Chapter VII: Part II: Who Is He? (3)

During the first years of Akhnaton's reign these feasts were more frequent. "Let every ninth day of the month be a day for beggars," it said in the king's decree. Governors of provinces were on that day to distribute to the hungry corn from the king's granaries "for the cry of the needy has come up unto heaven and our heart is sore." "Amon is the god of the rich and Aton the god of the poor," the king preached. "Woe unto you, you sleek and rich who acquire house after house and field after field, so that there is no room on the earth left for others! Your hands are full of blood. Wash, cleanse yourselves, learn to do good. Save the oppressed, defend the orphan, protect the widow. Provide bread for the hungry, water for the thirsty, clothes for the naked, shelter for the homeless, smiles for the weeping. Undo the bondsmen's yoke and set the slaves free: then shall your light shine in darkness and your night shall be as midday!"

"Ankh-em-maat, You-Who-live-in-Truth," the king's disciples said to him, "you will make the poor equal with the rich, will efface the boundaries between fields as the river flood effaces them. You are a multitude of Niles, flooding the earth with the waters of inexhaustible love!"

The king had invented a dangerous game of throwing gold to the beggars like fire into straw. For many years Mahu, the chief of the guards, had saved the situation: collecting trustworthy people from among the palace servants he dressed them up as beggars and promised the well-behaved a fair share of the spoils and the unruly--the lash; and all had gone well. The king was short-sighted; from the High Place where he sat while throwing the gold money rings into the crowd, he could not recognize the faces below.

But someone informed against Mahu. The king was very angry and nearly dismissed him from his post; and next time Mahu had to admit real, not dressed up beggars. Then there was trouble: no sooner did the rain of gold begin to fall than people grew savage, a free fight began and a whole detachment of armed soldiers had difficulty in quieting the crowd. There were three killed and many wounded. The king fell ill with grief, gold rained no more, but food was still given away and petitions received.

The Beggars Court was a large quadrangle paved with slabs of alabaster and surrounded by two storeys of pillared arcades. At one end of it was the High Place--the king's tabernacle. A wide, gradually ascending staircase of alabaster led to it. The goddess, Nekhbet, the Falcon Sun-mother, with a white head and a red, scaly body, was soaring above the tabernacle holding a golden ring--the royal globe, in its claws. "As the mother comforts her children so will I comfort you," the king, son of the Sun, said to the sorrowful children of the earth.

"Down! down! down! the king comes! The god comes!" the runners cried and the whole crowd in the court prostrated themselves, crying out:

"Rejoice, Akhnaton, Joy of the Sun!"

Besides beggars and petitioners there were, in the crowd, many sick, blind, halt and lame, because people believed that everyone who touched the king's clothes or upon whom his shadow fell was healed.

"Defend us, save us, have mercy, O Lord!" they called to him, like the souls in hell to the god who came down to them.

The king ascended the steps to the tabernacle and sat on his throne. Dio stood behind him with the fan.

The guards admitted the petitioners through a narrow passage between two low walls of stone along the foot of the stairs. Two Nubian soldiers with naked swords guarded the door in the middle of the wall adjoining the staircase. Approaching this door every petitioner prostrated himself, sniffed the ground, placed a wooden or a clay tablet with his petition on the bottom step of the stairs, where there was a heap of them already, and passed on.

Everyone was admitted into the Court, but a special permit was required for entering the passage leading to the king's tabernacle. Mahu, the chief of the guards, watched over everything.

Suddenly there was a disturbance. A petitioner tried to get through the little door. The soldiers crossed their swords in front of him but he went straight ahead, stretching his arm towards the king and screaming as though he were being cut to pieces:

"Defend, save, have mercy, Joy of the Sun!"

Not daring to kill a man before the king, the soldiers lifted their swords and the man, flattening himself on the ground and wriggling like an eel, crept between them and began crawling up the stairs. Mahu rushed at him and seized him by the collar, but the man wriggled out and went on screaming and crawling towards the king.

Mahu made a sign to the lancers of the bodyguard who stood two in a row, along the stairs. They closed their ranks and lowered their spears. But the man crawled on.

At the same moment a frenzied scream was heard:

"Let him through! Let him through!"

The squealing, breathless scream like that of a woman in hysterics or of a child in a fit was so strange that Dio did not recognize the king's voice. With a distorted face he jumped up and stamped with both feet, as the little girls had done when they played blind man's buff to the sound of the threshing song. And the ringing cry went on:

"Let him through! Let him through!"

Mahu made another sign to the lancers and they lifted their spears, making way. The man crawled between them and advanced almost as far as the top landing where the king's tabernacle stood. He raised his head and Dio recognised the long red curls, the red goat's beard, the prominent ears, hooked nose, thick lips and burning eyes of Issachar, son of Hamuel.

The king was quiet now and, bending forward, looked straight into Issachar's eyes intently and, as it were, greedily, just as Issachar looked at him.

"Your servant has a secret message for you, sire!" Issachar whispered.

"Speak, I listen."

"No, for you, for you alone."

"Leave us alone," the king said to the dignitaries who stood on the landing.

All withdrew except Dio who hid behind the corner of the tabernacle.

Some three or four steps separated Issachar from the king. "I know who you are! I know!" he said, crawling up and looking straight into the king's eyes, with the same intent, eager look. "Sun's joy, Sun's Only Son, Akhnaton Uaenra, Son of the living God!"

Suddenly he jumped up and drew a knife from his belt. But before he had time to raise it Dio darted forward and seized him by the hand. He pushed her so that she fell on her knees but jumped up again, not letting go of his hand, and screening the king with her body. An unendurably burning chill pierced her shoulder. She heard shouts, saw people running and fell on the ground with the last thought: 'he will kill him!'

IX

Paradise gardens of Maru-Aton--the Precincts of the Sun--were situated south of the city, where the rocks of the hilly desert were close to the river.

The sweet breath of the north wind could be felt even on the hottest days under the shade of the evergreen palms and cedars laden with the fragrance of incense. Each tree was planted in a hole dug in the sand, filled with the Nile black earth and surrounded by a ridge of bricks to prevent water running away.

Everywhere there were flower-beds, ponds, islands, bridges, arbours, chapels, summer houses of light transparent lattice-work magnificently painted and gilded like jewel boxes.

The king often came here to rest from the noise of the city in the stillness of paradise.

Dio spent three months here recovering from her wound. Issachar hit her with the knife just above her left breast. It was a dangerous wound: had the knife gone in deeper it would have touched the heart. During the first few days she suffered from fever and delirium.

She fancied she was lying on the funeral pyre as then, in the island of Crete after killing the god Bull; the sacrificial knife pierced her heart; the flames burnt her but through their heat she felt a heavenly freshness: Merira was the flame and Tammuzadad--the freshness.

Or she saw a fiery red goat grazing on the green meadows of paradise; the grass turned coal-black at his touch and red sparks flitted about it; and again--Tamu was the green grass and Merira--the sparks.

Or it was a rich old Sidonian merchant unfolding before her among the booths of the Knossos harbour magnificent stuff, red shot with green; winking slyly he praised his goods: "a true robe of Baal! A mine of silver per cubit is my last price." And, once more, the red shade was Merira, the green--Tammuzadad.

Or, the real Merira was taking her into the holy of holies of Aton's temple, as he really had done, three days before Issachar's attack on the king; she did not want to go in, knowing that no one but the king and the high priest were supposed to do so, but Merira reassured her, saying, "Yes, with me you may!" And, taking her by the hand, he led her in. In the dim light of sanctuary lamps the bas-relief of the Sphinx seemed a pale phantom: a lion's body and legs, human arms and head and an inexpressibly strange, fine, birdlike face--old, ancient, eternal. "If a man had suffered for a thousand years in hell and then came to earth again, he would have a face like that," Merira whispered in her ear. "Who is he?" she tried to recognize him and could not; and then, suddenly, she knew him and woke up with a cry of unearthly horror: 'Akhnaton'!

The king's physician, Pentu, treated her so cleverly that she was soon better. But the unwearying care of the queen did her more good perhaps than any medicine. The queen nursed Dio as though she had been her own daughter; she never left her, spent sleepless nights beside her though she herself was far from well: she had a cough and every evening there was an ominous red flush in her cheeks.

Each time that Dio saw the wan, beautiful face bending over her, the face of one who had also received a mortal wound, she felt like bursting into tears.

She learned from the queen what happened in the Beggars Court after Issachar had struck her and she fell down senseless.

"God has saved the king by a miracle!" everyone said. The assassin had raised his knife to strike him when some dreadful vision appeared before him; the knife dropped out of his hand and he fell at the king's feet. The king, thinking that Dio was killed, bent over her and embraced her with a cry so terrible that only then they understood how much he loved her. He would not leave her, but at last Pentu, the physician, assured him that Dio was alive and he got up, covered with her blood.

"You are now related by blood both to him and to me," the queen said, smiling through tears.

Some of the bodyguards rushed at Issachar, intending to kill him on the spot, but the others saved him at the orders of Mahu and Ramose; only these two had kept their presence of mind amidst the general confusion and remembered that, before putting the criminal to death, they ought to find out from him whether he had any accomplices. Issachar was taken to the prison and cross-examined, but he said very little; he did not give anyone away and only confessed that when he raised the knife to strike the king he had a vision. He would not say what the vision was and only muttered to himself something in the Jewish language about their King-Messiah and repeated senseless words "they shall look on Him whom they pierced." But he would not explain who was pierced and then grew silent altogether.

Torture was forbidden by royal decree in the holy province of Aton, yet considering the importance of the occasion they had recourse to it all the same. But neither antelope lashes nor hippopotamus scourges could untie Issachar's tongue. Mahu and Ramose had to give him up at last.

On that same night he was taken ill with something like brain fever--or pretended to be. Fearing that the criminal might die before the execution Ramose hastened to ask the king for a death penalty had been abolished in Aton's province. And when Ramose suggested that the criminal should be moved to some other province and executed there, the king smiled and said, shrugging his shoulders: "there is no deceiving God, my friend! This man wanted to kill me here--and here he must be judged."--"Not judged, but pardoned," Ramose understood and was indignant; he decided to put Issachar to death secretly by the hands of the gaolers. But he did not succeed in this either: the old gaolers were replaced by the new who had received strict orders to preserve the prisoner's life.

Issachar soon recovered from his real, or pretended, illness. The king who had had an epileptic fit after Issachar's attack on him and was still far from well, visited the prisoner and had a long peaceful talk almost alone with him: the guards stood at a distance; and a few days later it appeared that the prisoner had escaped.

The three elder princesses, Maki, Rita and Ankhi, helped the queen to nurse Dio; it was from them she heard of the city rumour about the king having himself helped Issachar to escape; it was said that the man had not gone far but was hiding somewhere in the town waiting, perhaps, for a new opportunity to take the king's life.

"The king has now shamed the faces of all his faithful servants because he loves those who hate him and hates those who love him!" Ramose cried when he heard of Issachar's escape, and he recalled the words of old Amenhotep the Wise, the tutor and namesake of the king's father: "if you want to please the gods, sire, and to cleanse Egypt from corruption, drive away all the Jews!"

"The darling Hippopotamus is right," Ankhi concluded--she called Ramose 'hippopotamus' because of his being so stout--and suddenly she clenched her fists and stamped almost crying with anger. "Shame, shame upon all of us that the vile Jew has been spared!"

Dio made no answer, but the thought flashed through her mind "we are related by blood now, but blood, both his own and other people's is like water to him!" And though she immediately felt ashamed of this thought a trace of it remained in her mind.

The king often came to Maru-Aton, but the queen seldom allowed him to see Dio, especially during the first, difficult days: she knew he was not clever with the sick. His conversations with Dio were strangely trivial.

"Why is it I keep talking of trifles?" he wondered one day, left alone with her. "Is it that I am growing stupid? You know, Dio, sometimes I am awfully stupid, ridiculously so. It must be because of my illness...."

He paused and then added, with the childishly timid, apologetic smile that always wrung her heart: "The worst of it is that I sometimes make the most sacred things foolish and ridiculous: like a thief stealing and desecrating that which is holy...."

"Why do you talk like this?" Dio cried, indignantly.

"There, forgive me, I won't.... What is it I was going to say? Oh, yes, about Issachar. It wasn't out of foolishness I pardoned him. He is a very good man...."

The queen came in and the conversation dropped. Dio was glad: her heart was throbbing as though Issachar's knife had once more been thrust into the wound.

By the month of Paonzu, March-April, she was almost well though still weak.

The first time she went into the garden she was surprised to see that the hot summer came straight after the winter: there was no trace of spring.

Strange longing came upon her during those hot days of delusive southern spring. "He who drinks water out of the Nile forgets his native land," the Egyptians said. She fancied she, too, had forgotten it. What was this longing then? "It's nothing," she tried to comfort herself, "it's simply foolishness, the result of illness, as with the king. It will pass off." But it did not.

In the gardens of Maru-Aton by the big pond opposite the women's quarters where Dio lived, a rare tree, hardly ever seen in Egypt, was planted--a silver birch, graceful and slender, like a girl of thirteen. It had been brought as a present to Princess Makitatona from Thracia, the land of Midnight. The princess was very fond of it; she looked after it herself, watered it and kept the ground around it well dug, covering it with fresh Nile black earth.

Dio, too, grew fond of the birch tree. Every day she watched its buds swell and sticky, greenish yellow leaves, crumpled like the face of a new-born baby, open out; she kissed them and, sniffing them with her eyes closed, fancied that every moment she would hear the call of the cuckoo and smell the melting snow and lilies of the valley as in her native woods at home on Mount Ida--smell the real spring of her own native land.

When flocks of cranes flew northwards, with their melancholy call, she stretched out her arms to them: would that she, too, were flying with them! Looking at the ever blue, lifeless sky she longed for the living clouds she knew so well. Putting her ear to a shell, she eagerly listened to its roar, that was like the roar of sea waves; she dreamt of the sea in her sleep and wept. One day she sniffed a new sponge Zenra had just bought and almost cried in reality.

She had a Cretan amethyst, a present from her mother, with a fine design upon it: bare willows in a flooded meadow all bent to one side by the wind, a tumble-down old fence with poles sticking out, the ripple of autumn rain on the water: everything dull and wretched and yet she would have given her very soul to see it all again. But she knew she would never see it, she would never go home--she would not want to herself. Was this, perhaps, why she longed for it so? Thus the radiant shades in paradise may be longing for this gloomy earth.

One early morning she sat by Maki's birch tree, listening to the wailing of the shepherd's pipe in the hills above Maru-Aton. She knew both the song and the singer: the song was about the dead god Tammuz and the singer was Engur, son of Nurdahan, a Babylonian shepherd, an old servant of Tammuzadad, brought by her to Egypt from the island of Crete.

The sounds of the pipe fell sadly and monotonously, sound after sound like tear after tear.

"The wail is raised for Tammuz far away,
The mother-goat and the kid are slain,
The mother-sheep and the lamb are slain,
The wail is raised for the beloved Son."

Dio listened and it seemed to her that in this song the whole creation was weeping for the Son who is to come, but still tarries "how long, how long, O Lord?"

Nothing stirred and complete stillness reigned everywhere; only the air, in spite of the early hour, was simmering with heat over the sandy paths of the garden and flowing in streams like molten glass.

Suddenly a fan-like leaf at the top of a palm moved as though coming to life, then another and a third. There was a gust of wind, hot as from an oven; the sand on the paths rose up like smoke; the light grew dim; the sky turned dark and yellowish in an extraordinary, incredible way: it might be the end of the world; the whole garden rustled and groaned in the sudden whirlwind. It was dark as night.

Dio ran home. The wind almost knocked her off her feet, burned her face, blinded her with sand. Her breath failed her, her temples throbbed, her legs gave way under her. It was not twenty paces to the house but she felt she would fall exhausted before she got there.

"Make haste, make haste, dear!" Zenra shouted to her from the steps; seizing Dio by the hand she dragged her into the entry, and with difficulty shutting the door in the tearing wind, bolted it fast.

"What is it, nurse?" Dio asked.

"Sheheb, a plague of Set," the old woman answered in a whisper, putting the palms of both hands to her forehead as in prayer.

Sheheb, the south-east wind, blows from the Arabian desert. Fiery clouds of sand, thrown up by the whirlwind, fall slanting upon the ground with the noise of hail. The sun turns crimson, then dark like an ember. At midday lamps have to be lit. Neither men nor animals can breathe in the black stuffy darkness; plants perish. The whirlwind never lasts more than an hour; if it lasted longer everything would be burned up as with fire.

In the fiery darkness of the Sheheb Dio lay on her couch like one dead. The wind howled outside and the whole house shook as though it would fall. Someone seemed to be knocking and throwing handfuls of sand at the closed shutters, the flame of the lamp flickered in the wind that penetrated through the walls.

The door opened suddenly and someone came in.

"Zenra, is it you?" Dio called.

There was no answer. Somebody approached the couch. Dio recognized Tammuzadad and was not frightened or surprised, she seemed to have expected him. He bent over her and smiled; no, it was not Tamu, but Merira. She looked closely and % again it was Tamu and then Merira again; first it was one then another; they interchanged and merged into one another like the two colours of a shot material. He bent down still lower, looked into her eyes as though asking a question. She knew that if she answered 'no' with her eyes only he would go away; but she closed her eyes without speaking. He lay down beside her and embraced her. She lay like one dead.

When he had gone away she thought "I will go and hang myself." But she went on lying quite still. She may have dropped asleep and by the time she woke up the Sheheb was over, the sky was clear and the flame of the lamp looked pale. Zenra came in and Dio understood that it had been delirium.

After the Sheheb the weather freshened. The sweet breath of the north wind could be felt in the shade of the evergreen palms and cedars fragrant like a censer of incense. Only at times a smell of carrion came from the direction of Sheol and then Dio thought of her Sheheb nightmare. It was the last attack of her illness. The wound healed so completely that the only trace left of it was a pale pink scar on the dark skin, and Dio was quite well.

The king had once given her a beautiful scroll of papyrus, yellowish like old ivory, smoothed to perfection with wild boar's tooth, fine, strong, imperishable.

Papyrus was expensive and only used for the most important records; everything else was written on clay or wooden tablets, flat white stones or fragments of broken earthenware.

Dio had been wondering for some time what would be good enough to write on this scroll; at last she thought of something.

All the king's teaching was given by word of mouth; he never wrote down anything himself and did not allow others to do so. "To write," he used to say, "is to kill the word."

"It will all be lost, it will vanish like a footprint on the sand," Dio often thought sorrowfully, and at last she decided: "I will write down on the papyrus the king's teaching; I will not disobey him: no one living now shall see the scroll; but when I have finished writing I will bury it in the ground; perhaps in ages to come men will discover it and read it."

She carried out her plan.

In secret from all she worked night after night, sitting on the floor in front of a low desk with a sloping board for the papyrus, tracing upon it, with the sharpened end of a reed, close columns of hieroglyphics, abbreviated into shorthand, and covering each column with cedar varnish which made the writing indelible.

Words of wisdom of King Akhnaton Uaenra Neferheperura--Sun's joy, Sun's beautiful essence, Sun's only Son--heard and written down by Dio, daughter of Aridoel, a Cretan, priestess of the Great Mother.

The King says:

"Aton, the face of god, the disc of the sun, is the visible image of the invisible God. To reveal to men the hidden one is everything.

"My grandfather, Prince Tutmose, was hunting once in the desert of the Pyramids; he was tired, lay down and dropped asleep at the foot of the great Sphinx which, in those days, was buried in the sands. The Sphinx appeared to him in a dream and said "I am your father, Aton; I will make you king if you dig me out of the sands." The prince did so, and I am doing so, too: I dig the living God out of the dead sands--dead hearts."

The King says:

"There are three substances in God: Zatut--Rays, Neferu--Beauty,--Merita--Love; the Disc of the Sun, Light and Warmth; Father, Son, Mother."

"The symbol of Aton, the disc of the sun with three rays like hands, stretched downwards is clear to all men--to the wise and to the children."

"The remedy from death is not ointments for the dead, balsam, salt, resin or saltpetre, but mercy and love. Have mercy upon one another, O people, have mercy upon one another and you shall never see death!"

The King said to the malefactor who attempted his life, Issachar the Israelite: "your God sacrifices all to Himself and mine sacrifices Himself for all."

The King says:

"The way they break granite in the quarries of Egypt is this: they make a hole in the stone, drive a wooden wedge into it, moisten it with water and the wood, as it swells out, breaks the stone. I, too, am such a wedge."

"The Egyptians have an image of Osiris-Set, god-devil, with two heads on one body, as it were, twins grown together. I want to cut them in two."

"The deadness of Egypt is the perfect equilibrium of the scales. I want to disturb it."

"How little I have done! I have lifted the coffin-lid over Egypt and I know, when I am gone, the lid will be shut down again. But the signal has been given to future ages!"

"When I was about eight I saw one day the soldiers piling up before the King, my father, the cut-off hands of enemies killed in battle, and I fainted with the smell of corruption. When I think of war I always recall this smell."

"On the wall of the Charuk palace, near Thebes, where I spent my childhood, there was a mural painting of a naval battle between the Cretans and the Egyptians; the enemies' ships were going down, the men drowning and the Egyptians were stretching out to them poles, sticks, oars, saving their enemies. I remember someone laughed looking at the painting: 'One wouldn't find such fools anywhere except in Egypt!' I did not know what to answer and perhaps I do not know now, but I am glad to be living in the land of such fools!"

"The greatest of the kings of Egypt, Amenemhet, had it written on his tomb:

In my reign men lived in peace and mercy
Arrows and swords lay idle in my reign."

"The god rejoices when he goes into battle and sees blood" is said in the inscription of King Tutmose the Third, the Conqueror, to the god Amon. Amon is the god of war, Aton the god of peace. One must choose between them. I have chosen."

"There will be war so long as there are many peoples and many gods; but when there is one God and one mankind, there will be peace."

"We Egyptians despise the Jews, but maybe they know more about the Son than we do: we say about Him 'He was' and they say He is to come.'"

The king said to me alone and told me not to repeat it to anyone:

"I am the joy of the Sun, Akhnaton? No, not joy as yet, but sorrow; not the light, but the shadow of the sun that is to rise--the Son!"

Dio wrote down many other words of the king in her scroll and she finished with the hymn to Aton:

The Song of King Akhnaton Uaenra Neferheperura to Aton, the living and only God.

If my scroll is ever found by you, men of the ages to come, pray for me in gratitude for having preserved this song for you, the sweetest of all the songs of the Lord, that at the everlasting supper I may eat bread with my beloved King Akhnaton, the messenger of the rising sun--the Son.

Glorious is thy rising in the east
Lord and giver of life, Aton!
When thou risest in the sky
Thou fillest the earth with thy beauty.
Thy rays embrace all created things,
Thou hast carried them all away captive.
Thou bindest them by thy love.
Thou art far but thy rays are on earth,
Thou art on high, thy footprints are the day.
When thou settest in the west
Men lie in the 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.
Lions come forth from their dens,
Serpents creep from out their holes:
The Creator has gone to rest and the world is dumb.

Thou risest and bright is the earth
Thou sendest forth thy rays and the darkness flees.
Men rise, bathe their limbs, take their clothing,
Their arms are uplifted in prayer.

And in all the world they do their work.
All cattle graze in pastures green,
All plants are growing in the fields,
The birds are flying over their nests,
And lift their wings like hands in prayer.
Lambs leap and dance upon their feet,
All winged things fly gaily round.
They all live in thy life, O Lord!

The boats sail up and down the river,
Every highway is open because thou hast dawned.
The fish in the river leap up before thee
And thy rays are in the midst of the great sea.

Thou createst the man-child in woman,
And makest the seed in man,
Givest life to the child in its mother's womb,
Soothing it that it may not weep
Ere its own mother can soothe it.

When the chicken cries in the egg-shell,
Thou givest it breath to preserve it alive
And the strength to break the shell.
It comes forth from the egg and staggers,
But with its voice it calls to thee.
How manifold are thy works, O Lord!
They are hidden from us, Thou only God whose power no
other possesses!
Thou didst create the earth according to thy desire,
While thou wast alone in eternity,
Thou didst create man and the beasts of the field,
All the creatures that are upon the earth,
And fly with their wings on high.

Thou didst create Syria, Nubia and Egypt,
Setting every man in his place.
Giving him all that he needs,
His measure of food and his measure of days.
Their tongues are diverse in speech,
Their forms are diverse and their skins,
For Thou, divider, hast divided the peoples.

Thou makest the Nile in the nether world
To fill with goods thy people here;
Thou hast set a Nile up in the sky,
That its waters may fall down in floods,
Giving drink to wild beasts on the hills,
And refreshing the fields and the meadows.
How excellent are thy works, O Lord!
The Nile in heaven is for the strangers,
And the Nile from the nether world is for Egypt.

Thou feedest each plant as thine own child,
Thou makest the seasons for all thy creatures:
The winter to bring them coolness
And the summer to bring them heat.

Thou didst create the distant heavens
In order to behold all that Thou didst make.
Thou comest, thou goest, thou comest back
And Greatest out of thyself, the Only One,
Thousands upon thousands of forms:
Cities, towns and villages
On highways and on rivers.
All eyes see thy eternal sun.
When thou hast risen they live, when thou settest they die,
When thou didst establish the earth
Thou didst reveal thy will to me,
Thy Son, Akhnaton, who lives for ever and proceeds from thee,
And to thy beloved daughter,

Nefertiti, the delight of the Sun's delights.
Who flourishes for ever and ever.
Thou, Father, art in my heart
And there's no other that knows thee,
Only I know thee, thy son,
Akhnaton Uaenra,
Joy of the Sun, Sun's only son!"

When she had finished writing, Dio put the scroll inside an earthenware vessel, sealed it with a leaden seal with the sun disc of Aton and, as soon as it was dark, took a spade and went to Maki's birch tree by the big pond in the garden.

The fiery whirlwind of Sheheb had withered the tree, the blackened leaves were rolled up into little tubes, but the roots were alive. Maki dug it out to move it to a new hole with fresh earth in it, but she probably had not had time to finish her work before night: the tree lay near the hole.

Dio dug the hole deeper, put the earthenware pot into it, covered it with earth and levelled it.

A white rose was blooming close by in a flowerbed by the pond. In the stillness of the April night glowworms flitted about like sparks. One of them burrowed its way into the rose, and the flower seemed to have a heart of fire.

Dio went up to it, kissed it and thought:

"If some day men read my writing, they will connect Akhnaton with Dio. I shall be in him as this flame is in the flower."

X

The whip cracked, the horses dashed forward, the feathers on their manes swayed, snowflakes of foam dropped off their bridles, and the chariot flew like a whirlwind. The air whistled in the ears; the lion's tail fixed to the king's belt at the back and the crimson ribbons of his robe fluttered in the wind. The king was driving; Dio stood behind him.

They passed the palm groves and the fields of ripe, yellow corn, taller than the height of man; the Nile glittered for the last time in the distance and the menacing silence of the endless desert, now dark brown, now sparkling like glass, enveloped them.

As she looked through her lashes at the shining snake-like sandy roads, flattened by heavy traffic, Dio recalled the thin layer of ice over the thawing snow sparkling in the sun on Mount Dicte. The dazzling air was shimmering with the heat. A vulture hung motionless in the dark blue sky. At times the shadow of a passing cloud ran over the ground and, still quicker, an antelope galloped past; suddenly it would stop and, stretching out its neck, sniff the air and then run on, light as the wind.

The sun was setting when the wayfarers saw on a high rock of the Arabian hills a boundary-stone of the province of Aton.

The images of King Akhnaton and Queen Nefertiti, cut out in the rock at a height where only the wind, the sun and the eagles could reach them, were half-covered, as though buried alive, by the waves of drifting sands. The only way to reach the bas-reliefs was to descend by a rope down a perpendicular rock; and evidently this was what some enemy of Aton's faith had done, for the images were broken and defiled.

The king stepped out of the chariot. The long black shadow cast by his figure upon the white sand seemed to stretch to the ends of the earth.

There was a clatter of hoofs. The high-priest, Merira, and the chief of the guards, Mahu, drove up.

"If I could only find the scoundrels, I would kill them on the spot!" Mahu cried indignantly, when he saw the desecrated images.

"Come, come, my friend," said the king, with a smile. "The sands will bury them anyway--there will be nothing left."

Mahu went to make arrangements for the night: the king wished to sleep in the desert.

Close by there was a mountain gorge, dark and narrow like a coffin, where tombs had been cut in the rock for the princesses. Hard by an old fig-tree made an unfading patch of green against the dead sand, and a sweetbrier flowered, fragrant with the scent of honey and roses: the secret water of an underground spring kept them fresh.

The king, accompanied by Dio and Merira, went down into the gorge to see the tombs.

When they had finished they walked up the slope of the hill by a narrow jackals' path, talking.

"Is the decree concerning the gods ready, Merira?" the king asked.

Dio understood that he meant the decree prohibiting the worship of all the old gods.

"It is ready," Merira answered, "but do think before you proclaim it, sire."

"Think of what?"

"Of not losing your kingdom."

The king looked at him intently, without speaking, and then asked again:

"And what ought I to do, my friend, not to lose my kingdom?"

"I have told you many times, Uaenra: be merciful to yourself and others."

"To myself and others? Can one do both?"

"Yes."

"And what do you think, Dio?"

"I think one cannot."

Merira looked at her from under his brows, with mute derision.

"Do you remember, Merira, who it was said: 'I know the day when I shall not be'?" the king asked.

"I remember: the god Osiris."

"No, the man Osiris. It is the will of the Father that the Son should suffer and die for all. Blessed be my heavenly Father! I, too, know the day when I shall not be. It is drawing near--it has come already. Now my kingdom is coming to an end, now fulfil the last will of your king, Merira, son of Nehtaneb, and proclaim to men my decree concerning the false gods and the one true God, whose is the glory for ever and ever!"

"Your will shall be done, sire, but remember: once the fire is kindled, there is no putting it out."

"Why, did you think we should just play with the fire and then let it out?" the king said, with a smile. He put both his hands on Merira's shoulders and again looked deep into his eyes.

"I know what makes you wretched, Merira," he said quietly, almost in a whisper. "You have not yet decided whether you are my friend or my enemy. Maybe you will decide very soon. Remember one thing: I love you. Don't be afraid then, my friend, my beloved enemy; be my friend or my enemy to the bitter end. God help you!"

He put his arms round him and kissed him.

The chariot was brought. The king stepped into it and Dio followed him. The whip cracked, the horses dashed off and the chariot flew like the whirlwind.

Merira watched it go, and when it disappeared in the last rays of the setting sun he stretched out his arms towards it and cried:

"You have prophesied your own doom, Akhnaton Uaenra: now your sun is setting, now your kingdom is coming to an end!"

It was already dark when, having driven far into the hilly desert, the king stopped and alighted from the chariot. Dio tied the horses to a spear stuck in the sand. The king sat down on a stone and Dio sat at his feet.

He pointed out to her the distant flame of a bonfire in the desert.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Mahu, strange man that he is...." the king answered. "He follows me about like a watchdog; I suppose he is afraid of my running away...."

Both were silent: Dio was waiting for him to speak: she knew he had come with her to the desert in order to talk undisturbed.

"I want to ask you something, Dio, and I cannot, I can't find the words," he began quietly, without looking at her.

He broke off and then began lower still:

"Do you know what Iserker said to me when I asked him why he wanted to kill me? 'Because, being a man, you make yourself God'. This was well said, wasn't it?"

"No, it wasn't: you don't make yourself God."

"I know I don't: it would be better for a man who made himself God not to have been born. But that's one thing and then there is something else; and one thing is so like the other that sometimes there is no distinguishing them.... And then it turns round all of a sudden: it was like this and then, all at once, it's the other way about...."

He rambled on incoherently, constantly losing the thread of his thought, wandering off the point and trying to find words; at last he was in a complete tangle and, with a wave of his hand, said hopelessly:

"No, I cannot! I will tell you another time...."

Dio smiled, and, taking his hand began kissing and stroking it gently, comforting him like a child.

"Better tell me now, Enra!"

'Enra' was the diminutive of 'Uaenra' and only those most intimate with him called him so.

"You speak very well, I understand it all. You don't make yourself a god, that's one thing, and what was the other?" she tried to help him as though he were a schoolboy who had forgotten his lesson.

"What was the other thing?" he began again and suddenly hurried on joyfully. "Do you remember the prayer 'Thou, Father art in my heart and no one knows Thee but me, Thy son?' I have said this and I don't go back on it. I never shall. This is as fixed in me as the stars in heaven. But this is so when I am not afraid, and when I am afraid, I pray to the Father: 'send someone else, someone else instead, I cannot!' And now, too, I am afraid. I keep thinking of the burden I have taken upon myself. Can a man bear it? What do you think, can he?"

"I don't know, Enra...."

"Don't you know either?"

The way he looked at her wrung her heart.

She clasped his knees and cried: "Yes, I do know: you can--you alone!"

He said nothing and buried his face in his hands. There was a long silence.

The stars came out. The Milky Way like a cloud rent in two stretched from one end of the desert to the other; the Pleiades glowed and the seven stars of Tuart, the Hippopotamus, glittered with a cold brilliance.

The king uncovered his face and looked at Dio. His face was as still as the sleeping desert and the starry heavens above. But Dio shuddered: she recalled the Sphinx with the face of Akhnaton; if a man had been tortured for a thousand years in hell and then came to earth again, he would have such a face.

"Dio, my sister, my beloved, why did you come to me, why did you love me?" he said, wringing his hands. "It was easier for me without you: I did not know myself then, did not see myself. For the first time I saw myself in you and was terrified: who am I? who am I? Go away, I beg you! Why should you be tortured with me?"

"No, my brother, I shall never go away from you, I want to suffer with you!"

"You have escaped one fire and now you seek another?"

"Yes, I want to perish in your fire!"