Out of the Black Land (44 page)

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.’