Out of the Black Land (23 page)

This had always been my favourite part of the hymn. I recalled how enchanted I had been when I first took it down in my fast cursive, how the poem had grown on the whitened board under the spell of the soft voice of the King.

‘
How wonderful are thy works!
’ declared the King, forgetting his water-sickness, as he spoke his own words:

How mighty and how manifest to thy children!
They are hidden from the sight of men, Lord of the Sky, Sole God, like unto there is no other!
Unique One of the World, how sweet are thy ways!
Thou didst fashion the world according to thy desire when thy wast alone—all men, cattle great and small, all that are upon the earth that run upon feet or rise up on high on wings.
And the lands of Syria and Kush and Egypt—thou appointest every man to his place and satisfieth his needs.
Each man receives sustenance and his days are numbered. Their tongues are diverse in speech and their qualities likewise, and their colour is different because thou hast distinguished the nations.

My lord Akhnaten stood up and raised his arms as he declared the final blessing:

O Divine Lord of all,
All men toil for thee,
The Lord of every land, the Aten disc of the day-time, Great in majesty!’

And it occurred to me for the first time—considering how often I had repeated the hymn the realisation was late in coming—that unlike the previous hymn to Amen-Re, the Aten as a god had done nothing but create and provide. There was nothing in the hymn about compassion, or mercy, or justice, or kindness, or love.

And there were precious few of those qualities in the King, or in his Egypt.

Chapter Sixteen

Mutnodjme

I had never seen such a beautiful palace.

Ankhesenpaaten, who for some reason had decided to like me—and there was nothing I could do about this—took my hand and led me through all of the rooms of her mother’s palace, and it was remarkable.

Because the artisans were forbidden the use of the old outlines of gods—no falcon-headed Horus or cat-headed Basht—they had had to invent entirely new ways of depicting the world. The child told me that thousands of men had worked for months on the walls, and it showed.

Everywhere was light and colour and beauty. One whole room, for instance, was decorated with grapevines so real that one looked to pluck a handful of fruit. I stopped abruptly on what seemed to be the brink of a fish-filled pool, and Ankhesenpaaten laughed; the first natural sound I had heard out of that unnatural child. The pool was not real; it was a tesserae mosaic of fish and weed, so realistic that I had thought at first glance that I was about to step into water.

There were depictions of the royal family too; endless scenes of my Lord Akhnaten playing with his children, being anointed by his wife, offering piles of food to his sun god, and one delightful frieze of naked children playing games. The colours were bright, reds and browns and gold and blue.

We were alone in the centre of a room decorated all over with cornflowers and lotus, when the strange child suddenly said, ‘I was afraid,’ and I knelt down so that I could see into her face. She was thin limbed and big-bellied, like most children of that age, and instead of her usual bold stare she was eluding my gaze and biting her nails.

I decided that this was probably not a ruse of some sort and asked softly, ‘When were you afraid?’

‘When the soldier speared the teacher. There was blood. I was afraid.’

‘Yes, I’m sure that you were,’ I agreed, wondering what I could say that would not be reported back to every spy in the palace, or quoted where it would do most harm by the child herself.

Her little monkeyish face screwed up into a grimace, she whispered, ‘Will they kill me, too?’

‘No,’ I said firmly, clutching her as she threw herself into my arms. ‘No, Ankhesenpaaten, they won’t kill you. Your Divine Father loves you, you know he loves you.’ And I was perfectly sure of this.

‘Then why…’ I could not tell her the real reason—that her father was completely mad—so I temporised.

‘People sometimes do things which we cannot understand,’ I said. ‘But you are safe, little royal daughter, of that I am certain.’

‘That’s all right, then,’ she concluded, wriggled to get down, and continued to show me through the palace.

I began to wonder about my sister Nefertiti’s care for her children. Mother Tey would not have liked answering a question about such a happening, but she would have answered. This child’s fears had gone unassuaged and she was obviously choosing her confidant, and her moment, carefully, with a tact not to be expected in one so young. I resolved to look into the state of the others. And what was Tey my mother doing about it?

As it happened, nothing. Tey my mother summoned me later that day to a room decorated with a harvest; the most beautiful, delicate, full-coloured painting I had ever seen. Tey, however, was just as ever, though older and thinner, a spare dark crone in the atmosphere of exotic richness which enfolded the palace of the City of the Sun.

‘Well, daughter,’ she offered her hand for me to kiss, and I sank to my knees to comply.

‘Well, Divine Nurse Tey?’ I asked in return. Her black eyes dissected me, flaying me skin from bones. I held her gaze for some time, until she looked away.

‘You are older, daughter, you are getting fat, which will not do; and you are just as inquisitive and selfish as ever,’ she commented.

‘True, mother, I have not changed, though I have learned a great deal,’ I replied, trying not to lose my temper.

‘False learning in service of a false god,’ she sneered.

‘But learning none the less,’ I returned.

‘Why have you come to Amarna?’ she demanded, and I told her that I had come with Widow-Queen Merope when my temple was closed. She leaned forward and grasped my upper arm in hard fingers.

‘Listen to me, daughter, you have come and I cannot send you away, because there is nowhere to send you now that the false worship you followed has been exposed. But if you have come to break apart your sister’s peace, to annoy her or interfere with her management, or come between her and her husband, I will send you to work as a prostitute in the worst tavern on the waterfront, do you hear?’

‘I hear,’ I said equably. She could certainly send me there, but nothing could make me stay there.

‘Nefertiti is happy, she is content, she has position, she is a priestess of her own cult, and I will not have you meddling, daughter!’

‘Mother,’ I agreed, knowing that the title would annoy her. Having made her point, she decided to push matters further, to demonstrate her control over me. Tey never wanted partners or even co-conspirators. She would never think of trying to persuade me to be nice to my sister and to acquiesce in her husband’s insanity. Tey only ever wanted slaves.

‘And I forbid you to marry Great Royal Scribe Ptah-hotep may he live.’

‘Oh?’ I asked. The temple’s training in self control was beginning to slip. I would have to leave soon, or I would lose my temper. ‘Why is that, Mother?’

‘He is far above you, disgraced daughter of an outmoded religion.’

What to do? If I argued with her I would have to stay in the same room as this tyrannical woman, and I was anxious to leave and breathe free air again. But I would more willingly spend a hundred years in the belly of the serpent Apep than obey Tey’s whim. However, she had given me an escape route. I was not being forbidden to see Ptah-hotep, just to marry him. I threw myself on my face, so that she could not see my lack of tears, and began to sob, clutching at the hem of her garment.

‘Mother, please do not deny me this marriage—it is my last chance!’ I wailed, which was true. I felt her satisfaction, heard it in her voice.

‘I forbid it,’ she purred, and weeping, I concurred.

‘I will not marry the Great Royal Scribe,’ I whispered, and she laid her hand on my head and called me her good daughter.

Then she dismissed me. I went out with my stole over my dry face, and reflected that luxury and position had not improved the character of my mother.

It had also not done wonders for mine. I had just lied to my mother; or rather evaded the truth to deceive her. I would have to confess that at the end of my life. Assuming that Osiris and Isis still judged the dead and weighed their hearts against the feather of Maat.

I walked through the painted palace to the apartments of the Widow-Queens Tiye and Merope, and arrived in time for the noon meal.

‘The arrangements for the sed-festival are far advanced,’ commented Tiye. ‘I would have forbidden them if I had known. A sed festival—for a king who has reigned for such a short time? Ridiculous! But now it is too late.

‘Have some of this pheasant, child, it is delicious. My son has excellent cooks, it is plain. Do you know how much bread and beer the palace is providing for the residents of Amarna? Thousands of loaves, oceans of beer. My own lord Amenhotep-Osiris, may his soul be joyful forever in the Field of Reeds, gave lavish feasts and no one left without being fed properly, but this is beyond belief. He distributes this much food every decan, for the festival of the Aten on the tenth day. How can Egypt afford it?’

‘And the river is low,’ I agreed, taking some of the perfectly cooked flesh. It was very tasty and I took some more.

‘How was the lady your mother?’ asked Merope.

‘Much as ever, and she has forbidden me to marry the Great Royal Scribe.’

‘Why?’ asked Merope.

‘She is demonstrating her power over me.’

‘I see. Would you like me to speak to my son about this marriage?’ asked Tiye the Queen, eying me keenly.

‘No, Lady, I have agreed. I am too old to marry, anyway, I am almost nineteen. But she did not forbid me to see him,’ I added, and Merope chuckled.

‘We played that trick on her when we were children,’ she said. ‘She still hasn’t learned it!’

‘No, Tey has always been straightforward. Unpleasant, but straightforward,’ said Tiye. ‘She was a good midwife, but she no longer attends births. In fact, I believe that she does nothing but intrigue for more land and more power for the Divine Father Ay, who has, in my view, enough gold and power already. Tey was a better woman when she had tasks to perform. What is that noise?’

‘People are gathering in the square,’ said Merope, looking out of the window.

The windows of the palace of Amarna had deep embrasures. I could lean my elbows on the sill. I did so, next to Merope’s uncovered head.

The sun was bright even though it was only Khoiak, the season of the birth of Osiris, once the festival of the breaching of the sluices into the inland plain. The next month, Tybi, would bring the sed festival, and the time which had been the mystic marriage of Isis and Osiris. Khoiak was not usually terribly warm but midday in any season was hot in the full glare of the sun.

‘What are they all doing out in the open without any canopy?’ asked Merope. ‘Midday is the time to avoid the gaze of Amen-Re, I mean the Aten. They’ll be burned.’

‘So they will,’ I agreed. The crowd outside began to chant, all at once, the Hymn to the Aten, a poem which I had seen many years ago as a child. The scribe Ptah-hotep had shown it to me. Akhnaten may he live had written it. At intervals the crowd, courtiers and bricklayers alike, raised their arms to the disc of the sun. I could see them squinting and blinking as sweat ran into their eyes.

‘There are the Pharaoh and the Queen, at that window over there,’ Merope pointed. Safely out of the full glare of the sun, Akhnaten raised his hands in homage to the sun-disc, and Nefertiti my sister held out handfuls of arm rings and necklets which glittered so brightly that I could not look at them.

The service concluded. There was my father Ay, dressed as I had imagined in the leopard skin of a full priest, and as he held out his hands Nefertiti dropped a golden necklace into his grasp. His fingers snapped shut, as they always did on gold, and the crowd scrambled for the golden beads and bracelets which were sown broadcast through the mob by the King. ‘Hail, lord of brightness!’ they cried, tripping over one another and elbowing their way to the front. ‘Hail, most favoured child of the Aten!’

‘What a spectacle,’ said Tiye, who had joined us. Her voice was indulgent. ‘He always wanted to be worshipped,’ she added. ‘And this is probably the only way that it could be managed.’

‘We should have been told about this,’ I was worried. ‘Is someone trying to make us commit blasphemy?’

‘No, no women can worship the sun in its full splendour,’ said Merope. ‘Or so Huy the Chamberlain told me. He said that it would defile the Aten’s worship if we were to go out into the courtyard. We are allowed to watch from the windows, provided we are pure at heart and have not had intercourse with a man the preceding night.’

‘That must sort the sheep from the goats,’ said Tiye, chuckling. ‘But luckily we are all ritually pure,’ she said, and then she clutched her forehead as if her head hurt.

‘What is it, lady?’ Merope embraced her.

‘The only man I have ever wanted to sleep with is dead,’ snapped the Widow-Queen. ‘I have no other sorrow, but that is enough.’

We had no more to say, and ate the rest of our meal in silence. Then Sahte sent in a group of musicians, who began to play such sad melodies on pipe and drum that they comforted Tiye, or roused her, and she bade them play music to which one could dance.

And Merope and I danced, to and fro in the painted rooms, on the floor tiled with pictures of baboons, to a tune which had once been called,
Hathor takes pleasure of Horus
.

Ptah-hotep

I was allowed to join the worship of the Aten at noon, which argued that the King was pleased with me. It was very hot in the square, and I am fair though I am a child of the common people. I knew that I would be coloured if not blistered when the season advanced and the Pharaoh held his outdoor worship at noon, and wondered if his preference for pale ladies had led to the prohibition on women attending the service.