A God Against the Gods (4 page)

Basically, however, the marriage came about simply because in this land of Kemet succession to the throne passes through the eldest daughter. Therefore Pharaohs often marry their oldest sister to secure their hold on the throne. This Pharaoh had no living sisters at the time of his accession. His marriage to Queen Tiye, who was not royal (he was then about ten years old), was arranged by Mutemwiya, his mother, and by Mutemwiya’s brother and sister-in-law, Yuya and Tuya, parents of Tiye and her two older brothers, Aye and Aanen. As Pharaoh and Tiye grew older their marriage developed into a genuine love match, so that now the Great Wife, Queen Tiye, sits almost equal with him on the throne, goes with him everywhere, is consulted on everything, in effect rules Kemet almost as much as he does. Love in itself, however, was not enough to provide the legitimate succession that Pharaoh needed. Therefore when Queen Tiye bore her first child, Sitamon—eldest daughter of a Pharaoh and, therefore, carrier of legitimacy—her father promptly married her to settle once and for all his claim to the throne.

Nothing like producing your own legitimacy, as my friend remarked dryly in one of those confidential remarks with which he has already come to trust me; but in this case it solved the problem, was accepted joyfully by the country, and now Queen-Princess Sitamon is fully as popular as her parents, whose joy and delight she obviously is. She will never be permitted to marry elsewhere, of course, and as if to compensate, they shower her with constant attention, gifts, her own small palace and court within the complex at Malkata; and the people, understanding, seem to give her extra love whenever she appears—a small, bright, cheerful symbol of the strange contortions the needs of the throne sometimes impose upon the rulers of our strange land.

At her side today stands Gil-u-khi-pa of Mittani, a bride of state married for political reasons by Pharaoh a couple of years ago in his tenth regnal year. He issued a commemorative scarab about it, recounting how she arrived with “a retinue of 317 women.” Many of these have been quietly married off to deserving nobles around the country. Gil-u-khi-pa also has been given her own palace within Malkata, but apparently, aside from an occasional rumored visit, as perfunctory as any he makes to the countless anonymities in his official harem, Pharaoh never goes near her.

This would fully suit a stupid woman, but Amonhotep tells me that Gilukhipa is not stupid. Instead, she is quite intelligent, alert, informed.

Official neglect therefore has made her jealous, turned her inward, made her bitter, waspish, vindictive. There is no sharper tongue in all Kemet, my friend tells me, than Queen Gilukhipa’s.

“Stay wide of Gilukhipa unless you can use her to advance your own ends,” he said the other day—a rather odd comment, since if I have “ends,” at this point, he seems to be more conscious of them and more knowing about them than I am—“and if you do use her, be very sure you never give her anything she can hold over you. Because she certainly will.”

I don’t know what prompted his warning, but of course as with all I learn, I shall not forget it.

Now she rides along in the second royal barge beside little Sitamon, the latter’s popularity concealing Gilukhipa’s lack of it: the shouts seem to rise equally for them both, which is probably why Pharaoh decided they should ride together. It is obvious to Amonhotep the Scribe and to me that she knows this exactly and is, therefore, probably even more embittered than usual. Her back seems extra rigid, her eyes exceptionally fierce, her demeanor more than necessarily stern and aloof. It is not until their barge is nearing shore that she shows the slightest sign of human feeling. At that point Sitamon looks up at her, tugs excitedly at her hand, points at the great snakelike crimson and gold flags snapping from their standards all around the temple, and says something with an eager, delighted grin. Not even Gilukhipa can resist Sitamon, and for a second she smiles back, reaching down with a perfectly natural gesture to adjust the child’s gold circlet with uraeus, which has slipped a bit to one side. The crowd rewards them with an extra roar. As if in reproval, Ramose greets them with an extra solemnity. They both become suitably severe again, walk together hand in hand down the glaring empty avenue, are met in their turn by the priests of Amon, and disappear inside the vast stone structure.

From up the river comes another welcoming roar, and for a moment Amonhotep the Scribe and I speculate as to who it can be. The ranks of the House of Thebes are rather thin, at the moment: Pharaoh has his mother, no brothers, and sisters, Tiye so far has produced only two children, and all in all it is rather a shaky house. Tiye’s delivery later today (it is generally understood that she began labor just before noon, and is progressing well: how these rumors sweep through a crowd no one knows, but they do, and with an air of great authenticity, too) is expected to add one more son. But it will be several years more before the Good God can feel really secure in the midst of an abundant family. So who can this be coming now?

For just a moment Amonhotep and I speculate, though we know it cannot be so: can this be the Crown Prince, Tuthmose, named for his late grandfather Mutemwiya’s husband Tuthmose IV (life, health, prosperity!), and the other three brilliant Tuthmoses who preceded him?

The Crown Prince is six now, and only two weeks ago was installed by his father as High Priest of the god Ptah, five hundred miles downriver in the northern capital of Memphis in the Delta. My friend professes to see something significant in this—he regards it as a direct defiance of the priests of Amon here in Thebes—and yet why should Pharaoh have to “defy” his own priests? All the temples, all the priests, all the people, all the land, belong to him; he is the Good God who carries the word of all the other gods to us mortals. He is supreme.
He is God.
What need for him to “defy” anybody? Nonetheless, my friend becomes very mysterious and deliberately uninformative. I expect I shall have to probe for more, as time goes by.

Right now he says excitedly, “Wouldn’t it be something if he has had the boy brought down to sacrifice for his new brother right in the temple of Amon! Wouldn’t that be something!”

And for a second he almost hugs himself with excitement. Then he remembers abruptly where he is, pretends to be scratching his sides, relaxes and looks away.

“It couldn’t be,” he mutters out of the side of his mouth as we turn again to stare together up the river. “He wouldn’t dare.”

It comes as a profound shock when I finally realize, after a couple of disbelieving moments, that by “he” my friend means Pharaoh. It is the first, though I am beginning to suspect that it may not be the last, time that I have heard subversion spoken aloud in the hard bright sun of Kemet. Whom does Pharaoh have to “dare”? Again, I make a mental note to probe further.

For the moment, I myself do not dare to catch my friend’s eyes or indicate in any way that I perceive his meaning. We add our voices to the roar that now mounts steadily as the next great electrum-gilded barge approaches the landing. My friend gives a little grunt as we perceive who it is: not Tuthmose at all, of course, but the Councilor Aye, brother of Queen Tiye, son of Yuya and Tuya, nephew of Mutemwiya, member of that powerful family from Akhmim whose destiny seems to have become increasingly entwined, in these recent years, with the destiny of the House of Thebes. And will so continue, I hope for several reasons—not least being the welfare of Kemet, to which I already know all of them to be deeply devoted.

Aye is unusually tall for a man of Kemet, nearly six feet, where most are rarely more than five; in this he resembles his aging father, Yuya. He is a man whose visage in ordinary circumstances is almost as stern as it is on ceremonial occasions such as today; a man austere and somber—a man of state. I have talked to him directly only once, but even on that occasion, which one might have expected to be reasonably relaxed and friendly, there was no diminution of his remote and solemn manner. My immediate impression was that he simply adopts at all times a forbidding and indeed “stagy” aspect, seeking thereby to evoke an awe and deference men might not give him otherwise. I very soon concluded that this was too facile an explanation. Aye is solemn and thoughtful, careful and remote, because that is really the way Aye is; and the evidence of this is borne out by the fact that, of all men at Pharaoh’s Court, none wields more influence, both openly and in secret, than he.

Already he has succeeded Yuya as Master of the Horse; already he too refers to himself in his formal titularies as “one trusted by the Good God in the entire land … foremost of the companions of the King … praised by the Good God.” This flowery rhetoric, which I perceive to be standard in our land when men of importance refer to themselves, in his case, recognizes no more than fact. He is indeed foremost of the companions of Pharaoh the King, he is indeed trusted, praised and given power in some ways equal, though often more indirect, to that of the Vizier Ramose himself. In relation to Ramose and all the rest, he has one paramount advantage: he is brother of Tiye and brother-in-law to Pharaoh. But in Kemet, where men are amazingly well judged on what they can actually do, and where the lowliest in origin can rise upward rapidly through the society if he has the ability, this would not be enough to take Aye so far if he did not deserve it. He is, I have concluded respectfully already, a very wise, very perceptive, very farseeing, and very patient man.

Today he gives no sign whatsoever of the fact that intrigues the whole land: That his wife also lies in labor in their modest villa inside the Palace walls. Should it be a son, the House of Thebes will someday have another good servant to thank, along with Aye and Yuya, for its successes. Should it be a daughter, a destiny much greater may await. Twice, in Mutemwiya and in Tiye, the family of Aye has produced queens for Kemet. May it not do so sometime soon again?

None of this shadows the thin face, high cheekbones and level, intelligent eyes of the Councilor as he stands like a statue in his barge, nearing the dock at Karnak in front of the avenue of priests. For him, too, the people call out, and the sound that accompanies his progress is great. But for him there is not the affection they gave to Mutemwiya, the fond reception they accorded Sitamon and, with a good-natured generosity, extended also to unhappy Gilukhipa. There is more of solemnity in the cries they give for Aye. He is not liked in the way others are liked, for no man so austere and so obviously enwrapped in his own thoughts—Aye’s thinking, as my friend Amonhotep the Scribe put it to me, is louder than most men’s conversation—can ever evoke quite the unrestrained popular response given to others. He thinks, and he makes people think when they see him: in the presence of such an obvious intelligence, a deep respect, tinged not a little with awe, is all that he can expect. It is what he gets, in a greeting that accompanies him to the landing and then ceases, as abruptly and as dutifully as it began when his barge took water fifteen minutes ago upriver at Malkata.

And then suddenly, far off but heavy and insistent like the noise of some great reverent sea, a sea whose waves sound for no one else so profoundly, solemnly yet joyously as they do for him, the unmistakable noise begins and grows until it seems to envelop the universe. From Malkata the final barge has set out, and no one anywhere in all the world could have slightest doubt of who it carries.

The One Who Lives in the Great House, Strong-Bull-Appearing-As-Justice, Lord of the Two Lands, Establishing-Justice-and-Causing-the-Two-Lands-to-Be-Pacified, Horus of Gold, Mighty-of-Arm-When-He-Smites-the-Asiatics, King of Upper and Lower Kemet, Lord of Truth Like Ra, Son of the Sun, Ruler of Thebes, Given Life, the Pharaoh—Amonhotep III (life, health, prosperity!) comes.

Now the world splits wide with sound, the earth trembles, the skies are rent, the Sun looks down upon his Son with happiness and all of Kemet rejoices, united in one heart, one mind, one dream of unchanging order that has already managed to survive for nearly two thousand years and will go on into the future, as we say, forever and ever.

I find my eyes are wet with tears, I am shouting like the rest, at my side my friend is similarly overcome. It is impossible not to be moved as Pharaoh approaches. Yet even as I tremble, some cold, small machine inside continues to observe: I too am perceptive, farseeing, and patient, and soon I too hope to be wise with what I learn in Thebes.

So as his barge—not plated with electrum like the others, but, as befits Pharaoh, all in gold—comes slowly, slowly down the Nile, the oarsmen aiding the current with deliberate cadenced strokes in response to the rhythmic cries of the helmsman, the six trumpeters along each side of the craft sounding triumphant blasts from their long golden instruments at regular intervals, the long thin streamers, scarlet, blue and gold, flying from the golden canopy over the golden throne, everything glitter, everything gold, I study Amonhotep III (life, health, prosperity!), ninth Pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty to rule the land of Kemet.

I am thrilled by the presence of the God: but I analyze the man. In this I think my father might be proud of me, though he could never admit it, of course, for to analyze the God aloud, or to let it be known to anyone that you are doing it, is treason and sufficient to bring death if discovered. Only Amonhotep the Scribe, noting my shrewd eyes searching through their emotional tears, realizes, I think; and already I think Amonhotep the Scribe is a true friend of mine, who will not tell. He thinks I have “ends” to seek in Kemet, and already I feel he is beginning to take an active and encouraging role in them, though I myself am not even sure yet what they might be.

The great barge begins its final approach down the channel to Karnak. And all the world cracks wide with sound … for what?

I see a small, brown, stocky, round-faced man in his twenty-second year, his height, perhaps five feet two inches, more characteristic of the country than Aye’s tallness.

To cover his naked skull he too wears the formal wig, its two pendant flaps descending on each side to rest upon his chest, the whole draped with a striped cloth of gold bound around his head. On his chin he wears the narrow-cut, false beard of ceremony, a traditional regal anomaly in clean-shaven Kemet. Over all is the round, domed Blue Crown of the Two Kingdoms, made of leather, and studded with gold sequins. It is encircled by the uraeus—in his case, not one but three cobras, poised to strike his enemies—the cobra being the emblem of the goddess Buto, patroness of Lower Kemet, who in turn is associated with the vulture goddess Nekhebet, patroness of Upper Kemet, thereby symbolizing the union of the Two Kingdoms. (The gods and goddesses of Kemet are another subject. Intelligent though I am, I shall have to study that one for quite some time before I can even begin to understand its endless ramifications!) Behind the cobras is the disk of the Sun, which is known here under various names in its various forms—as “Re,” “Ra,” “Re-Herakhty,” most importantly, “Amon”—and of late, with increasing emphasis, particularly in the royal House, “The Aten.”