The City of Refuge: Book 1 of The Memphis Cycle

by Diana Wilder

  Nebamun frowned. “Do you feel the city has been systematically plundered?” he asked.

  “Yes, Your Grace.”

  “And yet anyone can see there's a great deal of gold still left here.”

  “It would be difficult to obtain quickly, Your Grace,” Seti replied. “There are other items more easily carried away: pottery goods, the wood from the temple doors, smaller furnishings, enough to keep a handful of people busy for years.”

  Nebamun nodded. “And what have your patrols discovered?” he asked. “Are we dealing with vandalism by the desert folk?”

  “I have found no evidence of it, Your Grace,” Seti replied.

  Nebamun's hands tightened on the finials of the throne as he raised his head to gaze thoughtfully before him. “The despoiled tombs,” he said slowly, “the looted houses—none appear to be the work of the Bedouin or the Tjehenu, then?”

  “No, Your Grace,” Seti said once more. “My patrols ranged far, and found no evidence that this area was ever visited by nomads. The proximity of Khemnu and Asyut, and Khebet, to a lesser degree, seems to have deterred them. I have spoken, as well, to officers of the Fifteenth Nome, Commander Khonsu, for one, and to men from the police at Quis, and they all agree there has been no sign of intruders.”

  “I see,” Nebamun said. “Then you are convinced that the damage to this city came from the actions of its neighbors and not from intruders?”

  “Yes, Your Grace, to my shame,” said Seti. “All has been done by our countrymen.”

  Nebamun nodded. “And do you have any idea who is actually responsible for the rape of this city?”

  “I have my suspicions, Your Grace,” Seti replied. “As does Commander Khonsu. We have discussed it in some detail. The matter could be pursued.”

  “That is something His Majesty will want,” said Nebamun. He looked over at Karoya and Khonsu. “But it is something that can be capably dealt with by the Fifteenth Nome's army.”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” Seti said, bowing.

  Nebamun smiled at him. “Thank you, General,” he said. “You have done well.” He looked over at Perineb. “And now, Your Reverence,” he said, “It is your turn. You are the eyes and ears of His Majesty's chief priests. You have looked upon the god Akhenaten worshiped, here in the heart of his cult. The shrines and temples of the Aten have been torn down throughout the land, and only those built in Akhet-Aten itself remain. It is not His Majesty's intent to slight any god, and he wishes to hear from your lips what you have found in your investigation.”

  “I have gone into the archives of the temple,” said Perineb. “My men and I have read every writing available. And last night, finally, I went into the temple.”

  “What did you find?” asked Nebamun.

  “I found much that is beautiful, and much that is good,” Perineb said quietly. “But wherever I looked, no matter how I tried, I could see that anyone coming to these shrines and reading these writings would fall into error.”

  Nebamun's expression was almost stony. “Is it all evil, then, Perineb?” he asked.

  “No, Your Grace,” Perineb replied. “It is distorted, like the sculptures designed by His Late Majesty. The writings are caught up in the beauty of the Aten and the glory of creation and of nature, but they say nothing else of humanity, or of good or evil. They say nothing of our need for forgiveness, they do not offer strength in trial or consolation in grief. The Aten loves and blesses the king, but it does not touch the other mortals who crowd the world beneath it. And, indeed, how could we avoid such an appearance of error? God rides the sun-disk, for it is His throne. But without God, what is the throne? Who would worship only a temple and ignore the god who animates it? Or praise the bed of the Nile and scorn the water that flows in it?”

  Nebamun's expression had eased. “He was transfixed by the beauty and the joy,” he said. “Spellbound, like one who has found his love after years of searching...”

  “He was not evil,” Perineb said. “I believe, in fact, that he was a good man. His tragedy was that he was inarticulate. For I believe that he truly did see the One behind the many, Who is enthroned on the Aten. But for whatever reason it may have been—whether his own pain or his own awe—he could not express what is inexpressible even to the articulate among us. And yet, Your Grace, his writings taken by themselves are so beautiful:

  How splendidly you rise on high,

  O living Aten, creator of all!

  Dawning in the east,

  Your splendor fills all the lands!

  You are beautiful, great,

  Radiant over all the lands.

  Your rays enfold all your creatures.

  Though you are distant, you touch the earth

  The object of our gaze, your strides are yet unseen.

  O sole god, beside whom there is no other,

  How manifold are your deeds,

  Though hidden from our sight!

  Through you were all things made,

  All folk, flock and herds;

  All who walk upon the earth,

  All that soar upon their outspread wings,

  The far, fair lands so strange to us,

  And the beauteous black land of Egypt.

  You set every man each in his own place,

  Supplying his needs from your abundance;

  There is nourishment for all,

  And each man's days are numbered in your heart.

  Man's tongues differ in their speech

  And our characters likewise;

  Our skins are distinct, each in its own way,

  For you distinguished the tribes of the peoples...

  Mighty over all, you yet are in my heart.

  Perineb's voice eased into silence.

  Nebamun had lowered his head when Perineb began to speak. He sat in silence for a long time after Perineb had finished. His eyes were bright and his voice slightly husky when he finally lifted his head and spoke. “I thank you, Perineb, with all my heart,” he said softly. “You have returned to me something I had mourned as lost forever.”

  “When what is lost is truly sought,” Perineb said with equal quietness, “It is always found.”

  “Thank you, Perineb,” Nebamun said again. He turned back to the assembled company. “And I thank the rest of you,” he said. “I have learned enough from all of you to enable me to decide what action must be taken. It isn't His Majesty's desire to waste lives. This is what I decree: Master Nehesi and Master Mersu will return to the quarries, undercut all remaining supports, collapse the excavations and close the quarries once and for all.”

  Mersu's eyes were wide with astonishment. Nehesi was silent as the room erupted into noise.

  Nebamun sat back beneath the glow of the Aten and waited until the commotion had subsided. He continued calmly, “The tombs in the hills surrounding this city shall be inspected and sealed once more. The families of those buried there shall be allowed to inventory their contents and send the treasure and the bodies of their kin to safety without fear of Pharaoh's displeasure. I have sent a royal messenger to Thebes with this word, which shall be proclaimed throughout Egypt.”

  Khonsu saw that Lord Nebamun was gazing at him. He bowed. “I'll detail a squadron of my best men to close the tombs, Your Grace,” he said. “And I'll supervise them, myself.”

  “Very good,” said Nebamun. “And as for Father Perineb: under his direction, the papyrus in the archives shall be burned and the clay tablets shall be smashed and buried. And all this will start tomorrow.”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” said Perineb.

  Lord Nebamun took a deep breath and cast a quick glance at the golden disk that hung behind him like a gleaming shield. “And, finally, I command the destruction of the city of Akhet-Aten.”

  This pronouncement, more than anything Nebamun had said previously, threw the gathering into an uproar.

  “The city!” someone shouted.

  “But that would take weeks!” Karoya said to Khonsu.

  Nebamun raised hi
s voice and continued as though no one had spoken. “Any remaining statues of the Pharaoh Akhenaten shall be broken into pieces wherever they are found. The gold shall be stripped from the walls of this palace and throughout this city, weighed and sent north to the royal treasury at Memphis. The cedar doors shall be removed from their hinges and shipped south to Karnak. The bronze fittings at doors and windows shall be removed, and all the carved stone shall be stripped from the walls of the palaces and temples of this place and left by the river for those who need them to use as they see fit. And then we will depart, leaving Akhet-Aten to crumble back to sand and desert.”

  XLVIII

  The statue gazed calmly into the sky from beneath lowered lids. Its brows curved pleasingly over slanting, almond-shaped eyes, and the faint suggestion of a smile quivered in the lines bracketing the full-lipped mouth. A sphinx headdress set off the elongated features; the arch of a cobra above the browband marked the face as royal.

  The face was mirrored by others around it, all serene and unblinking in the afternoon sun, heedless of the noises about them.

  The sounds gave way to laughter and chatter as the face split in a shower of stone, the mutilated pieces scattering upon the ground. One eye gazed up at the sun, still bright with the suggestion of a smile.

  A breeze rose, spinning whorls of dust up from the floor of the courtyard, sending grains of sand skittering across the eye as a shadow, slanting across the smashed stone fragments, threw it into darkness. The Master Sculptor Mersu looked thoughtfully down at the broken features, his mouth grim with pain.

  The foreman of the workmen approached him. “Master Mersu?” he said respectfully.

  The Master Sculptor blinked, then nodded. “Carry on, Djet,” he said, and moved aside as the foreman nodded to his crew.

  Khonsu, waiting at the courtyard gateway to speak with Mersu, let his gaze travel around the rows of colossal statues ringing the courtyard. The crew of laborers surrounded a statue. As Khonsu watched, two of them lifted their mauls and swung them at the statue's legs. Khonsu seemed to feel the shock of the blow in his own knees.

  The colossus shivered and toppled forward to smash into four pieces upon the ground. The upper torso, splitting from the body, turned on its back and lay smiling upward into the sun.

  One of the laborers straddled the statue, a copper chisel in one fist, a heavy wooden mallet in the other, and beheaded the cobra with two quick blows of the mallet. Three more strokes splintered the crook and flail and fractured the heavily braceleted arms at the wrists.

  The point of the chisel touched one slanting eye, the mallet poised, descended—

  “No!” cried Mersu as the copper point bit into the stone.

  The laborer flinched away from the blow and looked up at the foreman, who shook his head.

  Mersu turned away, saw Khonsu, and went over to him. “Hard work,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Khonsu. “Disheartening, too, for some.”

  Mersu looked puzzled, but Khonsu did not explain himself.

  A week had passed since Lord Nebamun had held audience in Akhenaten's throne room. An inventory had been made of the contents of all the houses, with estimated values attached to each, so that anyone claiming to have property in the city would be able to receive compensation from Pharaoh, should he be brave enough to seek it. That done, the more valuable pieces were sent south to Thebes and north to Memphis. Once this had been accomplished, Nebamun had ordered the commencement of the destruction of Akhet-Aten.

  Khonsu had watched as Mersu and his sculptors descended on the palace, stripping away the gilding, cutting away all the depictions of the king, erasing his names and defacing all the scenes of him with his family. The colonnaded courtyards were systematically wrecked, the roof slabs torn away to let in the sun and the wind. Window grilles were hurled to the ground, and even the dried remains of the gardens were torn up.

  The beautifully painted floors were left as they were, and some of the wall decorations were allowed to remain, but most of them were gouged with chisels.

  In the temple itself the walls, teeming with the bustling little white-clad figures Khonsu remembered so vividly, were dismantled, the blocks forced away from their mortar by the blows of a maul. A steady stream of workmen, each bearing a block, moved down the side of the temple to the quays. The legs of any standing colossal statues were smashed and the statues allowed to fall forward upon their faces. The roofing blocks covering the colonnades were hurled to the ground and the piers demolished one by one.

  What was left on the ground was no longer of any value. Steles, offering tables, and the lesser statues which remained were smashed almost beyond recognition.

  For an entire evening, the air was filled with the lingering, sweet scent of burning papyrus as Perineb and his priests gathered the writings from the temple archives and burned them. Large ships had arrived from Memphis in the north and Thebes in the south, their hulls filled with a cargo that Nebamun would not discuss.

  Khonsu had spent the week making a systematic inventory of the tombs, their owners and their contents. Now he watched as Mersu directed the destruction of the king's colossal statues in the deserted portion of the central palace, close to the harem.

  The master sculptor seemed tired and utterly disheartened by the entire affair. He turned his back on the destruction with an almost relieved movement and said, “You wished to speak with me, Commander?” It was a measure of his fatigue and agitation that he was speaking so formally.

  “Yes, Master Sculptor,” Khonsu said with equal formality. “I have something that needs your expertise.”

  “I'm at your service,” Mersu said. “Djet knows what to do, and he's got a strong stomach to boot. He isn't one of those who lives to create... What do you need?”

  “It's a ways from here,” Khonsu said. “In the children's quarters.”

  “The children's quarters,” Mersu repeated, his grim expression lightening. “Hm. No statues, no chisels, no destruction. Splendid. Take me where you will, Commander.”

  Khonsu led the sculptor through the succeeding rooms of the harem quarters. This time he heard no whispers and saw no shadows, and when he finally brought the man to the doorway of the room where he had found Nebamun on the day of their arrival in Akhet-Aten, Mersu looked around with the air of one who has awakened from a terrible dream to a welcome reality. “What do you want here?” he asked, craning his neck to gaze fully into the room.

  “There's a piece of painted wall here,” Khonsu said. “I hoped to chisel it away and give it to—to someone who admired it. Can it be done?”

  Mersu moved straight to the shelf and crouched down to peer beneath it. “You're saving this for him,” he said. “It's good of you.”

  Khonsu shrugged. “I know this part of the palace is marked for destruction, but if this can be saved...”

  “It can,” Mersu said, dropping to his knees and squinting at the painting. “The plaster's laid on thickly over brick, and if I can cut around the edges—I'll need about four people to help me ease this away from the wall without damaging it.”

  Khonsu nodded. “I'll send them when you're ready.”

  “Send them now,” said Mersu. “I'd rather save than destroy. And send a carpenter with them. I'll need to have a box thrown together to hold this when it's been removed. I'll have it for you by sunset.”

  “Very good,” Khonsu said. “And thank you.” He stopped as a distant crash made the floor shake. “I wonder how Neb-Aten would have felt about all this,” he said as the silence came surging back.

  Mersu shook his head. “He was a fine, gallant fellow, raised by a vizier and by a king,” he said. “If he were alive to see it, he'd take it like the prince he was and find a reason to smile about it. I think he would understand matters of necessity, though he never was one to bow to them, himself.” He smiled and added, “I know Neb-Aten would have liked you.”

  “I would have liked Neb-Aten,” Khonsu said.

  ** ** **

>   That night, just after the evening meal, Khonsu went to the terrace of the palace where Lord Nebamun was quietly watching the sunset, as was his custom. He was accompanied by two servants carrying between them a large, flat timber box containing the piece of painted wall from the nursery wing. The painting had been carefully cushioned with layers of linen, and though it was light enough to be carried easily by one man, Khonsu had resolved to take no chances.

  Nebamun was standing at the balustrade, his arms folded on the railing, gazing thoughtfully northward across the city toward the darkened shapes of the Northern Sentinels. He stiffened slightly as Khonsu approached, but he did not turn, and after a moment he motioned with one hand toward a chair.

  “You're always welcome here, Commander Khonsu,” he said. “Did you need to speak with me about something? Or are you simply giving me the pleasure of your company?”

  “Both and neither, Your Grace,” Khonsu replied. “I wanted to report that the demolition of the harem wing should be finished by noon tomorrow.”

  Nebamun nodded, though he did not turn from his contemplation of the northern horizon.. “The work is going swiftly, then.”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” Khonsu replied. “Very swiftly. I have found it's always easier to destroy than to create.”

  “It was splendid,” Nebamun said at last. “So open and bright, white and golden beneath the sun, with the dark cliffs rearing above it. Gardens and pools of water, and beyond them the beautiful green of this fertile little valley. New and clean, unspoiled by centuries of strife, unclouded by memories... All gone now, just as this palace soon will be.”

  Khonsu motioned to the two servants to set the crate down and nodded for them to leave. “I'm sorry, Your Grace,” he said.

  Nebamun's voice was scarcely louder than the sigh of the wind through the star-flecked sky when he spoke again. “They say the gateway of the morning is guarded by the twin lions Sef and Duau: Yesterday and Tomorrow. If the sun were to linger near the one, mourning what is past, or hesitate before the other, fearing what is to come, the earth would grow cold and die. I learned long ago to mourn what is gone and continue living.”