Return to Thebes (34 page)
Authors: Allen Drury
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Genre Fiction, #Historical, #Mythology & Folk Tales, #Historical Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy, #fairy tales
Ramesses
What happened to their dream? I stand here with Pharaoh, both of us beginning to slow and stumble as we near our seventieth year, and I ask myself: what happened to their dream? I am not one given much to musings, but here at what remains of Akhet-Aten I cannot help but ask it of myself—though I would never ask it of him because it is against all his orders and I would not dare.
Nefer-Kheperu-Ra and Nefertiti wanted only love: and horror was the end.
I am only a simple soldier, but I cannot help but wonder why.
Oh, I remember all the step-by-step: I can still name you each mistake as it came along. Pharaoh and I often discuss it and finally say to one another, “Well: let it be a lesson to
us.
”
At least we know what not to do, not that either of us ever would. But still, I mean: what
really
happened? Why did it
really
go wrong?
These are questions I do not believe the Good God asks himself, even in the privacy of his own room. It is a lonely room, because he rarely has time for the harim and the Queen of course is never there—or if she is, it is only to taunt him for a while before she disappears again with her snickering little companions, who grow more obnoxious and repulsive by the year. We are all roughly of an age, but those two seem to be eternal; they do not age, they just crinkle away, sneering evilly at the rest of us, sharing some never ending private joke with their mistress. I think the joke is that he had to marry her and make her Queen so that he could be King. Something went wrong there, too, but history made it impossible to correct. She comes only to argue, and goes away.
So, too, did Sitamon until she died recently and unexpectedly at Tanis. In these later years she used to go often there, gradually almost abandoning her palace in the compound of Malkata, particularly when he was in residence. He has not been there much either in recent years, for he has always preferred Memphis and now for all practical purposes has made it his principal capital, though Thebes remains the seat of Amon and so he comes at the time of Opet and for other ceremonies. Mostly, though, he stays in Memphis.
Sitamon died of a seizure of the heart in her sixty-second year, having before then been in excellent health as far as we knew. She made her regular progresses about the country, joined Mutnedjmet in many charities, remained beloved by the people. There were many things Pharaoh was unable to forgive her, but being loved by the people, I think, was the most unforgivable of all. Nor did he like the way she too, like the Queen, never hesitated to challenge his decrees and complain to his face about his harshness. “It is necessary,” was all he would grate out to her; and lately he stopped saying even that, only turning away with a black and angry face. Finally he refused to see her at all. But she still remained beloved of the people.
Now he has appropriated all her estates save the farm at Tanis, which she left specifically to three of her serving people, the maid Mutnofret and the guard Seneptah, who are married with three fine children, and an older serving woman nearer her own age, Nessamon, whom they seem to regard almost as a mother.
(Things about them were different, wigs, clothing, ways of walking, mannerisms carefully cultivated over the years; but when he sent me to inspect the property for him I of course recognized them instantly. Instinctively I bent low to kiss Her Majesty’s hand—there was immediate consternation—but, having done that, there was nothing for it but to kiss Queen Kia’s hand and bow low to Nakht-Min. We stared at one another: I don’t know which of us was the more confused. At first they were terrified, but I gave them my absolute pledge that I would keep their secret. I have never said anything to His Majesty and I never will. They are no longer threat to him. And he is my friend: I would save him from further blood.)
Sitamon’s will was very strong that they should have the farm, calling down upon Pharaoh’s head the eternal wrath of all the gods if he interfered; and since it is, as he says, a rather poor and infertile place, though pleasant—and since he is not entirely sure, I think, that Sitamon could not make good her threat from the afterworld, so strong a person was she—he has decided to let them keep it. And to Amonhotep, Son of Hapu, now almost ninety years of age but still, up to her death, active as steward of her estates, he has given her palace at Malkata for the remainder of his days.
So, aside from the Queen, who is as strong as he is and whom he will never control and now very seldom sees, all has been put in order by the Living Horus.
Ma’at,
order and justice have been restored, harsh laws and punishments govern all: the Two Lands are quiet and at peace because they do not dare be anything else. Abroad the Hittites still continue to press halfheartedly, but Suppiluliumas is also dead, Mursil II is a lazy weakling, and there have been no major clashes in recent years. All is in order save one thing. He has mentioned it to me increasingly of late, and today we are here to put it right at last.
He intends to remove the mummies of Akhenaten and Nefertiti and, I assume, return them to Thebes to lie with the others beneath the Western Peak.
Or at least that was what I thought he intended when we landed here last night. Now it is night again, and I am not so sure.
We have been twice to the Royal Wadi, the first time alone, the second accompanied by the small group of soldiers we brought with us. All but those two tombs are empty and deserted like the city itself. It has been an eerie experience to be here, because only among the trees at the very fringes of the Nile do there remain four or five peasant families. All else is empty, crumbling, open to the sands, deserted. The glassworks that used to produce such beautiful blue faïence were the last activity in the city to shut down, and that was five years ago. Shortly before that the last guards were withdrawn, the last contingent—two—of the once powerful priesthood of the Aten were arrested and sent to work as common laborers in the royal granite quarries at Aswan. Nothing remains here but ruined buildings and ruined memories. I shall be quite happy to get it over with, and leave.
We surveyed all the tombs today, not only those in the wadi but the Northern and Southern Tombs. The tomb of Aye, who died two weeks after the marriage of Horemheb and Mutnedjmet, was never occupied: he was buried hastily and with scant honors in the Valley of the Kings. Pharaoh did not even conduct the Ceremony of The-Opening-of-the-Mouth: we do not know where Aye is now in the afterworld, and his son obviously does not care. The other tombs along the hills, like Aye’s, were never finished and never occupied. The scenes they carried of the Heretic and the Beautiful Woman riding with their daughters about the city have been almost completely defaced on Pharaoh’s orders (as he also contemptuously ordered the de-manning of Akhenaten’s colossal naked statue at Thebes). Only the Hymn to the Aten has been allowed to remain intact in Aye’s tomb, probably because Pharaoh even now does not want to break entirely with the Aten, who still remains among the gods, though now a minor one.
We surveyed them all and then came back again to the wadi, where the soldiers met us; and after he had stood a long time staring at the sarcophagi of Akhenaten and Nefertiti he turned to the captain and said tersely, “Proceed as I said. We will be there tonight.”
“Where?” I asked, I am afraid in my usual stupid way—I am still not very bright, and I do not know why he has suffered me all these years, except that I am a good soldier and absolutely loyal to him—and for a moment I thought he was going to tell me. Then he took my arm in his usual familiar manner, his voice got its usual joshing note and he replied:
“Ramesses, as always you ask too many questions. All will be revealed. Let us go back to the barge now and have supper. You will see later.”
But no surprise that comes now can, I am sure, match the surprise he gave me when we finished supper. He pushed back his chair, gave me an appraising look and said quietly:
“Ramesses, my friend, how would you like to be Co-Regent, King and Pharaoh with me of our kingdom of Kemet?”
For several seconds I must have looked even more stupid than I probably do look, because I was completely and entirely astounded. Never in my wildest dreams, never in my most unbelievable—but I am a good soldier and I am also no fool when it comes to something like
that.
An offer to share the highest position in the world is not something you hesitate overlong about.
“Son of the Sun,” I said fervently, “I
accept.
But”—again it must have sounded stupid, but it was all so sudden and overwhelming I simply could not resist asking—“
why me?
”
“Because,” he said quietly, “you are my old and trusted comrade in arms whose loyalty and trustworthiness I have tested many years in many places. Because I have no heir, of course, from Her Majesty”—he made a grimace both of sadness and distaste—“or from any secondary wife, or even from the harim. Because there is no one who agrees more closely with what I have done and yet plan to do for the Two Lands. Because there is no one who has more faithfully carried out my wishes or been of greater help to me. Because there is no one I would rather see assume the Double Crown if the gods should see fit to take me before my work is done. Because you are faithful Ramesses, whom I love and who loves me, our brotherhood strengthened in a hundred clashes of war and a thousand things of peace. Because I think you would be a good Pharaoh. Because I need you to help me rule.” He smiled, a quizzical yet curiously tender smile, and asked in a tone once more joshing, “Is this not enough for you, O ‘stupid’ Ramesses? What more can I do to explain it? Must I beg you for it?”
“Oh no!” I exclaimed hastily. “I have already accepted, Majesty! I was just—just curious.”
“Well, now you know,” he said. “So rise, Living Horus, and come with me that I may announce it to these first witnesses who are with us, as tomorrow it will be carried to Memphis and to Thebes and to all our dominions from the Delta to Napata, and to Mittani, and to Hatti, and to the Great Green and to all the world besides.”
So we went out on the deck, he had a trumpeter blow a salute and caused a drum to be beaten; and there I, Ramesses, in the presence of some thirty bewildered but soon wildly enthusiastic soldiers, became Co-Regent, Living Horus, King and Pharaoh of the Two Lands of Kemet, like unto my dear friend Horemheb by whose side I have made my way and lived my life all the days since I first met him in front of the temple of Karnak, fifty-five years ago.
I did not think there could be more surprises after that, but there was one.
“And now,” he said, “we go to the Northern Tombs.”
***
Horemheb
(life, health, prosperity!)
He is overwhelmed, good Ramesses, yet this is an honor overdue. His qualities are simple but sound, his loyalty to me and my ideas absolute. I shall have an excellent Co-Regent beside me to help me with my burdens, and when I go Kemet will have a ruler who can be trusted to keep her to the course I have set. Thus will the Two Lands prosper, which has ever been my aim.
Now I can sense him wondering earnestly as we ride along through the silent, ruined city: why are we going to the Northern Tombs, what do I have in mind? I think he may suspect, for when I turn suddenly and catch him off guard he looks worried and fearful—he is still, at heart, the simple, superstitious peasant he was when we first met at Karnak. But I think in his innermost being he knows that this is the only way: the only way, if the last ghosts of Akhet-Aten are to be laid to rest forever.
It is very still as we ride. The soldiers have gone on ahead to make all ready. About us the great city stretches, crumbling away now into earth, its vacant boulevards, empty palaces and temples, gaping houses, inhabited only by snakes and scorpions. Khons rides above in his silver boat, the sands of the Red Land whisper gently over in the soft warm wind that blows against the Nile. My cousin and my half sister had their chance: they failed. It is right that I do what I do tonight.
A hardness has come into me over the years: I am far from amiable, idealistic young “Kaires” who came, cricket-bright, to Thebes so long ago. Yet I do not know how it could have been prevented. Great wrongs were done, great evils brought upon the land. Life said to me: “These things you must do for Kemet.” I did them, and the rest fell by the way.
At first it was not easy; but to some degree he made it so. He ordered me to kill our uncle Aanen, raging at him blindly in his fierce frustrations with Amon. I did so, and that was the first step. After that it gradually became easier—or if not easier, at least, shall I say, more of a habit. Killing is something one becomes inured to, I have found, even if one’s
ka
and
ba
can still cry out inside in horror at what one does. It was not my nature originally to kill; I was young, I was happy, I liked the world. But presently I came to see that my duty to the kingdom was such that I might well have no choice. I fought against it for a while but then gave in. It had to be. Each time my agony grew a little less, though never has it disappeared entirely. There are times even now when I awaken suddenly in the night and see myself with bitterness and loathing. But the kingdom had to be saved, and I was the only one strong enough to do it.
After Aanen, as I say, it became easier. This was aided by Akhenaten, who left us and went far away into those mystic realms of his own where only he—and possibly Nefertiti, though I think even she did not fully understand him—could go. There he built his dream world, which she shared for a time, and then poor, foolish, easygoing Smenkhkara, who tried to please everyone and reaped the sad reward thereof. Meanwhile the Two Lands failed abroad and collapsed at home. My father, the Great Wife and I knew something had to be done. Hatsuret went too far and killed Smenkhkara and Merytaten. We thought we had Akhenaten isolated, captive, stripped of his ability to ruin Kemet further. Then Nefertiti tried to rescue him, he decided suddenly to reclaim his power: his own example with Aanen, Hatsuret’s with the others, influenced me too much, perhaps. Yet, again, it had to be done and it proved best that it was. I ordered her death, in a moment of rage as blind as that in which he had me kill Aanen; yet it was necessary. After that I took the very same streets we take tonight and followed him to exactly the same place, the ledge along the Northern Tombs; and there disposed, as the gods told me I must, of that sad, sad figure that once had been such a promising Pharaoh. And that, too, was necessary.
Then came Tutankhamon, and for a time, while he was still a child, my father and I thought he could be trusted not to take us back down the same blind path that Akhenaten had followed with his sacrilegious “Sole God.” But soon the signs were there. Slowly but surely, with what they thought was disguising cleverness, he and Ankhesenamon began to attempt to re-establish the Aten and once more cut Amon down. With this last motivation I found myself in agreement, for Hatsuret was not content with the restoration of Amon and the great powers we had given him: he thought to rule us once again as Amon had in the past. It was time to lower both Aten and Amon once again; but neither could be done if Neb-Kheperu-Ra and Ankhesenamon persisted in their course. So Hatsuret became again my instrument, not knowing that in doing so he was sealing his own death and the new restraint of Amon. And Amonemhet and his family were sacrificed to defeat Ankhesenamon’s crazy scheme. So was Zannanza. And these things, too, were necessary.
My father continued to mumble on, sinking ever more rapidly into age. I was tempted to assist the process but he was too much beloved by the people; and in any event I knew the end could not be long delayed. Even so it was four years before the old man died, four years in which he continued to permit the Aten to flourish, modestly but persistently, under his protective rule. Only at the end did he give me the power I needed to set the Two Lands right; and it has taken all my efforts ever since to achieve even a modest start upon restoring the order, the
ma’at
and the justice that have been so sadly allowed to fall away in these last thirty years.
Marriage to my bothersome half sister, though it gave me, of course, no heirs—I never intended that it should, for who could couple with an infuriating baggage like that?—did confirm my claim to the throne. Then Sitamon removed my only remaining problem, and for that my thanks to her, wherever she may be in the afterworld. Ramesses, of course, is not my only spy: I have known for five or six years that they are at Tanis. But Kemet has forgotten Ankhesenamon, who represents the Heretic in any event, and I am so solidly in command of the kingdom that her children are no longer threat to me. They are no longer in the direct line, and my naming of Ramesses, who brings with him brilliant young Seti and, now, Seti’s own lively little second Ramesses, summons further weight against them. I think they are so afraid of me, and so thankful to be alive at all, that they will never be heard from again. And, also, I want no further blood: I am tired of blood. I have never wanted blood, though blood has been my portion. They may live out their lives and be happy, for all of me.
Their happiness is all I begrudge them, because happiness, though I am Living Horus, Good God, King and Pharaoh, has not come to me.
I do not know why, exactly, except that I suppose it has been sacrificed, like so much else, to my ambition to rule the kingdom. But from the day I entered the Great House and began to realize the state into which likable but self-indulgent Amonhotep III (life, health, prosperity!) was allowing Kemet to decline, I also began to think upon the prophecy of the ancient seer who clutched my hand when I was ten and cackled, “You will come to great power!” I began to feel that in some mysterious, secret way the gods had selected me to save the kingdom. And apparently I was right, for here I am.
Yet even so, I have not known happiness. A little, perhaps, with Sitamon, until her hopes of marriage had to be sacrificed, like all else, to what I came to realize was my duty to Kemet. An occasional scrap here and there, possibly, on campaign or in the harim with some anonymous, compliant slave girl. But nothing lasting, nothing real, nothing to really stir my heart. Perhaps if I had married Sitamon it would have come to me: but if I had married Sitamon I would not be King. And so the conundrum turns back upon itself and renders its own answer.…
We are beginning to leave the confines of the city now. The mile or so of open road leading up to the Northern Tombs shines dimly before us in the moonlight. There are lights above on the ledge. Ramesses grows ever more silent and concerned. But it must be done. There is no other way.
It will complete the action I began five years ago when I ordered the destruction and defacement of all monuments and portraits of Akhenaten, of Tutankhamon and of Aye, and began to date my reign from the reign of Amonhotep III (life, health, prosperity!), ignoring the three who came between. Thus do all official records, paintings, sculptures and monuments now proclaim. It is not the truth, but it is the truth as I intend it to be; and as I remarked during the Family’s argument over the painting of Akhenaten’s coronation durbar which ended in such disaster for him,
it may not be the truth now, but give it a few years and it will be.
A generation or two, perhaps three, and it will never be remembered that I was not the immediate successor to Amonhotep.
This has been the first stage of my campaign to wipe out the Aten heresy, and all connected with it, once and for all. Tonight brings the completion of my plan. I have hesitated many years, but it must be done. There is no other way.…
When Aye finally died, two weeks after creating me Co-Regent, I came to the throne to find that all about was chaos, despite the best efforts of both of us during Tutankhamon’s reign. Power had been too divided, I did not have a free hand to do what needed to be done. My father to the end was moderating, mollifying, conciliating, compromising. Yet the condition of the country had passed beyond those gentler things. Abroad the Empire was virtually gone. Suppiluliumas and the rest were raiding at will across our borders. Tribute from foreign vassals had fallen to virtually nothing because no vassal any longer respected us. The standard of the Living Horus no longer commanded the allegiance of our territories and the swift obedience of the “Nine Bows” of our traditional enemies. At home Amon had been partially restored, new temples had been built, corruption had been partially cleared away but still was present in every level of government and domestic life. My father, too, lived in duty to Kemet all his life, but by the time he came to the throne he was too old to be as stern as the times required; and in any event it was not in his character. I was left, and I found that it was in mine.
During his reign I organized a campaign and pushed Suppiluliumas back from his halfhearted attempt to avenge Zannanza. Mursil II made a few gestures after his father died, and them, too, I repulsed. Now the borders are reasonably secure, though the peace is tenuous and at any moment we may have to fight again; certainly I have not yet been able to recapture all the territories we have lost. I shall keep trying while I live, but I suspect it may be Ramesses, or more likely Seti, who will avenge us in the end.
Meanwhile, I have concentrated on domestic matters. Here I have been harsh, perhaps, as Sitamon always told me, and as Mutnedjmet still does when I cannot get away from her; but harshness was needed to restore the land and make it just and safe for all. Here, too, the work progresses and is not yet finished; but in my Edict I have laid the groundwork and established the rules. “Slowly and gradually,” as I wryly recall my father always saying, Kemet is beginning to move my way. The Edict has been the whip with which to drive the horse.
Unlike those who went before, I do not follow Akhenaten’s practice of going directly to the people. Tut followed his precedent, Ankhesenamon did, Aye did. I decided that few things had done more to weaken Pharaoh’s authority and damage the mystique of the Double Crown than this attempt to speak with the people on their own level. I have never appeared before them to address them on my intentions, and I never will. I pass among them in pomp and ceremony, they see me from an awesome distance: I never step down. In distance lies the mystery of the throne, and distance I have restored. The Edict was given them by Maya, that same Maya who was superintendent of the necropolis and friend to Tutankhamon, but has yet managed with his skill and diligence to become one of my most trusted advisers. He it was who appeared before the awed multitude in my favorite capital of Memphis and read my commands.
I began by telling them (through Maya and the proclamation which was then written on papyrus and sent to every city and village from the Delta to Napata) that I had taken counsel with my heart how best to expel evil and suppress lying. I told them that I spent my whole time seeking the welfare of Kemet and searching out instances of oppression.
I told them that Maya, my scribe, would give them the following orders:
First, I ordered punishment for those who rob the poor when they bring their humble levies for the royal breweries and kitchens. I said that any officer who did this would have his nose cut off and be sent to Tharu.
I said next that if any officer finds a citizen who does not have a boat to bring his tribute of wood to Pharaoh’s storehouses, then he shall find that citizen a boat and aid him to bring his tribute. And I said that if any citizen finds that his boat has been robbed, he shall not be required to pay further tribute; rather restitution shall be made to him out of Pharaoh’s treasury.
I went on to say that any soldier or officer who is guilty of robbing the poor when they bring gifts to the harim or to the temples of the gods shall also have his nose cut off and be sent to Tharu.
To stop the general practice by tax collectors of seizing the slaves of taxpayers and putting them to labor for six or seven days in order to exact extra taxes which they then pocket themselves, I said that any tax collector found guilty of this would himself be put to six or seven days’ labor.
I went on to correct another prevalent abuse by ordering that any soldier found guilty of stealing hides that he was supposed to be collecting for Pharaoh, and of not leaving a hide with each household as he was supposed to do, should be given a hundred blows, opening five wounds, and have the hides taken from him.
I then turned to other corruptions of tax officials that had grown up in recent years and ordered that severe punishment should be meted out to dishonest tax inspectors who connive with dishonest tax collectors to retain part of the taxes for themselves; and I also said that any official or soldier who seeks to steal vegetables being brought to Pharaoh’s houses and storehouses should likewise be given many blows, opening five wounds. And I said that taxes on grain should be levied more heavily upon the rich than upon the poor, for the poor need grain to live and the rich have much grain and can afford it