Tutankhamun: The Book of Shadows

by Nick Drake

  ‘I know nothing about hunting lions. My responsibility is to keep him safe and well, and to return him here, and to a secure future,’ I said.

  ‘You will do exactly as you are ordered. And if you fail, the cost will be personally high.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There can be no question of misunderstanding, surely?’ he replied, as if surprised by the innocence of the question.

  And then, with no more words, he bowed, and proposed to Ankhesenamun that they prepare for the ship’s departure.

  The sixty or so oarsmen took up their oars through the gunwales and with a series of great efforts, to the beat of the drum, they began to row the great ship away from the dock. Across the slowly widening distance I saw Ankhesenamun watching us leave, with Ay. Then without a wave, like a pale figure returning to the underworld, she disappeared into the dark palace. Ay remained watching until we vanished from sight. I looked down at the black water, which swirled and eddied in secret currents, as if some sorcerer were stirring up strange fortunes and storms of destiny.

  25

  Simut joined me at the stern of the golden ship, as the city slipped away behind us. Thebes, city of my birth and my life, dark under the night sky, the shadows of the suburbs and the shanties, the high steep walls of the temples and pylons, pure white where they faced the moon; and it seemed to me, for all the lives within it, that the city looked hollow, precariously balanced, made of papyrus and reeds, as if it could all fall down with one breath of ill wind. The imagination can conquer distance, I realized; but the heart cannot. I thought of the children asleep, and Tanefert awake in our bed, the candle still lit on the table beside her, thinking of me on this disappearing golden ship. I had decided to leave Thoth with her, to guard the house at night. The animal had looked disconsolate at my departure, as if he knew I was leaving him for some time.

  ‘Are you leaving a family here?’ I asked Simut.

  ‘I don’t have a family. I made a choice, early in my career. I had little family when I was young, and those I had were no help to me; so I decided I would not miss it as a grown man. The army has been my family. And it has been my whole life. I have no regrets.’

  It was the longest speech he had ever made to me. After a pause, as if he had been considering whether to trust me with an even deeper confidence, he said: ‘I think this journey is more dangerous than protecting the King in the palace. At least there we could control the security situation. We could have managed access, stability…but out here anything could happen.’

  I agreed with him, and yet here we were, overwhelmed by circumstances beyond our control.

  ‘What did you discover from the Chief Architect of the temple, regarding the desecration of the carving?’ I asked.

  ‘He said the last weeks of the construction were chaos. Everything was behind schedule, the carvings were slow in being completed, and he assigned craftsmen according to the advice of the chief artist. Because of the panic, there were lapses in the vetting procedures, many of the workers and craftsmen were not registered as they should have been, and now of course no one will accept responsibility for the carving…It would not have been too difficult for some rogue element to gain access to the work site…’

  He looked balefully at the dark foliage along the riverbank, as if unseen assassins lurked behind each palm tree.

  ‘I am no happier than you at the prospect of this mission. Memphis is a nest of snakes…’

  ‘I know it well. I received my training there. Fortunately, I have my own alliances in the city,’ he said.

  ‘And what is your opinion of Horemheb?’ I asked.

  He gazed at the dark river.

  ‘In my military opinion he is a great general. But I could not say the same of his humanity—’

  Just then a junior officer approached, saluted to Simut, and addressed me: ‘The King has asked for you.’

  And so I was admitted to the royal apartments. Thick curtains had been drawn to make this reception space even more private. There was no sign of the King or his monkey. Lit by scented oil lamps, it had been richly, elegantly decorated. I looked around at the array of treasures, any one of which could have funded a family for its entire lifetime. I picked up an alabaster goblet fashioned in the form of a white lotus. It bore crisp, black hieroglyphic inscriptions. I read them aloud to myself:

  Live your ka

  And may you spend millions of years

  Lover of Thebes

  With your face to the cool north breeze

  Beholding happiness

  ‘It is a beautiful poem,’ said the King in his light, high voice.

  He had entered without my noticing. I replaced the goblet carefully. Then I bowed and offered him my wishes for his peace, health and prosperity.

  ‘“Live your ka…” an enigmatic, but beautiful phrase. I hear you once wrote verse yourself. What do you think it means?’ he asked.

  ‘The ka is the mysterious force of life in all things, in each of us…’

  ‘It is that which differentiates us from the dead, and from dead things. But what does it mean to live it fully, in truth?’

  I pondered.

  ‘I suppose it is an invocation to each person to live according to that truth, and in so doing, if we are to believe the poem, to gain happiness, which is to say eternal happiness. “Millions of years…”’

  He smiled, revealing his perfect little teeth.

  ‘It is indeed a great mystery. I, for instance, feel at this moment I am finally, truly living my ka. This journey and this hunt are my destiny. But perhaps you do not believe in the sentiments the poem expresses?’ he asked.

  ‘I struggle with the word happiness. I am a Medjay officer. I don’t get to behold much happiness. But perhaps I am looking in the wrong places,’ I replied carefully.

  ‘You see the world as a harsh, dangerous place.’

  ‘I do,’ I admitted.

  ‘You have reason on your side,’ he replied. ‘But I still believe it can be otherwise.’

  Then he sat down in the only chair in the room. Like everything else, it was no ordinary chair, but a small throne made from ebony, partly covered with gold foil, and inlaid with geometric patterns of glass and coloured stones. I was surprised to glimpse, just before he sat down, at the top, the disc of the Aten–the symbol of his father’s reign and power, now long banned. He adjusted his slippers upon the inlaid footrest and its picture of Egypt’s enemies, the bound captives, and gazed at me with his strange intensity.

  ‘You are puzzled by this throne?’

  ‘It is a beautiful object.’

  ‘It was made for me in the time of my father.’

  The monkey jumped up on his lap, and watched me with its nervous, moist eyes. He stroked its tiny head, and it chattered to him briefly. He fed it a nut. He fingered a beautiful protection amulet on a gold chain around his neck.

  ‘But the symbolism is no longer permitted,’ I commented carefully.

  ‘No. It is forbidden. But not everything about my father’s enlightenment was wrong. I feel I can speak of this to you of all people, isn’t that strange? I was raised in his religion, and perhaps for that reason in spirit, if not in the letter, it feels true to me; as rightful as one’s true heart.’

  ‘But you led its banishment, lord.’

  ‘I had no choice. The tide of time turned against us. I was merely a child. Ay prevailed, and at the time, he was right–for how else could we have restored order to the Two Lands? But in the privacy of my heart and soul, I still worship the one God, the God of Light and Truth. And I know I am not alone.’

  The implications of this were astounding. Here was the King, confessing his attachment to the outlawed religion, despite the destruction of its icons and the estrangement of its priests in his own name. I wondered if Ankhesenamun was implicated in this, too.

  ‘Let me confess to you, Rahotep, while I know it is the duty of a king to be seen to conquer and kill the lion, most noble of the beasts, in tru
th I have no personal wish to do such a thing. Why would I kill such a wonderful creature, with his wild spirit? I would rather observe his power and his grace, and learn from his example. Sometimes, in my dreams, I have the powerful body of a lion, and the wise head of Thoth to think with. But then I awake, and I remember that I am myself. And only a moment later do I remember I am, and must be, King.’

  He gazed at his own limbs as if they were strangers.

  ‘A powerful body is meaningless without a powerful mind.’

  He smiled, almost sweetly, as if he appreciated my clumsy attempt at flattery. I suddenly had a strange idea that he might like me.

  ‘Tell me about my father,’ he said, gesturing to a low stool where I could sit at his royal feet.

  He had caught me by surprise again. His mind moved oddly, suddenly and unexpectedly sideways, by association, like a crab.

  ‘What do you wish to know?’ I replied.

  ‘My memory of him is diminishing every day. I hold on tightly to certain images but they are like an old piece of embroidered linen: the colour is fading, and the threads are frayed, and soon I fear his memory will be lost to me.’

  ‘I think he was a great man with a new vision of the world. What he did took great personal courage and political will. But I think he had too high an opinion of the capacity of human beings to perfect themselves. And that was the flaw in his great enlightenment,’ I said.

  ‘You do not believe in perfection, either?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Not in this life. Man is half-god, but he is also half-beast.’

  ‘Yours is a sceptical view. The Gods have made many attempts to create a perfect humanity, but each time they have been dissatisfied, and have thrown their work away, and abandoned the world to chaos. I believe that is what befell my father. But it was not the end of the story. Do you remember it? The God Ra, with his silver bones and gold skin, and hair and teeth of lapis lazuli, and his eye from whose vision humanity was born, understood the treachery in the hearts of men, and sent down Hathor, in her form of Sekhmet the Vengeful, to slaughter those who plotted against him. But in his heart Ra felt pity for his creatures. And so he changed his mind. And he tricked the Goddess; he created the red beer of the Gods, and she became drunk with its delight, and did not realize it was not humanity’s blood that stained the desert; and that is how we survived her revenge, by the compassion of Ra.’

  He stroked the monkey as if it was humanity, and he was Ra.

  ‘You are wondering why I have told you this tale,’ he said, quietly.

  ‘I wonder if perhaps it is because you are not your father. And perhaps you told me because although he desired perfection, he brought this world to the brink of a terrible catastrophe. And perhaps because in your compassion you wish to save the world from disaster,’ I said.

  He gazed at me.

  ‘Perhaps that is what I was thinking. But what of Hathor and her taste for blood?’

  ‘I do not know,’ I replied, honestly enough.

  ‘I believe there is a pattern of retribution to events. A crime begets a crime begets a crime, and so on until the end of everything. So how can we escape this pattern, this labyrinth of revenge and suffering? Only by an act of exceptional forgiveness…But are human beings capable of such compassion? No. I have not yet been forgiven for the crimes of my father. Perhaps I will never be forgiven. And if that is so, then I will have to prove myself better than him. And here we are, travelling in darkness, surrounded by fear, so that I can bring back a wild lion in triumph. Perhaps then I will establish myself as King in my own name; not as my father’s son. It is a strange world. And here you are, to protect me from it, like the Eye of Ra.’

  He reached into his robe, and took from it a ring, adorned with a small, but very fine, protective Eye. He gave it to me. I slipped it on my finger and bowed in thanks.

  ‘I give you this all-seeing Eye so that your vision may be as powerful as Ra’s. Our enemies travel as fast as shadows. They are with us always. You must see them. You must learn to see in the dark.’

  26

  The strong current drew us onwards, ever northwards, towards Memphis. Simut and his guard kept watch at all hours. I was restless, unable to sleep, and I felt trapped on the water. Whenever the King took the air, which was not often, we made sure we were away from the villages. Even so, every field and every grove of palm trees presented the possibility of danger, for we made an extravagant target. From our point of view, I saw dirt-poor villages huddled beneath the shade of the date palms, where naked children and dogs swarmed the narrow, crooked mud streets, and families lived crowded on top of each other with their animals in one-room dwellings that were little more than stables. In the fields, women in miraculously bright, clean robes tilled the immaculate green and gold rows of barley and wheat, onions and cabbages. It all looked idyllic and peaceful, but nothing is as it seems: these women would toil from dawn until dusk just to pay the grain taxes to work the land, which they probably leased from one elite family, who lived comfortably inside their richly furnished and luxurious property in Thebes.

  After three days’ sailing we neared the almost-deserted city of Akhetaten. I stood at the prow to observe the range of broken red and grey cliffs behind the city. Just a few years ago this had been the site of Akhenaten’s great experiment: a new, bright, white capital of the future; great towers, open sun-temples, offices and suburbs of luxurious villas. But since the death of the King’s father, the bureaucracies had gradually returned to Thebes or Memphis. And then plague had arrived like a curse of revenge, killing off hundreds who had remained, many of them with no work and nowhere else to go. It was said this plague had also killed the other daughters of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, for they had disappeared from public life. Now, aside from a basic staff, the city was said to be largely abandoned, flyblown and falling into dereliction. But to my surprise, and interest, Simut informed me of the King’s great desire to visit the city.

  And so it was, early the next morning, just as the first birds began to sing, and the river mist drifted insubstantial and chilly over the sinuous currents of the dark water, and while the shadows of the night still lay long upon the ground, we stepped–accompanied by a troop of guards–from our moored ship on to the dry land of history.

  With the King in his white robes and Blue Crown carrying a gold walking stick topped with a glass knob, and a troop of front and rear guards in their armour carrying polished weapons to scare away any peasant sightseers dazzled by this unexpected visitation from another world, we set off towards the central city via deserted footpaths that had, just years before, been busy thoroughfares. As we entered the precincts of the city, I saw at once the effects of its abandonment: the walls, once freshly painted, were now faded to dusty greys and browns. The once carefully planted, stylish gardens were now wildly overgrown, and the pools of the rich were cracked and empty. A few bureaucrats and servants still walked to work on these deserted ways; but they seemed to move in a desultory fashion, and they stopped still in astonishment to stare at our group, before falling to their knees as the King passed by.

  Finally we stood upon the royal road. The sun’s rays had now risen over the horizon, and instantly it was hot. Once an immaculately swept ceremonial way for the arrival of Akhenaten and the royal family in their gold chariots, the road was now an empty pathway for ghosts and the dusty wind. We came to the first pylon of the Great Aten Temple. The soaring mud-brick walls were crumbling. The long, bright flags, which had once fluttered in the northern breeze, were tattered and faded to no colour by the bleaching power of the sun. The high wooden gates hung loosely on their rusted hinges. One of the guards forced them open, with a reluctant creaking and cracking of desiccated wood. We passed through into the vast courtyard. Once it would have been crowded with hundreds of offering tables, attended by thousands of worshippers in their bright white robes, their hands raised in the new ritual to the sun, holding up fruit and flowers, and even babies, for the blessing of
the evening rays. The many stone statues of Akhenaten and Nefertiti still stared across the vast space, but all there was to see now was dereliction; the failure of their great vision. One or two of the statues had fallen, and lay face down or face up, staring blindly at the sky.

  The King moved ahead, making clear he wished to have some moments of privacy. As we hung back, trying to keep watch, Simut whispered: ‘The whole city’s turning back into dust.’

  ‘I suppose that’s all it ever was.’

  ‘Just add water,’ he joked, sombrely.

  I grinned at this surprising moment of wit. He was right. Just add water, and make mud; dry the bricks in the sun, then add plaster and paint, and timber and copper from the island of Alashiya, and gold from the mines of Nubia, and years of labour, of blood and sweat and death, from everywhere else–and behold: a vision of heaven on earth. But there had been neither sufficient time nor treasure to build the vision in eternal stone, and so now it was returning to the dust of its making.

  The King was standing before a great stone statue of his father. The statue’s angular features were chiselled by shadows; all the lineaments of power were embodied in those strange features. Once they had been the epitome of kingship. But now the very style, with its strange, ambiguous elongations, had become a thing of the past. The young King’s face was enigmatic as he stood, small, human and frail, before the might of his stone father, among the desolate ruins of his father’s great vision. And then he did a strange thing: he sank down on his knees, and venerated the statue. We watched, and wondered whether we should join him. But none of his entourage seemed willing to do so. I moved towards him, and held a sunshade over his head. When he looked up, I saw his eyes were full of tears.

  We toured the city’s palaces, stepping across the strange evidence of former human occupation: single dusty sandals; pieces of faded clothing; broken jugs and hollow wine jars, their contents long evaporated; small domestic things, cups and dishes still unbroken but full of little drifts of sand and dust. We wandered through high, decorated halls once home to glorious affluence and exquisite music, and now to nesting birds, snakes, rats and woodworm. Beneath our feet, exquisite painted floors of water-gardens full of glazed fish and birds were faded and cracked by time’s careless attrition.