Chapter IX: Part THREE: I Am Not He (2)

An arrow pierced the fragrant cup on Ty's head and tore off the wig, leaving her bald head bare. But the old woman sat unperturbed and did not even take her gloves off; rebellion seemed to be part of the court ceremonial to her.

Miruit, wounded in the stomach with a spear, lay in a pool of blood on the floor, scratching the ground with her nails and showing her teeth as it were in a smile, and the narrow childish hips moved slower and slower as though ending the dance of love.

The Hittite Amazons might not have withstood the attack of the Midians, had not half the mercenaries deserted the conspirators at the last moment.

The noise of the battle began to subside, the rebels were in retreat. The women had conquered the men. It had all happened so quickly that those present had hardly come to their senses.

Suddenly Ramose, lightly wounded in the left arm, came into the chamber dragging Tuta after him. He threw him at the king's feet and cried:

"Here is the chief criminal, sire! It is for his sake the other one has been working," he pointed to Merira and turned to Tuta again. "Confess, you rascal, or I'll kill you like a dog."

He raised the knife over Tuta. The king seized his hand.

"Let go the knife!"

Ramose did not obey and, shaking with anger, grumbled:

"Will you forgive this one, too?"

"It's for me to decide what I will do, but you let go the knife!"

The king pulled the knife out of Ramose's hand by force and threw it aside.

"Woe to us! God will not save him who ruins himself!" the old man muttered, sinking into an armchair heavily, exhausted by his wound.

Tuta lay at the king's feet.

"Is it true that you have done it?" the king asked him.

"Not I, not I, sire, God sees it isn't I...." Tuta babbled, pointing his finger at Merira.

Merira stood at a distance without moving; he looked so unconcerned that he seemed not to see or hear anything. Someone had tied his hands behind his back.

The king went up to him and asked:

"You wanted to kill me, Merira?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because you prepare the way for the Son of perdition."

"Haven't we prepared it together?"

"No, not together."

"Why have you lied to me, then?"

"To destroy your work."

"But why did you rise against Him?"

"May I ask you a favour, sire?"

"Do."

"Don't ask me about anything and put me to death as soon as possible."

"No, Merira, I will not put you to death."

"You will forgive me like Tuta?" Merira said, with a smile that looked like a grimace of disgust. He had spoken with his eyes on the ground; suddenly he raised them and said looking straight into the king's eyes:

"Do what you like, but remember, Uaenra, that if you don't kill me, I will...."

He did not finish, but the king understood 'I will kill you.'

He put both hands on Merira's shoulders, and, also looking straight into his eyes, said, with a gentle smile:

"Remember, you too, Merira: whatever happens, I love you."

V

The king was the last to learn that Princess Makitatona was with child. She confessed it to him herself, but did not say who the man was and so implored him not to ask her that he had pity and reassured her:

"Don't tell me if you don't want to; you will tell me when you feel that you can."

He blamed himself for everything: "If I loved her more, this would not have happened!" He was doing himself injustice: he loved all his daughters and Maki more than the rest.

He thought the queen knew, but she did not. The princess's nurse, old Asa, may have suspected something, but she would rather have had her tongue cut off than said anything.

There were strange rumours in the town: it was said that the princess had been seduced by a tramp, a runaway slave or, perhaps, by the Jew Iserker himself; it would not have been very difficult, because the king's daughters were not properly looked after; Princess Makitatona had been seen to go out alone into the desert through the secret gate in the Maru-Aton garden wall. And people added, not without malice, that the Jews were highly delighted, for they thought that the princess would give birth to their Messiah.

The dwarf, Lagu, was brought one day to the palace half dead: he had had a fight with a crowd of street ruffians who were gazing at a charcoal drawing of the princesses made on the wall with an indecent inscription beneath it.

The king allowed Maki to live in retirement in the Maru-Aton palace until her confinement. She spent the days there in a perfectly dark room with the shutters closed and the windows curtained: she could not bear the light. She had had attacks of this disease before: daylight seemed to stab not only her eyes, but her whole body as with a knife; if a ray of sunshine penetrated into the room, she cried and groaned as with intolerable pain.

The eldest princess, Meritatona, or Rita, Saakera's wife, was inseparable from Maki. There was a year's difference between the sisters--one was fifteen, the other fourteen; they loved each other tenderly though they were as different as day and night.

Maki had been betrothed to Saakera, who was passionately in love with her; she loved him, too, but renounced him for Rita's sake and made a vow of virginity to the god Attis. The god's chapel was in the hilly desert not far from Maru-Aton. The droning of the eunuchs engaged in their devotions sounded like jackals howling in the night.

Some ten days after Saakera's feast Maki and Rita were sitting at Maru-Aton late one evening in a long and narrow Water House, supported by palm-shaped pillars with a labyrinth of eleven ornamental pools. Their slanting walls were covered with paintings of water plants, lotoses and papyrus, that seemed to be growing out of water; above them were painted pomegranate bushes and clumps of vine. Beds of living flowers were all round.

Rita and Maki were reclining on pillows by the water's edge, under bushes of white, pink, and red roses.

"Why didn't you tell sooner, you silly? We could have arranged things, and now look at yourself: it is too late," said Rita, feeling Maki's body as an experienced midwife. Pregnancy seemed monstrous in a little creature like Maki, almost a child.

"Saakera's Ethiopian has some stuff. Shall I ask her? Perhaps it could still be done...."

"Oh, Rita, don't speak of it, please don't!"

"Very well, don't whine.... What was I talking about? Yes, about Ankhi. She wants to run away and join Tuta. The rascals did not stay long in prison--they escaped to Nut-Amon; I expect they'll stir up a rising there. No, I would not have let them off: they ought to have been killed on the spot. But our courtiers are all traitors and scoundrels."

She spoke listlessly, evidently thinking of something else. Suddenly she smiled, as though recalling something funny.

"Shiha is a clever man! Do you know what he says of Enra?" Shiha was the high priest and eunuch of the god Attis.

"What?" Maki asked. She started slightly at the name of Shiha and Rita noticed it.

"He says Enra lives as though all were well with the world; but all is not well!"

"All is not well?" Maki repeated, frowning with the childish effort to understand.

"Do you remember Yuma's death?" Rita went on. Yuma was a little black slave who died of a tarantula sting.

"She turned greyish-white all over, just like an autumn fly covered with mildew, and a smell of corruption came from her before she died. And the day before yesterday someone had attacked a little girl of five by the very walls of Aton's temple, strangled her and thrown the body to the pigs. Is that well? And Enra lives as though none of these things happened. Perhaps all is well for God, but Enra is not God; people say he is, but he himself knows he isn't."

She pondered for a while and began again:

"He does not know how to cry, but one cannot live without tears; nothing is sweeter than tears..."

"Does Shiha say that?" Maki asked.

"No, I say it .... or perhaps Shiha, I don't remember.... What is Aton, the Sun? A spark in darkness: death will blow and the sun will be extinguished. Darkness is more than light; first there was darkness and then light. Maybe God dwells in darkness."

She laughed suddenly.

"You, too, are a sensible girl; you are afraid of light and love darkness. The daughter does not take after the father."

Maki listened greedily; sometimes she strove to say something, but words froze on her lips; she merely looked at her sister with wide open eyes and seemed like one bound hand and foot waiting for a blow.

"Well, that's enough moping, let us go! You must walk about, it is good for you," Rita said, lifting her with apparent roughness, but in reality with tender care, and led her into the garden.

It was dusk. The sky was clear, but mist was creeping over the ground. The water in the river had only just returned to its normal level; there were still pools of water about. Drops fell from the wet leaves. Frogs croaked ecstatically. The smell of the flowers was intoxicating. All at once the mist turned rosy from the moon that was rising invisibly.

They walked to the big pond where Maki's birch tree grew. It had never recovered after the scorching Sheheb. Everything round it was green and in flower, but it was dead and only on some of the bare branches a withered leaf showed black.

Maki put her arms round the pale, slender stem and pressed her cheek against it.

"Poor, poor darling!" she whispered tenderly as though saying good-bye to a friend who had died.

"A-ah, you remember the superstition!" Rita said, with a laugh. "If one plants a tree and it dies, the person who planted it will die also. Well, even if you do die, that's nothing very dreadful--you will have had a child anyway. To think of God sending such happiness to one who doesn't want it! Why, I would die ten times if I could only have a child."

After walking round the big pond, they came to the Lotos pond, with Aton's chapel on a little island and a small bridge leading to it. A huge lotos, not yet fully opened, showed white on the water. A boat was tied near by. Rita jumped into it, and seeing a garden knife at the bottom, took it to cut the lotos; she gave the flower to Maki and hid the knife in the bosom of her dress.

They went back to the Water-House and sat down in the old place.

"You haven't been to see Shiha for some time, have you?" Rita asked.

"No, I haven't."

"And I often go to him. It is interesting. A regular abode of love. All our dignitaries' wives keep going there. These eunuchs are excellent matchmakers. And they are themselves fond of women--and the women like it, of course. Shiha tempts me, too, with the god's marriage-bed: 'the god will come down to you in the night like a bridegroom to his bride,' he says. But I am not a fool to buy a pig in a poke. Instead of a god a slave or a dirty Jew may come and disgrace one..."

She paused and then spoke again, looking straight into Maki's eyes:

"Extraordinary! How is it possible not to find out who the father of your child is? Why, I would get the wretch from the bottom of the sea! But Shiha knows who came to you then. Would you like me to threaten him so that he should tell? ... Well, why are you silent? Do you want me to?"

"Do what you like, but don't torment, don't torment me so! Better make an end of it." Maki moaned, pale and trembling as though she were on the rack.

Rita drew back, and she trembled, too.

"Make an end of it? Do you think I know everything and merely tease you, play cat and mouse with you? Well, perhaps I do know.... What's the matter, why are you so frightened? Perhaps you know, too? A-ah, I've caught you! Speak, tell me, who is it? He?"

"Yes, he, Saakera," Maki answered, with apparent calm, looking straight into her eyes. "Well, kill me, I don't care..."

Rita brought the knife out of her bosom and flung it far away. She buried her face in her hands and sat for a few minutes without moving; then she drew her hands away from her face and put them on Maki's shoulders.

"There, it's a good thing you told me or very likely I would have killed you, really. Do you remember Ankhi's doll?"

When Rita and Ankhi were little they had once a fight over a clay doll, a hideous thing that they both loved passionately. Rita took it from her sister, who pulled it out of her hands, and broke it into bits against the wall. Then Rita fell upon Ankhi like a fury and bit her throat; the nurses had difficulty in dragging her off. And in the night she stole away into the garden and ate some poison berries, 'spiders' eggs'; she very nearly died.

"The devil entered into me then, and now, too. We have all taken after father--we are possessed.... Yes, it is a good thing you told me. All is well now--it's over! But I do wonder at myself: I thought I would kill you if you told me; and now I don't feel anything. Silly girls had a fight over a doll, but perhaps it was not worth while, after all. You know what a number of wives Saakera has. Sheep are in the stalls, fish in the hatchery and we in his palace. You and I are no better than the others. You gave me your betrothed, I gave you my husband, so we are quits and that's an end of it. We'll be friends as before, better than before. When the baby is born--it must be a boy, we don't want a girl--we'll look after it together.... What's the matter, why are you silent again? Don't you believe me?"

"I do, but I am afraid...."

"What of?"

"I don't know.... You may forgive me, but I will torment myself to death.... Oh, Rita, darling, why didn't you kill me straight away? It would have been better to make an end of it!"

"Nonsense! All will be forgiven and forgotten if only one lives and loves. And you do love me, don't you--more than before?"

"More, much more! I love you dreadfully, that's why I will die--because I love you so. You know, Rita, if one loves very much, one cannot live, it's too great a joy...."

"It was after that you got to love me so?" Rita asked, with slight mockery.

Instead of answering Maki hid her face on Rita's breast and burst into tears.

"There, that will do," Rita said, drily. "It is time to go home--see what heavy dew there is."

She took her by the arms and again led her along carefully like a nurse.

They went indoors. Rita put her sister to bed and sat down beside her, waiting for her to go to sleep.

"Don't go," Maki begged.

"I won't, don't be afraid, I'll sleep here beside you."

"You do love me, yes?" Maki whispered in her ear.

"No, I don't love you a bit. Why, you silly girl, if I didn't love you, I wouldn't torment you so.... there, that's enough talking, go to sleep."

"No, wait a minute, what was I going to say? ... Oh, yes! You know I do not know for certain who came to me then. I told you it was he, Saakera, but I don't really know--perhaps it wasn't he."

"Who was it, then?"

"He Whom I was expecting. I doubted, I did not believe--and this is why I suffer now. I shall die in misery, but when I am dead, perhaps He will come again."

"There, don't let us talk of it, sleep. Shall I tell you a story?"

"Do," Maki answered in a sleepy, childish voice.

"Once upon a time there lived a king and queen," Rita began the tale of the Bewitched Prince, in a sing-song voice like the old nurse, Asa. "One day they prayed to the gods and the gods gave them a son. And when he was born the seven Hathor came to decree his destiny and said, 'this man will meet with death from a crocodile, a snake, or a dog.' And the king was very, very sorry when he heard of this. And he caused a tower to be built in the mountains and settled the prince there. And the prince was very, very happy there...."

She stopped, listened to her sister's even breathing and kissing her on the eyes, that she might have good dreams, went out of the room.

Old Asa, the princesses' nurse, could not go to sleep in her stuffy room and went out into the garden; seeing something white flit among the trees she was frightened and wondered if it were Tiy--she knew that the dead queen walked about at night. But, recognizing Princess Meritatona, she called to her. The girl stopped, looked round without answering and ran along, disappearing among the thick bushes.

Used as Asa was to the princess's whims, she was surprised and then frightened--in a different way than at first: she felt there was something really alarming about the white phantom.

She ran after Rita, but her old legs did not obey her very well. She went on and on, calling her name, but there was no trace of her.

She met the gardener.

"Have you seen the princess?"

"Yes, I have."

"Where?"

"On the Lotos pond, in the chapel."

"What was she doing there?"

"I can't say."

"Let us go and look."

They walked to the chapel. The gardener did not dare to go in; Asa went in, but ran out immediately, screaming wildly, and fell to the ground, almost knocking the gardener off his feet.

He went into the chapel and saw the princess hanging on the brass rod of the curtain before the altar. She had made the noose out of the curtain drawstring but so badly that it slipped off. Hanging unevenly, her body rested with the toes of the left foot on the corner of the bench she had knocked down after climbing on to it to throw the string over the rod.

When the gardener cut the string and took the noose off Rita's neck she did not breathe and her face was so blue and fixed that he thought her dead.

Maki dreamt that she was lying on the marriage-bed in a high tower in the starry sky, waiting for Him as she had done then, in the temple of Attis; she knew that He would come and that His face would be like the moon, the sun of the night, not burning, not terrible, like the face of the god whose name is Quiet Heart.

She woke up and called:

"Rita!"

She looked round--there was no one in the room; only the moon looked in at the window, bright as the sun of the night.

Suddenly far away in the garden cries were heard. Maki jumped up, ran into the garden and listened. The cries came nearer and nearer. Men with torches ran about shouting.

Maki ran towards the torches. The men were carrying something long and white. Maki rushed forward with a shriek. The men made way for her. Moonlight fell upon Rita's face, and Maki fell fainting upon the ground.

Rita was in a deep swoon. She was saved in the end, but for several weeks she was at death's door as in childhood when she had eaten 'spiders' eggs.'

The same night Maki's labour pains began and by the morning she was safely delivered of a son.

VI

There was brilliant sunshine outside, but it was dark as night in the bedchamber of the Maru-Aton palace, with the shutters closed and the windows curtained; only the gilded columns glimmered faintly in the dim lamplight.

A bed of carved ebony and ivory, painted and gilded, stood in the middle of the room on a platform with four steps. It was shaped like a fantastic monster, a mixture of crocodile and hippopotamus, with lion's feet and open jaws: it guarded the sleeper; the more fearful the bed, the sweeter the sleep. Strangely convex, round and hard, with a wooden crescent for a pillow, it seemed uncomfortable, but was in truth better than any other bed, for it was cool to sleep on in the hot nights when feather beds and pillows were unendurable.

Princess Makitatona lay on the bed. On the fourth day after her delivery she had been attacked with child-bed fever.

The dark, stuffy room smelt of drugs. Pentu, the physician, was pounding in a mortar of stone a complicated remedy, composed of forty-six ingredients, corresponding to the same number of blood vessels in the human body. In addition to medicinal herbs it contained lizard's blood, sulphur from pigs' ears, powder from the head and wings of the sacred beetle, Kheper, a pregnant woman's milk, a hippopotamus's tooth and flies' dirt.

In another corner of the room a Babylonian sorcerer, Assursharatta, was boiling in a cauldron the blood of a freshly slain lamb with magical herbs and muttering a spell against the seven demons of fever:

Sibiti shunu, sibiti shunu,
Sibit adi shina shunu.
They are seven, they are seven,
They are seven twice over.
There are seven of them in heaven,
There are seven of them in hell.
They are neither male nor female,
They are childless and unmarried.
Whirlwinds that bring destruction
Do not know what mercy is,
Do not bend their ear to prayer.
They are evil, they are mighty,
They are seven, they are seven!

But nothing helped the patient--neither the medicines nor the spells, nor even the healing water from the well of the Sun in Heliopolis, where the god Ra washed his face when he lived on earth.

In vain old Asa whispered the incantation:

Mother Isis cries
From the top of the hill:
"Horus my son,
The hill is on fire,
Bring me water,
Quench the fire."

The fire of the fever would not be quenched.

In vain the queen read over her daughter the prayer of Mother Isis. When a scorpion stung baby Horus she cried to the sun and the sun was darkened, night was upon the earth until the god Tot healed the baby and gave it back to its mother. Since then the magical prayer of Isis had always been read over sick children.

"Stand still, O Sun, stand still until the child is restored to its mother!" the queen repeated with frenzied entreaty, but she knew the miracle would not happen, the sun would not stop.

She recalled the hymn to Aton:

Thou conquerest all through love,
Thou soothest the babe in the womb
Before its mother can soothe it.

But now He failed to soothe her.

Thou hast mercy upon a worm
And upon the midges of the air.

But now He had no mercy upon her.

The king and queen never left the invalid's side, but she was delirious and did not recognize them. If a ray of sunlight penetrated between the curtains or through a crack in the door, she grew restless and cried:

"It is coming, it is coming again! There it is stretching out its leg.... Abby darling, do drive it away, quick! It will seize me and suck me dry like a fly ... whoever could have let a spider into the sky?"

The king understood: Aton the Sun was the spider, the hand shaped rays were the spider's legs.

But most often she talked in her delirium about Shiha, the eunuch.

"Shiha, what does it mean 'light is greater than darkness'? Who has blasphemed against divine darkness? Do you say King Uaenra is godless? .... How dare you, you old monkey? .... Drink, drink! Isn't there something cooler? You gave me boiling water last time, it scalded my mouth...."

They gave her the freshest water out of porous Tyntyrian vessels, but she pushed the cup away:

"Hot water again!"

The baby boy had been born prematurely; it had no nails, no hair and was weak and pale like a blade of grass grown in darkness. It hardly cried at all and only wrinkled its face painfully at the lamplight.

"It isn't right for a baby to be in darkness: it may go blind; it must be taken into the sunshine," the midwives decided.

But as soon as they took it out into the light of day it screamed and struggled as in a fit; they had to take it back into the dark. It was born an enemy of Aton the Sun.

"Is it night outside?" Maki asked in one of her lucid intervals.

"No, it is day," the king answered.

"The day of life is short, the night of death is long," she said, with a quiet smile, looking into his eyes, as it were into his very heart. "Shiha says 'darkness was before light; sunshine is a veil over darkness.' Shall the dead see the sun? What do you think, Enra?"

He was about to answer, but she began to wander again.

"A hen, a white hen with a red wig on like Ty's.... It is running after me.... Oh, it has stuck its teeth into me!"

The king remembered that the white hen was the mate of the cock with which he and the princesses had played once. Old Asa wept bitterly: she thought the hen with teeth was a bad omen.

"Do explain, Shiha," Maki wandered, "King Uaenra is wiser than all the sons of men: how is it he does not know death? He lives and sings to the sun as though there were no death and all were well... What will he sing when he does know death?"

Sometimes the king fancied it was not mere delirium: it was as though she knew that he was there without seeing him and spoke for his benefit, passed dreadful judgment upon him, laughed at him with a terrible laugh.

"Enra, Enra, why don't you pray?" the queen repeated like one insane, looking at him with dry, tearless eyes. "Pray! Your prayer is strong: the Father will hear His son. Save her, Enra!"

The king was silent. He felt so ashamed that he could have screamed with shame, as with pain, but worse than shame, pain and death was the mockery "what will you sing when you do know death?"

At the same time princess Meritatona was lying ill in the apartments of Saakera, the heir-apparent.

Maki kept talking of her as of one dead.

"All through me, through me!" she repeated in anguish.

"But, darling, Rita is alive," her mother said, trying to comfort her. But she would not believe it.

"No, mother, don't deceive me, I saw how they carried her, dead."

"She might be saved if only she believed me," the queen thought. "But how can I convince her? And what has happened between them? A fine mother I am--I don't know why one daughter strangled herself and by whom the other has had a child.... Perhaps Enra knows? He spoke with her then--he must know."

She questioned the king when they were alone together.

"Enra, do you know who the baby's father is?"

"No, I don't know."

"Haven't you asked her?"

"I have, but she did not say."

"How is it you didn't find out, how could you have left her to face such torture alone?"

"I pitied her."

"And don't you pity her now? Enra, Enra, what have you done!"

The baby did not live long: it died by the evening of the fifth day as quietly as though it had gone to sleep.

"Where is the boy?" Maki asked, coming to herself.

"It is asleep," the queen answered.

"Never mind, I'll be very careful, let me have him!"

No one moved or spoke.

"Give him to me, do!" Maki repeated, looking round at them all. "Mother, where is he? Tell me the truth.... What has happened? Is he dead?"

The queen covered her face with her hands.

"Well, perhaps it is better so," Maki said quietly. "We shall soon be together...."

That same night before dawn the death struggle began. She no longer tossed about or wandered; she lay quite naked: the lightest covering oppressed her; the slender, childish body seemed flat and crushed as though it had been trodden on like a blade of grass; the head with the elongated skull was thrown back, the eyes closed, the face immovable and the breathing so faint that at times it was not noticeable.

Pentu, the physician, brought to her lips a round brass mirror and when it grew slightly clouded, he said:

"She breathes."

Suddenly she opened her eyes and called:

"Enra, where is Enra?"

"Here," the king answered bending over her, and she whispered in his ear, like a blade of grass rustling:

"Open the shutters."

He knew she was afraid of light and did not venture to open all the shutters at once, but ordered them to draw the curtains from one window only.

"All, all," she whispered.

All the windows were flung open. The morning sun flooded the room--the rays of the god Aton like a child's hands embraced her naked body.

"Lift me up," the blade of grass rustled, and the king lifted her as easily as though she were a blade of grass. The sun lighted her face.

"Akhnaton, Sun's joy, Sun's only Son!" she said, looking into his eyes so that he understood this was not delirium, "I know that you are...."

She did not finish, but he understood: "I know that you are He."

Suddenly she trembled in his arms, like a leaf in a storm. He laid her down on the bed.

Pentu put the mirror to her lips, but this time its brass surface remained clear. The rays of the Sun--a child's hands--embraced the body of the dead.

There was the sound of weeping in the chamber. The women cried, wailed frantically, beat their breasts, tore their hair, scratched their own faces till they bled, with a kind of rapture of despair. But all was decorous like a holy rite: this was how they had wailed thousands of years before and how they would wail thousands of years hence.

The king heard the wailing, but there was bitter laughter in his heart: "you are He!"

VII

I want to have Maki buried according to the ancient custom," the queen said.

"It shall be as you wish," the king answered. He understood what 'according to the ancient custom' meant. The hieroglyphics and mural paintings of the new tombs in the province of Aton contained no name or image of the ancient gods, no prayers, no incantations from the ancient scrolls of Going out into the World, Unsealing of lips and eyes, from the Book of the Gates, the Book of what is beyond the Tomb; no name or image of Osiris himself, the bringer of life to the dead.

It was only now that the king grasped the meaning of the inscription in Merira's tomb: 'may Aton and Unnofer revive the flesh on my bones.' Unnofer was the Good Spirit, Osiris, the King Akhnaton himself. There was a challenge and a temptation in it: "if you are He, conquer death!"

"I am not He! I am not! I am not!" he wanted to cry out in terror.

The mild fanatic, "the holy fool," Panehesy, looked straight into his eyes, as though asking: "Will you renounce the work of your whole life, will you lie, You-Who-live-in-truth, Ankh-em-maat?" And he read in his eyes the answer, "Yes, I will lie."

The best embalmers of Thebes, Memphis and Heliopolis, _herhebs_ and _mesras_, "divine sealers, cutters and cleaners," were working at the dead body of princess Makitatona.

Cauldrons were boiling night and day in the House of Life, the embalming chamber: ointments and unguents were being cooked--balm, styrax, cinnamon, myrrh and cassia; piles of wood were heaped up--sandal, terebinth, cedar, currant wood, mastic and the fragrant wood of the shuu tree; heaps of incense from Punt in lumps as big as a fist lay about. Clouds of dust rose over the copper mortars in which powders were made. Anyone unaccustomed to these pungent smells would have fainted coming into the chamber.

For thirty days and thirty nights they were cleaning, soaking, drying, salting, embalming, smoking and pickling the body.

The king watched everything. He saw the entrails being taken out through a slanting slit in the stomach, and the lapis lazuli sun beetle, Kheper, being put in the place of the heart. He heard the cracking of the bones when the nose was broken and the brain scooped out with a long flint knife.

Eyes of glass were set into the empty sockets. The hair of the wig, eyebrows and eyelashes was smoothed carefully. The nails, finger and toe, were gilded. A narrow plaited Osiris's beard in a wooden box was tied to the chin, for, in the resurrection of the dead, woman becomes man, the god Osiris. The bandage of the god Ra was put round the forehead, of the god Horus round the neck, of the god Tot on the ears, of the goddess Hathor on the mouth. And the mummy spun round and round like a spindle in the clever hands that bound it in endless bandages like a chrysalis in a cocoon.

A wooden, crescent-shaped support for the head was prepared and a prayer to the Sun--not the new god, Aton, but to the ancient god Ra--was written on a new sheet of papyrus: "Give warmth under his head. Do not forget his name. Come to the Osiris Makitaton. His name is the Radiant, the Ever-Living, the Ancient of Days. He is Thee."

Thus a new great and terrible god Makitaton grew out of little Maki.

Ancient wisdom went hand in hand with ancient crudeness and childishness: the hieroglyphic of the serpent in the tomb inscription was cut into two, so that the snake should not sting the dead, and fledgelings on the paintings had their feet cut so that they should not run away. A silver boat was placed in the tomb for the dead to sail the Sunset Sea, also a mirror, rouge, powder, a book of fairy tales and draughts: the dead could play a game with her soul; toys were also put in, among them Ankhi's broken doll, carefully pieced together.

A tomb effigy was made for the mummy: the bird Ba with a human face and hands, the soul of the dead girl, placing its hands upon her heart and looking lovingly upon her face was saying:

"The heart of my birth, my mother's heart, my earthly heart, do not forsake me. Thou art in me; thou art my Ka, my Double within my body; thou art Khnum, the Potter who hath made my limbs."

The Germinating Osiris was prepared, too: linen was stretched on a wooden frame, the likeness of Osiris's mummy was drawn upon it, a thin layer of black earth was placed over it and thickly sown with wheat. The frame was watered until the seeds germinated; then the crop was cut down smoothly like grass on the lawn. This green, spring-like resurrected body of Osiris was placed in the tomb by the side of the corpse. The living seemed to be teaching the dead: "Look, the seed has come to life--you do the same!"

The ancient custom was not observed in one respect only: the head of queen Nefertiti, the earthly mother, was sculptured in the four corners of the granite tomb instead of the head of Isis, the heavenly mother. When the queen heard of this she was indignant and rebelled against the king for the first time in her life. But it was too late to prepare a new tomb.

On the fortieth day after Maki's death the funeral procession started out. The coffin was put into a boat, the boat into a sledge--the carriage of the ancient times when there were no wheels; two pairs of oxen drew it and the runners slowly creaked on the white sand of the desert as it were on snow.

Mourners dressed in blue--the colour of the sky, the colour of death--walked in front, throwing dust over their heads with a wail, monotonous like the howling of jackals.

"Weep, weep, weep, O sisters! Shed tears, shed endless tears! Draw your mistress to the West, oxen, draw her to the West! Poor darling, you were so fond of talking to me, why are you silent now, why don't you speak a word? So many friends you had, and now you are alone, alone, alone! The little feet that walked so fast, the little hands that held so tight are bound, confined, tied down. Weep, weep, weep, O sisters! shed tears, shed endless tears!"

The sun was setting when they entered the Princesses' Valley, with the yawning openings of the tombs cut in the rocks. Close by an old fig tree was an unfading patch of green against the dead sands and a sweetbriar flowered fragrant with the scent of honey and roses: the secret waters of an underground spring kept them fresh. The drowsy humming of bees sounded like faraway cymbals.

The mummy was placed at the entrance of the tomb and stood against the yawning blackness of the cave, bathed in the last radiance of the setting sun. Two priests, one wearing the mask of the jackal-headed Anubis and the other of the falcon-headed Horus, stood on either side of the mummy, while the officiating priest, _herheb_, performing the sacrament Apra, the opening of lips and eyes, read the magical words from a papyrus:

"Get up, get up, get up, Osiris Makitaton! I, thy son Horus, have come to give thee back thy life, to join thy bones, to bind thy flesh, to put thy limbs together. I am Horus, thy son, who gives birth to his father. Horus opens thy eyes that they may see, thy lips that they may Speak, thy ears that they may hear; he strengthens thy legs that they may walk and thy arms that they may work!"

The priest embraced the mummy, brought his face near its face and breathed into its mouth.

"Thy flesh increases, thy blood flows and all thy limbs are whole."

"I am, I am! I live, I live! I shall not know corruption," another priest, hidden behind the mummy, answered as though it were itself speaking.

"Thou art a god among gods, transfigured, indestructible, ruling over other gods;" the officiating priest declared.

"I am one. My being is the being of all the gods throughout eternity," the mummy answered and the dead eyes glittered more brightly than the living. "He is--I am; I am--He is."

The king fell on his face: he understood that this new terrible god, Lightgiving, Everlasting, Ancient of days, Makitaton, had overthrown Aton.

He breathed with relief when the body was put back in the coffin and Makitaton became little Maki once more.

He bent over her, kissed her on the mouth and put upon her heart a branch of mimosa: the tender, feathery leaves were to respond with their tremour to the first stir of the heart at resurrection.

The king spent the night in a tent in the desert, waiting for sunrise, to say the morning prayers at the tomb.

He could not go to sleep for hours. At last he got up, lifted the side of the tent and looked out. The Milky Way stretched like a cloud rent in two 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. Dead stillness was all round; only the jackals' howling and the hooting of owls came from the gorge below.

He lay down again and went to sleep.

He dreamt he was standing on a square platform at the top of Cheops' great pyramid. The desert below was thronged with a countless multitude of men: there seemed to be as many heads as there were grains of sand in the desert; it was as though all tribes and peoples had gathered together for the last judgment on him, Uaenra. They were looking at him and waiting with bated breath.

A puny, black little creature--Shiha, the eunuch, or the god Tot himself, the Wise Monkey--fidgeted by his side. The king wanted to push it away and could not--he felt weak all over.

Suddenly Shiha tore off the king's royal apron, shenshet, and began whipping him with a switch on the naked body, saying:

"Here's something for you, Akhnaton Uaenra, Joy of the Sun, Sun's only Son!"

He did not hurt him but whipped him respectfully, as one ought to whip the god-king according to the mad wisdom of the dream; but the more respectful it was, the more shameful.

And the human multitude down below laughed frantically, shaking the earth and the sky with its laughter. The sun in heaven, a red monstrous face, bared its teeth, turning crimson with laughter; it stretched out its long hand-shaped rays and made a long nose at him.

And Shiha went on whipping him and saying:

"Ah, you naughty boy, you shameless little creature, you have disgraced yourself before all the world! Take this, son of man, son of god!"

The king woke up, recalled his dream and felt as frightened and ashamed in reality as he did in the dream.

He lay for some time in the dark with his eyes open. There was a lump in his throat, his breath failed him as before an epileptic fit; the inhuman scream was ready to burst from his throat. "What shall I do? What shall I do?" he thought with anguish.

Suddenly he felt easier--something had been loosened, the lump in the throat had melted away. He got up and walked out of the tent.

The sky was rose-green and the rose-green waves of the sand seemed as ethereal as the sky. The morning star bright as the sun glittered in the heavens. Not a man, not a beast, not a bird, not a tree, not even a blade of grass--only the sky and the earth--endless freedom, infinite expanse.

Akhnaton raised his eyes to the star and smiled. All at once he seemed to have understood what he was to do.

With joy, as though his words were enough to conquer death--the mocking laughter--he whispered:

"To go away! To go away!"