Tutankhamun: The Book of Shadows

by Nick Drake

  Finally it was time to seal Tutankhamun in his tomb of eternity. I had a strange feeling that we, the living, crowded into the passageway, were on the wrong side of the stone door that was hurriedly constructed between ourselves and the now deserted Hall of Waiting. The gathered faces–nobles, priests and the young Queen–looked like conspirators at a crime in the candles’ nervous, gusty light. I felt something like disgust as well as pity as the masons in their dirty work-clothes manoeuvred the last stones into place with a grinding sound, then crudely slapped and smoothed dark wet grey plaster with their trowels over them for the necropolis guards to apply their oval insignias of Anubis; many hands reached forward to record their signs for eternity, in a manner perfunctory, anxious and at odds with the meaning of the other symbols. Great of love of the entire Land…creating images of the Gods that they may give to him the breath of life…

  Then, like a herd of animals, we shuffled backwards up the passageway holding our frail lamps. Ankhesenamun laid a last bouquet on the steps–mandrake, blue water lily, nightshade, olive, willow; hopeful, frail, transitory flowers from the world’s spring. Her face was wet with tears. I came last, and as I looked back I saw, like a dark, rising flood, the shadows of our departing forms joining the great darkness of eternity that now followed us up the sixteen steps, until it was sealed in by more stones, for ever.

  53

  The half-moon had sunk to the edge of the black and blue outline of the Valley. We stood together, uncertain under the late stars, in the land of the living. But we were not alone. In the darkness an imposing figure stood waiting, with armed men behind him, their arms polished by the moonlight. Horemheb. I looked for Simut’s guards; I saw dark shapes, slain bodies, slumped in the darkness.

  The general walked forward to confront Ay and Ankhesenamun.

  ‘You did not see fit to invite me to the last rites of the King?’ he demanded.

  Ay faced him.

  ‘I am King. I have performed the rites, and taken the succession. I will announce my accession and my forthcoming coronation in the morning.’

  ‘And what of you, Queen? Did you think so little of my offer that you failed to discuss it with me before making whatever decision has led to this sorry situation?’

  ‘I considered everything. I am the widow of Tutankhamun, Restorer of the Gods, and the granddaughter of Amenhotep the Glorious. And you are not noble.’

  ‘How dare you question my nobility!’ he growled in his low, menacing voice.

  She paused. The moment had come. Horemheb was impatient to hear what she would say.

  ‘Information has come to us, privately and secretly, which has astounded and disappointed us. It concerns the reputation and integrity of the army.’

  She let the dangerous words hang in the dark air.

  ‘The reputation and integrity of the army is untarnished,’ replied Horemheb, menacingly.

  ‘Perhaps, then, the general is not aware of everything that is happening within his own division. There are elements within the army which are trading with the Hittites, our ancient enemies, for personal profit,’ she said.

  He approached closer, his breath pluming in the cold night air.

  ‘You actually dare to accuse my divisions of treachery? You?’ He gazed at her in derision. But she confronted him.

  ‘I am reporting that which was told to me. Perhaps it is not true. But then again, perhaps it is. The opium poppy, I hear. Transported across the lines of battle. Trading with the enemy? It would be most unfortunate if such a suggestion were to reach the offices, the temples, and the general ear,’ she said.

  Horemheb swiftly drew out his curved sword, its polished outer blade glinting in the moonlight. For a moment, I feared he would slice off her head. He held his weapon aloft in his gloved fist, and his soldiers instantly aimed their elegant, powerful arrows at our hearts, in preparation for an order to slaughter us all in silence. Simut stepped forward to protect the Queen, his own dagger now raised at Horemheb. The two men stared at each other, tense as dogs before a vicious fight. But Ankhesenamun held her ground and intervened.

  ‘I do not think our assassination would help your cause. You do not have sufficient power to take control of all the offices and temples of the Two Lands. Too many of your troops are fighting the war. Think carefully. Listen to my proposition. All I desire is order for the Two Lands, and therefore an equitable sharing of the powers necessary to maintain that order between the three of us. Ay will govern as King, for he controls the offices of the kingdom. You will remain as general. The secret trade must stop. If it does, then there is much to be gained for you. There is the future.’

  Slowly Horemheb lowered his sword, and gestured for his men to lower their bows.

  ‘And what is that future? Will you marry this shambles of age and infirmity?’ he asked, gesturing with contempt at Ay.

  ‘My King is dead, but only I can bring forth a successor, a son who will be King in turn. That is my destiny, and I will fulfil it. As for the father of my son, I will choose him carefully, the fittest and the best among the best of men. I will choose him myself, and no man will have authority over me. Whoever proves himself to be this noble man, I shall take as my husband. And he shall become King, beside me. In due course, we will rule the Two Lands together. Perhaps you, sir, will prove yourself to be this worthy man.’

  Ay, who had remained silent throughout this exchange, now intervened.

  ‘Those are the terms. You should know that there are a thousand palace guards stationed above us, and at the entrance to the Valley. They are prepared to do whatever is necessary to secure our safety. What is your answer?’

  Horemheb looked up, and there on the escarpments on either side were new lines of dark figures holding bows.

  ‘Did you think I would not anticipate everything you could have thought of?’ continued Ay.

  Horemheb considered them both. Then he approached them very closely.

  ‘Wonderful: an old man with toothache and a feeble girl with dreams of glory grasping at the reins of power, and a useless Medjay officer who knows now his family will never be safe. Listen—’

  And he opened his arms to the vast silence of the night and the desert that dwarfed us.

  ‘Do you know what that is? It is the sound of time. You hear nothing but silence, and yet it is roaring like a lion. There is no god but time, and I am his general. I will wait. My hour is nigh, and when it arrives, in triumph and glory, you will both be nothing but dust, and your names will be nothing but dust, for I will erase them, every single one, from their stones, and I will usurp your monuments, and in your place there will be a new dynasty, carrying my name, valiant son succeeding each strong father, generation after generation, into the future, for ever.’

  And then he smiled, as if victory were assured, turned away and marched off into the dark, followed by his troops.

  Ay gazed after him balefully.

  ‘That man is full of wind. Come, there is much work to be done.’

  He suddenly winced and grasped his jaw. It seemed that all the power in the world could not alleviate the pain of ruined teeth.

  Before she departed, to her uncertain future, Ankhesenamun turned quietly to me.

  ‘I came to you, asking for help. You have risked everything to help me in these days. I heard his threat against your family. So be sure I will do all within my power to ensure their safety. You know I wish you to become my private guard. That offer remains open. It would make me happy to see you.’

  I nodded. She looked sadly at the sealed entrance to the tomb of her late young husband. Then she turned away, followed by Khay and the other nobles, and they all took to the chariots that would carry them back on the long paved way to the palace of shadows, and the merciless work of fashioning and bringing to pass the secure future of the Two Lands. I remembered what Horemheb had said about power; that it was a rough beast. I hoped she could learn to ride it well.

  Simut and I stood watching them go. Darkness was fa
lling quickly from the dawn air.

  ‘Horemheb is right, I’m afraid. Ay will not live long, and the Queen cannot govern without an heir. Not while Horemheb is waiting.’

  ‘True. But she is becoming a powerful woman. She has her mother in her. And that gives me hope,’ I replied, with a feeling of optimism that caught me by surprise.

  ‘Come, let us walk to the top of the hills and watch the sun rise on this new day,’ he suggested.

  So we scrambled up the tracks, like scars on the rough, dark, ancient hide of the mountainside, and soon before us lay the vast panorama of the shadowy world: the rich, ancient fields, the endlessly flowing waters of the Great River, and the sleeping city with its glorious temples and towers, its rich, silent palaces, its prisons and hovels, and its quiet homes and poor districts, in the dark distance. I breathed in the cold, fresh air. It was bracing and fortifying. The last stars were fading, and there was a hint of red on the horizon beyond the city. The King was dead. I thought of his eyes, and his gold face, down in the dark, perhaps–who knows?–now seeing the Otherworld appear before him as the light of eternity dawned and his spirits rejoined him.

  As for me, what my eyes beheld of the world was enough. Smoke from the first fires began to twist into the still, pure air. Far off I heard the first birds begin to sing. I rested my hand on Thoth’s head. He gazed at me with his wise, old eyes. My children and my wife would still be asleep. I wanted very much to be there to greet them when they woke. I needed to find a way to believe we could be safe, despite the perils and threats of the future to come. I looked up at the indigo sky, and the horizon that was brightening with every moment. It would soon be light.

  THE END

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Since 1922, when Howard Carter made his momentous discovery in the Valley of the Kings, Tutankhamun has become the most famous, compelling and in some ways mysterious of all Ancient Egyptians. As a child, in 1972, I was taken to see the great Tutankhamun exhibition at the British Museum. His grave goods–among them the golden shrine, gilded statuettes showing him poised with a spear or holding the flail of power, the alabaster ‘wishing cup,’ a gold sceptre, glorious jewellery, a long bronze trumpet, a boomerang and an intricately decorated hunting bow–seemed like the treasures of a lost world. Above all, his death mask of beaten, solid gold–surely one of the most beautiful works of art from the ancient world–seemed to sum up the powerful mystery of the so-called ‘boy king,’ who possessed such power and lived among such wonders, and yet who died mysteriously young–probably less than twenty years old–and was then hurriedly buried and entirely forgotten, for about 3,300 years.

  The discovery of the tomb promoted a huge revival in the popular fascination with Egypt; but perhaps it emphasized the occult mysteries of the pyramids and tombs, and the B-movie curses of the mummies, at the expense of a more balanced view of that remarkable culture. For Tutankhamun, for instance, the pyramids were already about as ancient as Stonehenge is for us today.

  Ancient historians and archaeologists have given us a great deal of detailed information about Ancient Egypt, and about the New Kingdom in particular. By the 18th Dynasty, Egypt commanded the most powerful, rich and sophisticated empire the ancient world had ever known. It was a highly complex, highly organized society, constructing astounding monuments, fashioning gorgeous art, objects and jewellery, sustaining its pre-eminence in international power politics, and supporting lives of luxury and affluence for its elite–all on the back of a large labouring workforce. Beyond its own borders, it ruled and administered a vast territory from the third cataract in what is now Sudan, through much of the Levant. Its routes of trade in rare goods and labour stretched much further. It had an advanced army, led by General Horemheb, an extremely powerful priesthood that administered and profited from vast tracts of land and property, a sophisticated civil service, and something recognizably like a national police force in the Medjay.

  The Medjay were originally nomadic Nubian people. During the Middle Kingdom, the Ancient Egyptians appreciated their fighting skills, employing them as trackers and foot soldiers, and using their scouting talent to collect intelligence on strangers, at the borders especially. Fortunately for us, Ancient Egypt was a bureaucratic culture, and a report from that time still survives: ‘The patrol which set out to patrol the desert edge…has returned and reported to me as follows: “We have found a track of 32 men and 3 donkeys”’ (Kemp, 2006). By the 18th Dynasty the term Medjay could be applied more widely to describe a kind of early urban policing force. Corruption and crime are richly attested to during the New Kingdom, as throughout time and culture, and so I have extrapolated from the available evidence a police force functioning similarly to a modern one, with a coded hierarchy, a strong assertion of independence from other forms of authority, and of course independent-minded detectives, or ‘Seekers of Mystery,’ of which Rahotep is the finest.

  All the earthly powers, accomplishments and triumphs of New Kingdom Egypt were made possible by the life-giving waters of the Nile, the Great River, which defined for the Ancient Egyptians the ‘Two Lands’: the Black, which was the richly fertile soil of the river lands, and the Red, which was the apparently endless desert that surrounded them, and which represented the things they feared–barrenness, chaos and death. The perpetual cycle of the daily rebirth of the sun in the east, the setting of the sun in the west, and the sun’s mysterious night journey through the perilous territory of the afterlife inspired their beautiful, complex religion.

  We know Tutankhamun inherited the throne when he was only about eight years old. We know Ay, essentially the Chancellor, governed in his name. And we know Tutankhamun was born and raised in a turbulent time. He inherited the difficulties of his reign from his father, Akhenaten. The introduction, or imposition, of Akhenaten and Nefertiti’s revolutionary Aten religion, and the foundation of a new temple-capital at Akhetaten (modern-day Amarna), had created a profound crisis of politics and religion, which I explored in Nefertiti: The Book of the Dead. After the end of Akhenaten’s reign, the old orthodox religion was restored, as powerful factions battled for power and new influence. One clear indication of how this forceful period of reform affected Tutankhamun, and the political necessity of disassociating himself from his father’s reign, was that he changed his name from Tutankhaten (‘Living Image of the Aten’) and reinstated the name of Amun, ‘the hidden one,’ the all-powerful god whose temple complex at Karnak remains one of the great monuments of the ancient world.

  The Ancient Egyptians feared chaos greatly. They recognized its forces as a constant threat to natural and supernatural order, and to the values of beauty, justice and truth. The goddess Maat, who was depicted as a seated woman wearing an ostrich feather, represented order at both the cosmic level of seasons and stars, and at the social level of the relations between the gods, in the person of the king, and men. A graphic description of the sense of chaos prevailing at the time of Tutankhamun’s coronation is recorded on the Restoration Stela (a stone slab bearing inscriptions) which was set up in the temple complex of Karnak in the early years of his reign. Of course, its purpose was partly propaganda; but its description of the state of the world before Tutankhamun’s ascension is incredibly vivid. (A passage from the text forms the epigraph to this book.) The new king’s duty would be, as for all kings before him, to restore Maat to the Two Lands of Egypt; as the stela asserts, ‘He has vanquished chaos from the whole land…and the whole land has been made as it was in the time of Creation.’

  Evidence for a biography of Tutankhamun is extremely sketchy, and most accounts are interpretations based on shards of often highly ambiguous evidence. Many compelling mysteries remain unsolved. How and why did Tutankhamun die so young? Recent CT scans of his mummy have disproved the old theory that a blow to the back of his skull killed him. The new scientific evidence implies a broken leg, and septicaemia. If so, how did this happen? Was there an accident? Or did some more sinister crime befall him? We can still only guess why the
funeral arrangements seem to have been so strangely hurried–the tomb paintings crude and unfinished, the funeral furniture haphazard, the parts of the golden shrine damaged as they were put together, and the two mummified foetuses buried with him unidentified. Why was the wine out of date, and why were there so many walking sticks in the tomb? What was the role of his wife, Ankhesenamun, who was also his half-sister, and daughter of the great queen Nefertiti and Akhenaten? What was Ay’s claim to power, and under what circumstances did he become the next king? And where was the powerful figure of Horemheb during this strange, dark time?

  The great poet Robert Graves wrote that his historical novels were attempts to solve cryptic historical puzzles. There can be few greater remaining historical mysteries than the life and death of Tutankhamun, and this novel has been my endeavour, through imagination, careful attempts to be as historically accurate as possible, and a wish to depict these long-dead people as being fully alive in their own present tense, to offer a solution to the mystery of the young man who briefly held the crook and flail of earthly power in his hands, and who was then entirely lost to history until that day in 1922 when the seals of his tomb were broken open.