A God Against the Gods

by Allen Drury

  My approach has been to stick to the simple facts of what we know and follow them as nearly as possible to their logical conclusions.

  As a general principle, the novelist must also guard against, and bring a healthy skepticism to, the professional Egyptologist’s tendency to insist that simply because a fragment from a certain era indicates that such-and-such was the case at that time, therefore it was always and eternally the case throughout the three millennia of Ancient Egypt. Thus it may possibly have been the general custom that the ceremonies of co-regency were held at the northern capital of Memphis in the Delta. But if Amonhotep III was really the supreme power that all Egyptologists would argue, then if he (and I) wanted to decree that Akhenaten’s ceremony be held in Thebes, then he (and I) could certainly do so—and there is no evidence anywhere that this is not what actually happened. Similarly, the article of faith that no one but Pharaoh and the high priests of Amon ever entered the inner precincts of the temple at Karnak. Circumstances—and power—alter cases. Certainly there must have been many times in three thousand changeable years when they did.

  It cannot be argued on the one hand that Pharaoh was all-powerful and on the other that he was so tradition-bound that he couldn’t change his own mind. The records show, in fact, that on many occasions many Pharaohs did exactly as they pleased. The reader must keep in mind that much of professional Egyptology consists of intrepid conjectures stoutly declared, passionately defended, and constantly revised. In such a milieu the novelist must consider himself, within the bounds of logic and common sense, quite as free as any Pharaoh to decide for himself what Pharaoh did.

  “Within the bounds of logic and common sense”—and so I have tried to keep my imaginings here. I have tried to hold always to the basic thesis—in itself denied, by implication if not by outright statement, by many of the older school of Egyptologists—that the ancients were, in fact, human beings before they were anything else. They might have been considered gods by their contemporaries, and have considered themselves gods; but that did not make them any less human, as the great personalities of the Eighteenth Dynasty, from the Tuthmoses and the woman Pharaoh, Hatshepsut, on down, make abundantly clear.

  For the basic historical outline of the novels I have followed most closely the great present-day Egyptologist Cyril Aldred, recently retired as Keeper of Antiquities of the Royal Scottish Museum in Edinburgh. Not only in his books, but in a most generous personal correspondence, he has been consistently helpful. I part company with him, as he knows, on his fundamental thesis that there was no real conflict between Akhenaten and the priests of Amon whose power and wealth he destroyed. I am afraid my own view, conditioned by some years as a political correspondent, is much more cynical concerning the lengths to which human beings, of whatever era, will go in order to get, and keep, power.

  But for the basic facts of the Amarna period—the familial relationships, Akhenaten’s co-regency with his father, his relationships with his daughters and his brother Smenkhkara, and an infinite number of illuminating facts about the whole era—I have found no expert more astute, perceptive, and generally entertaining than Mr. Aldred. His Akhenaten: Pharaoh of Egypt (Abacus paperbacks, Sphere Books Ltd., London, 1972) has been my desk bible and now threatens to fall apart from innumerable under-linings and re-thumbings.

  He (like all other authorities consulted) is of course absolved completely of any responsibility whatsoever for my own conclusions concerning motivations, psychological interpretations, conversations, detailed fictitious events leading up to actual historical episodes—the clothing of these bones with life—which are my own, and for which I am solely responsible.

  I have followed Aldred completely in his translation of the Aten’s cartouches and Akhenaten’s Hymn to the Aten, only inserting directly the words “Akhenaten,” “raised,” “as the Nile” and “of thy quality,” where he has them in parentheses. Since I have the King speak his own Hymn, this seems a permissible liberty. I have in general followed Carl Niebuhr’s translation of the so-called “Amarna Letters,” again taking an occasional literary liberty with the letters of Tushratta of Mittani which I have quoted, and in addition placing some thoughts of my own invention in the mouths of such nagging gentlemen as Burnaburiash of Babylon. I think in these I have retained the essential spirit of these gold-begging, archly critical, and at times desperately worried correspondents of the unheeding Sons of the Sun.

  In addition to Mr. Aldred (who also generated an excellent character by calling my attention to recent studies of Akhenaten’s second wife, Kia), other friends have been most helpful in gathering material and increasing my appreciation for, and interest in, what may well be history’s most fascinating civilization.

  In London, Mrs. Herbert R. Mayes was indefatigable in tracking down and securing for me various out-of-print books by older Egyptologists; to Grace, dear friend and excellent book detective, I shall always be grateful. With a comparable diligence my uncle, Winthrop S. Drury, assisted in gathering books and research materials in New York. Three other dear friends, Mrs. Olga Burns of Sausalito and Edith and Raul Dalle-Feste of Cosmopolitan Travel in San Francisco, organized delightful tours which did much to give me the feel and atmosphere of the teeming life that has run for so many centuries beside the Nile. Bill Howard Eichstadt did his usual fine job of research and manuscript typing, and in addition contributed unflagging good humor and numerous lively songs to adventures in the field, especially during our eighteen-mile donkey ride over the otherwise silent sands of Akhet-Aten. From Eastmar Travel in Cairo, the invaluable Baki Fawzi and the lovely Zeenab Chawki were models of what highly intelligent, thoroughly informed guides, who truly love their country’s history, can do to illuminate it for the foreigner. And at San Francisco State University, Dr. Andreina Leanza Becker-Colonna of the department of Archaeology was most helpful in securing translations of important texts.

  For those who wish to delve further in the period, I append at the end a partial list, headed by Mr. Aldred, of some of the authors who have been most helpful to me in constructing A God Against the Gods and its sequel—which will in due course complete my particular version of the closing years of the all-powerful but ill-fated Eighteenth Dynasty—Return to Thebes.

  I offer them as a very modest introduction to a vast and ever growing literature, and I do so with a warning:

  Once enthralled by the Ancient Egyptians, you will be enthralled, as they themselves said so often about so many things, “forever and ever—for millions and millions of years.”

  Allen Drury

  ***

  Principal Characters In The Novel

  The Royal Family of the Later Eighteenth Dynasty

  (Pharaohs in capitals):

  AMON-HO-TEP III, ninth King, and Pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty

  Queen Mu-tem-wi-ya, his mother

  Queen Tiye, his Great Wife

  Queen Gil-u-khi-pa of Mittani, his second wife

  Queen-Princess Sit-a-mon, his daughter, and wife

  AMON-HO-TEP IV, later AKH-EN-ATEN, tenth King, and Pharaoh, his son

  SMENKH-KA-RA, eleventh King, and Pharaoh, his son

  TUT-ANKH-ATEN, later TUT-ANKH-AMON, twelfth King and Pharaoh, his son

  Princess Bek-et-aten, his daughter

  Queen Nefer-ti-ti, Chief Wife of AKH-EN-ATEN

  Queen Kia of Mesopotamia, his second wife

  Meryt-aten, Meket-aten, Ankh-e-sen-pa-aten, Nefer-neferu-aten Junior, Nefer-neferu, Set-e-pen-ra, daughters of AKH-EN-ATEN and Nefer-ti-ti

  AYE, older brother of Queen Tiye and father of Nefer-ti-ti, thirteenth King, and Pharaoh

  HOR-EM-HEB, fourteenth and last King and Pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty, his son

  A-a-nen, younger brother of Queen Tiye, Priest of Amon

  Others in the Court:

  Amon-ho-tep, Son of Hapu, scribe, sage, builder, adviser to the Royal Family

  Ra-mo-se, Vizier

  Bek, chief sculptor to AKH-EN-ATEN

  Th
e Lady Anser-Wossett, chief lady in waiting to Queen Nefer-ti-ti

  Hat-sur-et, Priest of Amon

  RAMESSES, lieutenant to HOR-EM-HEB, later first King and Pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty

  Amon-em-het, a peasant

  Allies:

  Bur-na-bur-i-ash, King of Babylon

  Tush-ratta, King of Mittani

  Gods:

  Amon, “King of the Gods” at the start of AKHENATEN’s revolution

  The Aten, AKHENATEN’s Sole God

  Horus, Ptah, Hathor, Sekhmet, Thoth, Anuhis, Isis, Osiris, and many others

  ***

  Amonhotep, S.H.

  So do I sign myself, remembering the small, wizened, modest man who gave me life, thinking thereby to give him in return a fame of which he never dreamed in all his sixty humble years as a farmer:

  Amon-ho-tep, Son of Hapu, risen very high and destined, as we all declare so stoutly on our tombs and monuments, to live forever and ever.…

  Now that I too am very old, I sometimes question this. It is not in the children of Kemet, the Black Land, to question such things, but now and again some of us do … when we are very old … and very secretly.…

  It would never do for one who has passed most of his life in the Great House, most of his life as the willing and, I like to think, useful servant of Pharaoh, the Good God, the One-above-all-others who lives there, to have in public a thought so unsettling. But sometimes, as I say, I do have such thoughts. I am a little more independent of mind, and no doubt of demeanor, than most. It is possibly the reason why the Good God has always chosen to favor me, and why I have been able to survive these recent years and remain, as I do to this day, a famous and honored man upon whom he still smiles with favor when he sees me—even though the One who smiles upon me now is many years away from the One who smiled upon me first. It is not his fault that he profited from the troubles of the House of Thebes; indeed, having his nature, he could do no other. Particularly when those who were of that House so grievously lost ma’at—the sense of the fitness of things—and allowed such evil days to fall upon the land of Kemet.

  I went down the Nile a month ago, leaving from the never ending clamor of the docks at Thebes in the old familiar way, watching the pleasant life of the eternal stream passing by on all sides—the excited shouts and chatter of the pilots and sailors, the greetings called out cheerfully from the banks, the barges laden with goods going up and down between Thebes and the cities of the Delta, the small papyrus boats carrying families on business or pleasure, the occasional state barge of the high official parting all before it. I no longer travel like that save on the greatest of occasions when I am sometimes called back to the Great House to participate; but like all the sons and daughters of Kemet, I love the river. As we should, for from it comes our past, present, future, our reason, our purpose, and our life.

  So I traveled down, being poled by two of my slaves, taken captive by my namesake, Amon-ho-tep III (life, health, prosperity!), on that expedition to Nubia upon which I accompanied him so long ago, when we were young. He never made another, though on his monuments you will find him telling you how he subjugated Syria, Naharin, and wretched Kush. They all say things like that, the Ones who live in the Great House, and sometimes you cannot tell who has done what, or indeed who is who. But does it matter? They are all gods, they are all eternal, they come and go unchanging in the endless story of Kemet, always conquering, always victorious, always all-knowing, always all-powerful, always, essentially, the same … save one. And although the One who sits in the Great House now has done everything he could to obliterate his name and his memory, from the life and deeds of that One the land of Kemet will never really recover. Him she will never forget, though forgetting is official and always will be official, forever and ever.…

  I passed by his city on my eighth day on the river. It was nearing dusk and along the banks in the little villages the humble folk from whom I come were cooking their evening meals. Across the water floated laughter, happy voices, the comfortable noise, and bustle of family concourse. It was so until we neared the great bend against the eastern cliffs where he decreed that his city should be built, and where it rose, complete, in two furious fantastic years. Then all habitation ended, a great silence fell, and on the soft winds blowing out of the Red Land came no sound save the ghostly sounds an old man heard in memory:

  The high, imperious cries of Akh-en-aten (life, health, prosperity!) … Nefer-ti-ti’s firm yet gentle voice … the happy gossip of their daughters … the eager boyish voices of his two younger brothers, Smenkh-ka-ra and Tut-ankh-amon (life, health, prosperity to them both!), innocent of care before they too became God and Pharaoh … the calm, unhurried phrases of his uncle and father-in-law Aye (life, health, prosperity!) as he waited patiently for the day when he, too, would so ascend … the soft, unyielding tones of his mother, Queen Tiye … the weary complaints of his father, Amon-ho-tep III (life, health, prosperity!), not to be saved by divinity, doomed soon to pass to the West and knowing it … the sibilant comments of the other uncle, Aanen, Second Priest of Amon, bitter and unforgiving, working ceaselessly toward the day when he dared challenge the God who worshiped the Aten … and all the others, myself among them, younger then, confident, certain, perhaps a little contentious in the power I still held in the Palace … and my friend Hor-em-heb (life, health, prosperity!) who holds the Palace now and who, for Kemet’s sake, had to join in silencing, finally, the most dangerous of the many voices of the House of Thebes.…

  Ghostly they are now, ghostly and yet curiously alive for an old man dreaming on the river. I could hear them as clearly as I hear you, see them as clearly as my eyes see you. When I returned up the river to Thebes from Heliopolis, where I had gone on the business of one of my sons, just dead, it happened again.

  I stood for a long time by the rail but I do not think I will go that way again. I am very old, now, and there is little chance that I will again have business on the river even if Amon were to give me strength, which lately he has not. I think it better, perhaps, that it should be so, for there is no profit in it for me, and certainly no satisfaction. I cannot find it in my heart to condemn that One even though I understand why my friend in the Great House now feels he must. And I agree with that. I agree with that. Make no mistake, I agree, it must be done. But I do not want to hear their voices any more.

  All, all are gone, the House of Thebes. A year ago his sister, the Queen-Princess Sit-a-mon, to whom in these later years of my retirement I served a comfortable time as High Steward, died at her own great age: the chapter closed. Already in so short a time, twenty-six racing years since his death, nothing remains of his city but a few half-finished tombs in the cliffs; piles of rubble; the crumbling outline of a mud-brick palace here and there. The wind from the Red Land blows gently over them, the sand piles ever deeper. Men stay away, it is a haunted place. I do not want to go there again. But it was a wondrous city once and he was a wonder, too. And while few men in the land of Kemet understood him or will ever understand him, the fact of his living cannot be denied by the One who rules now or by anyone, no matter how determined the attempt. That fact, I truly believe, will live forever and ever, whether or not men ever really know why it all happened.

  It did not seem necessary to know, then: we were, for a time, swept away by it. I doubt if we shall ever know, now. He was strange, very strange. I can see him as a child, far back before his city, before he became Co-Regent, the strange, gangling, malformed, horse-faced boy, walking the painted mud corridors of the Palace of Malkata at Thebes with his awkward, painful, shuffling gait, child of a god and soon to be God himself. What was he? Who was he? Why did he come our way? Why did he savage so the land of Kemet?

  These are questions the river does not answer as it runs forever through the Black Land and the Red, through the Two Kingdoms, the narrow, winding corridor of life and green, past Thebes, past Abydos, past Memphis, past all the rest … past the terribly lonely ruins of Akhet-Aten-Amarn
a, his city.

  Those were troubling days in the land of Kemet. We did not know their like before. I suspect we shall never know their like again. I pray we never shall. But I am glad that I was there.

  It began, as many things do in a royal house, with the birth of a child—two, actually, for she had much to do with it also—and the death of a child.…

  ***

  Book I

  Birth Of A God

  1392 B.C

  ***

  Kaires

  I am Kaires, as men properly say Kah-ee-race, named by my father, after he brought me finally from my birthplace to his beloved city of Thebes, for the great scribe Kaires who lived during the time among men of the God Nefer-Ka-Ra (life, health, prosperity!) of the House of Memphis, one thousand five hundred years ago.

  I, also a scribe, write this in the twenty-second year among men of the God Amonhotep III (life, health, prosperity!) of the House of Thebes. Even do I live in his house itself, in the Palace of Malkata, for I am young, well favored and, I think, intelligent; and such are needed for the governing of the empire of the Two Kingdoms that stretches now south to the Fourth Cataract of the River Nile, north beyond Syria to the land of Mittani, and east and west to the Mountains of Light beyond which the Red Land begins and only the wretched Crossers of the Sands dare go.

  Together with my friend Amonhotep the Scribe (he who comes of humbler birth and a father named Hapu, both of which he flaunts from time to time when surrounded by the scions of noble houses who find themselves unequipped by nature to match his lively brain), I am entrusted with the taking down of the words that fall from the lips of those in the Great House; and being of inquiring mind and still something of a stranger here, I have much cause to ponder upon the curious world in which I find myself.