by Tom Holland
And so saying, Joseph raised his eyes to gaze into the sun and the Prince did the same, and then they bowed their heads, for they could not endure the brightness; and the Prince vowed to himself that he would do as his grandfather had instructed. From that time on, it became his practice to walk with the old man as his helper every day, and he saw for himself, what Joseph would point out to him wherever they went, how infinite were the beauties and wonders of creation, all brought into being by the rays of the sun, and the All-Mighty who dwelt beyond the brightness of its disk.
Then it happened that Joseph grew very ill, and he could no longer rise and walk abroad with his grandson, and then one day he fell asleep and he never woke again. When the news was reported, there was great grief and wailing throughout the Palace, and all of Egypt, for there had never been a servant of Pharaoh so beloved as Joseph. A great line of mourners followed his body to his tomb, to see him laid to rest within the valley s stony depths, reunited at last for all time with his lost wife. But the Prince, as he watched the stone being lowered to seal the entrance to the tomb, thought of the birds as they rose above the rushes of the lake, and of the trees which had always sheltered his grandfather’s favourite spot; and he could no longer endure to remain in the valley. Instead he turned and ran, stumbling through its barren, lifeless rocks, ignoring all the cries and appeals of his mother, until at last he reached the paths where he had walked with his grandfather; and he thought again upon all which Joseph had taught.
So it was that from that time on he ignored the worship of every other god, and continued to roam with Kiya far and wide, admiring all the splendours illumined by the sun, wondering at all the living things, the animals and plants, from the giant hippopotamus to the tiniest petals on a flower, given life by the golden touch of its rays. He wondered at the fields with their clusters of wild poppies, their herds of patient cattle coated in softest, lushest mud. He wondered at the marshes, where the birds would flock as thick as the bullrushes, and snakes with fabulous patterns and flask-nosed crocodiles would lurk. He even wondered at the burning red sands, which all his countrymen detested and dreaded, for the memory of his lions still remained precious to him, and he knew it was in the desert that they had dwelt while they were free. For even in the desert, the sun provided life; and wherever there was life, there the young Prince would walk.
Yet it soon happened, such was the length of time he began to spend abroad, that his absences were brought to the attention of his father. King Amen-hetep straightaway sent for the Prince and was astonished, on seeing his son before him, to realise that he was on the verge of becoming a man, for his strength now seemed almost the equal of his beauty, which had always, since his earliest years, been wonderfully great. King Amen-hetep observed this with a strange sense of resentment, such as he did not at first altogether understand; and although he ordered his son to remain by his side, to see if he might not overcome his unease, he discovered instead that it was growing all the more. He did not care to have the Prince see him at his pleasures; he could not endure the sense of his son’s eye on his wine-cup, or on his fingers as he licked them clean of a sauce. Above all he could not endure to see his son with Queen Tyi; for the sight, in a strange way, would make him feel foolish, and conscious of his belly, and of how he was growing old.
But then it happened that King Amen-hetep was struck by an idea. He had long resented the burdens of kingship, which had begun to oppress him more and more since Joseph’s death, and so he resolved that his son should learn the duties of a Pharaoh, while he himself was left alone to the enjoyment of his court. So it was that the Prince was straightaway named regent, and to be sure he soon proved himself the finest kind of ruler, since he cared for the lives and fortunes of his subjects, he did not build colossal temples to himself, and he did not indulge in glamorous and pointless wars. Instead he travelled up and down the length of his country, always patient with the sufferings of the poor and the oppressed, always angered by the exposure of cruelties and bloodshed -- always seeking, in short, to do as he had vowed, both to himself and to Joseph ... to live in truth.
And then in time it happened that the Prince decided he would marry, for he desired to have Kiya by his side as his Queen; but the news, to his astonishment, met with a flat interdiction. Stirring himself from his couch, King Amen-hetep ordered his son to attend him in his throne room, where he instructed the Prince instead to marry his sister -- a command which the Prince indignantly refused. King Amen-hetep was at once thrown into a stupendous fury; but although he screamed, and grew red and began to shake, so that all the vast folds of his flesh began to quiver, the Prince would not give way.
‘Do as I command!’ King Amen-hetep screamed.
‘I shall not,’ replied the Prince.
‘I forbid you to marry Kiya!’
‘Of course, you may do so for now’ The Prince smiled grimly. ‘But the time will come, O my Father, when I am Pharaoh myself.’ And then he bowed, and turned and walked quietly away; and King Amen-hetep could only splutter. But Inen, who had been standing behind a pillar of the throne room, turned to his companion, the High Priest of Amen, and whispered something urgently into his ear; and the frowns upon the faces of both men grew deeper.
The following day, while the Prince was sitting with Kiya in the garden, he was approached by his mother, who embraced her niece fondly and then asked if she would leave her alone with her son. Kiya glanced towards the Prince, but then rose and slipped away. Tyi straightaway took her son by his arm, and begged him in a low, urgent voice to marry his eldest sister, so that he could then make her his Great Queen. She did not command him, as her husband had done, nor lose her temper; yet the Prince’s response, though polite, was the same. Still his mother pressed him, but he shook his head and laughed. ‘I am astonished,’ he exclaimed, ‘that you of all people should be asking me not to make Kiya my Great Queen. Why, you were not even Pharaoh’s cousin, yet you persuaded him to depose his sister in your favour.’
Tyi lowered her gaze. ‘That was different,’ she replied.
‘How?’
Tyi shrugged helplessly. ‘It was the will of the gods.’
‘Then maybe it is the will of the One God -- the God of your own father, do not forget - that I should marry Kiya and make her my Queen.’
Tyi shrugged helplessly again, and then she turned towards the colonnade and beckoned with a graceful gesture of her arm. The Prince watched as a priest emerged from the shadows and then, raising his hand to shade his gaze from the sun, he recognised the man as his uncle, Inen. He turned back to his mother. ‘If you cannot persuade me,’ he asked her, ‘then why do you think he will have any greater success?’
‘Because he is a man of great wisdom, who knows many secrets and sees many wondrous things.’
‘But I doubt he can see as far as my grandfather did.’
The Prince watched as his mother flinched and bit her lip. Then she reached out, almost gingerly, to touch him on his forearm and kiss him on his brow. ‘Would I ask you to do anything, O my beloved son,’ she whispered, ‘if it were not for your own good? So go with him. Listen to what he says. For it is all -- I say it again -- for your future good.’
The Prince frowned at her doubtfully, but then he shrugged and bowed his head, and did as she requested. He went with his uncle, who led him from the Palace and into the very depths of the temple, as far as the magical door of gliding metal, and then beyond it into the chamber with the round, empty pool. Once there, Inen pointed to the carvings on the walls, the secret portraits of Osiris and the gods, and then revealed to the Prince how his own blood was divine, descended through countless ages from the stars. ‘And yet you,’ he said with a sudden dry anger as arid and burning as a desert wind, ‘would presume to spoil a bloodline which has flowed since the very dawn of time? Why, it is as criminal as to seek to dam the Milky Way or the sacred waters of the life-giving Nile!’
‘No,’ answered the Prince, ‘for they are both the gifts of the On
e Who Dwells On High.’
‘The blood-line is the gift of the great god Osiris.’
‘No,’ the Prince repeated, ‘for there can be only one God.’
Inen smiled very thinly. ‘You will not think that, O Prince, when the moment of your death arrives and you discover that in truth you will never die at all.’
‘All men must die.’
Inen’s smile only broadened. ‘Not those of the royal blood, the blood of Osiris -- the blood, O Prince, which flows within your veins.’
But the Prince laughed contemptuously. ‘I have seen the tombs in which my forefathers have been laid.’
‘Yet such tombs are merely the portals to the eternity of Osiris. You as well, O Prince, whether you desire it or not, will be taken there by virtue of your royal descent.’
The Prince stared at him closely a moment; then he shook his head. ‘I believe neither in Osiris, nor in anything you say.’
‘But the time will come when you must.’
‘I do not think so.’
‘But I tell you, the time will come all the same, for your blood is your fate and cannot be denied.’
‘How do you mean?’
Inen did not reply; but as the Prince watched his uncle’s stare, he saw that it seemed to flicker to the pool by his side, before darting back to size him up and down.
‘I have had enough of this,’ said the Prince with sudden impatience, and he turned to walk back through the metal doors. But his uncle pursued him and seized him by the arm. ‘It were better for you,’ Inen whispered, ‘yes, and the Lady Kiya too, if you abandoned her now, before you ever have a child.’
‘Why?’ asked the Prince, feeling suddenly nervous. His question seemed to him like a fragile jar, flung from a roof and dropping through silence -- and yet, though he waited, there came no impact.
At last his uncle cleared his throat. ‘She is not already carrying your child, I hope?’
The Prince did not answer but, even as he sought to keep his face impassive, he knew that his uncle had read his silence.
‘I had hoped,’ said Inen at length, ‘that it would not come to this. It is possible, of course, since the child will have your blood, that it will grow to be an order of being like yourself. More likely, however . . .’ -- he met the Prince’s eye -- ‘your child will be dead before it can ever be born.’
‘How can you know that? Why should it be?’
‘It is, as I have said, the nature of your blood. Your child must share in it, or -- I am sorry -- be stillborn.’ He reached out to touch his nephew’s shoulder. ‘And so you see,’ he whispered, ‘what your mother said was true - I have had nothing but your own best interests at heart.’
For a moment, the Prince stood frozen rigid; but then he shook away his uncle’s hand and, turning, began to run through the many chambers of the temple, towards the distant gold of the light of the day, towards the light of the sun. Nor, for the next half-year, did he once return to the temple or speak with his uncle, ignoring his mother’s most earnest pleadings but instead devoting all his time to Kiya, caring for her and his unborn child. Yet still, despite all his attentions, some weeks before the birth was finally due she was rushed into her confinement, and the child was born tiny, frail-limbed and dead. For the next week, neither the Prince nor Kiya left their chamber but remained closeted away in the privacy of their grief; and when at last the Prince emerged back into the light of the sun, his face appeared strangely harrowed and thinned.
From that moment on, he made public his devotion to the One God of Yuya - yet Joseph was dead, and he had no guide save himself. But he remembered what his grandfather had said to him, standing beneath the shade of the trees and pointing to the sun; and so the Prince gave to the All-High the Egyptian name of ‘Aten’, which in the language of the pagans meant ‘the sun’. It was in the name of the Aten that he continued to reign, seeking to do so - as he had always done before - for the benefit of all, so that the poor, the oppressed and the powerless might approach him, just as easily as any of the great men of the Court. And so it was that one day a Nubian came to see him; very old, and covered in dust, he had travelled the whole vast distance of the Nile, from his own tiny village all the way to mighty Thebes, to ask the Prince to release his son, who had been captured and made a prisoner in King Amen-hetep’s wars; and the Prince did so at once, and released all the Nubian’s fellows too. Then a Syrian came, as old and wretched as the Nubian had been; and his request was the same, and the Prince’s answer the same also. Then a Libyan came with a similar request; and again the Prince ordered the prisoners released. He asked that all of them give praise and thanks to the Aten, and he taught them that men were all the same beneath the sun.
But when the news was brought to him, King Amen-hetep was roused a second time from his debaucheries, and came to his son in a greater fury than before, demanding to know by what right the prisoners had been freed, when it was by his express command that they had first been brought to Thebes. Then he laughed suddenly. ‘For what purpose, O my son, you will soon find out yourself.’
But the Prince shook his head and merely repeated what he had said to the liberated captives, how all were equally blessed by the sun.
At this, though, King Amen-hetep laughed bitterly once again. ‘Men are not equal,’ he snarled, jabbing with his finger, ‘for there are those who are mortal and there are those of us who are gods. The stronger must ever feed upon the weaker, the greater upon the lesser, blood upon blood, for this world is nothing but a pattern of destruction -- and it is time that you learnt to take your place within its order.’
So saying, he seized the Prince by his arm, and ordered his chariot and weapons prepared, and he led his huntsmen out into the desert, with Ay, the Prince’s uncle, the Master of Chariots, at their head. A stately tent was erected for them in the shade of a cliff, filled with cushions, and gold plates, and splendid rugs; and King Amen-hetep lolled there for a day, being plied with food and wines. Then at last Ay came to him and spoke into his ear, at which the King grunted with satisfaction, and heaved himself to his feet. With the aid of two servants, he stepped into his chariot, then ordered his son to ride his own alongside. Upon the brow of a ridge, King Amen-hetep reined in his horses and the Prince, looking down, saw a flock of bleating goats. They were pawing the sands and milling frantically against a high fence made of net; and when the Prince turned to look for the cause of their terror, he saw three black-maned lions crouched low against the sands. One of these suddenly bounded forward, crushing a goat beneath its weight, and then the other two -- padding forward likewise with hungry, bared-teeth snarls -- similarly pounced and seized their prey beneath their paws. King Amen-hetep laughed contentedly, watching as the dull sands were stained a deeper red. He leaned from his chariot and dug the Prince in the ribs. ‘And there you have it, O my son -- the way of this world!’
The Prince did not answer him; for he was remembering how his mother had once said the same thing, and promised him that one day he would be the bearer of death himself. King Amen-hetep, misinterpreting his son’s silence, chuckled once again, then shook out his reins and urged his chariot forward. By the fence of netting, he reined it in again while Ay, with his vast strength, bent and strung his bow. King Amen-hetep took it and drew an arrow, then aimed, and with a mighty wheeze, let the arrow go. It grazed the flank of one of the lions, who spat and snarled; then, its side streaked with red, came running forward towards the chariot. Suddenly it leapt, but could only hit the netting, and as it struggled in confusion to release itself, King Amen-hetep aimed and shot from his bow once again. Leaving the lion still struggling feebly against its bonds, he then rolled his chariot around the circuit of the fence, aiming at the infuriated lions trapped within it, until all three had been injured and made frenzied with their pain. Only then did King Amen-hetep return to his son, and hand him his bow and a quiver full of arrows.
‘Finish it,’ he ordered.
The Prince gazed down at the bow.
The Prince dropped the arrows and the bow upon the sand.
King Amen-hetep goggled in disbelief. ‘Coward!’ he screamed.
The syllables echoed around and out from the cliffs, fading out into the silence of the desert. The Prince observed that all the huntsmen were perfectly motionless, and that Ay, his uncle, would not meet his eye.
‘Coward!’ shrieked King Amen-hetep again, tottering forward now as though to choke his son, but the Prince nimbly avoided him and jumped on to the sand. He drew out his knife and cut a hole through the fence, then approached the lion which was still tangled in the nets and being almost throttled by its attempts to save itself. As he walked across the sands, so the other two lions, arrow-gashed and foam-streaked, came bounding towards him; but the Prince turned, and met their flaming eyes, so that the lions paused in puzzlement, then slowly dropped back. The Prince continued towards the lion entangled in the netting, and freed the animal from its bonds; then he drew out the arrows embedded in its flank, while stroking its mane, so that the lion half-rolled and closed its eyes with pleasure. Then, when he had done the same with the animal’s fellows, the Prince returned to the hole which he had cut into the netting and held it apart. The three lions slipped gracefully through it and paused a moment, their tails twitching, gazing up at King Amen-hetep as he sweated in his chariot; and then they tossed their manes and bounded away.
Watching them escape, the Prince approached his own chariot. As he did so, Ay stepped forward and picked up the bow and scattered arrows. He handed them across, his face perfectly motionless, but with a hint of something like amusement in his eyes; and the Prince, receiving them, passed them in turn to the King. But in King Amen-hetep’s stare there was no amusement at all, as he reached out slowly to touch the face of his son. ‘Your cheeks are growing hollow,’ he whispered. You must be careful’ -- his fat lips flickered at last into the faintest of smiles - ‘or your beauty will fade.’ Then he turned and shook out his chariot reins, and bellowed a command to return to the Palace; nor did he speak to the Prince again all that journey, save to order him, as they rode at length into Thebes, to continue onwards to the temple of Amen.
