In the fiery darkness of the Sheheb Dio lay on her couch like one

dead. The wind howled outside and the whole house shook as though it

would fall. Someone seemed to be knocking and throwing handfuls of

sand at the closed shutters, the flame of the lamp flickered in the

wind that penetrated through the walls.

The door opened suddenly and someone came in.

"Zenra, is it you?" Dio called.

There was no answer. Somebody approached the couch. Dio recognized

Tammuzadad and was not frightened or surprised, she seemed to have

expected him. He bent over her and smiled; no, it was not Tamu, but

Merira. She looked closely and % again it was Tamu and then Merira

again; first it was one then another; they interchanged and merged

into one another like the two colours of a shot material. He bent

down still lower, looked into her eyes as though asking a question.

She knew that if she answered 'no' with her eyes only he would go

away; but she closed her eyes without speaking. He lay down beside

her and embraced her. She lay like one dead.

When he had gone away she thought "I will go and hang myself." But

she went on lying quite still. She may have dropped asleep and by

the time she woke up the Sheheb was over, the sky was clear and the

flame of the lamp looked pale. Zenra came in and Dio understood that

it had been delirium.

After the Sheheb the weather freshened. The sweet breath of the

north wind could be felt in the shade of the evergreen palms and

cedars fragrant like a censer of incense. Only at times a smell of

carrion came from the direction of Sheol and then Dio thought of her

Sheheb nightmare. It was the last attack of her illness. The wound

healed so completely that the only trace left of it was a pale pink

scar on the dark skin, and Dio was quite well.

The king had once given her a beautiful scroll of papyrus, yellowish

like old ivory, smoothed to perfection with wild boar's tooth, fine,

strong, imperishable.

Papyrus was expensive and only used for the most important records;

everything else was written on clay or wooden tablets, flat white

stones or fragments of broken earthenware.

Dio had been wondering for some time what would be good enough to

write on this scroll; at last she thought of something.

All the king's teaching was given by word of mouth; he never wrote

down anything himself and did not allow others to do so. "To write,"

he used to say, "is to kill the word."

"It will all be lost, it will vanish like a footprint on the sand,"

Dio often thought sorrowfully, and at last she decided: "I will write

down on the papyrus the king's teaching; I will not disobey him: no

one living now shall see the scroll; but when I have finished writing

I will bury it in the ground; perhaps in ages to come men will

discover it and read it."

She carried out her plan.

In secret from all she worked night after night, sitting on the floor

in front of a low desk with a sloping board for the papyrus, tracing

upon it, with the sharpened end of a reed, close columns of

hieroglyphics, abbreviated into shorthand, and covering each column

with cedar varnish which made the writing indelible.

Words of wisdom of King Akhnaton Uaenra Neferheperura--Sun's joy,

Sun's beautiful essence, Sun's only Son--heard and written down by

Dio, daughter of Aridoel, a Cretan, priestess of the Great Mother.

The King says:

"Aton, the face of god, the disc of the sun, is the visible image of

the invisible God. To reveal to men the hidden one is everything.

"My grandfather, Prince Tutmose, was hunting once in the desert of

the Pyramids; he was tired, lay down and dropped asleep at the foot

of the great Sphinx which, in those days, was buried in the sands.

The Sphinx appeared to him in a dream and said "I am your father,

Aton; I will make you king if you dig me out of the sands." The

prince did so, and I am doing so, too: I dig the living God out of

the dead sands--dead hearts."

The King says:

"There are three substances in God: Zatut--Rays,

Neferu--Beauty,--Merita--Love; the Disc of the Sun, Light and Warmth;

Father, Son, Mother."

"The symbol of Aton, the disc of the sun with three rays like hands,

stretched downwards is clear to all men--to the wise and to the

children."

"The remedy from death is not ointments for the dead, balsam, salt,

resin or saltpetre, but mercy and love. Have mercy upon one another,

O people, have mercy upon one another and you shall never see death!"

The King said to the malefactor who attempted his life, Issachar the

Israelite: "your God sacrifices all to Himself and mine sacrifices

Himself for all."

The King says:

"The way they break granite in the quarries of Egypt is this: they

make a hole in the stone, drive a wooden wedge into it, moisten it

with water and the wood, as it swells out, breaks the stone. I, too,

am such a wedge."

"The Egyptians have an image of Osiris-Set, god-devil, with two heads

on one body, as it were, twins grown together. I want to cut them in

two."

"The deadness of Egypt is the perfect equilibrium of the scales. I

want to disturb it."

"How little I have done! I have lifted the coffin-lid over Egypt and

I know, when I am gone, the lid will be shut down again. But the

signal has been given to future ages!"

"When I was about eight I saw one day the soldiers piling up before

the King, my father, the cut-off hands of enemies killed in battle,

and I fainted with the smell of corruption. When I think of war I

always recall this smell."

"On the wall of the Charuk palace, near Thebes, where I spent my

childhood, there was a mural painting of a naval battle between the

Cretans and the Egyptians; the enemies' ships were going down, the

men drowning and the Egyptians were stretching out to them poles,

sticks, oars, saving their enemies. I remember someone laughed

looking at the painting: 'One wouldn't find such fools anywhere

except in Egypt!' I did not know what to answer and perhaps I do not

know now, but I am glad to be living in the land of such fools!"

"The greatest of the kings of Egypt, Amenemhet, had it written on his

tomb:

In my reign men lived in peace and mercy

Arrows and swords lay idle in my reign."

"The god rejoices when he goes into battle and sees blood" is said in

the inscription of King Tutmose the Third, the Conqueror, to the god

Amon. Amon is the god of war, Aton the god of peace. One must

choose between them. I have chosen."

"There will be war so long as there are many peoples and many gods;

but when there is one God and one mankind, there will be peace."

"We Egyptians despise the Jews, but maybe they know more about the

Son than we do: we say about Him 'He was' and they say He is to

come.'"

The king said to me alone and told me not to repeat it to anyone:

"I am the joy of the Sun, Akhnaton? No, not joy as yet, but sorrow;

not the light, but the shadow of the sun that is to rise--the Son!"

Dio wrote down many other words of the king in her scroll and she

finished with the hymn to Aton:

The Song of King Akhnaton Uaenra Neferheperura to Aton, the living

and only God.

If my scroll is ever found by you, men of the ages to come, pray for

me in gratitude for having preserved this song for you, the sweetest

of all the songs of the Lord, that at the everlasting supper I may

eat bread with my beloved King Akhnaton, the messenger of the rising

sun--the Son.

Glorious is thy rising in the east

Lord and giver of life, Aton!

When thou risest in the sky

Thou fillest the earth with thy beauty.

Thy rays embrace all created things,

Thou hast carried them all away captive.

Thou bindest them by thy love.

Thou art far but thy rays are on earth,

Thou art on high, thy footprints are the day.

When thou settest in the west

Men lie in the darkness like the dead.

Their heads are wrapped up, their nostrils stopped

Stolen are all their things that are under their heads

While they know it not.

Lions come forth from their dens,

Serpents creep from out their holes:

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

Thou risest and bright is the earth

Thou sendest forth thy rays and the darkness flees.

Men rise, bathe their limbs, take their clothing,

Their arms are uplifted in prayer.

And in all the world they do their work.

All cattle graze in pastures green,

All plants are growing in the fields,

The birds are flying over 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 boats sail up and down the river,

Every highway is open because thou hast dawned.

The fish in the river leap up before thee

And thy rays are in the midst of the great sea.

Thou createst the man-child in woman,

And makest the seed in man,

Givest life to the child in its mother's womb,

Soothing it that it may not weep

Ere its own mother can soothe it.

When the chicken cries in the egg-shell,

Thou givest it breath to preserve it alive

And the strength to break the shell.

It comes forth from the egg and staggers,

But with its voice it calls to thee.

How manifold are thy works, O Lord!

They are hidden from us, Thou only God whose power no

other possesses!

Thou didst create the earth according to thy desire,

While thou wast alone in eternity,

Thou didst create man and the beasts of the field,

All the creatures that are upon the earth,

And fly with their wings on high.

Thou didst create Syria, Nubia and Egypt,

Setting every man in his place.

Giving him all that he needs,

His measure of food and his measure of days.

Their tongues are diverse in speech,

Their forms are diverse and their skins,

For Thou, divider, hast divided the peoples.

Thou makest the Nile in the nether world

To fill with goods thy people here;

Thou hast set a Nile up in the sky,

That its waters may fall down in floods,

Giving drink to wild beasts on the hills,

And refreshing the fields and the meadows.

How excellent are thy works, O Lord!

The Nile in heaven is for the strangers,

And the Nile from the nether world is for Egypt.

Thou feedest each plant as thine own child,

Thou makest the seasons for all thy creatures:

The winter to bring them coolness

And the summer to bring them heat.

Thou didst create the distant heavens

In order to behold all that Thou didst make.

Thou comest, thou goest, thou comest back

And Greatest out of thyself, the Only One,

Thousands upon thousands of forms:

Cities, towns and villages

On highways and on rivers.

All eyes see thy eternal sun.

When thou hast risen they live, when thou settest they die,

When thou didst establish the earth

Thou didst reveal thy will to me,

Thy Son, Akhnaton, who lives for ever and proceeds from thee,

And to thy beloved daughter,

Nefertiti, the delight of the Sun's delights.

Who flourishes for ever and ever.

Thou, Father, art in my heart

And there's no other that knows thee,

Only I know thee, thy son,

Akhnaton Uaenra,

Joy of the Sun, Sun's only son!"

When she had finished writing, Dio put the scroll inside an

earthenware vessel, sealed it with a leaden seal with the sun disc of

Aton and, as soon as it was dark, took a spade and went to Maki's

birch tree by the big pond in the garden.

The fiery whirlwind of Sheheb had withered the tree, the blackened

leaves were rolled up into little tubes, but the roots were alive.

Maki dug it out to move it to a new hole with fresh earth in it, but

she probably had not had time to finish her work before night: the

tree lay near the hole.

Dio dug the hole deeper, put the earthenware pot into it, covered it

with earth and levelled it.

A white rose was blooming close by in a flowerbed by the pond. In

the stillness of the April night glowworms flitted about like sparks.

One of them burrowed its way into the rose, and the flower seemed to

have a heart of fire.

Dio went up to it, kissed it and thought:

"If some day men read my writing, they will connect Akhnaton with

Dio. I shall be in him as this flame is in the flower."

X

The whip cracked, the horses dashed forward, the feathers on their

manes swayed, snowflakes of foam dropped off their bridles, and the

chariot flew like a whirlwind. The air whistled in the ears; the

lion's tail fixed to the king's belt at the back and the crimson

ribbons of his robe fluttered in the wind. The king was driving; Dio

stood behind him.

They passed the palm groves and the fields of ripe, yellow corn,

taller than the height of man; the Nile glittered for the last time

in the distance and the menacing silence of the endless desert, now

dark brown, now sparkling like glass, enveloped them.

As she looked through her lashes at the shining snake-like sandy

roads, flattened by heavy traffic, Dio recalled the thin layer of ice

over the thawing snow sparkling in the sun on Mount Dicte. The

dazzling air was shimmering with the heat. A vulture hung motionless

in the dark blue sky. At times the shadow of a passing cloud ran

over the ground and, still quicker, an antelope galloped past;

suddenly it would stop and, stretching out its neck, sniff the air

and then run on, light as the wind.

The sun was setting when the wayfarers saw on a high rock of the

Arabian hills a boundary-stone of the province of Aton.

The images of King Akhnaton and Queen Nefertiti, cut out in the rock

at a height where only the wind, the sun and the eagles could reach

them, were half-covered, as though buried alive, by the waves of

drifting sands. The only way to reach the bas-reliefs was to descend

by a rope down a perpendicular rock; and evidently this was what some

enemy of Aton's faith had done, for the images were broken and

defiled.

The king stepped out of the chariot. The long black shadow cast by

his figure upon the white sand seemed to stretch to the ends of the

earth.

There was a clatter of hoofs. The high-priest, Merira, and the chief

of the guards, Mahu, drove up.

"If I could only find the scoundrels, I would kill them on the spot!"

Mahu cried indignantly, when he saw the desecrated images.

"Come, come, my friend," said the king, with a smile. "The sands

will bury them anyway--there will be nothing left."

Mahu went to make arrangements for the night: the king wished to

sleep in the desert.

Close by there was a mountain gorge, dark and narrow like a coffin,

where tombs had been cut in the rock for the princesses. Hard by an

old fig-tree made an unfading patch of green against the dead sand,

and a sweetbrier flowered, fragrant with the scent of honey and

roses: the secret water of an underground spring kept them fresh.

The king, accompanied by Dio and Merira, went down into the gorge to

see the tombs.

When they had finished they walked up the slope of the hill by a

narrow jackals' path, talking.

"Is the decree concerning the gods ready, Merira?" the king asked.

Dio understood that he meant the decree prohibiting the worship of

all the old gods.

"It is ready," Merira answered, "but do think before you proclaim it,

sire."

"Think of what?"

"Of not losing your kingdom."

The king looked at him intently, without speaking, and then asked

again:

"And what ought I to do, my friend, not to lose my kingdom?"

"I have told you many times, Uaenra: be merciful to yourself and

others."

"To myself and others? Can one do both?"

"Yes."

"And what do you think, Dio?"

"I think one cannot."

Merira looked at her from under his brows, with mute derision.

"Do you remember, Merira, who it was said: 'I know the day when I

shall not be'?" the king asked.

"I remember: the god Osiris."

"No, the man Osiris. It is the will of the Father that the Son

should suffer and die for all. Blessed be my heavenly Father! I,

too, know the day when I shall not be. It is drawing near--it has

come already. Now my kingdom is coming to an end, now fulfil the

last will of your king, Merira, son of Nehtaneb, and proclaim to men

my decree concerning the false gods and the one true God, whose is

the glory for ever and ever!"

"Your will shall be done, sire, but remember: once the fire is

kindled, there is no putting it out."

"Why, did you think we should just play with the fire and then let it

out?" the king said, with a smile. He put both his hands on Merira's

shoulders and again looked deep into his eyes.

"I know what makes you wretched, Merira," he said quietly, almost in

a whisper. "You have not yet decided whether you are my friend or my

enemy. Maybe you will decide very soon. Remember one thing: I love

you. Don't be afraid then, my friend, my beloved enemy; be my friend

or my enemy to the bitter end. God help you!"

He put his arms round him and kissed him.

The chariot was brought. The king stepped into it and Dio followed

him. The whip cracked, the horses dashed off and the chariot flew

like the whirlwind.

Merira watched it go, and when it disappeared in the last rays of the

setting sun he stretched out his arms towards it and cried:

"You have prophesied your own doom, Akhnaton Uaenra: now your sun is

setting, now your kingdom is coming to an end!"

It was already dark when, having driven far into the hilly desert,

the king stopped and alighted from the chariot. Dio tied the horses

to a spear stuck in the sand. The king sat down on a stone and Dio

sat at his feet.

He pointed out to her the distant flame of a bonfire in the desert.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Mahu, strange man that he is...." the king answered. "He follows me

about like a watchdog; I suppose he is afraid of my running away...."

Both were silent: Dio was waiting for him to speak: she knew he had

come with her to the desert in order to talk undisturbed.

"I want to ask you something, Dio, and I cannot, I can't find the

words," he began quietly, without looking at her.

He broke off and then began lower still:

"Do you know what Iserker said to me when I asked him why he wanted

to kill me? 'Because, being a man, you make yourself God'. This was

well said, wasn't it?"

"No, it wasn't: you don't make yourself God."

"I know I don't: it would be better for a man who made himself God

not to have been born. But that's one thing and then there is

something else; and one thing is so like the other that sometimes

there is no distinguishing them.... And then it turns round all of a

sudden: it was like this and then, all at once, it's the other way

about...."

He rambled on incoherently, constantly losing the thread of his

thought, wandering off the point and trying to find words; at last he

was in a complete tangle and, with a wave of his hand, said

hopelessly:

"No, I cannot! I will tell you another time...."

Dio smiled, and, taking his hand began kissing and stroking it

gently, comforting him like a child.

"Better tell me now, Enra!"

'Enra' was the diminutive of 'Uaenra' and only those most intimate

with him called him so.

"You speak very well, I understand it all. You don't make yourself a

god, that's one thing, and what was the other?" she tried to help him

as though he were a schoolboy who had forgotten his lesson.

"What was the other thing?" he began again and suddenly hurried on

joyfully. "Do you remember the prayer 'Thou, Father art in my heart

and no one knows Thee but me, Thy son?' I have said this and I don't

go back on it. I never shall. This is as fixed in me as the stars

in heaven. But this is so when I am not afraid, and when I am

afraid, I pray to the Father: 'send someone else, someone else

instead, I cannot!' And now, too, I am afraid. I keep thinking of

the burden I have taken upon myself. Can a man bear it? What do you

think, can he?"

"I don't know, Enra...."

"Don't you know either?"

The way he looked at her wrung her heart.

She clasped his knees and cried: "Yes, I do know: you can--you alone!"

He said nothing and buried his face in his hands. There was a long

silence.

The stars came out. The Milky Way like a cloud rent in two stretched

from one end of the desert to the other; the Pleiades glowed and the

seven stars of Tuart, the Hippopotamus, glittered with a cold

brilliance.

The king uncovered his face and looked at Dio. His face was as still

as the sleeping desert and the starry heavens above. But Dio

shuddered: she recalled the Sphinx with the face of Akhnaton; if a

man had been tortured for a thousand years in hell and then came to

earth again, he would have such a face.

"Dio, my sister, my beloved, why did you come to me, why did you love

me?" he said, wringing his hands. "It was easier for me without you:

I did not know myself then, did not see myself. For the first time I

saw myself in you and was terrified: who am I? who am I? Go away, I

beg you! Why should you be tortured with me?"

"No, my brother, I shall never go away from you, I want to suffer

with you!"

"You have escaped one fire and now you seek another?"

"Yes, I want to perish in your fire!"

PART THREE

I AM NOT HE

I

The days of the floods were approaching.

The black, parched, withered earth, deathlike and terrible was aching

under the terrible sun; the waters of the Nile barely covered its

slimy bed. Men, animals, and plants were perishing with the heat.

Had the heat lasted, everything, it seemed, would have been burnt up

as with the fire of a conflagration or of the Sheheb.

But at the exact day, at the exact hour, God's miracle took place:

Mother Isis wept over her dead son--the dried-up Nile; her tear--the

star Sirius, the forerunner of the sun--fell into it and the

ram-headed Khnum unsealed the springs of water.

Frogs croaked joyfully; herons paced about the black mud as though

measuring the earth like the wise god Tot, the Measurer; the clerks

of the Water Department measured the height of the water from the

Waterfalls to the Delta by the marks on the stone walls of the

measuring wells, while simple folk did it by the crocodile eggs and

ant-heaps: the water never rose above these. Twelve cubits meant the

ruin, sixteen cubits the salvation of Egypt.

At that time Merira went to Nut-Amon, Thebes, to see Ptamose who was

at death's door and implored him not to delay. But even when Merira

had arrived in Thebes he kept putting off the meeting, as though he

feared it.

He, too, was ill; he could not sleep at night and in the daytime he

wandered about the town, not knowing what to do with himself. A

grimace of disgust was constantly upon his face as though he smelt an

evil stench. This was one of the curious torments of his illness: he

was everywhere pursued by bad smells--of dead rats as in a granary,

of bats as in the burials caves, or of rotten fish as on the banks of

the Nile where fish is cleaned, salted and dried in the sun. No

perfumes were of any use: they only made the stench worse.

Some three days after his arrival he was sitting by the eastern gates

of the Apet-Oisit enclosure, among the ruins of the tomb-sanctuary of

King Tutmose the Third.

The sun was in the zenith: its rays came down straight almost without

casting any shadow. The dreadful light poured down like molten tin.

Merira sat in the narrow shadow cast by the crown of the giant pillar

that had fallen--the double head of the Heifer-Hather. The shadow at

his feet diminished so rapidly that one could almost see it: only a

minute before he had been all in the shadow and now the sun was

burning his feet. He saw a scorpion running in the dusty grass but

he did not stir, he seemed spellbound. There was a dull pain in his

left temple, as though a fishbone had pierced the eyeball. He felt

rather sick, and there was a taste of death in his mouth.

Black dots like flies, swam about in the air, that quivered with the

heat, and turning into transparent glassy maggots melted away. One

of them began to grow and became an ancient Sphinx, with the face of

Akhnaton; if a man had suffered for a thousand years in hell and then

came to earth again he would have a face like that. He slowly swam

past and melted away, then came back again, turned thick and heavy

and stood on all fours; his hind legs were those of a lion but the

front were human arms. He ran along making a hideous clatter with

his claws.

As though breaking with a terrible effort invisible bonds on his arms

and legs, Merira regained consciousness, got up and walked away.

By the same subterranean passages which Dio had trodden, he descended

into the large, low-pitched sepulchral chamber, or sanctuary,

supported by low quadrangular columns. A couch stood in the middle;

a corpse lay upon it.

The vaulted niche in the wall where once Amon's great Ram had lain on

a couch of purple in the brilliant light of sanctuary lamps, was dark

and empty: the animal had just died and its body was being embalmed.

Merira told the two priests who were in the room to go out, and,

approaching the couch with the dead man upon it, knelt down, bending

towards him. The dead man opened his young, living, immortal eyes;

his lips whispered with the rustle of dry leaves:

"Is it you, Merira?"

"Yes."

"Blessed be the True, the Only God! I have waited seven years for

you, my son, I knew that you would come--that I would not die without

seeing you. Why did you tarry so long? Did you think I would not

forgive you? I will forgive everything. Well, tell me, are you with

him or with me?"

"Oh, if I only knew, if I only knew, father! This is why I have

suffered so for seven years--because I don't know on whose side I am.

Perhaps I am neither with you nor with him."

"There is no middle course."

"To an honest man there is not, but to a vile one anything is

possible. For seven years I have done nothing but deceive myself and

others. Don't torment me, father, don't ask me, decide yourself on

whose side I am!"

"If I do you will not believe me. Do you remember your oath?"

"What are oaths to me? I have broken them long ago."

"No, you wanted to break them but you could not. You know yourself,

there is no room for both of you in the world, it is either you or

he. If you don't kill him, you will kill yourself."

"Yes, perhaps I will. Or, first him and then myself.... Can one

kill the man one loves, father?"

"Yes. To kill the body in order to save the soul."

"Well, that is how it will be with me, or perhaps it will be

different: I will kill him not out of love but out of envy. A beggar

envies a rich man, a scoundrel envies a noble one, the dead envy the

living. Set killed Osiris, his brother, from envy. And how can I

help envying him? He is--and I am not: he is alive and I am dead He

kills me, he destroys me for ever and ever!"

"Why have you not come before? What have you been doing with him?"

"What have I been doing? I thought I should get the better of him,

deceive him, catch him in my net, but instead...."

He broke off and asked, with a wry smile:

"Was it good, father, that Set killed Osiris?"

"Why do you ask? You know yourself: they, the blind puppies, think

it was not good. Osiris is life and Set is death for men, but for

us, the wise ones, this is not so. The Tormented one torments, the

Slain one slays, the Destroyed one destroys the world. Osiris-Amenti

is the eternal West, the sun of the dead, the end of the world: he

will rise over the world and the sun of the living will be

extinguished; the god with an unbeating heart will conquer the world

and the heart of the world will cease to beat. He is merciful and he

ensnares the world with his mercy as a bird-catcher ensnares a bird.

He says 'everlasting life' and, behold, there is everlasting death.

Set and Osiris have been struggling since the beginning of the world,

but the world does not yet know which of the two shall conquer."

"You speak almost exactly as he does, father! the tiniest hairbreadth

divides you from him...."

"Yes, there is only a hairbreadth difference between truth and

falsehood. Do you know the secret? The first Osiris has been, the

second is to come; this man is but a shadow cast by Him; this one has

spoken but the One to come will act."

"What will He do?"

"Destroy the world."

"Or perhaps the world will perish for His sake and be happy in doing

so?"

"And will you be happy, too?"

"Perhaps I, also."

"Do you love Him, then?"

"I do. How can one help loving Him? He is more beautiful than all

the sons of man. The devil knew well how to tempt man. I love His

shadow, too, King Akhnaton; I love and hate him at the same time.

And he knows it--he knows I want to kill him...."

Without speaking Ptamose took a ring off his finger and put it on

Merira's.

King Tutmose the Third, King Akhnaton's great-great-grandfather, gave

this ring to Hatuseneb, the high priest of Amon. A tiny cup of

poison was concealed under the fiery yellow carbuncle--'Amon's eye.'

On his deathbed the king commanded that if any king of Egypt were

false to Amon he was to be killed with that poison.

"My spirit be upon you, my son, and the Spirit of the Secret One!"

Ptamose said, laying his hands on Merira's head. "Henceforth, you,

Merira, son of Nehtaneb, are the High Priest of Amon. Woe to thy

enemies, O Lord! Their dwelling-place is in darkness but the rest of

the earth in thy light: the sun of them that hate thee is darkened,

the sun of them that love thee is rising!"

He ceased speaking, closed his eyes, and for a few minutes lay

without moving. Suddenly a faint tremor passed over his body. He

heaved a deep, deep sigh; his chest rose, then sank and did not rise

again. But there was no change in his face.

Merira watched him for some time, unable to tell whether he were

alive or dead. He took his hand--it was cold; he felt his heart--it

did not beat.

He called the priests and said:

"The great seer--Urma, the prophet of all the gods of the south and

the north, the high priest of Amon, Ptamose, has ascended to the

gods!"

II

Now we have begun, we must finish; it is no use crying over sour

milk, as an intelligent girl said once, having done something that

could not be put right," said Ay, a court dignitary, and everyone

laughed.

"How soon will the decree for destroying the gods be published?" Tuta

asked.

"In ten days or so," Parennofer, the Keeper of the King's Seal,

replied.

"Couldn't we hurry it? It will be the beginning, you know...." Tuta

said.

"It may be the beginning of such things that nothing will be left of

us," muttered Ahmes, the superintendent of the king's household.

"What is it you are afraid of?" Tuta asked.

"Oh, anything! It's no joke going against the gods...."

"Well, the gods can fend for themselves, but we must think of our own

skins. In this accursed hole, Aton's province, we are like mice in a

trap--there is no way of escape. They will slaughter us like sheep

when the levelling begins."

"What levelling?"

"Don't you know? The king thinks of nothing but making the rich and

the poor equal. But what if the mob does rise up in earnest?"

"No, I am not particularly afraid of the mob," Ahmes replied. "The

mob may very likely be on our side, but our own sort, the officials,

will cut off our noses in a trice."

"'Better have a head without a nose than a nose without a head,' as a

smart fellow said who had had his nose cut off," Ay said, and

everyone laughed again.

"And what are we to do with Saakera?" Parennofer asked.

"Nothing at all; his Ethiopian woman will deal with him," Ay answered.

Saakera, the heir-apparent, had three hundred and sixty-five wives,

according to the number of days in the year, one more beautiful than

the other, but he was said to prefer to them all an old, hideous and

bad-tempered Ethiopian who, so the rumour ran, used to box his ears

and do what she liked with him.

"One can't trust anyone," Ahmes concluded, looking round at them all

suspiciously. "Do you remember the words of King Amenemhet? 'Do not

trust your brother, do not commune with your friend, for in the day

of fear no one will stand by you. I gave alms to the poor and bread

to the hungry; but he who ate my bread lifted his heel against me.'

And someone else, too, has said rather cleverly 'where there are six

conspirators, there is one traitor.'"

They all looked at one another in silence: there were more than six

of them.

They were on the top floor of Tuta's summer-house, which had just

been built but was not yet inhabited; no one could disturb them

there: the garden surrounding it was under water during the flooding

of the Nile, so that the house had to be approached by boat.

On meeting each guest, Tuta led him to the washing-stand, then showed

him to a seat on the wide and low couch that ran the whole length of

the room and was covered with carpets, offered him the fragrant cup

for the head and moved towards him the stand with cooling drinks in

Tintyrian vessels of porous clay.

The night was dark and hot, a hot wind smelling of water, river mud

and fish, blew in sudden gusts; it set up its mournful song, that

sounded like a wolf's howl or a child's cry, somewhere very

far-off--at the end of the world, it seemed--then drew nearer and

nearer and suddenly came in a fearful gust, whistling, squealing,

roaring and moaning furiously, and stopped as suddenly; all that

could be heard was the splash of water against the walls of the house

and the rustle of palm leaves like a whisper behind the windows.

During one of these quiet intervals the door opened noiselessly and a

huge black cat, half-panther, walked in like a shadow. Going up to

Tuta it began rubbing itself against his legs, purring loudly. He

got up to shut the door when Merira came in.

Tuta ran forward to meet him and was going to bow down to the ground

before the high priest of Amon; but Merira embraced him and kissed

him on the mouth. Tuta offered him the seat of honour, but Merira

sat down on the floor beside him, slowly looked at them all and said,

with a quiet smile:

"Go on, gentlemen, I listen."

"It is for you to speak, father; it shall be as you say," Tuta

replied.

"No, decide for yourselves. Do all know what we have met for?"

"Yes."

"Well, then there is nothing more to say."

"It is no use crying over sour milk," Ay repeated, adding, after a

pause, "It is better that one man should die for all than that the

whole people should perish."

"Who will give him the cup?" Merira asked.

"Three people can give it him in virtue of our office, you, I or

Tuta," Ay answered. "Hadn't we better draw lots?"

The cat looking at the narrow stone-trellised chink-like window,

right under the ceiling, was mewing savagely. Suddenly it made a

huge leap across the room like a real panther, jumped up to the

window, and holding on to the stone bars with its claws, thrust its

head against it and tried to put its paw through, but could not: the

trellis was too close. Mewing still more furiously and plaintively

it jumped to the floor and rushed about the room, its black body

smooth and slippery like a snake.

"What's the matter with the cat?" Merira asked. "Has it gone mad?

See the way it bares its teeth! And its eyes glow like candles.

Ugh, the devil! Fancy keeping a reptile like that in the house.

Take care Tuta--it will go for your throat one day when you are

asleep!"

"I expect it smells someone," said Ay, looking at the window.

"But who can be there? There is water all round--no one could get

through. A bird or a monkey perhaps," said Tuta.

The wind that had just been roaring stopped again suddenly and

everything was so still that one could hear the water splashing

against the walls of the house and the palm leaves rustling.

"Perhaps it's they?" Parennofer whispered, turning pale.

"Who?" Tuta asked.

"The restless. It's not for nothing they desecrate the tombs

nowadays. They say there are a lot of evil spirits going about at

night."

"Oh please, please don't talk about it!" Tuta implored, his stomach

beginning to ache with fear.

"Drive it away, I beg you," Merira cried, with disgust.

Tuta seized the cat by the collar and tried to drag it out of the

room. But it would not go and he was scarcely able to master it; at

last, however he succeeded, and bolted the door behind it. But the

cat went on scratching and mewing outside the room.

"Let me see, what were we talking about?" Merira began again.

"About casting lots," Tuta reminded him.

"Yes. I don't know how it strikes you, gentlemen, but it seems to me

that it is unworthy of intelligent men to be the slaves of chance.

Let us decide freely. Ay, do you want to give the poison? No?

Tuta? Nor you either? Very well, then I will."

In the depths of the room there was an altar of bronze with a folding

wooden image of King Akhnaton sacrificing to the Sun god. Merira

went up to it, took the image and hit it against the corner of the

bronze altar so violently that it broke in two.

"Woe to thy enemies, O Lord! Their dwelling place is in darkness and

the rest of the earth in thy light; the sun of them that hate thee is

darkened and the sun of them that love thee is rising. Death to

Akhnaton Uaenra, the apostate!"

All repeated, joining hands over the altar:

"Death to the apostate!"

Merira led Tuta by the hand to the armchair and making him sit in it,

said:

"The high priest of God on high, Amon-Ra, the king over all other

gods, the prophet of all the gods of the south and the north, the

great seer of the sky, Urma Ptamose, commanded me, on his death-bed,

to elect king of all the earth Tutankhamon, the son of King Nebmaar

Amenhotep, the son of Horus. Do you all agree, men and brethren?"

"We agree. Long live Tutankhamon, King of Egypt!"

Neferhepera, the master of the king's wardrobe, gave Merira a golden

serpent of the Sun, Uta.

"By the power given me of God, I crown thee King of Egypt," Merira

said, placing it on Tuta's head.

"Long live the King!" they all cried, prostrating themselves.

Merira's face was suddenly distorted.

"The cat again!" he whispered, looking into a dark corner of the room.

"The cat? Where?" Tuta asked, looking quickly about him.

"There, in the corner, do you see?"

"There is nothing there."

"No, there is not. I must have fancied it."

He moved his hand across his face and smiled.

"Zahi, Heheki--they are winged panthers, with a falcon's head, a

human face on the back, a budding lotos instead of a tail and a belly

covered with sharp teats like the teeth of a saw. They say there are

a lot of these unclean creatures prowling about at night.... But

perhaps they don't exist? Old women's tales .... Heheki, heheki," he

laughed suddenly, with a laugh so dreadful that Tuta felt a shiver

running down his back.

"There, there, again, look! But this time it is not a cat--it is he,

Uaenra! Do you see what a face he has--worn out, old, eternal. If a

man had suffered for a thousand years in hell and then came back

again, he would have a face like that ... he looks at me and

laughs--he knows I want to kill him but he thinks I won't dare....

But wait a bit, I'll show you!"

He staggered and almost fell. They all rushed to him and would have

bled him, but he had already recovered. His face was almost calm;

only the corners of his mouth quivered and his lips were twisted into

a smile.

All of a sudden there was a frantic squealing and howling outside the

window; the leaves rustled and something fell into the water with a

heavy splash.

They all ran to the ground floor hall which gave on to the garden and

saw the cat floating on the water with its belly ripped open.

"It's a bad business," Ay said.

"Why!" Merira asked.

"Someone has been eavesdropping."

"What of it?"

"What of it? Why, he will tell the king."

"Let him. I know the king better than you do: he might hear with his

own ears, see with his own eyes and yet not believe. He would hand

the spy over to us."

"Hadn't we better put it off," Tuta began timidly; the fright had

given him such a stomach-ache that he could hardly stand and could

not spare a thought even for his beloved Ruru.

"Let's put it off! Let us!" everyone said.

"Cowards, scoundrels, traitors!" Merira cried in a fury. "If you put

it off, I will inform against you!"

"But we are thinking of you, Merira," Ay said. "You are ill, you

ought to look after yourself...."

"Here is my medicine!" Merira cried, pointing to the poison ring that

glittered on his finger. "It shall be as we decided: all will be

over in three days' time!"

III

Do not judge me, O Lord, for my many sins! I am a man with no

understanding of myself," Merira whispered.

"What are you whispering?" Dio asked.

"Nothing."

He stood at the prow of the boat with a double-edged harpoon in his

hands and she sat at the helm, rowing with a short oar, or pushing

off in shallow places with a long pole. The flat-bottomed boat for

two, made of long stems of papyrus, tied together and covered with

coal tar, was so unstable that one could hardly move in it without

risk of upsetting it. Merira wore the ancient hunting dress: a

two-lobed apron--_shenti_ of white linen, a broad necklace of

turquoise and carnelian beads, a small beard of black horsehair and a

'tiled' closely curled wig; all the rest of the body was naked. In

such dress the dead, after the resurrection, hunted in the blessed

fields of Ialu in the papyrus thickets of the heavenly Nile.

The milky-white sky of the early morning was changing to blue, as

innocent as the smile of a child asleep. The waters of the Nile were

still as a pond; the morning breath was so gentle that the

mirror-like surface of the river was not yet broken with ripples,

though boats with full sails were already flitting upon it like

birds. The rafts of pines and cedars from Lebanon slowly floated

along. Men, tiny as ants, dragged by a rope a huge barge with a

granite obelisk, singing a mournful song; it made the stillness seem

more still and the expanse of the river more limitless. The white

houses of the City of the Sun, scattered about like dice in the

narrow green strip of palm groves, were disappearing in the distance.

"What is the matter with you?" Dio asked Merira. "Happy? in good

spirits? No, that's not it.... I have never seen you like this."

"I had a good night," Merira answered. "I slept for quite six hours

on end."

He took a deep, eager breath. He was glad when he felt the smell of

bats and not of dead rats or rotten fish; and to-day--what joy! he

smelt nothing but morning freshness.

"And everything is good," he said, still more joyfully. "See how

high the water is! Isn't it fine?"

"Very fine," she agreed.

"Just think, sixteen and a half cubits! The water hasn't risen so

high for the last ten years!" Merira went on. "The country is saved

if the rebels in the south do not destroy the canals. Look, a little

ass in the field doesn't dare to put its foot in the ditch--ah, now

he has done it, clever creature--and men are more stupid than asses!"

He added, after a pause:

"I had a good dream the other night...."

"What was it?"

"It was about you. I dreamt we were children together walking in a

lovely garden, better than Maru-Aton--a real paradise--and you were

saying something very nice to me. I woke up and thought 'I will do

what she told me.'"

"And what did I say?"

He shook his head and said nothing.

"Again something you can't tell?"

"No."

He turned away to hide from her the tears that came into his eyes:

"Don't judge me, O Lord, for my many sins! I am a man with no

understanding of myself," he whispered again.

He suddenly struck the water with his harpoon so violently that he

nearly upset the boat. Dio cried out. When he pulled the harpoon

out of the water a fish was struggling on each side of it: an _in_,

with a rectangular, wing-like fin on its back, glittering like ruby,

sapphire and gold, and a _ha_ with the monstrous head of an anteater,

consecrated to the god Set. He threw both fishes at her feet and she

admired the way they struggled, dying.

"Why do you say you have never seen me like this?" he asked.

"I don't know. You always jeer, and to-day you look as though you

were going to smile. Quite like...."

"Like whom?"

She stopped suddenly and looked down; she wanted to say 'quite like

Tamu,' but suddenly she felt frightened and sorry--sorry for this one

as for the other.

"Also something you can't tell?" he asked, smiling.

"No, I can't."

"There, there, look!" he pointed to something that lay on the

sand-bank and seemed exactly like a greenish-black, slimy log.

"What is it?"

"A crocodile. It hid in the sand for the night and now it has

crawled out and will warm itself in the sun; and at midday, when the

north wind blows, it will open its mouth towards it to get cool. An

intelligent beast. But an ibis's feather paralyzes it and then one

can do anything with it..."

He spoke about indifferent things on purpose to hide his emotion, but

went on smiling exactly like Tamu.

The boat cut into a dense mass of papyrus plants. Their

umbrella-like tops quivered as though alive, the stems rustled and

bent over the boat like two high green walls. The yellow ambaki

flowers smelt of bitter almond and warm water and the pink lotoses,

_nekhebs_, of sweet aniseed. Blue dragonflies whirred unceasingly

over the floating leaves. An ichneumon, a sharp-faced little

creature with whiskers, something between a cat and a rat, was

stealing up the entangled papyrus-stems, and the bird-mother

fluttering over her nest desperately flapped her wings to drive the

robber away. Suddenly in the far distance there was a loud

trumpet-call: it was a hippopotamus, roaring as it spouted water from

its nostrils like a whale.

Water birds flew about in clouds: sacred herons--_benu_--with two

long feathers thrown back over their heads, sacred ibises,

bald-headed and white but for a black tail and a black edge on the

wings; wild ducks, geese, swans, cranes, spoonbills, plovers,

water-hens, hoopoos, peewits, divers, pelicans, cormorants,

golden-eyes, lapwings, magpies, snipe, fish-hawks and many others.

They were singing, twittering, chirruping, calling, quacking,

screeching, whistling, cackling, cawing, droning, clucking.

"Vepvet!" Merira called, and a huge yellow hunting cat, with emerald

eyes, that had been sleeping at the bottom of the boat, jumped to him

and settled beside him on the bow, pricking up its ears.

He threw a flat, curved tablet made of rhinoceros skin--a weapon of

immemorial antiquity. It flew along, struck its aim and describing

an arc in the air returned to him and fell at his feet. The cat

jumped into the thicket and brought a bird that had been killed. He

threw the weapon again, and the cat brought another bird, and soon

the boat was so full of game that it began to sink.

They rowed to a little island surrounded on all sides with thick

walls of papyrus, three times the height of man, bright green and

fresh as in paradise. In days of old, Mother Isis brought up the

baby Horus in such a papyrus nest.

They landed. A fisherman's net was stretched out on poles on the

shore to dry. There was a bed of reeds under a shelter of dry palm

leaves. Dio sat on the bed and Merira on the ground at her feet.

The cat ate fish greedily.

"She is as good at scenting prey as Ruru was," Merira said.

"Why 'was'?" Dio asked in surprise.

"Don't you know? The poor creature was killed the other day. Tuta

wept over it as though it had been his own daughter and has fallen

ill with grief."

"Who killed it?"

"I don't know. It was found dead in the garden. Someone must have

climbed a tree and been listening at the window, and the cat smelt

him out and rushed at him and he ripped its belly with a knife."

"But who could it have been?"

"Probably some spy of Mahu's."

"Impossible. Mahu knows that Tuta is a faithful servant of the king.

Why should he be watched?

"He might well be. All we do at court is to watch one another."

"And you watch me?"

"I do. Do you remember how you spoke about me with the king in the

desert? I know everything--I know that you betray me."

He gave her a long, intent look.

"No, Merira," she said quietly. "It is not I who betray you--you do

it yourself. You deceive yourself: you want to hate him and you

cannot--you love him...."

"I don't know. Perhaps I do love him. But love, too, is sometimes

cruel--more cruel than hate. It is said 'love is strong as death;

jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire;

many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.' Do

you know this?"

"I do. Is this how you love me, too?"

"What is my love to you? Why do you ask? Do you want to deceive me?"

"No. Even if I wanted to I could not: we know all about each other."

"Do we? There is no getting to the bottom of the soul--it is too

deep."

"At the bottom of the soul is love; one who loves knows everything.

Are you very unhappy?"

"And are you very sorry for me? It is a bad sign: if a woman pities

a man she doesn't love him."

There was a silence. Then he spoke again in a changed voice, without

looking at her.

"I have had another dream about you, a bad one. Only I don't know if

it was a dream. Perhaps you know what it was--a dream or not?"

She lowered her eyes, feeling that he was looking at her: it was like

spiders running over her naked body; she was ashamed and frightened

as in that dream.

"No, Dio, I do not love you. To love a woman one must despise her

just a little. I might love you when you are asleep or dead--as you

were in that dream. You said then 'it is sweet to be weak, sweet to

be only a woman.' But you wouldn't say that awake, would you? Why

do you lie then? You are a woman after all: moths nest in clothes

and slyness in woman. If you had only said to me then 'go away' I

would have gone. And I will go now--you have only to tell me...."

She put both her hands on his shoulders and said simply and quietly:

"Listen, my brother, three people have already perished through me; I

don't want you to perish too...."

"It wouldn't be through you, don't be afraid; I hated him before you

came."

There was a long silence, then she asked, speaking still lower than

before:

"What do you hate him for?"

"Don't you know? Surely you don't believe, do you, that King

Akhnaton is the One who is to come?

"No. I know he is only His shadow."

"But he does believe it himself."

"No, he doesn't. That was your temptation, your snare, but he is

free from it now."

"He is not--he never will be. I tempted him, you say? Why, could I

ever have done it without him? I merely said aloud what he thought;

I revealed his own secret to him. And do you imagine one can say 'I

am He' and then repent? I don't know who has been led into

temptation--I by him or he by me. But anyway, there is no greater

temptation upon earth than for a man to say 'I am God.' Yes, he is

only a shadow of the One to come; this one has said 'I will kindle

the flame' and that One will kindle it. But maybe we still have time

to put it out...."

"No, you will not put it out. His fire is love! 'Many waters cannot

quench love'--you have said so yourself. No, Merira, you will not

rise against him!"

"Do you think I am afraid of him?"

"Not of him but of the One behind him."

"Liar, Murderer, Devil is behind him. If He came I would rise

against Him, too!"

The green walls parted suddenly and the king's boat appeared. The

king stood at the stern with Mahu and was saying something to him,

pointing to the island.

"He is looking, he is looking at us!" Merira whispered in terror.

"Let us hide!"

They both went into the papyrus thicket. The boat passed them.

"I believe you are right after all, Dio, and I will never rise

against him," Merira said, with a quiet laugh, passing his hand over

his eyes as though he had just awoken from a fearful dream. "I may

rise against myself, but not against him...."

And after a silence he asked:

"You won't tell him what we have been talking about, will you?"

"No, I won't," she replied and glancing at him understood more

clearly than she had ever done before:

"He is an enemy."

IV

Saakera was giving a feast. The pillared hall of the palace where

the guests were assembled gave on to an open porch and the porch on

to the river. The palm-shaped columns, decorated with a scaly design

of coloured glass on a golden background, seemed made of precious

stones, glittering in the light of candelabra, each of which

resembled a burning bush; the yawning abyss of darkness gaped in

between. There the rusty sickle of the waning moon shed its dim

light on the ragged tops of the Lybian mountains and was reflected as

a pillar of dull copper in the black rippled surface of the river, so

wide that it was hard to believe it was a river and not the sea.

The night was still, but fresh, as often happens during the overflow.

The gentle breeze from the north blew so evenly that the flames of

the lamps were all bent to one side.

The blue ceiling, studded with golden stars, looked through the white

smoke of incense like a real sky through the clouds.

The guests sat in a semi-circle in the square space that was free

from columns: the king was in the middle, on his right sat Saakera,

the heir-apparent, with his consort, Meritatona, the king's eldest

daughter; then Ramose, Tuta, Ay; on the king's left was the queen,

next to her was an empty seat reserved for Merira, who had not yet

arrived; then came Mahu, Dio, and others. Members of the royal

family and senior dignitaries sat in arm-chairs and on folding

chairs, and the lesser ones sat on carpets and mats on the floor.

Within the semi-circle stood a big, round, one-legged table of

alabaster. It was covered with loaves of bread shaped like pyramids,

cones, balls and sacred animals, dishes of food, covered with fresh

leaves to protect the food from flies, and mounds of fruit: gigantic

bunches of Lybian grapes, a foot long, the rare fruits of shakarab,

spotted like a leopard's skin, and the egg-shaped persae in a

four-petalled chalice, golden-coloured and fragrant as flowers. Four

wine and beer stands made of trellised woodwork and garlanded with

flowers stood round the table.

Nubian girls, dressed in white, transparent linen--'woven air'--or

naked but for a narrow girdle just above the navel, served round the

cups with food and drink. Meat was cut up into small pieces and

eaten with the fingers, which were washed in scented water after

every dish. Wine and beer were sucked through reeds.

Fans of ostrich feathers and flykillers of jackals' tails were being

waved unceasingly to keep off the night midges, _zezet_.

Each guest wore on his head a tiny cup filled with fragrant ointment,

with a lotos stuck through it, so that the flower hung over the

forehead. Melting slowly with the warmth of the body and the heat of

the room the ointment fell in drops upon the white linen of the

dresses, leaving greasy yellow streaks upon it; the greater the

number of such streaks the better: it meant the guest had been well

looked after. When the cup was empty the girls produced a new one

offering the choice between _kemi_, 'the royal ointment,' or _anti_,

'the dew of the gods,' which gave a golden tint to the skin and made

the face look 'like the morning star.'

"Where is Merira?" the king asked.

"He has promised to come, but he is not here yet. He is not well.

He can't sleep," answered Saakera, the heir apparent, a young man

with a beautiful face, fine and mournful like the sickle of the moon

turning pale in the morning sky.

"Why don't you cure him, Pentu?" the king asked.

"There is only one certain remedy against sleeplessness, sire,"

Pentu, the physician, answered.

"What is it?"

"A clear conscience."

"But isn't his conscience clear?"

Pentu made no answer, as though he had not heard, and there was a

general silence.

"Why are you eating so little, Tuta?" the host inquired solicitously.

"This is your favourite dish, antelope from the salty plains. Isn't

it cooked to your liking?"

"Oh, yes, prince, it is excellent; I have eaten much of it."

"He is telling fibs--he hasn't had a bite, I have seen myself," the

king laughed. "He is grieving over poor Ruru. Haven't they

discovered yet who killed it?"

"No, they haven't," Tuta answered in confusion.

"They will soon discover it, I am on the track," Mahu said, looking

intently at Tuta.

Tuta was more dead than alive: he took a piece of meat into his mouth

and could not swallow it.

"What's the matter with you, stomach-ache again?" his consort,

princess Ankhsenbatona, who sat next to him, asked him in a whisper.

"Yes," he answered with the languid air he always assumed when

speaking about his health.

Ankhi knew that his stomach-ache was generally due to fear.

"What has frightened you?"

He said nothing.

"Speak! what is it? Ah, you insufferable creature!" she whispered

furiously and pinched his back so viciously that he nearly cried out.

Ay saw Tuta's confusion and wanted to help him, but did not know how.

Ay's wife, the great royal nurse, Ty, was sitting next to him.

Enormously stout--a regular toad--with a purplish face covered with

warts that had red hair on them, the old lady was wearing a fiery-red

wig, a Canaan novelty, and gold-coloured gloves, a Hittite novelty;

though there was no need to wear them in a hot country like Egypt,

she showed them off on every festive occasion. People thought her

half-mad, but she was very cunning and intelligent, and a malicious

gossip, especially in love affairs.

Soft-boiled ibis eggs were served. They were not eaten as a rule,

for the ibis was a bird sacred to the god Tot. But this time all the

company ate some to please the king and show their contempt for the

false god.

Ty helped herself to three eggs. It was awkward to eat them with

gloved hands and she smeared herself with the yolk which, however,

was not very noticeable beside the yellow streaks from the ointment.

"Aita! Aita!" she suddenly said in a loud voice, when there was a

silence and everyone was occupied with the eggs, and she gave a

high-pitched little laugh, curiously out of keeping with her enormous

size; it was like the silvery trill of a toad.

Ay looked at her and understood what he had to do. He began telling

about the pretty Aita, wife of one of the king's dignitaries who used

to deceive her husband so boldly and cleverly under his very nose

that everyone knew it except him.

"She had a feed, wiped her mouth and said 'I haven't done any

wrong'," Ay concluded.

"What? What?" the king laughed. "She had a feed, wiped her

mouth...." he tried to repeat it but could not go on for laughter.

"Wiped her mouth and said 'I haven't done any wrong'," Ay repeated.

"And what is your other saying? 'It is no use crying....'" the king

began again and could not finish.

"No use crying over sour milk," Ay said.

Tuta was saved. Ruru was forgotten.

Meanwhile Dio was whispering with Mahu, the chief of the guards.

"And what if he does not come?" she asked.

"He is sure to come," Mahu answered. "How many have you hidden away?"

"Three hundred."

"That will do."

"Hadn't we better tell the king?"

"Heaven forbid! If he learns it, all is lost, he will not believe a

word of it. We must catch the scoundrel red-handed.... Ah, there he

is!"

Merira came in. Tuta almost fainted.

"Here he is, at last!" said the king, getting up to greet Merira.

He made him sit down next to the queen and began asking him about his

health. Merira answered calmly, almost jokingly. But when a Nubian

brought him a cup of perfume he sent her away with a grimace of

disgust.

The little girls who sang and played the lute, the tambourine, the

flute and the cithern sat down in a circle on the floor. Miruit,

Pentaur's pupil whom Dio had brought with her from Thebes, stood in

the middle. Her dark amber-coloured body could be seen through the

flowing folds of the transparent dress. Her face, ugly, charming and

dangerous, like the head of a snake, seemed tiny under the mass of

the dull black hair powdered with blue.

The girls played and sang:

"Sweet one, you are sweet for love

Fairer than any woman,

Fairer than any girl,

Your hair is blacker than abed berries,

Your teeth are whiter than sunny flint.

Your lips are the bud of a flower,

Your arms are slender branches.

Two flowering crowns,

Your breasts are hardly formed,

Your nipples smell of myrrh."

Miruit was dancing the _dance de venire_. The upper part of the body

remained motionless and the lower moved rapidly, although she stood

on the same spot. Her head was thrown back, her lips open, her eyes

dark and fixed, and the slender waist moved like a serpent's tongue;

the belly rose and fell, the narrow, childish hips moved slower and

slower as though prolonging the last tremours of passion. If she had

really done before everyone the things her dance pictured, it would

not have been so innocently shameless.

The women looked down, the men smiled, beating measure with their

hands and the girls sang:

"You have captured my heart,

You have captured my heart

By a single look of your eyes.

How tender are your embraces,

How sweet your caresses!

Better than wine is your kiss,

The odour of your sweet body

Is better than any perfume."

When Miruit had finished the dance the choir of the blind men who had

sung at the Sun's festival entered the hall. They sat down on the

floor and sang to the sounds of the harp:

"One generation replaces another,

The sun rises, the sun sets again,

The nostrils of all breathe the morning air,

Until man goes to his place of rest.

No one can return from there, no one can tell

What awaits us beyond the tomb.

Rejoice then, O mortal, in thy day of life,

Until the day of weeping comes.

I have heard of what befell my forefathers:

The walls of their tombs are destroyed,

Their coffins are empty like coffins of beggars,

Forsaken by everyone on earth.

Their dwelling place knows them no more.

It is as though they had never been:

Rejoice then, mortal, in thy day of life!

Oil thy body with fragrant oil

Make lotos garlands for thy arms

And the breasts of thy sister beloved.

Enjoy the music and the songs

Forget thou all thy sorrows,

Remember nothing but the joy,

Until the day thy boat shall land

Upon the shores of Silence."

The song stopped and the breath of the night blew fresher than before

from the black gaps between the pillars; the flames of the lamps bent

lower, all on one side, as though someone invisible had come into the

room.

"Isn't it a fine song?" Saakera asked.

"No, prince, it isn't," answered Panehesy, the second priest of Aton

and the head of the king's spies--a man without age who looked like a

eunuch. He was a mild fanatic, 'a holy fool,' in the words of Ay.

"What's wrong with it?"

"It's godless. If it is true, our faith is in vain."

"I would answer you, my friend, but it doesn't behove ignorant men to

speak in the presence of the wise."

"Speak, Saakera," the king said. "I like listening to you. You say

what many people think, but don't say, and to me even a bitter truth

is dearer than a sweet lie."

"Listen then, Panehesy," Saakera began. "Let the son of the Sun who

has come down from heaven speak of heavenly things, and I will speak

of the earthly. We are all creatures of yesterday and we know

nothing, for our days upon earth are like a shadow. The same fate

befalls the righteous and the unrighteous, the good and the wicked,

the clean and the unclean, him that sacrifices and him that does not

sacrifice. A man has no pre-eminence above a beast: all are of the

dust and all turn to dust again. I have seen all the works that are

done under the sun and believe the dead are happier than the living,

and happiest of all is he who was never born!"

"What are we to do then, we who have been born?" Panehesy asked.

"The song gives an answer: rejoice in your day, mortals, but remember

that the peace of the god with the unbeating heart is the better

portion."

"Thank you very much, our kind host, you have given us a treat!" Ay

laughed. "Why, I couldn't swallow a morsel to the accompaniment of a

song like that!"

"Why not, my friend? Remembrance of sorrow in the midst of joy is

like salt in one's food."

"That's all very well, but every condiment should be used in

moderation, and this is too much salt."

"No, this is not salt," Pentu the physician said, quietly, as though

to himself.

"What is it then?" Ay asked.

"Poison," Pentu answered, quieter still. Mahu glanced at Merira. He

sat with his head bent and his eyes half closed, his face as unmoved

as that of a man asleep or dead.

"Why don't you speak, sire?" Panehesy cried, turning to the king.

"I don't speak because there is nothing to say: he is right," the

king answered.

"Well said, Abby darling!" Princess Meritatona exclaimed, clapping

her hands with delight.

Everyone looked at her with surprise.

"What does this mean, sire?" Panehesy faltered.

"It means, my friend, that if there is no God man is worse off than a

beast, because a beast does not know its end and a man does."

"But there is God."

"Yes, there is. Everyone says there is, but acts as though there

were not. And haven't you read, my son, that we shall have to give a

terrible answer for empty words? Pentu, too, is right: there is

poison in that song. But poison may be a medicine. There are two

endings to the song: one is 'eat, drink and die' and another 'feed

the starving, give drink to the thirsty'.... But it is better not to

speak of it. God is a spring in the wilderness, sealed for the

talkers and open for the silent. Merira is silent and he is right,

more right than any of us. Don't be vexed with our chatter, our

silent friend, forgive us!"

Merira made no answer, he merely looked at the king and his face

remained as unmoved as though he were asleep or dead.

Suddenly there came through the stillness the slow, measured clang of

the cymbals on the roof of Aton's temple, as though a huge heart of

brass began beating in the night.

All rose from their seats; the king, the queen, the princesses, the

heir-apparent and Merira walked to the altar that stood in the depths

of the room before a bas-relief of the god Aton.

"Glory be to the unseen god, to the midnight sun!" Merira intoned.

"Oh, mighty Falcon, with broad wings, flying through the two skies,

hastening in thy sleepless course through the sky underneath the

earth, to arise in thy place in the morning, the most secret of

secret gods. In thy life the dead come to life again; thou givest

their nostrils the breath of life and air to their stifled throats.

Thou bringest light to those who are in death; glorifying thee from

within their tombs, the dead lift up their hands and those in the

earth rejoice!"

When the cymbals sounded Mahu and Dio went into the adjoining room.

He walked up to the wall, knocked at it gently and put his ear to it.

A knock came from the other side, too. The block of stone in the

wall turned round like a swing door, leaving a narrow opening. The

palace walls were double and there was a hiding place between them.

No one knew of it except the king, Mahu and Ramose.

The Hittite Amazons of the king's bodyguard came out of the open door

noiselessly like shadows. The dwarf Iagu jumped out after them, ran

up to Mahu and asked in a whisper:

"Where are they?"

"Who?"

"Tuta, Merira."

"Why do you want to know?"

"I won't give them to anyone, I will throttle them with my own hands."

It was Iagu who had killed Ruru: he had climbed the tree by the

window, looked into the room, listened to all that the conspirators

said and told Mahu.

"You are a fine fellow, Iagu!" said Mahu, patting the dwarf on the

head. "Tiny as you are, you have a lion's heart. But there's one

thing, my friend: if you want to save the king, you must not touch

them, do you hear?"

"I hear," Iagu answered, grinding his teeth.

"Make haste, make haste!" Dio hurried them.

"Don't be afraid, we'll be in time," Mahu said calmly. "You go to

the king, and I will wait here. We will run out as soon as you call."

Dio returned to the guest chamber. Both Tuta and Ay had gone. The

king stood by the altar, whispering a prayer. Dio placed herself

behind him, opposite Merira.

A table with bread, wine and fruit stood near the altar. Merira went

to it and began preparing the libation cup.

He then returned to the altar, holding the cup in his hands.

Dio noticed a ring with a carbuncle on his finger; he had not worn it

before.

Their eyes met. "Who is to drink the cup?" he read the question in

her eyes. "You will see," she read the answer in his.

He approached the king and said:

"King Uaenra, Sun's only Son, light of light, spirit of spirit, flesh

of Sun's flesh, accept the cup of life, drink the cup of immortality,

thou who overcomest death!"

He held out the cup to the king. But before Akhnaton had had time to

take it, Dio snatched it out of Merira's hand and threw it on the

floor.

"What are you doing?" the king cried.

"I've poured out the poison," Dio answered and she called:

"Mahu! Mahu!"

The door was flung open, and the Hittite women, led by Mahu, ran into

the room. Some surrounded the king, others occupied the porch and

mounted guard by the doors, but most of them ran to the next room

where a battle with a detachment of Midian mercenaries had started.

"Rebellion! Save the king!" the dignitaries cried, rushing about the

room in search of an exit.

Suddenly there was a loud hammering at the door from which the

Hittite women had come. Both halves of the door were creaking and

shaking under the blows of the axe from the other side. No one had

expected an attack from the rear. The Amazons had barely had time to

run to the door. A new battle began there.

Arrows and spears whistled in the air. A spear struck the stand with

wines, and it fell with a clatter of broken crockery. A candelabrum

was overthrown and the mats on the floor caught fire.

"Fire! Fire!" the dignitaries shouted, but they did nothing to put

it out.

A Nubian girl seized a carpet and flung it over the flame,

extinguishing it at once.

An arrow pierced the fragrant cup on Ty's head and tore off the wig,

leaving her bald head bare. But the old woman sat unperturbed and

did not even take her gloves off; rebellion seemed to be part of the

court ceremonial to her.

Miruit, wounded in the stomach with a spear, lay in a pool of blood

on the floor, scratching the ground with her nails and showing her

teeth as it were in a smile, and the narrow childish hips moved

slower and slower as though ending the dance of love.

The Hittite Amazons might not have withstood the attack of the

Midians, had not half the mercenaries deserted the conspirators at

the last moment.

The noise of the battle began to subside, the rebels were in retreat.

The women had conquered the men. It had all happened so quickly that

those present had hardly come to their senses.

Suddenly Ramose, lightly wounded in the left arm, came into the

chamber dragging Tuta after him. He threw him at the king's feet and

cried:

"Here is the chief criminal, sire! It is for his sake the other one

has been working," he pointed to Merira and turned to Tuta again.

"Confess, you rascal, or I'll kill you like a dog."

He raised the knife over Tuta. The king seized his hand.

"Let go the knife!"

Ramose did not obey and, shaking with anger, grumbled:

"Will you forgive this one, too?"

"It's for me to decide what I will do, but you let go the knife!"

The king pulled the knife out of Ramose's hand by force and threw it

aside.

"Woe to us! God will not save him who ruins himself!" the old man

muttered, sinking into an armchair heavily, exhausted by his wound.

Tuta lay at the king's feet.

"Is it true that you have done it?" the king asked him.

"Not I, not I, sire, God sees it isn't I...." Tuta babbled, pointing

his finger at Merira.

Merira stood at a distance without moving; he looked so unconcerned

that he seemed not to see or hear anything. Someone had tied his

hands behind his back.

The king went up to him and asked:

"You wanted to kill me, Merira?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because you prepare the way for the Son of perdition."

"Haven't we prepared it together?"

"No, not together."

"Why have you lied to me, then?"

"To destroy your work."

"But why did you rise against Him?"

"May I ask you a favour, sire?"

"Do."

"Don't ask me about anything and put me to death as soon as possible."

"No, Merira, I will not put you to death."

"You will forgive me like Tuta?" Merira said, with a smile that

looked like a grimace of disgust. He had spoken with his eyes on the

ground; suddenly he raised them and said looking straight into the

king's eyes:

"Do what you like, but remember, Uaenra, that if you don't kill me, I

will...."

He did not finish, but the king understood 'I will kill you.'

He put both hands on Merira's shoulders, and, also looking straight

into his eyes, said, with a gentle smile:

"Remember, you too, Merira: whatever happens, I love you."

V

The king was the last to learn that Princess Makitatona was with

child. She confessed it to him herself, but did not say who the man

was and so implored him not to ask her that he had pity and reassured

her:

"Don't tell me if you don't want to; you will tell me when you feel

that you can."

He blamed himself for everything: "If I loved her more, this would

not have happened!" He was doing himself injustice: he loved all his

daughters and Maki more than the rest.

He thought the queen knew, but she did not. The princess's nurse,

old Asa, may have suspected something, but she would rather have had

her tongue cut off than said anything.

There were strange rumours in the town: it was said that the princess

had been seduced by a tramp, a runaway slave or, perhaps, by the Jew

Iserker himself; it would not have been very difficult, because the

king's daughters were not properly looked after; Princess Makitatona

had been seen to go out alone into the desert through the secret gate

in the Maru-Aton garden wall. And people added, not without malice,

that the Jews were highly delighted, for they thought that the

princess would give birth to their Messiah.

The dwarf, Lagu, was brought one day to the palace half dead: he had

had a fight with a crowd of street ruffians who were gazing at a

charcoal drawing of the princesses made on the wall with an indecent

inscription beneath it.

The king allowed Maki to live in retirement in the Maru-Aton palace

until her confinement. She spent the days there in a perfectly dark

room with the shutters closed and the windows curtained: she could

not bear the light. She had had attacks of this disease before:

daylight seemed to stab not only her eyes, but her whole body as with

a knife; if a ray of sunshine penetrated into the room, she cried and

groaned as with intolerable pain.

The eldest princess, Meritatona, or Rita, Saakera's wife, was

inseparable from Maki. There was a year's difference between the

sisters--one was fifteen, the other fourteen; they loved each other

tenderly though they were as different as day and night.

Maki had been betrothed to Saakera, who was passionately in love with

her; she loved him, too, but renounced him for Rita's sake and made a

vow of virginity to the god Attis. The god's chapel was in the hilly

desert not far from Maru-Aton. The droning of the eunuchs engaged in

their devotions sounded like jackals howling in the night.

Some ten days after Saakera's feast Maki and Rita were sitting at

Maru-Aton late one evening in a long and narrow Water House,

supported by palm-shaped pillars with a labyrinth of eleven

ornamental pools. Their slanting walls were covered with paintings

of water plants, lotoses and papyrus, that seemed to be growing out

of water; above them were painted pomegranate bushes and clumps of

vine. Beds of living flowers were all round.

Rita and Maki were reclining on pillows by the water's edge, under

bushes of white, pink, and red roses.

"Why didn't you tell sooner, you silly? We could have arranged

things, and now look at yourself: it is too late," said Rita, feeling

Maki's body as an experienced midwife. Pregnancy seemed monstrous in

a little creature like Maki, almost a child.

"Saakera's Ethiopian has some stuff. Shall I ask her? Perhaps it

could still be done...."

"Oh, Rita, don't speak of it, please don't!"

"Very well, don't whine.... What was I talking about? Yes, about

Ankhi. She wants to run away and join Tuta. The rascals did not

stay long in prison--they escaped to Nut-Amon; I expect they'll stir

up a rising there. No, I would not have let them off: they ought to

have been killed on the spot. But our courtiers are all traitors and

scoundrels."

She spoke listlessly, evidently thinking of something else. Suddenly

she smiled, as though recalling something funny.

"Shiha is a clever man! Do you know what he says of Enra?" Shiha

was the high priest and eunuch of the god Attis.

"What?" Maki asked. She started slightly at the name of Shiha and

Rita noticed it.

"He says Enra lives as though all were well with the world; but all

is not well!"

"All is not well?" Maki repeated, frowning with the childish effort

to understand.

"Do you remember Yuma's death?" Rita went on. Yuma was a little

black slave who died of a tarantula sting.

"She turned greyish-white all over, just like an autumn fly covered

with mildew, and a smell of corruption came from her before she died.

And the day before yesterday someone had attacked a little girl of

five by the very walls of Aton's temple, strangled her and thrown the

body to the pigs. Is that well? And Enra lives as though none of

these things happened. Perhaps all is well for God, but Enra is not

God; people say he is, but he himself knows he isn't."

She pondered for a while and began again:

"He does not know how to cry, but one cannot live without tears;

nothing is sweeter than tears..."

"Does Shiha say that?" Maki asked.

"No, I say it .... or perhaps Shiha, I don't remember.... What is

Aton, the Sun? A spark in darkness: death will blow and the sun will

be extinguished. Darkness is more than light; first there was

darkness and then light. Maybe God dwells in darkness."

She laughed suddenly.

"You, too, are a sensible girl; you are afraid of light and love

darkness. The daughter does not take after the father."

Maki listened greedily; sometimes she strove to say something, but

words froze on her lips; she merely looked at her sister with wide

open eyes and seemed like one bound hand and foot waiting for a blow.

"Well, that's enough moping, let us go! You must walk about, it is

good for you," Rita said, lifting her with apparent roughness, but in

reality with tender care, and led her into the garden.

It was dusk. The sky was clear, but mist was creeping over the

ground. The water in the river had only just returned to its normal

level; there were still pools of water about. Drops fell from the

wet leaves. Frogs croaked ecstatically. The smell of the flowers

was intoxicating. All at once the mist turned rosy from the moon

that was rising invisibly.

They walked to the big pond where Maki's birch tree grew. It had

never recovered after the scorching Sheheb. Everything round it was

green and in flower, but it was dead and only on some of the bare

branches a withered leaf showed black.

Maki put her arms round the pale, slender stem and pressed her cheek

against it.

"Poor, poor darling!" she whispered tenderly as though saying

good-bye to a friend who had died.

"A-ah, you remember the superstition!" Rita said, with a laugh. "If

one plants a tree and it dies, the person who planted it will die

also. Well, even if you do die, that's nothing very dreadful--you

will have had a child anyway. To think of God sending such happiness

to one who doesn't want it! Why, I would die ten times if I could

only have a child."

After walking round the big pond, they came to the Lotos pond, with

Aton's chapel on a little island and a small bridge leading to it. A

huge lotos, not yet fully opened, showed white on the water. A boat

was tied near by. Rita jumped into it, and seeing a garden knife at

the bottom, took it to cut the lotos; she gave the flower to Maki and

hid the knife in the bosom of her dress.

They went back to the Water-House and sat down in the old place.

"You haven't been to see Shiha for some time, have you?" Rita asked.

"No, I haven't."

"And I often go to him. It is interesting. A regular abode of love.

All our dignitaries' wives keep going there. These eunuchs are

excellent matchmakers. And they are themselves fond of women--and

the women like it, of course. Shiha tempts me, too, with the god's

marriage-bed: 'the god will come down to you in the night like a

bridegroom to his bride,' he says. But I am not a fool to buy a pig

in a poke. Instead of a god a slave or a dirty Jew may come and

disgrace one..."

She paused and then spoke again, looking straight into Maki's eyes:

"Extraordinary! How is it possible not to find out who the father of

your child is? Why, I would get the wretch from the bottom of the

sea! But Shiha knows who came to you then. Would you like me to

threaten him so that he should tell? ... Well, why are you silent?

Do you want me to?"

"Do what you like, but don't torment, don't torment me so! Better

make an end of it." Maki moaned, pale and trembling as though she

were on the rack.

Rita drew back, and she trembled, too.

"Make an end of it? Do you think I know everything and merely tease

you, play cat and mouse with you? Well, perhaps I do know....

What's the matter, why are you so frightened? Perhaps you know, too?

A-ah, I've caught you! Speak, tell me, who is it? He?"

"Yes, he, Saakera," Maki answered, with apparent calm, looking

straight into her eyes. "Well, kill me, I don't care..."

Rita brought the knife out of her bosom and flung it far away. She

buried her face in her hands and sat for a few minutes without

moving; then she drew her hands away from her face and put them on

Maki's shoulders.

"There, it's a good thing you told me or very likely I would have

killed you, really. Do you remember Ankhi's doll?"

When Rita and Ankhi were little they had once a fight over a clay

doll, a hideous thing that they both loved passionately. Rita took

it from her sister, who pulled it out of her hands, and broke it into

bits against the wall. Then Rita fell upon Ankhi like a fury and bit

her throat; the nurses had difficulty in dragging her off. And in

the night she stole away into the garden and ate some poison berries,

'spiders' eggs'; she very nearly died.

"The devil entered into me then, and now, too. We have all taken

after father--we are possessed.... Yes, it is a good thing you told

me. All is well now--it's over! But I do wonder at myself: I

thought I would kill you if you told me; and now I don't feel

anything. Silly girls had a fight over a doll, but perhaps it was

not worth while, after all. You know what a number of wives Saakera

has. Sheep are in the stalls, fish in the hatchery and we in his

palace. You and I are no better than the others. You gave me your

betrothed, I gave you my husband, so we are quits and that's an end

of it. We'll be friends as before, better than before. When the

baby is born--it must be a boy, we don't want a girl--we'll look

after it together.... What's the matter, why are you silent again?

Don't you believe me?"

"I do, but I am afraid...."

"What of?"

"I don't know.... You may forgive me, but I will torment myself to

death.... Oh, Rita, darling, why didn't you kill me straight away?

It would have been better to make an end of it!"

"Nonsense! All will be forgiven and forgotten if only one lives and

loves. And you do love me, don't you--more than before?"

"More, much more! I love you dreadfully, that's why I will

die--because I love you so. You know, Rita, if one loves very much,

one cannot live, it's too great a joy...."

"It was after that you got to love me so?" Rita asked, with slight

mockery.

Instead of answering Maki hid her face on Rita's breast and burst

into tears.

"There, that will do," Rita said, drily. "It is time to go home--see

what heavy dew there is."

She took her by the arms and again led her along carefully like a

nurse.

They went indoors. Rita put her sister to bed and sat down beside

her, waiting for her to go to sleep.

"Don't go," Maki begged.

"I won't, don't be afraid, I'll sleep here beside you."

"You do love me, yes?" Maki whispered in her ear.

"No, I don't love you a bit. Why, you silly girl, if I didn't love

you, I wouldn't torment you so.... there, that's enough talking, go

to sleep."

"No, wait a minute, what was I going to say? ... Oh, yes! You know I

do not know for certain who came to me then. I told you it was he,

Saakera, but I don't really know--perhaps it wasn't he."

"Who was it, then?"

"He Whom I was expecting. I doubted, I did not believe--and this is

why I suffer now. I shall die in misery, but when I am dead, perhaps

He will come again."

"There, don't let us talk of it, sleep. Shall I tell you a story?"

"Do," Maki answered in a sleepy, childish voice.

"Once upon a time there lived a king and queen," Rita began the tale

of the Bewitched Prince, in a sing-song voice like the old nurse,

Asa. "One day they prayed to the gods and the gods gave them a son.

And when he was born the seven Hathor came to decree his destiny and

said, 'this man will meet with death from a crocodile, a snake, or a

dog.' And the king was very, very sorry when he heard of this. And

he caused a tower to be built in the mountains and settled the prince

there. And the prince was very, very happy there...."

She stopped, listened to her sister's even breathing and kissing her

on the eyes, that she might have good dreams, went out of the room.

Old Asa, the princesses' nurse, could not go to sleep in her stuffy

room and went out into the garden; seeing something white flit among

the trees she was frightened and wondered if it were Tiy--she knew

that the dead queen walked about at night. But, recognizing Princess

Meritatona, she called to her. The girl stopped, looked round

without answering and ran along, disappearing among the thick bushes.

Used as Asa was to the princess's whims, she was surprised and then

frightened--in a different way than at first: she felt there was

something really alarming about the white phantom.

She ran after Rita, but her old legs did not obey her very well. She

went on and on, calling her name, but there was no trace of her.

She met the gardener.

"Have you seen the princess?"

"Yes, I have."

"Where?"

"On the Lotos pond, in the chapel."

"What was she doing there?"

"I can't say."

"Let us go and look."

They walked to the chapel. The gardener did not dare to go in; Asa

went in, but ran out immediately, screaming wildly, and fell to the

ground, almost knocking the gardener off his feet.

He went into the chapel and saw the princess hanging on the brass rod

of the curtain before the altar. She had made the noose out of the

curtain drawstring but so badly that it slipped off. Hanging

unevenly, her body rested with the toes of the left foot on the

corner of the bench she had knocked down after climbing on to it to

throw the string over the rod.

When the gardener cut the string and took the noose off Rita's neck

she did not breathe and her face was so blue and fixed that he

thought her dead.

Maki dreamt that she was lying on the marriage-bed in a high tower in

the starry sky, waiting for Him as she had done then, in the temple

of Attis; she knew that He would come and that His face would be like

the moon, the sun of the night, not burning, not terrible, like the

face of the god whose name is Quiet Heart.

She woke up and called:

"Rita!"

She looked round--there was no one in the room; only the moon looked

in at the window, bright as the sun of the night.

Suddenly far away in the garden cries were heard. Maki jumped up,

ran into the garden and listened. The cries came nearer and nearer.

Men with torches ran about shouting.

Maki ran towards the torches. The men were carrying something long

and white. Maki rushed forward with a shriek. The men made way for

her. Moonlight fell upon Rita's face, and Maki fell fainting upon

the ground.

Rita was in a deep swoon. She was saved in the end, but for several

weeks she was at death's door as in childhood when she had eaten

'spiders' eggs.'

The same night Maki's labour pains began and by the morning she was

safely delivered of a son.

VI

There was brilliant sunshine outside, but it was dark as night in the

bedchamber of the Maru-Aton palace, with the shutters closed and the

windows curtained; only the gilded columns glimmered faintly in the

dim lamplight.

A bed of carved ebony and ivory, painted and gilded, stood in the

middle of the room on a platform with four steps. It was shaped like

a fantastic monster, a mixture of crocodile and hippopotamus, with

lion's feet and open jaws: it guarded the sleeper; the more fearful

the bed, the sweeter the sleep. Strangely convex, round and hard,

with a wooden crescent for a pillow, it seemed uncomfortable, but was

in truth better than any other bed, for it was cool to sleep on in

the hot nights when feather beds and pillows were unendurable.

Princess Makitatona lay on the bed. On the fourth day after her

delivery she had been attacked with child-bed fever.

The dark, stuffy room smelt of drugs. Pentu, the physician, was

pounding in a mortar of stone a complicated remedy, composed of

forty-six ingredients, corresponding to the same number of blood

vessels in the human body. In addition to medicinal herbs it

contained lizard's blood, sulphur from pigs' ears, powder from the

head and wings of the sacred beetle, Kheper, a pregnant woman's milk,

a hippopotamus's tooth and flies' dirt.

In another corner of the room a Babylonian sorcerer, Assursharatta,

was boiling in a cauldron the blood of a freshly slain lamb with

magical herbs and muttering a spell against the seven demons of fever:

Sibiti shunu, sibiti shunu,

Sibit adi shina shunu.

They are seven, they are seven,

They are seven twice over.

There are seven of them in heaven,

There are seven of them in hell.

They are neither male nor female,

They are childless and unmarried.

Whirlwinds that bring destruction

Do not know what mercy is,

Do not bend their ear to prayer.

They are evil, they are mighty,

They are seven, they are seven!

But nothing helped the patient--neither the medicines nor the spells,

nor even the healing water from the well of the Sun in Heliopolis,

where the god Ra washed his face when he lived on earth.

In vain old Asa whispered the incantation:

Mother Isis cries

From the top of the hill:

"Horus my son,

The hill is on fire,

Bring me water,

Quench the fire."

The fire of the fever would not be quenched.

In vain the queen read over her daughter the prayer of Mother Isis.

When a scorpion stung baby Horus she cried to the sun and the sun was

darkened, night was upon the earth until the god Tot healed the baby

and gave it back to its mother. Since then the magical prayer of

Isis had always been read over sick children.

"Stand still, O Sun, stand still until the child is restored to its

mother!" the queen repeated with frenzied entreaty, but she knew the

miracle would not happen, the sun would not stop.

She recalled the hymn to Aton:

Thou conquerest all through love,

Thou soothest the babe in the womb

Before its mother can soothe it.

But now He failed to soothe her.

Thou hast mercy upon a worm

And upon the midges of the air.

But now He had no mercy upon her.

The king and queen never left the invalid's side, but she was

delirious and did not recognize them. If a ray of sunlight

penetrated between the curtains or through a crack in the door, she

grew restless and cried:

"It is coming, it is coming again! There it is stretching out its

leg.... Abby darling, do drive it away, quick! It will seize me and

suck me dry like a fly ... whoever could have let a spider into the

sky?"

The king understood: Aton the Sun was the spider, the hand shaped

rays were the spider's legs.

But most often she talked in her delirium about Shiha, the eunuch.

"Shiha, what does it mean 'light is greater than darkness'? Who has

blasphemed against divine darkness? Do you say King Uaenra is

godless? .... How dare you, you old monkey? .... Drink, drink! Isn't

there something cooler? You gave me boiling water last time, it

scalded my mouth...."

They gave her the freshest water out of porous Tyntyrian vessels, but

she pushed the cup away:

"Hot water again!"

The baby boy had been born prematurely; it had no nails, no hair and

was weak and pale like a blade of grass grown in darkness. It hardly

cried at all and only wrinkled its face painfully at the lamplight.

"It isn't right for a baby to be in darkness: it may go blind; it

must be taken into the sunshine," the midwives decided.

But as soon as they took it out into the light of day it screamed and

struggled as in a fit; they had to take it back into the dark. It

was born an enemy of Aton the Sun.

"Is it night outside?" Maki asked in one of her lucid intervals.

"No, it is day," the king answered.

"The day of life is short, the night of death is long," she said,

with a quiet smile, looking into his eyes, as it were into his very

heart. "Shiha says 'darkness was before light; sunshine is a veil

over darkness.' Shall the dead see the sun? What do you think,

Enra?"

He was about to answer, but she began to wander again.

"A hen, a white hen with a red wig on like Ty's.... It is running

after me.... Oh, it has stuck its teeth into me!"

The king remembered that the white hen was the mate of the cock with

which he and the princesses had played once. Old Asa wept bitterly:

she thought the hen with teeth was a bad omen.

"Do explain, Shiha," Maki wandered, "King Uaenra is wiser than all

the sons of men: how is it he does not know death? He lives and

sings to the sun as though there were no death and all were well...

What will he sing when he does know death?"

Sometimes the king fancied it was not mere delirium: it was as though

she knew that he was there without seeing him and spoke for his

benefit, passed dreadful judgment upon him, laughed at him with a

terrible laugh.

"Enra, Enra, why don't you pray?" the queen repeated like one insane,

looking at him with dry, tearless eyes. "Pray! Your prayer is

strong: the Father will hear His son. Save her, Enra!"

The king was silent. He felt so ashamed that he could have screamed

with shame, as with pain, but worse than shame, pain and death was

the mockery "what will you sing when you do know death?"

At the same time princess Meritatona was lying ill in the apartments

of Saakera, the heir-apparent.

Maki kept talking of her as of one dead.

"All through me, through me!" she repeated in anguish.

"But, darling, Rita is alive," her mother said, trying to comfort

her. But she would not believe it.

"No, mother, don't deceive me, I saw how they carried her, dead."

"She might be saved if only she believed me," the queen thought.

"But how can I convince her? And what has happened between them? A

fine mother I am--I don't know why one daughter strangled herself and

by whom the other has had a child.... Perhaps Enra knows? He spoke

with her then--he must know."

She questioned the king when they were alone together.

"Enra, do you know who the baby's father is?"

"No, I don't know."

"Haven't you asked her?"

"I have, but she did not say."

"How is it you didn't find out, how could you have left her to face

such torture alone?"

"I pitied her."

"And don't you pity her now? Enra, Enra, what have you done!"

The baby did not live long: it died by the evening of the fifth day

as quietly as though it had gone to sleep.

"Where is the boy?" Maki asked, coming to herself.

"It is asleep," the queen answered.

"Never mind, I'll be very careful, let me have him!"

No one moved or spoke.

"Give him to me, do!" Maki repeated, looking round at them all.

"Mother, where is he? Tell me the truth.... What has happened? Is

he dead?"

The queen covered her face with her hands.

"Well, perhaps it is better so," Maki said quietly. "We shall soon

be together...."

That same night before dawn the death struggle began. She no longer

tossed about or wandered; she lay quite naked: the lightest covering

oppressed her; the slender, childish body seemed flat and crushed as

though it had been trodden on like a blade of grass; the head with

the elongated skull was thrown back, the eyes closed, the face

immovable and the breathing so faint that at times it was not

noticeable.

Pentu, the physician, brought to her lips a round brass mirror and

when it grew slightly clouded, he said:

"She breathes."

Suddenly she opened her eyes and called:

"Enra, where is Enra?"

"Here," the king answered bending over her, and she whispered in his

ear, like a blade of grass rustling:

"Open the shutters."

He knew she was afraid of light and did not venture to open all the

shutters at once, but ordered them to draw the curtains from one

window only.

"All, all," she whispered.

All the windows were flung open. The morning sun flooded the

room--the rays of the god Aton like a child's hands embraced her

naked body.

"Lift me up," the blade of grass rustled, and the king lifted her as

easily as though she were a blade of grass. The sun lighted her face.

"Akhnaton, Sun's joy, Sun's only Son!" she said, looking into his

eyes so that he understood this was not delirium, "I know that you

are...."

She did not finish, but he understood: "I know that you are He."

Suddenly she trembled in his arms, like a leaf in a storm. He laid

her down on the bed.

Pentu put the mirror to her lips, but this time its brass surface

remained clear. The rays of the Sun--a child's hands--embraced the

body of the dead.

There was the sound of weeping in the chamber. The women cried,

wailed frantically, beat their breasts, tore their hair, scratched

their own faces till they bled, with a kind of rapture of despair.

But all was decorous like a holy rite: this was how they had wailed

thousands of years before and how they would wail thousands of years

hence.

The king heard the wailing, but there was bitter laughter in his

heart: "you are He!"

VII

I want to have Maki buried according to the ancient custom," the

queen said.

"It shall be as you wish," the king answered. He understood what

'according to the ancient custom' meant. The hieroglyphics and mural

paintings of the new tombs in the province of Aton contained no name

or image of the ancient gods, no prayers, no incantations from the

ancient scrolls of Going out into the World, Unsealing of lips and

eyes, from the Book of the Gates, the Book of what is beyond the

Tomb; no name or image of Osiris himself, the bringer of life to the

dead.

It was only now that the king grasped the meaning of the inscription

in Merira's tomb: 'may Aton and Unnofer revive the flesh on my

bones.' Unnofer was the Good Spirit, Osiris, the King Akhnaton

himself. There was a challenge and a temptation in it: "if you are

He, conquer death!"

"I am not He! I am not! I am not!" he wanted to cry out in terror.

The mild fanatic, "the holy fool," Panehesy, looked straight into his

eyes, as though asking: "Will you renounce the work of your whole

life, will you lie, You-Who-live-in-truth, Ankh-em-maat?" And he

read in his eyes the answer, "Yes, I will lie."

The best embalmers of Thebes, Memphis and Heliopolis, _herhebs_ and

_mesras_, "divine sealers, cutters and cleaners," were working at the

dead body of princess Makitatona.

Cauldrons were boiling night and day in the House of Life, the

embalming chamber: ointments and unguents were being cooked--balm,

styrax, cinnamon, myrrh and cassia; piles of wood were heaped

up--sandal, terebinth, cedar, currant wood, mastic and the fragrant

wood of the shuu tree; heaps of incense from Punt in lumps as big as

a fist lay about. Clouds of dust rose over the copper mortars in

which powders were made. Anyone unaccustomed to these pungent smells

would have fainted coming into the chamber.

For thirty days and thirty nights they were cleaning, soaking,

drying, salting, embalming, smoking and pickling the body.

The king watched everything. He saw the entrails being taken out

through a slanting slit in the stomach, and the lapis lazuli sun

beetle, Kheper, being put in the place of the heart. He heard the

cracking of the bones when the nose was broken and the brain scooped

out with a long flint knife.

Eyes of glass were set into the empty sockets. The hair of the wig,

eyebrows and eyelashes was smoothed carefully. The nails, finger and

toe, were gilded. A narrow plaited Osiris's beard in a wooden box

was tied to the chin, for, in the resurrection of the dead, woman

becomes man, the god Osiris. The bandage of the god Ra was put round

the forehead, of the god Horus round the neck, of the god Tot on the

ears, of the goddess Hathor on the mouth. And the mummy spun round

and round like a spindle in the clever hands that bound it in endless

bandages like a chrysalis in a cocoon.

A wooden, crescent-shaped support for the head was prepared and a

prayer to the Sun--not the new god, Aton, but to the ancient god

Ra--was written on a new sheet of papyrus: "Give warmth under his

head. Do not forget his name. Come to the Osiris Makitaton. His

name is the Radiant, the Ever-Living, the Ancient of Days. He is

Thee."

Thus a new great and terrible god Makitaton grew out of little Maki.

Ancient wisdom went hand in hand with ancient crudeness and

childishness: the hieroglyphic of the serpent in the tomb inscription

was cut into two, so that the snake should not sting the dead, and

fledgelings on the paintings had their feet cut so that they should

not run away. A silver boat was placed in the tomb for the dead to

sail the Sunset Sea, also a mirror, rouge, powder, a book of fairy

tales and draughts: the dead could play a game with her soul; toys

were also put in, among them Ankhi's broken doll, carefully pieced

together.

A tomb effigy was made for the mummy: the bird Ba with a human face

and hands, the soul of the dead girl, placing its hands upon her

heart and looking lovingly upon her face was saying:

"The heart of my birth, my mother's heart, my earthly heart, do not

forsake me. Thou art in me; thou art my Ka, my Double within my

body; thou art Khnum, the Potter who hath made my limbs."

The Germinating Osiris was prepared, too: linen was stretched on a

wooden frame, the likeness of Osiris's mummy was drawn upon it, a

thin layer of black earth was placed over it and thickly sown with

wheat. The frame was watered until the seeds germinated; then the

crop was cut down smoothly like grass on the lawn. This green,

spring-like resurrected body of Osiris was placed in the tomb by the

side of the corpse. The living seemed to be teaching the dead:

"Look, the seed has come to life--you do the same!"

The ancient custom was not observed in one respect only: the head of

queen Nefertiti, the earthly mother, was sculptured in the four

corners of the granite tomb instead of the head of Isis, the heavenly

mother. When the queen heard of this she was indignant and rebelled

against the king for the first time in her life. But it was too late

to prepare a new tomb.

On the fortieth day after Maki's death the funeral procession started

out. The coffin was put into a boat, the boat into a sledge--the

carriage of the ancient times when there were no wheels; two pairs of

oxen drew it and the runners slowly creaked on the white sand of the

desert as it were on snow.

Mourners dressed in blue--the colour of the sky, the colour of

death--walked in front, throwing dust over their heads with a wail,

monotonous like the howling of jackals.

"Weep, weep, weep, O sisters! Shed tears, shed endless tears! Draw

your mistress to the West, oxen, draw her to the West! Poor darling,

you were so fond of talking to me, why are you silent now, why don't

you speak a word? So many friends you had, and now you are alone,

alone, alone! The little feet that walked so fast, the little hands

that held so tight are bound, confined, tied down. Weep, weep, weep,

O sisters! shed tears, shed endless tears!"

The sun was setting when they entered the Princesses' Valley, with

the yawning openings of the tombs cut in the rocks. Close by an old

fig tree was an unfading patch of green against the dead sands and a

sweetbriar flowered fragrant with the scent of honey and roses: the

secret waters of an underground spring kept them fresh. The drowsy

humming of bees sounded like faraway cymbals.

The mummy was placed at the entrance of the tomb and stood against

the yawning blackness of the cave, bathed in the last radiance of the

setting sun. Two priests, one wearing the mask of the jackal-headed

Anubis and the other of the falcon-headed Horus, stood on either side

of the mummy, while the officiating priest, _herheb_, performing the

sacrament Apra, the opening of lips and eyes, read the magical words

from a papyrus:

"Get up, get up, get up, Osiris Makitaton! I, thy son Horus, have

come to give thee back thy life, to join thy bones, to bind thy

flesh, to put thy limbs together. I am Horus, thy son, who gives

birth to his father. Horus opens thy eyes that they may see, thy

lips that they may Speak, thy ears that they may hear; he strengthens

thy legs that they may walk and thy arms that they may work!"

The priest embraced the mummy, brought his face near its face and

breathed into its mouth.

"Thy flesh increases, thy blood flows and all thy limbs are whole."

"I am, I am! I live, I live! I shall not know corruption," another

priest, hidden behind the mummy, answered as though it were itself

speaking.

"Thou art a god among gods, transfigured, indestructible, ruling over

other gods;" the officiating priest declared.

"I am one. My being is the being of all the gods throughout

eternity," the mummy answered and the dead eyes glittered more

brightly than the living. "He is--I am; I am--He is."

The king fell on his face: he understood that this new terrible god,

Lightgiving, Everlasting, Ancient of days, Makitaton, had overthrown

Aton.

He breathed with relief when the body was put back in the coffin and

Makitaton became little Maki once more.

He bent over her, kissed her on the mouth and put upon her heart a

branch of mimosa: the tender, feathery leaves were to respond with

their tremour to the first stir of the heart at resurrection.

The king spent the night in a tent in the desert, waiting for

sunrise, to say the morning prayers at the tomb.

He could not go to sleep for hours. At last he got up, lifted the

side of the tent and looked out. The Milky Way stretched like a

cloud rent in two from one end of the desert to the other, the

Pleiades glowed, and the seven stars of Tuart the Hippopotamus

glittered with a cold brilliance. Dead stillness was all round; only

the jackals' howling and the hooting of owls came from the gorge

below.

He lay down again and went to sleep.

He dreamt he was standing on a square platform at the top of Cheops'

great pyramid. The desert below was thronged with a countless

multitude of men: there seemed to be as many heads as there were

grains of sand in the desert; it was as though all tribes and peoples

had gathered together for the last judgment on him, Uaenra. They

were looking at him and waiting with bated breath.

A puny, black little creature--Shiha, the eunuch, or the god Tot

himself, the Wise Monkey--fidgeted by his side. The king wanted to

push it away and could not--he felt weak all over.

Suddenly Shiha tore off the king's royal apron, shenshet, and began

whipping him with a switch on the naked body, saying:

"Here's something for you, Akhnaton Uaenra, Joy of the Sun, Sun's

only Son!"

He did not hurt him but whipped him respectfully, as one ought to

whip the god-king according to the mad wisdom of the dream; but the

more respectful it was, the more shameful.

And the human multitude down below laughed frantically, shaking the

earth and the sky with its laughter. The sun in heaven, a red

monstrous face, bared its teeth, turning crimson with laughter; it

stretched out its long hand-shaped rays and made a long nose at him.

And Shiha went on whipping him and saying:

"Ah, you naughty boy, you shameless little creature, you have

disgraced yourself before all the world! Take this, son of man, son

of god!"

The king woke up, recalled his dream and felt as frightened and

ashamed in reality as he did in the dream.

He lay for some time in the dark with his eyes open. There was a

lump in his throat, his breath failed him as before an epileptic fit;

the inhuman scream was ready to burst from his throat. "What shall I

do? What shall I do?" he thought with anguish.

Suddenly he felt easier--something had been loosened, the lump in the

throat had melted away. He got up and walked out of the tent.

The sky was rose-green and the rose-green waves of the sand seemed as

ethereal as the sky. The morning star bright as the sun glittered in

the heavens. Not a man, not a beast, not a bird, not a tree, not

even a blade of grass--only the sky and the earth--endless freedom,

infinite expanse.

Akhnaton raised his eyes to the star and smiled. All at once he

seemed to have understood what he was to do.

With joy, as though his words were enough to conquer death--the

mocking laughter--he whispered:

"To go away! To go away!"