by Overton, Max
"No. The Aten has not forgotten me. He will raise me once more to glory. Did I not always praise him and put him before all other gods?"
Merye did not answer. She huddled in her thin and patched robe and listened as her father continued to mumble about the special relationship he had with his god. After a long time, when the stars had moved significantly across the body of Nut, she spoke again.
"Father, we are no longer in Kemet, are we?"
"Eh? No, no, not strictly. These are the borderlands, the red deserts of Deshret. Why do you ask?"
"The sun still shines upon us though we are far from the Great River."
"Of course. The Aten looks down on his only son."
"Does the sun not also shine in Kemet, despite you not being there? Or in the land of Sin, or Kanaan, or even upon the Nubians and Hittites?"
The old man thought about this for several minutes. "What are you saying, Merye?"
"Could it be that the same sun that shines on every nation is in reality the same god to every people? What if the Aten is only the Kemetu aspect of the sun? Could this be why he does not answer you now that we are no longer in Kemet?"
"He is still the sun."
"When you were king in Akhet-Aten, men petitioned you and addressed you by name. If they had used another name, you would have assumed they were talking to someone else. Maybe the sun is like this--you have to address him by his proper name in whichever nation he reigns."
"So what is his name here?"
"I do not know, father."
"And what will be his name if we go south...or north...or east?"
"I do not know, father."
"There is a lot you do not know, it seems."
"That is true, father." Merye sighed and turned over, closing her eyes.
At dawn, the old man stretched and stood to urinate before orienting himself to the heat of the rising sun. He lifted up his arms and recited the morning hymn to the Aten that he had composed many years before. Behind him, the young woman uttered the appropriate responses, while rubbing the sleep from her eyes. The sun rose in the sky but otherwise showed no sign of hearing the song of praise.
"Perhaps you are right, Merye," the old man said. "If God will not hear my voice, it is because my mode of address is wrong. But how do I find out the correct way to address him?"
"I do not know, father, but it can surely not be the name that any of the peoples of the nations call him. A god like the sun must surely have a name of power, a name that is all-encompassing."
"The Khabiru call their god Adon which is like Aten, and El."
"Adon just means 'Lord' in their language, and El means 'God'," Merye objected. "It must be more than this."
"Perhaps it is a name that describes him--like 'Glorious' or 'Shining' or 'Golden'."
"There are many things that can be described thus."
"Like 'Glorious', not actually that name," the man grumbled.
"Then think of a name that is the god's alone. Think of a name that described him to our ancestors who were blessed by his life-giving rays, something that we experience, and what people will call him when we have passed into the West. The sun is eternal and was, is, and will be."
"Eternal One?"
Merye shrugged and turned away, gathering up their meagre belongings. "I imagine it has been used already, but try it, father."
The man lifted up his arms to the sun again and cried out his yearning and desire, calling the orb 'Eternal One'. After several minutes, he lowered his arms and his head. "He does not answer."
"Then search for another name." Merye shouldered her skin bag and touched her father lightly on the arm. "Which direction today, father?"
"In the direction of the sun." He set off, stumbling again in his personal darkness, but his lips moved incessantly as he considered his problem.
Merye followed a hundred paces behind, thinking her own thoughts. Every hour or so, judged by the passage of the sun across the sky, she approached her father and persuaded him to take a sip of water from the tepid liquid in the goat skin. Sometimes he would drink; other times refuse the proffered water with an impatient shake of his head. Then she would stop and wait for him to walk on through the furnace.
Toward noon, as the sun once more reached its zenith, she stopped and looked around for somewhere they could shelter from the worst of the heat. She spied rocks far off to their left and was about to start after her father to guide him to them when he uttered a loud wailing cry. She turned in time to see him fall headlong to the ground.
Merye ran to her father who lay on his back, his blind eyes staring up at the sun. "Father," she cried, and knelt beside him. He gave no sign that he had heard and she shook him, gently at first and then with increasing vigour. "Father!" She dabbed his face with a few precious drops of water in the hope of reviving him. The liquid hardly dampened him before it evaporated. "Father, wake up. I cannot carry you."
"He speaks to me," the old man whispered through cracked lips. "God speaks to me."
"That...that is good, but we must move. The heat is increasing and we must find shelter."
The old man allowed himself to be drawn to his feet, but would not be hurried as Merye pulled and pushed him toward the distant refuge. "He speaks to me at last," he whispered again.
"That is good, Father, and you can tell me what God says when we get you into the shade."
Shadows clung to the rocks, and after Merye had thrust her father's staff under and around them to disturb any snakes or scorpions sheltering there. The scorpion that had stung her father the previous day had been a relatively harmless one, but there were also deadly ones in the desert. Merye found nothing in the shadow of the rocks and they crawled between two large boulders, glad to be out of the direct glare of the sun. The air was scarcely less hot, but it still afforded some relief.
Merye doled out sips of warm water from the nearly empty flask. "So what did God say, father?"
"He spoke to me."
"Yes. What did he say?"
"I asked him his name."
"And he told you?"
"Yes."
Merye waited, but her father seemed in no hurry to elaborate. "What is God's name?" she asked at last.
"It is so obvious, really. I meditated on the everlasting qualities of God, praising him not only for shedding his life-giving rays on every nation, but also for being there in the past for our ancestors, for us today, and for our descendants in the future. I thought about the passage of years and how the God is unchanging after ten years, after a hundred, after a million. Everything changes except the sun. Then it came to me that God is unchanging because to him, a thousand years is as a day to men."
"That seems reasonable," Merye murmured. "What happened then?"
"I imagined three of me, a thousand years between my past me and the man I am today, and another thousand years until a future me. We all raised our voices in praise of the unchanging God and the three of me said to God, 'I was', 'I am', and 'I will be'. Then God spoke."
"What did he say?"
"I am."
Merye frowned. "What does that mean?"
"It means that there is no past or future for God. Everything is the present. God cannot say 'I was' because that means he has moved on from who he was then. Nor can he saw 'I will be' because that means he will change into someone else. He can only ever be in an unchanging present. God can only say 'I am'."
The woman shook her head. "If you say so, but what is his name? You say he told you?"
"He said, 'I am'. That is his name--'I am'."
Merye remained silent, and after a few minutes her father put out his hand and searched for her, patting her on the arm when he found her.
"It is hard to understand, I know, but that is what he said. He told me what to do, too."
"Do I want to know?"
"Come, child," her father chided. "When God speaks, we obey."
"Very well. What does God want of us?"
"Of me, daughter. He wants m
e to go to Midian in the land of Sin."
"To do what?"
The man waved his hand vaguely. "He will tell me when I get there."
"You are quite sure he wants us...you to go there? There are Kemetu soldiers in Sin. They might recognise you."
The old man laughed. "And if they do? What can they do against the chosen one of 'I am'?"
"They could kill you, father. They tried to before."
Her father nodded. "They took poor blind Waenre Akhenaten into the desert to be killed by his god, but the Aten preserved him. I now know that the Aten is but an aspect of 'I am', so how much more likely is it that God will keep me safe? I will tell them 'I am' sent me, and they will bow before him."
That same day, when the heat had drained from the land, they set their backs to the setting sun and started on the long journey to Midian in the land of Sin.
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Chapter Two
The palace at Ineb Hedj, within sight of those great angled stone monuments built a thousand years before, was cool and airy, affording excellent views of the Great River, the city, and the red sand desert that came almost to the city gates. The many connected buildings--halls, temples, private suites and the entire necessary infrastructure needed to sustain royalty--teemed with servants.
Through this mass of servants, a young woman walked alone. She walked alone because she had been raised as the daughter of the great Nebmaetre Amenhotep, and the sister of kings Waenre Akhenaten, Djeserkheperu Smenkhkare, and young Nebkheperure Tutankhamen. She was also the niece of the last king, Irimaat Ay, and unless the gods intervened, would soon be the wife of the next king. She walked alone because as a member of the royal family, of Per-Aa, it was considered beneath her to recognise the presence of servants. This saddened her because she empathised with the lot of the downtrodden, but her early efforts at familiarity had been rebuffed. Servants mistrusted her as they mistrusted any member of the capricious royal family. Classes of society did not mix.
Her appearance did not help either. Although still young--some thirty summers--her lifestyle with the desert tribes and her brother Smenkhkare's army had toughened her, and the sun had burnt her skin a deep copper colour quite unlike the pale complexions of Kemetu nobility. Further, she carried scars on her taut body, scars from sword and spear and dagger as well as the most horrendous one of all that had burst her right eye and blinded her on that side. Her own uncle Ay had been responsible for that disfigurement, but she had overcome it with the help of the gods. Left to die in the desert, the Nine Gods of Iunu had rescued her and restored her to health, the God Geb even giving her a stone eye to replace the lost one.
The woman paused by a low window that looked out over the sprawling city to the river beyond. Fifty days , she thought. There are only fifty days left . She turned and beckoned to a servant.
"Please bring me some wine." The servant bowed and hurried off, returning a few minutes later with a blue faience cup which he handed to her carefully. "What is your name?" she asked.
The servant, a young man, looked uncomfortable, perhaps wondering if he had done something wrong. "Paner, Lady Khepra," he said, looking down at the floor.
"Thank you for the wine, Paner. Do you know Physician Khu?"
"Yes, Lady Khepra."
"Do you know where he is at this moment?"
"No, Lady Khepra."
"Well, never mind, I will find him." She sipped at the wine in the cup, recognising it as a vintage that came from her late uncle Ay's estates in Ta Mehu. She handed it back to Paner and left the room, heading toward the servant's quarters.
The royal palace catered for ten or fifteen individuals--the king and queen when they were in residence, and a variable number of lesser wives and children. To support them was an army of servants, and though these servants needed far less room than the royal family, their quarters were almost as large as the palace itself. Lady Khepra worked her way steadily deeper into the warren of rooms and corridors, occasionally asking directions, until she found herself in a suite of tiny rooms that reeked of herbs and pungent spices. She heard voices she recognised and entered the room from which they issued. Four men were sitting around a rough table, drinking beer and arguing in loud and slightly drunk voices.
The youngest of the men saw her first and leapt to his feet, a broad smile on his homely face. "Scarab!" he cried. "You are welcome indeed, lady."
Scarab embraced the young man warmly. "Dear Khu. I was starting to think you had forgotten me. It has been days since you came to see me."
Khu frowned. "Not because I did not want to, lady. I tried but was turned away."
"None of this 'lady' nonsense, Khu. To you I am always just Scarab. But who turned you away?"
"The king's men...well, Lord Horemheb's still, I suppose. They said I should remember my place."
"Did they indeed? I will have words with them."
"I'd leave it be," an older man at the table said. His face was lined and his eyes were bloodshot, beneath a shock of grey hair. His hand shook slightly as he reached to grasp the table's edge. "Horemheb will do as he pleases." He started to rise from the table to greet her.
"Stay seated, Nebhotep old friend," Scarab said. "None of you need stand in my presence."
Despite her words, the other two men at the table, desert men in wool robes with the tribal markings of the Shechites, got up and immediately knelt on the tiled floor. "Greetings, Eye of Geb," one said. "What is your bidding?" said the other.
"I bid you rise," Scarab said with a laugh. "Seat yourselves again, Terrik and Salom. You are trusted members of the Pillar, not my servants." She sat down at the table and poured herself a cup of beer. "So, what have you all been doing? Where is Jesua?"
Khu shrugged. "Off gathering support from the tribes, I think. He does not tell me of his business. As for the rest...there is little we can do. We sit around and drink beer all day and argue instead of taking action and freeing you from this prison."
"We are all members of the Pillar," Terrik said. "If the Eye commands us, we obey. You told us to remain in the palace and do nothing precipitate, so we do just that."
"We can do more, Scarab," Salom added. "Command us and we will spirit you out of here...somehow."
"If it can be done safely, Salom. I will not risk the lives of my companions."
"We have time," Nebhotep said. "Fifty days remain and we can use all of that if..." The old physician broke off as a spasm of pain crossed his face.
Scarab reached over and put her hand on Nebhotep's arm. "What is wrong? This is more than just age. You are only fifty." She looked at Khu questioningly, but the young man just shook his head.
"Do not look to Khu for help with this, my lady," Nebhotep gasped. "This is beyond all medical help. I have a growth within my bowels and there is only one outcome for my illness."
"There must be something..."
"I can treat the pain, though that grows worse by the day. Nothing will touch the growth."
"It is true," Khu confirmed. "Only the gods can help him now. Could you...?"
Scarab sighed. "You know I cannot. Since the golden scarab slipped from my grasp between Taanach and Gubla, the gods have not listened to my prayers."
"Let us pray that Abrim and the others will find it," Terrik said.
"Then they have to bring it all the way back," Khu said gloomily. "After twenty days I doubt they are even there yet, and then they have to find it and bring it back safely. In fifty days, Horemheb will bury Ay and become king and then..."
"And then Horemheb will make you his queen," Nebhotep said, looking at Scarab. "Are you prepared for that, my lady? It could happen."
"I have not fought Ay just so a military adventurer can become king in his place. I will fight him too, if need be."
"How?" Nebhotep asked. "You have no army and a handful of friends. The people might follow you but not against a trained army under General Horemheb."
"I am already king and Kemet do
es not need another."
Nebhotep reached out to Scarab and clasped her hands. "I was there when we buried your brother Smenkhkare and Aanen anointed you as his successor. I believe you are rightfully ruler of the Two Kingdoms, but you must bow to practicalities. Kemet has been weakened by thirty years of mismanagement and weak leadership. The nation needs a strong ruler with a strong army at his back. Horemheb is that man. You must look to a different future, my lady. Do not throw your life away in a futile bid to oust Horemheb."
Scarab withdrew her hands from the old physician's grasp. "So what would you have me do? Give up and become one of Horemheb's wives. He may make me his queen because he needs the marriage link with Nebmaetre's family to legitimate his claim to the throne, but that will not last. He will not keep a damaged woman in his bed for longer than it takes to secure his throne. Then he will kill me or put me away. That is not a fate I seek."
"That is not a future I would encourage you to embrace," Nebhotep said, leaning back and pressing a hand to his abdomen. "What I am trying to say is Horemheb is already an old man; he will not last forever. Escape from Ineb Hedj and wait him out. When he weakens, you can act to put your own son Seti on the throne."
"And how is Scarab to escape?" Khu asked. "Do you have a plan?"
"No. I can scarcely move outside the palace since my illness. That task is something for you young men to arrange."
Khu grunted. "If Scarab leaves the palace, an armed guard accompanies her, and she cannot pass through the city gates."
"Further, Khu and Scarab cannot leave the palace together," Terrik added. "Horemheb is well aware of Khu's special place beside the Eye."
Khu blushed. "I would willingly stay behind if it means Scarab can escape."
"No one is being left behind," Scarab said firmly.
"How then are we to accomplish this escape?" Terrik demanded. "We are five against the whole of Horemheb's command. If we were armed and in the desert we might stand a chance, but not here in the palace."