Out of the Black Land

Chapter Twenty-nine

Mutnodjme

Widow-Queen Tiye was henceforth free. I do not know how she explained her release to her sons, co-regents now and rulers of Egypt, but they did not attempt to lock her up again. Not even in Pharmuthi two years later, when Great Royal Wife Meritaten died of the sweating fever and Ankhesenpaaten was married to her brother Smenkhare. The little princess had borne one child, a pale and sickly creature which only survived for three hours.

In this she only lasted a little longer than her mother and grandmother, for I had news from the palace of Sitamen that my sister Nefertiti had fallen into a despondency and thus into a fever, and had died peacefully.

Ptah-hotep wrote me letters of love and I replied with love. I visited my sister Merope in her house by the square, where she quickly bore two sons for Dhutmose. They were very pretty children and her husband doted on them and on her.

Otherwise I ruled my household, learned cuneiform, lay with the general, conceived and miscarried. I had no one to consult about my state of health; and I had no suitable prayers. The only learned women left in Egypt did not dare show their learning. Although after the first few years midwives had been allowed to practice again to stem the rising mortality amongst mothers. Someone must have told those stupid men that if the mothers died in childbirth they would have no sons.

No sooner was seed settled in my womb and my purifying blood had ceased for half a season, then would come the grinding ache which meant that the child had loosed hold on the flesh, and I would shortly bleed another baby.

My mother, who had recovered miraculously from cancer of the womb, told me that I would never bear, because learning had unsettled my female parts. I ignored her. For the first time in my life, I had Mother Tey in a vice.

On my advice, she had gone to Thebes and prayed for healing in the disestablished temple of Hathor, lady of music, and then in the remains of the temple of Isis. She reported that there were still some priestesses there, living in what had been the servant’s quarters at the back of the compound, and they had given her a potion and told her to pray to Isis nine nights in succession. She had done that and had been healed. Either the physicians had been mistaken in their diagnosis, and nothing was more likely, or Isis had healed her. Presumably Isis had some use for her, though I could not think of one, except to assist in punishing Egypt for its apostasy.

So now she was alive, which was something of a pity as she encouraged Divine Father Ay in his greed, but I held her life in my hand, knowing that she had appealed to forbidden gods.

She was probably right about my ability to carry children. I seemed to conceive easily, but the child would not stay with me. I could have visited the temple of Isis myself, and seen Ptah-hotep, but somehow there were always things in the house to be done, and somehow the general was always away when I thought of going, and somehow I never got there, and the years passed.

I never loved the general like I loved Ptah-hotep, never felt that strange feeling of being twinned by the night and the gods, but he was a good man, fair and just and kind, and I liked him well.

I was putting ointment on Kasa’s skinned knee—the clumsy child had become a clumsy man—when I heard trumpets blowing. I walked to the window. I had not heard such a clamour for years. The general woke up, sitting up in mid snore.

‘Those are battle trumpets,’ remarked Ipuy, picking up his wood-carving knife. Our soldiers had sprung to attention and grabbed their weapons. Horemheb summoned them to form a guard around us as we went out into the court of the Aten. Either an army was attacking or some amazing announcement was to be made. All the people in the palace had poured into the great court.

All eyes were on the Window of Appearances. The royal family filed out.

There was Akhnaten may he die in his most extravagant cloth, a parody of an army uniform. Long contemplation of his god, the Aten, had damaged his eyes and now he had to squint to see a hand’s span in front of him.

There was Smenkhare in the wig and jewellery of Great Royal Wife; worried and maternal Ankhesenpaaten with her little brother Tutankhaten holding her hand; and Divine Father Ay, along with Pannefer and Huy, all smirking.

‘People of the Aten’ announced the King. ‘I have called you together to hear my words.’

‘Hail sweet child of brightness,’ called the crowd, hoping for their usual ration of gold trinkets. “Hail to the Aten!’

‘Misery is upon the land,’ said the King.

I was astounded that he knew anything about what was happening in Egypt. He never left the city and he did not listen to anyone but his own dishonest ministers.

‘In my own household, three of my daughters are dead and the Beautiful-One-Who-Is-Come is gone into flame. The Phoenix has not risen.’

This was true. However, the sacrifice which he had designed to bring the Phoenix had not been properly made, though I had no intention of telling anyone that. After a year of watching on the walls to sight the first flock of birds escorting the Firebird, the cult had fallen into disfavour.

‘Hail to the Phoenix!’ cried a few voices, and were hushed.

‘Therefore I consulted with my priests.’ The king looked on Divine Father Ay.

‘Why is the Aten angry with us? Why does the river Nile not flood? Why has the Aten punished us?’ the king asked.

He was even untrue to his own theology, I thought with disgust. His Aten had no compassion, no justice, no mercy, no personality. He had constructed it as pure life-force, creating and created. It had no incarnation, unknowable and unknown, a primeval thing-which-is-all. Therefore the Aten could neither punish nor reward. As well ask the sun not to burn skin, or the water not to wet it.

‘I have communed with godhead,’ the King yelled, blinking at the crowd. ‘We have been lazy, accepting all the gifts of the Aten without trying to spread the knowledge of it to foreign lands. Therefore I have decided. Now that the name of the old god is obliterated from Egypt, now that we are pure, then we must purify the barbarians. We must go forth not as soldiers but as instructors. All of my army will be used to take presents to foreign kings, to foreign places, even as far as the Great Green Sea and the nests of the vile Kush. And the most valuable present they will carry will be knowledge of the Aten!’

I looked at Horemheb. His mouth had fallen open. I struggled to work out the implications of what the King Akhnaten had just ordered. His soldiers were to go forth to foreign kings to preach the cult of the Aten. That did not seem perilous. Someone asked the king a question.

‘What shall we do, child of the Aten before all stand in awe, if these foreigners do not accept the teachings?’

‘Why, kill them,’ said the king calmly. ‘If they will not accept, we must kill them.’

This, on the other hand, made the situation disastrous. Egypt was surrounded by desert nomads who had their own form of monotheism for which they were perfectly willing, even eager, to kill or be killed; and by kingdoms who had their own long-established gods who were just as precious to them as the Aten was to the mad king.

I could not see Babylon surrendering Nun, or Ishtar being abandoned in Assyria. Even if the rulers wished to do so—and an army on the threshold can be very persuasive in religious matters—they would not dare, for their people would rise up and slaughter them.

‘What’s the king doing?’ I whispered to my husband.

‘He’s declaring war on the world,’ said the general.

***

It being Mechir, which in the old days was the month to celebrate the story of Sekmet and the destruction of mankind—averted by the gods pouring her a lake of red beer—the Widow-Queen Tiye decreed a feast.

Sekmet was her goddess, She Who Loves Silence, the lioness in the peak. The Widow-Queen invited the whole royal family; excluding Ankhesenpaaten and Tutankhaten as too young to take part in the special celebration which she had in mind.

She did not invite me—and I was rather hurt—but she summoned me to her rooms as the finishing touches were being made to what looked like a very lavish feast. She saw my slightly downcast face and kissed me.

‘Come and open this door tomorrow morning, daughter Mutnodjme,’ she said gently. Her red hair was concealed under a full court wig, and she was wearing her own weight in gems. She was old. She was, now I calculated, over fifty.

‘Make me a promise, daughter,’ she said, sounding so serious.

I responded instantly, ‘I am your slave, lady.’

‘Help the little royal ones,’ she added, and I swore to do so. Then she put around my neck a very precious necklace, loaded my arm with bracelets and placed a lotus wreath on my head.

‘Remember me,’ she said, and then ushered me out, for her guests were arriving.

I stood by the door in the corridor of gazelles and watched them come in. Pannefer and Huy, greasy with expensive scents. Smenkhare walking in a parody of femaleness, hand on hip. His eyes were glazed. I had been told that he had become habituated to opium in larger and larger quantities, to kill misery and help him to sleep. And of course the king and his guards—he never moved without guards. Akhnaten had not aged well. The body which had been strange was now grotesque. His belly swayed as he walked, his breasts bounced. He did not notice me. The Widow-Queen welcomed them all in and shut the door.

I did not sleep well. I could not explain why I tossed and turned and eventually got up, so as not to wake the general; though nothing short of a battle alarm woke Horemheb. I lit a small lamp and sat down in the empty outer apartment and waited for the sun to rise. In the silence I heard sounds of merrymaking from the right direction, screams of mirth and the smash of dropped pottery.

I walked about. The night was not cold. The painted walls grew too close. I walked out of the general’s rooms and out to the battlements, where I would see the whole City of the Sun laid out beneath me as soon as Khephri pushed the ball of light over the horizon.

The night, of course, was not completely silent. I heard a woman giggle, a man whisper, then the noise of kisses as someone made love just behind the wall against which I leaned. Down in the kitchen courtyard, someone was making dung and straw fuel-bricks. I heard the clamp and thud as the bricks were pressed into their moulds and then released, to be laid out to dry in the sun. A soldier paused when he saw me standing by the wall, identified me and went away.

Light grew. I could not wait for full sunrise, and I did not want to be on the wall when the mad king again came forth to hail his Aten at its rising.

I hurried to the quarters of the Widow-Queen Tiye and I found her; still alive—though the others were all dead.

Both guards were lying across the threshold with not a mark on them, even the feathers in their helmets undisturbed.

Akhnaten had fallen at Tiye’s feet. His eyes were open, still strange and dreamy, though the personality behind them had fled to its maker. Tiye cradled Smenkhare in her arms. His wig had fallen off, revealing his vulnerable boy’s scalp and nape of the neck, which the red-headed woman kissed.

Master of the Household Pannefer lay in his place, Chamberlain Huy on the other side, bundles of fallen garlands and wigs and jewels.

‘I gave them life,’ the Widow-Queen said with an effort, trying to smile. ‘Now I have taken it away. Tell your father Ay that I am sorry he missed my festival—I wanted to take him with me as well. The deed is mine,’ she said with immense dignity.

Then she drained the cup in her hand. The poison was fast acting, and in moments she had joined her sons on their journey to the Otherworld.

I knelt down and sprinkled some of the poisoned wine over my lady the Widow-Queen Tiye, and offered up long-forgotten prayers for her soul, saying to the judges:

She was a great Queen, and by her actions she has saved Egypt. She lived in Maat and died in Maat, and truth was in her.

She will live, she will live, she will live!

For Isis has her hand and Nepthys her arm.

For Neith is her guardian and Sekmet her defender.

The lioness of the peak is her lady, She Who Loves Silence, and she has died in carrying out her desperate strategy like any general who dies in battle.

I could not bear to look on the scene any more. The air was heavy with death. But now there was another chance for the Black Land, for the intelligent boy Tutankhaten was now Pharaoh, and the maternal and well-disciplined Ankhesenpaaten his Great Royal Wife.

Widow-Queen Tiye had paid for the salvation for Egypt with her life, and I could not condemn her. My principal feeling as I looked on the dead face of King Akhnaten was great relief that the nightmare in which we had all been enmeshed was now abolished.

When I came back with Horemheb the sunlight was falling full on Tiye’s face, and she looked like the young girl she had been when she had been married to Amenhotep-Osiris the Wise, who would by now be aware that she was coming to dwell with him in the Field of Reeds, and who would welcome her back into his embrace.

Ptah-hotep

The news came to Thebes with a thudding of drums. Sitamen caught me as I went through the gate and told me that she was coming with me to inter her mother as befitted a Great Royal Wife. My captivity had ended and I was free in the world again, for both the Pharaohs were dead, though I did not know until I saw Mutnodjme again what the manner of their deaths had been.

She came to the landing dock and embraced me, pressing close. She was older and heavier and the trials of the Amarna household had aged her, but she was still very beautiful to my eyes. She took my hand and led me to a waiting litter, preceded me inside and sat down to embrace me and tell me everything that had happened, very rapidly and very clearly, which had always been her practice.

Perhaps in getting older I had outlived the nervous shocks of my youth, but her account of the deaths of the two ministers and the Pharaoh and his brother did not strike me aghast. I was moved because Tiye had died so well and for such a good cause, when the king was on the verge of committing Egypt to a path which could only have led immediately to invasion by one or other of the outraged powers.

Now there would be an interval of seventy days when a large number of diplomatic relationships could be resumed and most of the problems ironed out, before we laid to rest a Widow-Queen, two Pharaohs and two ministers.

‘I think it very charming that the Widow-Queen took her sons with her; and Pannefer and Huy along to do the dirty work, to which they were accustomed as no others could be,’ I told Mutnodjme. ‘It’s a great pity that your father had to miss the feast of Sekmet.’

‘He had a bellyache, unfortunately,’ she replied. ‘And I do not believe that he is to be unseated from his position as High Priest of the Aten, either.’

‘No need,’ I said. ‘We can just allow the old worship to re-emerge. The Aten can be allowed to fade away quietly. Once the court moves back to Thebes this city also will just be reduced to a provincial capital. A Nomarch should be put in charge.’

‘And you, Ptah-hotep? What will you do?’

‘Since I cannot have you, lady, I shall find some employment which uses my learning.’

‘You can have me,’ she said quietly. ‘The general knows all about us, about you and Kheperren and me.’

‘You still love me?’ I asked.

‘Have I not said so?’ she replied sharply.

And she embraced me, there in the litter, and I lay down on her breast and breathed in the scent of her skin.

***

Forty days are long enough to embalm commoners—in fact forty days are long enough to embalm anyone—but the seventy days required for a Pharaoh are to synchronise with the Sothic cycle; magic, not science.

I went to the funerals for Huy and Pannefer, not entirely, as Mutnodjme accused, to make sure that they were dead, but that sureness did play some part in my attendance. They were both buried in the ritual of the Aten, which made no mention of the other gods and would, I hoped, ensure them a good hungry reception from Aphopis. The beast’s only difficulty would be to locate a heart to eat and I feared that he would gain not even a toothful from both of them.

We buried the Widow-Queen Tiye with great ceremony in the language and ritual in which she had been born, married and reigned. The little King Tutankhaten had given orders that his mother should be laid to rest in a way which she would have ordered for herself. Even so, it was strange to see the priests of Osiris looking over their shoulders in case the inspectors of the Aten should appear from the ground and arrest them for heresy.

Sitamen and the priestess of Isis, Mutnodjme, acted as Isis and Neith, crying over the body and trying to hold it back as the priests of Osiris came to fetch Tiye away from them.

Mutnodjme’s once jet-black hair had streaks of white in it. We were getting old, I more than my lady, and soon I would go away from the City of the Sun to Thebes, where the priests of Amen-Re had come out of hiding and begun to repair their buildings. Snefru was long dead, I needed something to do, and I did not want to stay with Mutnodjme if she belonged to the general. Half measures were not enough for me. I was tired of intrigue, of courts, of danger. I might even have been tired of love.

Seventy days took us into the heat and dust of Mesore. I walked along behind the coffin of the boy Smenkhare, who had been hastily interred in a sarcophagus made for his mother Tiye. The embalmers had been at a loss as to how to classify him. He had been born male and was still male, though dead, but his title had been Great Royal Wife. They compromised, in the end, folding one arm across his breast as a woman is embalmed, but bandaging his phallus into erection just in case.

Smenkhare—who was in my view a blameless victim—and the heretic Pharaoh himself were hurried to a scanty burial in the same tomb.

A great change had already come over Amarna. Now that no one handed out free grain every decan, now that no one flung golden bracelets to the commoners every festival, there were many murmurings against the Pharaoh who was less than three months dead. The signs of the Aten began to be torn down. The priests of the Aten were being attacked in the street by hungry people flinging dung. In the beginning it was dung; later it was stones. They needed the dung for fuel.

So the royal funeral was hurried and secret. I saw Akhnaten’s sarcophagus packed away with Smenkhare’s in a tomb originally intended for their great mother.

We had buried the Widow-Queen Tiye in a splendid tomb decorated with the most beautiful frieze of fishermen, and she had her eyes on the Book of Coming Forth By Day which was inscribed on her walls. She was supplied with everything we could think of, including an army of shabti, the answerers, little model people who would do her bidding in the Field of Reeds.

By contrast we spared only the basic funeral furniture for Akhnaten. He had not believed in an afterlife, so why should we impoverish the people by providing him with goods for which he would have no use?

The people were impoverished enough.

The state of Egypt was evil, but as Horemheb said, they were used to being governed. Tutankhaten had changed his name to Tutankhamen, and his sister-wife was now called Ankhesenamen. The priests of Amen-Re would doubtless enjoy resuming their own power, their old temples, and their old position, and here was a chance to make sure that the power of the three arms of government—the temple, the crown and the army—were in balance again.

The people would enjoy having their old festivals back, which had given shape to their lives and their father’s fathers back to the reign of Khufu. Preparations were already in train for Opet next month, when Amen-Re would go back to his wife Mut, having been away from her for so long. I expected that the gods would be very pleased to see each other again. The temple of Isis was gathering its lost priestesses and digging up its buried manuscripts. Isis would wail for Osiris again, and time-honoured Horus contend with ever-evil Set.

I visited my old office in the palace. There I saw soldiers leading Bakhenmut away in fetters. General Horemheb was watching with grim satisfaction, stroking his ceremonial jewel-of-office with his broad, blunt fingers.

‘What is happening?’ I asked the soldiers.

‘He’s under arrest for taking bribes,’ they told me, and one look at Bakhenmut’s hanging head told me that it was true. The General drew me aside.

‘Ten judges and thirty-six scribes,’ the General told me. ‘All guilty of peculation and theft and extortion. We shall have no judges left, soon. The Pharaoh gave me the power, Ptah-hotep. Do you want your old title back?’

‘I? No, I resigned it, I am just Ptah-hotep now. If you want my advice, though, General, might I suggest that you split the office? My scribes Khety and Hanufer have worked here for many years. If they have not taken bribes during the reign of the heretic then they never will. I cannot choose between them. Khety is still, I guess, rather impulsive and Hanufer rather stolid. Together they will make one very good Great Royal Scribe.’

‘Done,’ said the General, towering over me. ‘Scribe Khety?’ he bellowed into the office. ‘Scribe Hanufer?’

Both of them jumped, but I saw no signs of guilt on their faces, just the wary countenances of anyone who lived through the Amarna regime where an unwise word could be fatal.

‘Are you willing to jointly accept the position of Great Royal Scribe?’ yelled General Horemheb into the room.

They both said, ‘yes’ in stunned voices.

‘Good. Commence immediately. Report to the Pharaoh tomorrow morning for your orders.’

‘General,’ I ventured, ‘you put great trust in my advice.’

He gave me a big grin from his wide face and clapped me on the shoulder so that I staggered.

‘First thing a commander learns, Ptah-hotep,’ he said. ‘Find out who you can trust, and trust them. Widow-Queen Tiye-Osiris, the red-headed woman, she trusted you. Mutnodjme is a remarkable woman. I trust her. She trusts you. That’s sufficient for a simple soldier. Come along with me, if you will,’ he added.

I fell in beside him. It was very hard to disobey Horemheb; he had the habit of command.

We walked together through a palace humming with activity. The households of several high officials were being evicted with bag and baggage into the court of the Phoenix, to await transport to their Nomes of origin. There were soldiers everywhere, not just the red feathers of the Pharaoh’s guard but the blue of Horemheb’s men and the green of the Hermotybies. I had never seen so many soldiers. I said so.

‘Pharaoh has called all the commanders in. They will be dispatched, if he takes my advice, to settle the borders. But I will need fully half of mine just to begin the task of distributing grain to the starving.

‘We will see if Opet this year will bring on a proper inundation. If so, we shall be able to distribute seed grain early and see if we can get two crops, which will avert immediate famine—if we can find enough measurers and inspectors who aren’t entirely corrupted by their devotion to the Aten. Ah, here we are.’

‘Where?’ I asked.

‘As a special favour to the throne,’ said Horemheb, leading me up a set of stairs. ‘For a short time.’

I had a growing feeling of unease, but somehow I could not stop following Horemheb up the steps. He opened the door into a small room where various regalia of state was laid out on benches, and three servants were combing and dressing wigs. They smiled and ushered me to a chair, where my head was measured, a suitable court wig found, and before it was placed on my head, General Horemheb dropped a necklace of office around my neck.

I stared at the pendant: a vulture, holding the eye of Horus, over the scarab beetle Khephri. I knew that set of symbols.

‘General, I’m not a judge!’ I protested, trying to get up and being pressed firmly but respectfully back into my seat by the servant who was draping an assortment of gowns over my shoulders.

‘Just for the moment,’ the general assured me. ‘You are the only man of unassailable virtue in the whole of the Black Land. You are the only one the people will accept to judge the corrupt officials who have been amassing fortunes at the expense of the people.

‘Amen-Re is obviously with you and the new Chief Priest Dhutmose has approved you. He will be here directly to bless you in the name of the Great God and remove any lingering stain of Atenism. He has already renounced the Aten himself.’

‘Why do the people approve of me?’ I asked, bewildered.

General Horemheb, seeing that he was not going to have to restrain me bodily, sat down and accepted a cup of beer from one of the servants. I drank some too, bewildered.

‘The story went all over Egypt,’ he said slowly. ‘Children on the borders of Nubia tell it around campfires; boys in the service of the border fortresses hear the tale from soldiers; the children of commoners dip into the bean-pot and listen to it. Everyone knows the thrilling story of how Ptah-hotep—born a commoner like them but risen to Great Royal Scribe—stripped himself of all his wealth and titles, freed his slaves, and dismissed his household and walked out naked to defy the Pharaoh to his face, when he was offered a choice of doing a vile deed which would have saved his life.’

‘It was simple,’ I told him. ‘There was nothing else I could do.’

‘When it was thought that you had perished in your brave deed,’ the general said, watching me closely, ‘your parents wept until you wrote to tell them that you were alive and safe. Being sensible people, they did not allow this to be known.

‘But ever since you ‘died’ in the pyre of the Phoenix, your parents received small gifts from the people. They were not formal gifts-of-offering—which have the name of the giver attached—but were loaves and jugs left anonymously on the threshold. People who were hungry, when there was so little grain, gave them bread and beer to honour and commemorate the scribe Ptah-hotep who was the only one of all that vast horde of courtiers who dared to defy Pharaoh. Do you see now why you must be a judge?’

A servant gave me a linen cloth to wipe my eyes. I had never thought that what I had done, which had seemed utterly inevitable at the time, would have been seen as courage.

‘Very well,’ I said. ‘I will be a judge. But I will be a just judge, ruling on the cases I have before me. I will not have any persecution of those who believed in the Aten if they have done no other wrong.’

‘That is also the will of Tutankhamen may he live!’ agreed General Horemheb.