T
The three walked into the Council Chamber. The dignitaries had long been gathered there waiting for the king. When he passed by them they prostrated themselves, sniffed the ground under his feet and, raising their shaven, egg-shaped heads stretched out their hands palms upwards, saying:
"Rejoice, Akhnaton, Joy of the Sun!"
Tuta, as usual, surpassed them all.
"My king, my god, who hast made me, grant me to enjoy the sight of thy face forever!" he exclaimed, rolling his eyes so ecstatically that everyone envied him.
The king sat down in his chair on a low alabaster platform between four pillars. Dio stood behind him with the fan.
All looked at her curiously. She felt she was already regarded as the king's mistress; she flushed and looked down.
A bodyguard of Hittite amazons stood in the depths of the many pillared room. The dignitaries sat on their heels in a semicircle on mats on the floor; only three sat on folding chairs: Tuta, Merira, and the commander-in-chief and king's vizier, Ramose, a heavy fat old man of seventy, with a red puffy face, like an old woman's, a courtly smile on his lips and small eyes lost in fat, very kind and intelligent.
Grandson of General Amenemheb, fellow-soldier of the great Tutmose the Third, the Conqueror, he had covered himself with glory in the different campaigns he led against the wild tribes of Kush and the Sinai nomads. He had been promoted to the rank of Vizier under King Amenhotep the Third, Akhnaton's father, and the people were fond of him and called him 'a just man.' He would have given his life for the king, but he regarded the new faith in Aton and the betrayal of the old gods as madness and disaster. "The best and most unfortunate of kings," he used to say about Akhnaton, "he is ruining himself and his kingdom for nothing."
The sitting of the Council began. The king listened to the officials' reports about the failure of crops, famine, rebellions, brigandage, robberies, bribe-taking, secessions of provincial governors and feuds between them.
Standing slightly on one side Dio could see his face. He listened with his head bent and his face seemed expressionless.
The chief of the guards, Mahu, reported on the last rising—the one in Thebes.
"Very likely nothing would have happened had not the Lybian mercenaries joined the rebels," he said in conclusion.
"And why did they join them?" the king asked.
"Because their salary was not paid in time."
"And why was it not paid?"
"At the prince Viceroy's orders."
The king looked at Tuta.
"Why did you do it?"
"I have laid the king's yoke upon my neck and here I bear it," Tuta began, wondering what kind of answer he had better give: he understood that someone had informed against him. "If I go up to heaven or come down to earth my life is always in thy right hand, O King! I look here and I look there and I see no light; I look upon thee, my king, my sun, and behold, here is light! A brick may move from under other bricks in a wall but I shall not move from under the feet of my king, my god...."
"Make haste and tell me why you did it," the king interrupted him impatiently.
"There was no money to buy bread for the starving and so I borrowed it from the Lybians' salary."
The king said nothing, but gave him such a look that Tuta lowered his eyes.
"How many killed?" asked the king, turning to Mahu again.
"Less than a hundred," he answered.
He knew that more than two thousand had been killed, but, exchanging glances with Ramose, understood that the truth should not be told: the king would be unhappy and perhaps fall ill and nothing would be gained by it—everything would remain as before.
"A hundred people!" the king whispered, bending his head still lower. "Well, you won't have long now....."
"Not long to do what, sire?" Ramose asked.
"To kill people in my name!" the king answered and then asked, after a pause: "Is there a letter from Ribaddi?"
"Yes, there is."
"Show it me."
"I cannot, sire, it is an unseemly letter."
"Never mind, show it."
Ramose gave him the letter. The king read it first to himself and then aloud so calmly that it might have been written about someone else:
"Ribaddi, Viceroy of the King of Egypt in Canaan, thus speaks to the King: for ten years I have been sending to thee for help but thou hast not helped me. Now Azini, an Amorite, a traitor, has risen against thee and gone over to the king of the Hittites. And they have gathered together chariots and men to conquer Canaan. The enemy is at my gates, to-morrow they will enter and kill me and throw my body to the dogs. Well does the King of Egypt reward his faithful servants! May the gods do the same unto thee as thou hast done unto me. My blood is on thy head, traitor!"
"How dares this dead dog insult our god-king!" Tuta said, with indignation.
The king looked at him again, and he subsided.
"Has Ribaddi perished?" the king asked.
"He has," Ramose answered. "He threw himself on his sword so as not to fall into the enemies' hands alive."
"What will happen now, Ramose?"
"Why, this, sire: the king of the Hittites will have Canaan; the thieves will undermine the wall and enter the house. We were for four hundred years under the yoke of the nomads, and we may be for another four hundred under the yoke of the Hittites. Your great-grandfather, Tutmose the Great, made Egypt the head of all nations and we were the light of the world and now this light is no more...."
"What are we to do then, Ramose?"
"You know yourself, king."
"Begin war?" the king asked.
Ramose made no answer; he knew that the king would perish and ruin his kingdom rather than begin war.
The king was silent, too; he seemed lost in thought. Suddenly he raised his head and said:
"I cannot!"
He paused again, thinking, and repeated:
"I cannot; no, I cannot! 'Peace, peace to the far and the near,' says my heavenly father, Aton. 'Peace is better than war; let there be no war, let there be peace!' This is all I know, all I have, Ramose. If you take this from me, there will be nothing left: I shall be destitute, naked, dead. Better kill me outright!"
He spoke simply and quietly; but Dio's heart throbbed again as on the day before in the joy of the heavenly dream. She suddenly recalled the huge pale phantom of Cheop's pyramid shimmering in the rosy sunlight mist over the yellow sands of the desert: the perfect triangles—"I began to be as one god, but three gods were in Me," in the words of the ancient wisdom—divine triangles getting narrower and narrower, more and more pointed as they rose to heaven and in the very last point the same frenzied ecstacy as in Akhnaton's quiet word 'Peace'!
"O, how sweet is thy teaching, Uaenra," Tuta thrust himself forward again—like the poodle Dang licking the king in the face. "You are the second Osiris, conquering the world by peace and not by sword. If you say to the water 'let there be peace'—there shall be peace."
"Listen, Ramose," the king began, "I am not such a scoundrel as Ribaddi thought, and I am not such a fool as Tuta takes me to be...."
The poodle Dang got a flip on the nose: he was alarmed and upset. But he was soon comforted by Ay—an old dignitary with intelligent, cold and cynical eyes, who sat next to him.
"Don't bother, it isn't worth it," he whispered in Tuta's ear. "You see he is playing the fool again, the crazy saint!"
"I am not such a fool as Tuta thinks," the king went on. "I know there will be no peace on earth for a long time to come. There will be endless war, and the longer it goes on the fiercer it will be: 'all will be killing each other' as the ancient prophecy says. There has been a flood of water—there is going to be one of blood. But even so, even so, let men know that there has been in the world a man who said 'peace'!"
He suddenly turned to Merira.
"What do you think, Merira? Why do you smile?"
"I think, sire, that what you say is good, but it is not all. God is not only peace...."
He spoke slowly, with an effort, as though thinking of something else.—
"But also what?" the king said to help him.
"Also war."
"What are you saying, my friend? War is not of God, but of the devil."
"Yes, of God, too. Two sides of the triangle meet at one point: day and night, mercy and wrath, peace and war, Son and Father—all the opposites are in God...."
"Is the Son against the Father?" the king asked and his hand that was holding the arm of the chair trembled slightly.
Merira raised his eyes to him and smiled so strangely that Dio thought 'madman!' But he looked down again at once and his face turned to stone, grew heavy with a stony heaviness.
"Why do you ask me?" he answered calmly. "You know it all better than I, Uaenra: does not the Son know the Father? God is the measure of all things. I say it not to you but to others: seek for measure in everything—in peace as in the sword."
"Quite so! Quite so!" Ramose cried. "I am no friend of yours, Merira, but for this saying I am ready to bow down at your feet—it couldn't be said better!"
"Why are you so pleased with it?" the king asked, looking at Ramose in surprise. "What he says is very dreadful."
"Yes, dreadful, but necessary," Ramose answered. "Ankh-em-Maat, You-Who-live-in-Truth, you want to lift truth up to heaven and spread it throughout the earth; but men are weak, stupid and wicked. Be merciful to them, O King, don't ask too much of them. If you fix a ladder for them they will climb up, but if you say 'fly,' they will fly headlong into the pit. There is no getting on with mercy only: our mercy merely smooths the way for evildoers. We talk much and we do little, but believe an old man like me: nothing in the world is more wicked than empty good words, nothing more vile than empty noble words."
"Are you speaking of me, Ramose?" the king asked, with a kind smile.
"No, not of you, Uaenra, but of those who demand a miracle of you and do not stir a finger themselves. For twenty years I have served faithfully the king, your father, and you; I have never told lies and I am not going to now. Things are going ill in your whole kingdom, they are going very ill, O King! We say 'peace,' but there is war, we say 'love,' but there is hatred, we say 'light,' but there is darkness instead."
He got up heavily, fell at the king's feet and wept: "Have pity, sire; have mercy! Save yourself, save Egypt, take up the sword for right and justice. And if you do not want to do it, I don't want to see you ruin yourself and your kingdom any more. Let me retire, I am old and want a rest!"
The king bent down to him and lifting him up embraced and kissed him on the lips.
"No my friend, I will not let you go, and you would not go yourself—you are fond of me... Bear up a little longer, the time is getting short—I shall soon go myself," he whispered in his ear.
"Go where? Where?" Ramose asked with prophetic terror.
"Don't speak, don't ask, you will soon know everything!" the king answered and got up, showing that the Council was over.
L
Leaving the Council Chamber, they went to the Beggars' Court. Telling the courtiers to go on, the king lagged behind so as to remain alone with Dio. Passing through a number of rooms they came into a small hothouse garden where incense trees brought from the far-away Punt, the land of the gods, grew in pots of earthenware, like huge heather plants fine as cobweb, dropping amber rosin tears in the warm sunshine.
The king sank down on a bench and sat for some minutes in silence without moving. He seemed to have forgotten Dio's presence, but suddenly he looked at her and said:
"Shame! Shame! Shame! You have looked enough at my shame, go away!"
Dio knelt down before him.
"No, sire, I will not go away from you. As the Lord lives and as my soul lives, whither my king goes, to shame or to honour, there will his servant go also."
"You have seen me put to shame once, now you will see it again. Let us go," the king said, getting up.
They entered the Beggars Court.
Three times in the year—when the Nile overflowed, at seed time, and at harvest—the palace gates were opened to all; every beggar could go in freely, merely giving his name to Mahu, the chief of the guards. Tables with bread, meat and beer were placed in the courtyard: everyone could eat and drink his fill. It was there that the king received petitions and heard complaints.
During the first years of Akhnaton's reign these feasts were more frequent. "Let every ninth day of the month be a day for beggars," it said in the king's decree. Governors of provinces were on that day to distribute to the hungry corn from the king's granaries "for the cry of the needy has come up unto heaven and our heart is sore." "Amon is the god of the rich and Aton the god of the poor," the king preached. "Woe unto you, you sleek and rich who acquire house after house and field after field, so that there is no room on the earth left for others! Your hands are full of blood. Wash, cleanse yourselves, learn to do good. Save the oppressed, defend the orphan, protect the widow. Provide bread for the hungry, water for the thirsty, clothes for the naked, shelter for the homeless, smiles for the weeping. Undo the bondsmen's yoke and set the slaves free: then shall your light shine in darkness and your night shall be as midday!"
"Ankh-em-maat, You-Who-live-in-Truth," the king's disciples said to him, "you will make the poor equal with the rich, will efface the boundaries between fields as the river flood effaces them. You are a multitude of Niles, flooding the earth with the waters of inexhaustible love!"
The king had invented a dangerous game of throwing gold to the beggars like fire into straw. For many years Mahu, the chief of the guards, had saved the situation: collecting trustworthy people from among the palace servants he dressed them up as beggars and promised the well-behaved a fair share of the spoils and the unruly—the lash; and all had gone well. The king was short-sighted; from the High Place where he sat while throwing the gold money rings into the crowd, he could not recognize the faces below.
But someone informed against Mahu. The king was very angry and nearly dismissed him from his post; and next time Mahu had to admit real, not dressed up beggars. Then there was trouble: no sooner did the rain of gold begin to fall than people grew savage, a free fight began and a whole detachment of armed soldiers had difficulty in quieting the crowd. There were three killed and many wounded. The king fell ill with grief, gold rained no more, but food was still given away and petitions received.
The Beggars Court was a large quadrangle paved with slabs of alabaster and surrounded by two storeys of pillared arcades. At one end of it was the High Place—the king's tabernacle. A wide, gradually ascending staircase of alabaster led to it. The goddess, Nekhbet, the Falcon Sun-mother, with a white head and a red, scaly body, was soaring above the tabernacle holding a golden ring—the royal globe, in its claws. "As the mother comforts her children so will I comfort you," the king, son of the Sun, said to the sorrowful children of the earth.
"Down! down! down! the king comes! The god comes!" the runners cried and the whole crowd in the court prostrated themselves, crying out:
"Rejoice, Akhnaton, Joy of the Sun!"
Besides beggars and petitioners there were, in the crowd, many sick, blind, halt and lame, because people believed that everyone who touched the king's clothes or upon whom his shadow fell was healed.
"Defend us, save us, have mercy, O Lord!" they called to him, like the souls in hell to the god who came down to them.
The king ascended the steps to the tabernacle and sat on his throne. Dio stood behind him with the fan.
The guards admitted the petitioners through a narrow passage between two low walls of stone along the foot of the stairs. Two Nubian soldiers with naked swords guarded the door in the middle of the wall adjoining the staircase. Approaching this door every petitioner prostrated himself, sniffed the ground, placed a wooden or a clay tablet with his petition on the bottom step of the stairs, where there was a heap of them already, and passed on.
Everyone was admitted into the Court, but a special permit was required for entering the passage leading to the king's tabernacle. Mahu, the chief of the guards, watched over everything.
Suddenly there was a disturbance. A petitioner tried to get through the little door. The soldiers crossed their swords in front of him but he went straight ahead, stretching his arm towards the king and screaming as though he were being cut to pieces:
"Defend, save, have mercy, Joy of the Sun!"
Not daring to kill a man before the king, the soldiers lifted their swords and the man, flattening himself on the ground and wriggling like an eel, crept between them and began crawling up the stairs. Mahu rushed at him and seized him by the collar, but the man wriggled out and went on screaming and crawling towards the king.
Mahu made a sign to the lancers of the bodyguard who stood two in a row, along the stairs. They closed their ranks and lowered their spears. But the man crawled on.
At the same moment a frenzied scream was heard:
"Let him through! Let him through!"
The squealing, breathless scream like that of a woman in hysterics or of a child in a fit was so strange that Dio did not recognize the king's voice. With a distorted face he jumped up and stamped with both feet, as the little girls had done when they played blind man's buff to the sound of the threshing song. And the ringing cry went on:
"Let him through! Let him through!"
Mahu made another sign to the lancers and they lifted their spears, making way. The man crawled between them and advanced almost as far as the top landing where the king's tabernacle stood. He raised his head and Dio recognised the long red curls, the red goat's beard, the prominent ears, hooked nose, thick lips and burning eyes of Issachar, son of Hamuel.
The king was quiet now and, bending forward, looked straight into Issachar's eyes intently and, as it were, greedily, just as Issachar looked at him.
"Your servant has a secret message for you, sire!" Issachar whispered.
"Speak, I listen."
"No, for you, for you alone."
"Leave us alone," the king said to the dignitaries who stood on the landing.
All withdrew except Dio who hid behind the corner of the tabernacle.
Some three or four steps separated Issachar from the king. "I know who you are! I know!" he said, crawling up and looking straight into the king's eyes, with the same intent, eager look. "Sun's joy, Sun's Only Son, Akhnaton Uaenra, Son of the living God!"
Suddenly he jumped up and drew a knife from his belt. But before he had time to raise it Dio darted forward and seized him by the hand. He pushed her so that she fell on her knees but jumped up again, not letting go of his hand, and screening the king with her body. An unendurably burning chill pierced her shoulder. She heard shouts, saw people running and fell on the ground with the last thought: 'he will kill him!'
P
Paradise gardens of Maru-Aton—the Precincts of the Sun—were situated south of the city, where the rocks of the hilly desert were close to the river.
The sweet breath of the north wind could be felt even on the hottest days under the shade of the evergreen palms and cedars laden with the fragrance of incense. Each tree was planted in a hole dug in the sand, filled with the Nile black earth and surrounded by a ridge of bricks to prevent water running away.
Everywhere there were flower-beds, ponds, islands, bridges, arbours, chapels, summer houses of light transparent lattice-work magnificently painted and gilded like jewel boxes.
The king often came here to rest from the noise of the city in the stillness of paradise.
Dio spent three months here recovering from her wound. Issachar hit her with the knife just above her left breast. It was a dangerous wound: had the knife gone in deeper it would have touched the heart. During the first few days she suffered from fever and delirium.
She fancied she was lying on the funeral pyre as then, in the island of Crete after killing the god Bull; the sacrificial knife pierced her heart; the flames burnt her but through their heat she felt a heavenly freshness: Merira was the flame and Tammuzadad—the freshness.
Or she saw a fiery red goat grazing on the green meadows of paradise; the grass turned coal-black at his touch and red sparks flitted about it; and again—Tamu was the green grass and Merira—the sparks.
Or it was a rich old Sidonian merchant unfolding before her among the booths of the Knossos harbour magnificent stuff, red shot with green; winking slyly he praised his goods: "a true robe of Baal! A mine of silver per cubit is my last price." And, once more, the red shade was Merira, the green—Tammuzadad.
Or, the real Merira was taking her into the holy of holies of Aton's temple, as he really had done, three days before Issachar's attack on the king; she did not want to go in, knowing that no one but the king and the high priest were supposed to do so, but Merira reassured her, saying, "Yes, with me you may!" And, taking her by the hand, he led her in. In the dim light of sanctuary lamps the bas-relief of the Sphinx seemed a pale phantom: a lion's body and legs, human arms and head and an inexpressibly strange, fine, birdlike face—old, ancient, eternal. "If a man had suffered for a thousand years in hell and then came to earth again, he would have a face like that," Merira whispered in her ear. "Who is he?" she tried to recognize him and could not; and then, suddenly, she knew him and woke up with a cry of unearthly horror: 'Akhnaton'!
The king's physician, Pentu, treated her so cleverly that she was soon better. But the unwearying care of the queen did her more good perhaps than any medicine. The queen nursed Dio as though she had been her own daughter; she never left her, spent sleepless nights beside her though she herself was far from well: she had a cough and every evening there was an ominous red flush in her cheeks.
Each time that Dio saw the wan, beautiful face bending over her, the face of one who had also received a mortal wound, she felt like bursting into tears.
She learned from the queen what happened in the Beggars Court after Issachar had struck her and she fell down senseless.
"God has saved the king by a miracle!" everyone said. The assassin had raised his knife to strike him when some dreadful vision appeared before him; the knife dropped out of his hand and he fell at the king's feet. The king, thinking that Dio was killed, bent over her and embraced her with a cry so terrible that only then they understood how much he loved her. He would not leave her, but at last Pentu, the physician, assured him that Dio was alive and he got up, covered with her blood.
"You are now related by blood both to him and to me," the queen said, smiling through tears.
Some of the bodyguards rushed at Issachar, intending to kill him on the spot, but the others saved him at the orders of Mahu and Ramose; only these two had kept their presence of mind amidst the general confusion and remembered that, before putting the criminal to death, they ought to find out from him whether he had any accomplices. Issachar was taken to the prison and cross-examined, but he said very little; he did not give anyone away and only confessed that when he raised the knife to strike the king he had a vision. He would not say what the vision was and only muttered to himself something in the Jewish language about their King-Messiah and repeated senseless words "they shall look on Him whom they pierced." But he would not explain who was pierced and then grew silent altogether.
Torture was forbidden by royal decree in the holy province of Aton, yet considering the importance of the occasion they had recourse to it all the same. But neither antelope lashes nor hippopotamus scourges could untie Issachar's tongue. Mahu and Ramose had to give him up at last.
On that same night he was taken ill with something like brain fever—or pretended to be. Fearing that the criminal might die before the execution Ramose hastened to ask the king for a death penalty had been abolished in Aton's province. And when Ramose suggested that the criminal should be moved to some other province and executed there, the king smiled and said, shrugging his shoulders: "there is no deceiving God, my friend! This man wanted to kill me here—and here he must be judged."—"Not judged, but pardoned," Ramose understood and was indignant; he decided to put Issachar to death secretly by the hands of the gaolers. But he did not succeed in this either: the old gaolers were replaced by the new who had received strict orders to preserve the prisoner's life.
Issachar soon recovered from his real, or pretended, illness. The king who had had an epileptic fit after Issachar's attack on him and was still far from well, visited the prisoner and had a long peaceful talk almost alone with him: the guards stood at a distance; and a few days later it appeared that the prisoner had escaped.
The three elder princesses, Maki, Rita and Ankhi, helped the queen to nurse Dio; it was from them she heard of the city rumour about the king having himself helped Issachar to escape; it was said that the man had not gone far but was hiding somewhere in the town waiting, perhaps, for a new opportunity to take the king's life.
"The king has now shamed the faces of all his faithful servants because he loves those who hate him and hates those who love him!" Ramose cried when he heard of Issachar's escape, and he recalled the words of old Amenhotep the Wise, the tutor and namesake of the king's father: "if you want to please the gods, sire, and to cleanse Egypt from corruption, drive away all the Jews!"
"The darling Hippopotamus is right," Ankhi concluded—she called Ramose 'hippopotamus' because of his being so stout—and suddenly she clenched her fists and stamped almost crying with anger. "Shame, shame upon all of us that the vile Jew has been spared!"
Dio made no answer, but the thought flashed through her mind "we are related by blood now, but blood, both his own and other people's is like water to him!" And though she immediately felt ashamed of this thought a trace of it remained in her mind.
The king often came to Maru-Aton, but the queen seldom allowed him to see Dio, especially during the first, difficult days: she knew he was not clever with the sick. His conversations with Dio were strangely trivial.
"Why is it I keep talking of trifles?" he wondered one day, left alone with her. "Is it that I am growing stupid? You know, Dio, sometimes I am awfully stupid, ridiculously so. It must be because of my illness...."
He paused and then added, with the childishly timid, apologetic smile that always wrung her heart: "The worst of it is that I sometimes make the most sacred things foolish and ridiculous: like a thief stealing and desecrating that which is holy...."
"Why do you talk like this?" Dio cried, indignantly.
"There, forgive me, I won't.... What is it I was going to say? Oh, yes, about Issachar. It wasn't out of foolishness I pardoned him. He is a very good man...."
The queen came in and the conversation dropped. Dio was glad: her heart was throbbing as though Issachar's knife had once more been thrust into the wound.
By the month of Paonzu, March-April, she was almost well though still weak.
The first time she went into the garden she was surprised to see that the hot summer came straight after the winter: there was no trace of spring.
Strange longing came upon her during those hot days of delusive southern spring. "He who drinks water out of the Nile forgets his native land," the Egyptians said. She fancied she, too, had forgotten it. What was this longing then? "It's nothing," she tried to comfort herself, "it's simply foolishness, the result of illness, as with the king. It will pass off." But it did not.
In the gardens of Maru-Aton by the big pond opposite the women's quarters where Dio lived, a rare tree, hardly ever seen in Egypt, was planted—a silver birch, graceful and slender, like a girl of thirteen. It had been brought as a present to Princess Makitatona from Thracia, the land of Midnight. The princess was very fond of it; she looked after it herself, watered it and kept the ground around it well dug, covering it with fresh Nile black earth.
Dio, too, grew fond of the birch tree. Every day she watched its buds swell and sticky, greenish yellow leaves, crumpled like the face of a new-born baby, open out; she kissed them and, sniffing them with her eyes closed, fancied that every moment she would hear the call of the cuckoo and smell the melting snow and lilies of the valley as in her native woods at home on Mount Ida—smell the real spring of her own native land.
When flocks of cranes flew northwards, with their melancholy call, she stretched out her arms to them: would that she, too, were flying with them! Looking at the ever blue, lifeless sky she longed for the living clouds she knew so well. Putting her ear to a shell, she eagerly listened to its roar, that was like the roar of sea waves; she dreamt of the sea in her sleep and wept. One day she sniffed a new sponge Zenra had just bought and almost cried in reality.
She had a Cretan amethyst, a present from her mother, with a fine design upon it: bare willows in a flooded meadow all bent to one side by the wind, a tumble-down old fence with poles sticking out, the ripple of autumn rain on the water: everything dull and wretched and yet she would have given her very soul to see it all again. But she knew she would never see it, she would never go home—she would not want to herself. Was this, perhaps, why she longed for it so? Thus the radiant shades in paradise may be longing for this gloomy earth.
One early morning she sat by Maki's birch tree, listening to the wailing of the shepherd's pipe in the hills above Maru-Aton. She knew both the song and the singer: the song was about the dead god Tammuz and the singer was Engur, son of Nurdahan, a Babylonian shepherd, an old servant of Tammuzadad, brought by her to Egypt from the island of Crete.
The sounds of the pipe fell sadly and monotonously, sound after sound like tear after tear.
"The wail is raised for Tammuz far away,The mother-goat and the kid are slain,The mother-sheep and the lamb are slain,The wail is raised for the beloved Son."
Dio listened and it seemed to her that in this song the whole creation was weeping for the Son who is to come, but still tarries "how long, how long, O Lord?"
Nothing stirred and complete stillness reigned everywhere; only the air, in spite of the early hour, was simmering with heat over the sandy paths of the garden and flowing in streams like molten glass.
Suddenly a fan-like leaf at the top of a palm moved as though coming to life, then another and a third. There was a gust of wind, hot as from an oven; the sand on the paths rose up like smoke; the light grew dim; the sky turned dark and yellowish in an extraordinary, incredible way: it might be the end of the world; the whole garden rustled and groaned in the sudden whirlwind. It was dark as night.
Dio ran home. The wind almost knocked her off her feet, burned her face, blinded her with sand. Her breath failed her, her temples throbbed, her legs gave way under her. It was not twenty paces to the house but she felt she would fall exhausted before she got there.
"Make haste, make haste, dear!" Zenra shouted to her from the steps; seizing Dio by the hand she dragged her into the entry, and with difficulty shutting the door in the tearing wind, bolted it fast.
"What is it, nurse?" Dio asked.
"Sheheb, a plague of Set," the old woman answered in a whisper, putting the palms of both hands to her forehead as in prayer.
Sheheb, the south-east wind, blows from the Arabian desert. Fiery clouds of sand, thrown up by the whirlwind, fall slanting upon the ground with the noise of hail. The sun turns crimson, then dark like an ember. At midday lamps have to be lit. Neither men nor animals can breathe in the black stuffy darkness; plants perish. The whirlwind never lasts more than an hour; if it lasted longer everything would be burned up as with fire.
In the fiery darkness of the Sheheb Dio lay on her couch like one dead. The wind howled outside and the whole house shook as though it would fall. Someone seemed to be knocking and throwing handfuls of sand at the closed shutters, the flame of the lamp flickered in the wind that penetrated through the walls.
The door opened suddenly and someone came in.
"Zenra, is it you?" Dio called.
There was no answer. Somebody approached the couch. Dio recognized Tammuzadad and was not frightened or surprised, she seemed to have expected him. He bent over her and smiled; no, it was not Tamu, but Merira. She looked closely and % again it was Tamu and then Merira again; first it was one then another; they interchanged and merged into one another like the two colours of a shot material. He bent down still lower, looked into her eyes as though asking a question. She knew that if she answered 'no' with her eyes only he would go away; but she closed her eyes without speaking. He lay down beside her and embraced her. She lay like one dead.
When he had gone away she thought "I will go and hang myself." But she went on lying quite still. She may have dropped asleep and by the time she woke up the Sheheb was over, the sky was clear and the flame of the lamp looked pale. Zenra came in and Dio understood that it had been delirium.
After the Sheheb the weather freshened. The sweet breath of the north wind could be felt in the shade of the evergreen palms and cedars fragrant like a censer of incense. Only at times a smell of carrion came from the direction of Sheol and then Dio thought of her Sheheb nightmare. It was the last attack of her illness. The wound healed so completely that the only trace left of it was a pale pink scar on the dark skin, and Dio was quite well.
The king had once given her a beautiful scroll of papyrus, yellowish like old ivory, smoothed to perfection with wild boar's tooth, fine, strong, imperishable.
Papyrus was expensive and only used for the most important records; everything else was written on clay or wooden tablets, flat white stones or fragments of broken earthenware.
Dio had been wondering for some time what would be good enough to write on this scroll; at last she thought of something.
All the king's teaching was given by word of mouth; he never wrote down anything himself and did not allow others to do so. "To write," he used to say, "is to kill the word."
"It will all be lost, it will vanish like a footprint on the sand," Dio often thought sorrowfully, and at last she decided: "I will write down on the papyrus the king's teaching; I will not disobey him: no one living now shall see the scroll; but when I have finished writing I will bury it in the ground; perhaps in ages to come men will discover it and read it."
She carried out her plan.
In secret from all she worked night after night, sitting on the floor in front of a low desk with a sloping board for the papyrus, tracing upon it, with the sharpened end of a reed, close columns of hieroglyphics, abbreviated into shorthand, and covering each column with cedar varnish which made the writing indelible.
Words of wisdom of King Akhnaton Uaenra Neferheperura—Sun's joy, Sun's beautiful essence, Sun's only Son—heard and written down by Dio, daughter of Aridoel, a Cretan, priestess of the Great Mother.
The King says:
"Aton, the face of god, the disc of the sun, is the visible image of the invisible God. To reveal to men the hidden one is everything.
"My grandfather, Prince Tutmose, was hunting once in the desert of the Pyramids; he was tired, lay down and dropped asleep at the foot of the great Sphinx which, in those days, was buried in the sands. The Sphinx appeared to him in a dream and said "I am your father, Aton; I will make you king if you dig me out of the sands." The prince did so, and I am doing so, too: I dig the living God out of the dead sands—dead hearts."
The King says:
"There are three substances in God: Zatut—Rays, Neferu—Beauty,—Merita—Love; the Disc of the Sun, Light and Warmth; Father, Son, Mother."
"The symbol of Aton, the disc of the sun with three rays like hands, stretched downwards is clear to all men—to the wise and to the children."
"The remedy from death is not ointments for the dead, balsam, salt, resin or saltpetre, but mercy and love. Have mercy upon one another, O people, have mercy upon one another and you shall never see death!"
The King said to the malefactor who attempted his life, Issachar the Israelite: "your God sacrifices all to Himself and mine sacrifices Himself for all."
The King says:
"The way they break granite in the quarries of Egypt is this: they make a hole in the stone, drive a wooden wedge into it, moisten it with water and the wood, as it swells out, breaks the stone. I, too, am such a wedge."
"The Egyptians have an image of Osiris-Set, god-devil, with two heads on one body, as it were, twins grown together. I want to cut them in two."
"The deadness of Egypt is the perfect equilibrium of the scales. I want to disturb it."
"How little I have done! I have lifted the coffin-lid over Egypt and I know, when I am gone, the lid will be shut down again. But the signal has been given to future ages!"
"When I was about eight I saw one day the soldiers piling up before the King, my father, the cut-off hands of enemies killed in battle, and I fainted with the smell of corruption. When I think of war I always recall this smell."
"On the wall of the Charuk palace, near Thebes, where I spent my childhood, there was a mural painting of a naval battle between the Cretans and the Egyptians; the enemies' ships were going down, the men drowning and the Egyptians were stretching out to them poles, sticks, oars, saving their enemies. I remember someone laughed looking at the painting: 'One wouldn't find such fools anywhere except in Egypt!' I did not know what to answer and perhaps I do not know now, but I am glad to be living in the land of such fools!"
"The greatest of the kings of Egypt, Amenemhet, had it written on his tomb:
In my reign men lived in peace and mercyArrows and swords lay idle in my reign."
"The god rejoices when he goes into battle and sees blood" is said in the inscription of King Tutmose the Third, the Conqueror, to the god Amon. Amon is the god of war, Aton the god of peace. One must choose between them. I have chosen."
"There will be war so long as there are many peoples and many gods; but when there is one God and one mankind, there will be peace."
"We Egyptians despise the Jews, but maybe they know more about the Son than we do: we say about Him 'He was' and they say He is to come.'"
The king said to me alone and told me not to repeat it to anyone:
"I am the joy of the Sun, Akhnaton? No, not joy as yet, but sorrow; not the light, but the shadow of the sun that is to rise—the Son!"
Dio wrote down many other words of the king in her scroll and she finished with the hymn to Aton:
The Song of King Akhnaton Uaenra Neferheperura to Aton, the living and only God.
If my scroll is ever found by you, men of the ages to come, pray for me in gratitude for having preserved this song for you, the sweetest of all the songs of the Lord, that at the everlasting supper I may eat bread with my beloved King Akhnaton, the messenger of the rising sun—the Son.
Glorious is thy rising in the eastLord and giver of life, Aton!When thou risest in the skyThou fillest the earth with thy beauty.Thy rays embrace all created things,Thou hast carried them all away captive.Thou bindest them by thy love.Thou art far but thy rays are on earth,Thou art on high, thy footprints are the day.When thou settest in the westMen lie in the darkness like the dead.Their heads are wrapped up, their nostrils stoppedStolen are all their things that are under their headsWhile they know it not.Lions come forth from their dens,Serpents creep from out their holes:The Creator has gone to rest and the world is dumb.
Thou risest and bright is the earthThou sendest forth thy rays and the darkness flees.Men rise, bathe their limbs, take their clothing,Their arms are uplifted in prayer.
And in all the world they do their work.All cattle graze in pastures green,All plants are growing in the fields,The birds are flying over their nests,And lift their wings like hands in prayer.Lambs leap and dance upon their feet,All winged things fly gaily round.They all live in thy life, O Lord!
The boats sail up and down the river,Every highway is open because thou hast dawned.The fish in the river leap up before theeAnd thy rays are in the midst of the great sea.
Thou createst the man-child in woman,And makest the seed in man,Givest life to the child in its mother's womb,Soothing it that it may not weepEre its own mother can soothe it.
When the chicken cries in the egg-shell,Thou givest it breath to preserve it aliveAnd the strength to break the shell.It comes forth from the egg and staggers,But with its voice it calls to thee.How manifold are thy works, O Lord!They are hidden from us, Thou only God whose power noother possesses!Thou didst create the earth according to thy desire,While thou wast alone in eternity,Thou didst create man and the beasts of the field,All the creatures that are upon the earth,And fly with their wings on high.
Thou didst create Syria, Nubia and Egypt,Setting every man in his place.Giving him all that he needs,His measure of food and his measure of days.Their tongues are diverse in speech,Their forms are diverse and their skins,For Thou, divider, hast divided the peoples.
Thou makest the Nile in the nether worldTo fill with goods thy people here;Thou hast set a Nile up in the sky,That its waters may fall down in floods,Giving drink to wild beasts on the hills,And refreshing the fields and the meadows.How excellent are thy works, O Lord!The Nile in heaven is for the strangers,And the Nile from the nether world is for Egypt.
Thou feedest each plant as thine own child,Thou makest the seasons for all thy creatures:The winter to bring them coolnessAnd the summer to bring them heat.
Thou didst create the distant heavensIn order to behold all that Thou didst make.Thou comest, thou goest, thou comest backAnd Greatest out of thyself, the Only One,Thousands upon thousands of forms:Cities, towns and villagesOn highways and on rivers.All eyes see thy eternal sun.When thou hast risen they live, when thou settest they die,When thou didst establish the earthThou didst reveal thy will to me,Thy Son, Akhnaton, who lives for ever and proceeds from thee,And to thy beloved daughter,
Nefertiti, the delight of the Sun's delights.Who flourishes for ever and ever.Thou, Father, art in my heartAnd there's no other that knows thee,Only I know thee, thy son,Akhnaton Uaenra,Joy of the Sun, Sun's only son!"
When she had finished writing, Dio put the scroll inside an earthenware vessel, sealed it with a leaden seal with the sun disc of Aton and, as soon as it was dark, took a spade and went to Maki's birch tree by the big pond in the garden.
The fiery whirlwind of Sheheb had withered the tree, the blackened leaves were rolled up into little tubes, but the roots were alive. Maki dug it out to move it to a new hole with fresh earth in it, but she probably had not had time to finish her work before night: the tree lay near the hole.
Dio dug the hole deeper, put the earthenware pot into it, covered it with earth and levelled it.
A white rose was blooming close by in a flowerbed by the pond. In the stillness of the April night glowworms flitted about like sparks. One of them burrowed its way into the rose, and the flower seemed to have a heart of fire.
Dio went up to it, kissed it and thought:
"If some day men read my writing, they will connect Akhnaton with Dio. I shall be in him as this flame is in the flower."