by Paul Doherty
‘It’s quite simple to understand,’ Huy declared on one occasion. ‘All people should worship the Aten and all people should accept our Pharaoh as the Aten incarnate. Any problems are not his responsibility. He thinks the Mitanni, the Canaanites, the Libyans and Kushites should love him for what he is and not for the gold and silver they expect to receive from him.’
The others were equally cynical. Pentju, in particular, would often use the excuse of tending to a patient or searching for some new cure to avoid official functions. Maya found some comfort in his new duties as Overseer of the House of Silver, proving to be a brilliant financier and treasurer – ‘Able,’ as Rameses remarked sourly, ‘to squeeze gold out of a rock.’ Maya often had to travel to Thebes; he would use such occasions to meet Sobeck. At least his return brought a welcome relief as he reported the chatter and gossip from that stunned, dying city. He told us about its temples, the subdued life in the markets and the growing resentment of its populace at what they now openly called the Great Heresy.
Ay was the bridge between all groups. Akhenaten’s faithful minister, the confidant and ally of everyone who mattered. A watcher and scrutiniser of hearts was Ay, yet even here I sensed a subdued panic. We had all been brought to this place – but what next? Ay expended his energies on strengthening his ties with the men of influence in the city of Aten and elsewhere, particularly Horemheb whose military skill and organisation he came to admire. Mutnodjmet, Ay’s second daughter, Nefertiti’s comely, fat-faced, calm-eyed sister, arrived in the city with her Danga dwarves. Horemheb fell in love with her only as Horemheb could: stiff-necked, tight-jawed, stuttering and embarrassed. Yet he truly loved her. I used to tease him, tapping him on the chest and saying, ‘At last I have discovered that you have a true heart and not one of flint.’ Horemheb would splutter with annoyance, he’d even blush. This was one problem Rameses was unable to help him with so I had constantly to advise Horemheb on what presents to buy and how he should act. Ay encouraged all this. Mutnodjmet was not indolent but she had been kept in the shadows by her beautiful elder sister. At first she was very confused by Horemheb. Eventually, with a little coaxing from both her father and myself, she responded sweetly to the great soldier’s overtures. Rameses, too, encouraged that match and eventually they married. Maya tartly commented that he didn’t know whom Horemheb loved the most, Mutnodjmet or her dwarves.
Shortly after this, news arrived that the Magnificent One had died. Living in the twilight, he had gone quietly into the West. Queen Tiye buried him in glorious splendour in a majestic tomb prepared for him in the Valley of the Kings, protected by the great Colossi of the King. These gleaming red quartzite statues were built to last for ever, glowering over an empire he had created, ‘And,’ Rameses whispered, ‘which his son was about to lose.’
I always wondered if Queen Tiye had helped her husband over the Far Horizon. She certainly struck quick at the cause of her discontent, Princess Sitamun being promptly banished to some distant estate to live out her life in silent obscurity. Akhenaten and his court observed the seventy days of mourning. Certain monuments and inscriptions were erected to his father but these were more as an afterthought, acts of filial piety to his grey-haired, widowed mother. Queen Tiye became a constant visitor to her son’s new city, a small sunshade palace being built and placed at her disposal. She was still courteous and affable to me but more concerned that I protect her son. She no longer had to watch me; Djarka did that for her. Queen Tiye treated me as she would a good knife, ensuring the point and blade still remained sharp and strong. Nefertiti she avoided, being more concerned to talk to Ay. They would often meet in the Hall of Audience near the Records Office, going through documents, talking far into the night over the growing problems from the distant far-flung provinces to the empire.
Afterwards Ay would visit me to break bread and drink some wine. He had been given the title of Chief of Royal Archers and would use such occasions to check the barracks and storerooms. He was amused at how I kept a small armoury in a chamber on the second floor of my own house. I bluntly informed him that I had not forgotten the Jackals or that bloody battle in the Valley of the Shadows. Ay would nod and, without fail, would ask the same question, probing to find out what I and others of the Kap, as he called us, thought of the present situation. I would snap back that I wasn’t a spy and ask him what the future held. He muttered about similar cities being founded in Canaan and Nubia, of arranging eternal treaties of peace with other kings and states. Ay was deeply worried; he had good reason to be.
Akhenaten and Nefertiti, together with their children, were now becoming not just the centre of the new cult but the cult itself. In the northern and southern section of the eastern cliffs, on either side of Akhenaten’s planned tomb, we founded our own Necropolis. You can go and look at these, they are still there; most are half-finished. I chose one in the southern cliffs, an underground cavern to fool the grave-robbers. Go into mine and have a good look. The paintings are not much and the prayers to the Aten are all wrong – that was my way of kicking against the goad. Go into the rest and study the paintings and inscriptions. Akhenaten had outlawed the Osirian rite. There were to be no ceremonies of Opening the Mouth, preparing for the Journey through the Underworld where your soul was weighed on the scales of Thoth and received the judgement of Osiris. Oh no, Akhenaten changed all that! He made it much simpler. All you had to do was die with Pharaoh’s smile directed towards you (which, of course, you couldn’t see because you had your head down and your arse up) and everything would be fine. The Necropolis of the Sun Disc proved this. Every single tomb depicted Akhenaten and Nefertiti, together with their family, giving presents, being blessed by the Aten, riding out together under the Aten, eating under the Aten, playing, drinking, sleeping and kissing under the Aten.
As in death, so in life. We were all given psalters with prayers and hymns to the Aten. We were invited to compete, to show our adulation to the Aten and the royal couple. Even wall paintings had to reflect Akhenaten’s command about ‘living in the truth’: they had to be executed according to a certain style. Some people may call it original, thought-provoking and beautiful. To a certain extent that’s true but, when you are surrounded by it day and night, ordered to decorate your tombs in the same imagery, it becomes tiresome like hearing the same piece of music, not so well played, being repeated time and time again.
Why did I stay? Well, where else could I go? My interrogators have asked me why I didn’t flee. I think for a long time. I reflect. I recall those events and the answer is quite simple.
Nefertiti’s smile!
Mahu, Commander of the Police of Akhenaten.
(Inscription from Mahu’s tomb at El-Amarna, the City of the Aten.)
Chapter 17
She whose smile gladdens the heart,
Lovely of face and fair of form.
Oh, it was all true. Nefertiti was beauty itself but in the City of the Aten she proved the truth that beauty has its own terror. Physically she changed. Her face became leaner and harder, the cheekbones more pronounced, her head constantly tilted back, the gaze from those seductive eyes more imperious. She lost her laughter, that streak of girlish impishness and love of mystery. She seemed to live in a blaze of light and assumed the aura of an unapproachable goddess, as if she wished to merge with her husband in both appearance and power. She began to wear the Nubian bag wig which left the nape of her neck exposed, two plaits hanging down either side, imitating the hairstyle of the warriors in her retinue. She wore the flowing, gorgeous robes of a queen but she often manifested herself in a bleak narrow kilt like that of a soldier, though longer, falling to her ankles. The Hathor crown with its horns and plumes was put aside for a small feathered blue crown, very similar to the Imperial War Crown of Egypt. In paintings and carvings Nefertiti was now often depicted as smiting an enemy, adopting the stylistic ritual of a triumphant Pharaoh meting out justice to his enemies. In all things she appeared as a female soldier, a war goddess.
A
t the same time Akhenaten began to dress in floral attire, perfume-drenched wigs and the light flowing robes of a woman. This transfer of robes and roles was like the meeting of two forces. Would it be a true mingling, I wondered. Or would one absorb the other? If Akhenaten saw himself as the Incarnation of the Aten, what role could be, would be, assigned to Nefertiti? Would they see themselves as the male and female expression of the Godhead, or would he resent it?
The imperial harem at the City of the Aten with its concubines and Royal Ornaments expanded to include noblewomen from different parts of the Empire and those kingdoms who expressed their loyalty by despatching their fairest princesses for the pleasure of Egypt’s Pharaoh. Nevertheless Nefertiti still ruled Akhenaten’s heart, or so it seemed. Perhaps I was the only one to sense an underlying friction, an impatience on his part with Nefertiti who, at the City of the Aten, provided him with two more daughters but not the son he craved for, the future bearer of his life-giving seed. Sometimes Akhenaten spoke to me alone, not about affairs of state or the security of the city, but reminiscences about the past when he was the Veiled One, living, as he put it, ‘in complete holiness and purity’. I wondered if he yearned for those days. Was he resenting the growing power and strength of Nefertiti, who had failed to produce a beloved son? Queen Tiye’s influence had certainly declined. Since the death of the Magnificent One she had lost that aura of power, of ruthless will, as if the accession of her second son and the building of the City of the Aten was the realisation of a dream. I suspect she, too, recognised that all was not well. During ceremonies and processions the tension between the royal couple was sometimes apparent, as if my master wanted to be by himself before the Aten, unwilling and unable to share his divine status with anyone.
In his talks with me he would speak of those cherished memories when he, and no one else, walked the Way to the One.
‘I never,’ he declared defiantly, ‘adored another god,’ and then as a veiled attack upon his mother, his wife and the entire Akhmin gang, ‘nor did I dance, sing, or profane myself before false idols like that of Min at Akhmin.’
Such moods passed. He’d assume that trancelike state, the result of Nefertiti’s potions and powders. At other times, when I was summoned to his chamber or into his gardens, he’d sit withdrawn, unshaven, bleary-eyed as if he had been drinking heavily. Once, when I was waiting, kicking my heels in an antechamber, I heard the sound of raised voices from the imperial bedroom, a heated discussion about the liturgy to be used in a forthcoming ceremony at the sun altar. On another occasion I was summoned to the imperial residence. Akhenaten, heavy-eyed, face drawn, sat in the glorious Green Room staring out over the garden.
‘Well,’ he demanded as I knelt and nosed the ground, ‘I have waited long enough. Your spy in Akhmin – what does he report?’
‘Your Majesty,’ I remained kneeling. ‘What spy? What report?’
‘You know full well,’ Akhenaten shouted threateningly.
I lifted my head. Spots of anger coloured his sallow face, those strange eyes gleamed, dark wells of anger. He seemed on the verge of hitting me.
‘You know what?’ He stared at me, mouth sagging. ‘I am sorry, Baboon,’ he stammered. ‘I made a mistake,’ and summarily dismissed me.
Nefertiti’s sun, however, burned as brightly and fiercely as ever though she must have sensed her husband’s disappointment at the lack of a male heir. After the birth of her sixth daughter, in year nine of Akhenaten’s reign, she held a celebration in the garden below the Green Room. The children of the Kap were invited. It was like the old days: tables were stacked with platters of every food imaginable and delicious wine had been specially imported from Buto in the Delta. Akhenaten laughed and chatted to Ay. Nefertiti sat, serenely accepting compliments when Pentju, full of wine, cracked a joke about the sex of a child being the gift of the gods. Nefertiti heard him.
‘What?’ she screamed.
The festivities fell silent. Nefertiti sprang from the chair, clutching her walking stick, carved with the signs of the Aten. The birth of her last child had been a painful process, leaving her weak but, strengthened by her fury, she walked along the line of guests and glowered down at Pentju.
‘Scorpion man!’ she hissed. ‘What do you say about gods, when there is only one! And this gift? Are you saying I am not blessed by the One? He has provided me with six beautiful daughters. Have I failed because there is no prince, no forked child?’
Guests on either side hastily withdrew. Pentju, quivering with fright, hurriedly made obeisance.
‘Divine One,’ he pleaded, ‘I made a joke …’
‘A joke! Am I a joke?’ And, before anyone could stop her, Nefertiti rained blows down on Pentju’s bent back. He scrambled away. In the confusion his robes became tangled while his loincloth slipped, exposing bare buttocks. Nefertiti, screaming with laughter, lashed out at these. The rest of the guests gazed on in horror. Nefertiti swung her stick as if it was a war-club. Pentju, screaming, tried to crawl away but was trapped in his robe. Akhenaten glowered sullenly. Tiye sat, face in hands. Ay looked frightened. Rameses lowered his face to hide his snigger. Tables and platters were sent tumbling. Blood appeared on the grass. I sprang to my feet, pulled Pentju away and crouched down telling him to recover his dignity and flee. I glanced up. Nefertiti stood before me, eyes full of fury, those delicious lips curled in a snarl.
‘Your Majesty,’ I pleaded. The cane came down but I caught it. Nefertiti, chewing her lips, glared at me. She tried to pull the stick away, I held it fast. Her anger began to fade as if she became aware of where she was and what she had done.
‘Baboon?’ she shouted. ‘Scuttle off! Tell the scorpion man he is banished for ever from my presence. He can look after the family monkey, the Mitanni girl. I am never to see him again!’
I released the stick. Nefertiti swept away and the celebrations ended.
I wished, I hoped, the Beautiful One would send for me. I dreamed we’d meet in some cool garden. She would explain, excuse herself, ask me to act as intermediary with Pentju, but it never happened. Nefertiti made an enemy that day as well as a hideous mistake in alienating Pentju and, may the gods forgive me, for not consulting with me. Instead, I had to listen to the chatter and gossip about the incident, but that was Mahu’s role in Akhenaten’s paradise.
No threat lurked in the City of the Aten or, at least, I thought it didn’t. The troops, both on the land and river approaches, not to mention my swarm of mercenaries, saw to that. Djarka, as my lieutenant, pursued the occasional felon. I was supposed to hunt down what Akhenaten called those ‘Criminals of the Heart’, who did not worship the Aten in the spirit of truth. Yet what was I supposed to do? Arrest an old priest who cried for the beauty of Osiris and kept his shrine in a cupboard in his house? Flog a woman who begged Isis for a happy childbirth? Fine some poor worker who could not understand how he would fare after death without the protection of the Lord Anubis? Such reports came into my office; I didn’t need wood for the brazier. I enjoyed watching these reports burn. My boys in the mercenary corps also understood: they were so suspicious they worshipped every god, just in case. Djarka proved to be an able lieutenant, a true scribe, a just man with a genuine compassion for the poor, some of whom were his own people. He rarely commented on Akhenaten though, when I informed him about Nefertiti and her uncontrollable fury, he looked sad and commented that visions can go wrong, how dreams can turn to dust and that, perhaps, the One had yet to truly manifest himself.
Djarka and I became magistrates rather than police, adjudicating on a wide range of civil matters, domestic disputes and property rights. I grew to enjoy entering other people’s lives, savouring the very ordinariness and yet intrigued by their complex relationships, their virtues and vices. Sometimes, to get away, we’d take Karnak out into the Red Lands. We’d choose the bed of a valley or wadi where moisture encouraged the growth of sparse grass and whose deep sides would prevent flight to right or left then, we’d set up two nets halfway down the valley w
ith food and water placed between. The animals would slip through the first net, in which gaps had been deliberately left and, whistling up Karnak, we’d spring the trap. I enjoyed the hunt, a welcome break from the etiquette and protocol of Akhenaten’s court.
At the end of the ninth year of Akhenaten’s reign, just after what Rameses sarcastically termed ‘the beating of the buttocks’, Djarka fell in love with a beautiful girl called Nekmet, the only daughter of a very wealthy cook who had opened his own luxurious eating-house in the southern suburbs of the city.
I’ll tell the story of how it happened. Nekmet must have been about twenty summers old. Her father Makhre had worked in both Memphis and Thebes, gaining a reputation as a chef who, in the words of Djarka ‘could make the plainest bread taste sweet’. Naturally I became a guest in Makhre’s house, Djarka sitting alongside me, all hungry for the lustrous-eyed Nekmet rather than the dishes her father’s servants would bring. Makhre nursed a great ambition to work in the palace kitchens, so I arranged that. Akhenaten was delighted: Makhre was summoned into the royal presence and rewarded with pots of perfume, a gold necklace and bangle. Djarka spent more and more time with his daughter. I was sad yet happy. If Djarka married, I realised how much I would miss him. The man had become part of me, he’d tried to fill the empty spaces in my soul. I often wondered if I should follow suit, marry some pleasant girl and settle down. True, I had my fair share of lady friends except that, when I lay in the dark and the oil lamps glowed, I’d only see Nefertiti’s face, view her body, smell her scent. No, I had been conceived in pain, born in mistrust and lived loveless as a child. My sins are always before me. I have killed, I have lied, I have betrayed – but one sin I shall not, cannot, commit: I will not look at another person and say ‘I love you’ and know full well it is a lie. So, instead, I went back to my watching and listening, playing the judge, attending the court, mumbling the prayers and singing the hymns and, whenever possible, going out into the Red Lands.