On a Balcony (16 page)

I
t was the thirteenth year of the reign, which left them only five to go. But of course they could not know that, for secure as they were at Aketaten, nothing much happened in this year.

True, the temples were closed and the economy of the country was wrecked. The army was growing stronger than Pharaoh, which was dangerous. But
nobody
in the army had bothered to tell Pharaoh that. In Asia, Egypt lost Mitannia to the Hittites and six cities in Syria; in Africa, Nubia as far as the Fifth Cataract. The coastal trade, however, continued to flourish, since the Phoenicians ran it at a sufficient profit to themselves to keep them loyal, but even so, new waves of piracy hampered the steady flow of goods. The cost of wood went up, the supply of spices down. Pharaoh did not care for spiced food.

Thebes, they said, was orderly, apart from the
perpetual
strikes, but then there had always been strikes, because the officials in charge of grain allotment were hopelessly venal. When they grew too venal, which was every three or four years, one changed them, and the strikes abated for a while. It was a nuisance, but quite traditional.

All these things had nothing to do with Aketaten, and were in any event scarcely Ikhnaton’s concern.

It was in this year that he saw his first pair of gloves. They came from the interior of Arabia, and they were marvellous. They were so impersonal. Anything you did in gloves, you did not do at all. He had a pair made for Smenkara.

If you cut off a man’s hand, as was done with prisoners of war, you could not use it for anything at all. But here you had something that could do things you would never dare to do yourself. Inside gloves your own hands felt secret and safe, and could do as they pleased without anybody ever being able to see. If surrogate hands, why not then noses, eyes, a penis, ears? We already have wigs instead of hair. On the same principle, gloves made the dirtiest moral action clean, for one had no responsibility for what one touched. Any dirt that might be involved rubbed off on the gloves.

They said Royal Father Ay was Pharaoh’s right hand. Why not give him these surrogate hands, then, a pair of gloves? Then Pharaoh would have no
responsibility
for anything done in Pharaoh’s name. The gloves would bear the responsibility.

They were a marvel. He would distribute them to Ay from the balcony, as soon as the matter could be arranged.

And so we have the scene, on a rock painting done the same year. It was a gala event, and one of the Queen’s infrequent recent appearances. The nobles in the street below cheered themselves hoarse. Smenkara had begged for the privilege of being on the balcony, but since Ikhnaton kept him in the background, was not visible.

The irony of the scene made Ikhnaton giggle.

Unfortunately, as far as Ay was concerned, gloves were only gloves.

To tell the truth, Ikhnaton was a little bored, though not unpleasantly so. Mostly that year he played with the children. Their little fists grabbed rapaciously at things, like the tentacles of a stranded octopus, before it dies in the sun. He enjoyed that. It was agreeable to be the father of small girls, even if Meritaten was now too old to play, and had been relegated to
the harem, though Smenkara seemed to like her well enough.

They owed one everything. They had sometimes the power to annoy, when their voices piped too loud in very hot weather, but they were charming, and they did not have the power to hurt. It was a little like keeping cats, if cats were not sacred, and always remained kittens.

He played with them as though they were toys, the clay toys one gives to children and which grown-ups play with when they are sure they are not observed, or feel nervous. For this he could not be blamed, for they were not children. They had been brought up to be toys, and that is what they were. They could never be taken over into adulthood, and made to serve some purpose. They could only be forgotten, broken, or
discarded
. It must be said it gave them a certain gaily painted charm that would only later seem horrible.

N
othing much happened in the next year, either, not that was, at first.

In the State Department, the foreign minister under Ay received his fifth appeal from Rib-Addi of Byblos, against the disloyal manœuvres of Aziru, who had gone over to the Hittites. Byblos was of some importance as a trade centre. But the foreign minister knew better than to bother Pharaoh with such matters, and since the bribe offered by the Hittite ambassador turned out to be surprisingly large, he did not mention it to Ay either.

At court one saw rather more of Smenkara and of Nefertiti rather less. She now appeared only for Aton worship and the distributions of gold collars and other valuable honorifics from the royal balcony. In public the Royal Couple was as affectionate as ever. In
private
, she could be seen alone by anyone who sought her intervention or interest. The foreign minister was not among her party. She had no interest in politics in Syria, and supported Pharaoh in his disinterest in the matter, as she always had. It was another way she had of holding his attention, which these days was
increasingly
difficult to hold.

She found it prudent to avoid the court, for Smenkara did not like her. For the most part she stayed in the northern suburb and strengthened her position.

Tutankaten did seem to like her. He was seven now, and quite knowledgeable. Since Pharaoh neglected him, she had virtually adopted him, and thought his affection almost genuine. One does not expect
self-interest
from a child of seven. Unfortunately for her, he was, like the rest of them, precocious.

Since he showed an aptitude for sport, wiser than her mother, she hired male tutors and bowmen to instruct him. She also paid them well. She did not think much of Smenkara, and a prince with a faction is more useful than a prince without one. She made sure that
Tutankaten’s
servants should be loyal to her.

Smenkara, who collected art objects, had not only reawakened Ikhnaton’s interest in them, but had added a new piece to his own collection. In Pharaoh’s rooms he had found a small quartzite head and admired it. Ikhnaton had given it to him at once, without the slightest compunction. He had almost forgotten
Maketaten
. Not only did he have Smenkara to talk to, but he had a new interest now, or at least he tried to
persuade
himself that he had.

The matter was kept quiet, and in any case was rather pathetic. He had added a male harem to the royal establishment. Nefertiti could scarcely blame him. His tuberculosis had had the usual side effects, and in a way she had taught him the method, years ago. It was only because he could not sleep at night, and she doubted if he enjoyed it; but then again, thinking the matter over, he might.

She grew thoughtful. Purely apart from the
desperation
it revealed, boys were apt to be more spiteful than girls, and in sexual intrigue, more quarrelsome and adroit.

She need not have worried. Smenkara, though
unduly
decadent, had no such interests, and besides, it was an entertainment which Pharaoh preferred to keep locked up in one room and never refer to.

However, if he had no interest in the fate of the Empire, Tiiy did. Copies of all official documents were sent to her as a matter of course, not by the Foreign Office, but by their original senders. She sent word
down from Thebes that now Amenophis was dead she wished to visit the new capital. She was not so naïve as to believe her visit would produce any particular result, but it might, and besides, she was not without curiosity.

Ikhnaton would have refused her permission to come, but then his eye was caught by the death-mask of Amenophis.

He had forced Tutmose to give it to him. Having it about satisfied his new and restless mood. Having his father’s dead face there to watch somehow made life a little livelier. The Queen admired dangerous cats. This dangerous face might serve him equally well. He kept it by him, he supposed, out of defiance. Therefore, why not defy it now?

His mother, no doubt, thought of him as a weakling, incompetent to rule in her stead. If the Foreign Office did not plague him, she did. He was tired of all these petitions. He had begun to tire of the whole panoply, and was by no means averse to a chance to show off, which would make it for a moment new, seen through someone else’s eyes. He would let her come.

The preparations took six months. Unexpectedly Nefertiti found herself back in favour. She had built herself into the religion solidly, and now she was needed to show it off. She knew all that and tended Tutankaten with particular care. She had never liked her mother, either.

The preparations rejuvenated all of them.

She brought the blind harpers out of retirement with her. She thought she deserved the gesture. But Ikhnaton did not even notice them. He was too busy, for there was building to be done, and a pageant to be organized.

To Ay and Horemheb that pageant was ironic, for by this time, by force of finding it around him every day, Horemheb had had to master irony himself. Irony, in this case, turned out to be hugely expensive. The treasury was not so full as it had been, but the
army coffers were fuller. He had no objection to
paying
up, if the object lesson provided did any good.

Needless to say, it didn’t.

As a national symbol, however, it was effective, in a way that Tiiy may have overlooked. For in coming to Aketaten, Tiiy made it look very much as though the old order had at last been made to bow down before the new. On the other hand, her personal prestige was so great, and the partisan motives for applauding her so complex, that nobody bothered to look at the matter that way. To many she was the glory of the Empire, Pharaoh only what was left of it. Her reception by the army she found especially gratifying.

Nor did she see any reason to remove the figure of Amon from the prow and rudder of her own barge, or his standards from among those of her personal guard.

The shout these raised, when her flotilla approached the jetty of the south custom house, and the size of the crowd that raised it, was no doubt one reason why Pharaoh had caused the flotilla to dock there rather than at the wharves opposite the palaces and the Aton temple. She smiled graciously and was satisfied.

As for Ikhnaton, he relished the impertinence, for here, at Aketaten, he could put it in its place, which is what he had planned to do all along.

Rather than let her proceed to the dwelling built for her, he insisted she join in Aton worship at an altar built along her route for just that purpose. She could scarcely refuse, he thought. She had no intention of refusing. She felt the liveliest interest.

She was a pragmatist. Religion to her was a branch of the government, whereby one handed over spiritual ownership of the state to a series of venal officials, called priests, whose sole function was to maintain
metaphysical
order in one’s name. Like any officials, they sometimes forgot themselves, and had to be brought into line or even stripped of office, but one could not do
everything oneself, and by and large the arrangement was satisfactory. The priesthood in other words was a branch of the police, and only slightly more corrupt, but then corruption is the price we have to pay for order, and always has been.

As for the rest, she was superstitious about trifles and needed religion on her death-bed, and that was that.

She thought the white altar with its four staircases very pretty. Flowers she had always been fond of; she had never minded hot sunlight, and the hymn, of course, should not have been written in the vernacular, but the harpers played it very well. Meryra she did not even recognize.

That bright feverish glitter on her son was somewhat more disturbing. She looked round at the rest of them. The princesses did not count, but Meritaten looked as though she could bear children, which would be some help. Smenkara she had given up, but he was at least physically normal. To Nefertiti she was deliberately gracious. Tutankaten was too young to be forced to toddle through such fatiguing ceremonies, at his age so much standing was bound to make him bandy-legged. She made a note to mention it.

Indeed the only people she enjoyed seeing were Ay and Horemheb. They were very close now, those two. They even stood close together. It was always
agreeable
to see Ay. His cynicism was refreshing and never rude.

She saw what he meant about Horemheb.

Horemheb had turned out well. It was odd and even startling that he should be the perfect popular image of what a Pharaoh should be, manly, supple, direct, and powerful-looking, when they all looked like something else. Or perhaps it was not so odd, for in point of fact his family was older than the dynasty. In the obscurity of poverty they had probably taken the opportunity to renew their blood. Whereas her own brood was clearly
the scuttle-butt of inbreeding. It always happened. After two or three generations a family fell in on itself.

Like everyone else, she looked at Horemheb’s calves. One forgets at times that it is not always the face that sums up the character. It may as easily be some other part of the body, the finger-nails, the hand, the navel, even the foot. In his case it was the calves. They were so firm and sturdy.

They left the altar and she was escorted through the city.

She was escorted mercilessly through all of it, and exposed to a good deal of aesthetic prattle as well. She thought it was a pity Ikhnaton had no other hobbies. Between architecture and theology she was beginning to find it an unduly hot day.

The temples, she could see, in a light summer pavilion way, were pretty, but she was more interested in the Foreign Office.

It turned out Ikhnaton had never been in the Foreign Office.

She stared when he said that, and beside her, Ay gave a slight shrug. The courtiers, too, were little better than an ennobled rabble. She was relieved when she had been left alone in the temple of reception he had had built for her. The temple was decorated with alternating statues of herself, Amenophis, and Ikhnaton. The workmanship was bad, but it was a graceful touch. She took a nap.

There was something to be said for ritual and
ceremonial
after all. Moving that way in processions, appearing only at state dinners and other public
functions
, it took her longer to lose her temper, for not being alone with anybody, she had nobody to lose it with.

Private meals were less agreeable. She sat in one chair, and Nefertiti and Ikhnaton sat in another, ten feet opposite her, the space between occupied by food racks, flower arrangements, and wine bottles. The
acoustics in the banqueting hall were bad and the orchestra noisy. It was really a relief when the acrobats arrived, and made sustained conversation unnecessary.

Ikhnaton’s table manners had not improved. If
anything
they had become worse. Nor were Nefertiti’s much better. Seen thus, gnawing away at a chicken or a roast, their faces had a look of abstracted bliss that seldom came over them in the temples. If they washed their hands frequently, it was only to prevent their slipping on a greasy bone.

She was astonished, sipped wine, and watched. Nefertiti, at least, had always been fastidious. Indeed physically, despite that eye, she was still fastidious, in a curious sick-bed way. But they were gluttons. On the other hand, there was some excuse. The cooking, she had to admit, was superb.

Conversation was boring. Nefertiti, to her surprise, talked about the religion rather more, and Ikhnaton, less. Perhaps, as the fountain-head of inspiration, he preferred to staunch the flow of a well that could not be inexhaustible. Nefertiti on the other hand almost talked as though she believed it, and of course, as she well knew, Nefertiti believed in nothing.

Tiiy saved her conversation for Ay and Horemheb. They acted out their game of domestic affection well, but she was not convinced. She knew what domestic affection was, and it was not this. Even as a
performance
it seemed a little tired. There was no feeling in those understanding smiles.

Also, Smenkara was rude to her. Not even Nefertiti seemed to control him. No doubt they all wanted to show how independent they were, since they were her children. She could not help but find them saddening.

She found the pageant of foreign tribute even more so.

They viewed it from a reception hall built for the purpose at one side of the Foreign Office.

It came in three parts: a spontaneous demonstration of loyalty on the part of the ambassadors of subject states; a procession of captives, which was an excuse for the army to parade in force; and the presentation of tribute. She settled into place and was not impressed.

For one thing, there had been some difficulty with the ambassadors. The Foreign Office, caught between Pharaoh and the facts, had been forced to improvise. Ambassadors should have presented themselves from the Sea Peoples, Crete, the Mitannians, the Hittites, the Phoenicians, and all the lesser cities of Philistia, Sharon, Acre, Esdraelon, Beth-Shan, Damascus,
Kadesh
, Aleppo, Lachish, Beth-Shemesh, and Judea.
Unfortunately
Lachish, Kadesh, and Aleppo were
undergoing
siege, and could not get their ambassadors out. It had been a task to find natives of those regions in the foreign quarter and dress them up. The Sea Peoples were no longer under control, but one of their petty chieftains, who hoped to defeat his countrymen with Egyptian help, had been pressed into service. The Mitannian kingdom had fallen ten years ago, and so had Crete. None the less a real Cretan had been
obtained
in the person of a Mycenean merchant, and without his beard he did very well. The Phoenicians were there in full force, but twenty Phoenician
ambassadors
, though they filled out the procession, might seem excessive. This had been solved by having each one represent a different city.

The Hittites, however, were openly at war with Egypt, though they sent protestations of loyalty, but since they had absorbed the Mitannian state, three of whose daughters had married Pharaohs, including Amenophis III and Ikhnaton himself, these
protestations
failed to convince. So they had been left out.