Then, hearing those words and knowing them forever inscribed on bronze tablets and in the hearts of the Gods of the Oath, Aziru met my eyes with a cold, emotionless stare that did not waver even when Hattu-ziti was saying: To the Sun, Great King, his lord, Aziru spoke as follows: ‘Myself, together with my house I have surrendered.’”
And the whole time the military clauses were being attested and the god-list and curses invoked for breach and punishment therefore, the king of Amurru looked straight into the eyes of myself, his lord, as if to say: ‘You did this to me, and made me submit myself, but I am my own man and none of this changes anything between us.’
So, after the two of us put our seals to the clay copies and the celebration commenced, I took my new vassal by the arm and led him out onto the administration hall’s portico, where I had received the hearts of my people so long ago after returning in ignominious defeat from my first conflict with Mitanni.
And it was there, on the portico overlooking the outer citadel concourse, that I heard first-hand about Akhenaten: about the bespangled Hall of Foreign Tribute, about the Aten’s castle in which Akhenaten’s queen Nefertiti went to dwell when her husband threw her over for his brother and the daughter of his own loins. I heard of Nefertiti’s rosy-toned skin, her strong-faced beauty which was more of our northern stamp than Egyptian – although, said Aziru, next to my Malnigal, Istar incarnate, the Queen of Egypt was merely plain. I heard tell of Akhenaten himself: of his woman’s hips and protuberant belly, his face that was homely beyond belief, loose-lipped and long-eyed and sardonic; I heard of his electrum-plated chariot, whose horses wore mantles of silver and gold. I heard of the king’s mother, Tiye, the last hope of the priests of Amun, she who had born a late-life son to Akhenaten’s father. The boy’s name was Tutankhaten, and around him all the anti-Atenists had rallied in the old capital of Egypt, Thebes. Now, I was not listening very hard to Aziru’s words on the subject of Egypt’s royal children; neither Tutankhaten’s beauty, nor the fact that he was as “divine” as the two co-regents sharing the double throne interested me.
I was more attentive to Aziru’s tales of Akhenaten’s marriage to his daughter which occurred while Aziru was in Egypt, when the girl was at best nine years of age, but only because of the prurience of the story.
On the other hand, Aziru’s impressions of Aye, Divine Father, held my attention until the night-watch blared his call out and the fires were lit in Hattusas. Yes, the Master of Horses, Aye, and his red-leather gloves and his six-foot frame which towered above the other Egyptians like some walking colossus, intensely concerned me. What I heard of the General Horemheb, right hand of this Aye, intrigued me. Although during all the years we had fought, Aziru and I, in Upper and Lower Retenu, this Horemheb had been impotent against our battle, Aziru’s assessment of him was high and full of foreboding. Horemheb, Aziru said, had been too busy trying to keep the pyramids from falling down on top of him to pay attention to the northern lands in which his king had lost interest. Horemheb, cited Aziru, was Akhenaten’s “Sole Friend” and confidant, and by all reports was already practicing the Pharaonic gleam of eye and godly manner. Under a sane ruler, or if even the Theban opposition led by Akhenaten’s mother Tiye and ex-wife Nefertiti came back to power, Horemheb would be, predicted Aziru, a power which to reckon as great as was Egypt’s army of old. A general, said Aziru, is no better than the orders he receives.
“Do you think then, that the Thebans will prevail; will all these royal folk break Akhenaten to his harness?”
“It is, my overlord, very hard to say. What can be done in the matter of a king who is a god? But another god is being raised in Thebes: young Tutankhaten. Should Ankhsenpaaten bear Akhenaten no male heir, I think that pressure from his court must force Akhenaten to abdicate, or at least get rid of his paramour Smenkhkare and put little Tut on the co-regent’s throne. Or so has the Honorable Lord Hani said to me.”
Now, I had seen the shiver course over Aziru’s flesh when he talked of King Akhenaten and how the king had tried to convert him, first gently, and then more and more forcibly, to his god the Aten. And I heard from Aziru’s very mouth that the reason he had come up to Hattusas and thrown himself at the feet of the Sun was most specifically the revulsion that looking upon Akhenaten’s twisted countenance and listening to his fanatical pontifications had engendered in my vassal, the Amurrite king. Aziru was so candid as to say that if he had stayed much longer in Akhetaten, he was sure he would have been asked to submit himself to the God-King in ways other than by oath. And that, above all things, more than political pressure or even the murder of his father at Egyptian hands, had driven Aziru to make submission to myself, the Sun. And in the matter of the oaths of allegiance Aziru had sworn to Akhenaten in order to get out of Egypt with all the members he had possessed when he was summoned there, the Amurrite had this to say:
“Surely, the Oath Gods will make an exception of me in this case. When I swore those fealty oaths, there was hatred in my heart and naked blades were all around me. Even as I was saying them aloud, to myself and to the gods in my heart I was saying: if I get out of this alive I am going up to Hattusas and throw myself upon the mercy of the Sun. So, Oath Gods, do not listen to these words spoken from my mouth, do not lay these obligations to me as consequence of my oath!’ And I have laid sacrifices, reminding the gods of this matter, and that I never meant to be bound by what submission Akhenaten demanded from me. And furthermore: all was overseen only by this lonely god, the Aten, and the one goddess Akhenaten has allowed to flourish, the lady of truth, Maat. So if those Oath Gods who oversee Egyptian matters of kingship and queenship were not at all consulted on his part, then what degree of attention will the gods, my lords, who were ignored, bring to bear on the matter? No, I am safe from retribution from the gods. I must be. It is Akhenaten who will reap a shriveled harvest, when the gods have had their fill of his warring against them.”
And Aziru, who had been to Akhetaten and seen with his own eyes the decadence residing in the City of the Horizon, was not wrong.
Barely had the Amurrite gone down to oversee our joint concerns in Syria than word was brought to me, and seconded by Malnigal’s father’s monthly missive: “Smenkhare, Akhenaten’s co-regent and the brother who was to him the female principal of the Aten” had died of a fever, so we were told. Recalling Aziru’s prognostications, I thought the fever more the result of a surreptitiously administered dose of mandragora, which grew in profusion around the palace gardens of Akhenaten’s city.
Now, barely had I sent to Aziru an invitation to come up again and consult with me on Egyptian affairs, when I received a second message: Naphuria Akhenaten, Pharaoh, Mighty Bull, Lofty of Plumes, Golden Horus, King of Upper and Lower Egypt, High Priest of Harakhte-Rejoicing-in-the-Horizon, in His Name: “Heat-Which-is-in-Aten:” Neferk-heprure-Wanre, lord of heaven, ruler of eternity, was dead.
Dead. I decreed a great festival, to be held simultaneously throughout all the Hatti lands. I was as excited as a child upon New Year’s day. I was generous, magnanimous far beyond my custom, both in rendering judgments for the people and in my private affairs. I even began growing a beard for Malnigal, who had long been urging me to do so; moreover, I left off my attempts to curtail her passion for things imported, which had become a constant battle between us, so concertedly did she strain to empty Hattusas’ treasury.
Dead. I greeted Aziru like my own kin, and since he had been on his way up to Hatti when the announcement was circulated, even availed myself of the opportunity the fates, in league with the Storm God, my lord, had provided: it was I who told the news to Aziru, who watched his eyes bulge, then close, who watched his face pale and then flush, who heard his icy, sharp-edged laugh peal out over Hatti. So long, and so hard, did Aziru laugh that I thought they would hear it in Thebes. He laughed until he cried, until he found need to sit, until he could not laugh anymore. Then, holding his side and groaning in mock agony, he supplicated my Majesty for wine to drink.
; This I had brought to him, and when he had drunk of it, he observed that whatsoever I, the Sun, chose to do in the matter of conquering towns in the Egyptian south, I might now do. And that he, Aziru, was anxious to help me, more so than he had ever been.
“What of this Aye, whom you so praised to me? And what of the general Horemheb?”
Aziru snapped his fingers, a loud, cracking sound in the tiny, windowless study I was using so that none would interrupt us. “That,” he said, referring to the sound he had made, “is what of those two, now: Nothing! They have chosen whom they must – the solar blood must be perpetuated. You and I will very soon be dealing with a Son of the Sun too young to ascend his throne without a step-stool.”
“How old is this – what is his name?”
“Tutankhaten; Nibhuria to us barbarians who cannot properly pronounce an Egyptian name. He is nine, or maybe ten. This high.” He extended his hand at his waist.
“How can you be so sure this boy-king will live to rule? Might he not suffer this mysterious ailment that so conveniently claimed his older brothers?”
“That is a Hittite point of view, my lord, please take no offense. I wonder what is going on there; did any word come of the ex-wife, Nefertiti?”
“No word. Only that they were lifting this Nibhuria onto the seat of kingship. If you are right, and I will not believe it until I hear it from Duttu, then you and I should lay a sacrifice before the gods of the armies… what danger can a lad too young to have learned to masturbate be to us?”
“Perhaps,” he said, collecting himself. “And perhaps we should not thank the gods until we are sure we have been increased. The little heiress, Ankhsenpaaten, bore her father a child just recently, but I am not sure if it lived: it was sickly like all Akhenaten’s get. However it came out, she was pregnant when I left the City of the Horizon. They will marry Nibhuria Tutankhaten to Ankhsenpaaten. She holds the blood to legitimize him.”
“So? Aziru, you still have not made yourself clear: will this Pharaoh rule, truly, and thus be no threat; or will his mother and Aye and Horemheb and the priests rule through him?”
“My overlord, Great King, I wish I knew. Overshadowing all Egyptian affairs is the godhood of Pharaoh; it is possible that he will wield power, because of that. Until some one of us hears from Hani, or until Hatib the Vile whispers it in your ear, or Duttu writes you of it, none of us will know. I imagine they will stop wearing those short, round Libyan wigs that they love so in Akhetaten, and go back to the long, plaited Theban ones,” mused Aziru, as if to himself.
“While you are here, will you not honor my family with your presence at my son’s emergence into manhood?”
Now, polite or not, I was not asking, but decreeing, and he knew it.
“Which son, though it matters not? I am, my lord Overlord, deeply honored that you ask me to attend.”
“Which? My lion-rider, prince Zannanza, Khinti’s child.”
“And her beautiful daughter, is she a woman in the eyes of the Sun?”
“What is that most feral look, vassal? Whether she is or isn’t can matter not at all to you: that girl will marry for love, at a time of her own choosing. I have promised her.”
CHAPTER 31
Not only did we hear that they stopped wearing the fashionable Libyan wigs that had obtained in the City of the Horizon, but that the whole court was leaving. The City of the Aten was to be abandoned. We in poorer nations could only shake our heads at such flagrant waste.
In the two years since Zannanza, my prince out of Khinti, had become a man, my only reliable source of information had been Malnigal’s sister in Egypt and her father, Burnaburiash, king of Babylon. It was Burnaburiash, the only Great King of my acquaintance still in diplomatic correspondence with Egypt, who rendered protest after formal protest in the matter of the Egyptian court having formally recognized the upstart “king” of Assyria, Assur-uballit, upon his own and as no one’s vassal. But no notice did Egypt take of Babylon’s displeasure, although the Theban scribes were nothing if not polite.
My faithful Duttu had been found out and slain, or otherwise perished, and I had no eyes in Theban grace among his kindred.
Hatib, also, was suffering the shifting of power whose tremors may bring a man’s life down around his ears like a wooden roof.
I had my hands full keeping my Syrian dependencies quiet and peaceful. I made a few stabs at Amqa’s cities, but only to let Aziru know I was still alive and well, which he seemed to have a tendency to forget, even though once a year he trundled up to Hattusas with his tribute of gold and silver and his precious gifts for my queen and the officials of temples and of the armies to whom he, by treaty, showed deference.
Six more times did Aziru make the yearly pilgrimage to Hattusas before the Sun, myself, roused once again for battle. Another two years did I gather intelligence and sit on my buttocks with my ears perked southward, before I was ready.
Six years and two, I waited, while the Egyptian priests licked their wounds and accustomed themselves and everyone else to the change in Pharaoh’s name: Tutankhaten, Living-image-of-Aten, was no more; Tutankhamun, Living-image-of-Amun ruled in Thebes. The God Amun and everyone else, if one could believe what the forked-tongued chose to say, were exceedingly pleased; all was once more exceedingly well with Pharaoh, the Good God, with his country, with his wives and children, with his horses and chariots. As well, I assumed, as could be a king just turned eighteen, with a wife two years older who had born her father, the presiding Pharaoh’s full brother, a child: As well as a man could be, whose rule had been so circumscribed that it seemed to consist only of decrees ordering the restoration of each and every monument his heretic predecessor had defaced, of endlessly placating the formerly-maligned god Amun and his priests, and of restoring free worship of the Gods in all their differentiated splendor from one end of Egypt to the other.
Six years I spent teaching Aziru to come to heel, and raising my twins in their puberty and Malnigal’s get in their diapers, and fighting little up-country skirmishes.
Six years: I learned to love Malnigal less, in that period. Her detractors became vociferous, and I had been through that before; so instead of silencing them, for in many ways I agreed (she was a perfect woman, perchance, but a perfect Tawananna for Hatti she was far from being), I withdrew in my way from the entire affair. If she could not see what she was doing, if she could not take charge of her life and moderate her lusts and her excesses and cease trying to transform Hattusas into a province of Babylon, then I was not going to take her part.
I am not saying that there was peace in the Hatti land or anywhere else during that time. But what battles there were, were not the battles I was longing to fight. It was as if I was having to do everything I had done across the years a second time. There was fighting on the Gasgaean frontier, so much of it that I went myself to the front to put an end to it.
Only one of those battles was especially memorable, and not because I cut off the Gasgaean chieftain’s head at the end of it: I was out of patience in the matter of the Gasgaean enemy, and was not only making summary execution of Gasgaean leaders my practice, but had ordered all my commanders to do the same.
In this particular battle of which I speak, in the rear of the army, a plague broke out. And though I had Hannutti, my master of horses, the field marshal, and Himuili, commander of ten with me, and the Great Shepherd also, only Himuili died of the plague. And I was pleased about that, though I had expected he would die in his river-bank position during the battle.
So it seemed that the Oath Gods had rendered me a judgment, both in the matter of the death of Himuili and concerning the Gasgaean enemies.
Two years of that campaign I myself oversaw, and when the worst was over and the Gasgaeans were put to flight, it was Telipinus’ army that made the final sweep of Gasga before driving down to start the war with which I am about to concern myself.
In that year, the eighth of the boy-king in Egypt’s reign, the thirty-sixth of my own regna
l calendar, I was concerning myself with accomplishing sharply circumscribed goals:
I had thought long on the matter of my son Piyassilis, and come to the decision that the only true solution to his problem was to keep my word to give him the city and the country of Carchemish as his own kingship. There he could do whatsoever he wished in the matter of Tarkhunta-zalma and his personal life, and no one in Hatti could say a word about it.
I had thought long on the matter of my Syrian dependencies, and when I was possessed of the country and the city of Carchemish, I intended to close up all the holes in my southernmost territories through which the treacherous kings of Mukis and Ni’i and Nuhasse were wont to slip, thus stabilizing matters in Retenu so that I could turn my attention, next year, to my eastern boundaries, where king Artatama, the Hurrian with whom I had a treaty, was making such a muddle of affairs on the far bank of the Mala.
“Tribal troops came in multitude and attacked my army by night,” said the Priest, eyes darting fiery pride.” Then the gods of the Sun helped me, so that I defeated the enemy and slew them. And when I had defeated the tribal troops sent by the Hurrians, the country of our enemies saw this, and they were afraid, and all the countries of Arziya and Carchemish made peace with me, and the town of Murmuriga made peace with me, too.” And he handed me the tablets of submission of those countries which were suddenly Hittite countries, the lands about Carchemish-on-the-Mala, that choicest Mitannian stronghold on this side of the river.
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