A God Against the Gods (17 page)

Sitamon

This evening I see a new Nile, though it is the same we see at Thebes. Perhaps I should say I see a new Kemet, for I do not see our stark and lovely Peak of the West turning purple in the dying twilight as Ra-Atum, the sun in old age, gently leaves the land. The river blazes molten into gold, then copper, then a last slow shimmering of bronze, before Nut, goddess of the night, ascends her throne; and that is as always. But the hills are low and far away, and not the same.

My brother has brought us here, and none of us, as yet (except, I am sure, Nefertiti), knows why. I have not had much chance to talk to him, for as always we traveled in separate vessels on our way down the river, and when we have made camp at night I have stayed with our parents and he has visited us only once. Then, as always, he remained enigmatic and uncommunicative, even under our mother’s gentle teasing—which conceals, as her children all learn early, a determined and persistent curiosity that does not rest until it is satisfied.

My brother is the only one of us who never satisfies it; and this, I think, in some curious way makes her love him more. He is the one problem the Great Wife has never really understood or solved; and I can tell from his expression that this is one of the things that please him, and from which he derives enjoyment.

There are others. Already he and our cousin have three daughters, all named for the Aten: Meryt-aten, Meket-aten and Ankh-e-sen-pa-aten. And already he has done other things for the Aten which have caused much comment in the land—and much grumbling in the temples of Amon.

Within a month after Pharaoh had made him Co-Regent he ordered a new sandstone quarry to be opened at Gebel Silsila for the building of a huge temple to the Aten at Karnak. Yet, with the deliberate perversity which he also seems to enjoy, he made all Kemet as confused about his motives as he makes his family. He ordered that there be carved at Gebel Silsila a stela, the inscribed slab, usually of stone, upon which Pharaohs are accustomed to relate their achievements for posterity, and on it he had himself depicted making sacrifice to Amon—in the regalia of High Priest of “Ra-Herakhty, rejoicing on the Horizon in his manifestation of the Light that is in the Sun-Disk”—in other words, the Aten.

Sacrificing to Amon as High Priest of the Aten: such is my brother, the Pharaoh Amonhotep IV (life, health, prosperity!). And this is what not only his mother and his family, but all of Kemet, the Empire and foreign states, are expected to make some sense of.

I must confess that his sister does not, as yet. I, the Queen-Princess Sitamon, am as baffled as any peasant along the Nile. I think there may be a pattern here. I am as curious as Queen Tiye. But he never explains, my brother: he simply does, and the world may make of it what the world will.

So the building of the great temple to the Aten at Karnak proceeds posthaste: I think it may overtake the slow and endless construction of our father’s temple to Amon at Luxor. To it, at a formal ceremony when the cornerstone was laid, my brother gave the name “The Aten is found in the House of the Aten”—which many of us took to have the added sense of, “
So do not try to imprison him in your
house, Amon!
”
Certainly that is what our uncle Aanen chose to make of it, buzzing angrily around the Palace like some bothersome bee: him I hope my brother will squash, in due time, because he is an increasingly annoying man, and I find him not only a bore but an active nuisance. At any rate, his instinct told him this was another of those insults to Amon he is always reading into everything, and he did much fuming on the subject, to the deliberately deaf ears of the Family and the absolute complete disregard of his nephew my brother.

Then just ten days ago, shortly before we all set sail on this unexplained progress down the river, my brother did something even more startling. He ordered placed on the walls of the new temple two cartouches, or name plates, for the Aten exactly like the cartouche of a Pharaoh. And to make it still more pointed, he gave the god the titularies of a Pharaoh celebrating Jubilee, even though theoretically Jubilee, symbol of a Pharaoh’s renewal and continuation in office, comes only once in thirty years.

Thus the Aten now is almost a third Pharaoh (at least in my brother’s mind—or in my brother’s plan, whatever that may be), and his proper form of address are these words which have never before been conferred on a god, even on Amon:

“Ra-Herakhty, rejoicing on the Horizon in his manifestation of the Light that is in the Sun-Disk, Aten, the Living, the Great, Who is in Jubilee, Lord of Heaven and Earth, Giving life forever and ever.”

He also caused to be carved on the temple walls a new symbol of the god which he himself, apparently, designed—based on the hieroglyph for sunlight, but enlarged and elaborated so that now it represents a disk encircled by a uraeus, with an ankh hanging from its neck. Radiating out from its edges are more than a dozen long rays, each having at its end a tiny hand, many of those hands offering ankhs and other tributes to my brother, to Nefertiti, and to their daughters.

And he reiterated that he was the High Priest of the Aten and formally appointed Nefertiti the High Priestess. And he also appointed, to universal astonishment, our uncle Aye to be his assistant. And, to universal astonishment, our uncle Aye bowed gravely, seeming not at all surprised, and accepted.

He also has just commissioned the sculptor Bek to carve three colossal statues of himself, one to be placed at the entrance of the Aten’s house in Karnak, one halfway along the slope up to the altar, and the third at the altar’s entrance.

Where all this puts Amon, I leave to my uncle Aanen and his overweening priests to figure out. It is a very dangerous game my brother plays, but there are those who deserve it, and Amon, I think, is one.

This sharp sentiment does not sound like Sitamon, who, as I recall her, was a sunny and amiable child who grew into a pleasant and tolerant young girl and then into an apparently happy woman. This I suppose I still am, basically, though testiness has a way of creeping on us all in times like these. I see Kaires with reasonable frequency—as always, he accompanies us now, and is off in camp with his soldiers, half a mile up the river: through the palms I can glimpse the fires burning, hear the distant shouts over the general hum of the Court’s encampment. We have a permanent agreement that later we may meet behind some sand dune, but that is hardly the life we should like to have together. I am now twenty-seven, he is thirty-four, and we do not grow younger. Gilukhipa still helps when she can, though lately she has not been feeling well, and is confined for the moment to her own tent, some hundreds of yards away from my parents and me. She cannot help tonight. It will be sand dune or nothing, which has often been the case in our secret romance, begun when I was fifteen and continued without a break ever since.

I should like to marry him, but this of course is impossible. My father pre-empted me to confirm his own claim on the throne, and not even my brother, who would normally have married me to secure his own claim, could ever do anything about that

Nor, as a matter of fact, has my father; although there was an occasion, just after Kaires and I suddenly realized that we were in love and must find our own secret channels for expressing it, when I thought he might try.

It was late, in the Palace of Malkata. The Great Wife had gone to bed. Pharaoh, presumably suffering one of his periodic bouts of illness, was confined to his room. I was practicing the harp, pretending to gossip with my ladies in waiting and inwardly planning desperately how I might next see Kaires. Suddenly there came a summons: Pharaoh desired wine, and I was to bring it to him.

Instantly everyone in the room made an assumption. I also made the assumption and, strengthened by my new-found love for Kaires, followed it with an iron determination that, for this royal daughter, it was not to be. A citizen of Kemet is taught from infancy that whatever Pharaoh desires Pharaoh must have, automatically and without question; and I suspect, had I not just fallen in love with Kaires, that I should not have objected. It is the customary thing in the royal House: I should probably, though it might at first have seemed a little strange, have welcomed the chance to bear a possible heir to the throne. I had no particular antipathy to the prospect, which I had long expected and to which, except for Kaires, would have willingly agreed. But—there was Kaires, fair to me then, and fairer even to me now. So I took the wine, gave my ladies one sharp look that silenced their softly smiling titters, and walked alone, save for the guard who customarily accompanies me, to Pharaoh’s door.

There I nodded dismissal to the guard, who also gave me a secret, knowing glance which only served to strengthen my determination; called out clearly, “Father, I have your wine,” and was bade to enter.

As I suspected, the room was darkened and Pharaoh was naked on the bed, bearing a close resemblance at that moment to the god Min, the only god in Kemet who is ever portrayed sexually. Min is always a very vigorous and obvious figure in this respect, and so was Pharaoh; and something—a combination, possibly, of my determination, my nervousness, my fright, and a sudden sense of the ridiculous that Hathor, Sekhmet or someone equally friendly sent winging to my rescue—prompted me to make the comparison aloud.

“You look just like Min, Father,” I said, “only I think possibly he is a little bigger.”

And abruptly I began to giggle—quite hysterically at first, I must admit, but in a moment with a sure, deep, genuine amusement that presently had me clutching my sides and, I am afraid, sloshing the wine about a bit, spattering the floor and the single flimsy thickness of cotton which at that moment was all that stood between me and a possible heir to the throne of Kemet.

For a very long moment Pharaoh simply stared at me as if he could not believe his ears. Anger, shock, bafflement, uncertainty crossed the face that was already turning a little soft, a little heavy. First he flushed, then he paled, then he flushed again. Meanwhile, I was pleased to note, the resemblance to Min could not maintain itself, the shock was too great for it, too: it crumpled away and slunk between his legs. And then suddenly, mercifully, he also began to laugh, as genuinely and completely as I. In a moment we were crowing together like two fools, and I knew Kaires and I had won, though it was many years before I told Kaires of the battle.

“Daughter,” he said finally, wiping his eyes on the bed sheet that he had pulled over himself in the midst of our hilarity, “you are one worthy of your mother. Return to your ladies, sleep well. And as you go, send in one of the house servants. I really
do
want some wine!”

And he opened his arms to me with an entirely honest affection, I leaned down and kissed him on the forehead, he patted me smartly but impersonally on the rump, gave me a shove and a heartily amused “Be off with you!”

And that was how the Queen-Princess Sitamon saved herself for her true love and did not bear a possible heir to the throne of Kemet

He never attempted it again, of course; but for years after that I felt every time Kaires and I were together that we were very probably risking death should Pharaoh find out. However, I think in recent years he and my mother have come to suspect, and have even cooperated. It has become much easier, I have noted, particularly since my brother became Co-Regent, for me to slip away from the Palace to meet Kaires in Gilukhipa’s rooms, in the rushes along the Nile, among the sand dunes, or wherever else the gods have seen fit to permit our happiness. Our love has not been easy, neither has it been really difficult; and as such things go, I suppose we have known a reasonable content, even though we should have liked to marry and give a happy life to the two sons and a daughter I have been forced to dispose of while they were yet unborn.

My parents, as I say, have silently cooperated; yet I think the cooperation has been greater since my brother ascended the joint throne. The young Pharaoh believes as firmly as the old that people should lead lives of happiness and pleasure, but he extends it beyond the Palace or his own bedroom. He seems to regard almost all men with a certain generosity, possibly because he survived his illness as he did. He wants them to be happy. If, sometimes, this seems to mean happy
on his terms
,
that is just something one must learn to live with when dealing with a Pharaoh—certainly when dealing with this one, who is a most imperious and determined man.

I think, in fact, that even my parents are becoming a little alarmed, now, about my brother. They have perhaps instructed him too well in his defiance of Amon: He has perhaps truly slipped out of their fingers and into the multiple hands of the Aten. Our mother, who has secretly prided herself for years that she really governs the country behind the facade offered by our father with his erratically declining health, is not so sure, now. Temporarily, at least, she seems to have lost even her usual close communion with my uncle Aye, who appears to have joined my brother in worship of the Aten. She was not consulted about Gebel Silsila, she was not notified that a huge new temple to the Aten was to be built at Karnak, she was not told of the startling changes in the Aten’s titles that he announced ten days ago before we left Thebes. Nor does she know, any more than I or anyone—saving, always, Nefertiti—the purpose of this progress down the river, or why we have encamped on the edge of this great empty plain in a bend of the low-lying eastern cliffs.

She stood at the rail as we approached it and said only, “I recognize this place.” And although of course she has passed it many times over the years on their journeys up and down to our northern capital at Memphis, I realized she meant “recognize” in a deeper sense. For this is the place where he had his greatest welcome when he first resumed his appearances before the people after his illness. Her tone sounded troubled and sad, for she does not know what he proposes to do here tomorrow—and secretly, I think, she fears it.

Because he does propose to do something here tomorrow: he has announced nothing, but there is too much of a pattern. The announcements and ceremonies of the recent days—the apparently abrupt but, I suspect, long-planned decision to bring the entire Court north down the river to this desolate emptiness forsaken by gods and men alike—the carefully suppressed but palpable excitement which neither he nor Nefertiti can quite conceal, for all their determination to appear impassive … something is to happen.