Casting the Gods Adrift Read online

  Then the king’s courtier led Father, Ibrim and me over the King’s Bridge and directly to the Temple of Aten the sun. The courtier told us it was not like any other temple. It was not some gloomy secretive cave of a building, with looming statues and inner rooms where the priests communed mysteriously with images of the gods. This temple was open to the sun. ‘There are no roofs to the temples of Aten. They are open to the rays of Aten, as every heart is open to His eyes,’ said our guide in a bored, slightly routine way, as if he had said it many times before. He told us that the altars – there were many of them, either to Aten or to the divine pharaoh himself – were piled with fruit and flowers, and the walls were painted with the rays of the sun, each ray ending in a hand. I could feel the sun shining on the top of my head. I could feel the painted hands emptying blessings on my head. I was going to be a craftsman – a sculptor! – a maker of beautiful things for the beautiful daughters of Akhenaten! I was the happiest boy alive.

  ‘But where are the other temples?’ said Father, and there was a strange, strained quality to his voice. ‘My boys must ask the priests to perform a thanks-offering ritual to the great baboon-god Thoth. Their life is preserved by the goodness of Thoth.’

  ‘There is no god but Aten the sun,’ said our escort, haughty as an ostrich. ‘There are no other temples in el-Amarna. Aten the sun and our own god-king Akhenaten rule here. Is the news so slow to travel throughout their kingdom?’

  ‘I had heard something of the kind,’ said my father guardedly.

  ‘So it shall be, as it is here, from end to end of the Nile. One god, just as there is one sun.’

  Ibrim took hold of my hand. The floor was patterned, and he did not feel safe walking across it, for fear there were steps he could not see. ‘I want to ask a priest to put an offering on his altar. On Akhenaten’s altar,’ he whispered to me. I could see from his face that he was as happy as I at the way things were turning out. ‘But I only have the elephant you gave me. Everything else was lost with the boat.’

  ‘Give it,’ I said, brimming over with joy. ‘I can make you something else. Soon I’ll be able to make you anything! I’ll be the best craftsman in all Egypt!’ I led him over to a priest, and Ibrim took the elephant out of a little shoulder bag which hung, still river-sodden, against his dry clothes. We asked if it could be laid, with two figs, on an altar to Akhenaten.

  On the wall beside us, a huge depiction of the pharaoh looked benignly down upon us. He was wearing the full panoply of kingship; the blue cobra crown, the crook and flail of kingly power crossed on his chest. The face looked pleased, gratified.

  The heat bounded off the high, bright walls, redoubling like an echo. We sweated joy, my brother and I.

  No more than a few steps from the temple, the courtier jerked his head abruptly at a house. ‘You may stay here, since it is the pharaoh’s wish,’ he said grudgingly and, duty done, he scurried back to the palace.

  ‘Isn’t it wonderful, Father?’ I burst out, dancing around, shaking my hands in the air. ‘Music for Ibrim, and I shall be a sculptor! In the pharaoh’s own workshops!’ But even as I said it, I knew that somehow I was throwing straws on a fire, fuelling my father’s rage, making his eyes bulge with pent-up fury.

  Father was not overjoyed. He was on the verge of cursing or bursting into tears.

  4

  Man of Gold

  ‘What? Am I to collect animals to decorate a room? To entertain babies? For slaves to walk them on a lead?’

  Ibrim pressed himself against me. I put an arm around his shoulders, but we were reeds in front of a howling wind. I had never seen my father so angry.

  ‘Are there to be no temples for my crocodiles? Are my baboons to be given no sacred burial?’

  Ibrim began to whimper. Foolishly, I said, ‘I don’t know, Father.’

  He bent down to yell into my face, ‘My animals are the embodiment of the gods! Does this serpent-demon think he can overturn the Ship of a Million Days? Does he think to cast the gods adrift – to spill them back into the ocean of nothingness and drown them? His father, Amenhotep, may his name live for ever, was chosen by the gods to be pharaoh over Egypt! And does his son deny that the gods exist?’ His hand reached out and snatched hold of the gold case strung around Ibrim’s neck. ‘If there is no Thoth, what good is this promise, eh? Who is protecting your brother’s life? Eh? Eh?’ And he let go so violently that the talisman flew up and hit Ibrim on the forehead.

  I barely understood what he was talking about – only that this same Akhenaten who, with a word, had made my dreams come true, loosed some terrible nightmare on my father. The god-king so eager to employ him was a traitor to his own kind. Father had no choice but to serve the new pharaoh. He was a god, after all. But as a believer in the many other gods – Hathor, Khon, Thoth, Anubis, Osiris, Amun-Ra – he was bound by religious duty to hate Pharaoh Akhenaten with all his might.

  ‘That’s no reason to be angry with us,’ I snivelled, after he had stalked away into the house and we could hear him kicking the furniture.

  ‘He’s not angry,’ said Ibrim, one hand closed round the golden talisman, the other against his forehead. ‘He’s scared.’

  Of course I told him he was a fool and said what did he know, and that he was too young to understand. But I knew he was probably right. Ibrim always is about things like that.

  Things soon righted themselves, for Father did not have to stay. We never had to suffer his terrible moods for long. He was always so soon gone again, south, upriver into Nubia and beyond, collecting more rare animals, trapping gorgeous birds. We stayed behind in el-Amarna this time, instead of going back to our old house. We did not miss our nagging, crabbed aunts. And we were happy.

  Do you think that’s strange? Do you think we should have been wondering and fretting about the number of gods in Heaven? Are you mad? We were boys. Little boys.

  Ibrim learned the seven-stringed harp and the hand lyre, and then he discovered the Syrian lyre. It was taller than he was, and had eight strings. But he took mastery of it like a man taking mastery of a syrup tree, and soon he could fetch music out of it sweeter than syrup.

  Me, I studied in the royal workshops. I was quick to learn – hungry to learn. Around me, everything was being made – the city sprawling outwards from the five palaces, the temples of Aten, the statues, the vases, the paintings were all new. There was a continuous noise of building, and the air was full of stonedust. A feeling of new opportunities existed here. Not like the feeling you get at Memphis, where the greatest achievements – the pyramids, the sphinxes, the colossal statues – were all made hundreds of years ago by people long dead; or at the Great Temple of Amun in Karnak.

  Perhaps because of the dramatic way we had met the pharaoh, he seemed to take a particular interest in Ibrim and me. We were allowed to play inside the palaces, so long as we did not enter the women’s quarters, and he even let us see the green room, where all the walls are painted to resemble the reed marshes, with birds flying upwards, and a pool painted on the floor. It was breathtaking.

  The third oldest of the princesses, Ankhesenpa-aten, was an artist, too, and she would sometimes come to the workshop to see things being made. I was the youngest person there, so I suppose she found it easiest to talk to me.

  ‘I like to paint,’ she told me, looking at me with her almond-shaped eyes, lids painted the same colour as the green room. ‘Mix me some paints, won’t you?’ And she set the ivory palette down in front of me. She could have asked me to cut out my heart and lay it on the palette. I would have done it without a murmur. She was the most beautiful creature I ever saw (apart from Queen Nefertiti herself).

  But I was better at painting than Ankhesenpa-aten. That was where our friendship began – with me teaching her how to use the little palm-fibre brush. We used to sit together on one of the cushioned window seats of the palace and talk about pigments and kohl, and which animal’s hair could be used for brushes, and whether there were any paintings in the West Country, the
country on the other side of Death.

  Consequently, I saw everything in their palace – the golden beds, the sunken baths and lavatories, the alabaster vases, the banqueting tables. We gorged on sweet figs, dates and pomegranates, and I told Ankhesenpa-aten my secrets and she told me hers. I think I must have told her even more than I told Ibrim (though I never spoke of Father and his rages). She tended to help herself to the things I had made, but I was more pleased than annoyed; it was a kind of praise. I thought I would be happy for ever.

  From time to time, Father arrived with a shipment of monkeys and cats and birds – and the whole royal family would gather to gaze out of the palace windows, the little princesses (there were six) pointing and squealing and the great queen laughing, and Father breaking off from checking his inventory to bow in their direction every now and then. I would see Pharaoh Akhenaten congratulate him, lay a hand on his shoulder and admire Father’s genius in capturing such splendid specimens. Father’s birds fluttered around the courtyard aviary of the Great Palace, and brought joy to the pharaoh every time he stopped to admire them.

  No one had forced Father to abandon his gods. True, there were no temples to Thoth or the creator-god Amun-Ra in el-Amarna. But further along the river, all the old religious customs were still being carried out, all the temples and shrines and places of pilgrimage still existed. Most of Egypt was going on as it had always done, its priests worshipping the same gods as their forefathers. Akhenaten had not banned the worship of other gods. So I could see no reason for my father to fret. None in the world.

  When I had mastered fine chisel work, I was put to work making cartouches – ovals with hieroglyphs inside them spelling out a particular royal name. I was entrusted with the carving of the queen’s cartouche – that’s how good I was. A hundred times and more I carved that lozenge: Nefernefruaten-Nefertiti – Beautiful are the Beauties of Aten – A Beautiful Woman is Come. And never once did I carve it without thinking of the queen’s face, more beautiful than any words, or any carving of a word.

  Even the memory of my own mother, who died when Ibrim was born, is not as beautiful to me as the thought of Queen Nefertiti. So tender, so serene, so marvellous in her tall blue crown snaked round with a golden cobra. The king adored her – carried her in his chariot when he rode out into the desert; took her in his papyrus skiff down to the reed marshes; shared his glory equally with her when he was carried shoulder-high through el-Amarna on a palanquin of dazzling electrum, fanned with ostrich-feather fans.

  The whole world was in awe of the pharaoh and his great queen that year, and I more than anyone. Father brought home from Assyria a tamed lion, with fur of pale gold and a mane of black flecked with silvery gold. Electrum the Lion, we called it. Pharaoh Akhenaten walked the beast on a red leather leash through the five palaces, beaming with satisfaction as he did so. Then he stroked my father on the back (as one might a lion) and told him, ‘For this and for all your loyal efforts, I shall make you a Man of Gold!’

  I thought nothing could ever cloud my happiness. What did it matter if there was one god or a whole shipful? My father was to be a Man of Gold, the highest honour conferred on an official of the pharaoh’s court. Surely even father must be won round by such an honour?

  On the day of the ceremony, the two oldest princesses stood by their father holding golden collars piled on a scarlet cushion. Ankhesenpa-aten held a golden tray, and stood on the other side of the throne. As each chosen Man of Gold approached the dais, a herald spoke aloud the great service they had done to the pharaoh and to Aten. The king presented the collars, and the queen took from the golden tray a pair of red leather gloves, and presented them as well.

  I had to describe it all to Ibrim; his sight had left him altogether now and plunged him into a sunless dark full of music and incense and the noise of building. But despite his blindness, he was happy that day. Who would not be?

  ‘What did he say to you, Father? What did the pharaoh say?’

  The collar of gold strips hinged with leather seemed to weigh heavily on Father, hollowing his chest, rounding his shoulders. ‘He offered me a boon. Any boon within his power to grant.’

  ‘What did you ask for, Father?’ said Ibrim, leaping up and down, hanging on to one scarlet-gloved hand.

  ‘I asked to attend the Festival of Opet with my family.’

  I knew it, of course I did. It was a big religious festival. But I felt a clammy hand grip my guts. It was not the most tactful thing my father could have asked for, after all – to attend a festival in honour of a god other than Aten. ‘Oh, and did he grant it?’ I asked.

  ‘He says there will be no Festival of Opet this year,’ said Father, in a voice I did not recognise – choked, almost strangled to a whisper. ‘Nor even the Festival of Osiris. He is closing down the temples of all the gods but Aten the sun.’

  Even I was shocked. What would happen if Akhenaten succeeded in driving the gods out of Heaven? Wouldn’t times of catastrophe and disaster begin? I automatically threw a nervous glance towards the river. I couldn’t help it. That was where Set lived, the demon-hippopotamus bent on devouring Egypt. Without the god Horus to subdue him with magic harpoons, wouldn’t Set surface and begin to devour my world? Would Osiris, unworshipped, withdraw his gift of life-after-death and refuse to receive the souls of those who died? Would the great snake Apep beneath the earth rear up its head one day soon, to see the Ship of a Million Days floating by empty, adrift, no one aboard. For the first time, I tasted some of the fear that had been tormenting my father.

  ‘All Egypt is to worship Aten as the only god,’ Father was saying, his voice shrill with sarcasm. ‘It is the will of Aten. That is what he said to me.’ He was a man bereft. His gods had been turned out-of-doors, exiled, cast adrift in their open boat to die. I saw there were tears in his eyes. I saw how he raised a hand to brush them away, and was met by the sight of a red glove.

  If he had found a scorpion there, a finger’s breadth from his face, I don’t believe he would have reacted any differently. He flung his hand away from him so sharply that the glove flew through the air to land on a stack of drying bricks. I ran to fetch it and hugged it to me – a gift from a god to a mortal man. How many boys ever held such a thing? But when I went back to father and Ibrim, I held it out of sight, behind my back, so that Father should not have to take it back.

  I had bad dreams that night. I had bad dreams many nights after that. I dreamed that I was in a reed boat, and a hippopotamus erupted out of the river ahead of me, gaping its mouth so wide I could see right down its gullet to the fires burning inside. I threw a harpoon, but it just glanced off the wet, black, rubbery hide, and the beast still came on, chewing up the prow with those blunt, stubby teeth, rending the boat into shreds to get at me, to devour me—

  I woke up screaming, and my father came to me, his eyes unnaturally bright in the darkness.

  ‘What did you dream, boy? What?’

  Something kept me from telling him. I claimed that my nightmare had gone, in waking; he could not know any different. But I did want him to sit down on the edge of the bed, to stay and chat about nothing very much, until the fright left me – to show me I was safe in el-Amarna, in the house of a Man of Gold. He did indeed sit down on my bed, and lean his face down close to mine.

  Then he whispered, ‘Do you know what becomes of the servants of the enemies of the gods, boy? Do you? They die a second death and are eaten, through all eternity, by monsters in the Underworld.’

  ‘I serve all the gods, Father! All of them! Truly!’

  ‘Ah, but we all belong to Akhenaten, don’t we? All Egypt belongs to Akhenaten. Every soul in it. He will take us with him, boy, I see it. The king will take us all down to the Underworld, you see if he doesn’t. Monsters, boy! Foul monsters!’

  With that he left me, stumping back to bed, muttering, chanting, praying; I don’t know which.

  Yes, I had a good many nightmares after that.

  5

  The Red Country
r />   Some of the things made in the royal workshops were for the palaces: a bath lined in smooth limestone, hassocks for the seats, carved beds with legs like lion paws and gilded with gold leaf.

  But most of the things we made were for the afterlife. It is not so hard for us mortals. We have little to call our own in this life, so we don’t have to take much with us – a pair of sandals, a loaf of bread, a few beads, perhaps. But a pharaoh! He needs everything, and everything he needs must be perfect, beautiful, worthy of a god. All life long, his craftsmen must make things for his tomb: cups, skiffs, make-up, games, clothes, pets, crowns, musical instruments – everything.

  Having so much treasured up, he then has to keep his treasure safe from thieves, and his tomb, as well as being a point of departure for the heavens, has to be secure. Even the mighty pyramids had not proved impregnable. Better to carve a tomb out of solid rock somewhere secret, somewhere no one but the sun’s rays will find it. Akhenaten decided to build his tomb out in the Red Country, the desert beyond the green of the Nile valley.

  The Red Country is a really sinister, scary place, unblessed by the holy Nile. Nothing chooses to grow there, and the wind raises spectral shapes out of the dust, like running men. Strange place to build a tomb, where everything sweet in life springs from the watered places. But that is where Akhenaten decided to build his ‘House of Eternity’; his starting point for the journey to the afterlife. And we went with him, Father and I, the day he decided to visit the site. That’s how trusted we had become.

  We rode out in chariots, but the charioteer would not let me hold the reins. Father was fretful and tetchy. He kept saying, ‘Why has he asked us? Why is he showing us this tedious place?’ I was just anxious to hold the reins.

  The Red Country was not for us, not for our family. Father had purchased a grave site at Abydos. Though it had cost him his life savings, and had to be kept secret from the king, he felt much, much safer now, knowing that in death, he was better provided for than the king. Abydos, city of tombs, had grown up on the banks of the Nile on the very spot where the goddess Isis magically raised her husband Osiris from the dead and taught mortals the secrets of eternal life. Anyone buried in Abydos will be raised to life just like Osiris. Of course only the richest can afford to be buried there, but even quite poor people set up stelae, burial posts carved with their names, so that Osiris won’t forget them. No, this red, dusty place was not for us. Not Harkhuf’s family.