Casting the Gods Adrift (3 page)

Perhaps because of the dramatic way we had met the pharaoh, he seemed to take a particular interest in Ibrim and me. We were allowed to play inside the palaces, so long as we did not enter the women's quarters, and
he even let us see the green room, where all the walls are painted to resemble the reed marshes, with birds flying upwards, and a pool painted on the floor. It was breathtaking.

The third oldest of the princesses, Ankhesenpa-aten, was an artist, too, and she would sometimes come to the workshop to see things being made. I was the youngest person there, so I suppose she found it easiest to talk to me.

‘I like to paint,' she told me, looking at me with her almond-shaped eyes, lids painted the same colour as the green room. ‘Mix me some paints, won't you?' And she set the ivory palette down in front of me. She could have asked me to cut out my heart and lay it on the palette. I would have done it without a murmur. She was the most beautiful creature I ever saw (apart from Queen Nefertiti herself).

But I was better at painting than Ankhesenpa-aten. That was where our friendship began – with me teaching her how to use the little palm-fibre brush. We used to
sit together on one of the cushioned window seats of the palace and talk about pigments and kohl, and which animal's hair could be used for brushes, and whether there were any paintings in the West Country, the country on the other side of Death.

Consequently, I saw everything in their palace – the golden beds, the sunken baths and lavatories, the alabaster vases, the banqueting tables. We gorged on sweet figs, dates and pomegranates, and I told Ankhesenpa-aten my secrets and she told me hers. I think I must have told her even more than I told Ibrim (though I never spoke of Father and his rages). She tended to help herself to the things I had made, but I was more pleased than annoyed; it was a kind of praise. I thought I would be happy for ever.

From time to time, Father arrived with a shipment of monkeys and cats and birds – and the whole royal family would gather to gaze out of the palace windows, the little princesses (there were six) pointing and squealing and the great queen laughing, and Father breaking off from checking his inventory to bow in their direction every now
and then. I would see Pharaoh Akhenaten congratulate him, lay a hand on his shoulder and admire Father's genius in capturing such splendid specimens. Father's birds fluttered around the courtyard aviary of the Great Palace, and brought joy to the pharaoh every time he stopped to admire them.

No one had forced Father to abandon his gods. True, there were no temples to Thoth or the creator-god Amun-Ra in el-Amarna. But further along the river, all the old religious customs were still being carried out, all the temples and shrines and places of pilgrimage still existed. Most of Egypt was going on as it had always done, its priests worshipping the same gods as their forefathers. Akhenaten had not banned the worship of other gods. So I could see no reason for my father to fret. None in the world.

When I had mastered fine chisel work, I was put to work making cartouches – ovals with hieroglyphs inside them spelling out a particular royal name. I was entrusted with the carving of the queen's cartouche – that's
how good I was. A hundred times and more I carved that lozenge:
Nefernefruaten-Nefertiti – Beautiful are the Beauties of Aten – A Beautiful Woman is Come
. And never once did I carve it without thinking of the queen's face, more beautiful than any words, or any carving of a word.

Even the memory of my own mother, who died when Ibrim was born, is not as beautiful to me as the thought of Queen Nefertiti. So tender, so serene, so marvellous in her tall blue crown snaked round with a golden cobra. The king adored her – carried her in his chariot when he rode out into the desert; took her in his papyrus skiff down to the reed marshes; shared his glory equally with her when he was carried shoulder-high through el-Amarna on a palanquin of dazzling electrum, fanned with ostrich-feather fans.

The whole world was in awe of the pharaoh and his great queen that year, and I more than anyone. Father brought home from Assyria a tamed lion, with fur of pale gold and a mane of black flecked with silvery gold. Electrum the Lion, we called it.
Pharaoh Akhenaten walked the beast on a red leather leash through the five palaces, beaming with satisfaction as he did so. Then he stroked my father on the back (as one might a lion) and told him, ‘For this and for all your loyal efforts, I shall make you a Man of Gold!'

I thought nothing could ever cloud my happiness. What did it matter if there was one god or a whole shipful? My father was to be a Man of Gold, the highest honour conferred on an official of the pharaoh's court. Surely even father must be won round by such an honour?

On the day of the ceremony, the two oldest princesses stood by their father holding golden collars piled on a scarlet cushion. Ankhesenpa-aten held a golden tray, and stood on the other side of the throne. As each chosen Man of Gold approached the dais, a herald spoke aloud the great service they had done to the pharaoh and to Aten. The king presented the collars, and the queen took from the golden tray a pair of red leather gloves, and presented them as well.

I had to describe it all to Ibrim; his sight had left him altogether now and plunged him into a sunless dark full of music and incense and the noise of building. But despite his blindness, he was happy that day. Who would not be?

‘What did he say to you, Father? What did the pharaoh say?'

The collar of gold strips hinged with leather seemed to weigh heavily on Father, hollowing his chest, rounding his shoulders. ‘He offered me a boon. Any boon within his power to grant.'

‘What did you ask for, Father?' said Ibrim, leaping up and down, hanging on to one scarlet-gloved hand.

‘I asked to attend the Festival of Opet with my family.'

I knew it, of course I did. It was a big religious festival. But I felt a clammy hand grip my guts. It was not the most tactful thing my father could have asked for, after all – to attend a festival in honour of a god other than Aten. ‘Oh, and did he grant it?' I asked.

‘He says there will be no Festival of Opet
this year,' said Father, in a voice I did not recognise – choked, almost strangled to a whisper. ‘Nor even the Festival of Osiris. He is closing down the temples of all the gods but Aten the sun.'

Even I was shocked. What would happen if Akhenaten succeeded in driving the gods out of Heaven? Wouldn't times of catastrophe and disaster begin? I automatically threw a nervous glance towards the river. I couldn't help it. That was where Set lived, the demon-hippopotamus bent on devouring Egypt. Without the god Horus to subdue him with magic harpoons, wouldn't Set surface and begin to devour my world? Would Osiris, unworshipped, withdraw his gift of life-after-death and refuse to receive the souls of those who died? Would the great snake Apep beneath the earth rear up its head one day soon, to see the Ship of a Million Days floating by empty, adrift, no one aboard. For the first time, I tasted some of the fear that had been tormenting my father.

‘All Egypt is to worship Aten as the only
god,' Father was saying, his voice shrill with sarcasm. ‘It is the will of Aten. That is what he said to me.' He was a man bereft. His gods had been turned out-of-doors, exiled, cast adrift in their open boat to die. I saw there were tears in his eyes. I saw how he raised a hand to brush them away, and was met by the sight of a red glove.

If he had found a scorpion there, a finger's breadth from his face, I don't believe he would have reacted any differently. He flung his hand away from him so sharply that the glove flew through the air to land on a stack of drying bricks. I ran to fetch it and hugged it to me – a gift from a god to a mortal man. How many boys ever held such a thing? But when I went back to father and Ibrim, I held it out of sight, behind my back, so that Father should not have to take it back.

I had bad dreams that night. I had bad dreams many nights after that. I dreamed that I was in a reed boat, and a hippopotamus erupted out of the river ahead of me, gaping its mouth so wide I could see right down its gullet to the fires burning inside. I threw a harpoon, but it just
glanced off the wet, black, rubbery hide, and the beast still came on, chewing up the prow with those blunt, stubby teeth, rending the boat into shreds to get at me, to devour me—

I woke up screaming, and my father came to me, his eyes unnaturally bright in the darkness.

‘What did you dream, boy?
What
?'

Something kept me from telling him. I claimed that my nightmare had gone, in waking; he could not know any different. But I did want him to sit down on the edge of the bed, to stay and chat about nothing very much, until the fright left me – to show me I was safe in el-Amarna, in the house of a Man of Gold. He did indeed sit down on my bed, and lean his face down close to mine.

Then he whispered, ‘Do you know what becomes of the servants of the enemies of the gods, boy? Do you? They die a second death and are eaten, through all eternity, by monsters in the Underworld.'

‘I serve all the gods, Father! All of them! Truly!'

‘Ah, but we all belong to Akhenaten, don't we? All Egypt belongs to Akhenaten. Every soul in it. He will take us with him, boy, I see it. The king will take us all down to the Underworld, you see if he doesn't. Monsters, boy! Foul monsters!'

With that he left me, stumping back to bed, muttering, chanting, praying; I don't know which.

Yes, I had a good many nightmares after that.

Some of the things made in the royal workshops were for the palaces: a bath lined in smooth limestone, hassocks for the seats, carved beds with legs like lion paws and gilded with gold leaf.

But most of the things we made were for the afterlife. It is not so hard for us mortals. We have little to call our own in this life, so we don't have to take much with us – a pair of sandals, a loaf of bread, a few beads, perhaps. But a pharaoh! He needs everything, and everything he needs must be perfect, beautiful, worthy of a god. All life long, his craftsmen must make things for his tomb: cups, skiffs, make-up, games, clothes, pets, crowns, musical instruments – everything.

Having so much treasured up, he then has to keep his treasure safe from thieves, and his tomb, as well as being a point of departure for the heavens, has to be secure. Even the mighty pyramids had not proved impregnable. Better to carve a tomb out of solid rock somewhere secret, somewhere no one but the sun's rays will find it. Akhenaten decided to build his tomb out in the Red Country, the desert beyond the green of the Nile valley.

The Red Country is a really sinister, scary place, unblessed by the holy Nile. Nothing chooses to grow there, and the wind raises spectral shapes out of the dust, like running men. Strange place to build a tomb, where everything sweet in life springs from the watered places. But that is where Akhenaten decided to build his ‘House of Eternity'; his starting point for the journey to the afterlife. And we went with him, Father and I, the day he decided to visit the site. That's how trusted we had become.

We rode out in chariots, but the charioteer would not let me hold the reins. Father was fretful and tetchy. He kept saying, ‘Why has
he asked us? Why is he showing us this tedious place?' I was just anxious to hold the reins.

The Red Country was not for us, not for our family. Father had purchased a grave site at Abydos. Though it had cost him his life savings, and had to be kept secret from the king, he felt much, much safer now, knowing that in death, he was better provided for than the king. Abydos, city of tombs, had grown up on the banks of the Nile on the very spot where the goddess Isis magically raised her husband Osiris from the dead and taught mortals the secrets of eternal life. Anyone buried in Abydos will be raised to life just like Osiris. Of course only the richest can afford to be buried there, but even quite poor people set up stelae, burial posts carved with their names, so that Osiris won't forget them. No, this red, dusty place was not for us. Not Harkhuf's family.

But one day the Princess Ankhesenpa-aten would lie here. She too would have her House of Eternity alongside her father's, crammed with gold, silver, gems and ushabti
cats. She was really excited to visit the place that morning. I hated the thought of it. I hated the thought of Ankhesenpa-aten growing old, or sick, or dying – being buried in her father's misguided religion, in this awful, blood-red place. In fact, I did my best to get all such thoughts out of my head, and busied myself thinking about better things. About chariots, chiefly.

In particular, I thought about the pharaoh's chariot. How would it be to ride in that? There it stood, leather and wood armoured all over with gold, with two black horses plumed and stamping. How glorious to tear along, the reins lashed round my waist like a real charioteer, over the desert and through the tape of the horizon, winning every race!

The last little bit of the way, the pharaoh, his daughters and his men of gold went on foot, not even shielded from the sun's heat by fan-bearers. The exact location of the tombs must remain a secret, for fear grave robbers might break in and steal the treasure which would one day be heaped around the king's sarcophagus. Not for
me to know. Not for charioteers or fan bearers. I remained behind. I remember, Ankhesenpa-aten looked back over her shoulder and waggled her fingers at me as they walked away.

I wish I could buy you a grave at Abydos! I thought. Away from this ungodly place.

I looked at the king's chariot. His charioteer was busy talking to the other drivers. How could it hurt just to try?

Up I stepped, on to the running board. One of the horses turned his head and snorted. The charioteer looked round and brandished his whip at me.

The horses sprang straight from standing into a gallop. There was no time to jump off, no time to even think. The floor of the chariot seemed to be pounding my legs into my hips, jarring my kneecaps like hammer blows. I made a snatch at the reins, but they were tied to the chariot and not round my waist.