by Overton, Max
The arrival of Paramessu's men tipped the balance and the soldiers of the Amun Division swept through the western city, carrying all opposition away. As the fighting eased, Paatenemheb led his troops on a sweep north and east to link up with Khui's Black Company, closing and sealing off the temples as they found them.
As the troops passed, men came to their senses and the city watchmen started organizing brigades of men and women with jars and pails, fetching river water to put out the growing flames. Small groups of Amun supporters still harassed the fire-fighters, chanting and throwing stones, but troops of soldiers easily dispersed them.
All through the night the troops fought to clear the streets and close the temples and behind them the charred and smoldering remnants of the city slowly came under the control of the authorities. Aten rose golden over the three hills east of the city, casting his light over a shaken city. By mid-morning, Akhenaten and his god controlled Waset.
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Chapter Eighteen
With this one step, Akhenaten doomed his religious revolution.
We Kemetus love having gods and over the years have collected vast numbers of them until there are more gods than there are days of the year in which to celebrate them. Now the king was asking, or rather ordering the people to give up all their gods in favor of just one, the Aten.
As long as the king's Aten was just one of many gods, no-one was concerned. There is complete freedom of worship in Kemet--even foreigners are at liberty to worship their own deities provided the rites do not involve anything that might disturb the peace. Some years ago, I think it was in the time of my grandfather Thutmose, a group of Ammonite settlers in the river Delta area brought in the worship of one of their tribal gods--Molek. The rites of this bloodthirsty god involve feeding human infants to the fires in the statue's belly. This was frowned on by the authorities but not banned as it was the settlers' own infants who fed the god. However, the settlers were few in number and eventually they turned to offering up stray infants from the surrounding communities. The authorities acted swiftly, stamping out the practice and sending the priests of Molek to meet the gods of the underworld and explain matters to them in person.
My father Nebmaetre brought the worship of the Aten to the fore, doing it for the love of his queen, Tiye. His youngest son Amenhotep was raised among his mother's people, the Khabiru, and had his mind warped by their strange religious beliefs. Amazing as it may seem, this tribe worships a single invisible god who lives on mountain tops and creates the thunder. What is more their god has no name and apparently never has had one. They refer to him as 'El' which just translates as 'god' and 'Adon' which translates as 'lord'. And here lies the coincidence that almost brought Kemet to her knees. The 'd' sound in the Khabiru tongue is very like the 't' sound in ours and to young Amenhotep's ears, Adon became Aten, a minor aspect of Re, who is a major deity. Being raised among the Khabiru, he adopted their worship and when he came to power, he pushed his god with gathering strength to the front ranks of our pantheon.
He picked the wrong city to introduce the worship of Aten. Waset has long been dedicated to Amun, the most powerful god among our many, particularly when worshiped as the composite god Amun-Re. Every house of kings, every family line adopts a god as their royal patron and state god, and Amun was the god of our family. As long as my father just worshiped Aten as one god among many and held due reverence for Amun; Ma'at, the divine balance, was maintained. The Aten's role as creator of mankind, animals and plants and, as the sun, shining down on foreigners as well as Kemetus, was nothing especially new as these ideas had been incorporated in Amun-Re's worship. What was new was Akhenaten's insistence that the Aten was the only god, that all others were false. This brought the priests of those gods, and especially the extremely powerful priests of Amun, into active opposition.
Akhenaten instituted religious intolerance for the first time in our long history. Withdrawing to his city of Akhet-Aten, the king set up his cult of Aten, under which he was the son of the sun and the sole beneficiary of the blessings that poured down from the god. Akhenaten believed it offered something for the common people but in fact it did not. It did not offer any sort of moral philosophy or laws, nor did it offer a comforting afterlife. The citizens of Aten's city at least had the semblance of a religious life with the king active in his self-centered worship, but the rest of the country did not even have that.
The priests of Amun were extremely rich and influential before Akhenaten's edict and, faced with the confiscation and redistribution of their wealth, started to foment dissatisfaction and incite riot among the populace. Coupled with the weakening of the army, Kemet tottered on the brink of anarchy.
I was present in Waset during the riots. Returning from the burial rites that saw our father interred in his tomb in the Valley of Kings, Akhenaten summoned his General of Armies, Paatenemheb, and instructed him to enforce the edict of obliteration without delay. He then proceeded to hamper his general by denying him the force he needed to carry out these orders.
We waited in the great palace in Waset, the whole royal family with the exception of Akhenaten's daughters who had stayed in Akhet-Aten. We heard the quiet become a mutter and the mutter grow by stages to a roar. Many years later I was by the Great Sea when the gods sent a wave, a great towering one that rushed in with a roar that loosened the bowels and froze us in our tracks. The wave of outraged humanity in Waset that day brought fear to our hearts like the wave of water would years later to mine. It was the cry of a people cut adrift from the stable land of their familiar gods. Akhenaten heard the people of Kemet that day. I know he did, for young as I was, I saw indecision in his eyes, and fear.
If Paatenemheb had arrived to talk to the king then, instead of an hour later, the course of our lives and Kemet's fate may have been very different. He did not though, and Ay talked instead, bolstering his courage and strengthening his resolve to put down the rebellious priests of Amun. Without our uncle's advice, Akhenaten may have given in to his fear and allowed the old gods to remain, rescinding his edict. Then Akhenaten would have retired to his new capital city to follow his own personal god and the rest of Kemet would have gone their own way. Perhaps this step away from extremism and intolerance would even have led to a change in foreign policy.
Ay advised the king to stand firm, to force the priests to stand down, by the use of force if necessary. He portrayed the uprising as a rebellion against the Aten rather than for the gods; and hardened the king's heart. I did not understand then why my uncle Ay did this, for he most certainly was not a dedicated Aten supporter. He had been a priest of Amun while it brought him power and influence. Now he was a priest of Aten for similar reasons. In retrospect, I believe Ay stood to gain by weakening Kemet and even then saw clearly his own role in the future.
Ay spoke calmly but forcefully and when Paatenemheb came to plead for arms for his troops, Akhenaten agreed almost immediately. He would have preferred a quiet demolition of the old order, with the people rejoicing over the triumph of Aten, but if forced to it, he would show strength. The statues of the gods were to be destroyed, the priests disbanded and exiled and if anybody got in the way of the king's troops, they too would feel his righteous fury.
For the first time I saw Ay as a power behind the throne, twisting words to alter ideas, modifying actions to achieve the results he wanted. I know Smenkhkare saw it too for he muttered angry words to me later.
"Who is king in Kemet, sister? Our brother Akhenaten was anointed yet it is Ay who makes the decisions."
"He is the king's advisor," I replied, quite reasonably I thought.
"Advisor, yes. But he put words in the king's mouth. When Akhenaten gave his orders to Paatenemheb, it was Ay's words that he heard, not the king's."
"Does it really matter? The riots will be quelled."
"Of course it matters," Smenkhkare snapped. I took a step backward, my mouth quivering at his tone. He did not see my reaction, being t
oo busy pacing, thinking his own thoughts. "When I am king, he will not rule me. If he thinks he can rule Kemet through me, he must think again."
He looked up then and saw I was about to cry. At once he changed from fierce prince to kind-hearted brother. Putting his arm about me, he explained.
"A king is anointed by the priests to act as a bridge between the gods and men. He represents both sides of the bargain. In times long gone in Kemet, and still in some of the more backward countries, the king will offer himself up as a sacrifice in times of pestilence or drought. The voluntary spilling of his sacred blood pleased the gods and they would relent, sparing the people. The king was a herd-master, tending his herd. Now, imagine if the real power rested not with the anointed king but with someone who had not entered into this agreement with the gods? Who then stands for the people? I tell you, little sister, when I am king I will stand for my people, my Kemet, against any who seek power for their own ends. That includes uncle Ay."
From where we stood in an upper room in the palace, we could see part of the temple complex. Presently the roaring of the crowds grew loud again, the screams beginning as the soldiers poured in, their thick wooden batons rising and falling in unison, spears thrusting and swords slashing. They secured the temples and moved on, out of our sight, but we could hear their progress through the city. By late afternoon thick columns of smoke arose as buildings were torched by rampaging mobs that had lost sight of their aims and had descended into mayhem and violence. We heard the deep-noted bells of the city watchmen as they turned out in force to fight the fires.
Dusk fell and it was almost like the festival of the dead, for it seemed as if lanterns burned throughout the city. The glow of fires paled the stars and the smoke, white against the night sky, obscured them. We stayed by the window all night, sitting hand in hand on a couch carved in the form of Taweret, the hippopotamus goddess of childbirth. I did not recognize the irony until much later, but one of the old gods was presiding over the birth of a new age in Kemetu history, one in which she, along with all the other gods, would play no part.
The sun came up over the three hills to the east of Waset, but as it rose through the smoke, the light dimmed so we could look at the perfect unblemished disk as it seemed to swim through the air. Re hid his heat and light but Aten looked down at the horrors being committed in his name and by mid-morning, as the fires and smoke died down, the army finally gained control over Waset.
Akhenaten did not stay in the city that had defied him. He boarded the royal barge at noon, descending below decks before the sailors even cast off. He never saw the destruction wrought in his name for he never returned to Waset as king, content to live out his reign in his god's city, ignoring anything that might disturb his illusions. Ay ruled in all but name.
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Chapter Nineteen
Unseasonal rains in the hills and mountains to the east and north swelled the streams to bursting point, flooding the plains to the north of Gezer in a sheet of muddy brown water. The floods receded quickly, soaked up by a parched and sandy soil but the plant life of the region, geared to the vicissitudes of an arid climate, burst forth in the water's wake, creating another flood that covered the plains in green. The herds followed and increased: sheep, goats and cattle, the nomads of the dry regions spreading out to follow the gift of the gods. Others trailed the herds--predators--animal and human alike.
Jebu the Amorite had prospered over the years. A successful captain in King Aziru's informal army, his ruthless attacks on Kemetu troops, his persistent depredations of defenseless farmers, and his atrocities against villagers in the north of Syria brought him to the notice of the king himself. Gifts and honours followed, and increased power. Once the leader of a handful of cutthroats and bandits, he now controlled half a thousand men who were slowly being shaped into a disciplined fighting force.
Aziru's patronage had brought Jebu power and wealth--his armbands were now gold rather than copper and he drank wine as often as beer--but at heart he was still a bandit chief. He much preferred to leave the organization of his small army in the hands of his officers, Aram, Simyras and Jezral, and head off into the hills with a small band of men for a bit of relaxing rape and slaughter.
On one such trip, Jebu found himself overlooking the coast road a day's hard horse-ride north of the Kemetu garrison city of Gezer. Normally, the traffic on the road, despite being the only true route north out of Kemet, was light. Caravans passed north and south, the rich ones guarded well by mercenaries, the poorer ones almost unguarded but scarcely worth the trouble of taking. Spices, faience, trinkets and carved wood may bring a decent profit if you were a trader, but what was an honest bandit to do with a camel load of such things? Once the traders had been killed and their women enjoyed then killed, the only gains were the meager handfuls of copper and occasionally silver they carried. Spices were tipped out onto the dusty ground to mingle with the blood, pottery smashed and everything else burned. Sometimes a trinket or knife with a fancy hilt caught the eye, but generally there was little to show for one's efforts. Still, it was better than drilling the men or organizing food and equipment for Aziru's fledgling army.
A rasping cough broke through Jebu's concentration and he turned from his contemplation of the deserted coast road to look at his friend and lieutenant, Aram. His forehead furrowed in concern at the sight of the man doubled over and retching. One or two of the men supported the Amorite officer and offered a flask of water.
Aram waved the water away and straightened, panting. "I'm alright, you motherless turds. I just feel a bit sick, that's all."
"Something you ate?" Jebu asked. "Or have you been drinking again?"
One of the men standing nearby guffawed. "That'll be the day. Aram can drink unwatered wine and match cup for cup most men who are just drinking beer." Laughter erupted with several other men making similar observations of Aram's prowess.
"Maybe you were poxed by that woman four days ago," another man observed. "If there's one thing Aram likes more than wine it's a bit of pink, even if she's half dead."
Jebu frowned again, thinking back four days.
His small troop had jogged out of the hills into a small Khabiru village expecting to find provisions and a bit of rest before the next stage of their journey. Khabiru favored the Amorites over their putative overlords, the Kemetus and could usually be persuaded to part with food and drink--and the occasional young girl--for a few copper pieces. However, this village was different. The stench of death met them a hundred paces out and the silence was broken only by the muted roar of flies. Jebu's first thought had been of another raiding party. Aziru's soldiers seldom knew what other parts of his sprawling army was doing.
They entered the Khabiru village, cloths held over their noses to find the population, maybe thirty men, women and children lying dead in their huts, bloated and fly-blown, their stink enveloping them in a noxious cloud. One or two bodies were relatively fresh but even these showed swellings in the groin, neck and armpits. An Amorite soldier muttered "Plague," having seen it in Byblos once, he said. They avoided the bodies after that, plundering a few scraps of metal and a bag or two of grain from what had apparently been the headman's hut.
On the way out of the village, a noise from one of the outlying huts sent Aram in, sword drawn, to investigate. A few moments later he had hauled out a middle-aged woman by her hair and thrown her to the ground with a shout of pleasure. Ripping her dress he threw himself on top of the weakly-struggling woman and raped her. Finishing, he drew his dagger and penetrated her once more, this time in the chest, before rising to his feet and adjusting his clothing.
"Are you mad?" Jebu had asked. "These people died of the plague."
"Not this one," Aram grinned in reply. "She died of Aram." He tore off the woman's clothing and pointed. "See, there is no plague in her." A moment later he slapped at his leg and swore. "Fleas. That's all I caught from her."
Three days later Aram co
mplained of the heat, though in truth the sun was no hotter than it should be at that time of year. He griped of an ache in his groin too, though he ruled out the pox as his water passed without pain. Chills followed, and a headache that had him seeking surcease in wine the previous night, to no avail. Now he coughed and retched as muscle cramps racked his body.
"It is plague," Jebu said flatly.
The soldiers around Aram stepped away hastily, their eyes widening in fear.
"Nonsense," Aram grunted. "You were all in the village breathing that foul air but nobody else is sick. I just have a fever. Maybe I drank some bad water." He hawked and spat, one of the men jumping back quickly to avoid the phlegm. Clutching his head, Aram groaned.
"It was the woman," Jebu insisted. "She had the plague and you were the only one who used her. She gave it to you."
"She wasn't plagued. You saw her--she had no swellings." Aram doubled over again, panting. He sank to his knees and wrapped his arms about his body as a wave of uncontrollable shivering swept over him. "Oh, gods, I feel awful...but it is not plague," he added, a note of desperation in his voice.
Jebu stared at his lieutenant, knowing he was already dead. Nobody survived the plague. It was in the hands of the gods as to who caught it, though coming into contact with a victim seemed to increase the chance. It was almost as if the dead person wanted company and somehow made others around him sicken and die. Nothing would cure plague but fire would destroy it, and distance would safeguard them--if they were not already dead men. He drew his sword silently, moving round behind Aram, his men scattering as they divined his purpose.
