards there.
Two granite colossi and two obelisks, as though keeping watch, threw
black, menacing shadows on to the square of white stone bathed in
moonlight.
Pentaur and Hafra, the blacksmith, walked up to the temple gates; the
gold, with the hieroglyphics of dark bronze upon it, the two words
'Great Spirit,' dimly glistened in the moonlight.
"Hack them!" Pentaur said.
Hafra raised the axe, but let it down again, not daring to strike.
Pentaur seized the axe from him and cried:
"Lift up your heads, oh ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting
doors, and the King of Glory shall come in!"
He lifted the axe and struck; the ponderous echo rolled through the
empty, resonant air behind the gates, as though the Great Spirit
himself had answered him.
"Achaeans, Achaeans, the devils!" was heard in the crowd.
Achaeans, the half-savage mercenaries from the North, had just
arrived in Egypt to serve the king. They had come straight to the
City of the Sun, and were hardly known at Thebes, but there were
terrible rumours about their ferocity and mad courage.
Rushing out from three ambushes at once they surrounded the crowd on
all sides, pressing it to the walls of the temple so that escape was
impossible. And above the gates on the flat roof of the temple
copper helmets and spears were glistening, too. Ethiopian slingers
were ambushed there. Arrows, stones and lead fell from there like
hail.
Pentaur raised his eyes and saw just above him, in a narrow window of
the temple wall, a boy of fifteen, with a black monkey-like face,
white teeth bared like those of a beast of prey, and two feathers, a
green and a red one, stuck aslant in the black frizzy hair. Placing
an arrow on the bowstring, he aimed at Pentaur slowly bending a huge
bow made of rhinoceros bone.
Pentaur remembered the tame monkey on the top of the palm tree over
Khnum's house, throwing the shells of the pods at the sleeping
dancer, Miruit, and he smiled. He might have jumped behind the
projecting wall, but he thought "what for? I shall be killed anyway,
and it is good to die for Him Who has been!"
The bowstring sounded.
"Has been or will be?" he had time to ask and to answer: "Has been,
is and will be," while the arrow whistled through the air. Its
copper sting pierced him just under the left breast. He fell on the
threshold of the closed gates. For him the gates lifted their heads,
the everlasting doors were lifted up and the King of Glory came in.
Standing by the tabernacle Yubra was watching the last batch of the
Lybians fighting. Suddenly the leaden bullet from a sling struck him
on the temple. He fell and thought he was dying. But a minute later
he propped himself up on his elbow and saw that the Achaean devils
were hacking the tabernacle.
The white curtains flapped like broken wings laying bare the small,
worm-eaten, wooden figure of the god, blackened with the smoke of
incense, polished with the kisses of the worshippers. A soldier
seized it, and lifting it up, flung it upon the ground and trampled
it underfoot. The god's body cracked like a crushed insect.
Yubra fell upon his face so as not to see.
Pentaur was dying happily. Some one gentle as the god whose name is
Quiet-Heart was bending over him--he could not tell whether it was a
boy who looked like a girl or a girl who looked like a boy. He
wanted to ask 'Who are you?' when the kiss of eternity sealed his
lips. And the dulcet chords played on:
"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!"
VIII
When Dio had set out to see Ptamose the mutiny was just beginning
beyond the river and all was quiet on this side.
Issachar was waiting for her by the Eastern Gates of the Apet-Oisit
wall, where the deserted tomb-sanctuary of King Tutmose the Third lay
in ruins. Stepping out of the litter and telling the bearers to wait
for her at the gate, she went with Issachar into the half-destroyed
porch of the sanctuary. Walking up to the wall, which was completely
covered with bas-reliefs and mural paintings, he leaned his shoulder
against it. A movable stone turned on its axis, revealing a dark
narrow opening. They both squeezed themselves sideways through it
and descended some steep steps cut in the thickness of the rock.
Issachar walked in front of Dio down a slanting underground passage,
carrying a torch.
It was close: the depths of the earth warmed through by the eternal
Egyptian sun, never cooled; the darkness was filled with warmth.
"Glory be to thee who dwelleth in darkness, O Lord!" Dio remembered.
It seemed to her that here the dead were as warm lying in their tombs
in the bosom of the earth as a child in its mother's womb.
The endless mural paintings represented the journey of the Sun-god
down the subterranean Nile: the sail of the boat hung limply in the
breathless stillness and the dead oarsmen were dragging it over dry
land through the twelve caves--the twelve hours of the night, from
the eternal night to the eternal morn.
The hieroglyphic inscriptions glorified the Midnight Sun, Amon the
Hidden.
"When thou descendest beyond the sky
The most secret of secret Gods,
Thou bringest light to them who are in death.
Glorifying thee from within their tombs,
The dead lift up their arms
And those under the earth rejoice."
The main passage was intersected by side passages. Suddenly the red
flame of torches and the black shadows of men carrying spears,
swords, bows and arrows flitted across them.
"Where are they carrying the arms?" Dio asked.
"I don't know," Issachar answered reluctantly.
"It must be the rebels in the town," she guessed.
Supplies of arms and also of gold, silver and lapis-lazuli--remnants
of the temple treasuries concealed from the king's spies were hidden
in these subterranean recesses of Amon's temple. It was all kept
there for the day of rebellion against the apostate king.
Turning into one of the side passages and walking to the end of it,
they stopped at a closed door in the wall. Opening it, Issachar
walked in, lit a lamp with his torch and said, putting the lamp on
the floor:
"Wait here, they will come for you."
"And where are you going?" Dio asked.
"To fetch Pentaur."
"Good, bring him here!" she said joyfully: she had been thinking
about him all the time.
Issachar went out, closing the door after him.
Dio looked round the empty vaulted cell, long and narrow like the
tomb--and perhaps indeed it was one. The walls were covered from top
to bottom with hieroglyphic script and pictures.
She sat on the floor and waited. Tired of sitting still she got up
and, taking the lamp, began looking at the mural paintings and
reading the hieroglyphics. She was so absorbed in this that she did
not notice the passage of time.
Suddenly the flame grew dim, gave a last flicker and went out. Walls
of stifling, black, and, as it were, tangible darkness, closed in
upon her. She was afraid of being left and forgotten in this coffin.
She fumbled her way to the door and began knocking and calling. She
listened: a deadly stillness. She felt more frightened than ever.
All of a sudden she recalled Pentaur and the fear left her: if he was
alive he would come.
She sat down again, leaning her back against the wall and remained
so. A strange stillness came over her; she did not know whether it
was dream or waking. She was filled with the black, warm, sunny
darkness as a vessel is with water. With quiet ecstasy she whispered
the words she had just read in the hieroglyphic inscriptions, spoken
by the dead man to the Midnight Sun, the hidden god:
"He is--I am; I am--He is."
And it seemed to her that she herself were dead and lying in the
bosom of the earth like a child in its mother's womb, waiting for
resurrection--birth into eternal life. And the dulcet harpstrings
sang
"Death is now to me like sweetest myrrh...."
All of a sudden a light flashed into her eyes. A bent, decrepit old
man with a torch--a priest, to judge by his shaven head and the
leopard skin thrown over his shoulder--stooping over her, took her by
the hand, helped her up and led her out of the room.
"Who are you? Where are you taking me?" she asked. He said nothing
and was about to lead her down some more steep narrow stairs.
"No, I don't want to go down," she said. "Take me up. Where is
Pentaur? .... Why do you say nothing? Speak."
The old man made an inarticulate sound and, opening his mouth, showed
her a stump in place of a tongue; he explained by signs that Pentaur
would come down too and that somebody was expecting her. She
understood that he meant Ptamose.
They walked further down. Again Dio did not know whether she was
asleep or awake. The dumb man had such a dead face that it seemed to
her Death itself was leading her to the kingdom of death.
They stopped at a closed door. The dumb man knocked. Someone from
within asked "Who is there?" and when Dio said her name the door was
opened.
In a low sepulchral chamber or sanctuary, supported by four
quadrangular columns, cut out in the thickness of the rock, stood a
sepulchral couch, with a mummy in a white shroud lying on it. There
was, Dio thought, something terrible in its face--more terrible than
death.
Her dumb guide took her past the couch into the depths of the
chamber, where a vaulted niche, lined with leaf-copper, glowed, like
sunset, in the light of innumerable lamps. There, in the smoke of
fragrant incense, a huge black lop-eared Lybian ram--probably
transferred from the upper temple--lay asleep on a couch of purple.
This was the sacred animal, "the bleating prophet," the living heart
of the temple.
A girl of thirteen--not an Egyptian to judge by her fair hair and
skin--lay beside it, with her head on the animal's back and her eyes
half-closed, like a bride on the bed of love. Completely naked, but
for a narrow girdle of precious stones below the navel, shameless and
innocent, she stretched herself out, pale and white on the black
fleece, like a narcissus, the flower of death. She was one of the
twelve priestesses of the god Ram--Amon-Ra.
At the approach of Dio, the little girl opened her eyes and looked at
her intently. There was something so mournful in that look that
Dio's heart was wrung; she remembered another victim of the god
Beast--Pasiphae-Eoia.
Her dumb guide prostrated himself before the Ram. A young priest,
with an austere meagre face, kneeling next to Dio, was burning
fragrant incense in a censer.
"Bow down to the god!" he whispered, looking at her severely.
Dio looked at him, too, but said nothing and did not bow to the
beast, though she knew it was dangerous--they might kill her for
impiety.
When the girl opened her eyes and moved the Ram woke up and also
moved slowly and heavily: one could see it was very old, almost at
its last gasp. It opened one eye: the pupil, fiery-yellow like a
carbuncle, glowed menacingly from under a dark heavy eyelid, with
grey lashes, and looked into her eyes with an almost human look.
"The god opens his eye, the sun, and there is light in the world,"
the priest whispered the prayer.
When he had finished he got up, and taking Dio by the hand led her to
the couch with the mummy. He bent down to the dead man and whispered
something in his ear. Dio drew back horrified: the dead man opened
his eyes.
His deathly, skeleton-like body, brown as a withered tree, showed
through the transparent white of the winding sheet. The veins on the
shrunken temples stood out as though stripped of flesh; the thin,
thread-like lips of the sunk-in mouth and the gristle of the hooked
nose--a vulture's beak--looked deathly under the tightly drawn shiny
skin. But living, young, immortal eyes seemed to have been set in
that mask of death.
The priest reverently lifted the mummy and raised its head on the
couch. The dead lips opened and whispered, rustling like dry leaves.
"Listen, the Urma is speaking to you."
It was only then Dio grasped that this was the great seer--_urma_,
watcher of the secrets of heaven and the prophet of all the gods of
north and south, the high priest of Amon, Ptamose.
He was over a hundred years old--an age not infrequent in Egypt.
Many people thought that he had long been dead, for during the last
ten years, ever since the apostate king began to persecute the faith
of his fathers, Ptamose had been hiding in subterranean hiding-places
and tombs; some of those who knew him to be alive said that he would
never die, while others asserted that he had died and risen again.
Dio knelt down and bending over the low couch put her ear close to
the whispering lips.
"You have come at last, my dear daughter! Why have you delayed so
long?"
There was an insidious caress in his voice, a magnetic power in his
eyes.
"Pentaur has told me much about you, but one cannot tell all about
others. Tell me yourself now."
He began asking her questions, but he seemed to know all before she
had answered him and to read her heart as an open scroll.
"You poor, poor child!" he whispered when she told him how Eoia and
Tammuzadad had perished through her. "To destroy those whom you
love--that's your misery. Do you know this?"
"Yes, I do."
"Mind then that you don't destroy him also."
"Whom?"
"King Akhnaton."
"Well, if I do destroy him so much the better for you!" she said with
a forced smile.
The shadow of a smile flitted in the eyes of the old man, too. "Do
you think I am his enemy? No; God knows I am not lying--why should a
dead man lie?--I love him as my own soul!"
"Why then did you rise against him?"
"I rose not against him but against Him who comes after him."
"The Son?"
"God has no Son."
"How can the Father be without the Son?"
"All are the Father's sons. Great in His love he gives birth to the
gods and gives breath to the baby bird inside the egg, preserves the
son of a worm, feeds the mouse in its hole and the midge in the air.
The son of a worm is God's son, too. Stones, plants, animals, men,
gods--all are his sons; He has no only Son. He who has said 'I am
the Son' has killed the Father. _Ua-en-ua_, one and only is He and
there is none other beside. He who says 'there are two gods' kills
God. This is whom I have risen against--the deicide. He will save
the world, you think? No, He will destroy it. He will sacrifice
himself for the world? No, He will sacrifice the world to himself.
Men will love Him and hate the world. Honey will be as wormwood to
them, light as darkness, life as death. And they will perish. Then
they will come to us and say 'Save us!' And we will save them again."
"Again? Has it all happened before?"
"Yes. It has been and it will be. Do you know the meaning of
_Nem-ankh_, eternal recurrence? Eternity spins round and round and
repeats its cycles. All that has been in time shall be in eternity.
_He_ has been, too. His first name was Osiris. He came to us but we
killed Him and destroyed His work. He wanted to make His kingdom in
the land of the living but we drove Him to the Kingdom of the dead,
Amenti, the eternal West: we gave Him that world and kept this one
for ourselves. He will come again and we will kill Him once more and
destroy His work. We have conquered the world and not He."
"There is no Son and perhaps there is no Father either?" Dio asked,
looking at him defiantly. "Tell me the truth, don't lie: is there a
God or no?"
"God is--there is no God; say what you like--it all comes to nothing;
all men's words about God are vain."
"There now! I have caught the thief!" Dio cried, laughing into his
face. "I knew all along you did not believe in God."
"Silly girl!" he said, as gently and kindly as before, "I am dead:
the dead see God. I adjure you by the living God, consider before
you go to Him whether there isn't truth in my words!"
"And if there is, what then?"
"Leave Him and stay with us!"
"No, even then I shall remain with Him!"
"You love Him more than the truth?"
"More."
"Go to Him, then, to the tempter, the son of perdition, the devil!"
"It's you who are the devil!" she cried, raising her hand as though
she would strike him.
The dumb man rushed up to her, seized her by the arm and raised a
knife over her.
"Leave her alone!" Ptamose said, and the old man drew back.
Suddenly there was a sound of bleating, low as the weeping of a child
but old and feeble: it was the Ram. Ptamose looked at the animal and
the animal at him and they seemed to understand each other.
"The Great One foretells woe, woe to the earth with its bleating!"
the old man exclaimed, raising his eyes to Dio. "Go up--you will see
what He is doing. It has begun already and will not end until He
comes!"
Then he glanced at the dumb priest and said:
"Take her upstairs and don't molest her, you answer for her with your
life!"
He shut his eyes and again looked like one dead.
Dio was running upstairs, with one thought only in her mind: "Where
is Pentaur, what has happened to him?"
Going out of the catacomb by the same door as she had entered, she
went past the ruins of Tutmose's tomb and walked along the south wall
of Amon's temple. On the white stones of the temple square, bathed
in moonlight, dead bodies lay about as on a battlefield.
Half-savage, hyena-like dogs were worrying them. An emaciated
looking dog, with a blood-stained mouth, was sitting on its hind legs
howling at the moon.
Dio stopped suddenly. The needle of the obelisk showed black against
the moonlit sky: the hieroglyphics on the mirror-like polished
surface of its granite glorified King Akhnaton, the Joy of the Sun,
and someone was sitting hunched up against the base of it---dead or
alive Dio could not make out. She came nearer and, bending down, saw
a dead woman, thin as a skeleton, stiffly pressing a dead baby to her
wrinkled, black, charred-looking breasts, as she gazed at it with
glassy eyes; her white teeth were bared as though she were laughing.
It was the beggar woman from the province of the Black Heifer.
Dio recalled a black granite figure she had once seen of the goddess
Isis, the Mother with her son Horus, and it suddenly seemed to her
that this dead woman was Mother Isis herself, accursed and killed--by
whom?
"Go up, you will see what He is doing," the words of Ptamose sounded
in her ears.
She turned round at the sound of footsteps. Issachar came up to her.
"Where is Pentaur? What has happened?" she cried, and, before he had
time to answer, she understood from his face that Pentaur had been
killed.
The familiar pain of inexpiable guilt, insatiable pity pierced her
heart. "To destroy those whom you love--that's your misery," the
words of the seer sounded in her ears again.
It took her some time to grasp what Issachar was saying; at last she
understood: they would not give Pentaur's body to him, but perhaps
they might give it to her.
She followed him. A cordon of sentries guarded the approach to the
gates of Amon's temple. The centurion recognised Dio: he had seen
her at the Viceroy's white house; he let them both through and told
the soldiers to give her Pentaur's body.
He was lying where he had been killed--by the threshold of the
western gates. Their gold with the hieroglyphics of dark bronze--two
words 'Great Spirit'--dimly glittered in the moonlight.
Dio knelt down, and looking into the dead man's face, kissed him on
the lips. Their cold penetrated down to her very heart.
"It is my doing--His doing," she thought and the word 'He' had a
double meaning for her: he--the king, and He--the Son.
IX
Dio was watching the fire beyond the River from the flat roof of
Khnum's house. Charuk Palace was burning--the residence of the
Viceroy Tutankhaton.
Built of very old dry cedar and cypress wood, it burned hotly and
steadily like a resin torch. The bare crags of the Lybian Mountains
above it glowed as though red hot; the flames were reflected in the
river as a pillar of fire and white smoke coiled in clouds of
moonlight blue and fiery crimson.
Khnum's servants were standing by Dio's side on the roof. All the
faces wore the look of that unaccountable joy which people always
feel at the sight of a fire at night.
"There, look where it has caught now! The women's apartments are on
fire!" someone said.
"No, the prince's lodge," another answered.
"And now something in the garden is on fire, by the very lake, it
must be Aton's chapel."
"I expect it's all Kiki's doing--his handiwork!"
"The rabble will warm their hands at the fire, you may be sure!"
"Look, mates, look, it's begun on our side, too!" said someone
joyfully, pointing to the right side of the river, where fire broke
out in two places at once.
"Ah, the dogs, they've set it ablaze from all sides!"
Khnum came up on to the roof by a steep staircase. Two servants
supported him. He had just got out of bed: after the trial of Yubra
that afternoon he had had a liver attack. Nibituia and Inioteph, his
secretary, followed him.
An armchair was brought for Khnum and Nibituia sat on a stool at his
feet. Dio came up to them and kissed them both on the shoulders.
"Is it long since you came back from town, my daughter?" Khnum asked
her.
"I have only just returned."
"Have you heard anything?"
"The rebels have been scattered near Amon's temple, at Oisit, but at
other places they are gathering together again, burning and
plundering. I've heard that the Achaean mercenaries have come with
Mahu, the king's chief of the guards."
"Extraordinary!" Inioteph muttered under his breath and shook his
head with a smile.
Khnum looked at him sullenly from under his brows.
"What are you muttering?"
"Extraordinary, I say: there are plenty of loyal troops in the town
and instead of sending them against the rebels they wait for the
Achaeans!"
"Hold your tongue, silly! You must be careful what you say.... And
where is the Viceroy?" he turned to Dio again.
"No one knows for certain. Some say he is on the other side of the
river and others that he has come over to this side, with a large
detachment of Nubians."
She very nearly said 'run away' and Khnum understood.
"Uhuh have mercy upon us!" Nibituia sighed. "What if he falls into
the brigands' hands!"
Khnum looked at the fire for some time without speaking.
"Quite, quite, quite! Here it is, this is the beginning," he said,
quietly, as though thinking aloud. "According to Ipuver's prophecy
'the slaves shall be masters, the beggars shall become new gods.'
Our Yubra knew what he was doing, the worm: an ant knows how far the
flood will reach and build its hill on safe ground. He has gone to
the rebels just in time."
Dio, too, was looking at the fire and suddenly the familiar feeling
of repetition, of eternal recurrence came over her--_nem-ankh_--'all
this has been already'; the red flame of the fire lighted from below
the bare rocks and was reflected as a red pillar in the water in
exactly the same way; white smoke curled in clouds of moonlight-blue
and fiery crimson just like this; now as then the cold of the dead
lips penetrated her through and through--it never left her from the
moment she kissed Pentaur good-bye.
There was a sound of rapid steps on the stairs. The centurion of the
Viceroy's bodyguard, quite a young boy, ran up to the roof. From his
dusty helmet, torn clothes, restless eyes and trembling lips one
could see that he had just come from a serious engagement.
"Rejoice, my lord!" he said, approaching Khnum with a low bow, "His
Highness asks me to tell you...."
He stopped breathless with hurry.
"Is His Highness safe?" Khnum asked, looking into the frightened face
of the boy.
"Thanks be to Aton, he is safe now, but he has been in great danger.
The riotous rabble is so turbulent, it is terrible.... His Highness
will be here directly, he asks you to give him shelter."
"How many are coming with him?"
"Less than thirty."
"Where are the others?"
"Some have run away and others have been sent to Mahu, the chief of
the guards: His Highness has given him the command of the city."
"Quite, quite, quite," said Khnum, shaking his head, thoughtfully: he
understood that Tuta ran away like a coward. "Mahu is a brave
soldier and will make short work of the rebels. For the moment the
city is saved, though God only knows what the end of it will be....
Well, let us go, my son, I shall be happy to receive His Highness."
Khnum got up and went downstairs. All followed him.
Dio and Zenra went into Dio's room on the second storey. Dio began
to undress. She was trembling so that her teeth were chattering.
The cold still penetrated her through and through.
"Why are you trembling?" Zenra asked her.
Dio made no answer and lay down on the couch. Zenra tucked her in,
kissed her and was about to go when Dio took her hand.
"Do you know, nurse, Pentaur is killed?" she said quietly, with
apparent calm.
The old woman's legs gave way under her. She sat down on the edge of
the couch so as not to fall.
"Good Lord!" she whispered, with the surprise people always feel at
the news of a sudden death. "But how, where, when?"
"Just now in the riot by Amon's temple."
"Ah, poor thing!" Zenra wept. "Such a good man, and I had hoped..."
Dio smiled.
"You hoped he would marry me? Yes, the bridegroom was right enough,
but the bride was no good.... Well, go now and don't cry. One
mustn't cry for him--he died a good death. God grant us all to die
like that!"
Dio closed her eyes, but as soon as Zenra went out she opened them
again and looked at the other end of the room where a moonbeam fell
upon the tall Amon's harp with crossed strings and two
rainbow-coloured sun discs at the foot; their golden centres
glittered dimly in the uncertain light. It was the harp on which
Pentaur had played that afternoon his quiet songs of love and death.
Whether a cloud had covered the moon or Dio's eyes were dimmed with
tears, she suddenly fancied that somebody's shadow flitted across the
slanting square made by the moonbeams on the white wall. "It is he,"
she thought, and was all alert as though waiting for the harpstrings
to sound. But all was silent and the shadow disappeared; the light
on the wall was once more even and white. Dio covered her head with
the bedclothes and settled down to sleep but she could not.
All of a sudden she heard the sound of the harp. She threw off the
coverlet, sat up and listened: the chords were ringing and singing:
"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!"
And again a shadow flitted across the wall. Terror possessed her.
But the familiar pain of inexpiable guilt, insatiable pity was
stronger than terror: oh, if she could only see his shadow, could
only say to his shadow 'forgive'!
She got up from the bed and went to the harp. The strings continued
vibrating quietly but clearly. Something living was fluttering down
below. Dio looked down and saw a bat that was caught in the network
of the crossed strings and was struggling against them.
Dio smiled bitterly and regretted the terror of the moment ago. The
wall of death rose between them more impenetrable than ever, the dead
went further away into death, as though he had died again.
She carefully released the captive, kissed it on the head and,
climbing on to a chair, let it out of the long and narrow window
right up by the ceiling.
She returned to her bed, lay down and sank at once into the deep
heavy sleep of grief.
"Get up, my dear, get up, it is time to go," she heard Zenra's voice
over her.
"To go? Where?" she muttered without opening her eyes.
"To the City of the Sun. Tuta is going to-day and we go with him.
Come, wake up, sleepy head!"
Dio opened her eyes. The light was still dim in the windows: the sun
had not yet risen. But a sudden joy flooded her like sunlight. It
seemed she had only now understood what it meant--"Akhnaton, the Joy
of the Sun!"
She dressed quickly and ran up to the roof.
The winter morning was still and misty and its stillness seemed to
say that the riot was over, the earth had not turned upside down, but
stood firmly and would go on doing so for a long time yet.
Everything was as usual: two white turtle-doves were cooing in the
garden under the black feathery cedar tree; the morning sounds,
slightly muffled by the fog, were wafted from afar over the water of
the canal: the braying of the donkey, the creaking of the
water-raising wheels, the clatter of the laundry bats and the
mournful droning song:
"Washerman, washing clothes in the river,
Good neighbour of the crocodile swimming past"
As always one smelt in the morning freshness the slightly bitter
smoke of manure-bricks, like the smell of autumn bonfires in the
fields of her native north.
Suddenly a warm, rosy light shone through the cold whiteness of the
mist, like heavenly joy through earthly sorrow. "Heaven is united
with the earth; on earth there is the joy of heaven." Dio recalled
the words of the Osiris mysteries.
"Joy of the Sun, Joy of the Sun--Akhnaton!" she repeated, weeping and
laughing with joy.
Zenra called to her and told her to make haste. Dio ran downstairs
to say good-bye to Khnum and Nibituia. Khnum gave her his blessing
and kind old Nibituia put her arms around her and wept: she had grown
to love Dio as her own daughter.
They stepped into a boat and went down the Big Canal to the Risit
Harbour where the Viceroy's boat was waiting. Tuta was on it
already: he had gone before daylight.
The boat had two masts; the sails with a check pattern were spread
out widely like a falcon's wings; on the prow was the horned head of
a gazelle and on the stern a huge lotus-flower: the rudder was a
flowering shrub and its handle the head of a king in a high tiara;
the deck cabins of carved acacia wood were arranged in two storeys,
like a small palace, magnificently painted and gilded, and fenced
round the top with a network of royal snakes standing on their tails;
coloured flags were displayed everywhere. The whole ship was a
living miracle of gold, purple and azure, half bird, half flower.
The anchor was raised and they set off. The sun had risen and the
mists melted away. A fresh wind blowing through the mountain gorges,
filled the sails; the oarsmen plied their oars and the ship swiftly
glided down the river.
Tuta did not leave his cabin all day: he had toothache and his cheek
was swollen. The cat Ruru went about with a bandaged paw: it had
been hit with a stone in the riot. When at last Tuta did come out
towards evening he looked so crestfallen that Dio thought he was just
like a cat that had received a shower bath.
Later on the wits at court composed a song about this dismal journey.
Poor little Tuta
Moans in his cabin.
His cheek is swollen,
Toothache very bad.
He warmed himself that night
By the Charuk palace fire,
Then exposed his heated cheek
To a draught in terror dire.
"Well, he hasn't had his way this time, but he will the next," Dio
thought. "You will be king over the mice, you cat."
The City of the Sun, Akhetaton, Egypt's new Capital, was built in the
province of Hares, half-way between Memphis and Thebes, four hundred
aters or five days' journey from Thebes.
They sailed in the day-time only and spent the nights in harbours:
sailing at night was dangerous because of the many shallows and
whirlpools. The bed of the Nile changed continually, especially in
winter when the water was shallow. The pilot, standing on the ship's
prow, was all the time feeling the bottom with a pole.
They passed the big commercial harbour, Copt, which lay on the
caravan route leading through the desert to the Red Sea; the town of
Dendera, with the great temple of Isis-Hathor; the town of Abt, where
the body of the god-man, Osiris, was buried, and the most ancient of
the Egyptian cities, Tinis, the capital of Men, the first king of
Egypt.
But the cities were few; poor villages with huts made of the dried
mud of the Nile were more frequent. The yellow streak of dead sand
and the black streak of fertile earth--Black Earth, Kemet, was the
name of Egypt--stretched on either side of the river, peaceful,
simple and monotonous; the black of the Nile mud, humid and shining
like the living 'pupil of Isis' and the yellow of the desert--life
and death--were side by side, in an eternal union, eternal peace.
It was winter--sowing time. Men were ploughing, harrowing, sowing.
Oxen slowly walked along drawing rich furrows with the plough. Here
and there the first crops already showed their bright spring green.
And the melancholy singing of the ploughman echoed far in the
stillness of the fields.
The dull white waters of the Nile now flowed fast, pressed in by
rocky banks; now widened out in pools and backwaters still as a pond,
with impassable jungles of papyrus and green carpets of floating
lotus leaves; only a hippopotamus, waddling ashore, and a lion or a
leopard, coming down to drink, cut narrow paths in those thickets.
A long-legged ibis strode along the humid slime measuring the ground
like the wise god Tot, the land-measurer. Crocodiles lay on the
sandbanks, like slimy logs, and the birds benu--a kind of
heron--walked along their backs picking off the water fleas or,
fearlessly thrusting their heads into the open jaws, cleaned the
monsters' teeth.
And long after the fall of dusk, the tops of the cliffs glowed a
fiery yellow and the girlishly slender outlines of the palms and the
coal black cones of the granaries showed black against the crimson
west.
The nights were as still as the days; only the jackals barked and
howled in the desert and the hippopotamus in the papyrus thicket
bellowed, like a bull, at the dazzlingly bright moon, the sun of the
night.
And in the morning the day-sun rose as radiant as ever. The two
streaks--the black and the yellow--stretched along the banks as
monotonously as before; the oxen walked along as slowly, cutting deep
furrows with the plough and the melancholy singing of the ploughman
echoed in the stillness of the fields.
And everything was as still and gentle as the face of the god whose
name is Quiet-Heart.
On the evening of the fifth day after passing a rocky gorge that
seemed like a dark and narrow fortress gate, the ship suddenly came
out into a sunlit expanse of water. One gate was in the south and
another in the north; between them, surrounded on all sides by
mountain ridges, as by fortress walls, lay the great plain cut in two
by the Nile: in the west green meadows stretched as far as the Lybian
Hills that melted into rose and amethyst in the light of the setting
sun; in the east lay the semicircle of rocky and sandy desert, rising
gradually towards the parched rocks of the Arabian mountains.
Between the river and the desert there was a long and narrow streak
of palm groves and gardens. White houses were scattered among them
like dice and a huge white temple towered above them.
"The City of the Sun! The City of the Sun!" Dio recognised it at
once and with a joyous terror she thought: "_He_ is here!"
And just as when she stood by the body of Pentaur, the word 'He' had
a double meaning for her: he--the king and He--the Son.