Return to Thebes

by Allen Drury

  I then reminded them what I had already done (this was in the second year of my reign, when I thought it time to give them a general review of what I had accomplished for them to that point). I said that I had improved the entire land, that I had sailed it as far south as Napata, traveling the interior from one end to the other, which was true. I noted that I had found two excellent honest citizens and appointed them Vizier of the North and Vizier of the South, as indeed I had, Pera and Neferhotep. I said that I had led these two to the truth and instructed them to administer all my regulations honestly and fairly, guarding themselves against the temptation to take bribes and always working diligently for Kemet; and so they have faithfully done, from that day to this. I said that I would pay them directly and well with silver and gold from the royal treasury so that no one could obligate them with gifts; and so I have.

  I then issued a strong order for punishment of any government official taking bribes; and I noted that I had appointed new priests (including young Nefer, able and my willing servant, to be High Priest of Amon on the death of his feeble old father), new prophets and new officials of the courts (to rid the land, though I did not feel I had to spell it out, of the old ones who had done so much to corrupt our society).

  I reminded them that I was legislating for Kemet to improve the lives of its people; and I announced times and places when I would be present regularly throughout the land to preside (but not to speak) while my officials conducted their business for the good of Kemet. And I promised that on these occasions I would give gifts of gold and silver and grain to those citizens who had done well, and deserved it. And this, too, I have done.

  I told them then that I had so far accomplished many great things for them and for the Two Lands, and that I would continue to do so with a strong hand, for such corruption and sadness had fallen upon the Two Lands that only a strong hand could rescue them; and I ended by saying (through Maya and the written proclamations):

  “Hear ye these commands which My Majesty has made for the first time governing the whole land, when My Majesty remembered the many cases of oppression that have occurred before!”

  Since then some five hundred noses have been cut off, the prison in Tharu has grown by three thousand, a good many hundred blows, opening a good many wounds, have been administered. But it has been necessary. This is an amiable and easygoing people, but they do need an iron hand to hold them to the course of justice. This I have provided.

  I had originally prepared this Edict for Tutankhamon, and some parts of it had been published in his name. But I felt no compunction about claiming it, expanding it and reissuing it for myself, because when he was alive I was the principal administrator of it, anyway.

  But, as I said, much still remains to be done. So I travel ceaselessly up and down the river—I am even now on my way to visit Thebes, after I complete the business here—and I labor each day from the time Ra’s first light begins to slant across the land until the time the last purple glow fades at last from the western hills. My life is work, for I have few pleasures. I have little time for them, and the needs of the kingdom will not let me rest.…

  We are at the foot of the last ramp up the hill to the Northern Tombs. Our horses puff and whinny, our progress slows. Above we can see soldiers, torches flaring in the gentle wind. They are formed into ranks and stand facing us, so that we cannot yet see what is behind.

  We top the rise, halt the horses, hand the reins to two soldiers who hurry forward and tie them securely to a jut of rock. The rest stand immobile, white with fear and superstition as their captain salutes us and says solemnly:

  “Your Majesties, all is ready.”

  Ramesses starts—he is not yet used to his new title—and I say:

  “Very well, good captain. Leave us now and we shall perform the business. Remain at the bottom of the hill and when we come down I shall instruct you.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” he says; calls an order to his men; they march swiftly down the ramp.

  We see now what is behind them.

  “No!” Ramesses cries, half turning away, his face contorted with fear and horror. But:

  “Yes!” I say in a terrible voice. “You are King now, too, my friend! Act it, and do with me what must be done!”

  And after a moment, with a heavy sigh and a little whimpering sound, he rejoins me and we walk forward to the great pyre of wood on which lie the broken bits of bone and rotted flesh that once were he who was known as Nefer-Kheperu-Ra Akhenaten and she who once was known as Nefer-neferu-aten Nefertiti.

  Here on the ledge where they liked to picnic, here where he loved to brood above his shining, foredoomed city, here where I, Horemheb, raised my ax and ended his pathetic life, I keep my last appointment with my strange cousin and his beautiful, unhappy Queen.

  She is not beautiful now, nor is he. We have here mere ghastly tatters, wrapped carelessly in hasty rags. There was no time or desire to mummify them properly, they were pitched pell-mell into hurried graves. Only a few jewels sewn with desperate haste into the fraying fabric still gleam and glitter in the moonlight, and them I reach down and carefully remove, for I am a careful man and waste not what I can use.

  This done, I take two timbers from the pile, hold them for a moment in the torches that flare high all around, casting a garish light upon the scene—like to the light of that wild night in front of the Palace when I saw them last—and hand one to Ramesses.

  He takes it in a trembling hand. He still is inclined to whimper a bit, but my mind is made up. I strike him sharply on the back.

  “Light the pyre!” I order, and plunge my own timber into it. After a frightened moment he does the same. The wood, drenched in pitchblende, catches at once. We step back from the blasting heat. In seconds the flames are roaring toward the sky.

  “So die, Akhenaten!” I cry, and to my mind come racing the words of The-Opening-of-the-Mouth, which I turn now for my own purposes in this moment of final triumph over him. “Die, Nefertiti! Die you both forever! You die again, you die again forever! Here you will never live again, you die again forever!”

  Another sob comes from Ramesses at what he regards as this impiety; but I have said what I meant to say and I am not afraid. It is what they deserve, and the gods, I know, are with me as I say it.

  Once more he starts to turn away. I grasp his arm and force him sternly back. We face the holocaust, in which we can discern nothing. There is one sharp pop! as of a bone, or perhaps a skull, exploding, but that is all we hear, save only the steady rush of flame that mounts higher and higher as the impregnated wood roars into ashes and takes them to ashes with it.

  For many minutes we stand so while they burn. I feel great calmness, great serenity. Now they are truly gone forever, and Kemet and I can both, at last, rest easy.

  Finally the flames flicker and die. Nothing but ashes remain. It is over.

  We turn, untie our horses, mount and ride down. At the foot the troops await us, rigid, awed and terrified.

  “Captain,” I say, taking a purse from my belt, “here is much gold for you and your men, five pieces each for them and ten for you. Do you return now to the ledge, disperse the embers, rake the area, remove all traces. And be sure to spread the ashes thinly over the rock, so that the winds of the Red Land may blow them away and they may nevermore be seen.”

  “Yes, Majesty,” he replies in a shaking voice. “We go.” And fortified by my gold, they gather up their courage, put aside their superstitions and obey.

  Ramesses heaves once more a deep, shuddering sigh. But I tell him calmly, “Son of the Sun, it is no matter. It was necessary for the sake of the Two Lands to put them to rest forever—we did it—it is done. Come with me now and we will go to Thebes and make you King.”

  He looks at me strangely as though he has never really known me, though we have been closest friends for more than half a century.

  “Yes, Son of the Sun,” he says at last. “It shall be as you say.”

  We go down from the
Northern Tombs, through the ghostly city, along the empty streets and so to the river and my golden barge.

  Khons rides above in his silver boat. All is quiet everywhere. No human stirs. Only a lone dog howls, somewhere along the Nile.

  The city is dead.

  The Heretic and the Beautiful Woman are dead.

  The evil concept of One God is dead, forever and ever, for millions and millions of years.

  The mad dream is ended.

  The vast plain sleeps.

  ***

  Epilogue

  Amonhotep,

  Son of Hapu

  So it ends, as it began, in Thebes. Far down the Nile I hear them coming, Pharaoh and the Co-Regent, and the Co-Regent’s son, and his son. Once more comes the familiar roar of greeting from the same familiar crowd. The same crowd—the same enthusiasm—the same welcome—the same pomp and circumstance—it never changes, though the faces change. Nor will it ever change, I suppose, as long as the Two Lands live. And that, they tell us, will be forever.

  Forever is becoming a somewhat easier concept for me now, because a month ago I attained one hundred years of age. I do not know why the gods have preserved me so long, unless it be to have one mind that can still remember how it all began. And one, perhaps, that can stand aside and watch the pageant pass and reflect upon the mortality that overtakes us all, even should we happen to be Good Gods, Living Horuses, Kings and Pharaohs of the Two Lands of the kingdom of Kemet.

  Horemheb and Ramesses are eighty, now, and both are beginning to show signs of it. Both have lived the warriors’ life and Horemheb has added to it the burden of all the things he has had to do since to restore ma’at and order to the kingdom. He, I think, will go to lie beneath the Western Peak somewhat sooner than simple, kindly Ramesses; but I do not think he will be with us much beyond.

  And of course it does not really matter. Horemheb has set the Two Lands firmly on their course at last; an iron will has restored a stable, if a somewhat iron, society. All that remains now is to recapture fully our lost territories and Empire, and that I do not think will be too long delayed, though I do not expect that either of the Good Gods, or I, will live to see it. There is one who will.

  The great golden barge is nearing now, approaching on the usual roar of sound, as they prepare to disembark at Karnak to start the Festival of Opet. Horemheb stands in the prow; behind a little, at his right hand, stands Ramesses; and behind him stand forceful determined Seti, now thirty-nine, and his own young second Ramesses, now twenty. I almost said “Seti I,” for soon, I think, he will be. I feel in my old bones, which have grown more sensitive to nature’s winds and human weather as I have achieved my century: the Good Gods will not be here much longer. I believe the years will be few until Seti succeeds to the Double Crown.

  The House of Thebes is finished, the Eighteenth Dynasty is, for all practical purposes, over. The Nineteenth Dynasty, for all practical purposes, has begun. And now truly, such is the strong character and imperious will of Seti, the great days of Kemet will at last return.

  So we come again full circle, as we have before in our ancient history of near two thousand years, from glory to collapse to glory again. It is good, as I near my own end, to know that the future shines bright once more for the Two Lands and for the wearer of the Double Crown; because grievous and many are the wounds we have suffered in recent years, and dark and dismal have appeared our chances, many times.

  Now the dream is at last played out, the remaining characters soon will leave the stage; and out of it all, what remains? What of him who still haunts the plains of Akhet-Aten, who still lives restlessly in the hearts of all who knew him, even though Horemheb would like to think he banished him forever on the ledge before the Northern Tombs?

  He still lives: and as much as any, and perhaps more than most, will continue to live, I think, forever and ever, for millions and millions of years.

  Who was Akhenaten? What was he? Was there any true idealism and consistency in the god who raised his spear against the other gods, who sang of love and happiness and joyful worship yet married his daughters, abandoned his wife, loved his brother, ruined the kingdom, lost the Empire, sacrificed all to his lovely, futile dream?

  I did not used to think so before I reached my present years; and even now I am not sure I am right to believe it. Yet it seems to me that he was a true idealist, and so can be forgiven much; and that his inconsistencies were human inconsistencies and thereby became of themselves an understandable, and so forgivable, consistency.

  Out of his hatred for the gods because they would not rescue him from his disfigurement came, with true human irony, his Sole God of love.

  He was idealistic, power-loving—humble, arrogant—gentle, ruthless—practical, impractical—normal, abnormal—weak, strong—a dreamer cursed by dreams.

  He was both god and man, and in both a multitude. He greatly tried and greatly failed; and though his message of a Sole God of love was not for us, I yet suspect that sometime, somewhere, it will find an answer in the hearts of men.

  They are on the landing stage now, they turn to receive the tumult of the kingdom: Horemheb and Ramesses—two fast-aging gods who hold themselves determinedly erect with the pride of their position; Seti and young Ramesses—symbols, and soon to be creators, of the new day. The Two Lands are in good hands now, and before long, I suspect, will have forgotten their strange, unknowable Pharaoh and the chance of love that they had in him, and lost. But somewhere buried deep the memory will live, uneasily; and Kemet, for all that Horemheb has returned her successfully to the ways of her ancestors, will never be the same again. Nor, perhaps, will the world beyond her borders.

  Now as they begin their slow progress toward the first pylon of triumphant Amon’s temple—where they will stop at the litter in which I lie and bow low and greet me fondly for old times’ sake and all we have been through together—two scenes are in my mind.

  The first is that early night upon the ledge when he announced his Hymn to the Aten and had us join him in the flaring torchlight as he chanted. It can be found now only in the tomb of Aye and one or two others, but it lives in my heart as I suspect it does in Horemheb’s, though he would never admit it:

  “Thou arisest fair in the horizon of Heaven, O Living Aten, Beginner of Life. When thou dawnest in the East, thou fillest every land with thy beauty. Thou art indeed comely, great, radiant and high over every land. Thy rays embrace the lands to the full extent of all that thou hast made, for thou art Ra and thou attainest their limits and subdueth them for thy beloved son, Akhenaten. Thou art remote yet thy rays are not upon the earth. Thou art in the sight of men, yet thy ways are not known.…

  “The earth brightens when thou arisest in the Eastern horizon and shinest forth as Aten in the daytime. Thou drivest away the night when thou givest forth thy beams.… The entire earth performs its labors. All cattle are at peace in their pastures. The trees and herbage grow green. The birds fly from their nests, their wings raised in praise of thy spirit. All animals gambol on their feet, all the winged creation live when thou hast risen for them. The boats sail upstream, and likewise downstream. All ways open at thy dawning. The fish in the river leap in thy presence. Thy rays are in the midst of the sea.

  “Thou it is who causest women to conceive and maketh seed into man, who giveth life to the child in the womb of its mother, who comforteth him so that he cries not therein, nurse that thou art, even in the womb, who giveth breath to quicken all that he hath made.…

  “How manifold are thy works! They are hidden from the sight of men, O Sole God, like unto whom there is no other…!

  “Thy beams nourish every field and when thou shinest they live and grow for thee. Thou makest the seasons in order to sustain all that thou hast made, the winter to cool them, the summer heat that they may taste of thy quality. Thou hast made heaven afar off that thou mayest behold all that thou hast made when thou wast alone, appearing in thy aspect of the Living Aten, rising and shining forth. Thou makest
millions of forms out of thyself, towns, villages, fields, roads, the river. All eyes behold thee before them, for thou art the A ten of the daytime, above all that thou hast created.…”

  And as the two elderly Pharaohs who are, and the two youthful Pharaohs who are yet to be, leave me after much kind greeting and pass within the temple of Karnak, this last thing comes to me:

  That night on the river when the Court left Akhet-Aten and Tutankhamon stopped for the night at the village of Hanis; and when, on the deck of His Majesty’s barge, very late, the lone singer sang, to the shimmering sound of a harp and the gentle rustle of a sistrum, his bittersweet words that speak to us all, old and young, rich and poor, greatest of the earth or smallest on it, after all the strife is over and the final word is said:

  “Be glad, that thou mayest cause thine heart to forget that men will one day glorify thee at thy funeral. Follow thy desire, so long as thou livest. Put myrrh on thy head, clothe thee in fine linen, and anoint thee with the marvels of life.

  “Increase yet more the delights that thou hast, and let not thine heart grow faint. Follow thy desire and do good to others and thyself. Do what thou must upon earth and vex not thine heart, until that day of lamentation come to thee—for He With The Quiet Heart, Great Osiris, heareth not lamentations, and cries deliver no man from the underworld.

  “Spend thy days happily and do not weary thereof!

  “Lo, none can take his goods with him!

  “Lo, none that hath departed can come again.…”

  September 1975–March 1976

  ***

  Appendix