Sunrise on the Mediterranean

by Suzanne Frank

  The Tsori ship, with its wary sailors, had been traded for a Nile vessel. Shallow bottomed, with no keel, it was easier to move over rocks and through the sometimes dangerous twists in the river. Wenaten and his staff had easily passed inspection by the lazy officials on the Delta; now they moved toward Akhetaten.

  Temples that once stood proud and regal along the river were now swamped with weeds, serving as homes for rodents. Many of the statues to other gods and goddesses had been defaced, leaving only the orb with its extended hands, the Aten, where an animal’s visage once was. Cat-headed Bastet, ibis-headed Thoth, falcon-headed Horus, all were defaced in favor of the handed disk.

  Obelisks had been knocked over, and fields lay fallow with no priests to work them. What other industry had absorbed the discharge of tens of thousands of priests?

  “What has he done to Egypt?” RaEm said beside him. “It is … an embarrassment!”

  Cheftu watched the waters slide by, felt the timelessness of the Nile, the sadness of the decay around them. “He seems a destroyer, not a creator,” he said. Though these temples were dilapidated, there didn’t appear to be new ones to take their places. “What are the people doing?” he wondered aloud.

  RaEm watched for a few more moments, then announced it was making her unwell and she was returning to her couch. Wenaten’s couch, Cheftu thought, which she had commandeered, casting Wenaten from it.

  A few minutes later the ambassador joined Cheftu by the railing, drumming his fingers on the wood.

  “What bothers you, my lord?” Cheftu asked lazily. Where was Chloe? Was she in Egypt? Follow what, follow whom, follow how … The words chased each other in his head like a dog with its tail.

  “I spoke briefly to an acquaintance of mine at the border. Pharaoh, umm, living forever! has allowed three uprisings in Kush to go unchecked.” Wenaten had donned a new wig, short and curled. “Even though Canaan boils with trouble, the entire eastern outpost has been dissolved, save one old diplomat.”

  “Egypt is the most powerful entity in the world,” Cheftu said, wondering if those words were still true. “Surely we have nothing to fear from Canaan?”

  “All the land that Thutmosis the Great One gathered for us is gone.”

  Which means I am now after the time of Thut, Cheftu thought, and before the time of Rameses. I know nothing of this history. Merde!

  “One by one we have lost our vassals.” Wenaten slapped his wig straight, irritated. “This time we stand to lose the King’s Highway.”

  “That is where?” Cheftu asked. This was not a phrase or term he recalled.

  “Runs from the Salt Sea up to Mitanni and Assyria. Straight across the plateau in the center of Canani land, so we don’t have to worry about those conniving Tsidoni thieves on the seaboard. They have no respect for Egypt,” he muttered. “Uncircumcised sons of jackals!”

  “How can we lose the King’s Highway?” How could Egypt lose anything? Cheftu stared at the abandoned villages, haunted roadways; he would not have believed this had he not seen it. How the people must be suffering.

  Wenaten began picking at a loose thread in his sash, his short, skinny fingers working at its edge, tugging it free. “The fool lost it through passivity. The same way he lost us the Sea Road that runs from Sais to Gaza.” The thread broke off in his hand, so with a shake of his head, he started picking around for another one to pull. “Already they are calling it the Way of the Pelesti. Passivity,” he muttered. “Now the Pelesti have renamed it, as though it didn’t belong to Egypt for generations and generations.” The second thread broke. “It was the Way of the Sea, named by the Egyptians, before those sea raiders cursed our land with their invasions.”

  Cheftu nodded, as though this were common knowledge to him. Pelesti; who were these people? Were they sea raiders, or were the Tsidoni the sea raiders? Had everyone taken to stealing rights-of-way from Egypt? “One of the petty mountain lords in central Canaan has overtaken the others’ lands,” Wenaten said. “The seren, how the Pelesti call their king, plead with Egypt to intervene.”

  “The Pelesti are our vassals?”

  Wenaten glared at him. “What part haven’t you heard, fool? The Pelesti are our vassals, but they have forgotten! Haii, that fop on the throne, instead of reminding them of their allegiances by sending a few soldiers their way, he withdraws the one competent idiot still there!”

  “Egypt rules an empire. Part of accepting their tribute is to protect them, whether they have forgotten or not. It is the covenant of suzerain,” Cheftu said.

  Wenaten glared at him. “You must be a royal adviser; you sound just like one.”

  Cheftu gathered from his tone that Wenaten wasn’t complimenting him. “Aye, well,” the ambassador continued, “Inundations have been poor, our priests are dying like lotus without water. Even the court is dwindling, though every noble who leaves Akhetaten is immediately declared an enemy of the state. It’s hardly an empire, sad to say.”

  “Do you have to return?” Cheftu asked. “I could take the ship to court with a message from you.”

  Wenaten pursed his lips. “I’ve seen much of the world outside Egypt. Even if Pharaoh, living forever! is foaming mad, still our land is more peaceful, beautiful, and soothing than anything on earth. Look at this,” he said, stretching his hand toward the horizon. “You can see for henti. No mountains, no trees to obstruct the view and weary the eye.” Wenaten sighed. “Aii, Egypt, the garden of the gods. Err, god.”

  “When will we be in Akhetaten?”

  “With this current? In two weeks.”

  A few days later they dined beneath the stars. Wenaten had stopped again at the mouth of the Delta, picked up a scroll from a friend of his, another envoy. As he ate fish, fowl, and fruit, he chuckled over the contents of the papyrus.

  Cheftu and RaEm exchanged glances. He was being rude, but also he had been traveling for two years. It must be good to be home.

  RaEm, per Egyptian fashion, had shaved her head and wore a new wig, called “the Kushite,” with the same angled cut and curl as Wenaten’s. It was the trendiest thing in court, she’d been told, further testimony of how androgyny was the rule in this new regime. After a few tries she’d given up explaining to Cheftu what “trendy” meant, since the Egyptian language they spoke to each other had no equivalent for the term.

  Trendy, or au courant, went against the Egyptian concept of perfection, of Ma’at. In Ma’at, nothing changed. All things dwelt in a universal sense of balance—Pharaoh ruling from above, commoners in the fields, nobles feasting on the Nile—throughout this life and into the next. This divine stability was what the rational, devout Egyptian sought.

  New fashion was change. New wig styles were change. The new artistic style was an even greater change. The Egyptian whom Cheftu had been for seventeen years balked; this was not the Egypt he knew and understood. The Frenchman who had wholeheartedly believed in Liberté, Fraternité, Égalité, saw change as progress. Most changes, at least. Cheftu looked back at RaEm.

  Pleated linen sleeves covered her from clavicle to wrists, another new style, while the skirt of her gown was layered over a solid underskirt. RaEm declared she was delighted to be back into a black-haired and copper-skinned body, even if it belonged to another person; she didn’t care about anything else. Praise the gods, Cheftu thought, the body she was in had emerged from the eruption of Aztlan free of permanent scars, though RaEm was still boyishly frail. Without her wig or dress, one would almost wonder at her gender.

  The promiscuous priestess of HatHor appearing asexual: it was an interesting, ironic twist.

  Wenaten rolled up the scroll, then drank his beer in one gulp. “Aii, well, shall you hear the news?”

  RaEm nodded, smiling at him. Did the little man realize she would bed him just for the control of it? Cheftu wondered. He leaned back with his own cup of beer to listen.

  “Rumors fly thick and fast that Akhetaten has sent for his cousin,” Wenaten said.

  Cheftu knew that the term cou
sin essentially meant anyone with a drop of royal blood. As the pharaohs of Egypt were known for generously spreading their seed, it was possible that half of Egypt was a cousin of Pharaoh.

  “Where is his cousin?” RaEm asked. “Aii, well, beyond the cataracts,” Wenaten said, lowering his voice. “Queen Tiye the Kushi was married before she became the consort of Amenhotep Osiris, Akhenaten’s father. Tiye’s brother is Ay.”

  Cheftu tried to recall any of these names. Amenhotep had been Hatshepsut’s father’s name, though it was Egyptian custom for royalty to bear almost all of their ancestors’ names. Each pharaoh had his prenomen and his secret name, then a list of lineage names.

  “Ay is fan bearer to Pharaoh.” Wenaten hunched closer to them. “Tiye’s husband in Kushi gave her a child, before it was recognized that she bore the throne right.”

  Aye, the royal blood of Egypt coursed through the veins of the women, Cheftu knew. So even if Tiye were wed to someone else, if she were the only royal woman left, it would be Ma’at that she wed again to serve the throne.

  “She was brought to Amenhotep Osiris, leaving her child and husband in Kush.”

  “A son?” RaEm said.

  Wenaten shrugged. “No one has ever seen him, so it is assumed he is a son.” Wenaten muttered the rest. “Pharaoh needs a co-regent so that while Pharaoh focuses on prayers and sacrifices to his hot god, someone else will handle the details of ruling an empire.” He stared into the distance for a moment. “Some of the envoys have waited years for intervention from Pharaoh. Their lands await rescue by Egypt.”

  “How many Amenhoteps have there been?” Cheftu asked, trying to grasp the chronology, narrow down when they were.

  Wenaten stared at him. “Amenhoteps have always ruled Egypt,” he said, his tone confused.

  Aye, and it was the Westerners who broke the reigns of Egypt into dynasties, for the Egyptians had no sense of individual rule. Even if Wenaten gave Cheftu a chronology, he wouldn’t recognize it, Cheftu thought.

  “No one has ever seen this cousin?” RaEm asked, drawing Wenaten’s attention back to her. “He is an heir to the Egyptian throne? I thought all the heirs were raised together?”

  The envoy picked at some skin loose on his arm. “Aii! Thutmose was Akhenaten’s brother, but he died young. There was another brother who had died while he was yet in the cradle. It seemed wise to hide any other heirs. Akhenaten, while he was called Amenhotep, ruled with his father, Amenhotep. Though, truth be known, Tiye ruled them both,” he said in an undertone.

  RaEm’s eyes gleamed. “Powerful women are still admired in Egypt?”

  Wenaten pursed his lips. “She is more than a woman, she is a general!” He shivered. “Many a career soldier or diplomat has been reduced to tears in her presence.”

  “Does the queen mother live in Ak—the town where Pharaoh does?” Cheftu asked.

  “What of this unknown son?” RaEm asked, glancing at Cheftu.

  “Smenkhare is the third son—”

  “Smenkhare could as easily be a woman’s name,” RaEm interrupted.

  Wenaten answered RaEm. “I guess it is possible that maybe he is a she. Who knows? The point is that someone, anyone of royal blood, will be ruling Egypt instead of just letting her run to ruin.”

  “Tell us about Akhetaten,” Cheftu said, glancing at RaEm, who had fallen silent, her gaze on the horizon, a slight frown on her brow. He could almost smell the brimstone and sulfur from the workings of her mind. “Does the queen mother live there?”

  “It’s a new city, barely built when I left,” Wenaten said. “Most of the court still lived in Waset, though Akhetaten was becoming populated.” He closed his eyes, as though summoning the image. “The city has very large buildings and very few roofs. We’re all supposed to bake our brains in service to the Aten.”

  “Does the Aten take sacrifices?” RaEm asked, pushing herself back into the conversation.

  “Nay,” Wenaten said, shaking his head. “The only person who knows what the Aten wants, or when, or why, is Akhenaten.”

  “He has no priests?” Cheftu asked.

  Wenaten filled their cups again. “Priests aplenty, but none of them speak to the Aten. Or he doesn’t speak to them,” he said, waving a hand before his face. “I’m not sure. I never considered myself a religious man. The gods were the gods, we wore amulets to protect ourselves, we sacrificed when we needed something. They stayed in the heavens, we stayed on earth. Now, now …” He sighed and drained another beer.

  RaEm looked uneasy. “Is that Aten really Allah?” she whispered to Cheftu. “He is so rigid a god.” To Wenaten she said, “What of the other gods?”

  “Banished,” he answered shortly. “Gone.”

  How could one man do away with the Egyptian pantheon? “Surely they have just become minor deities?” Cheftu said. “Much in the same way that Amun-Ra—”

  “Are you a fool?” Wenaten interrupted in a hissing whisper, glancing around. “That name is death! Death, I tell you! There is one god in Egypt! One! His name is Aten!” Wenaten leaned back, calmer, his tone normal again. “It is a punishable offense to speak the name of another god. Worship is daily, in the Temple of the Rising of the Aten, as a group. No one is excused. Punishments are levied if one is late or misses.” He rose abruptly. “I must piss,” he said as he staggered off.

  Cheftu sipped his beer. “Was the Aten not just a minor element of Amun-Ra?” he whispered to RaEm.

  She glared at him for saying the name of Egypt’s god; then, when she saw that no one was watching them, she shrugged. “I have never heard of this god, this Aten. What a strange thing, Egypt without her gods. What of HatHor? Isis? Neith? Bastet?” She looked at him. “Are there no goddesses at all?” She gestured to the topsail, hanging limp above them. “This god doesn’t even have a face! How can we worship something that has no eyes to see us, no ears to hear us?”

  Cheftu looked at the symbol: a disk, with rays extended, each ending in an open-palmed hand. How had this pharaoh turned his people against what they had known and worshiped for so many millennia? It made no sense. “I am for my couch,” he said, rising, finishing his beer.

  RaEm looked away. “I think I will stay up awhile longer,” she said.

  You think you will seduce Wenaten, Cheftu realized. However, he nodded and walked away. Once inside the tent enclosure, stretched out on his pallet, he withdrew the stones again. “What land is Chloe in?” he whispered to them.

  “I-n-t-h-e l-a-n-d-o-f-y-o-u-r-d-e-s-t-i-n-a-t-i-o-n.” Cheftu blew out the lamp. “Zut alors.”

  I CURSED, ROLLING OVER. My shoulder was still extremely tender, but at least it was back in place. How the hell I’d survived that insane Batmanesque tightrope torture wasn’t abundantly clear.

  At least I was alive. I could walk. Also, for better or worse, I was the local goddess. I wasn’t sure exactly how it worked, but by making it across, I had outwitted the lover Mexos, I hadn’t embraced Dagon, and I was one with the mother-goddess. Like many ancient people—and I felt as though I were becoming an authority on ancient peoples— not every last thing they believed had to agree with every other thing they believed. In fact, stories could contradict each other but not be viewed as inconsistencies.

  To a Western linear thought pattern, it was bewildering. But to the Eastern mind, which I’d spent a lot of time with both here and in my childhood, it made a strange, convoluted, and quirky kind of sense.

  Consequently I was the local goddess, a facet of the great goddess Ashterty. They had given me a house, Tamera as my handmaid, food, clothing, and power. I’d been invited to sit with the serenim, the city elders, when they listened to cases and dispensed justice. I was to attend every dinner, every event, of which there were many. The bad news was I was escorted everywhere, waited on by everyone, and my chances for slipping into the crowd and hitchhiking to Egypt were nil.

  Especially since I still couldn’t use my left shoulder, arm, and hand. I wasn’t healed yet. Though it was back in place, the swel
ling wasn’t completely gone. I looked up at Dagon, since I was living at the base of his tail until I took possession of my new, goddess-worthy dwelling. “Heya,” I whispered to the idol. Groaning, very un-sea-mistress-like, I sat up. What I wouldn’t give for coffee! Or a painkiller.

  “HaDerkato?”

  I motioned for Tamera to enter. She left me a breakfast of fish grilled with tiny little sweet onions. Scallions? The meal was delicious, though it hurt to hold the plate after a moment. I set it down and looked around, trying to orient myself.

  Who, what, when, where, and why were my questions, and I hadn’t a single answer. Had these people come from the ashes of the time period I’d lived in before, in Aztlan? Had I moved forward in time? No one seemed to know the name of Pharaoh, so that checkpoint was ineffective. All in all, I was firmly adrift, waiting for Cheftu to chance across my pathway. I shifted and saw a priest wielding a spear poke his head around the corner.

  My chains were figurative but effective. They hadn’t even given me shoes!

  Tamera mixed me some concoction involving salt water, a raw egg, coriander leaf, and something else. Whatever it was, it eased some of my aching. Gingerly I climbed into a bath, then submitted to having my hair brushed and oiled while my legs were waxed.

  The Pelesti were not as conscious about hygiene as either the Egyptians or the Azlantu. However, I was. Plucking and shaving and waxing had become a way of life for me, one I wasn’t anxious to give up. However, it was agony with bruises. I settled for a minimum of service because I’m a wimp when it comes to pain.

  Even bathing, I wasn’t alone.

  By noon I was clothed, jeweled, coiffed, and painted. I was eating some raisins and bread when Tamera came in, a contingency of priestesses behind her. They were all wearing fish masks and fish body cloaks. Tamera handed me the same garment, telling me that I was now one of their order, a goddess to serve Dagon as they each served him while mortal.

  Again, more of the incongruous story thinking. No one seemed to find it odd that I didn’t know what to do, that I didn’t know what prayers to say or even what the ritual was. They must have assumed I was a stupid goddess, but all were so agog at my passing the tightrope ritual that they were willing to overlook some things. Thank the goddess!