Moses (6 page)

This returned the boy to reality, and thankful that now he grappled with what he understood, he answered, “
That
anyone knows, Amon-Teph, for the blessed Re stands with Osiris cheek to cheek, the lord of death and the god of the sun, together!”

“The cold and the warm, Moses?”

“Precisely,” Moses nodded eagerly, “for alone, each would fade into no substance, but together—”

“Ah, Moses,” the priest sighed, “don't argue matters theological with me, for I can only promise you the short end. I see that you were well taught, and I am sure you can recite more paragraphs from the
Book of the Dead
than I can, the way my memory serves me. As a matter of fact, your answer shows devotion to your studies. He is the god of the sun, is he not? Sun-god, river-god, heavenly-god, flood-god—oh so many of him from so far back. Did it ever occur to you, Moses, to wonder why the ancient folk built those stone mountains at Giza so high?”

Moses shook his head. The pyramids were high; why they were high had never occurred to him, and who on earth would ever think of asking such a question?

“They were more simple in the olden times,” the priest smiled. “Each king considered that he would build a platform to set him on a level with the god Re. They were simple, and Re was simple, too. Do you know, Moses, people grow wiser and their gods grow a little wiser too?”

“I don't understand you, Amon-Teph.”

“No. But you will begin to—because understanding comes slowly, Moses. You have told me the name of the sun-god, but the name of the sun, this you haven't spoken at all.”

“The sun is the sun,” Moses said slowly, half as a question. “It has no name.”

“And you are the son of Enekhas-Amon, the daughter of Seti the god, and yet you have a name-perhaps a bit unusual, perhaps only half a name—still, it serves. Is the sun less, Moses?”

“I don't know.”

“Even I, fat old Amon-Teph, have a name, and my pet cat has a name—but the sun? Moses, have you ever heard the word
Aton?
”

“I don't remember,” slowly and half-afraid, he answered. The night was closing in on Moses; and now the moon, the silver disc of Isis, the mother, the sister of life and death, was up over the horizon, gazing full upon him, challenging his
justice
, searching his soul for what horrible thoughts he might think in the next moment. Looking about him, almost wildly, almost like a trapped animal, he saw that the other priests had forgotten him or were deliberately ignoring him, bent on their own business. They had long brazen rods, with a loop at either end, and through these loops they seemed to be tracing the course of the stars. Sometimes they laid down their rods to make notations on strips of papyrus, and again they put their heads together for whispered consultations.

“Magic,” Moses whispered.

“Nonsense, boy!” Amon-Teph snorted. “We have no truck with this new fad of magic here! We are doing our work—and at the moment mine is to open your dark eyes a little.”

“Why?” Moses asked in half a whimper.

“Why? You want to know all at once. You will know soon enough. For the time being—I can tell you no more than your mother will permit me to tell you. But rest assured, my child, that you have a vital place in our dreams—and they are not always to remain dreams. Now think no more about it, let the future rest. For you, Prince, there is only tomorrow, but my tomorrows are far, far away. Are you afraid?”

“I don't want to be.”

“But when I said
Aton
, your heart turned over. I am an old man, Moses, and not fit to frighten any child, much less a prince of Egypt. And you—are you enough of a man yet to know a beautiful woman when she passes by, or is beauty still a word?”

“I'm not a child,” Moses answered sullenly.

“And perhaps not a man either. But if you saw all the beautiful women in Egypt today, you would never see one so fair and lovely as the Queen Nefertiti. Does her name frighten you too? And what of the god who shared her throne, the King Akh-en-Aton?”

“Cursed be his name,” Moses whispered.

“Ah boy, boy,” the old man sighed, placing a hand on the prince's shoulder and touching his cheek lightly with the other. “So quick to curse. And if they taught you to curse our mother, the River Nile, you would do that too—or the sweet morning wind? Curse it? No—no, Moses,” he said gently, softly, winningly, “we will come closer than curses, and we will learn something, you and I. You're not too young, and I'm not too old. Do you think it is lightly that I place my life in your hands? Old, I am, and fat and ugly, but still life is sweet and the life of my brothers here—that is also sweet. And what will happen if you go to your godly uncle and tell him that here I spoke the name of Akh-en-Aton?”

“I won't tell,” Moses pleaded, feeling that this was the most awful moment of his life. “I won't tell.”

“But if you should tell?”

“You will die, Amon-Teph,” the boy stammered, his eyes filling with tears. “But I won't tell.”

“I think you won't,” the priest murmured. “Either because I am a fool, or because I am a good judge of men, even when they are young men. Do you think I would tell you evil things, Moses, and lead you in evil paths?”

Moses shook his head.

“No, you are very dear to me; and only the cause is worth the risk. Akh-en-Aton was a good and gentle man—and even as we look at the stars, so did he look at the sun and feel its warmth and goodness; and he said to himself—The sun's name is Aton; and did he not look kindly upon us and give us so generously of his warm blood, then we would all perish and die in the everlasting night. What other god is like him?'”

“Akh-en-Aton wanted to kill the gods—”

“No, no, boy! What lies they tell you! Do you think that gods die so easily? Believe me, it was with no thought of killing the gods that Akh-en-Aton turned to the sun—but to make the gods what they must be, to bring them together with he-who-created-all, who shines down on us every day. We are all children of Aton, our father, and is it wrong for children to know their father as he truly is? Is it wrong for children to know that their father is good and that he gives them everlastingly of his warm gold? Why must we call him by many names and give him many aspects? He has only one that is meaningful—his great, golden heart.”

The priest was silent then and he remained silent for a long while, his eyes looking out past the marble balustrade; and as Moses watched him, the boy's fear went away. Finally, Moses said,

“But that was a long, long time ago, wasn't it, AmonTeph?”

“For you, yes,” the priest nodded. “For me—only yesterday. My own grandfather was a priest of Aton under Akh-en-Aton. So, you see, it was not so long ago. But now it's late, Moses. Go to your mother.” He took the prince's hand and kissed it; the other priests turned to Moses and nodded their heads; and Moses, full of a strange, over-whelming gladness, left the platform and walked slowly down the stone stairs.

[7]

MANHOOD PECKED AT him; he was gaining his height, and the first soft, dark down began to show on his upper lip. His limbs lengthened, and his round muscles became flat and hard. Inside him strange new juices stirred him to restless, aching, longing that was without definition and beyond his understanding, Suddenly, the world was created anew and a hundred things were singular.

Often enough the children of Ramses swam in the River Nile now. This was frowned on if not wholly forbidden, but they were yearlings who had to test their stride and strength constantly—and bolster their defiance too. When night fell, they would slip down the outside stairs of the palace to the stone quays where the royal barges were docked, drop noiselessly into the warm water, and swim out—the moment tingling with the possibility that they might encounter a crocodile that had come up out of the wild marshes of the Delta.

Sometimes the bolder among their sisters joined them, and it was thus that one night a girl called Neftu-Isis, round and ripe and budding in her womanhood, swam next to Moses. Something real or fancied frightened her and she threw her arms around him, the two of them sinking beneath the water; and he, returning her embrace, finding it like no other touch of a woman's hands, new and wonderful and causing his whole body to tremble, held on to her even when they rose above the water again, reassuring her that there was nothing to fear—and anyway here he was, Moses, and a match for anything.

“You're so strong,” she said, as if those words were never spoken by a woman before, and he replied, treading water with calculated ease,

“Oh, I don't know. I suppose I swim fairly well.”

She herself swam like a fish, having been raised in and out of the palace pools and fountains, but she hastened to declare, “And I swim badly, Prince of Egypt, don't I? And I tire so easily.”

He thought her modest and enchanting, her long black hair spreading fanwise around her head in the water, and for the first time the sight of a girl's breasts excited him. He begged her to rest on him, and with long, easy strokes he swam back to the quays. He was not sure that chance brought him to a different quay than they had embarked from. It was closer, in any case, and as the night air was cooling, he put his arms around her to warm her. They lay side by side on the stone floor of the quay, the rocks beneath them still warm from the sun, and it never occurred to Moses that she knew so much more of making love than he did. Yet she was not backward with her knowledge and, since he knew practically nothing to speak of, he was filled with worship and adoration. Though he was younger than she—she was past fourteen, some nine months from the age of marriage—he took her to his heart, decided that she was the only woman he would ever love, and lived for at least a week in a transport of joy.

It was not long before he overheard some of his royal cousins talking about her, and heard too that she had been betrothed some six months to a duke of Philistia—for Ramses used his daughters, as he did so many other people, to build political bridges. His broken heart somehow healed, but not without aid from one or another of the many princesses; and since in their code of living no store was set on virginity and because so much love had been pent up inside him, he loved generously and easily.

But he loved without being in love, and the singular wonder of the first moment was not repeated. Yet he was not like some of his royal cousins who drove themselves after women—perhaps in imitation of or perhaps in competition with their godly sire; Moses was an anomaly in, the Great House of the king, a prince with a very small store of arrogance; and perhaps for that very reason, women turned to him with a regard his age hardly warranted.

But this modestywhich—won him not only the love of women but also the friendship of some of the gentler, if usually younger, of his royal brothers—did not spring fullgrown; it was helped to develop by the princely astronomers who had, in a measure, made him their ward. Whatever the ultimate goal they planned—the ultimate destination they chose for Moses and for themselves—it remained unrevealed to the boy; and as circumstances developed, it would so remain for many years. He accepted their apparent love for him or the strange reverence they bore him because they were gentle people and the creed they taught him was a gentle creed.

They never lured him to the tower or urged him there. When he came by himself they welcomed him gladly, and when a week or ten days went by without his coming, they didn't reproach him. Amon-Teph remained his teacher, and step by step there was unfolded for him the story of Aton.

He learned how for untold generations the lord and creator of all things had looked with compassion and pity upon the Land of Egypt—for while Aton, the sun, was the father and maker of all, he had chosen the Land of Egypt for his special blessing, and had given to Egyptians the sacred knowledge of truth and justice. Yet, in spite of this, the Egyptians turned their faces from him and worshipped many strange and cold gods, turning more and more to death and the shadow-world of death. So little did they comprehend Aton that they built mountains of stone that lesser gods might mount to the level of Aton—never knowing that to approach Aton would be to invite destruction, even as he who looks at Aton too long will find that the god has taken his sight away for ever.

For this Aton pitied them and often discussed their folly and wickness with his son, who dwelt within his bosom. The name of the sacred son of Aton was Shay, which meant
destiny
, or the ultimate realization of all things. Finally, Aton decided that he must send his holy son to mankind, to redeem them and to make them conscious of their ultimate destiny; and even though it meant leaving the everlasting beauty of his father, Shay agreed. Whereupon, Shay descended to earth and entered the body of the most godlike man he could find—Amen-Hotep, the ruler over Egypt. This occurred in the sixth year of the reign of this holy king; and when it happened, he knew that it had happened and he changed his name to Akh-en-Aton, declaring by this name that he was consecrated to Aton and that he would war against all gods other than the one true god.

Yet in the end the gods of darkness and hate returned to the Land of Egypt. Akh-en-Aton died, and his son was a weakling and without the spirit of Shay within him. All who were evil and rapacious and hungry for power turned against Aton and, led by the dark plotter, the god Osiris, they triumphed; and those who served Aton died by the thousands. That was less than a century ago, yet today the faith of Aton was kept alive only by a handful and only at the risk of their own lives.

“So you see, Moses,” Amon-Teph said to him, “not all priests are as alike inside as they are outside, even as not all princes are cut out of the same cloth. This palace swarms with priests who came to power when they murdered the old priesthood of Aton; and because they could destroy whom they liked by charging them with the heresy of Aton, they have ever spread and increased their power. So long as the God Ramses rules, they will be held in some check, for he has an iron hand and jealousy of his own power. But god help us all if a weakling comes after him! Then the priests will pluck Egypt clean as a bone.”