Chapter III: Part I: Akhnaton, King of Egypt (3)

"Mice burying the cat," said Min, smiling bitterly. "No, my man, there's no way of doing it. The gentry talk and the people are mute; he who has the sword has the word."

"A knife may be as good, but the trouble is that the hare has the knife in its paw but cannot move for awe! That's why the fat-bellied ride rough-shod over us. And if we weren't a set of fools we might do great things at a time like this!" said a short, thick-set, broad-shouldered man of forty, with a terribly disfigured but calm and intelligent face, who had been playing dice without taking part in the conversation. He was Kiki the Noseless, the thief who had lately plundered the tomb of the ancient King Saakerra and obtained thousands of pounds worth of leaf gold and precious stones off the king's mummy. He had been seized and brought to trial, but acquitted for a large bribe.

Kiki was an assumed name and no one knew what his real name was. It was rumored that in his youth he had committed an awful crime; he was punished by being buried up to his neck in the ground, but by a miracle he escaped and ran away; then he became the chief of a robber band in the marshes of the Delta, was caught, had his nose cut off by the hangman and was deported to the gold mines in Nubia; he escaped and became a brigand once more; was seized again and sent to the copper mines of Sinai, escaped again and, after hiding for some time, appeared in Thebes just before the mutiny under the name of Noseless Kiki.

As soon as he spoke everyone was silent and turned to him. But he went on playing dice, looking as though all that was being said here were empty babble.

The musicians who had stopped for a moment began strumming the kinnar and playing the pipe again. The scholars struck up a drunken song. It had grown dark. They lighted a copper lamp suspended from the ceiling and filled with evil smelling vegetable oil, and on the floor earthenware lamps with mutton fat.

"Zen is speaking, Zen is speaking! Listen!" voices were heard suddenly.

Zen--or Zennofer--a man of thirty with a sad, gentle and sickly face and dreadful cataract on his blind eyes, was a junior priest 'uab' in the sanctuary of the god Khonsu-Osiris. He was reputed to be a seer because he knew by heart the writings of the ancient prophets and himself had visions and heard voices.

The musicians were told to stop, the drunken scholars were pushed out into the street and in the stillness that followed the gentle voice of the prophet sounded as though coming from a distance.

"To whom shall I tell of my sorrow? Whom shall I call to weep?" he spoke as though crying in his sleep. "They do not hear, they do not see, they walk in darkness; the foundations of the earth are shaking and there is no wise man to understand and no foolish man to bewail it!"

Suddenly he stretched out his arms and cried in a loud voice: "So it has been and so it shall be, so it has been and so it shall be! There shall be endless evil. The gods will grow weary of men; the gods will forsake the earth and go to heaven. The sun will be darkened, the earth will be waste. The flowers of the fields will set up a moan, the heart of the beasts will weep for men; but men will not weep--they will laugh with sorrow. An old man will say 'I would I were dead,' and the child 'That I had not been born!' There will be a great mutiny throughout the earth. The towns will say 'let us drive out the rulers!' The mob will rush into the courts of judgment; the scrolls of the law will be torn, records of estates scattered, the boundaries between fields wiped out, the frontier posts knocked down. Men will say 'nothing is private, all things are in common; other people's things are mine; I take what I like!' The poor will say to the rich, 'Thief, give me back what you have stolen from me.' The small will say to the great 'all are equal!' Those who have not built the houses will live in them; those who have not tilled the land will fill the granaries; those who have not woven will be clothed in fine raiment, and she who looked at her own reflection in water will now gaze at herself in a mirror. Slaves will wear gold, pearls and lapis-lazuli, and the mistress will go in rags, begging for bread. The beggars will be as gods and the earth will turn upside down as does a potter's wheel!"

Suddenly he stood up and fell on his knees, raising his blind eyes to the sky as though he already saw the things of which he was speaking.

"So it has been and so it shall be--there shall be a new heaven and a new earth. There the lion shall lie down with the lamb and the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp and the weaned child put his hand on the cockatrice's den. Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord! He will come down like rain on a freshly mown meadow, like dew upon the parched fields. Lo, He cometh!"

He stopped and all were silent. "That's all nonsense," the Noseless Kiki's voice was suddenly heard in the stillness. "Why do you listen to a fool's talk?"

"And why do you revile God's prophet, you dog?" said Hafra the blacksmith, laying his hand on Kiki's shoulder so heavily that Kiki staggered. Freeing himself with an agile movement, he seized the knife that hung at his waist; but glancing at the giant's childish face he evidently changed his mind and said calmly, with a twinkle in his eye,

"Very well, if he is a prophet, let him tell us when this is to be?"

"For such as you--never; but for the saints--soon!" Zen answered.

"Soon? You are wrong there. No, brother, it will take a good long time for fools to grow wise."

"But do you know when it shall be?" Hafra asked.

"Yes, I do."

"Tell us then, don't beat about the bush!"

"Do you remember the inscription on King Una's tomb?" asked Kiki, the same mocking smile in his eyes.

Zen said nothing, as though he had not heard the question, but his face quivered like the face of a child in a fit of terror.

Yubra, too, was trembling: he felt that the fate of the world were being decided by this argument between the saint and the criminal. The blacksmith scowled more and more menacingly.

"You have forgotten? Well, I'll remind you," Kiki went on. "Once upon a time, very long ago, there lived a king called Una. He was a clever man, cleverer than anybody in the world, but he was a brigand, a thief, a scoundrel, no better than we are. He died and was buried and they put over his tomb the inscription he told them to write: The bones of the earth are cracking, the sky is shaking, the stars are falling, the gods are trembling: King Una, the devourer of gods comes forth from his tomb and goes hunting; he sets traps and catches the gods; he kills them; stews them, roasts them, and eats them; big ones for breakfast, middle-sized for dinner, little ones for supper, and old gods and goddesses he uses to make fragrant incense. He devoured them all and became the god of gods.'"

"What rubbish is this, you fool? Speak straight, don't wriggle!" cried Hafra, clenching his fists in a fury.

"Have it straight, then: it won't be soon, but the hour will come when the poor and wretched will say 'we are no worse than King Una, the devourer of the gods.' Scoundrels, pickpockets, brigands, dirty Jews, men with torn nostrils, the flogged, the branded, the cursed will say 'we are nothing--let us be everything! Then the earth will turn upside down and he will come..."

"Who is he?" Hafra asked.

"God and devil, the Blacky-whity, two gods in one!"

"Stop or I'll kill you!" the blacksmith shouted, raising his fist.

Kiki jumped back and pulled out his knife. There would have been a fight but shouts came from the street:

"They are coming! They are coming! They are coming!"

"Rebellion!" the cobbler was the first to guess what had happened and rushed to the door. All the others followed him.

There was a crush. The Flea was pressed to the wall and nearly suffocated. Min was knocked down. Hafra stumbled against him and fell down, too. Kiki jumped over both and, whistling like a brigand, shouted: "Have you got any knives?"

"Yes," someone in the street shouted back. Everyone was running in one direction--from the Risit Harbour to the Hittite Square.

It was dark; the moon had not yet risen; the stars twinkled in the sky and there was the red glow of a fire on the horizon.

VII

People were crowded in the Square. In the vague hubbub of voices one could distinguish at times the phrases:

"Glory be to Amon on High! Glory be to Khonsu, Amon's Son!" Suddenly there came the sound of melodious singing, far off at first and then nearer and nearer. The Square was lit up with the red glow of the torches and a solemn procession appeared.

The Lybian mercenaries walked in front followed by fan-bearers and censer-bearers; then came the _horemhebs_--officiating priests, and finally twenty-four senior priests--_neteratephs_, with shaven heads, leopard skins across the shoulder and wide, stiffly starched white skirts. Walking twelve in a row they carried on two poles the holy tabernacle--Userhet--a boat of acacia wood with linen curtains like sails, that hid a figure of Amon a foot high. Its shadow could be seen through the fine material in the flickering light of the torches: but people did not dare to look even at the shadow of the god: to see him was to die.

A crowd followed the tabernacle, singing in a chorus:

"Glory be to Amon on High
Glory to Khonsu, Amon's son!
Exalt ye them above the heavens,
Exalt ye them above the earth.
Proclaim to all their glory!
Tell men to fear the Lord
Throughout all generations,
Tell it to the great and small,
To every creature that draws breath.
To fishes and fowls of the air;
Tell those who know not and who know:
'Fear ye the Lord!'"

Yubra sang, too, saying 'Aton' instead of 'Amon'; no one heard him in the general chorus. And sometimes he made a mistake, glorifying the god of his enemies and rejoiced: he knew that where they were going there would be no more enemies; the lion and the lamb would lie down together and the child would play on the hole of the asp.

The beggar woman from the province of the Black Heifer walked by Yubra's side. He had found her half-dead with hunger by the heap of manure-bricks in the Square, restored her to life and given her some food: Nebra procured bread for her and milk for the baby from a boatman friend of his. When she had eaten and seen that the baby was alive and sucking a comforter that Yubra cleverly made for it, she revived and followed him as a dog follows the man who has given it food. She followed him in the procession, too.

He was holding her firmly and kindly by the hand, as though he were leading this sorrowful and perishing daughter of the earth to the new earth, to the Comforter. She understood but vaguely what was going on, and not daring to look at the shadow of the god behind the veil, simply repeated with the rest of the crowd:

"Glory be to thee, god of mercy,
The Lord of the silent,
The help of the humble,
The saviour of those in hell!
When they call unto thee
Thou comest to them from afar
Thou sayest to them 'I am here.'"

She, too, was in hell; perhaps He would come to her, too, and say 'I am here,' she thought joyfully, as though knowing that in the place where they were going there would be no famine and the mothers would not have to steal other people's children and kill them like lambs in order to feed their own.

Pentaur was walking on the left in the first row of the twelve priests, neteratephs, who carried the tabernacle. Yubra saw him and they looked at one another. "How did you come here, servant of Aton? Are you a spy?" Yubra read the question in Pentaur's eyes. "Come, there can be no spies now! We are all brothers," was the answer in Yubra's eyes, and Pentaur seemed to understand--he smiled at him like a brother.

Zen, the prophet, was also with the crowd; a little boy was leading him by the hand. His face was sorrowful unto death: maybe he knew that Kiki was right and that the earth would turn upside down only in order that the worst might come.

After passing Coppersmiths' Street they came into the sacred Road of the Rams. At the very end of it the dull red disc of the moon, cut across by the black needle of the obelisk, like a cat's eye by the narrowed pupil, was slowly rising behind the sanctuary of Mut.

Suddenly the procession stopped. The blast of trumpets and the rattle of drums was heard in front; arrows and stones from slings flew about with a hissing sound: it was an ambush of the Nubian soldiers sent against the rebels.

One arrow struck the foot of the tabernacle. The priests lowered it to the ground; men crowded round it, defending the body of the god with their own bodies.

The attack of the Nubians was so violent that the Lybian mercenaries flinched and would have run away had not help arrived just in time.

Kiki, with a few desperadoes like himself, had gone from the Hittite Square to the raised road where the workmen, who had been dragging the giant statue of King Akhnaton during the day, had gone to sleep, some on straw and others on the bare earth. Kiki could not wake many of them: they slept so heavily that if the very earth under them had caught fire they would hardly have wakened. But he did rouse some three hundred by the mere cry of 'Plunder!'; leading them against the Nubians' ambush he attacked it from behind and so won the battle for the rebels.

The procession moved on with a song of victory:

"Woe to be to thine enemies, Lord!
Their dwelling place is in darkness,
But the rest of the earth in thy light.
The sun of them that hate thee is darkened,
The sun of them that love thee is rising!"

Reaching Amon's temple they walked past it and turned to the right, to Khonsu's sanctuary, easily scattering a small detachment of Midian archers on the way. But at the sanctuary they learned that at the first news of mutiny the golden figure of Khonsu had been removed and hidden in the treasury of Amon's temple.

"Come, good people, you have been saving the god long enough, it is time you thought about yourselves!" Kiki the Noseless shouted to the crowd, jumping on the empty pedestal of Khonsu's statue. "There is nothing to be got here, Aton's rabble have cleared the place, but on the other side of the river in the Chanik Palace there is still plenty of stuff left. Let's make for the river, mates!"

There arose a dispute, almost a fight, as to what they were to do--save the god or plunder.

As Yubra listened, he grew uneasy: was this what he had been hoping for or something utterly different?

After much wrangling the crowd divided into two: the bigger part went to the other side of the river with Kiki and the smaller set out towards Amon's temple.

Pentaur led them. Expecting another ambush they put out the torches. Men walked in silence, with stern faces; they knew that perhaps they were going to their death. "We shall all die for Him!" Yubra thought, with quiet joy.

When they reached the temple they saw there were no guards there. Two granite colossi and two obelisks, as though keeping watch, threw black, menacing shadows on to the square of white stone bathed in moonlight.

Pentaur and Hafra, the blacksmith, walked up to the temple gates; the gold, with the hieroglyphics of dark bronze upon it, the two words 'Great Spirit,' dimly glistened in the moonlight.

"Hack them!" Pentaur said.

Hafra raised the axe, but let it down again, not daring to strike. Pentaur seized the axe from him and cried:

"Lift up your heads, oh ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in!"

He lifted the axe and struck; the ponderous echo rolled through the empty, resonant air behind the gates, as though the Great Spirit himself had answered him.

"Achaeans, Achaeans, the devils!" was heard in the crowd.

Achaeans, the half-savage mercenaries from the North, had just arrived in Egypt to serve the king. They had come straight to the City of the Sun, and were hardly known at Thebes, but there were terrible rumours about their ferocity and mad courage.

Rushing out from three ambushes at once they surrounded the crowd on all sides, pressing it to the walls of the temple so that escape was impossible. And above the gates on the flat roof of the temple copper helmets and spears were glistening, too. Ethiopian slingers were ambushed there. Arrows, stones and lead fell from there like hail.

Pentaur raised his eyes and saw just above him, in a narrow window of the temple wall, a boy of fifteen, with a black monkey-like face, white teeth bared like those of a beast of prey, and two feathers, a green and a red one, stuck aslant in the black frizzy hair. Placing an arrow on the bowstring, he aimed at Pentaur slowly bending a huge bow made of rhinoceros bone.

Pentaur remembered the tame monkey on the top of the palm tree over Khnum's house, throwing the shells of the pods at the sleeping dancer, Miruit, and he smiled. He might have jumped behind the projecting wall, but he thought "what for? I shall be killed anyway, and it is good to die for Him Who has been!"

The bowstring sounded.

"Has been or will be?" he had time to ask and to answer: "Has been, is and will be," while the arrow whistled through the air. Its copper sting pierced him just under the left breast. He fell on the threshold of the closed gates. For him the gates lifted their heads, the everlasting doors were lifted up and the King of Glory came in.

Standing by the tabernacle Yubra was watching the last batch of the Lybians fighting. Suddenly the leaden bullet from a sling struck him on the temple. He fell and thought he was dying. But a minute later he propped himself up on his elbow and saw that the Achaean devils were hacking the tabernacle.

The white curtains flapped like broken wings laying bare the small, worm-eaten, wooden figure of the god, blackened with the smoke of incense, polished with the kisses of the worshippers. A soldier seized it, and lifting it up, flung it upon the ground and trampled it underfoot. The god's body cracked like a crushed insect.

Yubra fell upon his face so as not to see.

Pentaur was dying happily. Some one gentle as the god whose name is Quiet-Heart was bending over him--he could not tell whether it was a boy who looked like a girl or a girl who looked like a boy. He wanted to ask 'Who are you?' when the kiss of eternity sealed his lips. And the dulcet chords played on:

"Death is now to me like sweetest myrrh,
Death is now to me like healing,
Death is now to me like refreshing rain,
Death is now to me like a home to an exile!"

VIII

When Dio had set out to see Ptamose the mutiny was just beginning beyond the river and all was quiet on this side.

Issachar was waiting for her by the Eastern Gates of the Apet-Oisit wall, where the deserted tomb-sanctuary of King Tutmose the Third lay in ruins. Stepping out of the litter and telling the bearers to wait for her at the gate, she went with Issachar into the half-destroyed porch of the sanctuary. Walking up to the wall, which was completely covered with bas-reliefs and mural paintings, he leaned his shoulder against it. A movable stone turned on its axis, revealing a dark narrow opening. They both squeezed themselves sideways through it and descended some steep steps cut in the thickness of the rock. Issachar walked in front of Dio down a slanting underground passage, carrying a torch.

It was close: the depths of the earth warmed through by the eternal Egyptian sun, never cooled; the darkness was filled with warmth. "Glory be to thee who dwelleth in darkness, O Lord!" Dio remembered. It seemed to her that here the dead were as warm lying in their tombs in the bosom of the earth as a child in its mother's womb.

The endless mural paintings represented the journey of the Sun-god down the subterranean Nile: the sail of the boat hung limply in the breathless stillness and the dead oarsmen were dragging it over dry land through the twelve caves--the twelve hours of the night, from the eternal night to the eternal morn.

The hieroglyphic inscriptions glorified the Midnight Sun, Amon the Hidden.

"When thou descendest beyond the sky
The most secret of secret Gods,
Thou bringest light to them who are in death.
Glorifying thee from within their tombs,
The dead lift up their arms
And those under the earth rejoice."

The main passage was intersected by side passages. Suddenly the red flame of torches and the black shadows of men carrying spears, swords, bows and arrows flitted across them.

"Where are they carrying the arms?" Dio asked.

"I don't know," Issachar answered reluctantly.

"It must be the rebels in the town," she guessed.

Supplies of arms and also of gold, silver and lapis-lazuli--remnants of the temple treasuries concealed from the king's spies were hidden in these subterranean recesses of Amon's temple. It was all kept there for the day of rebellion against the apostate king.

Turning into one of the side passages and walking to the end of it, they stopped at a closed door in the wall. Opening it, Issachar walked in, lit a lamp with his torch and said, putting the lamp on the floor:

"Wait here, they will come for you."

"And where are you going?" Dio asked.

"To fetch Pentaur."

"Good, bring him here!" she said joyfully: she had been thinking about him all the time.

Issachar went out, closing the door after him.

Dio looked round the empty vaulted cell, long and narrow like the tomb--and perhaps indeed it was one. The walls were covered from top to bottom with hieroglyphic script and pictures.

She sat on the floor and waited. Tired of sitting still she got up and, taking the lamp, began looking at the mural paintings and reading the hieroglyphics. She was so absorbed in this that she did not notice the passage of time.

Suddenly the flame grew dim, gave a last flicker and went out. Walls of stifling, black, and, as it were, tangible darkness, closed in upon her. She was afraid of being left and forgotten in this coffin.

She fumbled her way to the door and began knocking and calling. She listened: a deadly stillness. She felt more frightened than ever. All of a sudden she recalled Pentaur and the fear left her: if he was alive he would come.

She sat down again, leaning her back against the wall and remained so. A strange stillness came over her; she did not know whether it was dream or waking. She was filled with the black, warm, sunny darkness as a vessel is with water. With quiet ecstasy she whispered the words she had just read in the hieroglyphic inscriptions, spoken by the dead man to the Midnight Sun, the hidden god:

"He is--I am; I am--He is."

And it seemed to her that she herself were dead and lying in the bosom of the earth like a child in its mother's womb, waiting for resurrection--birth into eternal life. And the dulcet harpstrings sang

"Death is now to me like sweetest myrrh...."

All of a sudden a light flashed into her eyes. A bent, decrepit old man with a torch--a priest, to judge by his shaven head and the leopard skin thrown over his shoulder--stooping over her, took her by the hand, helped her up and led her out of the room.

"Who are you? Where are you taking me?" she asked. He said nothing and was about to lead her down some more steep narrow stairs.

"No, I don't want to go down," she said. "Take me up. Where is Pentaur? .... Why do you say nothing? Speak."

The old man made an inarticulate sound and, opening his mouth, showed her a stump in place of a tongue; he explained by signs that Pentaur would come down too and that somebody was expecting her. She understood that he meant Ptamose.

They walked further down. Again Dio did not know whether she was asleep or awake. The dumb man had such a dead face that it seemed to her Death itself was leading her to the kingdom of death.

They stopped at a closed door. The dumb man knocked. Someone from within asked "Who is there?" and when Dio said her name the door was opened.

In a low sepulchral chamber or sanctuary, supported by four quadrangular columns, cut out in the thickness of the rock, stood a sepulchral couch, with a mummy in a white shroud lying on it. There was, Dio thought, something terrible in its face--more terrible than death.

Her dumb guide took her past the couch into the depths of the chamber, where a vaulted niche, lined with leaf-copper, glowed, like sunset, in the light of innumerable lamps. There, in the smoke of fragrant incense, a huge black lop-eared Lybian ram--probably transferred from the upper temple--lay asleep on a couch of purple. This was the sacred animal, "the bleating prophet," the living heart of the temple.

A girl of thirteen--not an Egyptian to judge by her fair hair and skin--lay beside it, with her head on the animal's back and her eyes half-closed, like a bride on the bed of love. Completely naked, but for a narrow girdle of precious stones below the navel, shameless and innocent, she stretched herself out, pale and white on the black fleece, like a narcissus, the flower of death. She was one of the twelve priestesses of the god Ram--Amon-Ra.

At the approach of Dio, the little girl opened her eyes and looked at her intently. There was something so mournful in that look that Dio's heart was wrung; she remembered another victim of the god Beast--Pasiphae-Eoia.

Her dumb guide prostrated himself before the Ram. A young priest, with an austere meagre face, kneeling next to Dio, was burning fragrant incense in a censer.

"Bow down to the god!" he whispered, looking at her severely.

Dio looked at him, too, but said nothing and did not bow to the beast, though she knew it was dangerous--they might kill her for impiety.

When the girl opened her eyes and moved the Ram woke up and also moved slowly and heavily: one could see it was very old, almost at its last gasp. It opened one eye: the pupil, fiery-yellow like a carbuncle, glowed menacingly from under a dark heavy eyelid, with grey lashes, and looked into her eyes with an almost human look.

"The god opens his eye, the sun, and there is light in the world," the priest whispered the prayer.

When he had finished he got up, and taking Dio by the hand led her to the couch with the mummy. He bent down to the dead man and whispered something in his ear. Dio drew back horrified: the dead man opened his eyes.

His deathly, skeleton-like body, brown as a withered tree, showed through the transparent white of the winding sheet. The veins on the shrunken temples stood out as though stripped of flesh; the thin, thread-like lips of the sunk-in mouth and the gristle of the hooked nose--a vulture's beak--looked deathly under the tightly drawn shiny skin. But living, young, immortal eyes seemed to have been set in that mask of death.

The priest reverently lifted the mummy and raised its head on the couch. The dead lips opened and whispered, rustling like dry leaves.

"Listen, the Urma is speaking to you."

It was only then Dio grasped that this was the great seer--_urma_, watcher of the secrets of heaven and the prophet of all the gods of north and south, the high priest of Amon, Ptamose.

He was over a hundred years old--an age not infrequent in Egypt. Many people thought that he had long been dead, for during the last ten years, ever since the apostate king began to persecute the faith of his fathers, Ptamose had been hiding in subterranean hiding-places and tombs; some of those who knew him to be alive said that he would never die, while others asserted that he had died and risen again.

Dio knelt down and bending over the low couch put her ear close to the whispering lips.

"You have come at last, my dear daughter! Why have you delayed so long?"

There was an insidious caress in his voice, a magnetic power in his eyes.

"Pentaur has told me much about you, but one cannot tell all about others. Tell me yourself now."

He began asking her questions, but he seemed to know all before she had answered him and to read her heart as an open scroll.

"You poor, poor child!" he whispered when she told him how Eoia and Tammuzadad had perished through her. "To destroy those whom you love--that's your misery. Do you know this?"

"Yes, I do."

"Mind then that you don't destroy him also."

"Whom?"

"King Akhnaton."

"Well, if I do destroy him so much the better for you!" she said with a forced smile.

The shadow of a smile flitted in the eyes of the old man, too. "Do you think I am his enemy? No; God knows I am not lying--why should a dead man lie?--I love him as my own soul!"

"Why then did you rise against him?"

"I rose not against him but against Him who comes after him."

"The Son?"

"God has no Son."

"How can the Father be without the Son?"

"All are the Father's sons. Great in His love he gives birth to the gods and gives breath to the baby bird inside the egg, preserves the son of a worm, feeds the mouse in its hole and the midge in the air. The son of a worm is God's son, too. Stones, plants, animals, men, gods--all are his sons; He has no only Son. He who has said 'I am the Son' has killed the Father. _Ua-en-ua_, one and only is He and there is none other beside. He who says 'there are two gods' kills God. This is whom I have risen against--the deicide. He will save the world, you think? No, He will destroy it. He will sacrifice himself for the world? No, He will sacrifice the world to himself. Men will love Him and hate the world. Honey will be as wormwood to them, light as darkness, life as death. And they will perish. Then they will come to us and say 'Save us!' And we will save them again."

"Again? Has it all happened before?"

"Yes. It has been and it will be. Do you know the meaning of _Nem-ankh_, eternal recurrence? Eternity spins round and round and repeats its cycles. All that has been in time shall be in eternity. _He_ has been, too. His first name was Osiris. He came to us but we killed Him and destroyed His work. He wanted to make His kingdom in the land of the living but we drove Him to the Kingdom of the dead, Amenti, the eternal West: we gave Him that world and kept this one for ourselves. He will come again and we will kill Him once more and destroy His work. We have conquered the world and not He."

"There is no Son and perhaps there is no Father either?" Dio asked, looking at him defiantly. "Tell me the truth, don't lie: is there a God or no?"

"God is--there is no God; say what you like--it all comes to nothing; all men's words about God are vain."

"There now! I have caught the thief!" Dio cried, laughing into his face. "I knew all along you did not believe in God."

"Silly girl!" he said, as gently and kindly as before, "I am dead: the dead see God. I adjure you by the living God, consider before you go to Him whether there isn't truth in my words!"

"And if there is, what then?"

"Leave Him and stay with us!"

"No, even then I shall remain with Him!"

"You love Him more than the truth?"

"More."

"Go to Him, then, to the tempter, the son of perdition, the devil!"

"It's you who are the devil!" she cried, raising her hand as though she would strike him.

The dumb man rushed up to her, seized her by the arm and raised a knife over her.

"Leave her alone!" Ptamose said, and the old man drew back.

Suddenly there was a sound of bleating, low as the weeping of a child but old and feeble: it was the Ram. Ptamose looked at the animal and the animal at him and they seemed to understand each other.

"The Great One foretells woe, woe to the earth with its bleating!" the old man exclaimed, raising his eyes to Dio. "Go up--you will see what He is doing. It has begun already and will not end until He comes!"

Then he glanced at the dumb priest and said:

"Take her upstairs and don't molest her, you answer for her with your life!"

He shut his eyes and again looked like one dead.

Dio was running upstairs, with one thought only in her mind: "Where is Pentaur, what has happened to him?"

Going out of the catacomb by the same door as she had entered, she went past the ruins of Tutmose's tomb and walked along the south wall of Amon's temple. On the white stones of the temple square, bathed in moonlight, dead bodies lay about as on a battlefield. Half-savage, hyena-like dogs were worrying them. An emaciated looking dog, with a blood-stained mouth, was sitting on its hind legs howling at the moon.

Dio stopped suddenly. The needle of the obelisk showed black against the moonlit sky: the hieroglyphics on the mirror-like polished surface of its granite glorified King Akhnaton, the Joy of the Sun, and someone was sitting hunched up against the base of it---dead or alive Dio could not make out. She came nearer and, bending down, saw a dead woman, thin as a skeleton, stiffly pressing a dead baby to her wrinkled, black, charred-looking breasts, as she gazed at it with glassy eyes; her white teeth were bared as though she were laughing. It was the beggar woman from the province of the Black Heifer.

Dio recalled a black granite figure she had once seen of the goddess Isis, the Mother with her son Horus, and it suddenly seemed to her that this dead woman was Mother Isis herself, accursed and killed--by whom?

"Go up, you will see what He is doing," the words of Ptamose sounded in her ears.

She turned round at the sound of footsteps. Issachar came up to her.

"Where is Pentaur? What has happened?" she cried, and, before he had time to answer, she understood from his face that Pentaur had been killed.

The familiar pain of inexpiable guilt, insatiable pity pierced her heart. "To destroy those whom you love--that's your misery," the words of the seer sounded in her ears again.

It took her some time to grasp what Issachar was saying; at last she understood: they would not give Pentaur's body to him, but perhaps they might give it to her.

She followed him. A cordon of sentries guarded the approach to the gates of Amon's temple. The centurion recognised Dio: he had seen her at the Viceroy's white house; he let them both through and told the soldiers to give her Pentaur's body.

He was lying where he had been killed--by the threshold of the western gates. Their gold with the hieroglyphics of dark bronze--two words 'Great Spirit'--dimly glittered in the moonlight.

Dio knelt down, and looking into the dead man's face, kissed him on the lips. Their cold penetrated down to her very heart.

"It is my doing--His doing," she thought and the word 'He' had a double meaning for her: he--the king, and He--the Son.

IX

Dio was watching the fire beyond the River from the flat roof of Khnum's house. Charuk Palace was burning--the residence of the Viceroy Tutankhaton.

Built of very old dry cedar and cypress wood, it burned hotly and steadily like a resin torch. The bare crags of the Lybian Mountains above it glowed as though red hot; the flames were reflected in the river as a pillar of fire and white smoke coiled in clouds of moonlight blue and fiery crimson.

Khnum's servants were standing by Dio's side on the roof. All the faces wore the look of that unaccountable joy which people always feel at the sight of a fire at night.

"There, look where it has caught now! The women's apartments are on fire!" someone said.

"No, the prince's lodge," another answered.

"And now something in the garden is on fire, by the very lake, it must be Aton's chapel."

"I expect it's all Kiki's doing--his handiwork!"

"The rabble will warm their hands at the fire, you may be sure!"

"Look, mates, look, it's begun on our side, too!" said someone joyfully, pointing to the right side of the river, where fire broke out in two places at once.

"Ah, the dogs, they've set it ablaze from all sides!"

Khnum came up on to the roof by a steep staircase. Two servants supported him. He had just got out of bed: after the trial of Yubra that afternoon he had had a liver attack. Nibituia and Inioteph, his secretary, followed him.

An armchair was brought for Khnum and Nibituia sat on a stool at his feet. Dio came up to them and kissed them both on the shoulders.

"Is it long since you came back from town, my daughter?" Khnum asked her.

"I have only just returned."

"Have you heard anything?"

"The rebels have been scattered near Amon's temple, at Oisit, but at other places they are gathering together again, burning and plundering. I've heard that the Achaean mercenaries have come with Mahu, the king's chief of the guards."

"Extraordinary!" Inioteph muttered under his breath and shook his head with a smile.

Khnum looked at him sullenly from under his brows.

"What are you muttering?"

"Extraordinary, I say: there are plenty of loyal troops in the town and instead of sending them against the rebels they wait for the Achaeans!"

"Hold your tongue, silly! You must be careful what you say.... And where is the Viceroy?" he turned to Dio again.

"No one knows for certain. Some say he is on the other side of the river and others that he has come over to this side, with a large detachment of Nubians."

She very nearly said 'run away' and Khnum understood.

"Uhuh have mercy upon us!" Nibituia sighed. "What if he falls into the brigands' hands!"

Khnum looked at the fire for some time without speaking.

"Quite, quite, quite! Here it is, this is the beginning," he said, quietly, as though thinking aloud. "According to Ipuver's prophecy 'the slaves shall be masters, the beggars shall become new gods.' Our Yubra knew what he was doing, the worm: an ant knows how far the flood will reach and build its hill on safe ground. He has gone to the rebels just in time."

Dio, too, was looking at the fire and suddenly the familiar feeling of repetition, of eternal recurrence came over her--_nem-ankh_--'all this has been already'; the red flame of the fire lighted from below the bare rocks and was reflected as a red pillar in the water in exactly the same way; white smoke curled in clouds of moonlight-blue and fiery crimson just like this; now as then the cold of the dead lips penetrated her through and through--it never left her from the moment she kissed Pentaur good-bye.

There was a sound of rapid steps on the stairs. The centurion of the Viceroy's bodyguard, quite a young boy, ran up to the roof. From his dusty helmet, torn clothes, restless eyes and trembling lips one could see that he had just come from a serious engagement.

"Rejoice, my lord!" he said, approaching Khnum with a low bow, "His Highness asks me to tell you...."

He stopped breathless with hurry.

"Is His Highness safe?" Khnum asked, looking into the frightened face of the boy.

"Thanks be to Aton, he is safe now, but he has been in great danger. The riotous rabble is so turbulent, it is terrible.... His Highness will be here directly, he asks you to give him shelter."

"How many are coming with him?"

"Less than thirty."

"Where are the others?"

"Some have run away and others have been sent to Mahu, the chief of the guards: His Highness has given him the command of the city."

"Quite, quite, quite," said Khnum, shaking his head, thoughtfully: he understood that Tuta ran away like a coward. "Mahu is a brave soldier and will make short work of the rebels. For the moment the city is saved, though God only knows what the end of it will be.... Well, let us go, my son, I shall be happy to receive His Highness."

Khnum got up and went downstairs. All followed him.

Dio and Zenra went into Dio's room on the second storey. Dio began to undress. She was trembling so that her teeth were chattering. The cold still penetrated her through and through.

"Why are you trembling?" Zenra asked her.

Dio made no answer and lay down on the couch. Zenra tucked her in, kissed her and was about to go when Dio took her hand.

"Do you know, nurse, Pentaur is killed?" she said quietly, with apparent calm.

The old woman's legs gave way under her. She sat down on the edge of the couch so as not to fall.

"Good Lord!" she whispered, with the surprise people always feel at the news of a sudden death. "But how, where, when?"

"Just now in the riot by Amon's temple."

"Ah, poor thing!" Zenra wept. "Such a good man, and I had hoped..."

Dio smiled.

"You hoped he would marry me? Yes, the bridegroom was right enough, but the bride was no good.... Well, go now and don't cry. One mustn't cry for him--he died a good death. God grant us all to die like that!"

Dio closed her eyes, but as soon as Zenra went out she opened them again and looked at the other end of the room where a moonbeam fell upon the tall Amon's harp with crossed strings and two rainbow-coloured sun discs at the foot; their golden centres glittered dimly in the uncertain light. It was the harp on which Pentaur had played that afternoon his quiet songs of love and death.

Whether a cloud had covered the moon or Dio's eyes were dimmed with tears, she suddenly fancied that somebody's shadow flitted across the slanting square made by the moonbeams on the white wall. "It is he," she thought, and was all alert as though waiting for the harpstrings to sound. But all was silent and the shadow disappeared; the light on the wall was once more even and white. Dio covered her head with the bedclothes and settled down to sleep but she could not.

All of a sudden she heard the sound of the harp. She threw off the coverlet, sat up and listened: the chords were ringing and singing:

"Death is now to me like sweetest myrrh,
Death is now to me like healing,
Death is now to me like refreshing rain,
Death is now to me like a home to an exile!"

And again a shadow flitted across the wall. Terror possessed her. But the familiar pain of inexpiable guilt, insatiable pity was stronger than terror: oh, if she could only see his shadow, could only say to his shadow 'forgive'!

She got up from the bed and went to the harp. The strings continued vibrating quietly but clearly. Something living was fluttering down below. Dio looked down and saw a bat that was caught in the network of the crossed strings and was struggling against them.

Dio smiled bitterly and regretted the terror of the moment ago. The wall of death rose between them more impenetrable than ever, the dead went further away into death, as though he had died again.

She carefully released the captive, kissed it on the head and, climbing on to a chair, let it out of the long and narrow window right up by the ceiling.

She returned to her bed, lay down and sank at once into the deep heavy sleep of grief.

"Get up, my dear, get up, it is time to go," she heard Zenra's voice over her.

"To go? Where?" she muttered without opening her eyes.

"To the City of the Sun. Tuta is going to-day and we go with him. Come, wake up, sleepy head!"

Dio opened her eyes. The light was still dim in the windows: the sun had not yet risen. But a sudden joy flooded her like sunlight. It seemed she had only now understood what it meant--"Akhnaton, the Joy of the Sun!"

She dressed quickly and ran up to the roof.

The winter morning was still and misty and its stillness seemed to say that the riot was over, the earth had not turned upside down, but stood firmly and would go on doing so for a long time yet. Everything was as usual: two white turtle-doves were cooing in the garden under the black feathery cedar tree; the morning sounds, slightly muffled by the fog, were wafted from afar over the water of the canal: the braying of the donkey, the creaking of the water-raising wheels, the clatter of the laundry bats and the mournful droning song:

"Washerman, washing clothes in the river,
Good neighbour of the crocodile swimming past"

As always one smelt in the morning freshness the slightly bitter smoke of manure-bricks, like the smell of autumn bonfires in the fields of her native north.

Suddenly a warm, rosy light shone through the cold whiteness of the mist, like heavenly joy through earthly sorrow. "Heaven is united with the earth; on earth there is the joy of heaven." Dio recalled the words of the Osiris mysteries.

"Joy of the Sun, Joy of the Sun--Akhnaton!" she repeated, weeping and laughing with joy.

Zenra called to her and told her to make haste. Dio ran downstairs to say good-bye to Khnum and Nibituia. Khnum gave her his blessing and kind old Nibituia put her arms around her and wept: she had grown to love Dio as her own daughter.

They stepped into a boat and went down the Big Canal to the Risit Harbour where the Viceroy's boat was waiting. Tuta was on it already: he had gone before daylight.

The boat had two masts; the sails with a check pattern were spread out widely like a falcon's wings; on the prow was the horned head of a gazelle and on the stern a huge lotus-flower: the rudder was a flowering shrub and its handle the head of a king in a high tiara; the deck cabins of carved acacia wood were arranged in two storeys, like a small palace, magnificently painted and gilded, and fenced round the top with a network of royal snakes standing on their tails; coloured flags were displayed everywhere. The whole ship was a living miracle of gold, purple and azure, half bird, half flower.

The anchor was raised and they set off. The sun had risen and the mists melted away. A fresh wind blowing through the mountain gorges, filled the sails; the oarsmen plied their oars and the ship swiftly glided down the river.

Tuta did not leave his cabin all day: he had toothache and his cheek was swollen. The cat Ruru went about with a bandaged paw: it had been hit with a stone in the riot. When at last Tuta did come out towards evening he looked so crestfallen that Dio thought he was just like a cat that had received a shower bath.

Later on the wits at court composed a song about this dismal journey.

Poor little Tuta
Moans in his cabin.
His cheek is swollen,
Toothache very bad.

He warmed himself that night
By the Charuk palace fire,
Then exposed his heated cheek
To a draught in terror dire.

"Well, he hasn't had his way this time, but he will the next," Dio thought. "You will be king over the mice, you cat."

The City of the Sun, Akhetaton, Egypt's new Capital, was built in the province of Hares, half-way between Memphis and Thebes, four hundred aters or five days' journey from Thebes.

They sailed in the day-time only and spent the nights in harbours: sailing at night was dangerous because of the many shallows and whirlpools. The bed of the Nile changed continually, especially in winter when the water was shallow. The pilot, standing on the ship's prow, was all the time feeling the bottom with a pole.

They passed the big commercial harbour, Copt, which lay on the caravan route leading through the desert to the Red Sea; the town of Dendera, with the great temple of Isis-Hathor; the town of Abt, where the body of the god-man, Osiris, was buried, and the most ancient of the Egyptian cities, Tinis, the capital of Men, the first king of Egypt.

But the cities were few; poor villages with huts made of the dried mud of the Nile were more frequent. The yellow streak of dead sand and the black streak of fertile earth--Black Earth, Kemet, was the name of Egypt--stretched on either side of the river, peaceful, simple and monotonous; the black of the Nile mud, humid and shining like the living 'pupil of Isis' and the yellow of the desert--life and death--were side by side, in an eternal union, eternal peace.

It was winter--sowing time. Men were ploughing, harrowing, sowing. Oxen slowly walked along drawing rich furrows with the plough. Here and there the first crops already showed their bright spring green. And the melancholy singing of the ploughman echoed far in the stillness of the fields.

The dull white waters of the Nile now flowed fast, pressed in by rocky banks; now widened out in pools and backwaters still as a pond, with impassable jungles of papyrus and green carpets of floating lotus leaves; only a hippopotamus, waddling ashore, and a lion or a leopard, coming down to drink, cut narrow paths in those thickets.

A long-legged ibis strode along the humid slime measuring the ground like the wise god Tot, the land-measurer. Crocodiles lay on the sandbanks, like slimy logs, and the birds benu--a kind of heron--walked along their backs picking off the water fleas or, fearlessly thrusting their heads into the open jaws, cleaned the monsters' teeth.

And long after the fall of dusk, the tops of the cliffs glowed a fiery yellow and the girlishly slender outlines of the palms and the coal black cones of the granaries showed black against the crimson west.

The nights were as still as the days; only the jackals barked and howled in the desert and the hippopotamus in the papyrus thicket bellowed, like a bull, at the dazzlingly bright moon, the sun of the night.

And in the morning the day-sun rose as radiant as ever. The two streaks--the black and the yellow--stretched along the banks as monotonously as before; the oxen walked along as slowly, cutting deep furrows with the plough and the melancholy singing of the ploughman echoed in the stillness of the fields.

And everything was as still and gentle as the face of the god whose name is Quiet-Heart.