PART II

WHO IS HE?

I

I, Akhnaton Uaenra, the Joy of the Sun, the only Son of the Sun,

speak thus: here will I build a city in the name of Aton, my Father,

for it was none other than He brought me to Akhetaton, his portion

from all eternity. There was not any man in the whole land who led

me to it, saying 'build a city here,' but my heavenly Father has said

it. This land belongs not to a god nor to a goddess, not to a prince

nor to a princess, but only to Aton, my Father. May the City of God

thrive like the sun in heaven. Behold, I raise my hand and swear: I

will not pass beyond the boundary of this domain, which Aton has

himself desired and fenced in with his hills, and with which He is

pleased for ever and ever!"

This inscription was cut in the thickness of the rocks, north, south,

east and west of the city of Akhetaton, on fourteen flat boundary

stones, which marked the portion of Aton, the kingdom of God upon

earth. They were fourteen according to the fourteen parts of the

dismembered body of Osiris, the Great Victim, for King Akhnaton was

himself the second Osiris.

In the fourth year of his reign he had abandoned the ancient capital

of Egypt, Nut Amon or Thebes, and founded a new one.

The city was built with such haste that the newly erected walls were

showing cracks; the cracks were patched up with clay and the building

carried on. Experienced architects merely shook their heads,

remembering the old saying: 'to build in a hurry means no end of

worry.'

The king's exchequer was growing empty; innumerable stores of

treasure, plundered from the temples of Amon, were being spent; tens

of thousands of workmen were driven to Akhetaton from all parts of

Egypt; they worked even at night, by torchlight. And the miracle had

taken place; within ten years a new city had grown up in the desert;

so does the pink lotos, nekheb, break into flower during the night

and appear above the water in the morning; so does a beautiful mirage

rise over the shimmering heat of the desert; but the water flows away

and the lotos fades; the wind blows and the mirage is gone.

Dio came to Akhetaton five days before the great festival, the

twelfth anniversary of the city's foundation, coinciding with the day

of Aton's nativity, the winter solstice, when the 'little sun,' the

baby god Osiris-Sokkaris, rises from the dead and is born. She was

to dance before the king for the first time at that festival.

Tuta had intended to present her at court as soon as they arrived,

but she did not wish it and he gave way; he gave way to her in

everything, waiting upon her wishes; it was evident that she was for

him a big stake in a big game; he was bargaining over 'the Pearl of

the Seas' like a clever merchant

He was soon comforted for his bad luck in Thebes. While still on the

journey he received good news from his friends at court who had done

their best for him and gave the king such a version of the rising

that Tuta's weakness appeared as mercy, his cowardice as love of

peace: he ran away from the battlefield, they said, because he

remembered that 'peace was better than war.'

Dio spent the five days before the festival in Tuta's house near the

temple of Aton, preparing for the dance. She did not go out nor show

herself to anyone in the daytime, but at night she went up to the

flat roof of the temple where she was to dance. She practiced there

herself and taught others.

The day before the feast she was sitting alone, late in the evening,

in the newly decorated room of Tuta's summer house; he and his wife,

the king's daughter Ankhsenbatona, or Ankhi, lived in the winter

house. The smell of fresh paint and plaster came from the still

unfinished part of the house, where in the daytime masons, carpenters

and painters were at work. It seemed to Dio that the whole town was

pervaded by this smell.

Red pillars with green garlands of palm leaves supported the sky-blue

ceiling. The white walls were decorated with a delicate design of

yellow butterflies, fluttering over fine seaweed.

The freshness of a winter evening came through the long, narrow

stone-trellised windows, right up by the ceiling. Sitting on a low

couch--a brick platform covered with rugs and cushions--Dio, wrapped

up in her Cretan wolf-fur, was warming herself by the hearth--an

earthenware platter of hot embers.

"To-morrow I shall see _him_," she thought with fear. She had begun

to be afraid on the very first day she arrived, and grew more so as

time went oh; and on this last night before the meeting such fear

possessed her that she felt she might run away if she did not control

herself. She went hot and cold at the thought that the next day she

was to dance before the king. "My legs will give way under me, I

shall stumble, fall flat, disgrace poor Tuta!" she laughed, as though

to make her fear worse.

In the depth of the room two sanctuary lamps were hanging in two

niches decorated with alabaster bas-reliefs of the king on the left

and the queen on the right. The wall space between them was covered

with rows of turquoise blue hieroglyphics on golden yellow ground,

glorifying the god Aton.

Dio got up, and going to the niche on the left, looked at the

bas-relief of the king standing at an altar. He was raising two

round sacrificial loaves, one on each palm, towards the Sun. The

enormously tall royal tiara, tapering to a point, seemed too heavy

for the childish head on the slender neck, flexible like the stem of

a flower. The childish face was irregular, with a receding forehead

and a protruding mouth. The charm of his naked body was like that of

a flower that had just opened and was already fading with the heat:

"Thou art the flower uprooted from the ground,

Thou art the plant unmoistened by running water."

Dio recalled the song of weeping for the dead god Tammuz.

The neck, the shoulders, the hands, the calves and the ankles were

slender and narrow like those of a boy of ten, but the hips were wide

like a woman's and the breasts too full: neither he nor she--he and

she at the same time--a marvel of god-like beauty.

On Mount Dicte in the Island of Crete, Dio had heard an ancient

legend: in the beginning man and woman were one body with two faces;

but the Lord cut their body in two and gave to each a spinal cord;

'that's how people cut eggs in two with a hair for pickling,' old

Mother Akakalla, the prophetess, used to add with a queer, uncanny

laugh when she told this legend in Dio's ear.

"The hair could not have passed right through his body," she thought,

looking at the King's image, and she recalled the prophecy: "the

kingdom of God shall come when the two shall be one, and male shall

be female and there shall be neither male nor female."

She knelt down and stretched out her arms to the marvel of godlike

charm.

"My brother, my sister, the two horned moon, the double-edged axe, my

lover, my loved one!" she whispered devoutly.

A whiff of wind came from the window; the flame of the lamp

flickered, the outline of the figure grew dim and through the marvel

the monster peered--neither old nor young, neither man nor woman, a

eunuch, a decrepit babe, the horror of Gem-Aton.

"Go to him then, the seducer, the son of perdition, the devil," the

voice of Ptamose sounded over her and she buried her face in her

hands, terrified.

At the same moment she felt that someone was standing behind her; she

turned round and saw a little girl.

A robe, transparent like running water, fell in flowing folds over

the slender body. The over-dress had come open in front and the

amber-brown skin could be seen through the shift worn underneath.

The girl wore on her head a huge shiny black wig of tightly plaited

tresses cut evenly round the edge. A tiny talc cup, turned upside

down and filled with the _kemi_ ointment made up of seven

perfumes--the royal ointment--was fixed on the top of the head.

Slowly melting with the warmth of the body it dropped like fragrant

dew on the hair, face and clothes. The long stem of a pink lotos was

thrust through a hole in the cup in such a way that the half-open

flower, with a sweet smell of anise, hung over the forehead.

The girl was about twelve years old. The childish face was charming

though irregular, with a protruding mouth and a receding forehead;

the large slightly squinting eyes had a fixed heavy look such as one

sees in the eyes of an epileptic.

At one moment she seemed a child, at another a woman; there was

something pathetic and charming in this elusive twilight between

childhood and womanhood. She was a half-open bud like the rosy lotos

_nekheb_ over her forehead, fragrant with the freshness of water; it

closes its petals and shortens its stem at night as it hides under

the water and when, in the morning, it comes up again and opens its

chalice, a golden winged beetle flies out of it--Horus, the

newly-born god of the Sun.

The little girl appeared so suddenly, so like a phantom that Dio

looked at her almost in fear. Both were silent for a second.

"Dio?" the visitor asked at last.

"Yes. And who are you?"

She made no answer; but raising her left eyebrow and shrugging her

shoulders, asked again:

"What were you doing here? Praying?"

"No .... simply looking at the figure...."

"But why were you kneeling, then?"

Dio blushed in confusion. The child lifted her eyebrow again and

shrugged her shoulders.

"You don't want to tell me? Very well, don't."

She went up to the couch and picked up from it the gazelle skin which

she had taken off when she came into the room.

"It is cold and damp in your room. You don't know how to keep a fire

in," she said, wrapping herself up. "Well, aren't you going to say

anything? I want to talk to you."

She sat on the couch in the Egyptian fashion, clasping her knees with

her hands and resting her chin on them. Dio sat down beside her.

"You don't know yet who I am?" asked the child, fixing her heavy gaze

upon Dio.

"I don't."

"His wife."

"Whose wife?"

"Are you pretending, or what?"

"The princess?" Dio guessed suddenly.

"Thank heaven, at last!" said the visitor. "Well, why do you sit and

stare at me?"

"Why, what's wrong?"

"What's wrong? The king's daughter, a child of the Sun, is before

you and it doesn't occur to you to make the slightest bow?"

Dio smiled and knelt before her on the couch, as a grown up person

kneels before a child to caress it.

"Rejoice, Princess Ankhsenbatona, my dear, welcome guest!" she said

with all her heart and was about to kiss the princess's hand, when

the girl quickly drew it away.

"There, now she is grabbing my hand! Is that the way to bow to

royalty?"

"Isn't it?"

"You should bow down to the ground! Well, I don't care, I don't want

your bows, sit down.... Wait a minute though!"

She also knelt suddenly in front of Dio.

"Turn to the light, please; that's it!"

Dio turned her face to the lamp that stood on the floor by the

couch--a flower of blue glass on a high alabaster stand. Ankhi

approached her face to Dio's and with a business-like frown began to

scrutinize her in silence.

"Yes, very beautiful," she whispered at last as though speaking to

herself. "What rouge do you use?"

"I don't use any."

"What next?"

She licked her little finger and raising it to Dio's face asked:

"May I try?"

"Do."

Ankhi slowly moved her finger along Dio's cheek and looked to see if

the tip of it was red. No, it was not red.

"Strange!" she said in surprise. "How old are you?"

"Twenty."

"How is it you are so young?"

"But twenty isn't old, is it?"

"Oh yes, it is with us. We are married at ten and grandmothers at

thirty. But, of course, with you in the north everything is

different: the sun makes people old and the cold keeps them young,"

she said complacently, evidently repeating somebody else's words.

She sat down in the same attitude as before, clasping her knees with

her hands, and sank into thought.

"Why do you laugh?" she asked, again fixing her heavy gaze on Dio.

"I am not laughing, I am merely happy."

"What about?"

"I don't know. Simply because you have come."

"It's always 'simply' with you.... Do you imagine I am a little

girl? .... What has he said to you about me?"

Dio understood that 'he' was Tuta.

"He said you were very clever and a beauty and that he loved you more

than anything in the world."

"Nonsense! You just say this out of kindness.... You must have both

been laughing at me. Has he told you that I play dolls?"

"No, he hasn't."

"But I do play! I played last summer and will play again if I want

to. I don't care if they do laugh at me. The king says children are

better than grown-ups, wiser, they know more. Eternity, he says, is

a child playing with, playing..."

She forgot what Eternity was playing with and flushed crimson.

"Ah, curse the thing! The wool has again made my head hot." She

pulled the wig off her head and flung it away. The talc cup clinked

against the wall; the lotos stem broke and the flower hung down

piteously.

"Do you imagine that I have dressed up for you? Not likely! I am

going to supper at the palace..."

Her head was shaven and had such a long, vegetable, marrow-like skull

that Dio almost cried out with surprise. In Egypt long heads were

regarded as particularly beautiful in girls. The strange custom of

bandaging newborn children's heads in order to lengthen their skulls

was brought to Egypt from the Kingdom of Mitanni, the midnight land

by the upper Euphrates, whence Akhnaton's mother, Queen Tiy, came.

All the King's daughters were long-headed. Noble ladies and, later

on, men suddenly developed long skulls also: they wore special skull

caps--"royal marrows"--made of the finest antelope skins.

Very likely Princess Ankhi took off her wig on purpose to boast of

the shape of her head to Dio: "You may have rosy cheeks, but I have a

royal marrow!"

"And is it true you are a sorceress, they say?"

"No, it isn't."

"Then what did they want to burn you for?"

Dio said nothing.

"Again, you don't want to tell me?"

"I don't."

"You killed the god Bull, your Mreura, or was it Hapius?"

Hapius was the bull of Memphis and Mreura the bull of Heliopolis, the

incarnate god of the Sun. "We, too, had a Mreura," Ankhi went on,

not waiting for an answer. "It died two years ago: I was very fond

of it. It was old and blind. I used to go into its stable, put my

arms round it and kiss its head, and it would lick my face and bellow

into my ear as though to say something. To kill a creature like

that, good heavens! It's like killing a baby...."

She paused, and looking at Dio from under her brows said suddenly:

"They have found a wax doll in the palace."

"What wax doll?"

"A charmed one, with its heart pierced by a needle; the person whose

name is written on the wax is sure to die. The king's name was

written on it; they found it in the king's bedchamber...."

She paused again and asked:

"How long have you been here?"

"Five days."

"And the wax doll was found the day before yesterday."

"Well, what of it?"

"Nothing. One can't stop people talking and they say all sorts of

things .... And why do you sit at home hiding from everyone and only

come out at night?"

Her face worked suddenly, the eyes flashed angrily, the lips trembled

and she said, looking straight at Dio:

"Are you his concubine?"

"Whose?"

"Tuta's."

Dio clasped her hands in dismay.

"What nonsense, princess darling!"

"Why nonsense?"

"Because I cannot be anybody's concubine: priestesses of the Mother

are perpetual virgins. And, besides it's a matter of taste. His

Highness ... may I speak the truth, you won't be angry?"

"No, speak."

"His Highness is very nice, but I don't like him at all."

Ankhi looked at her, heaved a deep sigh, as a person suddenly

relieved of violent pain, and whispered:

"Is it true?"

"Why, look into my eyes, don't you see it is true?"

Ankhi looked straight into her eyes; then turned away and buried her

face in her hands; her thin shoulders quivered and all her body

trembled with silent sobs.

Dio moved up to her and putting her arms round her pressed the girl's

long shaven head--the royal marrow--to her bosom.

"Don't you believe me?"

"Yes, I do. I have known all along that it was all untrue about your

being a sorceress, and the wax doll. I said it all on purpose..."

"Then why are you crying?"

"Oh, because I am so mean, so horrid! I liked you the moment I saw

you and so I got angry. I am always angry with the people I am fond

of.... But you don't know all yet! I made old Iagu promise--he is

an old servant, a faithful dog and loves me as his own soul--I made

him promise that he would kill you if you really were Tuta's

mistress. I would have killed him and myself, too--that's what I am

like! When the devil gets hold of me I can do anything...."

She wept again.

"There, there, my little darling, my sweet little girl!" Dio

whispered, stroking her head, and suddenly she remembered she had

said almost the same words when she caressed Eoia just like that.

"That's all over now and done with! Let us be friends, shall we?"

Ankhi said nothing but pressed more closely to her. Dio kissed her

on the lips without speaking and herself wept for joy.

Joy rose in her heart, like the sun, and the fear she had felt melted

away like a shadow.

"Darling, darling child!" she thought, "it is he himself, Akhnaton,

the Joy of the Sun, has sent you to me as joy's messenger!"

II

In the silence of the night a trumpet proclaimed joy unto men. First

one, then another, a third--and then scores and hundreds of trumpets

played the hymn to Aton:

Glorious is Thy rising in the East,

Lord and giver of life, Aton!

Thou sendest Thy rays and darkness flees,

All the earth is filled with joy.

The trumpets sounded at every end of the city, arousing many-voiced

echoes in the mountains. Just as cocks call to one another and crow

to the Sun in the night, so did the trumpets call at the hour before

dawn when men's sleep is like the sleep of death, as is said in

Aton's hymn:

Men sleep in darkness like the dead,

Their heads are wrapped up and their nostrils stopped.

Stolen are the things that are under their heads,

While they know it not.

Every lion cometh forth from his den,

Serpents creep from out of their holes,

The Creator has gone to rest and the world is mute.

But the trumpet was waking the sleepers as the call of the Lord will

one day wake the dead. Old men and children, slaves and free, rich

and poor, foreigners and Egyptians, were all running to greet the

newborn sun, the god Aton.

Dio was roused by the sound of the trumpet in the small chapel of

Aton's temple where she slept that night with the girl singers,

musicians and dancers who were to accompany her in her dance before

the king.

"The trumpets call, the trumpets! Get up, girls! The sun is born,

rejoice!" she heard the voices round her.

They embraced and kissed one another, wishing each other new joy with

the new sun.

They ran out on to the flat roof of the temple.

It was a warm night: after midnight the wind had changed to the south

and the temperature rose at once. Big round white clouds were

floating across the sky like sails. Misty, fluffy stars twinkled

like wind-blown flames and a waning copper-yellow moon lay on its

back over the black ridge of the Lybian mountains.

Heaven, earth, water, plants, animals--all were still asleep; men

alone were awake. The town down below was stirring like an ant-heap.

Lights were appearing in the windows, lamps were smoking on the

roofs, torches glowed in the streets filled with dark crowds that

streamed along like rivers. There was a hum of voices, rustle of

feet, stamping of hoofs, clatter of wheels, neighing of horses, cries

of soldiers and the ceaseless call of the trumpets--the hymn to Aton:

Glorious is Thy rising in the East,

Lord and giver of life, Aton!

Thou sendest Thy rays and darkness flees,

All the earth is filled with joy.

"There goes the royal procession! Let us run downstairs, girls, we

can see better from there!" cried one of those who were looking from

the roof of Aton's temple, and they all flew downstairs like a flock

of turtle-doves, on to the flat top of the gates nearest the street

where the procession was passing.

"The king! The king! Down! Down! Down!" cried the runners,

scattering the crowd with their staves as they marched along in step,

their bare backs bent double.

The king's bodyguard, the Hittite Amazons, came next. Yellow skinned

and flat chested, with narrow eyes and high cheek bones, one warrior

lock on their shaven heads, they carried bronze double-edged axes,

the sacred weapon of the Virgin-Mother.

Then came courtiers, judges, councillors, warlords, treasurers,

clerks, priests, soothsayers, scribes, chiefs of the bakers, chiefs

of the butlers, chiefs of the king's stables, lords of the

bedchamber, masters of the robes, hairdressers, launderers, perfumers

and so on: all were dressed in white robes with pointed, stiffly

starched aprons; all wore the special skullcaps that made their

shaven heads look like the egg-shaped 'royal marrows.'

Then came the censer-bearers, lavishly burning incense, its white

clouds turning rosy in the torchlight; these were followed by the

fan-bearers waving multi-coloured fans of ostrich feathers and real

flowers, fixed on long poles.

Finally there came twenty-four black Ethiopian youths, naked but for

short aprons of parrot feathers and wearing golden nose rings; they

carried on their shoulders a tall ivory throne covered with leaf gold

with lions for a pedestal.

Dio clearly saw the leopard skin on the narrow boyish shoulders, the

simple long white robe of such transparent linen that one could see

through it above the elbows of the thin dark-skinned boyish arms, the

coloured hieroglyphics of Aton's name; she saw the staff--symbol of

godhead--in one hand and the scourge in the other; the pear-shaped

royal tiara, made of pale cham, a mixture of gold and silver, studded

with small stars of lapis lazuli, and the golden snake of the sun,

Uta, coiled on the forehead.

She saw all this but she did not dare to look at his face. "I will

look when I am dancing before him," she thought, as she ran upstairs

to the roof of Aton's temple.

"Down! Down! The king comes! the god comes!" the runners shouted,

and people bowed to the ground.

The procession entered the gates of Aton's temple.

The temple of the Sun, the House of Joy, consisted of seven pillared

courts, with tower-like pylon gates, side-chapels and three hundred

and sixty-five altars. Seven courts were the seven temples of the

seven peoples, for as it says in the hymn to Aton:

Thou hast carried them all away captive,

Thou bindest them by Thy love.

There was a time when by 'people'--_romet_--the Egyptians meant

themselves only; all other nations were excluded; but now all were

brothers, children of one Heavenly Father, Aton. The Temple of the

Sun was the temple for all mankind.

Seven courts, seven temples: the first was dedicated to Tammuz of

Babylon, the second to Attis of the Hittites, the third to Adon of

Canaan, the fourth to Adun of Crete, the fifth to Mithra of Mitanni,

the sixth to Ashmun of Phoenicia, the seventh to Zagreus-Bacchus of

Thrace. All these god-men who had suffered, died and risen from the

dead, were but shadows of the one sun that was to rise--the Son.

The seven open temples led into the eighth, the secret one, which no

one but the king and the high priest dared enter. There in perpetual

twilight stood sixteen giant Osirises made of alabaster, pale as

phantoms, tightly bound with winding sheets, wearing gods' tiaras and

holding a staff--symbol of god-head--in one hand and a scourge in the

other; the faces of all were in the likeness of King Akhnaton.

Passing through the seven open temples the procession approached the

eighth, the secret one. The king went into it alone, and, while he

was praying there, all waited outside. When he came out, they

mounted by an outside staircase on to the flat roof of the upper

temple, which was built on the roof of the lower.

The great altar of the Sun stood here; it was made of huge blocks of

cream-coloured sandstone, pale as a girl's body and shaped like a

pyramid with its top cut off; two gradual approaches, without steps,

led up to it. On a high platform at the top of the pyramid a

sanctuary fire was perpetually burning, and, above it on a column of

alabaster, the sun disc of Aton, made of pale cham--a mixture of gold

and silver--glistened with a dull brilliance. It was the highest

point of the huge edifice and the first and last ray of the sun was

always reflected upon it.

The king, the queen, the princesses and the heir apparent--only those

in whose veins flowed the blood of the Sun--went up to the top of the

pyramid, and then the king alone ascended the platform where the fire

was burning.

People thronged in the seven courts of the temple down below, on the

pylons, the staircases, the roofs of both temples; it was like a

living mountain of people and the highest point of it was one

man--the king.

"I come to glorify Thy rays, living Aton, one eternal God!" he said

stretching out his arms to the Sun.

"Praise be to Thee, living Aton, who hast made the heavens and the

mysteries thereof," answered the high priest Merira, who stood at the

base of the pyramid. "Thou art in heaven and Thy beloved son

Akhnaton is on earth!"

"I show the way of life to all of you, generations that have been and

are to come," the king continued. "Give praise to the God Aton, the

living God, and ye shall live! Gather together and come, all ye

people of salvation; turn to the Lord, all ye ends of the earth, for

Aton is God and there is none other God but He."

"The God Aton is the only God and there is none other God but He,"

answered the innumerable crowds down below, and the call of thousands

was like the roar of the sea.

The moon had set, the stars were hardly visible. The wind dropped,

the clouds cleared away, the sky was almost grey. And suddenly a

giant ray, shaped like a pyramid with its base on the ground and its

top in the zenith, appeared in the morning twilight and white

opalescent lights, like sheet lightning, flickered across it--the

Light of the Zodiac, the forerunner of the Sun.

The king, with his wife, daughters and the heir apparent, descended

from the pyramid altar and went into a painted and gilded tent that

stood at the eastern side of it.

There was a sound of flutes and a ringing of citherns, then came

subdued singing and a slow procession of priestesses, carrying a

coffin on their shoulders, mounted the flat roof of the temple by an

outer staircase. A dead body wrapped up in a white winding sheet lay

in the coffin. The priestesses placed the coffin on the dark purple

carpet before the king's tent.

Two mourners came forward, one stood at the head and the other at the

feet of the corpse, weeping and calling to each other like the two

sister goddesses Isis and Neftis at the tomb of Osiris, their

brother. Meanwhile the others, naked but for a narrow black belt

below the navel and a black 'bandage of shame' between the legs, were

dancing the wild, ancient, magical dance of Osiris-Bata, the rising

god, the vegetating ear of corn: standing in a row on one leg they

raised the other leg all at once, lowered it and then raised it

again, higher and higher each time, so that at last the toes went up

higher than the heads.

"Arise, arise, arise! O Sun of all suns, O first fruits of them that

slept, arise!" they repeated, also all at once, to the ringing of the

citherns and the squealing of flutes. This meant: "grow up as high

as our legs are thrown up, o ear of corn, arise, thou dead one!"

And the mourners wept:

"Come to thy sister, come, my Beloved,

Thou whose heart now beats no more!

I am thy sister who loved thee on earth,

No one has loved thee more than I!"

Suddenly a quiver passed over the corpse, as over a chrysalis when a

butterfly stirs within it--a tremor that was like the tremulous

lightnings in the sky, as though the same miracle were happening in

the human body and in the heavens.

The grave clothes wrapped round the corpse were slowly unwound; the

hand was slowly raised to the face as that of one waking from

profound slumber; the knees bent slowly; the elbows rested against

the bottom of the coffin and the body began to rise.

"Arise! Arise! Arise!" the dancers repeated as an incantation,

throwing up their legs higher than their heads in the magical dance.

The light of the Zodiac was no longer visible in the rosy light of

the dawn. A glowing ember blazed up in the misty crevice of the

Arabian mountains and the first ray of the sun glistened on Aton's

disc.

At the same moment the corpse rose, opened its eyes and smiled--and

in that smile there was eternal life, the sun that has no setting.

"Dio, the dancer, the Pearl of the Kingdom of the Seas," a whisper

was heard in the crowd of the courtiers.

The priestesses finished their magical dance and fell, face

downwards, on the ground. The citherns and flutes were silent except

one which was still weeping; it was like a lonely bird crying in the

twilight:

"On my bed in the night

I looked for him,

For him whom my soul loveth,

I sought him and did not find him."

Stepping out of the coffin, Dio moved towards the sun. She began the

dance slowly and quietly, as though in her sleep; there was still

something of the stiffness of death in her limbs. But as the sun

rose higher the dance grew quicker and more impetuous. Her head was

thrown back, her arms were stretched towards the sun; the white veils

fell on the purple carpet, revealing the innocent body, neither

masculine nor feminine--at once masculine and feminine--a marvel of

godlike beauty. The sun was kissing her and she was surrendering

herself to it, the mortal uniting with the god as a bride with her

lover.

"Put me as a seal upon thine heart,

"As a ring upon thine hand

For strong as death is love,"

sobbed the flute.

The song stopped suddenly; the dancer fell flat on her back as though

dead. One of the priestesses ran up to her and covered her with the

white grave clothes.

The soft sound of footsteps and a voice that seemed familiar, though

she had never heard it, reached Dio's ears. She raised her head and

saw the king face to face. He was saying something to her but she

could not make it out. She looked into his face eagerly as though

recognising him after a long, long parting: this was perhaps how

lovers recognised each other in the world beyond the grave.

She recalled her fear of him and was surprised not to be feeling any.

A simple, quite a simple, face like anybody else's; the face of the

son of man, the brother of man, gentle, very gentle like the face of

the god whose name is Quiet Heart.

"Are you very tired?" he was asking, probably not for the first time.

"No, not very."

"How well you danced! Our dancers can't do it. Is this your Cretan

dance?"

"Both ours and yours together."

He, too, was gazing at her as though trying to recognise her.

"Where have I seen you?"

"Nowhere, sire."

"Strange, I keep fancying I have seen you before...."

She was sitting at his feet and he stood bending over her. Both were

uncomfortable. The white sheet kept slipping off her naked body and

she was trying unsuccessfully to keep it on. She suddenly felt

confused and blushed.

"Are you cold? Go along and get dressed," he said and blushed, too.

'Just like a little boy,' she thought, and recalled the figure at the

Charuk palace--the boy who looked like a girl.

He took a ring off his finger, put it on hers, and, bending down

still lower, kissed her on the head. Then he left her and returned

to the royal tent.

"The fish has bitten!" an old dignitary, Ay, Tuta's friend and

patron, who stood next to him in the crowd of courtiers, whispered in

his ear.

"You think so?" Tuta asked joyfully.

"Set your mind at rest: it has bitten. You couldn't find another

such pair: they have been made for each other. Man and woman--a hook

and an eye--are two in love, but here there are four."

"How do you mean?"

"Why, there are two in him, two in her; an eye--a hook, a hook--an

eye; once they catch there will be no disentangling them."

"You are a wise man, Ay!" Tuta said in delight.

III

A choir of blind singers began the hymn to Aton.

They had been tramps and beggars walking along the high roads from

village to village. One day the king heard them at the gates of

Aton's temple and liked their singing so much that he made them

temple choristers--that God might receive praise not only from the

happy, the wise and the seeing, but also from the blind, wretched and

ignorant.

There were seven of them. They sat on their heels in a row before

the king's tent, dressed only in short white aprons, their limbs thin

as sticks, their bodies, with distended stomachs and the ribs showing

through the skin, blackened by the sun, their heads shaven, their

faces wrinkled; the folds of the skin near the mouth resembled those

of an old sick dog; they were snub-nosed and, like dogs, seemed to be

always sniffing; there were narrow, inflamed slits where their eyes

should have been.

The leader of the choir sat in front playing a high seven-stringed

harp, while the others, clapping their hands in time, sang in nasal

voices but with remarkable intensity of feeling. They looked

straight at the sun with their blind eyes but, not seeing the god of

light, Ra, they glorified the god of warmth, Shu:

"Shu our Father, Shu our Mother!

Weeping we have lost our sight.

We praise the sun out of the night.

Have mercy on us, poor blind men!"

And when they finished the melancholy song they began a joyous one:

Glorious is thy rising in the East,

Lord and giver of life, Aton

Thou sendest thy rays and darkness flees,

And the earth is filled with joy.

The roof of the temple was flooded with sunshine, but the seven

courts below were still in the shadow and only the high tops of the

pylons were gilded by the sun; the bright-coloured pennants on the

masts above them fluttered gaily in the morning breeze, white doves

flapped their wings joyfully and winter swallows, in their whistling

flight, cleft the air singing to the sun, shouting and shrilly

calling with joy: 'Ra!'

The king mounted the pyramidal altar once more and threw a handful of

incense into the fire. The flame blazed up, turning pale in the sun,

clouds of rosy-white smoke rose in the air and immediately similar

clouds rose from the three hundred and sixty-five altars in the seven

courts below: anyone seeing it from a distance would have thought the

city was on fire.

Slowly raising his arms to the sky, as though offering an invisible

sacrifice, the king proclaimed:

"All there is between the eastern hills and the western

hills--fields, waters, villages, plants, animals, men--all is brought

as sacrifice to thee, Aton, the living Sun, so that thy kingdom may

be on earth as it is in heaven, O Father!"

The black harvest of human heads bent down like the harvest corn in

the wind. Trumpets, flutes, citherns, harps, lyres, timbrels,

cymbals, kinnors combined with the thousands of voices into one

deafening chorus.

"Sing unto the Lord a new song, sing unto the Lord, the earth and all

that therein is! Give unto the Lord glory and honour, oh ye tribes

of the earth! Let the heavens rejoice and the earth sing in triumph!

Rejoice, Joy of the Sun, the only begotten Son of the Sun, Akhnaton

Uaenra!"

Gazing into the king's face, Dio thought with as much joy as though

she were already seeing the Son Who was to come: "no son of man has

been nearer to Him than he!"

Only high officials were admitted into the enclosure round the king's

tent. But beyond the enclosure a special place was set apart for the

new converts--men of all classes and nationalities--Babylonians,

Hittites, Canaanites, Aegians, Lybians, Mitannians, Thracians,

Ethiopians and even Jews.

Suddenly Dio saw in that crowd Issachar, the son of Hamuel. He was

watching the king intently, his mouth twisted in a malignant smile.

Dio could not take her eyes off Issachar's face: she was trying to

remember something.

The singing stopped and in the sudden stillness the king's voice was

heard:

"Lord, before the world was made, thou hast revealed thy will to thy

Son who lives forever. Thou, Father, art in my heart and no one

knows thee but me, thy Son."

"Cursed be the deceiver who said 'I am the Son,'"--Dio suddenly

recalled Issachar's words in the Gem-ton Chapel and, looking at the

king again, she thought with terror: "Who is he? Who is he? Who is

he?"

IV

The children of Israel which came into Egypt were seventy souls; but

now the Lord has made us as many as the stars in heaven. And the

king of Egypt said unto his people 'behold the people of the children

of Israel are more and mightier than we. Come on, let us deal wisely

with them, lest they multiply and it come to pass that when there

falleth out any war they join also unto our enemies.' And so they

did set over us taskmasters to afflict us with their burdens and they

made our lives bitter with hard bondage in mortar and in brick. And

we sighed and groaned by reason of the bondage and our cry had come

unto the Lord. And the Lord stretched out his hand and brought us

out of Egypt, from the house of bondage. And when the King of Egypt

and his army overtook us by the Red Sea, Moses stretched out his hand

over the sea and the waters were divided and the children of Israel

went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground and the waters,

were a wall unto them on their right hand and on their left. And the

waters came again upon the Egyptians and covered them; they sank to

the bottom as a stone."

This was the story as the Israelites told it, but the Egyptians

laughed at them:

"Nothing of the kind has happened: no king of Egypt ever perished in

the sea, and the leader of the Jews whom they call in Egyptian

_Mosu--Child, Son_--is not a 'Son of God' at all, as they imagine,

but the son of a slave, a wicked sorcerer, murderer and thief, who

ran away into the desert to the Midian nomads and then secretly

returned to Egypt and became the leader of a robber band of Khabiri,

the Plunderers, who are the same as the Jews. The Khabiri are

continually rising in the border lands of Egypt. In the days of King

Tutmose the Fourth there was such a rising; a band of Khabiri went to

the desert of Sinai and perished there of hunger and thirst together

with _Mosu_ or Moses, their leader."

This was how the sons of Ham mocked the sons of Israel. And, indeed,

not only the Egyptians but many of the Israelites themselves--for

Moses led only a part of them out of Egypt--refused to believe the

miracles of Exodus or to worship the new god, Jahve.

"What sort of god is it?" they asked. "We do not know him. Jahve in

the Midian language means 'Destroyer.' He is the god of the nomads

of Sinai and not of the Israelites, the demon of the desert, a

consuming fire. His son, Moses, covered his face when he appeared

before the people lest they should discover whom he was like. No,

the gods of our fathers, the gentle Elohim, were different: Eliun,

the Father, El-Shaddai the Son, and El Ruach, the Mother. This new

god is anger, tempest, consuming fire and those three are mercy,

loving kindness, dewy freshness."

And they also said:

"There has been no Exodus but there will be; there has been no Son

yet but the Son is to come according to the words of our father

Jacob: 'the sceptre shall not depart from Judah nor a lawgiver from

between his feet until the Messiah come.'"

Hamuel, son of Avinoam of the house of Judah, a priest of El-Shaddai,

worshipped the old gods, the Elohim, hated the new god Jahve and

awaited the coming of the Messiah.

He was a wise man; he doctored the sick; told fortunes by throwing

dice--_teraphim_--which revealed the divine preordination of human

destinies; he received good pay for this and also made money by a

traffic, of which the Customs officers knew nothing, in silphium, a

medicinal herb from Lybia, and the balm of Gilead for anointing the

dead. He lived in the town of Bubastis at the mouth of the Nile,

protected by gods and respected by men.

He had two sons: the elder Eliav by Thamar, an Israelite, and the

younger Issachar by Asta, an Egyptian.

It had happened that Hamuel went on business to the town of Mendes;

there, in the temple of the god Goat, he saw a little girl priestess,

Asta, and fell in love with her so much that he did not hesitate to

give a hundred gold rings, _utens_, the price of thirty pairs of

oxen, to pay for her flight from the temple: the priestesses

betrothed to the god could not under the penalty of death marry

anyone and especially not an 'unclean' Jew. Asta loved her mortal

husband ardently, but could not forgive herself for being unfaithful

to the immortal one and suffered such remorse that her mind became

slightly deranged. When she gave birth to a son she imagined that

she had conceived him by the god: the priestesses believed that the

god Goat, the fiery-red Bindidi--Sun-Ra in the flesh and the source

of virility in men and beasts--had carnal union with them. Asta

whispered strange stories to the little Iserker, as she called

Issachar in Egyptian, and sang strange songs to him about the

golden-fleeced, golden-horned Goat that grazed in the azure meadows

of the sky and came down sometimes to love the beautiful daughters of

the earth.

Hamuel's first wife, the Israelite, Thamar, bitterly hated the

Egyptian and her 'devil's brood, the son of the stinking Goat.' And

there really was something goat-like in Issachar's face--in his thick

hooked nose, thick lips, slanting yellow eyes and, when he grew up,

in the long reddish curls that hung alongside his cheeks, the long

parted reddish beard and the raucous, high-pitched, bleating voice.

The schoolboys teased little Iserker and called him "the red goat!"

Egyptians considered red-haired people unclean because Set, the

devil, was red like the sand of the desert, his kingdom: seeing a

red-haired man in the street passers-by spat to avert bad fortune and

mothers hid their children from his evil eye. 'It is a bad thing to

be red-haired'--the little boy had known this ever since he could

remember himself, but he could not decide, even when he had grown up,

whether it was a good or a bad thing to be the son of the god Goat.

It might be good for Iserker, the Egyptian, but bad for Issachar, the

Israelite; but he never knew whether he was Iserker or Issachar and

this was perpetual torture to him.

When, in the early years of the reign of Amenhotep the Fourth, or

Akhnaton, as he was to call himself later--news came of the victories

of Joshua in the Promised Land, a rebellion broke out among the

Israelites left in Egypt. The rebellion started in the town of

Bubastis. Hamuel's son Eliav, who was about twenty-five years old,

had been seen at the head of the rebels' army. The rebellion was

crushed; Eliav ran away and instead of him Issachar, his brother, who

was completely innocent, was seized and thrown into prison as a

hostage. Asta went from one judge to another giving bribes right and

left; they took the bribes but kept the hostage. Then someone

informed against Eliav, who had been hiding in the marshy jungles of

the Delta; he was seized and Issachar released.

Soon after this Asta died suddenly after drinking some cold beer on a

hot day; a few days later two maid-servants in Hamuel's house had a

quarrel and one of them told that the other had poisoned their

mistress. When both were cross-examined, the accused confessed that

she poisoned Asta at the instigation of Thamar. The latter did not

deny it and said to her husband straight out:

"I have killed Asta because she informed against Eliav. Kill me,

too: blood for blood, life for life."

She spoke in this way because she worshipped the fierce Jahve, the

Avenger. But Hamuel, a priest of the gentle El-Shaddai, had mercy on

her and merely ordered her to leave his house for ever. That same

night Thamar hanged herself and Hamuel did not survive her long--he

died of grief. On his deathbed he admonished Issachar, his son, to

await the Messiah.

Left alone in the world, Issachar went to Nut-Amon--Thebes--to his

maternal grandfather, the priest Ptahotep, who was the keeper of

scrolls in the sanctuary of Amon; there he assumed the rank of a

junior priest--_uab_--and became a pupil of Ptamose, the high priest

of Amon.

When the apostate king began to persecute the old faith, many of

Ptamose's pupils proved false to their teacher either through fear or

love of gain; but Issachar remained true to him.

Issachar's perpetual torment was that he could not decide whether he

was a Jew or an Egyptian; through revealing to him the mysteries of

the divine wisdom, Ptamose solved the question for him: the deeper

Issachar studied them, the clearer he saw that the god-man, Osiris,

who had been slain, and He of Whom the prophets of Israel had said:

"He has poured out His soul unto death and made intercession for the

transgressors" were one and the same Messiah.

V

After the mutiny at Thebes, Issachar went to Akhetaton, the City of

the Sun, to see his brother Eliav and to carry out a behest of

Ptamose so secret and terrible that he was afraid even to think of

it, to say nothing of discussing it with anyone.

At the bottom of a deep cauldron-shaped hollow among the rocks of the

Arabian hills, east of the City and within half an hour's walk from

it, lay the penal settlement of the Israelites sentenced to work in

the neighbouring quarries of Hat-Nub. The Egyptians called it the

Dirty Jews' Village and the Israelite's name for it was Sheol--Hell.

Some ten days after Aton's nativity, Issachar walked to Sheol to see

his brother Eliav.

An old man of seventy, looking like Abraham, with a fine, deeply

lined, dark-skinned face and a long white beard, was walking beside

him; he was Issachar's uncle, Ahiram, son of Halev, a rich merchant

from the town of Tanis. They were climbing by a narrow goat's path

one of the hills west of Sheol.

The sun was setting in the red mist, as in a pool of blood, and the

bare rocks of yellow sandstone, covered in places with waves of loose

sand, glowed with a red hot glow.

"I suppose you took part in the Nut-Amon rising, my boy, didn't you?"

Ahiram asked.

"I? Oh, no. I am a peaceful man. And besides the holy father does

not allow us to fight," Issachar answered. By 'holy father' he meant

Ptamose.

The old man shook his head doubtfully.

"Come, come, you are telling fibs, I see it from your eyes! All of

you, priests of Amon, are rebels. But remember, my son, nothing is

to be gained by rebellion."

"What is one to do then?" Issachar asked.

The old man stroked his long white beard with a sly smile.

"Why, this; listen. When our forefather, Abraham, went to Egypt from

Canaan because of the famine, he said to Sarah, his wife: 'you are a

fair woman to look upon; say to the Egyptians you are my sister that

it may be well with me for your sake.' She did as he asked and was

taken into Pharaoh's house, and it was well with Abraham for her sake

and he had sheep and oxen and he-asses, and men-servants and

maidservants and she-asses, and camels. And the Lord plagued Pharaoh

and his house with great plagues because of Sarah, Abraham's wife.

This is how it was, my son! Blessed be the children of Israel, the

people preserved by the Lord! They shall overthrow their enemies by

cunning and not by rebellion or violence," the old man said in

conclusion, and his eyes sparkled with Abraham's slyness.

A young eagle flew up from the rock, silvery-grey in the glow of

sunset that lighted it from below; the royal bird circled round and

round, looking out for prey in the desert--a baby antelope or a

bustard.

"I bare you on eagles' wings and brought you unto myself," Issachar

recalled the words of God to Israel. "This is how he bears me now,"

he thought. He remembered, too, what Ptamose said when he sent him

to the City of the Sun: "Be firm and have courage, my son, for the

Lord is with you: He will do it for you." And he gave him a small

bronze sacrificial knife, with the head of the god Amon-Ra for a

handle; Ptamose did not say what the knife was for and Issachar did

not ask--he knew.

Recalling this he thrust his hand under his cloak, and feeling the

knife hidden in his broad leather belt, clasped its handle firmly and

tenderly as a lover clasps the hand of his mistress. "Well, am I

afraid?" he thought. "No, not afraid at all: He will do it for me.

He bears me and will bring me unto Himself!" And turning to Ahiram

he said:

"Dear uncle, will you get me a pass?"

He had wanted to say this for several days, but did not dare to, and

he had not known a minute before that he would say it.

"What pass?"

"Into the palace to-morrow."

"Have you gone crazy, my boy? Where am I to get a permit for you

with the night coming on?"

"Uncle dear, you can do anything, you know everybody, you have

influence. Do get it for me, please do!" Issachar entreated him as

though it were a matter of life and death.

"What do you want it for?" Ahiram asked, looking at him attentively.

"To see the king!"

"But you have seen him already."

"Only from a distance. To-morrow is the day of petitions, everybody

will be allowed to go right up to the throne. I should see him quite

near, face to face. I like him very much. Joy of the Sun, Joy of

the Sun, to see him is a joy." Issachar said ecstatically.

"No, you shall not have a pass," Ahiram said decidedly, shaking his

head. "God only knows what is in your mind, you might get me into

trouble...."

Issachar took a purse from his bosom and producing from it a two-inch

sacred scarabee, Kheper, made of beautiful Sinai lapis-lazuli, gave

it Ahiram.

The old man seized it greedily, weighed it on his palm and

scrutinized it for a few minutes.

"A fine stone," he said at last, divided between the delight of a

connoisseur and the wish to beat down the price. "There is a little

flaw in it, it looks dull and greenish in one place, but it is a

lovely thing all the same. It's from Amon's treasury, isn't it? Did

you steal it?"

"What next, uncle! I am not a thief. Holy father gave it to me."

"Oh, what for? Though indeed there are all sorts of fools in the

world--some give presents for nothing. How much do you want for it?"

"Nothing, only get me the pass."

The old man's eyes glittered, he examined the stone again, and even

tried it with his tongue and teeth; then he stroked his beard with a

quick, as it were, thievish movement, and lifting an eyebrow and

screwing up one eye, said giving back the stone:

"Look here, my son, don't sleep in the town to-night: there will be a

search. The chief of the guards, Mahu, has got wind of something and

is looking for the Nut-Amon rebels. Spend the night in the Goats'

cave above Sheol; Naaman will take you there. If I procure the pass

I will come there before midnight, and if I don't it will mean things

have gone wrong--then save yourself and run away."

Issachar handed him the stone once more, but he did not take it.

"No, I will not take it in advance. Payment is due when the goods

are delivered. I am an honest merchant."

He was speaking the truth--he was honest; an honest man and a rogue

at the same time, after the manner of Abraham.

"I am sorry for you, my red-haired boy!" he said quietly, with an old

man's benignity. "Your brother Eliav has perished for nothing; mind

the same thing does not happen to you.... Remember, my son: man is

born to suffering as a spark flies upward, and yet the sight of the

sun is sweet to the living; a living dog is better than a dead lion."

"He has bought my soul for a stone and here he pities me," Issachar

marvelled. He looked once more at the eagle still circling in the

sky, thought of what was to happen next day and his heart throbbed

with joy: "He hears me and will bring me unto himself!"

They climbed to the top of the hill and saw in the hollow below a

regular quadrangle of uniform houses, intersected by a network of

streets and surrounded by high walls.

The dead desert was all round; not a tree, not a bush, nothing but

stones and sand; in the winter it was a cold grave, in the summer a

scorching oven, a true Hell--Sheol.

A stench as though of decaying carrion came from below. Ahiram

sniffed and frowned.

"Oho-hoho! It's the human smell, the smell of two-legged cattle.

There is no well or spring near, and one can't be forever going to

the river to fetch water; they stifle in their own stench, poor

things!"

They descended rapidly by the goats' path to the bottom of the valley

and approached the entrance to Sheol. Ahiram knocked. A window in

the wall was opened, the gatekeeper peeped out and, recognizing the

old man, unlocked the gate. He did not mean to admit Issachar, but

Ahiram whispered something in his ear, thrust something into his hand

and he let them both in.

Long, narrow, perfectly straight streets led from the square at the

entrance into the centre of the settlement. One side of each street

was a bare wall and the other a uniform row of mud huts that

resembled stable stalls; the streets were like prison corridors, the

huts like prison cells. There were no storehouses or granaries; all

the inhabitants of Sheol received government rations.

Dirty pools with clouds of flies buzzing over them and heaps of filth

and dung spread such an evil smell that the whole village seemed to

be one enormous heap of refuse.

"I put the plague of leprosy in a house of the land of your

possession," the Lord said to Israel. "If the plague be in the walls

of the house with hollow strokes, greenish and reddish, the stones in

which the plague is shall be taken away and cast into an unclean

place; and if the plague come again and be spread in the house, it is

a fretting leprosy; the house shall be broken down."

All the houses in Sheol had such leprosy. Lifeless stones were

cankered by filth, and living bodies of men even more so; the

unfortunate creatures which came down into Hell while still on earth

were covered with rashes, ulcers, spots, festers, and the terrible

white scabs of leprosy.

The king in his mercy allowed the prisoners' families to live with

them, but this only made matters worse: people were suffering from

overcrowding more than ever. "The dirty Jews' wives are fruitful,"

the gaolers said jeeringly. "In multiplying I will multiply thy seed

as the stars of the heaven." The Lord blessed Israel, but this

blessing turned into a curse; numberless children were born and died,

teeming in the filthy place like maggots in carrion.

"Thou hast carried them all away captive.

Thou bindest them by Thy love."

Issachar recalled the king's hymn to the god Aton. "Fine sort of

love," he thought, "casting the living into hell!"

Ahiram brought his nephew to Eliav's hut and saying good-bye to him

went back to the city to get the pass.

Issachar walked into the half-dark entry. Two mangy sheep dozed in

their stall; a sick old mule and a scraggy ass stood dejectedly by an

empty water trough: beasts of burden carried stones in the quarry and

lived together with the prisoners.

Beside them a decrepit old man, naked but for a ragged loin cloth,

sat on a heap of dung and ashes scraping with a potsherd the white

scabs of leprosy on his body, with a dull, monotonous wail, like the

howling of wind at night. This was Shammai the Righteous, the

grandfather of Eliav's wife Naomi.

He had once been rich, happy and respected by all; he had salt mines

by the Bitter Lakes and a lot of cattle in the Goshen pastures, and

he used to send caravans with wool and salt into Midia. He was a

godfearing man and led so blameless a life that he was surnamed

'Righteous.' He had hoped to live to a happy old age and to die

filled with days. But it pleased God to test him and he was suddenly

deprived of everything. Two of his sons were lost with their caravan

in the desert, probably killed by robbers; the other two perished in

the rebellion. His son-in-law, who was steward over all his

property, falsely accused Shammai of having taken part in the

rebellion. The old man was seized and tried; the judges acquitted

him, but they had a compact with his son-in-law and robbed him of all

he had. Now that he was a beggar all his friends forsook him; his

wife died. He thought of Naomi, his favourite granddaughter, and

came to live with her in Sheol where he fell ill with leprosy.

Sitting day and night among the ashes, he scraped his scabs with a

potsherd and comforted his heart with wailing. All the family had

grown so used to his endless wail that they noticed it no more than

one notices the creaking of a door, the sound of the wind or the

chirping of a grasshopper.

Issachar stopped in the entry and listened.

"Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was

said there is a man child conceived. Why died I not from the womb?

For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept,

then had I been at rest. My soul is weary of my life; I will say

unto God, do not condemn me; show me wherefore thou contendest with

me. Is it good unto thee that thou shouldst destroy the innocent?"

And it seemed to Issachar that Shammai's wail was the lament of the

whole people of Israel and, perhaps, of all mankind from the

beginning to the end of time.

Walking past Shammai, he entered a dark and narrow room dimly lighted

by two small lamps filled with mutton fat, one by the wall, on a

wooden shelf with little clay idols of the gods Elohim, and another

on the low brick platform with a block of stone on it that served as

a table.

Eliav was having supper at that table with his two guests--Aviezer, a

priest, and Naaman, a prophet.

Aviezer was a stout, important-looking man with red cheeks and a

black beard. His luxurious dress of Phoenician patterned material

was not very clean; a number of rings with imitation stones glittered

on his fingers. He came to Sheol bringing alms for the prisoners

from the rich Goshen merchants.

Naaman, a plumber and a prophet--_nabi_--was a little bald old man,

gentle, shy and timid, with the kind and simple face of a poor

Israelite labourer. He came from Thebes with Issachar.

There were other visitors present, but they sat at a distance and

took no part in the supper or the conversation.

When Issachar saw his brother, a tall, round-shouldered, bony man,

with a face so deeply lined that it seemed crumpled, everything else

suddenly vanished from his eyes and he only saw this face--familiar,

strange, pitiful, dear, and terrible.

"Ah, so you have arrived at last; I began to think you weren't

coming," Eliav said, getting up.

Issachar went up to him and was going to embrace him when Eliav

seized his hands with a quick movement and holding him back looked

into his eyes with a laugh:

"Well, I should think we might embrace each Other, or is it beneath

your dignity?" he said, as though it had been Issachar who held

himself back.

Issachar threw his arms round Eliav's neck.

"Well, sit down," said Eliav, disengaging himself and pointing to the

place of honour by his side--a low, half-circular stone chair. "You

see, we are feasting here, enjoying your gifts without you. Thank

you for remembering us and sending alms to us poor beggars. I dare

not offer you anything: you Egyptians think our Jewish food unclean!"

"Why do you say such things, brother?" Issachar began, but broke off,

looking down and flushing crimson. He took a piece off the dish.

"Why, he is eating! He really is, he doesn't despise our food!"

Eliav cried, with the same unkind smile.

Aviezer also smiled into his beard, and Naaman anxiously looked round

at them all with his kind eyes.

"Perhaps you will have a drink, too?" Eliav asked.

Issachar moved up his cup and Eliav filled it from a jug with

pomegranate wine, blood-red and thick as oil--also his brother's

present. He poured some out for himself, also.

"Your health, Iserker!"

He swallowed it at one gulp.

"Splendid wine this! I have never drunk anything like it."

He poured out some more. His wife, Naomi, a young, worn-looking

woman with child, came up to him and whispered in his ear:

"You must not take any more, sir."

"Why not? I haven't seen my brother all these years and I mayn't

have a drink on the occasion?"

He rudely pushed her away, giving her such a blow on the stomach with

his elbow that she nearly fell.

"Oh, my dears, please don't let him drink, there will be trouble!"

she begged the guests, retreating submissively like a beaten dog.

"A second cup to the success of your errand!" Eliav said. "You must

have come to us on business I expect, and not for the pleasure of

seeing your brother. Well, speak up, Iserker! What have you come

for?"

"Issachar, not Iserker," his brother corrected him, paling slightly

and frowning.

"Issachar in Hebrew and Iserker in Egyptian," Eliav answered. "Do

you know yourself what your name is, I wonder? There now, don't be

cross, don't look at me like Abel. I know you want to be an Abel,

but I am not a Cain... Rabbi, what did Cain kill Abel for?" he asked

Aviezer.

"Because God accepted Abel's gift and rejected Cain's."

"And why did God reject it?"

"No one knows this."

"That's always the way: no one knows the chief thing. But that was

just the beginning of it all. The beginning was bad and I expect the

end will be bad, too.... Well then, tell me what news have you

brought us, Abel?"

"Good news, brother: the Lord has heard at last the cry of Israel.

You will soon leave Sheol, captives.... Nabi Naaman, you are God's

prophet, you know it all better than I do. Speak!"

Naaman shook his head, with a shy smile.

"Prophet, indeed! I am a simple man: all my wisdom is in mending

cauldrons and saucepans..."

"Never mind, speak; God will teach you!"

The old man looked down and was silent for a time; then he began

timidly and in a low voice, obviously repeating somebody else's words:

"Thus speaks the Lord of Sabaoth, the God of Israel: strengthen your

arms which have grown weak, steady your knees that tremble. Behold

your God! He shall come and save you; He shall stretch out his arm,

He shall judge and lead his people out of Egypt, as out of the house

of bondage. The second Exodus will be greater than the first, and

the new Leader of Israel greater than Moses!"

He raised his eyes and his voice rang out with sudden force:

"How long, O Lord, shall the ungodly triumph? They trample upon thy

people, they oppress thine inheritance, God of vengeance, Lord God of

vengeance, show thyself, punish the proud! The Lord is to sit in

judgment upon the peoples; He shall be judge of all flesh!"

"He is rather slow about it," Eliav said, with a jeering smile and,

as though in answer to him, Shammai's wail was heard:

"Behold I cry out of wrong but I am not heard; I cry aloud and there

is no judgment! Why does God mock the torture of the innocent? Why

do the wicked live and spend their days in wealth? Why is the earth

given over to evildoers and God gives them countenance? If it is not

His doing, whose doing is it?"

"Do you hear?" Eliav asked, looking straight into Issachar's eyes.

"Shammai is right: there is no judgment of God in the doings of men.

All your prophecies are empty babble. The earth is a paradise for

evildoers and a hell for the innocent, a Sheol. You are wretched

comforters, useless physicians, all of you, damnation upon you and

your God!"

Aviezar looked at Eliav and said, "Do not blaspheme, my son. Woe to

him who disputes with his Maker."

"And what do you say, brother?" Eliav asked, still looking straight

into Issachar's eyes. "Is Shammai right?"

"Yes, he is."

"Who is to answer him, then?"

"The Redeemer."

"And who is the Redeemer?"

"You know yourself."

"No, I don't. So many prophets come to us--not you alone. Some say

that King Akhnaton is the Redeemer. Perhaps you have come to us from

him?"

"Why do you laugh, brother, why do you jeer at what is holy?"

"But do you think you know what is holy? Is it true, they say you

have been converted to the king's faith?"

"No, it is not."

"How is it, then, you were seen the other day at the festival of the

Sun, among the converts? Whom are you deceiving, them or us? Why

are you silent? Speak!"

"What am I to say, brother? You won't believe me in any case. Wait

till to-morrow--to-morrow you shall know all."

"To-morrow? No, tell me at once, at once, what do you mean by saying

'you will soon leave Sheol, captives'? We shall not leave it without

a rebellion. Have you come to stir us up, then?"

"You shall know everything to-morrow," Issachar repeated, getting up.

Eliav got up, too, and seized him by the hand.

"Stop, you shan't go like this! If you won't tell us, you will tell

the king's overseer!"

"Will you inform against me?"

"And why not? An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. I have

suffered for ten years on your account, and now it is your turn.

Come along!"

"Oh, my dears, hold him, hold him, there will be trouble!" Naomi

cried again.

All rushed at Eliav, but before they had time to restrain him, he

dashed to the corner, seized the copper pickaxe, with which he broke

stones in the quarry, ran towards Issachar, and raised it over his

head, shouting:

"Get out of my sight, you son of the stinking Goat, or I'll kill you!"

Issachar ran out of the house, covering his face with his hands.

He ran along the dark streets, stumbling, falling, getting up, and

running on again in terror.

He only came to himself outside the Sheol gates. Naaman had been

running beside him and saying to him something he could not make out;

at last he grasped that Naaman said:

"Let us run to the Goats' Cave and spend the night there."

By a steep narrow footpath cut in the rock, they ascended from the

Sheol valley to the open ground at the top of the hill. A small red

light flickered in the distance. They walked towards it. Fierce

sheep dogs, with heads like spiders, rushed at them barking.

An old shepherd came out to meet them; he drove away the dogs and

welcomed his guests with a low bow, calling Naaman by name. He had

evidently been expecting them and led them straight to the cave at

the top of the cliff overhanging Sheol.

Two young shepherds, who had been sitting by the bonfire in the cave

among a sleeping flock of goats and sheep, got up and also made a low

bow. They put more wood on the fire, spread some sheep-skins on the

ground, and wishing their guests good-night, went out together with

the old shepherd.

Issachar and Naaman sat down by the fire.

"Man is born to suffering as a spark flies upward," Issachar recalled

Ahiram's words as he gazed at the sparks in the smoking fire and he

thought "To-morrow Eliav will learn everything and will forgive and

love me."

He lay down and as soon as he closed his eyes began to descend by the

dark subterranean passages into the Nut-Amon sanctuary of the god

Ram; he went on and on, but he could not reach it--he had lost his

way. A small red light flickered in the distance. He walked towards

it. The light grew bigger and bigger and became at last a red sun

upon the black sky. Someone was standing under it, dressed in white,

with a face as gentle as that of the god whose name is Quiet Heart.

A quiet voice said, "Thou, Father, art in my heart and no one knows

thee but me, thy son." "Cursed be the deceiver who said 'I am the

Son'," Issachar cried, and drawing the knife from his belt was about

to strike him. But he saw the red blood flowing on the white robe.

"They shall look upon him whom they pierced and shall mourn for Him

as for a son," he recalled the prophecy, and, throwing down the

knife, flung himself at the feet of the Pierced One, crying "Who are

you?"

"Ahiram, your uncle, who did you think I was? Come, wake up, my

son," he heard Ahiram's voice and woke up.

"What is the matter with you, my boy? Have you had a bad dream?" the

old man said, stroking Issachar's hair affectionately. "See, here is

your pass!"

He took a day tablet from his bosom and gave it to Issachar: the

king's seal--the sun disc of Aton--was at the top, next to the date

of the month and below was the signature Tutankhaton.'

Issachar took the tablet and gazed at it, still trembling, so that

his teeth chattered.

"Give me the stone!" Ahiram said, looking at him suspiciously,

wondering if he would refuse payment.

Issachar took the stone out of his purse and gave it to Ahiram.

"But why are you so frightened? Have you changed your mind? Won't

you go?" the old man said.

"Yes, I will go," Issachar answered.

VI

Poor queen! To give the god hot fomentations when he has

stomach-ache and still believe that he is a god is no joke," the old

courtier Ay said, laughing.

Tuta, who was very fond of witty remarks, repeated it to Dio in a

moment of confidence, and she often recalled it as she looked at

Queen Nefertiti.

Mother of six children at the age of twenty-eight, she still looked

like a girl: slender girlish waist, bosom only slightly marked,

narrow shoulders, collar bones that stood out under the skin, a thin

long neck--'like a giraffe's,' she used herself to say jokingly. The

round face looked childishly tender under the high bucket-shaped

royal tiara, worn low over the forehead so that no hair showed.

There was something childishly piteous in the short slightly

protruding upper lip; there was an inward brooding look and a

fathomless depth of sadness in the big lustreless, rather slanting

black eyes under the heavy drooping eyelids.

She seemed to be all on guard, as though listening, spell-bound, to

something within herself, motionless as an arrow on the bow string or

a chord stretched to the uttermost but not sounding as yet; if it did

sound it would break. It was as though she had received a mortal

wound and were concealing it from all.

Daughter of Tadukhipa, a princess of Mitanni, and Amenhotep the

Third, king of Egypt, Queen Nefertiti was King Akhnaton's

half-sister: kings of Egypt, children of the Sun, often married their

sisters in order to preserve the purity of the race.

The king and queen were so much alike that when, as boy and girl,

they used to wear almost the same clothes, people found it hard to

distinguish them. There was the same languid charm about them, the

charm of a half-opened flower drooping with the heat of the sun.

"Oh plant that never tasted running water,

Oh flower, plucked out by the roots."

Dio recalled the dirge for the dead god Tammuz when she looked at the

bas-relief of the king and queen in one of the palace chambers. They

were represented sitting side by side on a double throne; she had her

left arm round his waist, the fingers of the right hand were

intertwined with his fingers and their faces were so close together

that one could hardly see her through him; he was in her and she in

him. As it said in the hymn to Aton:

"When Thou didst establish the earth

Thou didst reveal thy will to me

Thy son Akhnaton Uaenra,

And to thy beloved daughter

Nefertiti, delight of the Son

Who flourishes for ever and ever!"

It was then that this brother's and sister's marriage was made.

"They cannot be loved separately, they must be loved together--two in

one," Dio understood this at once.

After her dance on the day of Aton's Nativity, she received the rank

of 'the chief fan-bearer on the right side of the gracious god-king'

and, leaving Tuta's house, settled in the palace where a room was

assigned to her in the women's quarters close to the queen's

chambers. She soon made friends with the queen, but a barrier which

she herself could not understand separated her from the king.

She was no longer afraid of his being 'not quite human': she had

learned from the queen that he certainly was human. There was

profound meaning in the flat joke about 'the god having

stomach-ache.' And the horror that the king's blasphemous words

about being 'the son of God' had inspired in her at the festival of

the Sun had disappeared, too: all kings of Egypt called themselves

'sons of God.'

She felt no fear, but something that was perhaps worse than fear.

It used to happen in the autumn when she was hunting on Mount Ida in

Crete that on a bright, sunny day mist suddenly crept up from the

mountain gorges, and the molten gold of the forest, the blue sky, the

blue sea grew dim and grey and the sun itself looked out of the fog

like a dead fish's eye. "What if the Joy of the Sun, Akhnaton, also

looks at me with the eyes of a dead fish?" she thought.

She danced for him every day, and he admired her. "Only a dancer--I

will never be anything more for him," she said to herself, with a

grey fog of boredom in her mind.

She stood for hours behind the king's throne, raising and lowering

with a slow, measured movement, in accordance with the ancient

ritual, the big ostrich-feather fan on a long pole. Sometimes when

left alone with her he turned suddenly and smiled at her with such

appealing tenderness that her heart stood still at the thought that

he would speak and the barrier would fall. But he said nothing or

spoke about trifles: asked whether she was tired and would like to

sit down; or wondered at the quickness with which she had learned to

wave the fan--an art more difficult than it appeared; or, with

jesting courtesy, blessed the stupid old custom of keeping cool in

winter and fanning away the non-existent flies because it gave him a

chance of being with her.

One day Dio was reluctantly--she did not like talking about

it--telling the queen who questioned her how she had killed the god

Bull on the Knossos arena to avenge a human victim, her best friend,

Eoia; how she had been sentenced to be burned and was saved by

Tammuzadad, the Babylonian, who went to the stake in her place.

The king was present, too, and seemed to listen attentively. When

Dio finished there were tears in the queen's eyes, but the king, as

though coming to himself suddenly, glanced at them both with a

strange quiet smile, and muttered hurriedly and excitedly, repeating

the same words, as he often did:

"You mustn't shave it off! You mustn't shave it off!"

It was so inappropriate that Dio was alarmed and wondered if he were

ill. But the queen smiled calmly and said, laying her hand on Dio's

head:

"No, certainly not: it would be a pity to shave such beautiful hair!"

It was only then that Dio remembered that she had asked the queen a

day or two ago whether she ought to shave her head and wear a wig, as

the custom in Egypt was.

After saying these sudden words the king went out and the queen, as

though apologizing for him, said that he had not been very well

lately.

It took Dio some time to forget that at that moment she had caught a

glimpse of the decrepit monster of Gem-ton--that the sun looked

through the fog like a dead fish's eye.

The same evening when he was left alone with her, he got up suddenly,

put his hands on her shoulders and brought his face near hers, as

though he would kiss her; but did not--he merely smiled so that her

heart stood still: she recalled the girl-like boy with a face as

gentle as the face of the god whose name is Quiet-Heart.

A man dreams sometimes a dream of paradise, as though in sleep his

soul had returned to its heavenly home; and on waking he cannot

believe that it has been a dream only, cannot get used to his earthly

exile and is full of sadness and yearning: such was the sadness in

his face. The long lashes of the drooping eyelids, as though weighed

down with sleep, seemed moist with tears, but there was a smile on

the lips--a trace of paradise--heavenly joy shining through earthly

sorrow like the sun through a cloud.

"I heard everything you said this afternoon, only I did not want to

speak before her: one may not speak about this to anyone. You know

this, don't you?" he asked, looking at her with the same smile.

"I know," Dio answered.

"Darling, how good it is that you came, how I have been waiting for

you!"

He brought his face still nearer so that their lips almost touched.

"Do you love me?" he asked as simply as a child.

"I love you," she answered, as simply.

And it was a joy like a dream of paradise that he left her without a

kiss.

On the following day, the eleventh after Aton's nativity, Dio was

standing with her fan behind the queen's chair in the palace-chamber

of the Flood, in which the flooding of the Nile was depicted.

The morning sun shone through the melting mist of the clouds into the

square opening of the ceiling, adorned with faience wreaths of vine,

with dark red clusters of grapes and dark blue leaves. The tiled

walls were painted with water-flowers and plants, the pillars, shaped

like sheaves of papyrus, had for capitals figures of wild geese and

ducks hanging head downwards--the spoils of river hunting; the

paintings on the floor represented a backwater on the Nile; fishes

swam among the blue, wavy lines of the river, butterflies fluttered

among the lotos thickets, ducklings flew up, and an absurd spotted

calf galloped about with its tail in the air. As it said in the

morning hymn to Aton:

"The earth rejoices and is glad

All cattle graze in pastures green,

All plants are growing in the fields.

The birds are flying o'er their nests,

And lift their wings like hands in prayer,

Lambs leap and dance upon their feet.

All winged things fly gaily round,

They all live in thy life, O Lord!"

The king was playing with his six daughters: Meritatona, Makitatona,

Ankhsenbatona, Neferatona, Neferura and Setepenra. The eldest was

fifteen, the youngest five and there was a year's difference between

the others. When they stood in a row to say their prayers, their

smoothly shaven egg-shaped heads--royal marrows--formed a series of

descending steps, like the reeds on a shepherd's pipe.

The four elder girls were dressed in shifts of transparent

linen--'woven air'--and the two youngest were quite naked. Their

arms and legs, thin as sticks were almost brown; they wore heavy gold

rings in their ears and broad necklaces of crystal and chrysolite

tears arranged like rays round their necks.

The king's dwarf, Iagu, took part in the games; he came of the wild

tribe of Pygmies, Ua-Ua, who lived like monkeys in the trees of the

marshy forests in the extreme South. Two feet in height, bow-legged,

fat-bellied, black, wrinkled, old and monstrous like the god Bes, the

primaeval monster, he looked ferocious but was in truth as mild as a

lamb; he was a splendid dancer and an unwearying nurse to the

princesses who loved and tormented him; a faithful servant of the

king's household, he would have gladly died for each and all of them.

First they played 'nine-pins,' rolling ivory balls through reed hoops

so as to knock down at one blow nine wooden dolls with ugly

faces--nine kings hostile to Egypt.

Then Iagu's pupil, the trained white poodle, Dang, with a cap of

fiery red feathers on its head and ruby earrings, jumped through a

hoop and walked on its hind legs, holding a marshall's staff in its

front paws and a piece of antelope meat on its nose, not daring to

swallow it until Iagu cried "eat."

Then they went into the winter hot-house garden, where there were

rare foreign flowers and an ornamental pool with floating lotuses,

and made two dreadful monsters of clay--the Babylonian king,

Burnaburiash and his son, prince Karakardash, who wanted to marry the

eight year old princess Neferatona. The king was so smeared with

clay that he had to be washed in the pool.

Then they amused themselves with the cock--the bird, unknown in

Egypt, had just been brought from the kingdom of Mitanni; upset by

its long journey, the cock ruffled its feathers in gloomy silence,

but suddenly flapped its wings and crowed for the first time so

loudly that all were frightened and then delighted--'a regular

trumpet'!--and began to imitate him; the king did it so badly that

the girls laughed at him.

Then they returned to the chamber and played blind man's buff. Iagu

caught the king, who then had his eyes bandaged. The girls jumped

about and scurried to and fro under his very nose, strummed on

citherns, stamped with their bare feet on the floor, imitating the

oxen threshing and sang a song:

"Hey! Hey! Hey!

It's fine and fresh to-day,

Fine workmen, oxen,

Work, work away!

Stamp upon the threshing floor!

You'll have something for your trouble.

We'll have the grain and you the straw!"

The king, awkwardly spreading out his arms, kept catching empty air

or embracing pillars. At last he caught Ankhi, Tuta's twelve year

old wife.

"You moved the bandage," she cried. "There, the left eye is peeping

out! You mustn't cheat, abby!"

'Abby' was the diminutive from the Canaan word _Abba_--father.

"No, I haven't, it slid off," the king tried to justify himself.

"You have moved it, you have!" Ankhi kept on shouting. "I know you,

abby, you are a dreadful little rogue! But that's not the way to

play. You must catch again."

She bandaged his eyes tighter than before and he had to catch them

again.

The poodle, Dang, as though also playing, walked about on its hind

legs holding a sounding cithern in its front paws. The king,

imagining from the sound, that it was the little

Zeta--Zetepenra--bent down rapidly and threw his arms round Dang.

The dog barked and licked him in the face. The king cried out in

alarm, sat down on the floor and pushed Dang away. But it rushed up

to him again, put its front paws on the king's shoulders and licked

him squealing with delight.

All laughed and shouted.

"Abby has kissed Dang! Doggy has made friends with the king."

The queen laughed, too.

"There, you've done enough fanning, sit down and rest," she said to

Dio, and Dio sat down at the foot of her chair.

"The kingdom is for the children," she suddenly recalled aloud the

king's words that she had heard from little Ankhi.

"The kingdom is for the children," the queen repeated. "And do you

know how it goes on?"

"How?"

"What is most divine in men? Tears of the wise? No, laughter of

children."

"So this is why the god Aton has children's hands for rays?" Dio

asked.

"Yes, the whole of wisdom is in this: what is childlike is divine,"

the queen answered and, gently placing her hand on Dio's head, looked

straight into her eyes.

"How is it you are so pretty to-day? Have you fallen in love by any

chance?" she said, smiling--'quite like him--' Dio thought.

"Why fallen in love?" she asked, smiling, too.

"Because when girls are in love they grow particularly pretty."

Dio shook her head, blushed and bending quickly down, caught the

queen's hand and began kissing it eagerly, as though she were kissing

him through her.

Suddenly she felt the queen's hand tremble. Raising her eyes and

seeing that the queen was looking at the door, she, too, looked in

the same direction. Merira, son of Nehtaneb, the high priest of the

god Aton, was standing in the doorway.

Dio had been struck by his face at the festival of the Sun and since

then she often looked at him wondering whether she felt repelled or

attracted by him.

He somewhat resembled Tammuzadad: there was the same stony heaviness

about their faces; but there had been something childlike and piteous

in the Babylonian's face, while Merira looked hopelessly grown up.

There was a stony heaviness in the low overhanging brows, in the eyes

immoveably intent and yet, as it were, unseeing, the wide cheekbones,

the firmly set jaw and the tightly closed lips that seemed sealed

with bitterness and were always ready to jeer, though they could

never smile.

"He that increases knowledge increases sorrow," Dio recalled

Tammuzadad's words as she looked at that face. "To know all is to

despise all," it seemed to say, "not to curse, but merely to despise

in secret, to spew out of one's mouth." If a very courageous man

firmly determined on suicide had drunk poison and then calmly awaited

death, his face would wear the same expression.

Merira came of a very old family of the Heliopolis priests of the

Sun. He had once been the favourite pupil of Ptamose and an ardent

devotee of Amon; but he gave up the old faith and worshipped Aton.

The king was very fond of him. "You alone have followed my teaching,

no one else has," he said, when he conferred on Merira the rank of

high priest.

Merira came in while the king was sitting on the floor and the

poodle, Dang, with its paws on his shoulders, was licking his face

and the princesses were laughing and shouting.

"Abby has kissed Dang! Doggie has made friends with the king."

Merira probably failed to notice the queen and stopped in the doorway

looking intently at the king. The queen, bending slightly forward

and craning her neck, looked at Merira as intently as he did at the

king.

"Merira, Merira!" she cried suddenly and there was fear in her eyes.

"Why do you look at the king like that, do you want to cast a spell

over him?" she laughed, but there was fear in her laughter.

He slowly turned to her and made the low ceremonial bow, bending down

from his waist and stretching out his hands, palms upwards.

"Rejoice, queen Nefertiti, the delight of the Sun's delights! I have

come to call the king to the Council. It seems I have come at the

wrong moment."

"Why wrong? Go and tell the king."

Merira went up to the players. Laughter died down. The king jumped

up and looked at him with a guilty smile.

"What is it, Merira?"

"Nothing, sire. You were pleased to call the Council for to-day."

"Oh yes, the Council! I had forgotten..... Well, let us go, let us

go!" he hurried.

The bandage he had round his eyes during the game was dangling on his

neck; he tried to pull it off, but could not--it got tied into a

knot. Ankhi went up to him, undid the knot and took off the bandage,

while Rita--Meritatona--put on his head the royal tiara he had taken

off for the game.

The girls' faces fell. The poodle slightly growled at Merira and the

dwarf made funny and frightful faces at him behind the king's back.

It was as though a shadow had come upon everything and the sun had

grown dim and looked like a 'fish's eye.'

As the king walked past the queen and Dio he looked at them

dejectedly and resignedly like a schoolboy going to a dull lesson.

Dio glanced at the queen.

"Yes, follow him," she said, and Dio followed the king.

He looked round at her with a grateful smile and Merira looked at

them both with his usual mute derision.

VII

The three walked into the Council Chamber. The dignitaries had long

been gathered there waiting for the king. When he passed by them

they prostrated themselves, sniffed the ground under his feet and,

raising their shaven, egg-shaped heads stretched out their hands

palms upwards, saying:

"Rejoice, Akhnaton, Joy of the Sun!"

Tuta, as usual, surpassed them all.

"My king, my god, who hast made me, grant me to enjoy the sight of

thy face forever!" he exclaimed, rolling his eyes so ecstatically

that everyone envied him.

The king sat down in his chair on a low alabaster platform between

four pillars. Dio stood behind him with the fan.

All looked at her curiously. She felt she was already regarded as

the king's mistress; she flushed and looked down.

A bodyguard of Hittite amazons stood in the depths of the many

pillared room. The dignitaries sat on their heels in a semicircle on

mats on the floor; only three sat on folding chairs: Tuta, Merira,

and the commander-in-chief and king's vizier, Ramose, a heavy fat old

man of seventy, with a red puffy face, like an old woman's, a courtly

smile on his lips and small eyes lost in fat, very kind and

intelligent.

Grandson of General Amenemheb, fellow-soldier of the great Tutmose

the Third, the Conqueror, he had covered himself with glory in the

different campaigns he led against the wild tribes of Kush and the

Sinai nomads. He had been promoted to the rank of Vizier under King

Amenhotep the Third, Akhnaton's father, and the people were fond of

him and called him 'a just man.' He would have given his life for

the king, but he regarded the new faith in Aton and the betrayal of

the old gods as madness and disaster. "The best and most unfortunate

of kings," he used to say about Akhnaton, "he is ruining himself and

his kingdom for nothing."

The sitting of the Council began. The king listened to the

officials' reports about the failure of crops, famine, rebellions,

brigandage, robberies, bribe-taking, secessions of provincial

governors and feuds between them.

Standing slightly on one side Dio could see his face. He listened

with his head bent and his face seemed expressionless.

The chief of the guards, Mahu, reported on the last rising--the one

in Thebes.

"Very likely nothing would have happened had not the Lybian

mercenaries joined the rebels," he said in conclusion.

"And why did they join them?" the king asked.

"Because their salary was not paid in time."

"And why was it not paid?"

"At the prince Viceroy's orders."

The king looked at Tuta.

"Why did you do it?"

"I have laid the king's yoke upon my neck and here I bear it," Tuta

began, wondering what kind of answer he had better give: he

understood that someone had informed against him. "If I go up to

heaven or come down to earth my life is always in thy right hand, O

King! I look here and I look there and I see no light; I look upon

thee, my king, my sun, and behold, here is light! A brick may move

from under other bricks in a wall but I shall not move from under the

feet of my king, my god...."

"Make haste and tell me why you did it," the king interrupted him

impatiently.

"There was no money to buy bread for the starving and so I borrowed

it from the Lybians' salary."

The king said nothing, but gave him such a look that Tuta lowered his

eyes.

"How many killed?" asked the king, turning to Mahu again.

"Less than a hundred," he answered.

He knew that more than two thousand had been killed, but, exchanging

glances with Ramose, understood that the truth should not be told:

the king would be unhappy and perhaps fall ill and nothing would be

gained by it--everything would remain as before.

"A hundred people!" the king whispered, bending his head still lower.

"Well, you won't have long now....."

"Not long to do what, sire?" Ramose asked.

"To kill people in my name!" the king answered and then asked, after

a pause: "Is there a letter from Ribaddi?"

"Yes, there is."

"Show it me."

"I cannot, sire, it is an unseemly letter."

"Never mind, show it."

Ramose gave him the letter. The king read it first to himself and

then aloud so calmly that it might have been written about someone

else:

"Ribaddi, Viceroy of the King of Egypt in Canaan, thus speaks to the

King: for ten years I have been sending to thee for help but thou

hast not helped me. Now Azini, an Amorite, a traitor, has risen

against thee and gone over to the king of the Hittites. And they

have gathered together chariots and men to conquer Canaan. The enemy

is at my gates, to-morrow they will enter and kill me and throw my

body to the dogs. Well does the King of Egypt reward his faithful

servants! May the gods do the same unto thee as thou hast done unto

me. My blood is on thy head, traitor!"

"How dares this dead dog insult our god-king!" Tuta said, with

indignation.

The king looked at him again, and he subsided.

"Has Ribaddi perished?" the king asked.

"He has," Ramose answered. "He threw himself on his sword so as not

to fall into the enemies' hands alive."

"What will happen now, Ramose?"

"Why, this, sire: the king of the Hittites will have Canaan; the

thieves will undermine the wall and enter the house. We were for

four hundred years under the yoke of the nomads, and we may be for

another four hundred under the yoke of the Hittites. Your

great-grandfather, Tutmose the Great, made Egypt the head of all

nations and we were the light of the world and now this light is no

more...."

"What are we to do then, Ramose?"

"You know yourself, king."

"Begin war?" the king asked.

Ramose made no answer; he knew that the king would perish and ruin

his kingdom rather than begin war.

The king was silent, too; he seemed lost in thought. Suddenly he

raised his head and said:

"I cannot!"

He paused again, thinking, and repeated:

"I cannot; no, I cannot! 'Peace, peace to the far and the near,'

says my heavenly father, Aton. 'Peace is better than war; let there

be no war, let there be peace!' This is all I know, all I have,

Ramose. If you take this from me, there will be nothing left: I

shall be destitute, naked, dead. Better kill me outright!"

He spoke simply and quietly; but Dio's heart throbbed again as on the

day before in the joy of the heavenly dream. She suddenly recalled

the huge pale phantom of Cheop's pyramid shimmering in the rosy

sunlight mist over the yellow sands of the desert: the perfect

triangles--"I began to be as one god, but three gods were in Me," in

the words of the ancient wisdom--divine triangles getting narrower

and narrower, more and more pointed as they rose to heaven and in the

very last point the same frenzied ecstacy as in Akhnaton's quiet word

'Peace'!

"O, how sweet is thy teaching, Uaenra," Tuta thrust himself forward

again--like the poodle Dang licking the king in the face. "You are

the second Osiris, conquering the world by peace and not by sword.

If you say to the water 'let there be peace'--there shall be peace."

"Listen, Ramose," the king began, "I am not such a scoundrel as

Ribaddi thought, and I am not such a fool as Tuta takes me to be...."

The poodle Dang got a flip on the nose: he was alarmed and upset.

But he was soon comforted by Ay--an old dignitary with intelligent,

cold and cynical eyes, who sat next to him.

"Don't bother, it isn't worth it," he whispered in Tuta's ear. "You

see he is playing the fool again, the crazy saint!"

"I am not such a fool as Tuta thinks," the king went on. "I know

there will be no peace on earth for a long time to come. There will

be endless war, and the longer it goes on the fiercer it will be:

'all will be killing each other' as the ancient prophecy says. There

has been a flood of water--there is going to be one of blood. But

even so, even so, let men know that there has been in the world a man

who said 'peace'!"

He suddenly turned to Merira.

"What do you think, Merira? Why do you smile?"

"I think, sire, that what you say is good, but it is not all. God is

not only peace...."

He spoke slowly, with an effort, as though thinking of something

else.--

"But also what?" the king said to help him.

"Also war."

"What are you saying, my friend? War is not of God, but of the

devil."

"Yes, of God, too. Two sides of the triangle meet at one point: day

and night, mercy and wrath, peace and war, Son and Father--all the

opposites are in God...."

"Is the Son against the Father?" the king asked and his hand that was

holding the arm of the chair trembled slightly.

Merira raised his eyes to him and smiled so strangely that Dio

thought 'madman!' But he looked down again at once and his face

turned to stone, grew heavy with a stony heaviness.

"Why do you ask me?" he answered calmly. "You know it all better

than I, Uaenra: does not the Son know the Father? God is the measure

of all things. I say it not to you but to others: seek for measure

in everything--in peace as in the sword."

"Quite so! Quite so!" Ramose cried. "I am no friend of yours,

Merira, but for this saying I am ready to bow down at your feet--it

couldn't be said better!"

"Why are you so pleased with it?" the king asked, looking at Ramose

in surprise. "What he says is very dreadful."

"Yes, dreadful, but necessary," Ramose answered. "Ankh-em-Maat,

You-Who-live-in-Truth, you want to lift truth up to heaven and spread

it throughout the earth; but men are weak, stupid and wicked. Be

merciful to them, O King, don't ask too much of them. If you fix a

ladder for them they will climb up, but if you say 'fly,' they will

fly headlong into the pit. There is no getting on with mercy only:

our mercy merely smooths the way for evildoers. We talk much and we

do little, but believe an old man like me: nothing in the world is

more wicked than empty good words, nothing more vile than empty noble

words."

"Are you speaking of me, Ramose?" the king asked, with a kind smile.

"No, not of you, Uaenra, but of those who demand a miracle of you and

do not stir a finger themselves. For twenty years I have served

faithfully the king, your father, and you; I have never told lies and

I am not going to now. Things are going ill in your whole kingdom,

they are going very ill, O King! We say 'peace,' but there is war,

we say 'love,' but there is hatred, we say 'light,' but there is

darkness instead."

He got up heavily, fell at the king's feet and wept: "Have pity,

sire; have mercy! Save yourself, save Egypt, take up the sword for

right and justice. And if you do not want to do it, I don't want to

see you ruin yourself and your kingdom any more. Let me retire, I am

old and want a rest!"

The king bent down to him and lifting him up embraced and kissed him

on the lips.

"No my friend, I will not let you go, and you would not go

yourself--you are fond of me... Bear up a little longer, the time is

getting short--I shall soon go myself," he whispered in his ear.

"Go where? Where?" Ramose asked with prophetic terror.

"Don't speak, don't ask, you will soon know everything!" the king

answered and got up, showing that the Council was over.

VIII

Leaving the Council Chamber, they went to the Beggars' Court.

Telling the courtiers to go on, the king lagged behind so as to

remain alone with Dio. Passing through a number of rooms they came

into a small hothouse garden where incense trees brought from the

far-away Punt, the land of the gods, grew in pots of earthenware,

like huge heather plants fine as cobweb, dropping amber rosin tears

in the warm sunshine.

The king sank down on a bench and sat for some minutes in silence

without moving. He seemed to have forgotten Dio's presence, but

suddenly he looked at her and said:

"Shame! Shame! Shame! You have looked enough at my shame, go away!"

Dio knelt down before him.

"No, sire, I will not go away from you. As the Lord lives and as my

soul lives, whither my king goes, to shame or to honour, there will

his servant go also."

"You have seen me put to shame once, now you will see it again. Let

us go," the king said, getting up.

They entered the Beggars Court.

Three times in the year--when the Nile overflowed, at seed time, and

at harvest--the palace gates were opened to all; every beggar could

go in freely, merely giving his name to Mahu, the chief of the

guards. Tables with bread, meat and beer were placed in the

courtyard: everyone could eat and drink his fill. It was there that

the king received petitions and heard complaints.

During the first years of Akhnaton's reign these feasts were more

frequent. "Let every ninth day of the month be a day for beggars,"

it said in the king's decree. Governors of provinces were on that

day to distribute to the hungry corn from the king's granaries "for

the cry of the needy has come up unto heaven and our heart is sore."

"Amon is the god of the rich and Aton the god of the poor," the king

preached. "Woe unto you, you sleek and rich who acquire house after

house and field after field, so that there is no room on the earth

left for others! Your hands are full of blood. Wash, cleanse

yourselves, learn to do good. Save the oppressed, defend the orphan,

protect the widow. Provide bread for the hungry, water for the

thirsty, clothes for the naked, shelter for the homeless, smiles for

the weeping. Undo the bondsmen's yoke and set the slaves free: then

shall your light shine in darkness and your night shall be as midday!"

"Ankh-em-maat, You-Who-live-in-Truth," the king's disciples said to

him, "you will make the poor equal with the rich, will efface the

boundaries between fields as the river flood effaces them. You are a

multitude of Niles, flooding the earth with the waters of

inexhaustible love!"

The king had invented a dangerous game of throwing gold to the

beggars like fire into straw. For many years Mahu, the chief of the

guards, had saved the situation: collecting trustworthy people from

among the palace servants he dressed them up as beggars and promised

the well-behaved a fair share of the spoils and the unruly--the lash;

and all had gone well. The king was short-sighted; from the High

Place where he sat while throwing the gold money rings into the

crowd, he could not recognize the faces below.

But someone informed against Mahu. The king was very angry and

nearly dismissed him from his post; and next time Mahu had to admit

real, not dressed up beggars. Then there was trouble: no sooner did

the rain of gold begin to fall than people grew savage, a free fight

began and a whole detachment of armed soldiers had difficulty in

quieting the crowd. There were three killed and many wounded. The

king fell ill with grief, gold rained no more, but food was still

given away and petitions received.

The Beggars Court was a large quadrangle paved with slabs of

alabaster and surrounded by two storeys of pillared arcades. At one

end of it was the High Place--the king's tabernacle. A wide,

gradually ascending staircase of alabaster led to it. The goddess,

Nekhbet, the Falcon Sun-mother, with a white head and a red, scaly

body, was soaring above the tabernacle holding a golden ring--the

royal globe, in its claws. "As the mother comforts her children so

will I comfort you," the king, son of the Sun, said to the sorrowful

children of the earth.

"Down! down! down! the king comes! The god comes!" the runners cried

and the whole crowd in the court prostrated themselves, crying out:

"Rejoice, Akhnaton, Joy of the Sun!"

Besides beggars and petitioners there were, in the crowd, many sick,

blind, halt and lame, because people believed that everyone who

touched the king's clothes or upon whom his shadow fell was healed.

"Defend us, save us, have mercy, O Lord!" they called to him, like

the souls in hell to the god who came down to them.

The king ascended the steps to the tabernacle and sat on his throne.

Dio stood behind him with the fan.

The guards admitted the petitioners through a narrow passage between

two low walls of stone along the foot of the stairs. Two Nubian

soldiers with naked swords guarded the door in the middle of the wall

adjoining the staircase. Approaching this door every petitioner

prostrated himself, sniffed the ground, placed a wooden or a clay

tablet with his petition on the bottom step of the stairs, where

there was a heap of them already, and passed on.

Everyone was admitted into the Court, but a special permit was

required for entering the passage leading to the king's tabernacle.

Mahu, the chief of the guards, watched over everything.

Suddenly there was a disturbance. A petitioner tried to get through

the little door. The soldiers crossed their swords in front of him

but he went straight ahead, stretching his arm towards the king and

screaming as though he were being cut to pieces:

"Defend, save, have mercy, Joy of the Sun!"

Not daring to kill a man before the king, the soldiers lifted their

swords and the man, flattening himself on the ground and wriggling

like an eel, crept between them and began crawling up the stairs.

Mahu rushed at him and seized him by the collar, but the man wriggled

out and went on screaming and crawling towards the king.

Mahu made a sign to the lancers of the bodyguard who stood two in a

row, along the stairs. They closed their ranks and lowered their

spears. But the man crawled on.

At the same moment a frenzied scream was heard:

"Let him through! Let him through!"

The squealing, breathless scream like that of a woman in hysterics or

of a child in a fit was so strange that Dio did not recognize the

king's voice. With a distorted face he jumped up and stamped with

both feet, as the little girls had done when they played blind man's

buff to the sound of the threshing song. And the ringing cry went on:

"Let him through! Let him through!"

Mahu made another sign to the lancers and they lifted their spears,

making way. The man crawled between them and advanced almost as far

as the top landing where the king's tabernacle stood. He raised his

head and Dio recognised the long red curls, the red goat's beard, the

prominent ears, hooked nose, thick lips and burning eyes of Issachar,

son of Hamuel.

The king was quiet now and, bending forward, looked straight into

Issachar's eyes intently and, as it were, greedily, just as Issachar

looked at him.

"Your servant has a secret message for you, sire!" Issachar whispered.

"Speak, I listen."

"No, for you, for you alone."

"Leave us alone," the king said to the dignitaries who stood on the

landing.

All withdrew except Dio who hid behind the corner of the tabernacle.

Some three or four steps separated Issachar from the king. "I know

who you are! I know!" he said, crawling up and looking straight into

the king's eyes, with the same intent, eager look. "Sun's joy, Sun's

Only Son, Akhnaton Uaenra, Son of the living God!"

Suddenly he jumped up and drew a knife from his belt. But before he

had time to raise it Dio darted forward and seized him by the hand.

He pushed her so that she fell on her knees but jumped up again, not

letting go of his hand, and screening the king with her body. An

unendurably burning chill pierced her shoulder. She heard shouts,

saw people running and fell on the ground with the last thought: 'he

will kill him!'

IX

Paradise gardens of Maru-Aton--the Precincts of the Sun--were

situated south of the city, where the rocks of the hilly desert were

close to the river.

The sweet breath of the north wind could be felt even on the hottest

days under the shade of the evergreen palms and cedars laden with the

fragrance of incense. Each tree was planted in a hole dug in the

sand, filled with the Nile black earth and surrounded by a ridge of

bricks to prevent water running away.

Everywhere there were flower-beds, ponds, islands, bridges, arbours,

chapels, summer houses of light transparent lattice-work

magnificently painted and gilded like jewel boxes.

The king often came here to rest from the noise of the city in the

stillness of paradise.

Dio spent three months here recovering from her wound. Issachar hit

her with the knife just above her left breast. It was a dangerous

wound: had the knife gone in deeper it would have touched the heart.

During the first few days she suffered from fever and delirium.

She fancied she was lying on the funeral pyre as then, in the island

of Crete after killing the god Bull; the sacrificial knife pierced

her heart; the flames burnt her but through their heat she felt a

heavenly freshness: Merira was the flame and Tammuzadad--the

freshness.

Or she saw a fiery red goat grazing on the green meadows of paradise;

the grass turned coal-black at his touch and red sparks flitted about

it; and again--Tamu was the green grass and Merira--the sparks.

Or it was a rich old Sidonian merchant unfolding before her among the

booths of the Knossos harbour magnificent stuff, red shot with green;

winking slyly he praised his goods: "a true robe of Baal! A mine of

silver per cubit is my last price." And, once more, the red shade

was Merira, the green--Tammuzadad.

Or, the real Merira was taking her into the holy of holies of Aton's

temple, as he really had done, three days before Issachar's attack on

the king; she did not want to go in, knowing that no one but the king

and the high priest were supposed to do so, but Merira reassured her,

saying, "Yes, with me you may!" And, taking her by the hand, he led

her in. In the dim light of sanctuary lamps the bas-relief of the

Sphinx seemed a pale phantom: a lion's body and legs, human arms and

head and an inexpressibly strange, fine, birdlike face--old, ancient,

eternal. "If a man had suffered for a thousand years in hell and

then came to earth again, he would have a face like that," Merira

whispered in her ear. "Who is he?" she tried to recognize him and

could not; and then, suddenly, she knew him and woke up with a cry of

unearthly horror: 'Akhnaton'!

The king's physician, Pentu, treated her so cleverly that she was

soon better. But the unwearying care of the queen did her more good

perhaps than any medicine. The queen nursed Dio as though she had

been her own daughter; she never left her, spent sleepless nights

beside her though she herself was far from well: she had a cough and

every evening there was an ominous red flush in her cheeks.

Each time that Dio saw the wan, beautiful face bending over her, the

face of one who had also received a mortal wound, she felt like

bursting into tears.

She learned from the queen what happened in the Beggars Court after

Issachar had struck her and she fell down senseless.

"God has saved the king by a miracle!" everyone said. The assassin

had raised his knife to strike him when some dreadful vision appeared

before him; the knife dropped out of his hand and he fell at the

king's feet. The king, thinking that Dio was killed, bent over her

and embraced her with a cry so terrible that only then they

understood how much he loved her. He would not leave her, but at

last Pentu, the physician, assured him that Dio was alive and he got

up, covered with her blood.

"You are now related by blood both to him and to me," the queen said,

smiling through tears.

Some of the bodyguards rushed at Issachar, intending to kill him on

the spot, but the others saved him at the orders of Mahu and Ramose;

only these two had kept their presence of mind amidst the general

confusion and remembered that, before putting the criminal to death,

they ought to find out from him whether he had any accomplices.

Issachar was taken to the prison and cross-examined, but he said very

little; he did not give anyone away and only confessed that when he

raised the knife to strike the king he had a vision. He would not

say what the vision was and only muttered to himself something in the

Jewish language about their King-Messiah and repeated senseless words

"they shall look on Him whom they pierced." But he would not explain

who was pierced and then grew silent altogether.

Torture was forbidden by royal decree in the holy province of Aton,

yet considering the importance of the occasion they had recourse to

it all the same. But neither antelope lashes nor hippopotamus

scourges could untie Issachar's tongue. Mahu and Ramose had to give

him up at last.

On that same night he was taken ill with something like brain

fever--or pretended to be. Fearing that the criminal might die

before the execution Ramose hastened to ask the king for a death

penalty had been abolished in Aton's province. And when Ramose

suggested that the criminal should be moved to some other province

and executed there, the king smiled and said, shrugging his

shoulders: "there is no deceiving God, my friend! This man wanted to

kill me here--and here he must be judged."--"Not judged, but

pardoned," Ramose understood and was indignant; he decided to put

Issachar to death secretly by the hands of the gaolers. But he did

not succeed in this either: the old gaolers were replaced by the new

who had received strict orders to preserve the prisoner's life.

Issachar soon recovered from his real, or pretended, illness. The

king who had had an epileptic fit after Issachar's attack on him and

was still far from well, visited the prisoner and had a long peaceful

talk almost alone with him: the guards stood at a distance; and a few

days later it appeared that the prisoner had escaped.

The three elder princesses, Maki, Rita and Ankhi, helped the queen to

nurse Dio; it was from them she heard of the city rumour about the

king having himself helped Issachar to escape; it was said that the

man had not gone far but was hiding somewhere in the town waiting,

perhaps, for a new opportunity to take the king's life.

"The king has now shamed the faces of all his faithful servants

because he loves those who hate him and hates those who love him!"

Ramose cried when he heard of Issachar's escape, and he recalled the

words of old Amenhotep the Wise, the tutor and namesake of the king's

father: "if you want to please the gods, sire, and to cleanse Egypt

from corruption, drive away all the Jews!"

"The darling Hippopotamus is right," Ankhi concluded--she called

Ramose 'hippopotamus' because of his being so stout--and suddenly she

clenched her fists and stamped almost crying with anger. "Shame,

shame upon all of us that the vile Jew has been spared!"

Dio made no answer, but the thought flashed through her mind "we are

related by blood now, but blood, both his own and other people's is

like water to him!" And though she immediately felt ashamed of this

thought a trace of it remained in her mind.

The king often came to Maru-Aton, but the queen seldom allowed him to

see Dio, especially during the first, difficult days: she knew he was

not clever with the sick. His conversations with Dio were strangely

trivial.

"Why is it I keep talking of trifles?" he wondered one day, left

alone with her. "Is it that I am growing stupid? You know, Dio,

sometimes I am awfully stupid, ridiculously so. It must be because

of my illness...."

He paused and then added, with the childishly timid, apologetic smile

that always wrung her heart: "The worst of it is that I sometimes

make the most sacred things foolish and ridiculous: like a thief

stealing and desecrating that which is holy...."

"Why do you talk like this?" Dio cried, indignantly.

"There, forgive me, I won't.... What is it I was going to say? Oh,

yes, about Issachar. It wasn't out of foolishness I pardoned him.

He is a very good man...."

The queen came in and the conversation dropped. Dio was glad: her

heart was throbbing as though Issachar's knife had once more been

thrust into the wound.

By the month of Paonzu, March-April, she was almost well though still

weak.

The first time she went into the garden she was surprised to see that

the hot summer came straight after the winter: there was no trace of

spring.

Strange longing came upon her during those hot days of delusive

southern spring. "He who drinks water out of the Nile forgets his

native land," the Egyptians said. She fancied she, too, had

forgotten it. What was this longing then? "It's nothing," she tried

to comfort herself, "it's simply foolishness, the result of illness,

as with the king. It will pass off." But it did not.

In the gardens of Maru-Aton by the big pond opposite the women's

quarters where Dio lived, a rare tree, hardly ever seen in Egypt, was

planted--a silver birch, graceful and slender, like a girl of

thirteen. It had been brought as a present to Princess Makitatona

from Thracia, the land of Midnight. The princess was very fond of

it; she looked after it herself, watered it and kept the ground

around it well dug, covering it with fresh Nile black earth.

Dio, too, grew fond of the birch tree. Every day she watched its

buds swell and sticky, greenish yellow leaves, crumpled like the face

of a new-born baby, open out; she kissed them and, sniffing them with

her eyes closed, fancied that every moment she would hear the call of

the cuckoo and smell the melting snow and lilies of the valley as in

her native woods at home on Mount Ida--smell the real spring of her

own native land.

When flocks of cranes flew northwards, with their melancholy call,

she stretched out her arms to them: would that she, too, were flying

with them! Looking at the ever blue, lifeless sky she longed for the

living clouds she knew so well. Putting her ear to a shell, she

eagerly listened to its roar, that was like the roar of sea waves;

she dreamt of the sea in her sleep and wept. One day she sniffed a

new sponge Zenra had just bought and almost cried in reality.

She had a Cretan amethyst, a present from her mother, with a fine

design upon it: bare willows in a flooded meadow all bent to one side

by the wind, a tumble-down old fence with poles sticking out, the

ripple of autumn rain on the water: everything dull and wretched and

yet she would have given her very soul to see it all again. But she

knew she would never see it, she would never go home--she would not

want to herself. Was this, perhaps, why she longed for it so? Thus

the radiant shades in paradise may be longing for this gloomy earth.

One early morning she sat by Maki's birch tree, listening to the

wailing of the shepherd's pipe in the hills above Maru-Aton. She

knew both the song and the singer: the song was about the dead god

Tammuz and the singer was Engur, son of Nurdahan, a Babylonian

shepherd, an old servant of Tammuzadad, brought by her to Egypt from

the island of Crete.

The sounds of the pipe fell sadly and monotonously, sound after sound

like tear after tear.

"The wail is raised for Tammuz far away,

The mother-goat and the kid are slain,

The mother-sheep and the lamb are slain,

The wail is raised for the beloved Son."

Dio listened and it seemed to her that in this song the whole

creation was weeping for the Son who is to come, but still tarries

"how long, how long, O Lord?"

Nothing stirred and complete stillness reigned everywhere; only the

air, in spite of the early hour, was simmering with heat over the

sandy paths of the garden and flowing in streams like molten glass.

Suddenly a fan-like leaf at the top of a palm moved as though coming

to life, then another and a third. There was a gust of wind, hot as

from an oven; the sand on the paths rose up like smoke; the light

grew dim; the sky turned dark and yellowish in an extraordinary,

incredible way: it might be the end of the world; the whole garden

rustled and groaned in the sudden whirlwind. It was dark as night.

Dio ran home. The wind almost knocked her off her feet, burned her

face, blinded her with sand. Her breath failed her, her temples

throbbed, her legs gave way under her. It was not twenty paces to

the house but she felt she would fall exhausted before she got there.

"Make haste, make haste, dear!" Zenra shouted to her from the steps;

seizing Dio by the hand she dragged her into the entry, and with

difficulty shutting the door in the tearing wind, bolted it fast.

"What is it, nurse?" Dio asked.

"Sheheb, a plague of Set," the old woman answered in a whisper,

putting the palms of both hands to her forehead as in prayer.

Sheheb, the south-east wind, blows from the Arabian desert. Fiery

clouds of sand, thrown up by the whirlwind, fall slanting upon the

ground with the noise of hail. The sun turns crimson, then dark like

an ember. At midday lamps have to be lit. Neither men nor animals

can breathe in the black stuffy darkness; plants perish. The

whirlwind never lasts more than an hour; if it lasted longer

everything would be burned up as with fire.