Staging the accident would not be easy, however. The captain would have to be paid off. And there must be no chance of discovery. In the past the general had been exposed to a blackmail attempt. That particular infidel had come to mortally regret his indiscretion. Horemheb would have the captain killed later, regardless of the outcome. That would be the easy part.
The king and the queen, understanding the need for secrecy, showed no discomfort with their midnight embarkation. The boat would not normally be expected to arrive before sunrise three days hence. They would sleep late in their cabin and enjoy the daylight hours viewing the passing monuments of their kingdom.
Their plans to retire as soon as they were on board, and the moonless night, suited the general’s purposes. As he saw the captain off, the general signalled with a wave and looked up at the stars. His meaning was perfectly clear.
The captain did not see his task as all that difficult. The steersman of the royal barque could not see the way ahead and relied on the pilot, positioned high in the bow, to shout direction to him. Being the man in charge, the captain had ably confused messages between pilot and steersman on several previous occasions.
However, in the event, the captain had a good deal of trouble steering the disaster course. The oarsmen did not operate in the downstream direction at night because the noise might disturb the royal couple. There was no wind and the boat would not manoeuvre. The river currents naturally took the deeper channel and the momentum of the boat was with that of the river. He tried hard to force the steersman to guide the boat to the left but soon realised that had he persevered he would have accomplished nothing more than to turn the bow in the upstream direction and then, as the boat drifted backwards, only to stand embarrassed as his crew looked on. So he held course and missed the only opportunity he would have to hole the ship mid-river.
He would make another attempt on the return. The general was not generous over failure. Rather he was known to be gratuitous in his punishment.
The royal flotilla made good downstream headway and secured for the third night at Asyut on the west bank.
The captain cast off in the early hours of the following day. By the time the sun was at its highest, they had turned the last bend of the Nile before Akhetaten. The king and queen were sitting in the royal kiosk in front of their cabin expectantly awaiting their first sight of the deserted city. It was approaching a dozen years since the two of them had been taken from the place.
As the first buildings came into view, the memories started flooding back. But for the obvious lack of people and the absence of colourful banners, the site appeared much the same as they had remembered it. Lying within a natural bowl of lowland rimmed by rugged hills, a phalanx of great temples, palaces and buildings of state fronted a sweeping arc of the river.
The small flotilla pulled alongside the Great Palace wharf and the royal couple disembarked. The Pharaoh ordered the majority of his entourage to remain at the docking area.
The king and the queen with her handmaiden, two attendants to keep them shaded from the sun, four carrying two chairs on stretchers, four to carry refreshment, and four guards, walked through the main palace doors and into the first courtyard.
This enormous building held no memories for them. As minors they had never been permitted to enter the place. As they walked on, the echoes of their footsteps rang between the massive columns. Emerging from a second courtyard they reached the bridge that spanned the great processional way. Halfway across, at ‘the Window of Appearances’, Tutankhamun stopped. He turned to look along the wide avenue. Slowly the images returned Pharaoh Akhenaten, his queen Nefertiti and their daughters drawn in their chariots along the great road; a multitude of their subjects flanking either side, cheering and waving colourful banners of all types and sizes; court officials observing from the bridge; loud trumpeting echoes about the city walls; a thousand troops or more in several columns following behind the royal carriages.
A breath of wind drew up dust just as if a moment earlier they had galloped into the distance towards the Great Temple. Now there was nothing just an empty silence.
The squatters, and there were many, had been warned of the arrival. The fortunate had managed to conceal themselves from the general’s purging troops. Consumed by the immediate need for daily survival, they cared little about heresy or the lack of it. They remained huddled in various places of hiding, hoping they would never be discovered, and that the visit would be brief.
The royal party continued across the bridge and into the king’s estate. The great doors, flanked by massive walls deeply engraved and painted all over in brilliant green, white, red, blue, yellow and black, opened onto a large forecourt. The royal family’s quarters fronted the south side of this forecourt. The group of attendants followed the royal couple as they moved quickly through the reception hall in the direction of the king’s suite. Tutankhamun’s sandals crunched on the sand that had drifted in on the wind and settled inside the deserted halls. He walked into a room that held intimate memories. In this particular chamber he had sat on his ageing mother’s knee watching the Pharaoh and his queen and their daughters playing a board game. They sat on mats spread about the floor, the walls around them covered with all manner of bright, colourful, lively murals the verdant swamps, the animals, the birds, the people all alive with activity. All just memories now.
Suddenly Tutankhamun let out a curse. He had stepped on something hard sharp enough to break through the sole of one of his sandals. He bent down and picked it up. He turned the piece over in his hands. It was a broken piece of polished limestone in the shape of a nose. Holding the fragment in his palm, he walked into the adjoining hall and looked up at the great row of giant replicated statues lining the walls. Three were without noses; two with no arms; one had no face. The spoil of liberal vandalism littered the floor of the hallway.
The boy king turned angrily to his guards. “Gather this up. It must be restored. I will not see Pharaoh’s image defaced. Nothing must be lost. Secure it somewhere safe. Gather it up!”
The king had expected to see decline; he had not expected violation. The shock of such discriminate abuse almost reduced him to tears. He turned to the guards once again. “Bring my architect to this place. I order a full restoration that is to be completed before my next visit within the year. Mark that you remember!”
Ankhesenamun herself had the greater cause for anger. These desecrated statues were the images of her father he who had cherished her and her sisters as infants. It was true that he had not been a handsome man, but the other qualities he possessed far outweighed his physical shortcomings. The family had been extremely close. He had never allowed his duties as regent to interfere with the normal activities of the family unit.
Ankhesenamun’s personal beauty and her strength of will she owed to her mother a woman of outstanding beauty herself, with perfect physical endowments and a great mind, she carried a presence with her that gained the dutiful respect of all who knew her, and many of those who did not. For the first time in living memory, the people’s queen had become a virtual deity in parallel with her husband.
Fond memories, happy times, until steadily, one by one, ‘the sickness’ had taken them.
She recalled a foreboding darkness. In an instant at midday the sun, the life giver, had become extinguished. For a few chilling moments the entire population of the city fearfully contemplated the premature night. Then, equally as suddenly, the sun’s light had returned, just as brilliant and comfortably warming as before.
But the damage was done. A pervasive sense of panic took hold of the people. For some reason Aten was displeased. He had given them a demonstration of his power to return the land to darkness and cold at his will. The hitherto accepted philanthropy of this god was not so dependable after all. The people’s confidence in the Aten had become irrevocably breached.
There was worse to come. It came swiftly on the heels of one of the greatest inundations for years. All knew the Nile to
be bountiful. In living memory she had never failed them. This year the people were rejoicing at the sight of a flood greater than any previously witnessed. The larger the area flooded, the more extensive and prolific the future harvest. But the water bore within it a hidden, sinister bounty, the like of which they had not before encountered. An unrelenting, evil humour pervaded the land. It visited every household. Almost every family was touched by it in some way the royal family as much, perhaps more, than any other. It was as if the Nile herself, in fear of his power, had conspired with the gods against Aten to render his city lifeless.
It was a sign. This was a bad place. With so many dead and, ultimately, the deaths of the king and queen themselves, complete and permanent evacuation of the city, and abandonment of worship of the Aten, became an inevitability. To those people who remained alive and their new Pharaoh, Smenkhkare himself stricken with ‘the sickness’ but, although very weak, apparently surviving it was the only way to appease the old gods.
By the time the dead king’s tomb had been sealed, Akhetaten had become quite literally a monumental ghost town. The new Pharaoh and his entourage, all present at the tomb sealing, left the area by the northern route, skirting the perimeter of the city until they reached the royal flotilla waiting to take them downstream to Memphis.
Smenkhkare would never return alive.
Tutankhamun led his queen on, out and away from the palace and into one of the streets that took them south, parallel with the river, past the tall pylons of the family chapel. After a while they reached the compound that enclosed the house and grounds that had belonged to the governor of the southern region Tutankhamun’s vizier. The guards pushed open the great cedar gates to allow the royal couple to enter.
Here Tutankhamun had played as a boy. The garden was now dead and replaced by dried scrub, but the layout was still evident. The outdoor shrine where the icon of the Aten had been sheltered was now pretty much destroyed by vandals of the restoration, but he was pleased to observe that elsewhere, and more particularly within the house itself, there was little evidence of wilful damage. The painted walls had some stains on them and the colours had faded somewhat, but the pigments still retained much of their original body. There was no furniture Vizier Nakht had taken that with him during the exodus but the rubbish of recent, alien habitation was everywhere.
The two stopped in the principal reception room. They looked at each other. The king turned to his followers. “Pharaoh and his queen shall take refreshment here.”
Two of the guards quickly assembled a couple of gilded folding chairs they had been carrying and the royal couple took their seats. The queen’s elder maidservant, Tia, presented her with a tray of fruit.
“What does this remind you of, my Queen? Imagine these columns are palm trees, there are flowers all about us, ducks are singing from within the papyrus. Over there...” The king pointed to a corner of the room. “Look beyond the walls...”
Ankhesenamun chewed on a date and thought a moment. “The great oasis, my lord. Our family would sometimes picnic there. We would play games all of us together. My father would tell stories. Mother would sing to the music of the servants. Sometimes father would hunt. His kill would be prepared then and there. It would be roasted and we would feast on it. But fresh food and fresh water are not always good. To our eternal cost we learned that here, in this place.” She looked around the chamber. Tia bent close to pour the queen a cup of water. The king placed his hand over the mouth of the vessel. “We shall drink wine.”
The two took some wine and a little more fruit and were soon finished.
“I wish to make an offering at the cenotaph of my family,” said the queen.
“Of course,” acknowledged Tutankhamun. He instructed the carriers to bear them to the place.
As the party walked on to the threshold of the short ornamental avenue that led to the front portico of Akhenaten’s mortuary temple, the queen suddenly stopped, raised her hand to her mouth, and gasped in horror. The entire building had been razed to the ground. In their frenzy, the vandals had seen to it that not a single piece of masonry, not one fragment of statuary had been left whole, let alone standing. All images of the royal family had been excised from the massive columns, chipped out completely by the vandals’ chisels, or smashed beyond recognition. Snakes and scorpions infested the rubble.
Ankhesenamun broke down in tears.
The king realised immediately there could be much worse to come. “My Queen,” he consoled, “you must be strong. The infidels who did these things may not have stopped here.”
He turned at once to the guards and ordered, “We shall go to the tomb of Pharaoh Akhenaten. Bring me horse and chariot! I know the way. Towards where Amun riseth.” He pointed eastward towards a steep wadi emerging like a gash in the hillside beyond the city wall. “Two guards will accompany us. We need no other.”
With only a rough track to the ‘Royal Wadi’, it took the party almost an hour to reach the site of the lonely tomb. It was befittingly solitary, cut low into the side of the valley. As they had dreaded, but expected, the giant doorway lay open, a gaping black portal at the base of the white limestone cliff that towered above it. Evidence of vandalism and looting was spread all about the threshold. Pieces of broken pottery, splinters of furnishings, linen rags and beads spilled from roughly handled jewellery littered the valley floor.
“Light the torches!” ordered the king. “We will enter.”
Tutankhamun held his wife’s hand firmly as they stepped into the mouth of the tomb. The guards followed closely behind, carrying the torches. The lively flames threw the shadows of the royal couple dancing forward down the staircase of the steep entrance corridor. As they descended the steps, but for the occasional crackle from the torches and the crunch of feet on the sandy floor, they felt a close, foreboding silence within the place. Then, quite suddenly, they were startled by the sounds of a multitude of rodents scurrying between their legs as they made for the light at the top of the stairway. A second later a cloud of frantically flapping bats beat past them as the chaotic creatures made for the tomb entrance.
Ankhesenamun cried out and hid her face in her husband’s chest.
Equally suddenly, all became quiet once more. With some temerity the royal couple moved deeper into the tomb.
At the bottom of the stairs they passed through a doorway and entered a gently sloping corridor. With the faint light of their firebrands, they were unable to see how long the passage was. The king moved forward cautiously, keeping his eyes on the floor, looking out for objects, more stairs, a well, anything that could cause them to stumble and fall. The careless rubbish left by those who had violated the sepulchre was scattered everywhere, and the thick stench of dried defecation pervaded the atmosphere.
“Fear not, my King,” reassured Ankhesenamun. “As a child I took the funerary feast in this holy place many times the last for my father. I know its contours well. I shall lead you.” Her hand closed over his and she led him ahead into the darkness. About eighteen cubits further on, another door appeared opening into a second corridor that ran off to the right.
The queen pointed into the blackness. “My two youngest sisters, Neferneferure and Setepenre, they sleep within. Beyond them, my mother.”
She tried to go right but her husband held her back. “My Queen, are you prepared for what you might see?”
Ankhesenamun looked directly into his eyes. In the flickering lights the determination in her expression was all too clear. Prepared or not, it was obvious she would not leave before she had explored every room. He relaxed his grip and allowed her to lead him through the doorway.
But neither of them had seen a plundered tomb before. Neither of them was fully ready for what might await them in the depths.
“My baby sisters lie together in the first room. Mother lies in the second. This way.”
After walking through a second door, the roughly finished passage turned right and then gradually curved to the left. Where thi
s corridor ended another doorway appeared, cut into the left wall. This led immediately into a square room. The guards following close behind held the torches high to help illuminate the area before the royal couple. A scene of absolute devastation met their eyes. Of manmade articles there was little remaining that was in any way recognisable. But the bodies were still there: in the far corner of the room, two small, pathetic mummiform bundles of oil stained rags thrown one upon the other.
Ankhesenamun shrieked. It was an awful scream. It echoed about the corridors and chambers of the tomb, out of its mouth and reverberated along the narrow valley walls. The cry carried in the still desert air to the royal entourage on the riverside awaiting the king and queen’s return. There was much concern that something dreadful had befallen them. The remaining guards were at once dispatched to secure their safety.
The burial chamber of Queen Nefertiti, a crudely cut affair at the end of the corridor, was in yet worse condition. The queen’s body, naked but for some linen wrappings remaining about the lower shins, lay face down amongst the rubble that had been her sarcophagus. She had been stripped of every piece of her jewellery.
Ankhesenamun, Nefertiti’s only surviving daughter, knelt down beside the body and cradled the dead queen’s shrivelled head in her lap. The obscenity of it all was too much for her. She began to sob uncontrollably. She looked up at Tutankhamun. Strings of black paint from her eyelids followed the tears as they fell in torrents down her cheeks.
The king tried to comfort her. “There will be payment in kind for this deed. I will have Maya arrange for their rewrapping. We shall have them transferred to Thebes and reinterred in a secret place with full funerary ceremony. The gods will bless them once more as they recommence their journeys. Osiris yet awaits them. Come...” He gently encouraged her to rise and leave. “For now leave them where they lie. I will post a guard until Maya can get here.”
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