Return to Thebes (3 page)
Authors: Allen Drury
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Genre Fiction, #Historical, #Mythology & Folk Tales, #Historical Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy, #fairy tales
Now the battle rages. I do not care what the outcome is, for I am now, ironically, in a position where I am privileged to watch—a privilege I would gladly yield were it possible, but one which I do not think the gods will permit me to evade. Tuthmose is a little more in the center of things, but he too is safe. We exist to carry out orders, not give them. There is much stirring in the palaces. Horemheb and his chief aide General Ramesses have hurried back from Memphis, where they had gone to attend to the government’s business in the Delta. Aye and his sister, Queen Tiye, have come down from Thebes. Amonhotep, Son of Hapu, that sainted scribe whose wisdom becomes more universally respected as he learns to express it less, is bustling about. Tuthmose is keeping me informed. I feel the wind, though I am no longer able to be at the center of the storm. And storm it is, I am afraid, for His Majesty.
I fear for him and weep for him, because I think in his own strange way he has always meant to do right, and to live in truth. It is his tragedy that his truth is unlike the truth of any other. In that, I think, His Majesty has found the seeds of his downfall, at last.
***
Amonemhet
I am Amon-em-het the peasant, and you will remember how I saw His Majesty with the Prince Smenkhkara—whom we must now call “His Majesty,” too—sailing downriver to Akhet-Aten from Thebes, golden in the torchlight against the dark bosom of Hapi, god of the Nile, chanting His Majesty’s Hymn to his god the Aten, on that night three years ago when my wife and I frolicked too much and wound up with child number three. Not that I mind him, or the method of his getting, which is always pleasant any time, but he does have to be fed, of course, and that poses a problem. But we love children, and we manage. Number four will be here in another two weeks. Then, I suppose, will come five, six, seven, eight—may the gods stop us!
Ho,
ho
!
Let them try!
Anyway, I told you on that night when I saw His Majesty that it did not matter much to us here in the village what happens in the great cities among the great men. But in this I think I spoke too easily and too fast, because it has come to matter much in these last three years.
It used to be that we would hear distant reports that all was not going well in Kemet. Before His Majesty’s father died—Amonhotep III (life, health, prosperity!), that good man who governed us so well and looks better all the time compared to what we have now—we used to hear rumors, sometimes, about troubles in far-off places. It was said our allies, or countries we owned, or were friendly with, were not friendly any more. But this did not bother us in the village. It was all far away.
It was also reported—particularly by old Sahura, he who once was a scribe and went to the cities before he came home to sit in the square all day and demand that we listen to his old man’s warnings of disaster—that there was trouble in the whole government. He said order was breaking down,
ma’at
was being violated, bad times were coming to the Two Lands because of the Pharaoh Akhenaten. And even though we did notice that the priests of Amon were worried and seemed not quite so powerful, and occasionally a tax collector tried to take more than what seemed to us to be our fair share of taxes (the last such wound up that night in the bosom of Hapi and nevermore was seen again, may the Forty-two Judges of the Dead keep him drowning forever in the jaws of Sebek the crocodile god!), still it all seemed far away and not much of our concern.
But now that His Majesty Akhenaten is King, with His Majesty Smenkhkara beside him on the throne (and somewhere else, too, so everyone says), I have to admit it: there is real trouble in Kemet. It is not far away now, it is in the village. Now it concerns us because it is in our own place. Now we must pay attention—although there is not much that we can do about it now, of course: it has gone too far. It has got away from us almost before we knew it was happening. And of course we are only ignorant peasants who must obey the will of His Majesty in all things, as has ever been the way of the Two Lands.
But, I tell you! Now we have tax collectors who come, not in ones or twos who can be killed or cheated, but in gangs and bands who rove through the village and demand great sums and call in soldiers to help them destroy our dikes and fields if we will not pay. Who gets these sums we do not know, but we do not think they can go to His Majesty, or that His Majesty knows of this, for surely he would not permit it, being just and good and a father to us as Pharaoh has always been. But somebody gets this money. Somebody sends the thieves and the soldiers. Who is it? Who is to protect us?
And now we do not see priests of Amon any more, who also used to take taxes from us, but who gave us in return food and shelter when we needed it, and helped us from their granaries if we got a low Nile and the Inundation did not flood our fields properly with water and new soil. Now the priests of Amon are all in hiding, and the new priests of the Aten lord it over us. They too take our money and seize our crops and even take our children away to place them in the service of the Aten, who is His Majesty’s god and not ours, and whom nobody in the village wants. Is this done at His Majesty’s command? We do not believe it. But somebody commands it, for it is done. And whom can we look to for salvation from these crimes? It should be the duty of His Majesty to protect us, but he does not. What are we to do?
Now we talk, all up and down the river, from village to village in the ancient way that carries the news of Kemet swiftly from the Fourth Cataract to the Delta. Now we are all aware of what is happening, because it is causing trouble for us, and for our wives and children. We did not pay attention when His Majesty was Co-Regent with his father, because we knew his father and the Great Wife still had some power in Kemet to see that we were well governed, which is Pharaoh’s charge. We knew they were trying to look out for us.
We could ignore his god the Aten, which we did, because Amon and the other gods we have always worshiped were permitted to continue much as they had always done. Now all has changed.
Now it is known to us that His Majesty is not interested in keeping the faraway lands that brought wealth to Kemet and helped us all. He is not interested in caring for his people when they go hungry and need assistance. He is not interested in maintaining
ma’at
and the eternal order of Kemet which has always given us a contented life along the Nile, in good years and lean. He is not interested in protecting us, as the Good God should.
He is interested in three things only:
His god the Aten.
His brother the King Smenkhkara.
And himself.
We would never do anything to harm His Majesty, for he is the Living Horus, Son of the Sun, King of the Two Lands, Good God and Pharaoh, and we are his people, as has ever been the way in Kemet. But we no longer believe in him, nor do we love him any more, since he does not love us. And we think—nay, I will go further since I am saying my thoughts secretly and in private, and say
we hope
—that this will weaken him enough so that someone
can
do something to save us from him.
Save us, his own people, from Pharaoh!
How sad that it should come to that! How sad for Pharaoh, and for us, who wanted only to love him had he but kept his trust with us and made it possible for us to do so.
Now from the Fourth Cataract to the Delta we know this is not to be. And this is sad and frightening for Kemet, because we do not know what will happen to us, and in the village we all go fearful and uneasy because of it, and even in the midst of frolicking with my wife I find I cannot stop thinking of it, which makes me pause so that she cries out angrily and blames me for being a weakling and no man, when it is really His Majesty she should blame.
***
Kia
Poor Naphuria—whom I still call that, as we do in my native Mesopotamia, because in ten years as his second wife we have never been close enough so that I could comfortably call him Akhenaten.
Poor Naphuria, who thrashes about in the grip of his futile love and his unloved god and wonders why the Two Lands slip away from him!
Or does he wonder? Sometimes I think he cares not at all, so recklessly does he conduct himself, with so harsh and contemptuous a disregard for the traditional ways of Kemet. They were not my ways when I came here, and it has taken me awhile to understand them, but I have learned that they are good for Kemet. They have kept this ancient land in relative peace and stability for almost two thousand years, saving only the invasion of the Hyksos and a few weak kings here and there, and two millennia is not such a mean record for a country. I know, in fact, of no other like it. But such a heritage apparently means nothing at all to him.
Nefertiti and I have been living in the North Palace ever since our return from Thebes after the funeral of the old Pharaoh three years ago. I did not have to go: Akhenaten did not banish me from his side because I have never really been there. But I thought it best to go with her whose strength and courage I have always admired. There was nothing for me in the palace of men.
We have with us brave little Tut, no longer the happy child he used to be. The intimations of the adult world have turned him old before his time, and the knowledge that he may be called upon at any moment to replace his brother weighs heavily upon him. I think he still loves and stands in awe of his brother—of both brothers, in fact—and the thought that he may be used to do them violence troubles and shadows what was once a sunny personality. No one has ever said, or indicated openly, that violence is what may be done: but it is implicit. Implicit in the air, and implicit, let us be honest about it, in the situation.
Thus does the corruption of the Aten, confused and confounded yet more by the unhealthy love of the brothers, spread and poison the happiness of the Family, as it spreads and poisons the happiness of the land.
Yet I do not think Tut sees it in these terms, being still a child, nor does the Chief Wife, nor her three daughters who also live with us. To Nefertiti particularly, whose powerful personality influences all of us who live closely with her, the Aten remains, I think, the perfect ideal to which she would like to see all Kemet aspire. She has never wavered in her faith in the Sole God, and she still, I think, loves the Sole God’s prophet. The habit of love, ingrained in them both by their parents from earliest childhood, remains unbroken in her in spite of all. As it does in him, I think, because he has made no move to “disgrace” her as those who fall from favor in Kemet can be disgraced—by the destruction of her portraits and cartouches everywhere in the land, the smashing of her statues, the abolition of her name, and thus of her very
ka
and
ba
,
the soul and essence of her being. (Only one cartouche, on a “sun-shade” on the Nile that he has given to Merytaten, has actually been replaced, of all her thousands.) Nor has she “disappeared,” except that she now occupies a separate residence and is no longer portrayed officially as being at his side.
It is true that he has given his brother one of her names, Neferu-neferu-aten, “Fair is the Goodness of the Aten,” has conferred on him the titulary “Beloved of Akhenaten,” and has had the two of them portrayed together in poses more than brotherly. But she lives on, unmolested and well maintained, in the North Palace scarce three miles from his. Sometimes they even see one another when they proceed in their separate chariots to the Great Temple of the Aten to do worship, though both make every attempt to assure that their visits will not coincide. When they do, no glance is exchanged, no word is spoken. All fall silent and, oblations done as swiftly as is decent, they hastily remount and speed away to their separate palaces. But, for a wife the gossips of Kemet would have you believe is “disgraced,” Nefertiti manages to live on very well.
Such, it seems to me, is token enough that somewhere in the strange world to which he has gone from us the Good God retains some sense of sanity and balance, at least on that particular subject; and also, I believe some memory of love, if not its actual being, which will not permit him to be fatally harsh to her.
Partly because of this, but more, I believe, because she truly believes in the concept of one universal god, the Chief Wife remains true to the Aten. And so all of us in her household remain true to it too: Tutankhaten, who himself may yet rule in the name of the Aten; healthy and determined Ankh-e-sen-pa-aten, who will become his Queen; sickly Nefer-neferu-aten Junior and sickly Nefer-neferu-ra, both of whom give promise of soon following into the afterworld the sixth little sister, Set-e-pen-ra, who withered and died, like a lotus taken from the river’s edge and planted in the open desert, scarce six months after the move to the North Palace.
The oldest princess, tough and ambitious little Merytaten, Queen of her uncle Smenkhkara, now lords it over the King’s House in the stead of her mother, whom she apparently despises, for no kind word to the Chief Wife ever comes from her. She seems content with her lot, even though her marriage is known in the palaces to be simply form without substance. I believe she has no desire to have children, and indeed cannot, since she was injured in the delivery of her father’s daughter, Merytaten Junior, another feeble infant who perished several years ago after an uncomfortable and mercifully short existence. (Why is it that Akhenaten can beget only girls, most of them sickly? Is it some punishment of Amon, perhaps, who has never forgiven him and bides only the time when his priests can reclaim their power?)
To Merytaten, being the only Queen at the side of the two Pharaohs is evidently quite enough. She supervises her father’s household, attends him at ceremonies, travels with Smenkhkara on his frequent visits to Thebes. He has returned to the compound of Malkata and established a palace there, which he occupies quite frequently, almost as if he considered this some form of appeasement of Amon—though he rarely goes near the deserted temples at Karnak and Luxor, and always hurries back to his brother to make public show of his devotion to the Aten. To me this seems very typical of Smenkhkara, who remains a charming, golden man as he was a charming, golden youth, but who seems to suffer from some inherent weakness that keeps him always indecisive and seeming to hang between two divergent paths of action. Perhaps this accounts for his relationship with his brother. Weakness usually seeks strength, but in a certain kind of mentality weakness seeks weakness.
Yet perhaps in this I am being unfair to Akhenaten, because I do not think “weakness” is exactly the right word for him. Certainly one who has had the character to defy the awesome weight of the ancient gods and traditions of two thousand years, who has finally declared and conducted open battle against Amon, the most powerful of them all, who has dared to “live in truth” in ways that are shocking and affronting to his people, who has defied the powerful members of his own family who oppose his policies, who has deliberately placed himself beyond the reach and understanding of ordinary men, even more than the god-kings of the Nile
are
beyond the understanding of ordinary men—such a one is not exactly “weak.” He has a powerful personality and a powerful will, my husband, poor Naphuria; and it is only in the fact that the word “poor” comes automatically to my mind, and to that of many others, when we think of him, that there is indication of how weak, in the most fundamental sense, he is.
He is weak in that he
is
beyond the understanding of mankind. He is weak in that he no longer has a foot on the common ground, he is no longer in touch with reality as it is perceived by most who tread the earth. He has moved ever more steadily into a world of his own, a world unique to him alone—an insane world, if you like. Not even poor Smenkhkara, I suspect, can truly follow poor Naphuria where he goes.
We wonder, in the North Palace and at Malkata—where the Great Wife still prefers to live, though she comes often here to see her sons (and always, with complete impartiality and lack of fear, sees Nefertiti and the rest of us, as well)—what Smenkhkara makes of all this and what he feels about the strange things Naphuria does. Does he bear the name, title, and aspect of wife to his brother willingly? Does he approve when Naphuria orders Bek and Tuthmose to make Naphuria steadily younger and more beautiful in his statues, abandoning that “living in truth” that touched his earlier portraitures with near grotesquerie, so that he may try to match (pathetically, we all think) the gifts nature has conferred on Smenkhkara? Does Smenkhkara approve of the stelae and statues that show the two of them in intimate and candid embrace? Does Smenkhkara ever wonder whether he, too, is leaving sanity to live in his brother’s world? Or is he content to bask in the favor of the Good God, accept his gifts along with his attentions, and appear unabashed and unashamed in a relationship that most would accept were it kept private, but which none in tradition-bound Kemet can accept when it is flaunted before them officially by Pharaoh? And does he truly believe in the Aten, or is that, too, just a convenience to help him stay where he is?
These are questions that are now suddenly inescapable as the Family gathers to do battle over the paintings of the coronation durbar in the tombs of Huy and Meryra. Normally you would not think two paintings on two stone walls would cause such furor, but you must understand that in Kemet things that are pictured
are.
They
exist
because they are painted, and they exist
only
as they are painted—and they exist, you must remember, not just for a year or two but for all eternity in this preserving desert air. Therefore it is considered very important, in the Family, how things are portrayed, because this becomes the official history that will go down forever to those who come after. It is no wonder they are concerned about the tombs of Huy and Meryra, for in them the story will be told for all time—
not necessarily as it was, but as the Dynasty wishes it to be.
So, the battle of the durbar, which has brought them all to Akhet-Aten. Queen Tiye is the last to arrive, her state barge having docked shortly after noon today. We understand she went directly to her own small palace. Already she has sent word that she, Aye and Horemheb will visit us in the North Palace this evening, “before we see Their Majesties.” This means the three who must ultimately decide the Family’s position wish to take counsel with the Chief Wife, and possibly me as well, before they act. It is flattering and it is also dangerous, for it may well invite the open wrath of Akhenaten, whose temper is becoming steadily more erratic and unpredictable. But we are not afraid. When we received the messenger, Nefertiti merely read the Great Wife’s words aloud to me and then turned to the waiting servant and said quietly:
“Tell the Great Wife that Her Majesty Kia and I will be most happy to receive her, the Councilor, and General Horemheb at the evening hour that suits them.”
Then when he had swiftly gone she turned to me with a slight smile and a level glance from those steady, beautiful eyes, now filled with so much sadness, and said, with a trace of wistfulness in her voice:
“Poor Naphuria, as you would say. Once again he flirts with fate and invites the wrath of the Family. We must try to give our judgments fairly.”
“Yes, Majesty,” I agreed. “I believe we can do so.”
“I, too, believe it,” she said, “though, once again, it will not be a happy time.” Her eyes widened in thought and almost to herself she added, “
Why does he always persist in making life so hard for himself?
”
This I could not answer; although in fairness it must be said that on this occasion the responsibility is equal. It is Naphuria who wishes to tell the unadorned truth about the pathetic little coronation durbar. It is the Chief Wife and the Great Wife and the rest of the Family who want to tell the official lie.
It is, as usual, a head-on clash of opposites such as he always seems to invite. Poor Naphuria, indeed—and poor Smenkhkara, too; because this time, I think, the results may be very serious. The confrontation that is coming has been building for three years. It could have come over almost anything but, rather absurdly to me who am still, and will always be, essentially an outsider, it has come over something as seemingly trivial as two paintings in a couple of tombs.
The feeling must have been growing in the Family for some time that a turning point would have to come. Nefertiti and the Great Wife have deliberately helped to precipitate it by their orders to Huy and Meryra. They could only have done so, I believe, at the direct suggestion of Aye and Horemheb. Naphuria’s order came first—that made him vulnerable. The decision seems to be that now is the time to make use of this.
Poor Naphuria and poor Smenkhkara! I do not like either one, particularly, but as a disinterested party I do not enjoy seeing them so willfully rush headlong into what may prove to be great disaster for them, for Kemet, and for us all.
***
