Return to Thebes

by Allen Drury

  Slowly, slowly, we pass through Thebes to the beat of muffled drums, the muted mourning of trumpets, the repeated regretful groanings of the people. Slowly we come to the landing stage, slowly we board the golden barge, slowly we set out across the Nile: once again, as so many times before, Hapi bears the burden of the House of Thebes.

  The world is silent now; only the splash of oars breaks the stillness of the river. Behind on the east bank they watch us go, our gleaming banners fluttering at half mast in the gentle wind of spring, Ra high overhead as this, his latest Son, returns to him.

  We reach the west bank, are greeted by more priests of Amon. We are taken to the necropolis, move slowly toward the entrance to the Valley of the Kings. We dismount from our baldachins. The other members of our family group utter their final ritual cries, fall to their knees, bow their heads in silent farewell: they will remain where they are until we return.

  Her Majesty and I go on alone behind the group of slaves who bear the coffin high, and who later, after the final rites are done, will return with the priests to place the last objects in the tomb and close its doors forever.

  We move on through the barren rocky gorge, through the naked earth as raw, harsh and savage as it has forever been and will forever be. We come to the entrance to the tomb, we pass within. We reach the antechamber, turn right to the crypt. Carefully the slaves lower the gold coffin into its two enormous interfitting sarcophagi, remove the lid so that we may look down upon the mummified remains of Tutankhamon, and withdraw. My granddaughter and I draw near. She begins to weep, softly and steadily in a release she has not until now, I suspect, been able to achieve. I weep with her, as deeply as she. I have loved all my nephews: and all have come, before their time, to this.

  I am clad in the leopard skin of a high priest. At Ankhesenamon’s insistence I have reserved for myself—and no one, not even Horemheb, has dared challenge it—the privilege of performing the rite of The-Opening-of-the-Mouth.

  Normally this honor is reserved for the successor to the dead Pharaoh. With a startled glance at my granddaughter, standing head bowed, tears streaming down her cheeks, I suddenly think: And perhaps it is this time, too.…

  This is the thought that comes, at last, to me.

  But I remain impassive, though my heart surges wildly with many things. I take the iron prong, I lower it gently to touch the lips of the dead boy (I shall not make the mistake of poor Akhenaten with his father and actually damage the teeth in my strain and nervousness), I cry his name three times, and I say to him with a loving gentleness, because this is how I feel for him, though I know that duty forced me to be as responsible for his death as Horemheb, and the anguish and ordeal of that decision will eat forever at my heart:

  “You live again, you live again forever! Here you are young once more forever!”

  Silence answers, though we know that with my calling of his name and the utterance of these gentle words the long process of coming to life again in the eternal afterworld has begun for Neb-Kheperu-Ra.

  Hardly able to see through her weeping, Ankhesenamon leans down and places a wreath of fresh flowers on the mummy.

  In tears, clinging to one another, we turn away. Maya, superintendent of the necropolis and close friend of His Majesty, enters with priests of Amon as we leave, to supervise the final nesting of the coffin within its gilded sarcophagi, the final placing of the funerary furnishings, the final closing of the tomb.

  For some minutes we stand and watch, still holding tightly to one another while Ra looks down upon the young girl and the old man who must decide the fate of the Two Lands. Was there ever such a pair had such a heavy task?

  Presently the work is done. Maya and the priests bow to us and withdraw. Only we and the slaves remain.

  The slaves who, unknown to them, will see no tomorrow, begin their labors to their characteristic low-voiced chant. Plaster slaps against the heavy stone doors. Hammers pound against their edges to seal them forever.

  So we lay him to rest—slain by Hatsuret and Horemheb but slain even more, I think, by the beliefs of his brother, still doing their work from beyond the grave: my darling nephew Tutankhamon, that sweet and gentle boy—safe at last for all eternity—nevermore to be disturbed by hand or eye of mortal man.

  We turn, eyes still blinded by tears, and walk slowly back toward the others.

  I will permit myself this night to weep.

  Then I must face my son.

  ***

  Book V

  Triumph of a God

  1353-1339 B.C.

  ***

  Amonhotep,

  Son of Hapu

  My old friend embarks today on a dangerous course—embarks, and perhaps comes dead ashore, in more ways than one, should Horemheb not be as taken by surprise as we estimate he will be.

  ***

  Aye

  (life, health, prosperity!)

  He came to me yesterday morning, plaster scarcely twelve hours dry on Pharaoh’s tomb. He spoke without preliminary, almost without greeting save a perfunctory “Good morning, Father”—not using my titles, not honoring my age and dignities, consumed by the force of his own obsession and his certainty that he needs but state it with suitable impatience for it all to come about at once as he desires.

  Well: this did not impress the Co-Regent Aye, though I let him think it did. I played for time, successfully, I think; and today he will find out that things are not as he so arrogantly assumes them to be.

  “Father,” he said (he did not even bow: in his mind he was my superior already, I suppose), “I come to you on the business of Kemet.”

  “What else, my son?” I asked mildly, because it was obvious he was under great tension and I thought mildness best. “There has been nothing before either of us but the business of Kemet, for many years. What aspect of it concerns you now?”

  “The marriage of Her Majesty to the new Living Horus.”

  “Oh? I did not know she had selected a new Living Horus.”

  “It would not matter if she had,” he said contemptuously. “The choice rests with you and me, in any event.”

  “Does it, my son?” I inquired dryly. “Does Her Majesty know this?”

  “She will soon enough. What can she, a helpless girl, do about it? She will take whom we give her, and he will be the King.”

  “I believe,” I said slowly, “that she had the Prince Zannanza in mind, did she not? Strange that he should have died so tragically en route, thereby bringing us further troubles with Suppiluliumas.”

  “Suppiluliumas is a bag of wind,” he said harshly. “I shall drive him out of Palestine in a month’s time, have no doubt of that. He had no right to send Zannanza. No foreigner should wear the Double Crown. It was right that Zannanza should die.”

  “His father does not seem to think so,” I remarked. “Nor, I believe, does Her Majesty.”

  “She is a helpless girl,” he repeated in the same harsh tone. “What can she do about it? She will take whom we give her to be the Living Horus.”

  “You have someone in mind for this honor, Horemheb?”

  I gave him a bland look, under which he fidgeted. But he was not, of course, to be deterred.

  “Certainly,” he said. “Myself.”

  Though my granddaughter and I had expected this ever since Tutankhamon’s murder, the sheer effrontery of it took my breath away. Here it was at last, as blunt and direct and insistent as we had assumed it would be. Yet still, now that it had come, it was overwhelming.

  But not overwhelming in the way he had hoped, my shrewd, ambitious son; because, after giving him stare for stare, I said quietly, “I should have to consult Her Majesty most carefully on that.”

  “You will not consult Her Majesty on it for one second!” he snapped. “I, the General Horemheb, who have at my back the army of the Two Lands, the priesthood of Amon, and the people of Kemet, tell you this is how it will be!”

  “You have some of the army—”

  “Ramesses has secu
red all but a few garrisons for me!”

  “—and you may have the priesthood of Amon—”

  “Nefer’s age makes him timid. I have them.”

  “—but you do not have the people of the Two Lands. They hate and fear you, my poor Horemheb. They will never accept you as King.”

  “The people of Kemet,” he grated with a furious anger, for here I had apparently touched him straight on the quick—I had not realized until that moment that Horemheb, too, feels the need of love and suffers for the lack of it—“will learn to love whoever wears the Double Crown as they have learned many times in the past. If they do not learn of their own will, they will be made to learn. Why do you think their disapproval would make me hesitate, Father?”

  “I have never had to look at it that way myself,” I said with a thoughtful air I knew would infuriate him further, but I did not care at that moment, I was beginning to become angry myself, “because the people have always loved me. I have never had to force them. And I think they give me, still, a strength you would be hard put to challenge.”

  He looked at me for a long moment before he spoke. When he did he was very quiet, very calm, very firm. I knew then that words would no longer stop Horemheb, and that now only the shrewdest measures could prevent him from working his will upon us all.

  “I shall have her, Father,” he said, “and I shall have the Double Crown. Now: will it be with your approval and support, or will Aye, too, go the way of Akhenaten, Nefertiti, Tutankhamon, your simple Amonemhet and Zannanza?”

  “You are proud of such a catalogue?” I asked with a terrible bitterness, thinking him at that moment a monster: but his answer was not the answer of a monster, and almost persuaded me to give way.

  “No, Father,” he said quietly. “I am not proud of the things I have been driven to do for the sake of Kemet. But for the sake of Kemet I have done them; and for the sake of Kemet I will do whatever else is necessary. So concede me my motive, if you will.”

  “What are you?” I half whispered at last.

  “I am he who loves the Two Lands,” he said simply.

  “There is not one you name,” I said, “save Zannanza, who did not truly love the Two Lands. How could such horrors come from love?”

  “I do not know, Father,” he said, still quietly. “But they have.” Abruptly his face changed, his voice changed. His patience, I could see, had run out. “Now,” he said harshly, “let us have no more parley. I would have you send for Her Majesty, Father—at once—so that we can conclude this business and be married tomorrow at the temple of Karnak. At which time Amon will crown me Living Horus, King and Pharaoh of Kemet, as the gods have ordained from my earliest youth, when a seer once said to me: ‘You will come to great power.’”

  “I did not know of this seer!” I said in a last attempt to hold him off.

  “I told no one,” he said with a bitterly humorless little smile, “else I should never have lived to see the prophecy come true. Now send for my cousin, Father. We must settle this with no more talking.”

  Again our eyes held; until finally I said with a little nod and a weary sigh, “Very well. I shall go and talk to her.”

  “Call her here! At once!”

  “My son,” I said quietly, “all will be as you wish. But I must be allowed to speak to her privately first, to explain why this must be, to persuade her to accept it willingly and gracefully. Surely you do not wish to see hatred forever in the eyes of your wife when she looks at you! Surely even Horemheb needs at least a little love!”

  Which, as I had shrewdly calculated, was the thing that did it. His face contorted with pain, his eyes actually filled for a moment with tears. He is driven, my son, driven: differently, but as surely, as his cousin Akhenaten.

  He rubbed a hand savagely over his eyes. The pain was still in them as he said:

  “Very well, Father. Go to her. Say it is only my great love for the Two Lands, and the need that all become calm and orderly again as soon as possible, that compels this. But tell her it must be. And I will send word at once to Karnak—in your name—telling them to make all ready for noon tomorrow, as we are agreed.”

  “I shall give you my seal upon it,” I said and, taking a piece of papyrus hurriedly from my table, I wrote:

  “To Nefer:

  “Prepare all at once for the marriage tomorrow of Her Majesty Ankhesenamon, Queen and Lord of the Two Lands, to the new Living Horus, whom she will reveal to the world at that time, so that all may rejoice in his glory, and ma’at and order may come again to the kingdom.”

  And hurriedly stamped it with my seal and gave it him; and he went away, believing all would be as he said. And I went at once to the palace of Sitamon, stopping only to bring Amonhotep, Son of Hapu, along from the small adjoining house he now occupies as steward of her estates; and in Sitamon’s private chamber, conferred with her, with him and with my granddaughter, who carries the blood of Ra and with it the legitimate right to the Double Crown.…

  Now we are again at Karnak, and again the multitudes stretch out before us. Akhenaten began this practice of speaking directly to the people and allowing them to be witness to great events; Tutankhamon continued it; it seems good to me, too. Changes in the Great House come from within the Great House, but as I near the end of my life, and as I realize that the people’s love is really all that is left to me, I have come to perceive that it can sometimes be of genuine assistance.

  Her Majesty and I are gambling all that it will be, today.

  Again the drums beat, the trumpets blare, the banners fly. All is pomp, bustle, excitement. Neb-Kheperu-Ra is in the afterworld: it is time to move on. The people are eager and excited, filled with shouts and cries and sudden explosions of impatient anticipation as they wait to learn who their new Living Horus will be. There is an uneasy, uncertain note in much of this: many fear Horemheb.

  He sits beside me, face impassive, revealing nothing to the crowd. Only we in the Family, who know him so well, can see the grim little lines of satisfaction at the corners of his mouth. He will be a fierce Living Horus, my clever son. Somewhere far back, I think, he decided that he will never receive love and so he will not deign to give it. The brief tears of yesterday were only a moment’s weakness. My son is himself again. In him Kemet will have a stern father and a hard and ruthless taskmaster. The people sense this and are afraid.

  Nefer dodders forward (we have previously, of course, been inside the temple to offer our dutiful sacrifices to Amon), makes a few last ritual signs, chants a last blessing upon the Queen, dodders back to his seat.

  Pale, tense but perfectly composed, as icily calm and very nearly as beautiful as her mother used to be, Ankhesenamon comes forward. Her voice trembles a little at first, then steadies. Clear and determined, it rings out across the crowd:

  “Good people of Kemet! I, Ankhesenamon, Queen and Lord of the Two Lands, only existing bearer of the blood of Ra, sole remaining daughter of Nefer-Kheperu-Ra Akhenaten and Nefer-neferu-aten Nefertiti”—beside me I can sense Horemheb grow tense, for this reference is not necessary, stirring as it does old ghosts and old pains, unless she has some purpose he cannot yet fathom—“have called you together this day to receive a new Living Horus to wear the Double Crown and sit beside me as I conduct my rule of our beloved Two Lands.

  “Such a one must be wise in the ways of men and of government. Such a one must be shrewd in counsel, sound in advice, fierce in war, kind in peace. Such a one must be a worthy successor to Amonhotep III, Akhenaten, Smenkhkara, Tutankhamon”—and again Horemheb tenses—“life, health, prosperity to them all! Such a one must be pleasing to the gods, to great Amon, to great Aten”—again he stirs uneasily—“and to them all. Such a one must be pleasing also to me, who am the sole surviving daughter of Nefer-Kheperu-Ra Akhenaten and Nefer-neferu-aten Nefertiti, sole existing bearer of the blood of Ra, sole bearer of the legitimate right to the Double Crown.…”

  She pauses, takes a deep breath. We can see through her transparent skirt tha
t her legs are trembling, but it does not affect her voice. Daughter of my daughter she is, and proud would be Nefertiti could she hear her now.

  “Such a one,” she says, and her voice rises slightly, “I have already beside me in the House of Thebes. He has served us long and faithfully and well for many years. The highest posts of government have been his, the highest honors have rightfully come his way. I have known him all my life and never found him wanting. Valiant in war”—I can sense Horemheb begin to relax a little—“gracious in peace, magnanimous and wise in all things, it pleases me to marry him and thus create him Living Horus to sit beside and help me as I rule.

  “My people of Kemet, hail your new Pharaoh! Hail Aye, Living Horus, Great Bull, Lord of the Two Lands, King and Pharaoh of our dearly beloved Kingdom of Kemet! May he have life, health and prosperity forever and ever, for millions and millions of years!”

  The world explodes in a roar of sound. I am conscious of a strangled cry beside me, of Horemheb half starting from his seat, of Nakht-Min at his side reaching up and pulling him down again, an instinctive movement that could cost him his life but will not if Ankhesenamon and I can prevent it, and we will. I am conscious of a strange, moaning sound, like unto the insane, coming from Horemheb’s lips, drowned out, thank the gods, by the ecstatic roaring of the people. Then I rise and leave him and go forward to stand beside my granddaughter and the world seems to crack wide with sound, so much do they love me and so relieved are they that she has not chosen Horemheb.

  When the sound dies at last she cries firmly:

  “Nefer! Do you marry us in the rites of Amon! Now!”

  We turn to look at him, and for a moment poor old Nefer appears absolutely paralyzed as he stares desperately first at us, then at Horemheb, then back at us. From the corner of my eye, for I would not deign to give him open look, I too steal a glance at Horemheb. He is deathly pale, completely immobilized. There is nothing, after all, that he can do, away from his troops and in front of this multitude. My granddaughter and I have gambled, and we have won.