Chapter X: Part IV: The Shadow of the One to Come (1)

I

Saakera came up to Dio, his face so distorted that she hardly knew him.

"The king is waiting for you, go to him," he said, and was about to go when she stopped him.

"What has happened, prince?"

"He will tell you himself, go to him."

"I am keeping watch; I must wait till I am relieved."

"Never mind. I will take your place."

Dio ran up the stairs to the flat roof of Aton's temple.

The day was just dawning. The sky seemed empty and glassy like the open eye of a corpse. The waters of the river looked leaden. The earth was under the spell of sleep. The town below appeared dead. It was the hour when men's sleep is like death as is said in the hymn to Aton:

Men sleep in darkness like the dead,
Their heads are wrapped up, their nostrils stopped,
Stolen are all their things that are under their heads,
While they know it not.
Every lion comes forth from his den,
All serpents creep out of their holes,
The creator has gone to rest and the world is silent.

The white walls of the temple were dull-green as though under water. All was dead; only on the great altar of the Sun a perpetual fire was burning and the sun disc of Aton above it--the highest point of the whole huge edifice--glowed with a dull-red glow as though a ray of an invisible sun were reflected in it.

Dio saw the king in the distance, but she did not recognise him at once. He was sitting on the altar steps in a curiously cramped attitude, with his chin resting against his knees and his face buried in his hands. "Sitting on their heels in the dust," she recalled the refrain of the Babylonian song about the dead in the underworld, mournful as the howling of the night wind. He probably did not hear her step, for he did not stir. She did not dare to call him, thinking he was asleep.

Suddenly he raised his head and looked at her in a way that made her heart stand still.

"Ah, Dio! Have you seen Saakera?"

"Yes."

"Has he told you what I wanted to say to you?"

"No."

"Sit down."

She sat down beside him. He took her hand, kissed the palm of it and smiled in a way that wrung her heart again.

"There, now I have forgotten. I remember what I wanted to say, but I can't think how to say it. It must be the fit that has made me so forgetful."

She understood he was referring to the epileptic fit he had had recently.

He stretched himself so that the knuckles of his fingers cracked, and yawned loudly. Two deep wrinkles formed round his mouth. He looked like the ancient Sphinx with the face of Akhnaton.

"Do you remember my telling you, Dio, that my kingdom was coming to an end? Well, it has come to an end. I want to go away."

"How go away? Where?"

"Anywhere, so long as I go away from here, escape out of this prison.... But why do you ask? You know it all better than I do."

"But how are you to go? Will they let you?"

"No one is to know, except you and Saakera. You two will help me. He has already promised."

"Promised what?"

"I will tell you. It was he who killed Maki; she had the child by him. He has just confessed it. He is so wretched that he wants to kill himself and drink the remainder of the poison out of Merira's ring, my present to him. But I have thought of a worse punishment for him: he is to be king when I go away."

"But can he do it?"

"He will be no worse than I am. And it won't be for long: he will hand over the power to Horemheb, the Viceroy of the North. Horemheb refuses to be king so long as I live, but I expect he will agree when I am dead."

"How, when you are dead?"

"When I go away I shall be dead to all. No one will know that I have gone, and those who hear of it will not believe it but will think me dead."

Dio knew that Horemheb was an enemy of Aton's faith. Would the king ruin the work of his whole life by putting him into power? She wanted to ask the question, but felt she had better not.

"This is how Saakera is going to help me," the king went on. "We shall set out for Memphis together to see Horemheb and on the way I shall go ashore somewhere in the night--and that will be the last they will see of me."

"Will you go alone?"

"Yes. I will take off my royal dress, put on the clothes of a nab priest--you know, those that walk about the high roads collecting money for the temples, and go off with a staff and wallet."

"What for? What will you do?"

"What I have done all my life. Do you remember, Iserker said 'Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight'? Well, I shall be preparing it. I will leave the great and go to the small, leave the first and go to the last; the first have not heard me--perhaps the last will...."

He was saying extraordinary things in a dull, dreary way. He kept yawning; perhaps those who 'sit in the dust on their heels in the underworld' yawn like that, too.

"Well, why are you silent? Do you think I am mad?"

"No, it isn't that...."

"Speak, don't be afraid."

"I think .... forgive me, sire, but all you kings are like babies: you don't know what poor, hard life is like. As soon as you have gone you will perish senselessly--of thirst, of hunger, from a wild beast, or a brigand's knife. You will be like a naked child on naked earth...."

"'Be merciful to yourself, Uaenra!' Is that it? Do you remember who said it? My friend, Merira. No, Dio, my Father will not leave me. He who preserves worms and midges of the air will not forsake a man. And what is more terrible--a robber's knife or Tuta's flattery, thirst in the desert or Merira's poison? Isn't this so, Dio the prophetess?"

"It is. But I shall say, like Merira again: can't a king do more good than a beggar?"

He laughed.

"No, you are not Merira. You don't believe what you are saying. I have reigned for many years and much good I have done! Ramose is right: nothing is more vile than empty noble words, nothing more wicked than empty good words. I thought I could make people happy, bring heaven down to earth--and this is the happiness I have bestowed upon them: blood is being shed everywhere between the Delta and the Waterfalls, it is hell upon earth. I wanted to efface the boundaries of the fields, to make the poor equal with the rich, and what has happened is that the whole of Egypt is like a dirty Jews' village where people live and die like cattle in perfect equality! And it is all done by the decree of the king Who-lives-in-Truth--Ankh-em-Maat--a fine name! Iserker wanted to stab me, Merira to poison me, but isn't it doing me too much honour? To spit into the liar's face would be punishment enough.... Do you ever have shameful dreams, Dio, so ridiculous that one could die of laughter?"

"Yes, I know."

"Ah, so you have them, too.... Well, I have had such a dream--I nearly died of laughter. To laugh at oneself is death. 'I am He,' is what I laugh at, what is killing me. Laughter will kill me one day like epilepsy.... Dio, Dio, if you love me, save me, help me!"

"How can I help you?"

"Stay with her!"

She understood: with the queen.

"Does she know?"

"No."

"How then will you .... deceive her?"

"I can't deceive her--she will find out. But if at least it weren't just now, after Maki's death--one wound on the top of another.... Later on, when everything is over, you will tell her, you alone will know how to tell her so that she should forgive me...."

"No, she won't forgive, and if she does...."

"I know, you need not tell me! Oh, it would be better if she didn't forgive me! But she is sure to forgive.... What am I to do, what am I to do? To stay is to kill myself: to go away is to kill her, to trample upon her heart? ... Help me, stay with her. Perhaps you will save her. Remember, if she dies I shall die, too."

"You ask me for a miracle?"

"Yes, do a miracle--a miracle of love. You do love her, don't you? Love her to the end. Relieve me of my burden and take it upon yourself. Will you?"

"I will."

She was silent for a while and then asked:

"You will go away and I shall never see you again?"

"Yes, you will; I will call you as soon as I can and we will go to Him together!"

He spoke no more, and raising his knees as before put his chin on them and wept, covering his face with his hands.

She put her arm round his head and pressed it to her bosom, stroking it gently with the other hand.

Shiha, the eunuch, was right: the king did not know how to cry: he swallowed his tears convulsively, choked, trembled as in a shivering fit. But Dio's caress gradually calmed him, and he only shuddered from time to time with a sob like a child tired of crying.

"Perhaps you are right," he began again, "and I shall perish senselessly. Saakera wants to kill himself; perhaps I do also.... Dio, my sister, oh if you only could...."

"What is it? Tell me."

"If you could only tell me whether I ought to go away?"

Dio knew that the right answer was "no one but yourself can tell." But she also knew that saying this would mean abandoning him--the naked child upon the naked earth.

She pressed his head to her bosom and said:

"You ought."

The trumpets down below played the hymn to Aton:

"Glorious is Thy rising in the East
Lord and giver of life, Aton!"

The dead sky revived and turned rosy. A red ember blazed up in the misty gorge of the Arabian mountains and the first ray of the sun glittered on Aton's disc.

The king rose, took Dio by the hand and led her up the sloping approach to the great altar of the Sun. He turned to the East, raised his arms and said:

"I come to glorify thy rays, living Aton..."

But his voice failed him: he suddenly felt that he could no longer pray to Aton.

He fell on his knees and cried:

"My God, my God, have mercy upon me, a sinner! In thee have I put my trust, let me never be ashamed...."

And with a sob he beat his head against the flagstones:

"Let me never, never be ashamed!"

On the twenty-ninth day of the month of Hoyak, December, on the thirteenth anniversary of the foundation of the City of the Sun and the day of Aton's nativity, the king set out on his journey.

Everyone wondered at his breaking his oath not to leave the domain of Aton, but they did not wonder very much; it was the privilege of a king and a god to release himself from his vows, and besides, many had noticed that his fervour for the new faith had begun to cool. The decree prohibiting the worship of the gods had never been declared after all, and the day of departure was fixed on the very day of the great festival, as though on purpose to cancel it.

The king made no secret of his journey: he was going to Memphis to see Horemheb, the Viceroy of the North, to persuade him to take Saakera's place as heir to the throne. Sensible people rejoiced: they did not want Saakera for king; there was nothing to be proud of in being ruled by a king who had his ears boxed by his Ethiopian concubine; Horemheb, the husband of the queen's sister, Nezemmut, a direct descendant of the great king Tutmose the Third, had every right to reign; the gods themselves had commanded him to do so. "The gods rocked thy cradle," as it said in the song of Amon's priests. He was a faithful servant of the king and was not implicated in any court or priestly intrigue; but he had not been false to the faith of his fathers, had not worshipped the new god, and the enemies of Aton hoped he would destroy the work of the apostate king and restore the old gods.

Everyone rejoiced except the queen. The parting from her husband frightened her; she had never been parted from him during the fifteen years of their married life. Did she suspect anything? If she did she showed no sign of it, but submitted without a murmur. She did not ask him to take her with him--she knew he would not; and besides she could not leave Rita, who was ill. And she herself was not well: she had a racking cough, was feverish at night and there was an ominous flush in her cheeks.

The king had not been seen so joyful for years as he was on the day of his departure. Only when he took leave of the queen a shadow passed over his face; but he looked at Dio and was happy again.

The crowd on the quay was joyful, too. When the king's ship set sail, a white falcon, the bird of Horus, circled over it, foretelling a happy journey.

The people stood for some time watching the three ships, magnificently painted and gilded--marvels of gold, purple, and azure, half birds, half flowers--glide along the white water: after the overflow the Nile turns white 'like the milk of Isis.'

Memphis was four hundred _aters_ from the City of the Sun, down the river.

The further the king went the happier he was, as though he had, indeed, escaped from prison. It made him happy that the yellow streak of the dead sands and the black of fertile earth stretched on either side of the river simply, quietly and monotonously: life and death side by side in eternal union, eternal peace; that the slow oxen were drawing deep furrows in rich earth and the bright green crops already showed here and there, and the monotonous singing of the ploughman echoed far in the stillness of the fields.

A deserted temple of the Sun, built a thousand years before Akhnaton, stood at the edge of the desert in the middle of a great pyramid cemetery, within four or five hours' journey from Memphis down the river.

A full moon, huge and red-hot, was rising beyond the Arabian Mountains when the king's ship stopped by the temple. The king, Saakera and two priests, with sacred utensils, the bread of offering, wine for libations and incense, came ashore.

The only priest and guardian of the temple, an old man of a hundred years, met them and wept when he heard that the king wanted to offer a sacrifice: the last person to visit the temple was king Tutmose the Fourth, Akhnaton's grandfather.

They walked from the harbour to the temple down a long covered passage. On the large flat roof of the temple a huge obelisk, the Sun stone, Ben-ben, stood on a pyramid-shaped base, facing an altar made of five huge blocks of alabaster, exactly like the one in the City of the Sun, on the roof of Aton's temple.

The king burned incense, made the libation and prayed in silence for a few minutes. Then he sent everyone away and walked with Saakera to the secret gates that led into the desert. He gave him a scroll of papyrus--his resignation from the throne, and a letter to Horemheb, in which he implored him to save Egypt and accept the crown.

When Saakera had sworn that all should be done, the king embraced and kissed him on the mouth and, taking off his royal tiara, with a golden snake of the sun, Uta, over the forehead, put it on Saakera's head; he took off all his royal robes, put on the dress of a wandering priest, _uab_, slung a wallet over his shoulder, took a staff in his hand and walked out of the gate.

The full, dazzlingly bright moon stood high in the starless sky. Coal-black shadows fell upon the white sand that sparkled like snow with sapphire sparks, and the black triangles of the pyramids stood out against the sky on the distant horizon.

Saakera watched the king go. He walked as though he had been a wanderer all his life, with a light quick step, along a faint path--a jackals' track--to the neighbouring fishing village, Ptah-Sokkaris, consisting of some two dozen mud huts.

His figure grew smaller as he walked away; he had been the size of an animal, now he was the size of a bird, a mouse, an ant, a point, and finally he disappeared, melted away in the fire of the moon.

"Strange!" Saakera thought, unconscious of the tears that were trickling down his face. "There is no God, I know there isn't, then why...?"

He broke off and started as though someone else had finished for him:

"There is God, there is! It is because there is God that he has gone away!"

II

The pyramid cemetery of the ancient kings stretched along the edge of the desert from Memphis to Heliopolis--a three days' journey.

A great battle of men with death had once been fought here; death conquered, men ran away, the field became a desert; only the pyramids remained like fortresses, besieged but not taken.

In the very middle of the cemetery, in the plain of Rostia, the three largest pyramids stood--those of Menkaur, Hafra and Cheops. The many hundred-weight blocks of stone over the king's tomb within were packed so close together that a needle could not be thrust between them; outside, the mirror-like facing of sandstone was so perfect that the pyramids looked like huge crystals. The eternal triangles, rising from the earth to one point in the sky, proclaimed to men the mystery of Three: "I began to be as one God, but three Gods were within me."

All the other tombs had been destroyed; the royal mummies had been thrown out and lay about in the sand, turning to dust under the feet of the passers-by. Bats, hyenas and jackals lived in the tombs. Thieves had plundered them for a thousand years, but had not yet succeeded in clearing everything away.

As the blind singers sang at feasts:

"I have heard of what befell my forefathers:
The walls of their tombs are destroyed,
Their coffins are empty like coffins of beggars,
Forsaken by everyone on earth.
Their dwelling-place is no more.
It is as though they had never been.

In a wild rock close by that looked like a lion at rest, the great Sphinx was carved, no one knew by whom and when. Its face was the first human face sculptured in stone. Its names were Ra-Harmahu--the Sun-at-the-edge-of-the-horizon; Khu-Zeshep--Shining Terror, and Kheper--Rising from the Dead.

Perpetually buried by the sand, it lifted its head from under it with a mysterious smile on the flat lips, to see the first ray of the rising sun; and there was the dazzling terror of death and resurrection in its eyes of stone.

Not far from the Sphinx stood a temple built also no one knew when and by whom. The square pillars and rafters of such enormous stones that one could hardly believe them to have been carved by human hands were of black granite; all was smooth, bare and divinely simple.

The temple had not been destroyed and, indeed, there was nothing to destroy in it; but it had fallen into decay like everything around it. The high road from Memphis to Heliopolis went past it and part of the temple had been turned into an inn. The alabaster floors were dirty and the mirror-like granite had turned dull with the smoke of kitchen fires.

One day towards the end of winter shepherds were keeping the night watch in the field of Rostia; the tombs in the hills close by served as cattle sheds. They lighted a bonfire of manure bricks and straw right at the foot of the Sphinx. The night was cold; the tall grass was white with hoar frost.

Wayfarers who had not been able to obtain shelter at the inn settled by the shepherds' bonfire. Issachar was among them. When King Akhnaton had left the City of the Sun for Memphis, he went after him and, not finding him there, set out in search of him. Issachar's uncle, the merchant Ahiram, who was going with his young daughter-in-law, Tabitha, to the town of Tanis on business, was there, too, and so was Yubra, the former slave of Khnumhotep; wounded in the Nut-Amon rising, he had only just recovered after a long illness.

"Blessed is He who cometh in the name of the Lord," Yubra was saying. "He shall come down like rain upon the freshly cut meadow, like dew upon parched-up earth. He shall save the souls of the humble and the oppressor he shall lay low...."

"Of whom are you speaking?" asked Merik, a shepherd, with a kind and intelligent face somewhat like that of King Hafra, the pyramid builder, whose effigies stood in the temple by the inn. "Do you mean the new prophet?"

"No, the One of Whom the prophet speaks."

"Prophets prophesy, magpies chatter and it makes no difference to us one way or another," grunted Mermose, a sickly-looking man with a sarcastic smile on his thin lips, a saltworker from the Miuer lakes.

"Very true! Prophets are no use to poor people," Anupu, an old peasant, confirmed. Rough and shaggy he looked like a tree-stump dug out of the ground and covered with earth. He had been silent, eating bread soaked in water and wrapping his sheepskin closer round him, but suddenly he grew lively and began talking as though he had recalled something.

"I have dragged the plough myself for forty years--never had any money to buy oxen; and you know how little land we have. And the summer before last part of the bank was washed away during the overflow and a quarter of my field had fallen into the river and the house very nearly went, too. Tax collectors came: 'You are in great arrears, Anupu,' they said, 'sixty bushels of wheat, sixty of spelt and a hundred and seventy of barley.' 'I have nothing at all,' I said, 'have patience with me, fathers!' 'No,' they said, 'the treasury cannot wait, lie down.' And one made a sign behind the other's back to give him a bribe, but I had nothing to do it with. So they laid me out and gave me a flogging, and to my wife, too--she had stood up for me and abused them. And they sent me to clean the canals in Set's salt marshes during the very fierce heat. I had to stand up to my knees in water, devoured by midges, shaking with fever. I still get a shivering fit when the night comes on. And a neighbour told me the other day that my wife is dead, my house has tumbled down, my two sons have been taken for the army, and my daughter has been led astray by some Midian merchants. I have nothing now to return to.... And so I say, what is the use of prophets to me?"

Merik added some straw to the bonfire. The flames leapt up, lighting the face of the Sphinx in the black starry sky. Tabitha, with a baby in her arms, was sleeping between the Sphinx's lion paws.

Tabitha means 'gazelle.' She had the eyes of a gazelle, the long, dark eyelashes of a child, and such a smile that Merik's son User, a young man with a sad and girlishly charming face, wanted to cry with happiness at the sight of her. He looked at her as though he were praying: he fancied that she was Mother Isis with the baby Horus and that the Shining Terror fixed its stony eyes into the starlit darkness merely so that it might watch over the Mother and the Babe.

"It goes ill with peasants, but soldiers are no better off," said a thin little old man, rather like a grasshopper--a retired centurion, Aziri. "A soldier climbs up the hills carrying burdens like a donkey, drinks water out of pools like a dog; when he sees the enemy he trembles like a bird in a net; and when he comes home he is covered with wounds, cankered with illness, like an old wormeaten tree; he cannot work and is ashamed to beg--he may as well lie down and die."

He did not say it, but all understood "prophets are no use to a soldier."

"Come, friends, don't be so gloomy," Merik said, looking round at them all with a serene smile. "I have lived in the world for forty years, I have seen much evil, but also a great deal of good. One can't say of a man's life that it is quite good, nor that it is quite bad either; it's all mixed up; to-day is bad, to-morrow will be better."

"No, it won't be better," Mermose retorted. "It is bad now but it will be worse. It is written in the ancient scrolls: 'the Lord will give men a tremulous heart, their eyes shall melt away, their souls shall pine and they shall tremble night and day; in the day they shall say, 'oh, if it were night!' and at night 'oh, if it were day!' 'The sky over their head shall be brass and the earth under their feet shall be iron and dust shall fall upon them till they all perish.'"

"No, they will not perish: the Saviour will come and save the perishing," Yubra said, simply and quietly.

"How will he save them, by the sword or by the word?" asked a puny little man, with a spotty face, a sharp red little nose and squinting, shifty eyes. He was a scribe, dismissed from the service, Herihor or Heri, a quarrelsome, debauched and backbiting man, as one could see from his face.

"And what do you think?" Yubra answered evasively: he was afraid of Heri who was said to be a spy.

Heri did not answer at once; he had a pull at his flask and then said, with a wink:

"The sword. Or, if there is no sword at hand, with an axe or a stick. Until we get the rich by the throat and give their fat bellies a shake, they won't give back what they have plundered.... But it's enough babbling, we must act!"

"How?"

"Raise a cry throughout the world, 'rise up, rebel, paupers, kill, plunder, burn!' A great fire will be kindled and a thing that has never been will happen; beggars will be as gods and then the earth will turn upside down like a potter's wheel!"

"You should not say such things, my son!" Ahiram stopped him. "You must not rail against the rulers even in your thoughts, nor speak evil against the rich in your own chamber, for a bird of the air may carry your words."

"A-ah, you are afraid? Well, then it's no use talking," Heri laughed and he drained the last drop out of his flask.

"But who are you, where do you come from?" Yubra asked with sudden alarm.

"And who are you and your prophet? Tramps, I expect, runaway slaves, rogues, game for the gallows, we have seen enough of such, ugh!"

He paused, looking round at them all with sleepy but still cunning eyes, and then spoke amiably again.

"Come, dear old man, don't be cross, let us kiss! Ah, mates, I am sorry for you! You are poor, ignorant people, anyone can injure you and there's no one to stand up for you. And I am so fond of poor people--I am ready to lay down my life for them!"

And suddenly bending down to Yubra, he whispered in his ear: "Do you know Kiki the Noseless? He is a man of sense, cleverer than any prophet. They say he is stirring things up again on the Upper Nile! That's the man to join! Shall I take you to him?"

Yubra said nothing, and drew back. All were silent, as though they really were afraid to speak.

Far away in the desert the hungry roar of a lion was heard suddenly, and the dogs by the sheep-fold barked and howled frantically.

Merik rose and thanking his guests for their conversation with stately courtesy typical of the men of the desert, went with two shepherds on his watch round. The others began to settle down for the night on the warm sand by the bonfire, wrapping themselves in furs and cloaks.

Issachar went up to Yubra and said, taking him aside:

"May I see the prophet?"

"Why not? Everyone will see him to-morrow."

Isaachar paused and, looking round to see if anyone was listening, asked in a whisper:

"Who is he, where does he come from?"

"A _uab_ priest, but where he comes from I do not know."

"You really don't know or don't want to tell me?"

"No, I really don't know."

"And what is his name?"

"Neser-Bata."

Issachar knew that Bata was one of the names of Osiris: the Soul of Bread, of God's flesh broken and eaten by men; and Neser meant offspring, Son. Neser Bata--Son of Osiris, second Osiris.

"Are you an Israelite?" Yubra asked.

"Yes."

"Your Moses is a great prophet, but this one is greater than he."

"Only one Man on earth will be greater than Moses--do you know Who?"

"I know."

Issachar looked at Yubra as though wishing to ask something else.

"You will see for yourself and know," Yubra said in answer to that silent question, and walked away.

Issachar lay down by the bonfire, wrapping his cloak round him, but could not go to sleep for thinking about the prophet. There was something in Yubra's words and reservations that suggested the mysterious smile of Khu-Zeshep, the Shining Terror. He dropped asleep just before daybreak; he vaguely heard the distant roar of the lion and remembered the voice crying in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make His paths straight.'

Merik's son, too, could not go to sleep that night: he kept looking as though in prayer at the mother with the child asleep between the lion paws of the Sphinx.

Tabitha's ass dozed, hanging its head. The flame of the dying fire seemed to stand like a fine and sharp sword in the still air. From the low-lying meadows down by the river came the melancholy call of the hoopoo. The stars grew dim and twinkled like flames blown out by the wind. The sky turned white and rosy and there glowed in it a star, pure and dazzling like the sun. A red-hot ember blazed up in the misty gorge of the Arabian Mountains and the first ray of the sun lighted the Sphinx's face.

The baby woke up and cried. The mother gave him the breast. Then she held him up, showing him the sun. The boy laughed and stretched out his arms as though he would seize the sun.

The same mystery was in the smile of the baby as in the smile of the Sphinx. User fell on his face and worshipped Baby Horus--the Shining Terror.

Issachar woke up when the sun had already risen above the palm trees. He jumped up, afraid of having slept too late and missed the prophet.

Some people were hurrying past him.

"Where are you going?" he asked them.

"To Ieket-Chufu, to hear the prophet," they answered.

He followed them. Walking ankle-deep in sand along a trade between sharp, projecting rocks, they climbed on to the flat top of the hill Ieket-Chufu, facing the Great Pyramid of the same name. In the shadow the grass was still white with hoar-frost, but in the sun it had melted and fell in drops clear and bright as tears.

The expanse seen from the top of the hill was boundless: sands, yellow as the lion's hair, stretching to the edge of the horizon; bluish-green meadows and palm groves by the river; golden points of the Heliopolis obelisks, sparkling against the bare parched rocks of the Arabian hills purple as amethyst and yellow as topaz; and close by, opposite the hill, the huge pale phantom of Cheops' pyramid glimmering in the rosy sunlit mist. The perfect triangles rising from the earth to one point in the sky proclaimed to men the mystery of Three: "I began to be as one God but three Gods were in me."

The people crowding on the flat top of the hill surrounded the prophet so closely that Issachar could not squeeze his way to him. The lame, the halt, the dumb, the blind were among the crowd, as well as lepers, paralytics and men possessed by the devil. Neser-Bata laid his hands upon them with prayer and they were healed. Then he stood on a hillock in the middle of the plateau. The sun rising behind him surrounded the prophet with dazzling brilliance that seemed to come from his body. Issachar could not see his face. "Thy flesh is the flesh of the Sun; thy limbs are beautiful rays. In truth thou dost proceed from the Sun as the child from its mother's womb," he recalled the words of the service to Aton.

The prophet's voice was heard and the crowd grew so still that one could hear the drops of melting hoar-frost falling to the ground. The sound of that voice was so familiar that Issachar's heart throbbed with an incredible presentiment. He looked down: he was afraid of seeing and recognizing him.

Neser-Bata was speaking of the second Osiris, of the Son who was to come, of Him Whom the prophets of Israel called the Messiah.

Issachar raised his eyes, saw and recognized: "it is he!" and covered his face with his hands as though blinded by the sun. Yet he did not believe his eyes and looked once more, but by that time the prophet had gone down from the hillock and could not be seen for the crowd.

Issachar went up to Yubra and said:

"I want to speak to Neser-Bata."

"Go down to Khu-Zeshep, he will walk past there," Yubra answered.

Issachar walked down the hill and sat down on the sand at the foot of the Sphinx.

The sun was rising and the black shadow of the great pyramid slowly moved along the white sand like the shadow on a sundial measuring out minutes and ages, the passage of time and eternity. "How many minutes--how many ages will it be till He comes?" Issachar thought.

He suddenly saw Neser-Bata coming towards him down the hill. He went to meet him, fell at his feet and cried:

"Rejoice, Akhnaton, King of Egypt!"

He gazed into his face still unable to believe his eyes; he recognized him and yet he did not.

The prophet looked at him in silence and said, shaking his head:

"No, my son, you are mistaken, I am a beggar and a wanderer, Bata. And who are you?"

"Issachar, son of Hamuel, the one who wanted to kill you. Don't you know me?"

Suddenly Bata bent quickly down to him and whispered:

"If you love me, don't tell!"

And he looked into his eyes. There was such power in that look that had he said "die!" Issachar would have died.

But when Bata turned to go he embraced his feet and asked:

"May I follow you?"

"No, you may not. Go your way and I shall go mine: we shall both come to Him and meet there."

"To Him? But aren't you....?"

He gazed into his face once more, terror-stricken: it suddenly seemed to him that this was neither the beggar Bata, nor the king of Egypt, Akhnaton, but Someone else.

"Who are you? Who are you? I adjure you by the living God, who are you?" he whispered desperately.

The prophet shook his head and smiling pointed to the black shadow on the white sand.

"Do you see my shadow? As this shadow is from me, I am from Him. He comes after me but I am not He!"

He said it and walked along the foot of the Sphinx, followed by his shadow. He turned the corner and disappeared, and the shadow disappeared too. Only the light footprints were left on the white sand.

Issachar bent down and not daring to kiss them kissed the sand where the shadow had passed.

III

There was a riot in Busiris, a town in the Northern district.

As usual it was started by the Israelites working in the brick factories when they were no longer given any chopped straw necessary for making bricks, but were ordered to chop it themselves, while producing the usual quantity of bricks. Porters and loaders from the harbour joined them when they heard that boys younger than fifteen were to be taken for the army. The mothers said indignantly, "What is the good of bearing sons? They are no sooner grown up than they are driven to the slaughter, and you, their fathers, put up with it!" Part of the garrison of Kidjevadan mercenaries, who had received in their monthly ration nasty smelling sesame oil instead of olive oil for ointment, also joined the rioters.

Usirmar, son of Ziamon, the governor of the province of Busiris and an old soldier of the times of Tutmose the Fourth, sternly put down the rebellion. With a number of other rioters the tramp Bata, the slave Yubra and the Jew Avinoam--this was the assumed name of Issachar--denounced by the scribe Herihor, were seized as the chief culprits.

"This accursed Bata," so the denunciation ran, "a godless and seditious fellow, having gathered a band of thieves and brigands like himself, intended to cause rebellion not only in the Busiris province, but throughout Egypt, preaching that people should not obey the authorities and that they should refuse to serve in the army, that the poor ought to be equal to the rich, saying that the boundaries between fields should be effaced and the land be common property, and wealth taken from the rich and given to the poor. The said accursed man blasphemes against the gracious god-king and says in his vain talk that there is only one King in heaven and on earth--the god Ra-Aton."

The denunciation was illiterate but cleverly put together. It was a troubled time. Horemheb, the governor of the North, had just set out to the eastern province, Goshen, to put down a rising of the Israelites who were always dreaming of a second Exodus, and to repulse the attack of the Sinai nomads against the Great Wall of Egypt. Terrible rumours reached Usirmar of King Akhnaton's madness, suicide, or assassination, of a new rising in Thebes and an imminent war between the two rivals for the throne, Saakera and Tutankhaton.

The riotous band of the false prophet, Bata, might be the first spark of a new conflagration.

When Bata had been brought in fetters from the prison to the governor's white house, Usirmar ordered everyone out of the room and looked at him with surprise: he was so unlike a criminal. Usirmar had seen King Akhnaton only once, some twenty years ago, and would not have known him now.

"What is your name?" he asked the prisoner.

"Bata."

"Whose son are you?"

"God's."

"Are you joking? Take care."

"No, I am not joking. I do not know my earthly father; I know only the Heavenly."

"Who are you, where do you come from?"

"You see, I am a tramp. I walk about all over the country but I do not remember where I come from."

"Is it true that you incite the mob to rebellion and want to make the poor equal to the rich?"

"No, it is not true. Rebellion is an evil thing, and I want what is good."

"Why then don't you honour our gracious god-king?"

"I do honour the king, but the king is not God; only one Man on earth shall be God."

"What man?"

"Men call him Osiris, but they do not know his real name."

"Do you know it?"

"No, I don't know it either."

"And will _He_ be like you?"

"No, the sun is not like the shadow."

"Is it he then who will make the rich and the poor equal?"

"He, He alone and no one but He! You have said it well, my brother."

"I am not a brother to you, but a judge. Don't you know that I have the power to put you to death or to pardon you?"

"Whether you put me to death or pardon me, either will be a welcome gift to me," Bata answered with such a serene smile that Usimar marvelled more than ever and thought 'Poor crazy creature, one can't be angry with him.'

He asked him many more questions, but could not discover anything. Usirmar was a just and intelligent man: he understood that the denunciation was for the most part untrue and wanted to pardon the unfortunate prisoner, but could not do so legally; he gave him a light sentence, however; a light corporal punishment and then three years labour in the Nubian gold mines.

The sentence was carried out. With a number of other convicts Bata was sent in a large flat-bottomed barge, a floating prison, up the Nile to the distant Elephant City, Ieb, in the South. A caravan route went from Ieb through the terrible desert of Kush. There in the mining wells in the burning hot depths of the earth old and young men, women and children, with chains on their naked bodies, worked day and night under the overseer's whip, grinding quartz on hand mills, washing gold sand, and dying like flies of heat and thirst.

Issachar had escaped out of prison before the trial. The cunning sons of Israel bribed the gaolers and helped him to run away. Yubra escaped with him. They hired from a fisherman a sailing boat, old and damaged but swift, and sailed up the Nile following the prison barge at a distance.

They overtook and passed it by the City of the Sun. Issachar went ashore, found the chief of the guards, Mahu, and told him that Akhnaton, King of Egypt, was on the barge that was approaching the city.

Knowing something about the king's sudden disappearance, Mahu was not very much surprised, but he did not believe Issachar at once. Detaining him, he promised to reward him if his words proved to be true and, if not, to put him to death; he gave orders to stop the barge and at nightfall went to the harbour with fifty black soldiers on whose loyalty he could rely. Going on board he called the chief gaoler and ordered him to bring the prisoner called Bata; he took Bata into a deck cabin, shut the doors and windows and bringing a lamp close to his face recognised King Akhnaton.

"We guards are used to all sorts of things," Mahu used to tell afterwards. "We have seen so much that our hearts are like stone. But at that moment my heart melted like wax!"

It would have been terrible to him to see a wretched madman instead of King Akhnaton, Joy of the Sun; but it was more terrible to find before him a happy and rational man.

"Life, strength and health to the king," he began, but his voice failed him, his knees gave way under him and, falling at the king's feet, he wept.

The king bent down and said, putting his arms round him:

"There, Mahu, don't cry. I am happy here...."

And added, after a pause:

"I am better here than at home."

Mahu was still looking intently at him, hoping to see a madman; but the king certainly was not mad, and, all at once, Mahu felt as though he himself were going out of his mind.

"What are you saying, what are you saying, sire? You are better here among thieves and murderers than among your faithful servants?"

"Yes, Mahu. My brother, do you love me? I know you love me. Do then what I ask you: tell no one about me and let me go."

"God knows, Uaenra, I would gladly give my soul for you, but it is easier for me to kill you than leave you here."

"You will kill me if you don't leave me," the king said, and again he bent down and, putting both arms round Mahu's head, looked into his eyes with entreaty.

Mahu said afterwards that in another minute he would have broken down, lost his reason and gone, leaving the king behind. But Akhnaton had pity on him.

"You cannot?" he whispered as though lost in thought, looking at Mahu so that his heart again melted like wax. "Well, there is nothing for it then, let us go!"

They went from the cabin on to the deck. The king stepped into a litter. The soldiers lifted it and carried him to the palace.

IV

Dio woke up, opened her eyes and saw that the dull gold of the palm leaves on the capitals was turning silver in the bluish light of the morning, while the flickering flame of the night-light still threw a reddish reflection on the pale green, pointed leaves at the bottom of the columns; in the middle, where the disc of the god Aton was spreading its hand-shaped rays over the royal couple, the two lights merged in one.

Dio lay on a panther skin spread on the floor between two beds; the queen slept in one, but the king's bed was empty. Dio raised her head and looked at the sleeper: she slept quietly, breathed evenly; only at times the fine brows twitched like a butterfly's antennae and the wrinkle between them grew deeper, as though she were thinking hard even in her sleep; the pale face with the black shadow of the long lashes was beautiful in spite of the ravages wrought by disease.

Dio looked at the queen and it seemed to her it was he and not she: the sister-wife was strikingly like her brother-husband, especially in sleep.

Her hand, transparently pale with the blue veins standing out, hung over the edge of the bed. Dio touched it with her lips as lightly as the night wind and again it seemed to her it was not her hand but his.

"The two are one," she thought. "How could they have parted? How could he have left her? What will become of her, what will become of him?"

He had told the queen before his departure that he was going to Horemheb, the Viceroy of the North, to persuade him to accept the throne. The queen had always dreamed of resigning the throne and being free from the heavy yoke of sovereignty. She was glad and believed him, though not quite; she was surprised at his not taking her with him: for so many years they had hardly ever parted for a single day, and now in those dreadful weeks after Maki's death he left her, ran away as it were. She felt he was concealing something from her. She soon learned that he had never arrived at Memphis and no one knew or wanted to tell her where he was. She asked Dio, but she did not know either, or did not want to tell. Dio said nothing for days, but at last, seeing that the torture of uncertainty was worse than anything for the queen, she told her.

The queen listened to her calmly, as though she had been prepared for it; she had submitted to him in everything and she submitted to this, also. But she still failed to understand why he had not taken her with him. Together in happiness but apart in sorrow: so then he did not love her as much as she loved him? But for this, too, she blamed herself: she evidently had not known how to love; had she loved him more this would not have happened.

That same day she took to her bed and did not get up any more. The heart disease she had had for years grew very much worse.

Dio never left her for a moment: she remembered her promise to the king. But she sometimes fancied that her love was worse than hatred. She acted like a skilled torturer who preserves his victim's life, inflicting wounds and then healing them to prolong the torture. She deceived the queen from day to day, telling her that they were looking for the king, would soon find him, had already traced him; but each deception was found out and the torture grew worse.

Sometimes she felt indignant on her account: "What has he done to her! He did not want to kill the victim with his own hands--he ran away; he took a light burden upon himself and put upon her a burden no human being can bear."

That night the invalid had a terrible heart attack. The physician, Pentu, thought she would not survive it. The pang in her breast was so severe that she turned blue as though she had been strangled. No drugs were of any help. Finally Pentu decided to try, as the last resort a very powerful and dangerous remedy--the stupefying juice of Kidjevan belladonna, Lybian sylphium, Arabian myrrh and poppy juice with powdered turquoise and bones of the sacred ibis.

The remedy helped: the invalid dropped asleep.

Would she wake? "Oh, if only...." Dio thought and broke off, remembering the king's words, "if she dies, I will die with her." She knew this would be so.

The curtain on the door moved. Dio turned round and saw that Pentu had thrust his head in. She got up and went to speak to him behind the door in the covered passage leading to the river.

The early morning sky, grey as though covered with clouds, reminded her of the winter days when wet snow fell on Mount Ida. But the sun would rise and the sky would be as blue and cloudless as ever. White mist coiled like smoke over the low-lying meadows beyond the river, a water-bird among the reeds was calling in a creaking voice, and as though in answer to it the wheel of a well creaked somewhere in the distance. There was a smell of bitter smoke and winter freshness.

Pentu took Dio by the hand, led her away from the door and whispered in her ear.

"The king has come back...."

"Where is he?" Dio cried.

Pentu silenced her with a gesture.

"Sh-sh! She may hear. We must prepare her; if she heard suddenly it would be fatal...."

"Where is he?" Dio repeated in a whisper.

Pentu pointed to the door at the end of the passage. Dio rushed towards it, but stopped and put her hands to her head.

"Oh, Pentu, how are we to tell her? I cannot, you had better do it."

"No, Dio, you, no one but you!"

"Where did he come from? How did they find him?"

"Mahu brought him, but I don't know where from."

"Have you seen him?"

"I have."

"Well, how is he, what does he look like?"

"Better not ask. Such a thing hasn't happened since the days of the god Ra! In rags, unwashed, unshaved, bristles on his face, thin, black with sunburn and, dreadful to say, scars on his back. But, thanks to Mahu, no one except us knows anything about it--he has managed it all splendidly! We washed, shaved and dressed him...."

He stopped, as though lost in thought and then turned to Dio again.

"Well, why do you stand still? Go to her and I will keep watch here. When the king heard she was ill he rushed to her and we had difficulty to hold him back.... Go, don't be afraid. God willing, everything will come right!"

Dio returned to the bedroom. The queen was lying with her eyes open. She looked at Dio intently.

"Where have you been?"

"Just by the door."

"Whom were you talking to?"

"To Pentu."

"What about?"

"About the king. Good news...."

"Oh, yes, they are looking for him, they will soon find him. They have traced him already. Oh, Dio, aren't you tired of it? It's a mean, silly game! You know I was thinking last night that if I loved him more I wouldn't suffer as I do. He is not a child and not insane--he knows what he is doing. He has gone away--very well, it means it's better for him it should be so. Dio, my dear, my sister, he loves you. Be with him, love him to the end, don't forsake him; if need be, die with him. But don't lie any more...."

She raised herself on her elbow and looked at Dio still more intently.