by Allen Drury
We remembered that he was always a loving uncle to me and a loving grandfather to Ankhesenamon when we were little. We gradually forgave the years after I first came to the throne, when I was still a boy and he seemed to us an eager usurper of powers I was too young to exercise. Maturity brought with it a kindlier view of him. In retrospect he began to seem what we now suspect he has always been: the steady anchor of the House of Thebes, the one unswerving constant through all the troubled times and tempests of my father’s later years and my brothers’ tragic rule.
Concerning Horemheb, we have other ideas. Influenced partly by Sitamon, partly by his actions, but most of all by his really frightening threats to our lives in that dreadful overheard conversation, we have no faith at all in him. Sitamon says, “I believe he began by truly caring for Kemet and wishing to make her great again. I believe he still has this desire. But I also believe he now desires to make Horemheb great along with Kemet. And which of those desires is the greater.…” Her voice trails away and we all reach the same conclusion.
We all mistrust Horemheb. We have mistrusted him ever since the most dreadful night of all, the night he ordered Hatsuret to kill Nefertiti and himself murdered Akhenaten: though we eventually managed to understand how these awful events might have come about through a genuine desire to save the Two Lands from further disaster. But the memory has always made us fearful of him—more so as the years have passed and he has gathered to himself increasing power, which I know he will not yield without a struggle.
Well: I am ready for him now. Tomorrow all changes, and with it Horemheb. Otherwise, I will have his head. I am the Living Horus and after tomorrow none will dare say me nay.
Aye I intend to keep close to my side, however. We have finally returned without reservations to the feeling that in him we have a genuine friend, one whose only desire and ambition really is to serve the Two Lands. He will no longer be Regent, of course, and I do not think I will make him Co-Regent, for there is no need for that. It is true that Ankhesenamon has already had one stillborn daughter, not the son we fervently hoped for; but she is pregnant again, scarce two weeks from delivery, and this time, if Aten and the gods agree, the Crown Prince will be born. Someday when he is old enough I will create him Co-Regent. Meanwhile, tomorrow I am eighteen and all power returns to my hands. I shall be very slow and cautious about whom I let it out to hereafter, even to Aye. But we have decided that he will continue to be my most trusted adviser—as counterweight to Horemheb and Hatsuret, and for many more good reasons, principally his own integrity, loyalty and care for our beloved kingdom which is only now, nine years after the death of Nefer-Kheperu-Ra, beginning to recover some semblance of order from his chaotic rule.
There are other things I must do after tomorrow, also. I must see to it that the bodies of the Great Wife, my brother Smenkhkara, Merytaten, Meketaten, Nefertiti and Akhenaten are returned with suitable respect and ceremony to the Valley of the Kings to rest beside our ancestors where they properly belong.
I think of them often, lying in the Royal Wadi at Akhet-Aten: how very lonely they seem, so far away from us in the now deserted city. One thing I have constantly asked Aye and Horemheb to do, and I think Aye in particular has obeyed: make sure that those graves have not been disturbed and that all is safe and secure there. They assure me it is and, having no word to the contrary, I assume they are telling me the truth. But it is time for my family to come home now: the reasons of state that have made my uncle and cousin reluctant to return them here will be canceled when I take full power. I have told Aye this, and he agrees. It is time for the dead to rest easy, even poor Akhenaten, who brought such disaster on us all—particularly Akhenaten, who will find in our plans, I think, much with which he might agree.
We feel that he and dearest Nefertiti are watching us from the after-world and supporting us in what we intend to do.
Because, look you: Amon is becoming too great again. He is never content, that one, particularly when his forces are led by such as Hatsuret, that ravenous, ambitious priest. Amon is pushing us again, growing too strong, meddling too much. Once again, like my father and my brothers, I am faced with the greed of Amon. He wants land and he wants gold, much of which Horemheb returned to him in my name years ago when I was too young and helpless to prevent it. But above all he wants power. And while Aye has worked with him reluctantly, and while Horemheb, I am sure, thinks he could work with him completely, I know that I, Neb-Kheperu-Ra Tutankhamon, cannot.
Every time I go to the temple at Karnak it seems to me the messages I exchange with those hooded eyes, gleaming from the golden head in the single ray that illuminates that somber sanctuary, grow more threatening and more hostile. Amon has never been my friend, from the first day I saw him as a child of nine: and he knows well what I think of him, too. Our exchanges, never friendly, are now almost openly hostile, although since I alone face him while the others remain respectfully outside the inmost chamber, they do not know. But he knows and I know: Amon must be reduced again, before he swallows me up.
There is another reason, too. Amon and the gods have been restored for nine years now, and dutifully and earnestly Ankhesenamon and I have sought to understand them and try to appreciate their role in the life of the Two Lands. And we have concluded this: They are not bringers of happiness and joy to our people. Mostly, they frighten our people. They are simply weapons in the hands of ruthless priests and those, like Horemheb, who use the priests to impose their will upon the kingdom.
We will grant you that some are lovable like Hathor, amiable and wise like Thoth, gravely impressive like Sekhmet, stately and commanding like Horus. But none says, “I am Love. I want to love you and have you love me. I want you—all of you—to be free from superstition and fear, happy in our love for one another.”
None says this—save one. And so Ankhesenamon and I find ourselves coming back more and more to the god in whose faith we were reared, the god we are told we must continue to reduce and, ultimately, forget.
But we cannot forget, and him we do not wish to reduce. He is too bright, too happy, too loving—too comforting. Comforting, we think, is what we and our people need now, more than anything.
That is why we have preserved his temples in Akhet-Aten, enlarged his temple at Karnak, used as often as we dared his crook and flail and the golden throne emblazoned with his image blessing us. And that is why I think I begin to see in the eyes of Amon lately something of the fear he always tries deliberately to create in others.
That is why it will please me to do what we plan. But it must be done slowly and carefully, step by step. I must not make my brother’s mistakes. I do not think I will, because I do believe he was truly a fanatic and I am not. But that does not make my purpose less firm nor my will less determined.
I shall be careful, I shall be clever, I shall follow the rule of my uncle Aye we have heard him express so often: if change is to succeed in Kemet, it must be gradual.
Gradual I will be, but I will not be deflected. Our minds are made up and we are determined to do it. We have learned craft in our nine years as the prisoners of the Palace. We have also learned tenacity.
Tomorrow we will be prisoners no longer. Things will begin to happen as we wish them to happen. Gradually, Uncle, as you recommend: but inexorably, nonetheless.
***
Aye
Hatsuret complains and Horemheb mutters of dark things; and I must confess that I am not as easy as I profess to be when I answer them. Nor do I approach this occasion of my nephew’s full assumption of power with any less apprehension than they. But as I stand now in my room in Malkata while the servants dress me in my robes of office to attend the ceremonies soon to begin in teeming, excited Thebes across the river, I know that I must remain calm and steady whatever happens. Because upon the calmness and steadiness of the Regent Aye depends, I think, the future of what remains of the House of Thebes.
I am old, and I am tired; but I am not ready yet to yield to others less selfless t
han I the control of this kingdom, this beloved land. I have labored too long for Kemet, rescued her too many times from disaster, given her my heart and strength too often. I have connived in terrible things for the Two Lands—only because I thought I had to, only because I could see no other way out, but terrible nonetheless. And terrible in what they have done to me inside, too, though I have survived them—for one simple reason, I think.
Someone has had to survive.
Now two clever children are about to come to power; and what will that mean, for me and for Kemet? Hatsuret fears a restoration of the Aten, Horemheb fears a permanent impediment to his ambitions: I fear I shall be called on once again to stand in the middle and hold off contending forces by sheer strength of character, for that is about all that is left me now. I command great respect from the people, no one is revered as I am—but in Kemet it is not the people who decide what happens in the Palace. It is those within. And there the Regent Aye possesses means that dwindle as the years close in.
Yet in a profound though somewhat negative sense I think it is the people who are indeed my strength: because thanks to their support I do not believe my son quite yet dares challenge me openly. The people are not capable of giving me power, but the massive weight of their reverence for me is sufficient to prevent anyone from taking it from me. Not even the army, which Horemheb commands and has rebuilt to some reasonable degree of competence since Akhenaten’s death … not even, I think, my youngest nephew, who today is eighteen years of age and moves, as he rightly should, to claim his full inheritance.
It is my duty as Regent to make sure that the transition is peaceful and occurs without incident. I shall then lay the seals of my office at his feet, which he will wish me to do in any event, and offer myself for whatever further service he may feel an old man can render. I shall be very much surprised if he continues me as Co-Regent, for he wishes to be King alone, as he should, and my granddaughter is soon to give birth to a son who in due time will become Co-Regent, as he should. But I shall also be very much surprised if he does not keep me at his side as principal councilor and adviser, for the only alternative to me is my son. And I know Neb-Kheperu-Ra fears my son as I do, and will never give him such authority.
I do not know exactly how I know this, for both children are always very circumspect about Horemheb, even in their private conversations with me; but I do know it. It shows through. They dislike and fear him, whom once they looked up to as a kindly older friend of their childhood days. He has been very astute about concealing his ambitions, having only slipped once years ago in talking to Sitamon; but that was enough. Everything he has done since has been suspect, to her, to them and to me; and increasingly in recent years his actions have confirmed what those few inadvertent words foreshadowed. During my regency he has had enormous power, second only to mine; and he has used it to strengthen himself everywhere he could, with the army, with the people (through fear, however, not the love they bear me and Pharaoh), and through the priests of Amon whom Hatsuret leads once more to triumph in the land.
It is age, I suppose: but with increasing clarity I find myself remembering those many conversations with my sister and Amonhotep III (life, health, prosperity!) in which we deplored the steady inroads of Amon upon the power and prerogatives of the Eighteenth Dynasty. I can remember their attempts to stop this, I can remember how their failures drove my brother-in-law to dedicate Akhenaten to the Aten, I can of course remember all else. So much tragedy and so much pain as a result of this! And now it seems we have come full circle to find ourselves facing the same problem again—this time, because Horemheb believes he sees in the swarming priests of Amon the surest road to power.
He will be defeated in this, as I believe he must be—for under his patriotic exterior he has become too arbitrary, too harsh, too stern to rule easygoing Kemet—providing he does not have assistance from another quarter. Providing my last surviving nephew does not play directly into his hands and the hands of Amon. Providing there is no foolhardy attempt to revive the god whose diminishment has been necessary in order to restore ma’at and justice and the fragile balance of the Two Lands.
Bitterly I argued Tutankhamon’s defense, that night after Pharaoh had returned to Thebes and proclaimed the counsels of moderation which I myself had originally proposed to him; sternly I ordered Horemheb to abandon his wild ideas that “the young shoot must be rooted out before it becomes a great tree.” Horemheb was close to hysteria then, I think, and actually I was more uneasy than I cared to admit to him, myself, not being prepared for the forthright firmness with which my nephew stated propositions that had been simply diplomatic suggestions on my part. But I realized that this was in all probability youth’s enthusiastic tendency to overstate; and since next day he appeared to have relaxed to a more comfortable and less urgent frame of mind about it, I knew I had been right to face down my son and block his foolish exaggerations. Since then we have moved gradually, as I desired, to restore Amon, gradually to reduce the Aten. Tut and Ankhesenamon have seemingly been quite content with the placid flow of their days, the round of ceremonies and entertainments, their lingering sentimental allegiance to the Aten while the formal re-association of the Double Crown with Amon has proceeded under my careful guidance. All has appeared to go smoothly … until today. And today, I must most earnestly hope, the mood will continue and nothing drastic will be done.…
I seem to have fallen into a dreaming study as the servants dress me, because I become aware that one of them is pulling gently at my arm to get me to raise it and slip it into the gold-threaded robe he holds. I start, and apologize with a smile. He returns it with the worshipful air they all show me: I still have much respect to rely upon.
“It is almost time to go, Excellency,” he says. “The barges are ready at the landing stage.”
“I will pay attention and help you complete this speedily,” I promise, and bend myself to it as he holds out to me the seals and symbols of office.…
Horemheb will be defeated in his ambitions, as I say, providing Neb-Kheperu-Ra does not do something foolish this day. I think all of us in the Court have known that he and my granddaughter continue in their hearts to favor the Aten, that for them both there is an extremely strong emotional pull in the memories of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, that it is quite understandable that they should remain loyal to the faith in which they were reared. But I have done all I could to ease and moderate this during the nine years of my regency, and with their co-operation (for they are very far from fools) I think I have done very well. The Aten has been preserved—for, after all, he has been a god of this dynasty for the better part of two hundred years, though never such a one as Akhenaten tried to make of him—yet he has been gradually reduced to a more reasonable position. There was never any thought in my mind, and obviously none in Tutankhamon’s or Ankhesenamon’s, that he should be banished altogether. That has been Hatsuret’s idea, of course, and I suspect Horemheb’s, but that is not how Kemet functions. We have not lasted almost two thousand years by going to extremes: we have lasted by moving gradually. So it has been with the Aten since the death of his most fanatic worshiper. Not so, alas, has it been with Amon since his restoration.
There, of course, is the danger: that action will provoke reaction, that Pharaoh will move too strongly and too fast to counteract the renewed dominance of Amon which he rightly fears. I have cautioned him repeatedly, directly when he was a child, more indirectly and diplomatically as he grew older, that all things must be in moderation, all must be gradual. Politely he has listened, but I have learned to mistrust such politeness from the young. My daughter and my other two nephews were always very polite to me too—and then went headlong to their destruction. I pray to Aten, Amon and all the gods that this will not be the case with Neb-Kheperu-Ra. For, if so, sad and dreadful again may become the burden and the duty of the Regent Aye.…
I am dressed and ready to leave. Trumpets sound, drums beat. From across the Nile comes the swelling roar of exci
tement that always heralds the royal progress from the Palace of Malkata.
I leave my rooms and walk, preceded by heralds, through the busy corridors to the landing stage. It is January. The sky is filled with scudding clouds, the wind whips sharp off the river. Sitamon, Horemheb, Nakht-Min, my second daughter Mutnedjmet (and of course her two annoying little people) are there already. Pharaoh and the Chief Wife have not yet emerged.
The others are to precede us. Only I am to ride with my nephew and Ankhesenamon. This is significant and not lost upon Horemheb, who looks annoyed and upset and for a moment appears about to protest. I stare him down and he embarks, casting a dark glance back at the Palace as he goes. It is not a good omen for the day.
It is time for a boy of eighteen to be very, very clever. I do not know whether he has it in him, though I have tried as much as I could to impart from my years and wisdom the conviction that it is very, very necessary.
***
Amonhotep,
Son of Hapu
Normally I would ride with the Family, but Aye has asked me to wander among the people on the east bank in Thebes and tell him of their reactions to what Pharaoh does this day. None of us knows what this will be but all are apprehensive. We have witnessed so many of these state occasions at the temple of Karnak. Far more often than not they have meant trouble for the Two Lands and further unhappiness for the House of Thebes.
Yet we have done all we can, the Regent and I, to try to make sure that today will not be such another as those many that have gone before. We have been dealing with a bright and gentle lad, whose intelligence lies somewhere between the extremes of Akhenaten’s erratic brilliance and Smenkhkara’s amiable dullness and whose common sense, we hope, far exceeds them both. Since his return to Thebes, when he startled us all by the generosity of his gestures toward the Aten, he has subsided into an apparent acquiescence in all that has been done for Amon and the other gods. He has been content to make his point from time to time only by a gentle but persistent encouragement of the enlargement of the Aten’s temple at Karnak, by a fairly frequent display of the Aten’s crook and flail, and by his employment of the Aten’s throne, which he takes with him everywhere and uses whenever he can. He has also insisted that the temples at Akhet-Aten be protected and has refused to permit reprisals against the steadily dwindling Aten priesthood (many of whose members discreetly disappeared immediately after Akhenaten’s death, anyway, so that now only a handful openly remain).
