A God Against the Gods (6 page)

From the Fourth Cataract, far to the south in Ethiopia, to the land of Mittani, far to the north in Syria, I rule over the Empire of Kemet. My garrisons are stationed in a dozen vassal kingdoms. A handful of armed men, an annual appearance of my representatives to collect tribute, an occasional dynastic marriage, a routine gift of gold to those whose lands do not produce it in the abundance that Kemet enjoys—such are all that is necessary now to hold the Empire. The alliances must be kept up, the symbolic appearances must be made, the correspondence and the gifts must be faithfully delivered. With a diligent attention to these relatively minor and painless requirements, the Empire today virtually runs itself.

Kemet stands at the peak of her glory. I stand at the peak of Kemet. It is as simple as that. Only one thing shadows the comfortable equation—the fact which has now become with me almost an obsession: Amon is everywhere and into everything. And in the past two years or so this has become, for me, too much.

I do not know exactly when I began to realize this; one day, I believe, in a conversation with Tiye, who keeps me company in all things and possesses, in that small round head I love to cradle in the hollow of my arm, ten times the wisdom of most men. Tiye is my delight and my great good fortune, the one adviser above all others whom I trust, admire, respect and listen to. The shy ten-year-old boy who found himself being married to the shy ten-year-old girl from the house of Yuya and Tuya has grown up to find himself the husband of the perfect wife, lover, companion, friend—and equal partner, though we must maintain the outward forms of my personal supremacy, in the rule of Kemet.

To me she gives love, understanding, support, children—and advice shrewder than any I receive from anyone with the possible exception of her brother, Aye, and, lately, from Amonhotep the Scribe, Son of Hapu. These three I trust above all others, and Tiye above the other two. It is for this that I have issued a scarab, that small, gleaming beetle whose form we have transferred to jewelry and masonry and used to proclaim our worship or our praise, telling of her glories and making clear to my people that she sits at my left hand, almost as great as I. It is for this, also, that a year ago I ordered made for her in her town of Djarukha a “pleasure lake,” or basin, its length being 3700 cubits and its breadth 700 cubits. And it is for her that I issued a scarab showing myself rowing in my state barge on her lake, piercing the dikes so that the Nile might flow in and enrich the land and thus provide fine crops for her private wealth.

And it was at her urging that I named the barge
Radiance of the Aten.

For Aten likes not Amon, nor does Tiye, nor do Aye and Amonhotep, nor do I.

When I first published the scarab, in fact, there was much muttering in Amon’s temple. It was led by my brother-in-law Aanen, he whom I elevated to be Second Priest of Amon in a burst of generosity (never to be reversed, once done) when at fourteen I first began to be so deeply in love with his sister, thinking it would be a kindly gesture to her family, and also give me better control of pushing priests. This was my mistake. He even dared challenge me openly one day, here in the Palace. “You pay too much tribute to the Aten,” he said, his tone carrying, as always, its sharp little edge of criticism and impatience. I shrugged. “Amon has a hundred thousand priests throughout the Two Lands and owns as much of them as I do,” I said. “The Aten has only a barge—” “And the temple you have built for him at Karnak!” he interrupted. “That little thing!” I said with an equal sharpness. “Are you comparing that to the vast halls of Amon? Come now, Brother! You make too much of too little.” “We would have preferred the barge to be named for Amon,” he said with a prim pursing of the lips. “Well, it is named for the Aten,” I said, “and published so to the people, and so it stands.” “They will be confused,” he said, his tone becoming uncertain in the face of my obvious determination. “Amon will no doubt set them right,” I said dryly. “Do not worry about such a little thing, Brother. Amon reigns, forever and ever.” And I turned and walked away, and presently the grumbling in Amon’s temples subsided, though I know they still resent it whenever I use the Aten’s barge to sail the river. But since for the time being I have done nothing further, they have perforce subsided; though they watch. Always, they watch.

Amon is the hidden essence of Ra the Sun, which is secret, forbidding, unreachable, unknown. The word “Amon,” indeed,
means
hidden. For this reason his sanctuary at Karnak, like his sanctuaries everywhere, is shrouded in darkness: massive, dim, mysterious, frightening. Passage leads into passage, hall into hall, secret chamber into still more secret. Far inside, in the murky depths, mystery of mysteries, holy of holies, stands his gleaming golden statue in its sacred barque, lighted by a single ray of his father Sun, falling through a cleverly angled hole in the ceiling in such a way that his eyes are sunken, brooding, distant, terrifying in their somber depths. He is a god worshiped in fear by the people. He is supreme. And he is very cold.

The Aten is the disk of the Sun, its open, natural essence, its golden rays, its light, its joy. The Aten is everywhere, beaming down upon the Two Lands and all the people. The Aten is open, candid, lovable, the giver and benefactor of all things, which all men may see whenever they wish to look upward. Amon hides: the Aten gleams. And slowly, slowly, ever so carefully, my House has begun in recent years a patient and cautious shifting of emphasis to the Aten, as counterweight to Amon, who needs control but is too strong to be openly challenged, even by us who are the Sons of the Sun in all his manifestations.

Rekh-mi-re, Vizier of my great-grandfather Tuthmose III (life, health, prosperity!), wrote of my great-grandfather that he “saw his person in his true form—Ra, the Lord of Heaven, the King of Upper and Lower Kemet when he rises,
the Aten when he reveals himself.
”
My great-grandfather, like earlier kings of our dynasty, was officially said to have “rejoined the Aten” when he died; before that event he had constructed a temple to the Aten at Heliopolis in the Delta, seat of the cult of Ra-Herakhty, the Sun-God. Under my grandfather, Amonhotep II (life, health, prosperity!), the disk of the Aten became prominently displayed. At his command it carried a pair of enveloping arms to protect the
ka
,
or essence of being, of the land of Kemet, the royal House, and the people. In the reign of my father, Tuthmose IV (life, health, prosperity!), the Aten became officially the god of battles who makes Pharaoh supreme and gives him power over all his dominions—a great universal god whose exalted position in the sky entitles him to rule over the empire of all that his rays shine upon.

Thus slowly but surely the Aten became recognized as a deity separate from Amon. I in my turn have continued the process. I built the modest temple which so incenses Aanen and his fellows. I named Tiye’s barge. I built my palace on the west bank of the Nile near the necropolis, becoming thereby the only Pharaoh ever to defy and prove empty the warnings of Amon and the cult of Osiris, god of the dead, that the west bank must be reserved only to the dead. I have started a new complex of buildings at Medinet Habu, near Malkata, among them another shrine to the Aten. From time to time I make public display of my worship of him; and contemplate, in due course, some further things upon which Tiye and I agree.

In the same spirit and with the same motivation, I have more recently moved against Amon on another front. You note I say “moved against” as though it were a military campaign. So it is, for me, and to it Tiye and I give the thought and care that we no longer have to give to foreign battles, for they have all been won.… It will be a while before the battle against Amon is won.

Three months ago, acting on a decision reached some time before but known only to Tiye and to Aye, I announced the appointment of my son, the Crown Prince Tuthmose, to be High Priest of the god Ptah at Memphis, the capital of Lower Kemet. The boy is now six years old, a fine, sturdy child, always laughing and happy like his sister Sitamon. He is very bright, very perceptive: already he understands something of the burden that will someday be his when I have rejoined the Aten and he in his turn has become Son of the Sun, God, King and Pharaoh. So he listened willingly and eagerly when his mother and I explained to him that we wished him to fill this post for us, highest religious office in the oldest, and in some ways still the most powerful, of the Two Lands.

Millennia ago, before the kingdom was united by my unutterably remote ancestor, Menes (life, health, prosperity!), each of the Two Lands developed its own gods and goddesses and its own theology. That is why we have so many, many gods and goddesses, and that is why, even though Amon is the god of my House and of Upper Kemet, the principal god of Lower Kemet, Ptah, still has his own powerful priesthood and still occupies in both lands a high and honored place. And that is why it occurred to us that there, too, might be a shrewd way to reduce the power of Amon.

Having the Crown Prince as High Priest of Ptah would certainly give that god an enormous surge of popularity and prestige; close behind comes, for those who will grasp it, power. It is our thought that, by the time he becomes King and Pharaoh, Tuthmose will have strengthened Ptah to the point where that god will be an adequate balance for Amon—for that is what we seek. Not the destruction of Amon, as Aanen and some of his priests seem to think, but a balance for him, which will make both gods more manageable and keep either from becoming an insuperable burden to the dynasty and the people.

So I announced the appointment of Tuthmose, and before there could be any protest or outbreak—indeed, what outbreak could there be? I hold Amon in checkmate as he does me, and none of his priests dare oppose me openly—the boy and I had boarded the
Radiance of the Aten
and sailed away downriver to Memphis, leaving Tiye in charge at Malkata. Our progress, as always, was triumphal and slow, but in two weeks
^’
time we had reached the ancient capital. A week after that, in my presence—and you may be sure, the presence of the leading priests of Amon in Lower Kemet for I requested their presence and they did not dare refuse—the child became High Priest of Ptah.

And today, even as they begin to robe me in my golden clothes, he is on his way secretly from Memphis, scheduled to arrive here within the hour, to accompany me to the temple of Amon at Karnak and there worship with me in honor of his new brother.

And that new brother? For him, too, I have plans. Him I will dedicate to the Aten, and so balance will become counterbalance, and counterbalance again, and ultimately the power of the priests will become diffused, softened, reduced. Where many grasp, competition will cancel itself. Less will be taken by the temples and more will return to our House.

And Pharaoh, in my sons’ time if not in mine, will again become what he traditionally was before Amon came to stand at his elbow: a god without equal, a ruler whose servants no longer subvert him, even as they serve.

Such is our plan, and momentarily I expect the Crown Prince. I have had my talk with the Vizier Ramose, that excellent if humorless man who supervises for me the day-to-day administration of the kingdom. The task needs someone humorless: I do not mind that he has no small talk, worries about details, frets and nags at things he conceives to be wrong. Usually they are, usually I can count on him to straighten them out for me—drastically, sometimes, but always fairly. He is a man of rigid honor, absolute loyalty, endless devotion. Were it not that it would totally shock his sense of fitness to the point that it might give him a nervous breakdown, I might tell him, too, my plans for Amon, because certainly he would assist them without question. But, as I say, in his mind it would not be fitting; and in Ramose’s world, all things must fit. So I leave him untroubled as he is, privately worried about the situation, I know, but not permitting himself to think about it; concentrating instead on all the thousand details that are necessary for the efficient functioning of a modem and progressive kingdom, which is what I believe we have.

They drape about me my golden kilt, they fasten the golden belt. On my feet they place the golden slippers. The wig, the plaited cloth of gold, the golden crook and flail, the gold uraeus, the blue Double Crown: one by one, with infinite care and many incantations, they place them on me. And by now Tuthmose should be here.

I clap my hands sharply, a slave leaps forward, I say:

“Bring me the Councilor Aye.”

Grave and dignified as always, that good man who is his sister’s equal and his brother’s infinite superior comes. I know that he is deeply concerned that his own dear wife, Hebmet, also lies in labor in the compound of Malkata. But his thought now is all for me.

“Has the young ibis reached the nest?” I ask, in the simple code we use.

“Not yet, Son of the Sun,” he says, the worry in his eyes determinedly hidden, but clear to me.

“There is no word of his flight?”

“It was good as of last night’s reporting,” he says. “But I have had no word today.”

“We must leave in ten minutes,” I note. “My mother is already on the water. Sitamon and Gilukhipa leave in a moment. You are next.”

“Then we must go,” he says calmly; and steps forward, with a familiarity I permit only him, and places a hand lightly on my arm. “The ceremony must go forward,” he says, softly so that the attendants and priests, who have fallen back at his approach, cannot hear. “Do not worry.”

“Easy words,” I say, more sharply than I intend, for a fear is beginning to grow in my heart, as in his.

“He will come,” he says gently, though I can see he too is beginning to imagine the unimaginable. He bows formally, raises his voice, says firmly, “Majesty, I will see you in the temple,” and backs out, to go to the landing and board his barge.

Silently I pray for a moment—to Hathor, to Ptah, to Thoth and Geb and Nut and Ra-Herakhty and Isis and Harmakis and Buto and Sekh-met, to all the human-bird-and-animal-headed deities who surround me; and finally, in a desperation whose irony even in that moment does not escape me, to Amon-Ra himself, to his wife Mut and his son Khons, for
my
son who comes from Memphis, and who should by now be here.