A God Against the Gods

by Allen Drury

  I do it because here at Akhet-Aten we of the Court have no choice if we wish to remain in his good graces: and great could be the evil consequences did we not. Not, mind you, that he has ever killed anyone—save his uncle Aanen—for disobeying him. Not that he has ever removed anyone from power or laid waste his estates or proscribed him and his family or banished them. But he is Pharaoh and he might. Therefore we all do our best to stay in favor, even though he seems in most ways the mildest of men. It does not pay to take chances with a Good God, particularly one so strange and unknowable as this.

  I do it, also, for another reason: because in our years of close association, from the time I first began to sculpt his statues for him on through the building of his city to the present day, I have come to hold in my heart a deep respect for his mind, his artistic beliefs, the “new art” as he calls it, which he has caused to be created in the Two Kingdoms.

  Actually, of course, it is “new” only in the sense of its exaggerations. The things I was taught as a child by my father Men, chief sculptor to Amonhotep III (life, health, prosperity!), in general still hold true. There is simply a greater naturalism, an easier play of light and life across our scenes, a kindly humanism (although such has always been present in some degree throughout our history, in tomb-scenes depicting daily life) which illumines our efforts.

  In two things only has he broken completely with the past: the depiction of himself and his family which, as I say, many of us find ourselves forced by our own fears of him, no doubt exaggerated, to imitate; and the decoration of tombs and temples, where he has abandoned the old customs and turned us, by his example and in some cases on his orders, to new.

  In the old tombs and temples—you can see them by the hundreds wherever you travel in Kemet, from Sakkara to Thebes—you find the emphasis on Osiris and the afterlife which has been characteristic of our civilization for two millennia. There you find the brilliantly colored paintings of the afterlife, the voyage of the deceased down the underground Nile, past the forty-two Judges of the Dead, to their reward in the Fields of Rushes and Offerings. And you see the offerings themselves piled high around all the artifacts of living that the dead will need when they revive to life forever in the celestial fields. All of these, from time immemorial, have come out of ancient pattern books that we artists have for many hundreds of years simply copied into each new tomb.

  For the monuments and temples of the Kings, we have followed similar traditional designs. Some slightest changes of visage may distinguish one Pharaoh from another, but very little else has changed through the centuries.

  The King is shown being invested, usually accompanied by falcon-headed Horus and ibis-headed Thoth, their hands resting protectively on his shoulders. He is shown bringing offerings to them, to Ptah, to Amon, to Hathor, Nut or whomever. He is shown in triumph, trampling “the Nine Bows,” the nine nations that have always been our traditional enemies (whether or not—usually not—he has ever actually fought them). He is shown sometimes with his wife, their arms about one another in friendly connubiality. He is shown at the hunt, slaying vast quantities of game, of lions or cattle or whatever happens to have pleased his fancy when he ordered the fresco made. He is presently shown dying, as even gods must do, and, like the rest, going through the stages to become Osiris and revive in the afterlife.

  In a sort of eternal sunlit serenity, he is always shown full body with profiled face, staring off into some impossibly peaceful and perfect prospect that he alone can see.

  So it has always been.

  In sculpture, he is shown in the round, but again, always heroically so. He is usually colossal, ten, twelve, twenty, sixty feet high, dwarfing us mortal men who worship at his feet. He strides forever down the centuries, following himself as through a hall of mirrors, unchanged and unchanging, whoever he may be … until now.

  Yet even with Akhenaten we have our traditional scenes. He, too, has ordered us to show him standing atop the Nine Bows. He, too, has ordered himself depicted smashing an enemy with a club. In the same fashion he has even had us depict Queen Nefertiti raising a club like a Pharaoh to strike down an evil one. He still wants us to present them both in the traditional warlike style of the Pharaoh, even though in actual life he has never taken arms, never gone on expedition, never expressed any interest in conquest or the military art. It is but another of his puzzles which such as I have long since ceased trying to unravel. We do his bidding and leave the understanding to others whose personal happiness depends upon it more nearly.

  In the temples of the Aten, and in the small forest of altars that has grown up south of the House of Rejoicing, there is no holy trinity such as there is in the case of the other gods, since he believes the Aten to be alone, the Only God. Amon has his wife Mut, his son Khons; Ptah has Sekhmet to wife and Nefertum as son; and so on. But the Aten stands alone—except that he does not stand alone. The Co-Regent has provided him with a human family. It is Akhenaten, Nefertiti and their daughters who appear on the stelae. It is they who have become the Holy Family. It is they who receive the tribute of those who worship Aten. Thus does the King make himself indivisible with his god, in all his depictions and paintings.

  Sometimes when the day’s work is over and desert and Nile are lying exhausted from the heat, in that swift hour when Nut rushes to take over the world, I pause to study these things and to wonder if in them I can find the secret of the King. I do not think I or my workmen have captured it, though physically we have the outlines as he desired, and indeed as they are: the bloated figures, the odd elongated heads of the girls, the pendulous breasts and protruding stomachs, the divine ugliness. I think it is more at Karnak that I find him; and even though I am the one who did it, I can stand there for hours and study his colossi and still not know exactly what I have captured in the stone … though I know what I intended.

  I intended to capture arrogance and humility—gentleness and strength—assertion and self-defensiveness—confidence and terrible inner pain … for I think he is all these things. Have I done it?

  In the harsh light when Ra stands high above in bleak clarity, or casts his shadows slantwise on the stone, the harshness comes out and I think I have failed, I think he has eluded me. At dawn or in the twilight hour when the light is gentler, the gentler things come out, and I think I have captured him as I wished. But I do not know, nor do I know what he thinks himself, for he has never told me. He simply lets them stand, as if to say, as he always says, by his actions and often by his words: “See me. Here I am, living in truth. Make of it what you will!”

  There, and in his city, most truly speaks Akhenaten. And what a city it is! What a wonder have we created for him, here on the Aten’s once barren plain! What a city has he created, for let there be no mistake: this is indeed his doing and no one else may take the credit.

  In the center, on “the Island of the Aten,” rise such structures as the Great Palace, stretching for almost half a mile along the main thoroughfare, running west to the royal landing stage on the river. To the east is the Great Temple or House of the Aten, enclosed in a rectangular wall half a mile long by approximately eight hundred feet wide. Within this enclosure are also the sanctuary and the “House of Rejoicing,” which leads on to the Gem-Aten, or “Aten Is Found,” which is the central place of worship. To the south rises a smaller temple, the Mansion of the Aten, similar to the sanctuary of the Great Temple. (He has provided ample places to worship his god, I must say!) In addition, as I have noted, many hundreds of smaller altars have been built south of the House of Rejoicing. Most contain icons of himself and the Queen, or of themselves and some of the daughters, all worshiping the Aten; some few others are bare stone only. Offerings—sometimes very modest, baskets of fruit and flowers or the like, sometimes very lavish, rich with gold and jewels—are placed daily before all these altars. They are collected at sundown by the red-robed priests of the Aten, who by now number almost a thousand here in this city.

  Between the two temples lie other
structures such as the King’s House, connected to the Great Palace by the archway over the street in which he has placed the Window of Appearances. Nearby are the Office of Works (where I have my office), directing the building that still goes on in many sections of the city, particularly to the north; the House of the Correspondence of Pharaoh, where hundreds of clerks under the direction of the Foreign Secretary Tutu copy, file and index the letters from allies, tributaries and vassal states; and the Police Headquarters where pompous old Mahu shuffles his papers and pretends to keep order in Akhet-Aten, which fortunately is a relatively orderly city anyway.

  Here also are the houses of the wealthy attached to the Court in some capacity or other, such as those of the stewards Huya and Meryra, the major-domo Pa-ra-nefer, and the like; the more modest dwellings of lesser servitors; and finally the mud-brick huts of the necessary poor, who do the menial tasks that must be done with characteristic cheerfulness and good will.

  Physically much of the city is beautiful, but over much of it hangs a stink, for we have no sewage system save the canals we have brought in from the Nile, which are sluggish and do not sweep away the effluent dumped into them quite as rapidly as delicacy would enjoy. Nor do we have domestic water on the plain; it, too, comes in by canal from the Nile. Sometimes the purposes of the two sets of canals become confused in the minds of those who use them: the incidence of infection, at times, is rather high.

  To the south lie the houses and offices of some of the greater officials, such as Aye, Ramose, Amonhotep, Son of Hapu, Kaires and the rising young Nakht-Min. (Who would not rise, with Aye for a father?) There also is a Maru-Aten, a pleasure palace with a lake and running streams, brightly painted walls and pavements, and frescoes of the Aten and the Holy (human) Family in various intimate poses, inlaid with colored stones, glass and faïence from the King’s Glass Works. Here also are the sunshades or kiosks of Queen Nefertiti and the princesses.

  Building materials in most of the city are mud brick—glazed and painted in the homes of the wealthy and the great officials, simple and unadorned in the hovels of the poor. In the wealthier homes thresholds, window grilles, column bases and doorjambs are usually stone. Bathrooms have stone splash guards, stone squatting places, and stone tables for washing and anointing the body. The Great Palace is the only structure built of limestone, which is quarried in the western hills across the river near Hermopolis. Its state apartments are decorated with granite, alabaster and quartzite, covered with many beautiful paintings and hieroglyphics of the Aten and the Sacred (human) Family.

  To the north are the homes of the merchants and tradesmen, the quays where the produce cultivated in the western portion of the city across the Nile, and from elsewhere in Kemet, is brought to us by the busy boats that come into Akhet-Aten as they used to come into now slumbering Thebes.

  Farther north still is what we call the North City, site of the palaces of the old King and Queen Tiye, the small, newly completed palace shared jointly by the Princes Smenkhkara and Tutankhaten, and the just-laid foundations of the new palace of Queen Nefertiti. (We do not know why she desires one of her own, but he has ordered it without comment, and so we will build it without comment at his command—or, at least, any comment that can be overheard in the Great Palace.)

  Such, in essence, is his city, sprung from the empty plain in two short years. Its roofs are whitewashed, its temples gleam with gold, gorgeous streamers of all colors fly from every possible peak and cornice. We have not solved the sewage problem and we do have the slums of the poor, which no city seemingly can exist without (and which he prefers to ignore as he ignores the poor themselves). But all else is as he wishes.

  To the eye that looks down upon it, as his so often does from the ledge along the Northern Tombs, it appears to be, like the Aten, light and airy and gleaming with the hopes of men. Certainly I believe it still gleams with his, though all may not have gone as swiftly or as happily as he perhaps originally wished.

  A week ago he asked me how I was progressing with work on the tomb of his uncle Aye, largest and most impressive of the Southern Tombs. When I told him we had been able so far to sculpt only the entrance pillars and do the preliminary chiseling for the cutting of the inner chambers, he said:

  “Good. I would have you leave on one wall a blank space suitable for many words.”

  “You do not wish, then,” I began respectfully, “the Councilor’s family to be depicted—”

  “Oh yes,” he said impatiently, “yes, yes, yes! There will be ample place for that. But I want you to reserve a space for me.”

  “We already plan to show Your Majesty and the Family—” I said, but again he interrupted.

  “Bek, Bek! Do not anticipate! ‘Words,’ I said: I want space for words. You will receive them in due course. Do you intend to come to the Window of Appearances next week when I reveal my latest wonder?”

  “As you have directed me, O Son of the Sun,” I responded humbly.

  “Good!” he said. “Then you will understand. In the meantime, do as I say and leave space. Will you do that, Bek?”

  “Majesty!” I exclaimed, shocked. “How could I do otherwise than what Your Majesty commands?”

  “There are some who do,” he said, and a momentary grimness came into his eyes. Then his face lightened and he smiled as he sometimes does, a smile of amazing charm on that angular face, when he wishes to employ it. “But that does not apply to you, my faithful Bek. Together we live in truth, is it not so? Always and forever, in truth!”

  “As you command me, Son of the Sun,” I said.

  “As you wish, I hope, Bek,” he responded, still smiling; and of course I smiled too and bowed, for though I find his religion strange, I have always believed in the genius of His Majesty.

  “As I wish,” I echoed, and went off speedily thereafter to the Southern Tombs and instructed the workmen to leave the space he wants.

  He did not tell me exactly how large he wants it, so I have made it very large. Whatever it is supposed to contain, there will be room for it. I am prepared to believe it may indeed be wonderful, for such has been, in general, my experience of His Majesty.

  ***

  Sitamon

  And now what, from my strange brother? The latest buzz going about the Court concerns the new palace he has commanded for Nefertiti. It is to be at the far northern edge of the city. It is to contain apartments for her, apartments for the Lady Anser-Wossett and her other ladies in waiting, servants’ quarters, a large temple to the Aten—and, possibly, apartments for him. At least there will be adjoining apartments for someone, though there was nothing in his order to indicate that he intends to move there—or, indeed, that she does, for that matter. Apparently she has requested that it be built—just in case. And he has agreed—just in case. And “Just in case of what?” is the question that whispers through the corridors of the Great Palace and our other palaces and, no doubt, through all the streets and temples and houses and hovels of Akhet-Aten as well.

  Some of us, of course, think we know, but as yet no word of this has trickled to the streets. The gossip of Kemet, which travels like lightning up and down the river, and will soon have the Delta, Memphis, Thebes, Heliopolis—and no doubt even Nepata at the Fourth Cataract—flapping away as busily as this ingrown city, will continue, I trust, to speculate without substance. In common with all the Family, I hope and pray that what could be will never be.

  But: my cousin Nefertiti prepares herself for it, if it should come. I think, myself, that she jumps too quickly to conclusions, sees too many things where none exist, is putting herself in position to make too much of something which, if intelligently handled by her, could be nothing more than a fleeting episode that will pass without ever leaving a trace anywhere—except, perhaps, in her heart.

  It has taken me many years to understand that my cousin has a heart, beneath the icy perfection of her beauty and her seemingly unshakable composure at all times in all situations; but I have come to realize that underneath
she is as sensitive and as easily hurt as he—though, the gods know, without his reason. Now in the mature fullness of her beauty, even I, the Queen-Princess Sitamon, have to admit that there is no woman anywhere lovelier than my cousin Nefertiti. Should she not, then, possess the serenity of knowing that she is favored above all beings? Should it not be enough?

  Being woman, I know that it is not enough. I, too, have given devotion as absolute as hers—even greater, perhaps, for mine has had to undergo long absences, periods of deprivation, the frequent strain of having Kaires (the name which will be announced this afternoon at the Window of Appearances still rings strange: he will always be Kaires to me) at my side on innumerable occasions during ceremonial duties, yet being unable to touch, to smile or even to glance at one another. In recent years, of course, this has become much more relaxed: I am sure they know now, even in Nepata, that Sitamon and Kaires are lovers and have been for many years. But even so, it has not been easy.

  Nor has it been easy to face the ghosts and specters of what he was doing when away from me, which Nefertiti has never, until now, had to face. Since we could never marry, he has not been under formal compulsion to remain completely faithful to me, and since he is a vigorous man, I knew very early that he was not. I was prepared for temple girls, prostitutes, noble ladies, peasant girls; I was even, with some instinctive knowledge I dreaded yet forced myself to accept, prepared for soldiers. But I never queried, I never pressed; and eventually of his own accord he told me, and I think truly, that while at one time or another he had, when far from me, found himself driven in sheer desperation into other arms of many kinds, none of them meant a thing to him other than simple physical release.