“Horus, you look tired,” she said.
He nodded. “I dislike the dark hours, Nefertiti. I feel safe only under the heat of Ra, the light that reveals every hidden thing. Night is full of whispers unless I am able to sleep it away.”
Nefertiti clenched her fists under the cover of her sleeping robe. “And did you feel safe behind the curtains of the sumptuous barge Queen Sitamun gave you?”
“Oh, very. Sitamun is not a part of the darkness. She cannot hurt me.”
“Pharaoh, your father is dead. No one can hurt you now. But you can be used. Can you not see that Sitamun wishes to use you to become empress?”
He rose abruptly and began to wander about the room, and Nefertiti noticed that he stayed always within the border of light cast by the dozens of lamps in stands around the walls and flaring on every table.
“Sitamun has a right to become a reigning queen with you,” he said almost sulkily. “I love you, Nefertiti. You are beautiful, and you were good to me long before Mother had me released from the harem. But Sitamun is my own blood, my sister, my wife by right.”
“But a pharaoh has not been obliged to wed fully royal blood for hentis! The way of choosing an heir has changed!”
“That is not the point.” He picked up a green glass vase from Keftiu and absently began to trace the outline of the sea urchin etched onto it. “As the chief of a chosen and holy family I must keep that family united. Darkness hosts against it. We must lock arms. We must love each other strongly.”
He had sometimes spoken to her in this vein before, and she was terrified that she was beginning to understand fully his implications. She asked brusquely, “Is that why you made love to Sitamun behind the hangings of her barge?”
“My barge, Nefertiti.” He frowned over the vase and then, setting it down, came toward the couch, hands linked behind his back, short sleeping kilt sagging under his loose belly. “That is partly why. But she is also beautiful.”
“How is it, Pharaoh, that Sitamun’s beauty can excite you so, and yet my own has roused you so little?” She was aware of being on dangerous ground but was close to tears of jealousy. His periodic impotence was a secret she had kept more out of pride than loyalty. She had cast about in her mind many times for its cause, for when he did come to her full of desire, he was as passionate as any woman could wish.
He sat beside her, draping an arm across her shoulders. “Dear Nefertiti!” he said. “What is flesh but a vehicle for the ka? How can you care about Sitamun’s flesh when you and I share the communion of our kas? You are my wife, my cousin, my friend. It is enough.”
It is not enough if it means that my position as future empress is in jeopardy, Nefertiti thought furiously. Turning to him, she began to kiss him, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck, but his lips remained cool and unresponsive, and finally she drew away. “Do not marry Sitamun, I beg you,” she whispered. “If you must have her, put her in your harem.”
“But I have already decided.” He spoke mildly. “She is to be queen, with you. She is my sister.” He emphasized his last words, and Nefertiti suddenly saw the truth of the issue she was confronting. “Your sister—and your father’s wife,” she said slowly, her heart pounding. “Of course. That is why she excites you. That is why you make no move to fill your own harem. Will you acquire all your father’s women, Amunhotep?”
For the first time she saw him angry. “Don’t say that!” he shouted, full lips drawn back trembling over his teeth, hands clasped together. “You are disrespectful!” Amazed, she saw his eyes fill with tears. “That man was not my father! Go away!” He jerked at her with his elbow, and she slid speechlessly to her feet. Bowing, she turned to leave, but he called to her, his shrill voice muffled, “Lower, Nefertiti! Bow to the ground! You know who my father is. All of you know. Put your face to the floor!”
She did as he commanded and then, rising, fled from the room. In her own bedchamber her body servant was lighting the lamps. “You should have done that by now!” she shrieked and, striding to the girl, slapped her twice with all the force she could muster. “And why is my sheet not turned down, my gown laid out?” The girl ran, and Nefertiti flung herself onto the couch. Bunching the sheet in both hands, her body rigid, she surrendered to her rage for fear she should have to face the darker thing beneath it.
The day of Amunhotep’s funeral dawned pearl-clear and cool, and Tiye shivered as she stood in her tiring room while Piha and her other slaves draped her in blue and the Keeper of the Royal Regalia waited in the anteroom with her crowns. Today I will sacrifice to my husband, she thought determinedly. I shall look back down the years with gratitude. She knew that the procession was al ready forming on the road that led behind the valley where every pharaoh had been buried since the time of Thothmes I, Egypt’s Restorer. The harem women would be milling about, gossiping and adjusting their robes. The foreign delegations, swathed in their barbaric costumes, would be anxiously watching the Overseer of Protocol and his scribes. The ministers and other courtiers were doubtless whiling away the time by gambling or picking at the sweetmeats their servants carried.
Kheruef appeared at her doors himself, wearing a floor-length kilt of mourning blue, his headcloth a strip of gold-shot blue linen. “It is time, Majesty. All is in order.”
“I do not want to wait while the women are sorted out.”
“They are ready, and Queen Sitamun is on her litter.”
The horde fell silent as Tiye stepped under the pylon that divided Malkatta from the environs of the dead and made her way to her litter. Although it galled her that tradition demanded that she be carried beside her daughter, she gave no sign of it, and greeting Sitamun politely, she reclined on the litter. Her husband’s coffin already waited far ahead, propped against the rocky wall of the tomb, guarded by a thousand priests from Karnak, who had accompanied it in the early hours and had watched it being dragged on the sledge by the red oxen of custom to its resting place. Beside it stood the four canopic jars of white alabaster topped by the heads of the sons of Horus. The temple dancers were also there, sitting silently under their canopy.
At Tiye’s signal the cortege began to straggle along the road as the sun gained strength. From far back in the procession, behind the family members and the army commanders, the harem women began to shriek, scooping earth out of the baskets they carried and sprinkling it on their glistening wigs. Following them were the kitchen slaves and overseers of the burial feast that would take place outside the tomb when the ceremony was concluded.
The temple of the Son of Hapu loomed on Tiye’s left, the vast granite statue of her old enemy staring serenely and, Tiye thought, smugly over her head to the river beyond. This day he was unattended, for his priests walked in the procession. She averted her eyes and briefly toyed with the idea of having the temple razed. Some excuse could be found, perhaps that the stone was needed elsewhere. She herself would smash the nose from the statue so that Hapu could no longer smell, and pick at the eyes so that he could not see. But she quickly discarded the idea, for the common people had already taken to gathering in his forecourt, their arms full of flowers or bread or cheap blue beads, bringing their blind children to be healed. How ironic, she thought, that a misguided seer should cure the blind.
To her right her husband’s own mighty temple was drawing slowly closer, its columns towering against the blue of the sky, and beyond it, well into the strip of fertile land that was flooded each year, the two sentinels that the Son of Hapu himself had designed. Each was a likeness of Amunhotep over ten times taller than a man, and both gazed with omnipotence across the Nile to teeming Thebes and Karnak. The Son of Hapu had selected red quartzite for their sculpting, answering those who dared to ask him why he should concern himself with an engineer’s business with a secretive smile. When the monuments had been erected and dedicated, the reason became clear, for the statues sang at dawn, a clear, ringing note of purest quality. None knew what magic the Son of Hapu had performed to make the rock live, but
even Tiye had been awed. Her own masons and engineers could give no answers to her irritated questions. Members of the court who could drag themselves from their couches before Ra to this day stood in the grass at their feet to hear the magic.
The litter swayed on. Beneath the keening of the women conversations had started. Sitamun was eating a quince, holding the fruit away from her spotless linen so that the juice should not dribble onto it. Tiye allowed her thoughts to run on of their own accord until the procession halted for refreshment. When the canopies were folded away, those unfortunate enough to continue on foot began to sweat as Ra neared his zenith.
Tiye looked once again to the left, where a broad avenue of sphinxes led to a fine mortuary temple whose white terraces mounted gracefully to three shrines hewn out of the cliff itself. It had been built by Thothmes III, who had also erected another, smaller version that lacked this breathtaking symmetry. Few worshipers paced the avenue any longer, and the forest of myrrh trees that had been brought from some mysterious place and planted there were often neglected. It was sometimes said that Osiris Thothmes had not built the temple at all, that a woman pharaoh had raised it before her reign ended in confusion, but Tiye gave no credence to the legend.
The procession swung right, into the shade of the cliffs, and emerged again into blazing sunlight, where the priests were already waiting. Incense spiraled into the limpid air. The painted coffin stood prepared. Tiye stepped from her litter, and together with Sitamun and Amunhotep approached it. The ceremonies began.
For several days the courtiers camped in varying degrees of comfort in whatever shade they could find, whiling away the time. Some went hunting out on the desert. Some dictated letters, sampled foreign wines, or made love while the Amun priests chanted on. Interest was stirred when it came time to Open the Mouth, for all knew of their new pharaoh’s antipathy toward his father. The more superstitious among them waited for some manifestation from the dead god as his son approached with the knife in his hand, performing the rite as heir with a polite indifference. A surge of sympathy went out to Tiye, who swung open the coffin and was the first to kiss the bandaged feet. Pharaoh’s other wives followed suit, tears watering the sem-priests’ careful handiwork, but Amunhotep remained standing under his canopy, arms folded across his scrawny chest, eyes vacantly staring at the surrounding rocks.
It was with a feeling of universal relief that the coffin was at last carried into the damp hole to be swallowed by the darkness. Tiye and Sitamun followed it bearing flowers and watched as it was nestled into its five sarcophagi. The golden nails were driven in, and the flowers laid. All around, the torchlight gleamed on Pharaoh’s belongings, the gold and silver, jewels and precious woods.
Evening came, violet and dark blue, and Pharaoh’s last feast was set on blue cloths that carpeted the ground. Cushions were strewn, torches lit, and while the guardians of the dead sealed the tomb and pressed the jackal over the nine captives into the wet mud, the company fell upon the food and wine.
The funeral feast went on all night, until the valley resounded with the shrieks of the drunken guests, and dawn revealed a welter of bones, crumbs, half-eaten fruit, broken pots, and the sprawled bodies of the unconscious. Tiye had eaten and drunk little, retiring to her tent only to lie sleeplessly listening to the uproar. Just before dawn she ordered out her litter and with relief returned to Malkatta, going straight to the Office of Foreign Correspondence. The business of government would go on, and until her son’s coronation it was her duty to keep her hands on the reins. She could not predict his course, for he had shown little interest in the affairs of state. Perhaps, she mused, automatically correcting her scribe while her thoughts ran on, he will be content merely to wear the crown, and my usefulness will not be at an end. It will be Nefertiti and Sitamun, two fledgling sphinxes, who will press for an active role for my son. I will take each day as it comes.
A month later Tiye performed her own homage to her dead husband. In Karnak she dedicated an offering table to him, standing barefooted, wine and meat in her hands, while Ptahhotep poured cleansing water over the great stone slab. A fire was lit, and Tiye watched, a lump rising in her throat and her vision blurring, as the sacrificial meat was consumed. Carved on the table’s side were her own cartouches, the insignia of a monarch still reigning, and the words she had chosen to commemorate publicly Amunhotep: The principal Royal Wife. She made it as her monument for her beloved husband, Nebmaatra.
“For thy ka, Osiris Nebmaatra,” she whispered as the tears at last ran down her painted cheeks. “Forgive me for this show of weakness, but surely tears are no weaker than love, and I loved you.” She turned to the wooden stela that she had also commissioned, on which she and he were locked in each other’s arms forever, both young and handsome, with life spread out like Egypt herself for their pleasure. The fire spat and crackled, and Ptahhotep sang to the dead god. Tiye allowed herself the luxury of the grief from which she had been guarding her own ka. Now it consumed her, bringing with it the stark promise of loneliness, and she let it feed. She did not cry for him again.
8
Amunhotep’s coronation took place toward the end of the month of Phamenat. As was customary, he first received the homage of the northern gods in the temple of Ptah at Memphis before returning to Thebes to be crowned. Like his ancestors, he sat on the great stepped throne in Amun’s pillared inner court at Karnak, the lotus of the south and papyrus of the north beneath it, to be purified with water and crowned with the red and white crowns of a united country. The ancient jeweled cloak was laid around his frail shoulders, and the crook, flail, and scimitar were placed in his hands. He seemed to submit to it all with the same vague meekness he had exhibited at the funeral, allowing himself to be guided through the ceremonies almost as if he were a sacrificial animal. The only emotion he showed came at the reading of the titles by his herald. They were many, including not only the traditional Mighty Bull of Ma’at and Exalted One of Double Plumes, but also the titles he himself had added: High Priest of Ra-Harakhti the Exalted One in the Horizon in His Name of Shu Who Is in His Disk, and Great in His Duration. At the end of the ceremonies the Keeper of the Royal Regalia placed the cobra coronet on Nefertiti’s head, but the disk and plumes of an empress remained in their satin-lined box.
Nor did Amunhotep show much interest in the presentation of gifts and the feasting that went on the next day at Malkatta. He accepted the costly trinkets and prostrations expressionlessly, while Nefertiti and Sitamun exclaimed over the pile of precious objects that grew higher as evening approached. Immediately following the coronation feast a new pharaoh traditionally appointed new ministers, the young broom sweeping out the dust left by the old, but to Tiye’s surprise no officials were retired, and the devotion of the young men who had taken up residence in the palace with her son when he returned from Memphis went unrewarded. Sitting with Amunhotep on the dais of the hall his father had built for his first jubilee, she asked him, as the feast drew to an end, why he had made no changes.
“Because my palace at Thebes is not yet fit to live in, my Aten temple is not ready for my holy feet, and I am not clear in my mind what to do,” he replied over the loud babble of a thousand conversations and the click of the dancers’ finger cymbals. “Egypt runs perfectly well under your hand.”
Tiye put down her cup and turned to him slowly. “Do I understand that you are asking me to serve you as regent?”
He laughed, a sound as rarely heard as his father’s loud guffaw, but Amunhotep’s mirth was a choked squeak. “Yes, my royal mother, until such time as I wish to govern by myself. That is what you were hoping I would do, is it not?”
Tiye’s ringed fingers closed over his, and they smiled into each other’s eyes.
“Of course, dear Amunhotep, but I was quite prepared to do nothing more than retire and offer you advice when you needed it.”
“Were you indeed?”
Tiye had never seen him so happy. She kissed him on his flushed cheek. “Pharaoh Amunh
otep IV,” she said admiringly. “The throne was ordained for you after all. We will do great things together, you and I.”
The mood of elation was still with her when she was at last able to lower herself thankfully onto her couch in the small hours of the morning. The palace was now quiet. She lay basking in the triumph and satisfaction of the day while dawn filtered slowly between the slats of the window hangings. She had been ready to keep her hands on the reins of government only indirectly, through subtle pressures and tactful manipulations, but Amunhotep himself had removed that necessity. I am to go on ruling, she thought. What joy that knowledge brings! I had not realized until tonight how daunting the prospect of relinquishing power to my son was.
Within days Amunhotep embarked on the customary journey down the Nile to visit every accessible shrine and to have his kingship confirmed by each local deity. Remembering his lack of interest in the other rituals of his coronation, Tiye suspected that he was undertaking the trip solely to see On again. He left Malkatta in the barge Sitamun had given him, the barges of his entourage strung out behind like golden beads on a silver thread. Sitamun and Nefertiti accompanied him, and Tiye did not fail to notice that he also took little Tadukhipa and several of his father’s younger wives. He is wasting no time in appropriating the harem women who appeal to him, she reflected as she watched him go, and she wondered at the uneasiness that that thought raised.
In Amunhotep’s absence the court relaxed into its comfortable routine of sybaritic indulgence. The ministers and underlings no longer had to flounder on a sea of spiritual double meanings, afraid of giving offense through sheer ignorance. Tiye, too, returned to the routine of many years with peace. Since Amunhotep had refused to move into the pharaonic apartments, preferring to stay in the wing he had occupied as prince until his fine new palace on the east bank was ready, she decided to take them over herself, leaving her old apartments for Nefertiti or Sitamun, whichever woman could inveigle Pharaoh into giving her the sumptuous rooms of empress. Lying on the couch she had moved from her own quarters to her husband’s luxurious bedchamber, she wished for the man she had loved an eternal continuation of such joys in the land the gods inhabited.
The Twelfth Transforming Page 13