The Twelfth Transforming

by Pauline Gedge

  The city was a marvel of flags and graceful pylons, carefully tended trees, pillars that soared blue, red, yellow, and white into the hot sky. Every surface was painted or incised with pictures representing the glories of nature in brilliant colors, but Tiye did not fail to note that the largest of the walls and pylons were adorned with immense representations of the queen. Nefertiti stood or strode throughout Akhetaten, sometimes with flail raised, sometimes making offerings to the Aten with Meritaten a very tiny figure beside her knee, but always in a simple, male kilt and the cone crown that hid all trace of her femininity. On every corner there also stood shrines, small slabs of stone with scoops for incense and offerings. By the time the party approached the center of the city, a thin, faintly perfumed haze of incense had begun to envelop Tiye. Lightheaded from its odor and deafened by the tumult around her, she tried to grasp one dominant impression of Akhetaten and could not. Later, she knew, the city would reveal its secrets, but today its citizens had flowed into its center, obscuring its heart.

  The Royal Road continued to run straight on toward the north. In the distance Tiye could see that the mighty palace on the left was joined to another building on the right by a walkway high above the road, to which ramps gave access on either side. At its midpoint there was a huge window from which one could look along the road in either direction, and the top of the walkway was roofed and pillared. Beneath, two small square portals and one large one in the center permitted the passage of chariots and those on foot.

  When the cavalcade reached the arches, it halted. Soldiers rushed to form a cordon around Tiye and the children as she descended and followed Horemheb through a flagged pylon until she found herself ascending one of the ramps, with Pharaoh, Nefertiti, and the princesses just ahead. Below, the crowd was filling the road, their faces turned upward. Akhenaten reached the window and leaned out, one arm around Nefertiti’s shoulders. The princesses lounged against its carved lintels, waving to the people and giggling behind their painted palms.

  “People of the Holy City!” Akhenaten shouted above the melee. “Today is blessed in the history of Egypt. Today the empress graces us with her august presence. Today also, as a mark yet again of my favor toward him, the noble Pentu receives the Gold of Favors from my hand. Pentu!” He waved gaily at the man who knelt reverently below with hands already extended to catch the shower of gold that would fall. “This is the third time, is it not?”

  “It is indeed, Most Munificent One!”

  “For your devotion to the Aten, for your sacrifices and prayers, I make you a Person of Gold!”

  Nefertiti drew away as he lifted the heavy gold pectoral from his neck and shook off his gold bracelets and rings, tossing them jocularly out the window. A roar went up as Pentu bent this way and that, trying to catch them. Tiye found Ay at her elbow.

  “This is the Window of Appearances,” he murmured in her ear. “Every day when Pharaoh crosses from the palace on his way to the temple, he pauses here to speak to his subjects and distribute gold to any who have earned it.”

  “But this is a travesty!” Tiye whispered furiously. “His father only bestowed the Gold of Favors four times in his entire lifetime, and that only for superior devotion or bravery in battle! To debase the ceremony in this way is unbelievable!” Pharaoh was joking with Pentu as the man scrambled to retrieve the glittering hoard around him.

  “I have received it myself but once,” Ay went on, his lips against her ear. “Pharaoh is prodigal now only with those whose loyalty he wishes to buy. I find it pitiful. When Horemheb received it, he remained standing and let his servants gather the gold. See how Pentu grovels!”

  “He exposes himself to the common populace every day?” Tiye had to swallow her rage as with a last wave and smile the royal couple turned into the shadow of the walkway, and she flinched at the cheer that went up as she herself passed the window.

  Akhenaten’s palace was a vision realized, a home fit for the sheltering of the lord of the entire earth. Malkatta was a polite, small reflection of this maze of lordly pylons, long pillared courts opening out into another court and another, trees forested around lakes and fountains, ramps leading to gardens and gardens to rooms whose very size caused the foot to pause in awe. The palace seemed alive with movement, for its walls were decorated with ducks swimming, bulls leaping, fish flicking through green water. The pavilion of the queen was fronted by palm frond columns inlaid with glittering glazed tiles. Between the formal terraced gardens and Pharaoh’s reception hall there were over forty columns, and twenty more lined the hall that led to the royal pair’s private apartments. “There is even a private temple here patterned exactly on the Great Temple across the road,” Horemheb told her as she tried to maintain a sense of both proportion and direction. “It is called Hat-Aten and is forbidden to all but the royal family. There has never been a palace like this in the history of the world.”

  It seemed to Tiye that Pharaoh was deliberately taking the procession to the main hall in a roundabout way, flaunting his magical creation. No wonder my son needed Amun’s fortune, Tiye thought. No wonder he took all he could from Malkatta. How depleted is the Treasury? I must ask Apy. That all this should have been done so quickly! She was exhausted by the time the entourage entered the audience hall and climbed to the echoing dais. Here there were three thrones, and at last she could sit and rest her weary feet on the stool provided. The guests rose from their prone positions, and she felt their eyes on her enquiringly. She looked out over them inquisitively and was reassured. It was the day of tribute, and the hall was filled with costumes and tongues from all over the empire. She had expected a melancholy ritual but was astounded to see that even the Khatti had sent representatives.

  But her relief vanished soon after the payment of tribute began. Many of the delegations made elaborate speeches and kissed Akhenaten’s feet repeatedly, but their hands were empty. They had come merely as observers, and Egypt could no longer compel them to bring the goods she had once demanded. Pharaoh beamed on them as they crawled to him, casting proud sidelong glances at her. He spoke to them kindly, condescendingly, while Nefertiti clasped him around the waist and occasionally kissed his cheek.

  Tiye scanned the crowd more carefully and spotted Aziru, flamboyant in heavily tasseled brocade, leaning against a pillar surrounded by his ruffianly bodyguards. He caught her eye, bowed very low, and smiled at her slowly. Beside him was the Khatti ambassador, the same man who so long ago at Malkatta had set his feet impudently upon a dining table with his arms full of dancers. He was now fully mature, a man with swarthy features and the watchful eyes of a hawk. Pharaoh seemed like a caricature beside the two virile foreigners, plump, benign, and womanly. Tiye closed her eyes. O Amunhotep Glorified, she prayed to her dead husband. Help me. Give me wisdom.

  The traditional vassals of Egypt, southern Syria and Nubia, presented the customary gifts of horses, chariots, and exotic animals, ivory tusks and weapons, precious stones, and gold bars. Her trading partners, independent nations who took no part in Egypt’s wars, brought slaves, vases, ostrich feathers, and other curiosities, mere symbols of the years of good trade that had existed. But as the day wore to a close, Tiye cringed in an agonized shame as she watched servants accept and catalogue such a small list of goods when in her husband’s day the hall at Malkatta, the passage, the forecourt, and the treasuries had been choked with tribute.

  That night a feast was held in the same hall, now echoing with music and full of the loud laughter of the celebrants. Smenkhara was at last free to talk to Meritaten, and though Tiye would have liked to watch them seated knee to knee, their tables together among the children, she found herself trying to eat under Nefertiti’s frozen gaze. Akhenaten had placed Tiye in the position of honor on the dais, directly to his right, and Nefertiti at a table to herself behind him, where pharaohs usually seated secondary wives. Tiye herself had often been relegated to such a position at Malkatta when her husband was entertaining a new wife, and it had not concerned her, but Nef
ertiti was obviously nursing a wounded pride, and every time Tiye turned to her son, she caught her niece’s baleful glare out of the corner of her eye. The gray stare served to straighten Tiye’s spine, weary though she was.

  The wine was flowing freely, and the noise rose as the night progressed. Throughout the feast courtiers detached themselves and approached the dais to do homage to the empress, welcoming her to Akhetaten, picking their way through the riotous groups of people, the discarded flowers and blue bead trinkets, the monkeys that leaped and gibbered from one to another with snatched morsels of food in their tiny hands. Pharaoh’s favorite pets squatted beside his plate and under his chair, occasionally shrieking at one another or pulling imperiously at his gown for pieces of fruit. Cats stalked arrogantly among them, disdaining enticements of roast beef, their carnelian studded collars gleaming in the lamplight.

  Once the children had eaten, they left the dais and mingled with the guests, all but Smenkhara and Meritaten, who were whispering into each other’s ears and smiling happily. Tiye watched the ten-year-old Meketaten, a circlet of turquoise forget-me-nots on her forehead and the blue ribbons of her youth lock trailing down her back, pick her way to the lively group of harem women and stand hesitantly beside a woman whom Tiye did not at first recognize as Tadukhipa. When the older woman became aware of the girl’s presence, she took Meketaten’s hand and drew her down beside her, putting an arm around her. She said something that brought a faint smile to the girl’s wan face. Tiye turned to her son and found him also looking at his daughter.

  “Meketaten is pale,” Tiye said. “Was there much fever here this summer?”

  “The Aten protects his own,” Akhenaten replied shortly. “Meketaten is inviolable.”

  18

  Tiye spent one last night in the peace of Ay’s home before inspecting the house that had been built for her and grudgingly pronouncing it suitable. It lay to the north of the palace, with gardens that ran down to the river, but the grounds were divided from Pharaoh’s apartments only by a wall that contained a door. Worse, it was directly across the road from the Great Temple. Tiye had envisioned something more remote from the life of the city, a sanctuary to which she could retire at will, but the anxious pride with which Akhenaten led her from room to room silenced her objections. He had obviously seen to the furnishing and decorating himself and had tried to have the friezes and reliefs conform as closely as possible to the art she had loved at Malkatta. But in spite of his efforts Tiye knew when she stepped over the threshold that she could live here for years and never disperse the air of opulent, sinister magic that she was increasingly coming to realize imbued all the city.

  She gave Huya orders to have her goods unpacked and then went into the temple for the ceremonies of dedication of the sunshades Pharaoh had built. After only two days she was becoming used to grandeur, and the interior of the temple did not surprise her. There was no progression of courts that diminished in size while increasing in secrecy, until a dark sanctuary held the god. While the building was of a magnitude that dwarfed and tired her, it held only a massive forecourt, filled with altars and reached through three pylons and a grove of trees, and an inner court, larger still than the outer, with hundreds more offering tables leading to the main altar in blinding white rows. Though statues of Akhenaten dominated the palace and were set all over Akhetaten, none stood here. Of course not, Tiye thought, sweat gathering under her wig and prickling in her armpits as she stood with Beketaten in the choking incense that rose throughout the temple. Not when the ben-ben itself is Pharaoh and his family. The only shelter from the sun lay under the three small kiosks that Akhenaten had erected for the renewing of his own powers and those of the empress and Beketaten, and as the first part of the ceremony came to an end, Tiye stepped under the stone with relief. Standing in the blessed shade, she watched Pharaoh, surrounded by his priests, mount the steps to the high altar and begin the afternoon prayers. Songs of praise to the Aten rose from the choirs gathered in the forecourt. Cymbals clashed, and systra rattled. Flames, almost invisible in the bright sunlight, rose from the hands of the hundreds of servers who waited by the altars to light the piles of food and flowers. A sunshade is a solemn and holy object, Tiye reflected as she glanced along at Beketaten, standing with wide eyes under the ornate stone of her own kiosk, but in this place I would prefer my own canopy and a couple of fanbearers to keep the flies away. As she watched Akhenaten raise gold-girt arms to the fierce sky and the priests cry out and sink to the hot stone around him, she was far more impressed by the dignity and nobility that always cloaked her son in moments of worship than by the austere magnificence of her surroundings.

  That night, after she had for the first time been bathed and dressed under the high star-spangled ceiling of her new home and had been carried to Pharaoh’s private reception hall, he presented a golden funerary shrine to her. “A tomb in the cliffs behind Akhetaten is being beautified for you, Mother,” he told her eagerly. “You will lie surrounded by its protection. Look!” He walked around it and the bowed servants whose arms trembled under its weight. “I have caused your likeness to be engraved upon it, your sweet body swathed in the finest, most transparent linen, and my own royal likeness before you, to protect you from the demons after death. Here are our names, linked together.”

  “Akhenaten,” she said in a low voice, a lump in her throat, “I thank you for this great gift, but a tomb awaits me in Thebes near my first husband. I would prefer to lie there.”

  “That man died trusting in a false god,” he snapped back, his color rising. “I will not allow you to be contaminated by his presence!”

  “As you wish,” she said equably, privately resolving to issue her own edict to Huya.

  Akhenaten pettishly waved the shrine away, and the servants staggered out with it. He resumed his seat beside her. “I spent a lot of time overseeing it,” he complained.

  She kissed his cheek, saying soothingly, “It is a great gift. I am very grateful. Drink your wine, Akhenaten. Am I not here as you wished?” But he sat gloomily slumped over the table, breathing shallowly. “The music is haunting,” Tiye remarked after a while. “You have talented composers here.”

  “I wrote it myself,” he muttered. “There are words, but they are not suitable for feasting.” He straightened and began to sing softly in his thin treble, “How manifold are thy works! They are hidden before men, O sole God, beside whom there is no other. Thou didst create the earth according to thy heart while thou wast alone: even men, all herds of cattle and the antelopes; all that are upon the earth….” He kept his eyes on his plate and swayed gently to the rhythm. When he had finished, Tiye saw that he was crying.

  “That was beautiful,” she said gently, putting an arm around his neck. “Why do you weep?”

  He shook his head. “I do not know. I am the Living One of Diadems. I do not know….”

  He left the hall soon afterward. Tiye sat on, her wine before her on the littered table, her consciousness attuned to the gestures and quiet conversations of the few select guests who mingled informally with those of the royal family bidden by Pharaoh to be present. The air in the room had relaxed at Akhenaten’s departure. Smenkhara and Meritaten, already inseparable, were engaged in an earnest discussion. Meketaten, in the middle of a bevy of young wives who were sharing harem jokes, played a string game with Tadukhipa. Nefertiti had not appeared at all, and Tiye wondered whether she had even been invited. She was sipping the last of her wine, preparing to retire, when she saw Parennefer go up to Meketaten, bow, and whisper to her. The girl inclined her head and, rising, went out. A silence fell. All eyes followed her, and Tiye, puzzled, crooked a finger at Huya.

  “Send me Piha. I am ready to retire. But you see what you can find out about Princess Meketaten from the nursery servants. And send a herald to the house where Aziru is staying. Command him to present himself before me to morrow morning.” Conversation had begun again by the time Huya reached the doors. Something is troubling my little grandda
ughter, Tiye mused as she waited for Piha, and it is serious enough to provoke a strong reaction from these people. I suppose before long I will know what it is, but now I must rest.

  Huya came to her just after dawn, when the musicians who had woken her had retired and Piha had brought her morning fruit and watered wine. She sat propped up on cushions in the disordered bed, spearing pieces of watermelon and sipping as the light strengthened in the room.

  “Well,” she prompted. “You work quickly, Huya. Get on with it. I have to think about what I am going to say to Aziru.”

  He nodded. “Princess Meketaten no longer lives in the nursery,” he said. “She has an apartment in the harem. I went there, but the overseer would not let me in.”

  “Do you mean to tell me that the child is sharing my son’s bed?” Tiye pushed the remains of the fruit away.

  “I have not mingled with the staff here for long enough to ascertain the truth of the rumors, Majesty, but it appears so.”