Pharaoh Akhnaton said, as one pointing a moral, “See what came of your refusal to listen to me! Had you spoken more of Aton to these men, they would not now be acting thus, but their hearts are darkened, the scars of your whip lash burn their backs, and they know not what they do. And by the by, have you noticed that both my daughters can now walk? Meritaton takes care of the younger one, and they have an enchanting little gazelle for a playfellow. Well there is nothing to prevent your hiring the disbanded men as guards up and down the country, provided they remain guards and are not embodied into a standing army for war. And to my mind it would be well to break up all the chariots, for suspicion breeds suspicion, and we have to convince our neighbors that whatever happens Egypt will never have recourse to war.”
“Would it not be simpler to sell the chariots to Aziru or the Hittites? They pay well for chariots and horses,” sneered Horemheb. “I can see that it would not pay you to keep a regular army when you bury all the wealth of Egypt in a swamp or make bricks of it.”
They disputed thus day after day until by sheer tenacity Horemheb gained the position of commander-in-chief of the frontier troops and of all the garrisons. It was Pharaoh who decided how they should be armed, namely with wooden spears. Their numbers were left for Horemheb to determine. Horemheb then summoned all district commanders to Memphis because it lay in the middle of the country and on the borders of the Two Kingdoms. He was on the point of embarking for that city when a river courier arrived, with a stack of letters and clay tablets from Syria, full of alarming news. His hopes were rekindled. These communications showed beyond dispute that King Aziru, having learned of the disturbances in Thebes, considered the moment favorable for the annexation of certain cities beyond his borders. Megiddo, the key to Syria, was also in revolt, and Aziru’s forces were besieging the fortress to which the Egyptian garrison had retired and from which they were now appealing to Pharaoh for speedy help.
But Pharaoh Akhnaton said, “I fancy King Aziru has good reason for his actions. He is a fiery man, and it may be that my envoys have offended him. I will not judge him until he has opportunity to defend himself. But one thing I can do, and it was wrong of me not to think of it before. Now that a city of Aton is rising in the Black Land I must build another in the Red Land-in Syria-and in Kush. Megiddo is a junction for the caravan routes and therefore the most suitable place, but I suspect that just now it is too disturbed to permit building.
“But you have spoken to me of Jerusalem, where you built a temple to Aton during your campaign against the Khabiri-a campaign for which I can never forgive myself. It is not so central as Megidcfo, being farther south; nevertheless I shall take immediate steps for the building of a city of Aton in Jerusalem so that in future that shall be the center of Syria, though now it is only a tumbledown village.”
When Horemheb heard this, he broke his whip, threw it at Pharaoh s feet, and went aboard his ship. And so he sailed to Memphis to reorganize the garrison troops throughout the country. Yet his stay in Akhetaton had had this advantage: I had been able to tell him quietly and at leisure all that I had seen and heard in Babylon, Mitanni, the land of Hatti, and in Crete. He listened in silence, nodding now and again as if what I told him were not altogether news, and he fingered the knife I had been given by the harbormaster. All that I recounted to him of roads, bridges, and rivers he caused to be set down in writing, also any names I mentioned. Finally I told him to consult Kaptah in the matter, for Kaptah was as childish as himself in his memory for all manner of useless things.
He departed from Akhetaton in anger, and Pharaoh rejoiced to see him go. The conversations with Horemheb had greatly plagued him so that even the sight of the man gave him a headache.
To me he said musingly, “It may be the will of Aton that we lose Syria, and if so, who am I to oppose it since it must be for the good of Egypt? For the wealth of Syria has eaten at Egypt’s heart. All superfluity, all softness, vices, and evil practices have come from there. Were we to lose Syria, Egypt would return to simpler ways-to ways of truth-and that is the best thing that can befall it. The new life must start here and spread among all nations.”
My heart rose up against his talk and I said, “The commander of the Smyrna garrison has a son named Rameses-a lively boy with big brown eyes who loves to play with pretty stones. I treated him once for chickenpox. And in Megiddo there dwells an Egyptian woman who, having heard o? my skill, once visited me in Smyrna. Her belly was swollen; I opened it with my knife and she lived. Her skin was soft as wool, and she walked beautifully like all Egyptian women, even though her belly was swollen and here eyes were bright with fever.”
“I do not understand why you tell me of these things,” said Akhnaton, and he began to make a sketch of a temple he beheld in his mind’s eye. He constantly vexed his architects and master builders with drawings and explanations though they understood their business better than he.
“I mean that I can see that little Rameses with his mouth cut and bruised and the locks at his temple clotted with blood. I see the woman from Megiddo lying naked and bleeding in the courtyard of the fortress while men from Amurru violate her. Yet I acknowledge that my thoughts are trivial compared with yours and that a ruler cannot remember every Rameses and every soft-skinned woman among his subjects.”
Pharaoh clenched his fists, and his eyes darkened as he cried, “Sinuhe, can you not understand that if I must choose death rather than life, then I will choose the death of a hundred Egyptians rather than that of a thousand Syrians? Were I to give battle in Syria so as to liberate every Egyptian there, then many-both Syrians and Egyptians-would lose their lives in the war. Were I to meet evil with evil, only evil could result. But if I meet evil with good, the resulting evil is less. I will not choose death rather than life, and so I stop my ears to your talk. Speak to me no more of Syria if you love me and if my life is dear to you. When I think of that, my heart feels all the suffering those who die for my will’s sake must undergo-and a man cannot long endure the sufferings of many. Give me peace for the sake of Aton and of my truth.”
He bowed his head, and his eyes were swollen and bloodshot in his grief, and his thick lips trembled. I left him in peace, but in my own ears I heard the thunder of battering rams against the Megiddo walls and the cries of outraged women in the woolen tents of the Amorites. I hardened my heart against these sounds for I loved him, for all his madness, and perhaps I loved him the more because of it, for his madness was more beautiful than the wisdom of other men.
5
The founding of the new city brought division into the royal family, for the Queen Mother refused to follow her son into the desert. Thebes was her city, and the golden house of Pharaoh, glowing hazy blue and russet among its walls and gardens by the river, had been built by Pharaoh Amenhotep for his beloved. Taia, the Queen Mother, had begun life as a poor fowler girl in the reed swamps of the Lower Kingdom. She would not leave Thebes, and Princess Baketamon stayed with. her. Eie the priest, bearer of the crook on the right hand of the King, ruled and sat in judgment there on the King’s throne with the leather scrolls before him. Life in Thebes went on as before; only the false Pharaoh was absent-and unregretted.
Queen Nefertiti returned to Thebes for the birth of her next child, for she dared not be brought to bed without the help of the physicians and the Negro sorcerers of Thebes. Here she bore her third daughter, whose name was Ankhsenaton and who would in time be queen. To ease the birth, the sorcerers narrowed and lengthened the child’s head as they had done with the other princesses. When the girl grew up, all the court ladies, and others who wished to be in the fashion and to imitate the styles of the court, took to wearing false backs to their heads. But the princesses themselves kept their heads close shaven to show off the fine shape of their skulls. Artists also admired it, and they carved and drew and painted numerous portraits of them without suspecting that this distinctive feature was but a result of the magicians’ arts.