The Season of the Hyaena (Ancient Egyptian Mysteries) (32 page)

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Authors: Paul Doherty

BOOK: The Season of the Hyaena (Ancient Egyptian Mysteries)
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‘Oppression, agony and fear haunt me,’ he’d shout. ‘The demons have frustrated my desires. I have sinned. I am sick, my sins are many and my faults are grave.’
He would sit staring down the throne room, lips moving as if talking to beings we could not see. He’d then recover and start screaming, ‘What have I done? What have I done?’
At times we became frightened that he was possessed or that his true soul had left his body. The plague came, sweeping into the city like the Angel of Death, dealing out retribution and suffering on every side. The Divine One saw this as a curse, and his dejection deepened. He would kneel and pray, screaming for us priests to gather around him
He fell into the darkness and we thought he would either remain so or do himself an injury. He’d later recover and crouch on his throne, nibbling his fingers like a frightened child. Weeks passed into months. Sometimes he would neglect to wash or shave, driving away his servants with blows and curses.
During the sowing season of that same year, we became aware of others in the palace, at first nothing more than dark shapes and shadows, men out of the desert. The Imperial Guard were dismissed and these newcomers took up positions. This lasted for at least a month before they too disappeared. The Imperial Guard were ordered to return and we were allowed into the Divine One’s presence so he could show us his face. We found him calm upon his throne. He issued a proclamation, which startled us all: Nefertiti was to be restored. My lord Meryre, summoning up his courage, asked if others of the Royal Circle would be assembled, but Akenhaten rejected this. God’s Father, the Lord Ay, he replied quietly, would deal with them.
His Great Queen Nefertiti was brought to him. She arrived gowned, beautifully adorned, and knelt as a suppliant at his feet. On that day, and for the following days, she stayed alone with him. When we were summoned once again to his presence, Akenhaten was calmer. Nefertiti now shared his bed and throne, his lamentations grew less, and he took to sifting a set of amber turquoise beads. As time passed Nefertiti’s power became more apparent. She was declared regent. Cold and imperious, she took to shaving her head and dressing herself in the garb of Pharaoh. Whilst her status and glory increased, Akenhaten’s diminished. He drew apart from his Queen and from us, as if his former madness was a filthy robe he had shrugged off. He grew concerned with maps, charts and stars. He would also pray, not in the Temple of the Aten but alone in his own private chamber. If he sacrificed, it was not the blood of lambs or bulls, but grains of incense sprinkled over a brazier of fire. The Divine One also resumed hunting trips, often going out into the Red Lands alone.
One day, just after the New Year, when the Dog Star could be clearly seen high in the heavens and the white ibis had returned to the banks of the Nile to show the inundation was imminent, Akenhaten returned from a hunting trip. He was accompanied by what we thought were mere sand-dwellers, desert wanderers, in their striped robes with bushy hair and beards. My lord Meryre’s spies reported that these were the same who had often visited the Divine One as a boy and whose presence in the Palace had been noticed earlier. They came with no proclamation or trumpets, no pomp or ceremony, but soft as the wind, slipping down the tracks and paths of the eastern limestone cliffs into the City of the Aten. Lord Ay and officers of the Imperial Guard were under strict instruction: these visitors were the Pharaoh’s friends; they were to be welcomed and allowed into his presence without fear or trouble. Their leader was Yakoub, a tall, fierce-looking warrior, though he was friendly enough.
As the year progressed, the Divine One allowed these visitors to mingle freely with his priests. Yakoub was a great storyteller, a man who knew the deserts like the palm of his hand. He told me how he and his kin were of the tribe of Israar, a sect of the Apiru who, many years ago, had come from the western hill country of Canaan, travelling south into Egypt. Some of their tribe had settled in the Delta area, where they had become skilled stonemasons. Others had remained tending their flocks, moving along that lonely part of Egypt between the Black Lands and the Red Lands of the desert. He claimed how the Great Queen Tiye, wife of Amenhotep the Magnificent and mother of Akenhaten, was the descendant of their tribe. He boasted how others in the service of the Divine One, such as Djarka, servant of my lord Mahu, Chief of Police and Overseer of the House of Secrets, was also of them. Yakoub would share wine and break bread with us. He’d talk of his mysterious God whose name cannot be uttered, about how a Temu or Aput, a Messenger God or Messiah, was prophesied to come from his tribe.
During this time, the Divine One’s recovery improved. Serene and calm, he took to washing and purifying himself, whilst the business of the palace and the city was left to Nefertiti and others of the Royal Circle. However, one thing did alarm the Lord Meryre. Yakoub and his people were being paid direct from the Divine One’s
per hatch
, the household treasury. At first Lord Meryre thought these were bribes; he later became convinced that the Divine One’s companions were actually moving royal treasure out into the Red Lands. The High Priest, virtually excluded from Akenhaten’s presence and no longer consulted over rites and liturgy, became alarmed at the secretiveness of our divine master. Meryre often gathered myself, Djoser and the other priests for secret counsel. He made us swear an oath of loyalty to him declaring how others of the Royal Circle could no longer be trusted, that something was about to happen and we should prepare ourselves against the evil day. Eventually, one morning, when Akenhaten was in the Window of Appearances greeting the rising sun, Meryre demanded an audience. We were ushered into the imperial presence, but Akenhaten remained kneeling, keeping his back to us as if he didn’t care if we came, went or stayed. Lord Meryre, deeply insulted, was about to withdraw.
‘Why do you leave, my lord Meryre?’ Akenhaten’s voice was strong and clear.
When we turned in the doorway, Pharaoh no longer had his back to us but was squatting cross-legged. He was dressed only in a loincloth, with a thin linen shawl about his shoulders. His head and face were shaved and oiled, and the lines of worry about his eyes and mouth had disappeared.
‘You may, if you wish,’ he smiled and gestured, ‘come and speak to me.’
‘Perhaps,’ Meryre retorted, ‘we should be joined by your Great Queen and God’s Father Ay?’
The smile disappeared from Akenhaten’s face.
‘You must have wondered what happened to me, my lord Meryre. Come, be seated and I shall tell you. For my time with you is short.’
Alarmed and intrigued, Meryre, Djoser and I knelt before him.
‘Do not mention to me,’ Akenhaten’s head went down, his voice strong and echoing, ‘the Batiui, those red-haired devils of Akhmin, those fiends, those creatures of abomination who do not speak, and have not spoken, with true voice.’
The Divine One’s eyes rolled back in his head. He stretched out his hands. I thought he was having a fit.
‘My lord, what is the matter?’ Meryre demanded.
‘When you mentioned their names,’ Akenhaten’s eyes were now closed, ‘bloodstained phantoms surrounded me. I hear rushing and roaring like that of a powerful wind.’
‘But my lord,’ Meryre whispered, ‘the palace is silent. The morning sky is darkening over.’
‘It is my heart which speaks.’ Akenhaten kept his eyes closed. ‘I leave the things of the evil one and my heart travels. The rushing and roaring must be the wind blowing through the tops of lofty cedars.’
‘But my lord,’ Meryre insisted, ‘there are no cedars in the City of the Aten.’
‘I am here,’ Akenhaten sighed, ‘but my heart is in a place where cedars grow. I tire of this place. I have had visions of a city and the glory of Egypt as nothing more than lumpish grey mounds of clay cracked by the sun, scored by the rains. This city as a dark smudge on a wasteland of sand.’
‘Your Majesty,’ Meryre asked, ‘has Your Majesty been given a vision of the future?’
‘I have lived in visions in the darkness of the night. I have seen the shadows shift. I have been in the
tertrati iati
, the landscape of the night. I have had a taste of things to come: a dream about the power of the One and the future of Egypt.’ He put his hands over his face, then opened them, keeping them by the sides of his face like a veil. ‘Open are the double doors of the Far Horizon,’ he intoned. ‘Unlocked are its bolts. The divine cause is clear, though storms darken the sky. The stars rain down, the bones of beasts tremble. The demons are silent. I shall not die on this earth.’
‘Your Majesty,’ Meryre insisted, ‘if you have seen visions of the future, you must share them with us, leave your wisdom to your own son! Can we not,’ he hurried on, ‘take down your writings, convey your teachings to others?’
‘I would speak but they would not listen. I would tell but they would not understand. I would write but they would not learn. I would sing but they would turn away.’ Akenhaten’s shoulders slumped. ‘And as for my son,’ his eyes brimmed with tears, ‘or he who has been proclaimed my son … I have left my wisdom in the custody of the Watchers.’
‘Who are the Watchers?’ Meryre demanded.
‘When I go to my place,’ Akenhaten replied, ‘and if it be the will of God, my son will receive my wisdom. Until then …’
‘Your Majesty, what will happen to us?’
‘Each man follows his path, but where I go, you cannot come. When I am gone you shall long for me and search for me but you will not find me in my new place, in the mansion of my own making.’
‘And where is this?’ Meryre questioned.
Akenhaten opened his eyes, staring at us; his gaze was as fierce as a lion. ‘I wish to go, I am already in the land of no return.’
‘Why should you go there, my lord?’
‘Because I have striven after evil. I have transgressed the bounds of righteousness.’
Oh, my lord Mahu, I speak the truth. In that chamber I felt a sudden dread, the chill of fear. The sky was darkening with storm clouds. Djoser, to ease the tension, made some reference to this.
‘I am glad the clouds have come.’ Akenhaten smiled. ‘They will bring the rain, they will wash away the demons of the south-western winds.’
‘Who are these demons?’ Meryre asked.
Akenhaten gazed at a point above our heads.
‘They are seven in all. Yes, in the hollows of the great abyss lurk the seven, that’s what I have been told. They are neither male nor female. They take no wives, they beget no children. These demons of the seven know neither pity nor kindness. They do not listen to prayer or supplication; they are the messengers of death and the servants of the Devourer. If they meet a man like me, with whom God is angry, they fall on him like a lion takes a gazelle. They fill both his soul and body with poison. They bind his hands, they tie his feet and claw his sides.’
‘Have you seen these demons?’ Meryre asked.
‘They are skeletons who gather around my throne and bed. Red hair sprouts from their skulls; black wings conceal their hideousness; great flat hands stretch at the end of long arms. They take my body and claw my flesh.’ He gripped his stomach. ‘Like eagles’ talons, they grasp my heart and grind it like meal.’
‘And how do you combat them?’ Meryre was genuinely interested. He had often confided how he wished he possessed the power of an exorcist, the skill to drive out demons.
‘I called the priests of Apiru,’ Akenhaten confessed. ‘They sacrificed a lamb and daubed my body with its blood. They gave me powders to eat, to plunge my heart into a deep sleep. In my dreams I saw the demons, a howling, hideous throng who pay court to the Fetcher of Death.’ Akenhaten smiled. ‘When I woke, the demons had gone. My heart was purified. So do not threaten me, my lord Meryre, with bringing the red-haired ones here. I do not wish their presence.’
The High Priest was much dismayed and sought an immediate audience with the Lord Ay and the Great Queen Nefertiti. I was present at that interview. Lord Ay, anxious-faced, discussed the many possibilities, including that Akenhaten might be planning his own death. The Great Queen remained pale-faced and tight-lipped with fury. Although Nefertiti had been restored to favour, she, the Lord Ay and others of the Royal Circle were now banned from the imperial presence. At the end of the meeting Lord Ay concluded that I should be sent back to discuss certain possibilities with the Divine One.
I did so, expecting to be turned away, but Akenhaten graciously allowed me into his presence. He was now robed, an embroidered sash around his waist, a simple collar of gold about his neck. He was seated before a table. I remember the smell of cooking, of roast duck highly spiced. He offered to share this with me but I was too dry-tongued and frightened to eat.
‘Are you timid?’ Akenhaten asked. ‘Shall I tell you something, Khufu? My Great Queen and her wily father, for the first time in their lives, are truly frightened of me. They thought I was clay in their hands and that they could mould me. They cannot. They have failed in their true mission. It was they who led me from the path of righteousness.’
‘My lord,’ I dared to whisper, ‘you talk as if you are about to leave us. What about your baby son?’
‘I am always leaving you, Khufu, and as for my son, I shall share with you a great secret. For every secret must have a witness. Do you know why I banned the Great Queen from my presence? Because she dared to threaten my infant son! And do you know why she has been restored?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Because she had taken a blood oath by earth and sky that neither she, nor any of hers, shall lift a hand against him.’

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