‘How strange and yet how right that you came to my own tomb for sanctuary,’ Ay said. ‘I’m sorry to see you all accommodated in such inadequate surroundings. But perhaps there is a sense in which this incongruous setting amuses you, and so compensates for the discomfort.’ He was toying with us. He smiled like a necropolis cat. ‘We are all mortals. Except for those of us who have become gods. In their own opinions, at least. See, here it is, written in stone.’ He read off a column of hieroglyphs: ‘“An adoration of the Aten who lives for ever and ever, the Living and the Great Aten, Lord of all that Aten encircles, Lord of Heaven, Lord of Earth. Lord of the House of the Aten in Akhetaten, of the King of the South and the North, living on Truth, Lord of the Two Lands, the Son of the Sun, Lord of Diadems, Akhenaten, great in his duration, and of the Great Wife Nefer-Neferuaten-Nefertiti, who has life, health and youth for ever and ever.” And so on and so on. Oh, here’s my part: “the Bearer of the Fan on the Right Hand of the King, Overseer of all the Horses of his Majesty, he who gives satisfaction in the whole land, the favourite of the good god, God’s Father, Doer of Right, Ay who says: ‘Your rising is beautiful on the horizon of heaven, O living Aten, who gives life; when you rise on the eastern horizon you fill every land with beauty.’” ’ He paused for a moment, relishing the irony of it all. ‘Well, hardly, as it turns out…’
Then another voice spoke out from the shadows, shaky and strange: ‘ “For you are splendid, great, radiant, uplifted above every land…You are the Sun, distant but on the Earth, and when you set on the western horizon the Earth is in darkness, and in the likeness of Death…”’ Akhenaten’s voice grew in strength as he declaimed the lines, his thin arms raised up, mirroring his own carved image on the stone wall beside him, towards a sun that was not there. But then he stopped suddenly, as if he no longer wished to say the words that followed.
Ay looked at this spectre of failed power without expression. ‘Yes, the likeness of Death,’ he said. ‘I commissioned this tomb at some considerable expense, but I have never had the time to visit it and inspect the progress of the work. They are quite expensive now, these Houses of Death, yet there is no time while we are alive to attend to the things that matter. We rush, we make mistakes, we hurry to correct them, we do not think enough about the past and the future.’
He paused. I had no idea where he was going with this. Nefertiti remained oddly silent.
‘Would you like to hear a story about the past or the future?’
‘Let us consider the future.’ Nefertiti spoke at last from the darkness at the far end of the chamber.
Ay moved towards her, but she moved away again. I could not tell shadow from substance.
‘Certainly,’ he said. ‘I will tell you what I see. I see a time of calamity. I see this world crumbling, collapsing. I see Priests attacking the Aten temples, I see the Treasury empty, I see hatred in the eyes of the people, I see our enemies conquering our great cities and destroying our gods. I see our great green and gold world drying up, the Great River denying its bounty, the land parched and the crops wilted, and the locusts consuming all in their path. I see our granaries full of dust. I see the wind of time sweeping in from the Red Land, bringing fire and destruction, razing our cities, turning all that we have made to ash. I see children instructing their parents in acts of barbarity and horror, and I see barbarians celebrating in our temples. I see the statues of the gods replaced by chattering monkeys. I see the river flowing backwards and Ra turning cold. I see dead children in unnamed graves.’
‘You should not eat dinner so late,’ Nefertiti responded, carefully. ‘It disturbs the imagination.’
He fastidiously ignored her. ‘I see things as they are, and as they will be. Unless we act decisively now. We must return to things as they were. We must return to the ways of the traditions. We must fold up this city and lock its god, this Aten, in a box, and bury it deep in the desert as if it had never been. Then we must be practical. We need troops and grain. We must negotiate agreements and compensations with the new army, and with the Amun Priesthood. We must restore to the Theban Priesthood some portion of control over their wealth and resources, and allow them back into their temples. At the same time we must show the world we, as a family and a country, are stronger than ever, and that the gods support us. And to do this we must have a figure of power who can say to the people and the gods: “I am yesterday and tomorrow; I see all time; my name is one who passes on the paths of the gods. I am Lord of Eternity.”
‘There is no such person.’
‘I think there is,’ he said, quickly. ‘I think it is time to reveal her.’
He let that hang in the air. An offer. A possibility. But who was Ay, for all his authority, to make such a proposal? Was he a king-maker, a god-creator, a director of what shall and shall not be?
Then Akhenaten spoke with a madman’s futile conviction. ‘This is treason, and I will have you arrested and executed like a common thief.’
Ay laughed in his face-the first time I had heard him make such a human sound. ‘And who will hear this command, and who will obey it? No-one. You are a bankrupt, broken man. Failure and dissolution hang over you. Your power is departed. You will be lucky to be allowed to continue to live.’ His voice was calm and ruthlessly severe.
Akhenaten moved quickly to the entrance, but was barred by two guards. ‘Let me pass!’ he ordered. ‘I am Akhenaten!’ They remained still and silent. His powerlessness was terrible to behold. He beat his fists against them like a child in a tantrum. His blows were light and they simply ignored him.
He turned to Ay, incandescent with rage now. ‘The King will not be denied! You have stolen my kingdom. You have betrayed my trust. I curse you, and I and the god will be revenged upon you.’
‘No. You have betrayed the trust of the Two Lands. You have betrayed me. You have mocked and destroyed the great inheritance of this world. Your curses have no power. How can you feed the people? You cannot. How can you restore maat? You cannot. How can you show yourself again under the sign of the Aten? You cannot. The people hate you, the army despises you, and the Priests are plotting your assassination. I gave you this world and all its riches and power, and what did you do with it? You made this fool’s plaything of mud and straw. Can greatness be conjured from such materials? No. It crumbles, it decays, it falls apart. Soon there will be nothing left of this city and its mad King but shadows, bones and dust. Your father’s spirit dies a second death of shame. You will give up the crowns. Fall to your knees.’
Akhenaten stared at Ay. ‘To you? Never.’ He had lost, but he remained defiant.
Nefertiti emerged from the shadows. My heart twisted inside me when I saw her face.
‘You are God’s Father, but you cannot be the King,’ she said.
Something changed in Ay’s expression. I had seen it before, on the face of a committed gambler about to double the stakes.
‘You do not know who I am,’ he said.
His words changed the currents running in the dark air. Nefertiti stood still, caught out.
‘You are Ay, are you not?’
He moved among the columns, appearing and disappearing in the light and shadows, the conjuror of himself.
‘You cannot remember?’
She said nothing, waiting.
‘Memory is such a strange thing. Who are we without it? No-one.’
Still she waited.
He smiled. ‘I am glad you do not remember. I intended it to be so. I wanted you to be pure of all associations of the heart.’