Return to Thebes (15 page)

Tutankhamon
(life, health, prosperity!)

Today is the day we must leave the city of my brother and return to Thebes.

All about me is bustle, confusion, last-minute packing and preparation, the final hours of readiness in which everyone rushes about, worries, checks to make sure all is right, hopes to forget nothing, tries to remember everything. All over the city I can hear these sounds as Ankhesenpaaten and I stand at the window and stare for the last time at the gleaming white rooftops, the golden-spired temples, the miles of once-crowded streets, gardens, parks, alleyways that he called into life the year I was born and which, on this day thirteen years later, must now begin to die.

On the river the great barges wait, filled to overflowing with household goods, gold, jewels, the wealth of what was once his capital and for these past four years has been a favorite one of mine. A vast flotilla jams the Nile from the southern boundary to the north: All the officers of the Court, the nobility, the civil servants, their families, servants and slaves are packed and ready to leave. We sail at noon, my gold-painted barge in the lead, followed immediately by that of my uncle Aye and then by my cousin Horemheb. All the rest will jostle into place and the long journey upstream will begin amid the hectic shouts of pilots and oarsmen, the heavy rhythmic slap of paddles on water, the snapping sounds of sails as Shu the wind god bellies them out, the excited shouts of those who look forward—and perhaps, underneath, the quiet sobbing of those who look back … desperately muffled, of course, because this is supposed to be a happy day and no one is supposed to feel regret.

As we push out from the landing stage at the foot of the long ramp that leads from the now empty North Palace—all its bright hangings stripped from the walls, all my dear cousin Nefertiti’s statues and objects of art removed, all furniture stacked on the barges, even the kitchens emptied totally of pots and pans—trumpets will blow, banners will fly, a last dwindling shout will rise wistfully from the small official guard and the handful of poor who remain to serve them. All others have been removed in these recent weeks, sent away to start new lives in villages far from here. The city will stand deserted save for its lonely guardians. It will be lonely too.

It is time to say farewell: to Akhet-Aten, to him, and to the dream.…

Or so, I think, would they have me believe. And so, I think, would I have them believe, for only if they believe it will my Queen and I be permitted to live.…

I go in deathly fear of my uncle Aye, my cousin Horemheb and evil Hatsuret, who now rules triumphant as High Priest in the fast-rebuilding temple of Amon at Karnak. All goes happily now for him, the monster who killed my brother Smenkhkara, my cousin Merytaten, and last and most awful, my beautiful Nefertiti. At his side with cold confidence my uncle and Horemheb work their will upon me and, through me, upon the Two Lands.

Once I believed they did this because they really believed it to be best for Kemet.

Now I wonder if it is not just their own glory they seek.

When I first became Living Horus, Son of the Sun, King and Pharaoh, I cowered, a child just turning nine, in the dark night of murder and horror that ended the life of Akhenaten, Nefertiti and my mother the Great Wife. Hers was the death of duty, I realize that now: she did what she felt she had to do for the Two Lands and then bravely paid for it with her own life, and I honor and respect her for it, terrible as it was. But there was no need to kill my brother, no need to kill the Chief Wife. They could have been taken prisoner and sent away somewhere, if that was deemed best for Kemet—and perhaps it might have been. I can see that argument now. But there was no need to murder them just at the moment they seemed at last to be returning to one another. There was no need to kill my poor brother, driven insane as he was by all that had happened to him: no need to kill my “second mother,” my sweet Nefertiti whose only crime was loving him. They could have been allowed to enjoy in peace whatever happiness they could salvage from the wreck of the bitter past.…

You will say these are heavy thoughts for a youth of thirteen. But I wear a heavy crown, and because of it I am old beyond my years.

So I cowered, not knowing whether at any moment I might not be next. I did not really think so, for I was indeed the Living Horus then, I had the blood, the Double Crown was mine by right. These things had not saved Akhenaten, but I thought they might save me, whom they thought untainted by his “heresy.” Beside me trembled my loving Ankhesenpaaten—my niece and four years my senior, but ordained from childhood to be my wife: we thought she too might face the ax of Hatsuret before the night was ended, for now she bore the final right of legitimacy to the throne. So we jumped and screamed and clung to one another fiercely when the door suddenly opened. But it was my uncle Aye and Horemheb, and their words were loving and sweet, and we believed them, and relaxed.

“Son of the Sun,” my uncle said gravely, “we come to tell you that you have succeeded to the glorious throne of your ancestors. The House of Thebes, in you, will be restored to glory. Through you Kemet will once more flourish and be happy. Dear Ankhesenpaaten, you will rule beside him as Chief Queen of the Two Lands, and from his loins and yours will come many fine sons to serve the kingdom and preserve our Dynasty. Do not be afraid, for we are your servants and your friends, and it will be so.”

And Horemheb, his hands, though I did not know it then, just washed of the blood of my brother, agreed with equal gravity:

“Son of the Sun, it will be so.”

And because we were so frightened and wished so desperately to believe them, we did. And presently our trembling ceased, though not our tears for those who were gone; and soon Queen Kia appeared, her face as sad and ravaged with weeping as ours, and led us away to her quarters, hugged us and rocked us for a while and put us finally to bed, where we fell asleep in one another’s arms while she crooned a gentle song all night long to soothe our restless nightmare dreams.

(Dear, kind, gentle Kia, Nefertiti’s faithful friend, and ours! Where is she now? I do not know. When I went to Thebes for my coronation she was here; when I came back she was gone. When I asked my uncle where she was, he said vaguely, “She wished to go and live in the Delta, far from this place.” But secretly I had the three I now regard as my only true friends—my much older sister Sitamon, young Maya, my schoolmate and now supervisor of the necropolis at Thebes, and my cousin, the Vizier Nakht-Min—try to find her for me. They have never been able.)

Very soon thereafter we were taken to Thebes for the ceremonies that would sanctify my place as Pharaoh. Somewhere I heard dimly that there had been a hasty embalmment of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, not the ritual seventy days but more like ten or twenty, and that their rotting, half-prepared bodies had then been hurried away in the dead of night to the Royal Wadi here in Akhet-Aten and there been hastily and furtively buried. Only my mother the Great Wife received seventy days and full honors, and now is buried beside them. Meanwhile throughout the length of Kemet—on our borders—in embassies sent to King Tushratta of Mittani, King Supp-i-lu-li-u-mas of the Hittites and such other few remaining friends and allies as my brother left us—it was being announced that he, my mother and the Chief Wife were dead “of a natural fever” and that I was now the Living Horus and soon to be married to Ankhesenpaaten.

So all proceeded as my captors wished. It was a great shock to me to realize that this is what they were, my uncle Aye who had always been so fatherly and kind to me, my cousin Horemheb with whom I had played so happily so many times as baby and child—but I learned it fast, as I have learned much else fast in these four years of my imprisonment on the throne. Ankhesenpaaten and I were helpless and alone: the game proceeded as they said it must.

So there came the great day; and I will admit that for me, as a child, and for Ankhesenpaaten, who was allowed to watch nearby through dazzled eyes though we were not yet married, it was, although at first almost a disaster, in final impact an awesome and powerfully moving thing. It was only later that we came to realize that ambition, evil, corruption and death underlay it all. For the moment it became a spectacle as overwhelming to us as it was to all who crowded Thebes to witness the triumph of Amon, returning to power through the medium of his small, bewildered, nine-year-old pawn.

I had not slept much the night before, falling at last into fitful dozing not long before my uncle came to waken me. So I felt, at first, sleepy-eyed and queasy at my stomach. After I retired to relieve myself, he gave me strong tea, followed by wine mixed lightly with water: the first shocked me awake and quieted my stomach, the second seemed to put me into a dreamlike and happy mood. I forgot all that had brought me to this hour and thought only of what lay ahead. A great excitement began to fill my heart.

Next there entered to me four white-robed priests of Amon, who under my uncle’s supervision stripped from me my nightclothes and washed my body thoroughly in all its parts. (A little too thoroughly at times, I thought. I like not priests: they make me uneasy on many counts.) They anointed me with unguents which they told me were sacred to Amon. (Only eight days before, when my brother was alive, the unguents had been just unguents. Now the priests said mumbo-jumbo over the sticky stuff and it was suddenly sacred to Amon. I was not too bemused to miss the irony of this, but gave no sign.)

Then they placed about me only the pleated kilt of a Pharaoh, in my case very small, of course, for I was still but a skinny child. They placed nothing on my head, no sandals on my feet. Naked save for the kilt, I was escorted into the first courtyard of the temple of Karnak (its battered doors still scoured by the fires of my brother) and there joined the solemn procession—headed, of course, by Aye and Horemheb, who fell into step just behind me, and after them by Hatsuret and his highest aides. Following them came many priests and priestesses, not only of Amon, but of all the other gods. (How quickly, in but a week’s time, had they reappeared from hiding to seize anew their long-lost power!) These last were shaking sistrums, clashing cymbals, beating drums and blowing on the long bronze trumpets whose mournful mooing must sound like Hathor the cow goddess when she has a bellyache.

In response to their sudden raucous noise there came from beyond the walls a great, deep, roaring sound which startled me so that for a moment I turned back in fright to my uncle just behind me.

“Be happy, Son of the Sun,” he said, placing a soothing hand on my naked shivering shoulder—shivering more from chill than fright, actually: it was sunny but cold that day in Karnak. “These are your people, and they love you.”

And I believed him, and still do: for they
are
mine and they
do
love me, and Ankhesenpaaten as well. It is not their fault that they are unable to know who really rules them.

So we moved solemnly forward through the first pylon, erected by my father Amonhotep III (life, health, prosperity!), and suddenly I was greeted by sights such as I had never seen up to then, but have seen only too much of since. My uncle had tried to forewarn me, but his words had not really prepared me for such a startling spectacle.

Priests masked to represent the gods descended upon me from every side, dancing and cavorting and whirling about, uttering welcoming shrieks and, to me, unintelligible ritual cries. All this was entirely new to me because, having been raised in the Aten, I had never known these grotesque masks and ceremonies. They did not perceive it then, nor do they realize it now, but in that moment I thought with a sudden blinding flash:
But how absurd! They are children playing children’s games!

And instantaneously thereafter the thought which only Ankhesenpaaten knows, and shares:
My brother was right. It is nonsense, all this.

None of this showed upon my face, for by nine I had learned very well how to keep my feelings hidden. I submitted placidly when a priest wearing what I now know to be the falcon head of Horus of the Horizon seized me by one hand, and another, wearing the old man’s mask of Ra in his form of Atum as he sinks in old age into the West, seized me by the other. So excited were they at thus being back in power again that they almost yanked me forward through the second pylon built by my great-great-great-great-grandfather Tuthmose I (life, health, prosperity!). My naked feet barely skimmed the stones of the courtyard as they hustled me along. Behind me Aye and Horemheb, Hatsuret and the rest had to puff to keep up.

All this happened very quickly, you understand, and it ended very quickly too, because suddenly I saw where they were dragging me and I cried out sharply, “
No!
”
and let myself go limp in their hands so that my sacred body touched the ground and they had to stop in sheer horror of their own profanation of my person.

Before me I saw a pool of water, with four masked men standing around it at the points of the compass. Later I learned, of course, that this represented the division of the world into four parts according to the ancient creed of Heliopolis. But to me, a child seeing a mask of an ibis (Thoth, of course), a dog’s curved muzzle and square-cut ears (Seth), and two more falcon beaks (Horus of Behdet, and Dunawy) apparently about to plunge him into a pool of water, only one terrified thought could come:
It is like my distant brother Tuthmose! They are going to drown me as they drowned him!

And again I shrieked, “No, no,
no
!”
and sagged upon the ground.

Outside the loving roar continued. Inside all was consternation.

Instantly my uncle stooped down, angrily ordered the frightened priests aside, scooped me into his arms. Soothingly he murmured in my ear, quieted my trembling, which now was quite genuinely caused by fear, and patiently explained once again the significance of the four who confronted me. Since I could see that they were obviously as terrified of me as I of them, utterly confounded and confused by my reaction, I soon believed him and regained my composure. I slipped out of his arms, stood straight for a second and then marched sturdily forward, head held high. After that I felt no fear and the ceremony proceeded without further difficulty.