Thebes, the independent reign of the pharaoh Akhenaten
The hawk had flown to the sun. That was the way one referred to the death of a living god. The royal family had left the isolation of pharaoh's new city and returned to Thebes for the funerary ceremonies of Amunhotep the Magnificent. Egypt grieved, not only for the old pharaoh but for herself.
On the evening after the Magnificent was sealed in his tomb, Nefertiti sat in her personal sailing vessel and watched the black waters of the Nile flow by. Painted red, green, and gold, the boat slid across the water like hot oil on polished granite. Streams of golden light from the boat's torches marked her progress along the canal toward the quay in front of her father-in-law's mortuary temple. The hawk had flown to the sun, and one of the strongest foundation stones of Nefertiti's life had vanished.
So much had happened in the past few years. Fulfilling his promise, Akhenaten had taken her, the family, and the entire government of Egypt to his newly built city, Horizon of the Aten. Her husband's choice of a site for his capital was in keeping with his unpredictability. Instead of selecting a place where there were green fields, a place with access to the busy cities of the delta or the all-important Nubian territory, he chose a barren, empty plain.
Lying between Memphis and Thebes, this plain was startling in its vastness, stretching as it did from the Nile to the distant cliffs of the eastern desert. And it was drab. No starkly beautiful desert reds and creams here, just pale tans and grays, and only the sky offered any color. On the opposite bank lay fields, scattered and sparse. To Nefertiti, Horizon of the Aten was a place of emptiness.
In the past few years Akhenaten had closed many of the old temples, especially those of Amun and his goddess wife, Mut. All work on the Theban Sun Temples had ceased, and Nefertiti feared that many of her predictions were coming to pass. Word reached her from Memphis and other places of the suffering of the displaced and neglected.
She had overcome her disappointment at failing to bear a son, to carry on the royal line; and now she had just learned she was to bear another child. Her daughters were growing from precocious little top-heavy creatures into slim girls. Merytaten, the oldest, already copied the manners of her mother and spoke with becoming gravity and stateliness to her royal father. She and her sisters were golden orbs lighting Nefertiti's days.
The children had provided comfort during the long fading of Amunhotep the Magnificent. Not long ago, the old man had succumbed to a disease of the mouth and gums and to corpulence and old age. To the last, Queen Tiye remained at his side, refusing to allow him to give way to pain and desperation. He left behind a kingdom swirling in a whirlpool of dissent, and two younger sons, the children of his old age. The youngest was but an infant, and Nefertiti had taken over his care when Tiye gave way to despair upon her husband's death.
Despair. Nefertiti frowned as she stared at the oars plied by the sailors in a rhythm coordinated by drumbeats. As well as she knew Akhenaten, she couldn't have predicted that years of argument and impotent commands by his father would fail to dissuade Amunhotep's son from his radical course. The old pharaoh had even enlisted the support of his other wives in the fight, but that only gave Akhenaten a violent distaste for the most vocal of them-poor Tadukhipa of Mitanni.
Nefertiti was afraid that Akhenaten's resentment of his father had spilled over to contaminate Tadukhipa and the whole kingdom of Mitanni. She had warned Queen Tiye and Amunhotep, but the prejudice had already crept into Akhenaten's heart. This was an evil happening, for Mitanni had been an ally to Egypt and served as a bulwark against the encroaching Hittites. Sometimes Nefertiti suspected that if his father had hated Mitanni, Akhenaten would have loved the kingdom.
Shortly before Amunhotep's death Nefertiti had taken over the queen's network of messengers, spies, and informants, with Akhenaten's agreement. Worn out with nursing her husband, weighed down with grief, Tiye had given Nefertiti lists of cities and agents and sent all messengers to her successor.
"Pay attention to any word from Rib-Addi, king of Byblos, and all that comes to you regarding Aziru of Amurru," Tiye had said. She handed Nefertiti yet another list. "These are the chiefs and small kings who can't be trusted. They will prostrate themselves before pharaoh and spout all sorts of servile blandishments in order to convince Akhenaten to give them gold and troops."
"Yes, Aunt."
"Watch the trade routes, Nefertiti. Trade is vital, and any who interfere with it must be crushed. However, it's often a simple matter to quell unrest. Demand that the vassals near the trouble solve the problem. It's far easier for them to round up bandits than they'd have you believe."
Thus had she inherited another royal task, one for which Akhenaten had little liking. And now Amunhotep the Magnificent was dead, and the strongest curb on her husband's bizarre nature had vanished. Tiye said that they were fortunate that Nefertiti had borne children to steady him somewhat. Nefertiti wasn't so certain.
It was true that his attitude toward her had changed after the girls were born. Before, she had been his beautiful and amusing younger companion. When Merytaten came, he fell in love with the babe. He was already enamored of the mysteries of nature, and the force of creation became much more personal to him with the births of his own children. Akhenaten's wonder grew to include and envelope Nefertiti as well. Then his fascination with her had taken an unpredictable turn.
Akhenaten proclaimed her the fount of life for his new religion, the royal spouse of the Son of the Sun. He'd given her a new title-Exquisite Beauty of the Sun Disk. She remembered how, more and more, he had brought her forward during royal ceremonies and state occasions. Nefertiti found that her husband listened to her as an equal rather than as an entertaining child. The change had irritated her as much as it gratified her. She was no cleverer after becoming a mother than she had been before the girls' births.
With the growth of her influence over her husband came added risks. She'd become the focus of court intrigue. Noblemen who had barely noticed her now fawned over her as they had over Queen Tiye. Such hypocrisy was even more irritating than Akhenaten's unaccountable change of attitude. Sometimes, after days spent navigating the white-water rapids of the court, Nefertiti longed for the peace and obscurity of her childhood.
Most of all, she longed for the comfort of Amunhotep's presence. The old pharaoh had been so kind to her. He'd encouraged her to be brave, assumed that she was as clever of heart as his wife, protected her from the more dangerous members of his lascivious and jaded court. As long as Amunhotep had been alive, she had been merely Queen Nefertiti, wife of the junior ruler. Now she was much more. She was the great royal wife, She Who Was Pure of Hands, Great King's Wife Whom He Loves, and Lady of the Two Lands, beloved of the great living sun disk.
Being the great royal wife meant that she was no longer an apprentice. She was queen of Egypt, and the future seemed as unpredictable and dark as the river's black water. Nefertiti sighed when her sailing vessel gently bumped the quay. Her chief bodyguard, Sebek, helped her out of the boat. Half Nubian, with the height of a temple column and a face like a brooding jackal, Sebek didn't approve of this night visit to the mortuary temple on the west bank, but Nefertiti needed comfort. She was not yet twenty-one, mistress of an empire, wife of a man whose ideas and actions threatened his own kingdom.
She needed solace. Facing the grand facade of the mortuary temple, she walked down the paved avenue toward the pylon gate that marked the entrance. Sebek was at her heels, grumbling. Chosen by Tiye, he was a mature warrior, a commander of infantry and charioteers, and looked upon Nefertiti with a fatherly concern that sometimes grew irksome.
Nefertiti ignored Sebek's muttering and paused before the soaring images of the dead pharaoh that guarded Amunhotep's pylon gate. Carved of magic-stone, they represented pharaoh seated in majesty. They towered above her so high she could barely make out their eyes. Not that it would matter, for the statues stared ahead over her and everyone else below.
Sebek snapped an order at the two guards who accompanied them. Despite his glowering disapproval, Nefertiti was determined to make a food offering. She hoped to entice her father-in-law's spirit with a few dessert cakes made by the chief cook of the House of Rejoicing. Then he would appear as the ba, the human-headed bird, that manifestation of the deceased's personality that traveled between the tomb and the netherworld. Now that the king was no longer plagued by disease, he could enjoy the sweets he'd loved so by taking the form of the ba bird.
It took her a while to get past the astonished priests on duty, but at last she entered the dark cella that contained the offering table. With her box of cakes in one hand and a lamp in the other, she approached the slab of alabaster. Sebek waited at the door. Nefertiti scowled at him, and the warrior turned his back. Placing the lamp on the floor, she set the box on the altar and recited a spell. She had to get the words right. It was important in magic to repeat words of power in their exact order. She finished without a mistake and sat down on the floor before the altar to wait.
Nefertiti wrapped her arms around her bent legs and concentrated on the low relief behind the offering table. It portrayed Amunhotep in his prime, as Nefertiti had never known him. The artist had made Amunhotep's nose too long.
Nefertiti could smell the scent of flowers, bouquets and wreaths from the funeral. Beside the altar lay a scrap of material. She picked it up. It was from a mourning tunic, one of the blue-white linen garments made by the women of the royal household. At the funeral the women mourners had cried, thrown dust and ashes on themselves, and rent the tunics.
The frayed linen brought back too-clear memories of the funeral. The ritual of burial had been a shock. Although preparing for the afterlife occupied a great deal of one's lifetime, Amunhotep's funeral taught Nefertiti that the utilitarian business of mortuary endowments and collecting funerary furniture afforded little protection from the reality of death. Seeing her father-in-law's mummy on its boat-shaped bier had frightened her. Until then she had managed to remember Amunhotep as a vital, laughing man who delighted in good food and the caress of a woman. Now he was a thing of gold and precious stones, an unbearably remote product of metal-smiths and carpenters. The face created by those strangers was the face of cold eternity.
During the ceremonies she had kept her eyes averted from the mummy until her aunt threw herself at the foot of the coffin and screamed. Nefertiti had never before heard Tiye so much as raise her voice. Aunt was the essence of serenity, always in control. She had ruled with her husband, helped plan great temples, and tricked foreign ambassadors with aplomb.
Nefertiti sat in the dark chamber with her arms clutching her knees and tried not to remember her aunt's screams, but the memory forced its way to her heart. Tiye's grief had been terrible to witness-the great royal wife, mighty of strength, lay shattered. Tiye's disintegration, even more than Amunhotep's death, shook Nefertiti's world and left her more frightened than she had ever been. The death of pharaoh was awful but could be endured; her aunt's grief was a nightmare.
Drawing in a breath, Nefertiti let it out slowly and pressed her fingertips to her forehead. Her greatest worry had been that Akhenaten would interfere with the king's proper burial ritual in the name of his new god and thus deny the old king eternal life. He'd promised Tiye a traditional burial, but Akhenaten often changed decisions.
Her fears had been for nothing. Akhenaten officiated as priest, performing the ceremony of the Opening of the Mouth so that Amunhotep could eat, drink, and speak again. Her husband even attended the banquet after the funeral without treating the family and courtiers to a harangue about the Aten. Nefertiti was anxious to leave Thebes before being in the city of Amun aroused Akhenaten's fanaticism.
Nefertiti shifted her position so that she rested on one hip. The lamplight flickered. A shadow shaped like a wing moved across the face of the offering table. Nefertiti got to her knees and reached out with one hand. Was it the dead king's soul, come in bird form to visit her?
Suddenly a shout made her whirl around to face the door. As she moved, the wing shadow vanished. The shout had come from another room. Sebek too was looking in the direction of the shout, his hand on the scimitar at his belt. There was another shout, louder this time. Alarmed, Nefertiti ran out of the cella. Sebek launched himself after her, and they raced through the temple until they reached the outer hall. Great papyrus-bundle columns flanked an open court, where a crowd milled around two men.
Sebek thrust an arm in front of Nefertiti. "I'll go first, my queen." He gripped the hilt of the scimitar and walked up to the group of men. Nefertiti was close at his back. Sebek stopped beside a young priest at the edge of the crowd. "Make way for the great royal wife Nefertiti."
Shaved heads turned. Backs bent, and bodies scuttled to the side. They made their way to the crowd's center, where two men were shouting at each other as if they were in a beer tavern. Nefertiti recognized Wadjnas, chief priest of the mortuary temple. The man's face was contorted with fury, and he clutched the folds of a hastily donned robe. A wig sat awry his bald head until he clamped it straight with his free hand.
Wadjnas roared at the man facing him. Mery-Re. What was the high priest of the Aten doing in pharaoh's house of eternity? That was the question Sebek voiced in Nefertiti's name. The arguing ceased at once, and there was a moment of quiet while the men bowed low before Nefertiti. Although both men appeared startled at the presence of their queen, Wadjnas recovered first.
"Majesty, this-this heretic is going to erase the names of the gods. He says pharaoh ordered it. He says he will even wipe out the name of Osiris."
Nefertiti heard a mass intake of breath from the other priests. Her insides churned, and she waited for the gods to rend Mery-Re into small pieces. Osiris, renewer of life, the god who died and had been reborn-such a blasphemy could not be imagined. And yet these newcomer priests seemed confident in their sacrilege; she could see their puffed-up conviction in their faces. For years Akhenaten had been recruiting obsequious men whose sole qualification for membership in the Aten priesthood was a blind acceptance of his religious decrees. This was the result.
"The divine Son of the Sun orders the names of the usurpers to be expunged," Mery-Re said. "They are an abomination to the Aten." He motioned to the men at his back.
Nefertiti glanced at the hammers and chisels in the hands of the Aten priests. She noted their armed escort. Mery-Re was watching her. What could she do? Pharaoh's word was absolute. A cold fog invaded her body. While she hesitated, the soldiers corralled Wadjnas and his followers in one corner. Mery-Re directed his men to a wall depicting the judgment of Amunhotep's soul. Amunhotep stood before Osiris, while Anubis and Toth weighed his heart against the feather of truth. A priest pointed his chisel at the name of Osiris. Nefertiti cast a glance of appeal at Sebek, but the warrior lifted his hands in an unaccustomed movement of helplessness. The priest drew back his hammer.
Even now pharaoh might be undergoing judgment. The mist that shrouded Nefertiti's thoughts evaporated. The hammer arced toward the chisel. Nefertiti shouted, leaped at the priest, and caught the hammer in mid-swing. Pulled off balance, the man dropped the chisel. Nefertiti jerked the hammer out of his hand.
"You won't destroy pharaoh's ka." The priest shrank from her as she dropped the hammer.
Mery-Re swept toward her, two soldiers at his side.
"Thy majesty is misguided, distraught. Take the queen back to the palace."
The soldiers and Sebek moved toward each other as Nefertiti drew herself up to her full height. She stared at Mery-Re as if he were a maggot on the tip of her sandal.
"Mery-Re, you sniveling place seeker, you forget your lowly station."
"Nefertiti.'"
It was Akhenaten. Nefertiti was left standing in a sea of crouching figures. Pharaoh stalked to her, followed by a squadron of charioteers bearing swords.
Coming close, Akhenaten took her hand and searched her face. "What are you doing here? You're pale. Are you well?"
"Yes, majesty." Nefertiti stared into her husband's black eyes. "Majesty, did you order Mery-Re to wipe out the gods' names?"
"Of course," Akhenaten said as he gazed about the temple. "Words in stone make for permanent lies. The Aten's name shall replace all gods. What are you doing here?"
"I came to visit pharaoh's ka."
"Then you shall witness the beginning of reform. Mery-Re, begin."
Without thinking Nefertiti raised her voice. "No!"
Akhenaten had been surveying the temple walls with a preoccupied, hungry look on his face. At Nefertiti's shout, his eyes widened. He looked down as if to be sure that word had come from her.
"No? Did you say no?"
Akhenaten took Nefertiti by the shoulders and pulled her close so that he glared into her eyes. She put her arms on Akhenaten's shoulders and braced herself. She had gone too far this time. Either her husband would listen, or pharaoh would denounce her and send her away in disgrace. Nefertiti lowered her voice so that only Akhenaten could hear.
"Husband, you promised Queen Tiye you wouldn't interfere with pharaoh's provisions for the afterlife. Please don't make the gods angry." Nefertiti gasped as Akhenaten shook her.
"Blasphemy! There are no gods to make angry. Say it."
Nefertiti twisted the shoulders of pharaoh's robe in her fists. Anger began to replace her fear; she had always hated being bullied. Akhenaten became her unreasonable husband rather than pharaoh. She pounded Akhenaten's chest and spit out the words of a long-dead king.
"He is a fool who makes light of the judges of the dead."
Nefertiti was released suddenly, causing her to stumble. Akhenaten made a frustrated sound and snatched her arm. Nefertiti shied away as her husband thrust his face down into hers.
"The little hawk has talons," the king said.
The temple was so quiet she could hear her own breathing. Akhenaten was still glaring at her, but she refused to let him frighten her. Lifting her chin, she scowled at him. Her risk was rewarded. She could see him respond to the challenge of her defiance. He was still angry, but beneath the anger was excitement.
"By the Two Lands, you're as stubborn as my father ever was. I'm trying to save his ka."
Nefertiti jerked her arm free and poked a finger in her husband's chest. "If the Aten is all-powerful, why can he not see into your father's heart and judge him accordingly?"
"We've spoken of this many times before, Nefertiti. Father denied that the Aten was the one god."
There was no arguing with Akhenaten. No appeal to reason or the ancient ways would affect a man who knew he was the arbiter of all things. Nefertiti imagined her father-in-law's ka annihilated by the monster Eater of Souls in the Hall of Judgment. A silent cry went through her. Osiris, help me. She gazed up into Akhenaten's angry countenance. The wide, fleshy mouth looked as big as the maw of a demon. Moving so that her body almost touched Akhenaten's, she lifted her head so that her lips were near his ear.
"You promised," she whispered.
"What?"
"You promised you'd leave pharaoh's temple alone. Didn't you mean what you said?" Akhenaten released her arm, and Nefertiti moved back a step to gaze up into his black eyes. She kept her voice low and slightly rough. "I always thought I could trust you. I believed in you. How can I believe in you if you do this to your father?"
Her voice seemed to drain the anger from Akhenaten's countenance, leaving only excitement and affection. "You must believe in me."
"Then help me believe," Nefertiti said. "Keep your promise."
Nefertiti nearly cried out when Akhenaten took her hand and asked in a tone that was half teasing, half menacing, "Do you defy me?"
"No. I've never done that." Nefertiti made herself meet her husband's eyes, even though she was sure Akhenaten could see how much she hated to plead.
Akhenaten studied her until Nefertiti thought she would scream from the tension. Then he laughed softly.
"Mery-Re, return to the palace. I've changed my mind."
Nefertiti watched the high priest gather his men and retreat. Disapproval was blatant in his stiff posture.
Sebek came up beside her while pharaoh moved away to speak with Wadjnas. "I feared for you, majesty."
Nefertiti said nothing. She was still shaking from the risk she'd just taken. Once angered, Akhenaten could be vindictive and cruel. Although never its victim, Nefertiti had seen the results of pharaoh's wrath.
"My queen, are you well?"
"Yes." She pressed her shaking hands together. "I–I prayed for help from Osiris, and he came to my aid."
"Yes, majesty."
Nefertiti heard the warrior's skeptical tone. Sebek had never ventured an opinion about pharaoh. Such a liberty was not to be contemplated.
Sebek glanced over Nefertiti's head. "My queen, his majesty summons you."
Akhenaten waited at the entrance to the temple. His white robes stood out against the darkness of the stone around him. He lifted his arm; his eyes beckoned. Summoning her patience and her shredded composure, Nefertiti went to join her husband. As Akhenaten guided her outside, she couldn't help wondering if he would forget his desire to wipe out the name of Amun.