D
Dio was watching the fire beyond the River from the flat roof of Khnum's house. Charuk Palace was burning—the residence of the Viceroy Tutankhaton.
Built of very old dry cedar and cypress wood, it burned hotly and steadily like a resin torch. The bare crags of the Lybian Mountains above it glowed as though red hot; the flames were reflected in the river as a pillar of fire and white smoke coiled in clouds of moonlight blue and fiery crimson.
Khnum's servants were standing by Dio's side on the roof. All the faces wore the look of that unaccountable joy which people always feel at the sight of a fire at night.
"There, look where it has caught now! The women's apartments are on fire!" someone said.
"No, the prince's lodge," another answered.
"And now something in the garden is on fire, by the very lake, it must be Aton's chapel."
"I expect it's all Kiki's doing—his handiwork!"
"The rabble will warm their hands at the fire, you may be sure!"
"Look, mates, look, it's begun on our side, too!" said someone joyfully, pointing to the right side of the river, where fire broke out in two places at once.
"Ah, the dogs, they've set it ablaze from all sides!"
Khnum came up on to the roof by a steep staircase. Two servants supported him. He had just got out of bed: after the trial of Yubra that afternoon he had had a liver attack. Nibituia and Inioteph, his secretary, followed him.
An armchair was brought for Khnum and Nibituia sat on a stool at his feet. Dio came up to them and kissed them both on the shoulders.
"Is it long since you came back from town, my daughter?" Khnum asked her.
"I have only just returned."
"Have you heard anything?"
"The rebels have been scattered near Amon's temple, at Oisit, but at other places they are gathering together again, burning and plundering. I've heard that the Achaean mercenaries have come with Mahu, the king's chief of the guards."
"Extraordinary!" Inioteph muttered under his breath and shook his head with a smile.
Khnum looked at him sullenly from under his brows.
"What are you muttering?"
"Extraordinary, I say: there are plenty of loyal troops in the town and instead of sending them against the rebels they wait for the Achaeans!"
"Hold your tongue, silly! You must be careful what you say.... And where is the Viceroy?" he turned to Dio again.
"No one knows for certain. Some say he is on the other side of the river and others that he has come over to this side, with a large detachment of Nubians."
She very nearly said 'run away' and Khnum understood.
"Uhuh have mercy upon us!" Nibituia sighed. "What if he falls into the brigands' hands!"
Khnum looked at the fire for some time without speaking.
"Quite, quite, quite! Here it is, this is the beginning," he said, quietly, as though thinking aloud. "According to Ipuver's prophecy 'the slaves shall be masters, the beggars shall become new gods.' Our Yubra knew what he was doing, the worm: an ant knows how far the flood will reach and build its hill on safe ground. He has gone to the rebels just in time."
Dio, too, was looking at the fire and suddenly the familiar feeling of repetition, of eternal recurrence came over her—nem-ankh—'all this has been already'; the red flame of the fire lighted from below the bare rocks and was reflected as a red pillar in the water in exactly the same way; white smoke curled in clouds of moonlight-blue and fiery crimson just like this; now as then the cold of the dead lips penetrated her through and through—it never left her from the moment she kissed Pentaur good-bye.
There was a sound of rapid steps on the stairs. The centurion of the Viceroy's bodyguard, quite a young boy, ran up to the roof. From his dusty helmet, torn clothes, restless eyes and trembling lips one could see that he had just come from a serious engagement.
"Rejoice, my lord!" he said, approaching Khnum with a low bow, "His Highness asks me to tell you...."
He stopped breathless with hurry.
"Is His Highness safe?" Khnum asked, looking into the frightened face of the boy.
"Thanks be to Aton, he is safe now, but he has been in great danger. The riotous rabble is so turbulent, it is terrible.... His Highness will be here directly, he asks you to give him shelter."
"How many are coming with him?"
"Less than thirty."
"Where are the others?"
"Some have run away and others have been sent to Mahu, the chief of the guards: His Highness has given him the command of the city."
"Quite, quite, quite," said Khnum, shaking his head, thoughtfully: he understood that Tuta ran away like a coward. "Mahu is a brave soldier and will make short work of the rebels. For the moment the city is saved, though God only knows what the end of it will be.... Well, let us go, my son, I shall be happy to receive His Highness."
Khnum got up and went downstairs. All followed him.
Dio and Zenra went into Dio's room on the second storey. Dio began to undress. She was trembling so that her teeth were chattering. The cold still penetrated her through and through.
"Why are you trembling?" Zenra asked her.
Dio made no answer and lay down on the couch. Zenra tucked her in, kissed her and was about to go when Dio took her hand.
"Do you know, nurse, Pentaur is killed?" she said quietly, with apparent calm.
The old woman's legs gave way under her. She sat down on the edge of the couch so as not to fall.
"Good Lord!" she whispered, with the surprise people always feel at the news of a sudden death. "But how, where, when?"
"Just now in the riot by Amon's temple."
"Ah, poor thing!" Zenra wept. "Such a good man, and I had hoped..."
Dio smiled.
"You hoped he would marry me? Yes, the bridegroom was right enough, but the bride was no good.... Well, go now and don't cry. One mustn't cry for him—he died a good death. God grant us all to die like that!"
Dio closed her eyes, but as soon as Zenra went out she opened them again and looked at the other end of the room where a moonbeam fell upon the tall Amon's harp with crossed strings and two rainbow-coloured sun discs at the foot; their golden centres glittered dimly in the uncertain light. It was the harp on which Pentaur had played that afternoon his quiet songs of love and death.
Whether a cloud had covered the moon or Dio's eyes were dimmed with tears, she suddenly fancied that somebody's shadow flitted across the slanting square made by the moonbeams on the white wall. "It is he," she thought, and was all alert as though waiting for the harpstrings to sound. But all was silent and the shadow disappeared; the light on the wall was once more even and white. Dio covered her head with the bedclothes and settled down to sleep but she could not.
All of a sudden she heard the sound of the harp. She threw off the coverlet, sat up and listened: the chords were ringing and singing:
"Death is now to me like sweetest myrrh,Death is now to me like healing,Death is now to me like refreshing rain,Death is now to me like a home to an exile!"
And again a shadow flitted across the wall. Terror possessed her. But the familiar pain of inexpiable guilt, insatiable pity was stronger than terror: oh, if she could only see his shadow, could only say to his shadow 'forgive'!
She got up from the bed and went to the harp. The strings continued vibrating quietly but clearly. Something living was fluttering down below. Dio looked down and saw a bat that was caught in the network of the crossed strings and was struggling against them.
Dio smiled bitterly and regretted the terror of the moment ago. The wall of death rose between them more impenetrable than ever, the dead went further away into death, as though he had died again.
She carefully released the captive, kissed it on the head and, climbing on to a chair, let it out of the long and narrow window right up by the ceiling.
She returned to her bed, lay down and sank at once into the deep heavy sleep of grief.
"Get up, my dear, get up, it is time to go," she heard Zenra's voice over her.
"To go? Where?" she muttered without opening her eyes.
"To the City of the Sun. Tuta is going to-day and we go with him. Come, wake up, sleepy head!"
Dio opened her eyes. The light was still dim in the windows: the sun had not yet risen. But a sudden joy flooded her like sunlight. It seemed she had only now understood what it meant—"Akhnaton, the Joy of the Sun!"
She dressed quickly and ran up to the roof.
The winter morning was still and misty and its stillness seemed to say that the riot was over, the earth had not turned upside down, but stood firmly and would go on doing so for a long time yet. Everything was as usual: two white turtle-doves were cooing in the garden under the black feathery cedar tree; the morning sounds, slightly muffled by the fog, were wafted from afar over the water of the canal: the braying of the donkey, the creaking of the water-raising wheels, the clatter of the laundry bats and the mournful droning song:
"Washerman, washing clothes in the river,Good neighbour of the crocodile swimming past"
As always one smelt in the morning freshness the slightly bitter smoke of manure-bricks, like the smell of autumn bonfires in the fields of her native north.
Suddenly a warm, rosy light shone through the cold whiteness of the mist, like heavenly joy through earthly sorrow. "Heaven is united with the earth; on earth there is the joy of heaven." Dio recalled the words of the Osiris mysteries.
"Joy of the Sun, Joy of the Sun—Akhnaton!" she repeated, weeping and laughing with joy.
Zenra called to her and told her to make haste. Dio ran downstairs to say good-bye to Khnum and Nibituia. Khnum gave her his blessing and kind old Nibituia put her arms around her and wept: she had grown to love Dio as her own daughter.
They stepped into a boat and went down the Big Canal to the Risit Harbour where the Viceroy's boat was waiting. Tuta was on it already: he had gone before daylight.
The boat had two masts; the sails with a check pattern were spread out widely like a falcon's wings; on the prow was the horned head of a gazelle and on the stern a huge lotus-flower: the rudder was a flowering shrub and its handle the head of a king in a high tiara; the deck cabins of carved acacia wood were arranged in two storeys, like a small palace, magnificently painted and gilded, and fenced round the top with a network of royal snakes standing on their tails; coloured flags were displayed everywhere. The whole ship was a living miracle of gold, purple and azure, half bird, half flower.
The anchor was raised and they set off. The sun had risen and the mists melted away. A fresh wind blowing through the mountain gorges, filled the sails; the oarsmen plied their oars and the ship swiftly glided down the river.
Tuta did not leave his cabin all day: he had toothache and his cheek was swollen. The cat Ruru went about with a bandaged paw: it had been hit with a stone in the riot. When at last Tuta did come out towards evening he looked so crestfallen that Dio thought he was just like a cat that had received a shower bath.
Later on the wits at court composed a song about this dismal journey.
Poor little TutaMoans in his cabin.His cheek is swollen,Toothache very bad.
He warmed himself that nightBy the Charuk palace fire,Then exposed his heated cheekTo a draught in terror dire.
"Well, he hasn't had his way this time, but he will the next," Dio thought. "You will be king over the mice, you cat."
The City of the Sun, Akhetaton, Egypt's new Capital, was built in the province of Hares, half-way between Memphis and Thebes, four hundred aters or five days' journey from Thebes.
They sailed in the day-time only and spent the nights in harbours: sailing at night was dangerous because of the many shallows and whirlpools. The bed of the Nile changed continually, especially in winter when the water was shallow. The pilot, standing on the ship's prow, was all the time feeling the bottom with a pole.
They passed the big commercial harbour, Copt, which lay on the caravan route leading through the desert to the Red Sea; the town of Dendera, with the great temple of Isis-Hathor; the town of Abt, where the body of the god-man, Osiris, was buried, and the most ancient of the Egyptian cities, Tinis, the capital of Men, the first king of Egypt.
But the cities were few; poor villages with huts made of the dried mud of the Nile were more frequent. The yellow streak of dead sand and the black streak of fertile earth—Black Earth, Kemet, was the name of Egypt—stretched on either side of the river, peaceful, simple and monotonous; the black of the Nile mud, humid and shining like the living 'pupil of Isis' and the yellow of the desert—life and death—were side by side, in an eternal union, eternal peace.
It was winter—sowing time. Men were ploughing, harrowing, sowing. Oxen slowly walked along drawing rich furrows with the plough. Here and there the first crops already showed their bright spring green. And the melancholy singing of the ploughman echoed far in the stillness of the fields.
The dull white waters of the Nile now flowed fast, pressed in by rocky banks; now widened out in pools and backwaters still as a pond, with impassable jungles of papyrus and green carpets of floating lotus leaves; only a hippopotamus, waddling ashore, and a lion or a leopard, coming down to drink, cut narrow paths in those thickets.
A long-legged ibis strode along the humid slime measuring the ground like the wise god Tot, the land-measurer. Crocodiles lay on the sandbanks, like slimy logs, and the birds benu—a kind of heron—walked along their backs picking off the water fleas or, fearlessly thrusting their heads into the open jaws, cleaned the monsters' teeth.
And long after the fall of dusk, the tops of the cliffs glowed a fiery yellow and the girlishly slender outlines of the palms and the coal black cones of the granaries showed black against the crimson west.
The nights were as still as the days; only the jackals barked and howled in the desert and the hippopotamus in the papyrus thicket bellowed, like a bull, at the dazzlingly bright moon, the sun of the night.
And in the morning the day-sun rose as radiant as ever. The two streaks—the black and the yellow—stretched along the banks as monotonously as before; the oxen walked along as slowly, cutting deep furrows with the plough and the melancholy singing of the ploughman echoed in the stillness of the fields.
And everything was as still and gentle as the face of the god whose name is Quiet-Heart.
On the evening of the fifth day after passing a rocky gorge that seemed like a dark and narrow fortress gate, the ship suddenly came out into a sunlit expanse of water. One gate was in the south and another in the north; between them, surrounded on all sides by mountain ridges, as by fortress walls, lay the great plain cut in two by the Nile: in the west green meadows stretched as far as the Lybian Hills that melted into rose and amethyst in the light of the setting sun; in the east lay the semicircle of rocky and sandy desert, rising gradually towards the parched rocks of the Arabian mountains. Between the river and the desert there was a long and narrow streak of palm groves and gardens. White houses were scattered among them like dice and a huge white temple towered above them.
"The City of the Sun! The City of the Sun!" Dio recognised it at once and with a joyous terror she thought: "Heis here!"
And just as when she stood by the body of Pentaur, the word 'He' had a double meaning for her: he—the king and He—the Son.
I
I, Akhnaton Uaenra, the Joy of the Sun, the only Son of the Sun, speak thus: here will I build a city in the name of Aton, my Father, for it was none other than He brought me to Akhetaton, his portion from all eternity. There was not any man in the whole land who led me to it, saying 'build a city here,' but my heavenly Father has said it. This land belongs not to a god nor to a goddess, not to a prince nor to a princess, but only to Aton, my Father. May the City of God thrive like the sun in heaven. Behold, I raise my hand and swear: I will not pass beyond the boundary of this domain, which Aton has himself desired and fenced in with his hills, and with which He is pleased for ever and ever!"
This inscription was cut in the thickness of the rocks, north, south, east and west of the city of Akhetaton, on fourteen flat boundary stones, which marked the portion of Aton, the kingdom of God upon earth. They were fourteen according to the fourteen parts of the dismembered body of Osiris, the Great Victim, for King Akhnaton was himself the second Osiris.
In the fourth year of his reign he had abandoned the ancient capital of Egypt, Nut Amon or Thebes, and founded a new one.
The city was built with such haste that the newly erected walls were showing cracks; the cracks were patched up with clay and the building carried on. Experienced architects merely shook their heads, remembering the old saying: 'to build in a hurry means no end of worry.'
The king's exchequer was growing empty; innumerable stores of treasure, plundered from the temples of Amon, were being spent; tens of thousands of workmen were driven to Akhetaton from all parts of Egypt; they worked even at night, by torchlight. And the miracle had taken place; within ten years a new city had grown up in the desert; so does the pink lotos, nekheb, break into flower during the night and appear above the water in the morning; so does a beautiful mirage rise over the shimmering heat of the desert; but the water flows away and the lotos fades; the wind blows and the mirage is gone.
Dio came to Akhetaton five days before the great festival, the twelfth anniversary of the city's foundation, coinciding with the day of Aton's nativity, the winter solstice, when the 'little sun,' the baby god Osiris-Sokkaris, rises from the dead and is born. She was to dance before the king for the first time at that festival.
Tuta had intended to present her at court as soon as they arrived, but she did not wish it and he gave way; he gave way to her in everything, waiting upon her wishes; it was evident that she was for him a big stake in a big game; he was bargaining over 'the Pearl of the Seas' like a clever merchant
He was soon comforted for his bad luck in Thebes. While still on the journey he received good news from his friends at court who had done their best for him and gave the king such a version of the rising that Tuta's weakness appeared as mercy, his cowardice as love of peace: he ran away from the battlefield, they said, because he remembered that 'peace was better than war.'
Dio spent the five days before the festival in Tuta's house near the temple of Aton, preparing for the dance. She did not go out nor show herself to anyone in the daytime, but at night she went up to the flat roof of the temple where she was to dance. She practiced there herself and taught others.
The day before the feast she was sitting alone, late in the evening, in the newly decorated room of Tuta's summer house; he and his wife, the king's daughter Ankhsenbatona, or Ankhi, lived in the winter house. The smell of fresh paint and plaster came from the still unfinished part of the house, where in the daytime masons, carpenters and painters were at work. It seemed to Dio that the whole town was pervaded by this smell.
Red pillars with green garlands of palm leaves supported the sky-blue ceiling. The white walls were decorated with a delicate design of yellow butterflies, fluttering over fine seaweed.
The freshness of a winter evening came through the long, narrow stone-trellised windows, right up by the ceiling. Sitting on a low couch—a brick platform covered with rugs and cushions—Dio, wrapped up in her Cretan wolf-fur, was warming herself by the hearth—an earthenware platter of hot embers.
"To-morrow I shall seehim," she thought with fear. She had begun to be afraid on the very first day she arrived, and grew more so as time went oh; and on this last night before the meeting such fear possessed her that she felt she might run away if she did not control herself. She went hot and cold at the thought that the next day she was to dance before the king. "My legs will give way under me, I shall stumble, fall flat, disgrace poor Tuta!" she laughed, as though to make her fear worse.
In the depth of the room two sanctuary lamps were hanging in two niches decorated with alabaster bas-reliefs of the king on the left and the queen on the right. The wall space between them was covered with rows of turquoise blue hieroglyphics on golden yellow ground, glorifying the god Aton.
Dio got up, and going to the niche on the left, looked at the bas-relief of the king standing at an altar. He was raising two round sacrificial loaves, one on each palm, towards the Sun. The enormously tall royal tiara, tapering to a point, seemed too heavy for the childish head on the slender neck, flexible like the stem of a flower. The childish face was irregular, with a receding forehead and a protruding mouth. The charm of his naked body was like that of a flower that had just opened and was already fading with the heat:
"Thou art the flower uprooted from the ground,Thou art the plant unmoistened by running water."
Dio recalled the song of weeping for the dead god Tammuz.
The neck, the shoulders, the hands, the calves and the ankles were slender and narrow like those of a boy of ten, but the hips were wide like a woman's and the breasts too full: neither he nor she—he and she at the same time—a marvel of god-like beauty.
On Mount Dicte in the Island of Crete, Dio had heard an ancient legend: in the beginning man and woman were one body with two faces; but the Lord cut their body in two and gave to each a spinal cord; 'that's how people cut eggs in two with a hair for pickling,' old Mother Akakalla, the prophetess, used to add with a queer, uncanny laugh when she told this legend in Dio's ear.
"The hair could not have passed right through his body," she thought, looking at the King's image, and she recalled the prophecy: "the kingdom of God shall come when the two shall be one, and male shall be female and there shall be neither male nor female."
She knelt down and stretched out her arms to the marvel of godlike charm.
"My brother, my sister, the two horned moon, the double-edged axe, my lover, my loved one!" she whispered devoutly.
A whiff of wind came from the window; the flame of the lamp flickered, the outline of the figure grew dim and through the marvel the monster peered—neither old nor young, neither man nor woman, a eunuch, a decrepit babe, the horror of Gem-Aton.
"Go to him then, the seducer, the son of perdition, the devil," the voice of Ptamose sounded over her and she buried her face in her hands, terrified.
At the same moment she felt that someone was standing behind her; she turned round and saw a little girl.
A robe, transparent like running water, fell in flowing folds over the slender body. The over-dress had come open in front and the amber-brown skin could be seen through the shift worn underneath. The girl wore on her head a huge shiny black wig of tightly plaited tresses cut evenly round the edge. A tiny talc cup, turned upside down and filled with thekemiointment made up of seven perfumes—the royal ointment—was fixed on the top of the head. Slowly melting with the warmth of the body it dropped like fragrant dew on the hair, face and clothes. The long stem of a pink lotos was thrust through a hole in the cup in such a way that the half-open flower, with a sweet smell of anise, hung over the forehead.
The girl was about twelve years old. The childish face was charming though irregular, with a protruding mouth and a receding forehead; the large slightly squinting eyes had a fixed heavy look such as one sees in the eyes of an epileptic.
At one moment she seemed a child, at another a woman; there was something pathetic and charming in this elusive twilight between childhood and womanhood. She was a half-open bud like the rosy lotosnekhebover her forehead, fragrant with the freshness of water; it closes its petals and shortens its stem at night as it hides under the water and when, in the morning, it comes up again and opens its chalice, a golden winged beetle flies out of it—Horus, the newly-born god of the Sun.
The little girl appeared so suddenly, so like a phantom that Dio looked at her almost in fear. Both were silent for a second.
"Dio?" the visitor asked at last.
"Yes. And who are you?"
She made no answer; but raising her left eyebrow and shrugging her shoulders, asked again:
"What were you doing here? Praying?"
"No .... simply looking at the figure...."
"But why were you kneeling, then?"
Dio blushed in confusion. The child lifted her eyebrow again and shrugged her shoulders.
"You don't want to tell me? Very well, don't."
She went up to the couch and picked up from it the gazelle skin which she had taken off when she came into the room.
"It is cold and damp in your room. You don't know how to keep a fire in," she said, wrapping herself up. "Well, aren't you going to say anything? I want to talk to you."
She sat on the couch in the Egyptian fashion, clasping her knees with her hands and resting her chin on them. Dio sat down beside her.
"You don't know yet who I am?" asked the child, fixing her heavy gaze upon Dio.
"I don't."
"His wife."
"Whose wife?"
"Are you pretending, or what?"
"The princess?" Dio guessed suddenly.
"Thank heaven, at last!" said the visitor. "Well, why do you sit and stare at me?"
"Why, what's wrong?"
"What's wrong? The king's daughter, a child of the Sun, is before you and it doesn't occur to you to make the slightest bow?"
Dio smiled and knelt before her on the couch, as a grown up person kneels before a child to caress it.
"Rejoice, Princess Ankhsenbatona, my dear, welcome guest!" she said with all her heart and was about to kiss the princess's hand, when the girl quickly drew it away.
"There, now she is grabbing my hand! Is that the way to bow to royalty?"
"Isn't it?"
"You should bow down to the ground! Well, I don't care, I don't want your bows, sit down.... Wait a minute though!"
She also knelt suddenly in front of Dio.
"Turn to the light, please; that's it!"
Dio turned her face to the lamp that stood on the floor by the couch—a flower of blue glass on a high alabaster stand. Ankhi approached her face to Dio's and with a business-like frown began to scrutinize her in silence.
"Yes, very beautiful," she whispered at last as though speaking to herself. "What rouge do you use?"
"I don't use any."
"What next?"
She licked her little finger and raising it to Dio's face asked:
"May I try?"
"Do."
Ankhi slowly moved her finger along Dio's cheek and looked to see if the tip of it was red. No, it was not red.
"Strange!" she said in surprise. "How old are you?"
"Twenty."
"How is it you are so young?"
"But twenty isn't old, is it?"
"Oh yes, it is with us. We are married at ten and grandmothers at thirty. But, of course, with you in the north everything is different: the sun makes people old and the cold keeps them young," she said complacently, evidently repeating somebody else's words.
She sat down in the same attitude as before, clasping her knees with her hands, and sank into thought.
"Why do you laugh?" she asked, again fixing her heavy gaze on Dio.
"I am not laughing, I am merely happy."
"What about?"
"I don't know. Simply because you have come."
"It's always 'simply' with you.... Do you imagine I am a little girl? .... What has he said to you about me?"
Dio understood that 'he' was Tuta.
"He said you were very clever and a beauty and that he loved you more than anything in the world."
"Nonsense! You just say this out of kindness.... You must have both been laughing at me. Has he told you that I play dolls?"
"No, he hasn't."
"But I do play! I played last summer and will play again if I want to. I don't care if they do laugh at me. The king says children are better than grown-ups, wiser, they know more. Eternity, he says, is a child playing with, playing..."
She forgot what Eternity was playing with and flushed crimson.
"Ah, curse the thing! The wool has again made my head hot." She pulled the wig off her head and flung it away. The talc cup clinked against the wall; the lotos stem broke and the flower hung down piteously.
"Do you imagine that I have dressed up for you? Not likely! I am going to supper at the palace..."
Her head was shaven and had such a long, vegetable, marrow-like skull that Dio almost cried out with surprise. In Egypt long heads were regarded as particularly beautiful in girls. The strange custom of bandaging newborn children's heads in order to lengthen their skulls was brought to Egypt from the Kingdom of Mitanni, the midnight land by the upper Euphrates, whence Akhnaton's mother, Queen Tiy, came. All the King's daughters were long-headed. Noble ladies and, later on, men suddenly developed long skulls also: they wore special skull caps—"royal marrows"—made of the finest antelope skins.
Very likely Princess Ankhi took off her wig on purpose to boast of the shape of her head to Dio: "You may have rosy cheeks, but I have a royal marrow!"
"And is it true you are a sorceress, they say?"
"No, it isn't."
"Then what did they want to burn you for?"
Dio said nothing.
"Again, you don't want to tell me?"
"I don't."
"You killed the god Bull, your Mreura, or was it Hapius?"
Hapius was the bull of Memphis and Mreura the bull of Heliopolis, the incarnate god of the Sun. "We, too, had a Mreura," Ankhi went on, not waiting for an answer. "It died two years ago: I was very fond of it. It was old and blind. I used to go into its stable, put my arms round it and kiss its head, and it would lick my face and bellow into my ear as though to say something. To kill a creature like that, good heavens! It's like killing a baby...."
She paused, and looking at Dio from under her brows said suddenly:
"They have found a wax doll in the palace."
"What wax doll?"
"A charmed one, with its heart pierced by a needle; the person whose name is written on the wax is sure to die. The king's name was written on it; they found it in the king's bedchamber...."
She paused again and asked:
"How long have you been here?"
"Five days."
"And the wax doll was found the day before yesterday."
"Well, what of it?"
"Nothing. One can't stop people talking and they say all sorts of things .... And why do you sit at home hiding from everyone and only come out at night?"
Her face worked suddenly, the eyes flashed angrily, the lips trembled and she said, looking straight at Dio:
"Are you his concubine?"
"Whose?"
"Tuta's."
Dio clasped her hands in dismay.
"What nonsense, princess darling!"
"Why nonsense?"
"Because I cannot be anybody's concubine: priestesses of the Mother are perpetual virgins. And, besides it's a matter of taste. His Highness ... may I speak the truth, you won't be angry?"
"No, speak."
"His Highness is very nice, but I don't like him at all."
Ankhi looked at her, heaved a deep sigh, as a person suddenly relieved of violent pain, and whispered:
"Is it true?"
"Why, look into my eyes, don't you see it is true?"
Ankhi looked straight into her eyes; then turned away and buried her face in her hands; her thin shoulders quivered and all her body trembled with silent sobs.
Dio moved up to her and putting her arms round her pressed the girl's long shaven head—the royal marrow—to her bosom.
"Don't you believe me?"
"Yes, I do. I have known all along that it was all untrue about your being a sorceress, and the wax doll. I said it all on purpose..."
"Then why are you crying?"
"Oh, because I am so mean, so horrid! I liked you the moment I saw you and so I got angry. I am always angry with the people I am fond of.... But you don't know all yet! I made old Iagu promise—he is an old servant, a faithful dog and loves me as his own soul—I made him promise that he would kill you if you really were Tuta's mistress. I would have killed him and myself, too—that's what I am like! When the devil gets hold of me I can do anything...."
She wept again.
"There, there, my little darling, my sweet little girl!" Dio whispered, stroking her head, and suddenly she remembered she had said almost the same words when she caressed Eoia just like that. "That's all over now and done with! Let us be friends, shall we?"
Ankhi said nothing but pressed more closely to her. Dio kissed her on the lips without speaking and herself wept for joy.
Joy rose in her heart, like the sun, and the fear she had felt melted away like a shadow.
"Darling, darling child!" she thought, "it is he himself, Akhnaton, the Joy of the Sun, has sent you to me as joy's messenger!"
I
In the silence of the night a trumpet proclaimed joy unto men. First one, then another, a third—and then scores and hundreds of trumpets played the hymn to Aton:
Glorious is Thy rising in the East,Lord and giver of life, Aton!Thou sendest Thy rays and darkness flees,All the earth is filled with joy.
The trumpets sounded at every end of the city, arousing many-voiced echoes in the mountains. Just as cocks call to one another and crow to the Sun in the night, so did the trumpets call at the hour before dawn when men's sleep is like the sleep of death, as is said in Aton's hymn:
Men sleep in darkness like the dead,Their heads are wrapped up and their nostrils stopped.Stolen are the things that are under their heads,While they know it not.Every lion cometh forth from his den,Serpents creep from out of their holes,The Creator has gone to rest and the world is mute.
But the trumpet was waking the sleepers as the call of the Lord will one day wake the dead. Old men and children, slaves and free, rich and poor, foreigners and Egyptians, were all running to greet the newborn sun, the god Aton.
Dio was roused by the sound of the trumpet in the small chapel of Aton's temple where she slept that night with the girl singers, musicians and dancers who were to accompany her in her dance before the king.
"The trumpets call, the trumpets! Get up, girls! The sun is born, rejoice!" she heard the voices round her.
They embraced and kissed one another, wishing each other new joy with the new sun.
They ran out on to the flat roof of the temple.
It was a warm night: after midnight the wind had changed to the south and the temperature rose at once. Big round white clouds were floating across the sky like sails. Misty, fluffy stars twinkled like wind-blown flames and a waning copper-yellow moon lay on its back over the black ridge of the Lybian mountains.
Heaven, earth, water, plants, animals—all were still asleep; men alone were awake. The town down below was stirring like an ant-heap. Lights were appearing in the windows, lamps were smoking on the roofs, torches glowed in the streets filled with dark crowds that streamed along like rivers. There was a hum of voices, rustle of feet, stamping of hoofs, clatter of wheels, neighing of horses, cries of soldiers and the ceaseless call of the trumpets—the hymn to Aton:
Glorious is Thy rising in the East,Lord and giver of life, Aton!Thou sendest Thy rays and darkness flees,All the earth is filled with joy.
"There goes the royal procession! Let us run downstairs, girls, we can see better from there!" cried one of those who were looking from the roof of Aton's temple, and they all flew downstairs like a flock of turtle-doves, on to the flat top of the gates nearest the street where the procession was passing.
"The king! The king! Down! Down! Down!" cried the runners, scattering the crowd with their staves as they marched along in step, their bare backs bent double.
The king's bodyguard, the Hittite Amazons, came next. Yellow skinned and flat chested, with narrow eyes and high cheek bones, one warrior lock on their shaven heads, they carried bronze double-edged axes, the sacred weapon of the Virgin-Mother.
Then came courtiers, judges, councillors, warlords, treasurers, clerks, priests, soothsayers, scribes, chiefs of the bakers, chiefs of the butlers, chiefs of the king's stables, lords of the bedchamber, masters of the robes, hairdressers, launderers, perfumers and so on: all were dressed in white robes with pointed, stiffly starched aprons; all wore the special skullcaps that made their shaven heads look like the egg-shaped 'royal marrows.'
Then came the censer-bearers, lavishly burning incense, its white clouds turning rosy in the torchlight; these were followed by the fan-bearers waving multi-coloured fans of ostrich feathers and real flowers, fixed on long poles.
Finally there came twenty-four black Ethiopian youths, naked but for short aprons of parrot feathers and wearing golden nose rings; they carried on their shoulders a tall ivory throne covered with leaf gold with lions for a pedestal.
Dio clearly saw the leopard skin on the narrow boyish shoulders, the simple long white robe of such transparent linen that one could see through it above the elbows of the thin dark-skinned boyish arms, the coloured hieroglyphics of Aton's name; she saw the staff—symbol of godhead—in one hand and the scourge in the other; the pear-shaped royal tiara, made of pale cham, a mixture of gold and silver, studded with small stars of lapis lazuli, and the golden snake of the sun, Uta, coiled on the forehead.
She saw all this but she did not dare to look at his face. "I will look when I am dancing before him," she thought, as she ran upstairs to the roof of Aton's temple.
"Down! Down! The king comes! the god comes!" the runners shouted, and people bowed to the ground.
The procession entered the gates of Aton's temple.
The temple of the Sun, the House of Joy, consisted of seven pillared courts, with tower-like pylon gates, side-chapels and three hundred and sixty-five altars. Seven courts were the seven temples of the seven peoples, for as it says in the hymn to Aton:
Thou hast carried them all away captive,Thou bindest them by Thy love.
There was a time when by 'people'—romet—the Egyptians meant themselves only; all other nations were excluded; but now all were brothers, children of one Heavenly Father, Aton. The Temple of the Sun was the temple for all mankind.
Seven courts, seven temples: the first was dedicated to Tammuz of Babylon, the second to Attis of the Hittites, the third to Adon of Canaan, the fourth to Adun of Crete, the fifth to Mithra of Mitanni, the sixth to Ashmun of Phoenicia, the seventh to Zagreus-Bacchus of Thrace. All these god-men who had suffered, died and risen from the dead, were but shadows of the one sun that was to rise—the Son.
The seven open temples led into the eighth, the secret one, which no one but the king and the high priest dared enter. There in perpetual twilight stood sixteen giant Osirises made of alabaster, pale as phantoms, tightly bound with winding sheets, wearing gods' tiaras and holding a staff—symbol of god-head—in one hand and a scourge in the other; the faces of all were in the likeness of King Akhnaton.
Passing through the seven open temples the procession approached the eighth, the secret one. The king went into it alone, and, while he was praying there, all waited outside. When he came out, they mounted by an outside staircase on to the flat roof of the upper temple, which was built on the roof of the lower.
The great altar of the Sun stood here; it was made of huge blocks of cream-coloured sandstone, pale as a girl's body and shaped like a pyramid with its top cut off; two gradual approaches, without steps, led up to it. On a high platform at the top of the pyramid a sanctuary fire was perpetually burning, and, above it on a column of alabaster, the sun disc of Aton, made of pale cham—a mixture of gold and silver—glistened with a dull brilliance. It was the highest point of the huge edifice and the first and last ray of the sun was always reflected upon it.
The king, the queen, the princesses and the heir apparent—only those in whose veins flowed the blood of the Sun—went up to the top of the pyramid, and then the king alone ascended the platform where the fire was burning.
People thronged in the seven courts of the temple down below, on the pylons, the staircases, the roofs of both temples; it was like a living mountain of people and the highest point of it was one man—the king.
"I come to glorify Thy rays, living Aton, one eternal God!" he said stretching out his arms to the Sun.
"Praise be to Thee, living Aton, who hast made the heavens and the mysteries thereof," answered the high priest Merira, who stood at the base of the pyramid. "Thou art in heaven and Thy beloved son Akhnaton is on earth!"
"I show the way of life to all of you, generations that have been and are to come," the king continued. "Give praise to the God Aton, the living God, and ye shall live! Gather together and come, all ye people of salvation; turn to the Lord, all ye ends of the earth, for Aton is God and there is none other God but He."
"The God Aton is the only God and there is none other God but He," answered the innumerable crowds down below, and the call of thousands was like the roar of the sea.
The moon had set, the stars were hardly visible. The wind dropped, the clouds cleared away, the sky was almost grey. And suddenly a giant ray, shaped like a pyramid with its base on the ground and its top in the zenith, appeared in the morning twilight and white opalescent lights, like sheet lightning, flickered across it—the Light of the Zodiac, the forerunner of the Sun.
The king, with his wife, daughters and the heir apparent, descended from the pyramid altar and went into a painted and gilded tent that stood at the eastern side of it.
There was a sound of flutes and a ringing of citherns, then came subdued singing and a slow procession of priestesses, carrying a coffin on their shoulders, mounted the flat roof of the temple by an outer staircase. A dead body wrapped up in a white winding sheet lay in the coffin. The priestesses placed the coffin on the dark purple carpet before the king's tent.
Two mourners came forward, one stood at the head and the other at the feet of the corpse, weeping and calling to each other like the two sister goddesses Isis and Neftis at the tomb of Osiris, their brother. Meanwhile the others, naked but for a narrow black belt below the navel and a black 'bandage of shame' between the legs, were dancing the wild, ancient, magical dance of Osiris-Bata, the rising god, the vegetating ear of corn: standing in a row on one leg they raised the other leg all at once, lowered it and then raised it again, higher and higher each time, so that at last the toes went up higher than the heads.
"Arise, arise, arise! O Sun of all suns, O first fruits of them that slept, arise!" they repeated, also all at once, to the ringing of the citherns and the squealing of flutes. This meant: "grow up as high as our legs are thrown up, o ear of corn, arise, thou dead one!"
And the mourners wept:
"Come to thy sister, come, my Beloved,Thou whose heart now beats no more!I am thy sister who loved thee on earth,No one has loved thee more than I!"
Suddenly a quiver passed over the corpse, as over a chrysalis when a butterfly stirs within it—a tremor that was like the tremulous lightnings in the sky, as though the same miracle were happening in the human body and in the heavens.
The grave clothes wrapped round the corpse were slowly unwound; the hand was slowly raised to the face as that of one waking from profound slumber; the knees bent slowly; the elbows rested against the bottom of the coffin and the body began to rise.
"Arise! Arise! Arise!" the dancers repeated as an incantation, throwing up their legs higher than their heads in the magical dance.
The light of the Zodiac was no longer visible in the rosy light of the dawn. A glowing ember blazed up in the misty crevice of the Arabian mountains and the first ray of the sun glistened on Aton's disc.
At the same moment the corpse rose, opened its eyes and smiled—and in that smile there was eternal life, the sun that has no setting.
"Dio, the dancer, the Pearl of the Kingdom of the Seas," a whisper was heard in the crowd of the courtiers.
The priestesses finished their magical dance and fell, face downwards, on the ground. The citherns and flutes were silent except one which was still weeping; it was like a lonely bird crying in the twilight:
"On my bed in the nightI looked for him,For him whom my soul loveth,I sought him and did not find him."
Stepping out of the coffin, Dio moved towards the sun. She began the dance slowly and quietly, as though in her sleep; there was still something of the stiffness of death in her limbs. But as the sun rose higher the dance grew quicker and more impetuous. Her head was thrown back, her arms were stretched towards the sun; the white veils fell on the purple carpet, revealing the innocent body, neither masculine nor feminine—at once masculine and feminine—a marvel of godlike beauty. The sun was kissing her and she was surrendering herself to it, the mortal uniting with the god as a bride with her lover.
"Put me as a seal upon thine heart,"As a ring upon thine handFor strong as death is love,"
sobbed the flute.
The song stopped suddenly; the dancer fell flat on her back as though dead. One of the priestesses ran up to her and covered her with the white grave clothes.
The soft sound of footsteps and a voice that seemed familiar, though she had never heard it, reached Dio's ears. She raised her head and saw the king face to face. He was saying something to her but she could not make it out. She looked into his face eagerly as though recognising him after a long, long parting: this was perhaps how lovers recognised each other in the world beyond the grave.
She recalled her fear of him and was surprised not to be feeling any. A simple, quite a simple, face like anybody else's; the face of the son of man, the brother of man, gentle, very gentle like the face of the god whose name is Quiet Heart.
"Are you very tired?" he was asking, probably not for the first time.
"No, not very."
"How well you danced! Our dancers can't do it. Is this your Cretan dance?"
"Both ours and yours together."
He, too, was gazing at her as though trying to recognise her.
"Where have I seen you?"
"Nowhere, sire."
"Strange, I keep fancying I have seen you before...."
She was sitting at his feet and he stood bending over her. Both were uncomfortable. The white sheet kept slipping off her naked body and she was trying unsuccessfully to keep it on. She suddenly felt confused and blushed.
"Are you cold? Go along and get dressed," he said and blushed, too. 'Just like a little boy,' she thought, and recalled the figure at the Charuk palace—the boy who looked like a girl.
He took a ring off his finger, put it on hers, and, bending down still lower, kissed her on the head. Then he left her and returned to the royal tent.
"The fish has bitten!" an old dignitary, Ay, Tuta's friend and patron, who stood next to him in the crowd of courtiers, whispered in his ear.
"You think so?" Tuta asked joyfully.
"Set your mind at rest: it has bitten. You couldn't find another such pair: they have been made for each other. Man and woman—a hook and an eye—are two in love, but here there are four."
"How do you mean?"
"Why, there are two in him, two in her; an eye—a hook, a hook—an eye; once they catch there will be no disentangling them."
"You are a wise man, Ay!" Tuta said in delight.