Akhnaton, King of Egypt

by Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky

I

I, Akhnaton Uaenra, the Joy of the Sun, the only Son of the Sun, speak thus: here will I build a city in the name of Aton, my Father, for it was none other than He brought me to Akhetaton, his portion from all eternity. There was not any man in the whole land who led me to it, saying 'build a city here,' but my heavenly Father has said it. This land belongs not to a god nor to a goddess, not to a prince nor to a princess, but only to Aton, my Father. May the City of God thrive like the sun in heaven. Behold, I raise my hand and swear: I will not pass beyond the boundary of this domain, which Aton has himself desired and fenced in with his hills, and with which He is pleased for ever and ever!"

This inscription was cut in the thickness of the rocks, north, south, east and west of the city of Akhetaton, on fourteen flat boundary stones, which marked the portion of Aton, the kingdom of God upon earth. They were fourteen according to the fourteen parts of the dismembered body of Osiris, the Great Victim, for King Akhnaton was himself the second Osiris.

In the fourth year of his reign he had abandoned the ancient capital of Egypt, Nut Amon or Thebes, and founded a new one.

The city was built with such haste that the newly erected walls were showing cracks; the cracks were patched up with clay and the building carried on. Experienced architects merely shook their heads, remembering the old saying: 'to build in a hurry means no end of worry.'

The king's exchequer was growing empty; innumerable stores of treasure, plundered from the temples of Amon, were being spent; tens of thousands of workmen were driven to Akhetaton from all parts of Egypt; they worked even at night, by torchlight. And the miracle had taken place; within ten years a new city had grown up in the desert; so does the pink lotos, nekheb, break into flower during the night and appear above the water in the morning; so does a beautiful mirage rise over the shimmering heat of the desert; but the water flows away and the lotos fades; the wind blows and the mirage is gone.

Dio came to Akhetaton five days before the great festival, the twelfth anniversary of the city's foundation, coinciding with the day of Aton's nativity, the winter solstice, when the 'little sun,' the baby god Osiris-Sokkaris, rises from the dead and is born. She was to dance before the king for the first time at that festival.

Tuta had intended to present her at court as soon as they arrived, but she did not wish it and he gave way; he gave way to her in everything, waiting upon her wishes; it was evident that she was for him a big stake in a big game; he was bargaining over 'the Pearl of the Seas' like a clever merchant

He was soon comforted for his bad luck in Thebes. While still on the journey he received good news from his friends at court who had done their best for him and gave the king such a version of the rising that Tuta's weakness appeared as mercy, his cowardice as love of peace: he ran away from the battlefield, they said, because he remembered that 'peace was better than war.'

Dio spent the five days before the festival in Tuta's house near the temple of Aton, preparing for the dance. She did not go out nor show herself to anyone in the daytime, but at night she went up to the flat roof of the temple where she was to dance. She practiced there herself and taught others.

The day before the feast she was sitting alone, late in the evening, in the newly decorated room of Tuta's summer house; he and his wife, the king's daughter Ankhsenbatona, or Ankhi, lived in the winter house. The smell of fresh paint and plaster came from the still unfinished part of the house, where in the daytime masons, carpenters and painters were at work. It seemed to Dio that the whole town was pervaded by this smell.

Red pillars with green garlands of palm leaves supported the sky-blue ceiling. The white walls were decorated with a delicate design of yellow butterflies, fluttering over fine seaweed.

The freshness of a winter evening came through the long, narrow stone-trellised windows, right up by the ceiling. Sitting on a low couch—a brick platform covered with rugs and cushions—Dio, wrapped up in her Cretan wolf-fur, was warming herself by the hearth—an earthenware platter of hot embers.

"To-morrow I shall see him," she thought with fear. She had begun to be afraid on the very first day she arrived, and grew more so as time went oh; and on this last night before the meeting such fear possessed her that she felt she might run away if she did not control herself. She went hot and cold at the thought that the next day she was to dance before the king. "My legs will give way under me, I shall stumble, fall flat, disgrace poor Tuta!" she laughed, as though to make her fear worse.

In the depth of the room two sanctuary lamps were hanging in two niches decorated with alabaster bas-reliefs of the king on the left and the queen on the right. The wall space between them was covered with rows of turquoise blue hieroglyphics on golden yellow ground, glorifying the god Aton.

Dio got up, and going to the niche on the left, looked at the bas-relief of the king standing at an altar. He was raising two round sacrificial loaves, one on each palm, towards the Sun. The enormously tall royal tiara, tapering to a point, seemed too heavy for the childish head on the slender neck, flexible like the stem of a flower. The childish face was irregular, with a receding forehead and a protruding mouth. The charm of his naked body was like that of a flower that had just opened and was already fading with the heat:

"Thou art the flower uprooted from the ground,
Thou art the plant unmoistened by running water."

Dio recalled the song of weeping for the dead god Tammuz.

The neck, the shoulders, the hands, the calves and the ankles were slender and narrow like those of a boy of ten, but the hips were wide like a woman's and the breasts too full: neither he nor she—he and she at the same time—a marvel of god-like beauty.

On Mount Dicte in the Island of Crete, Dio had heard an ancient legend: in the beginning man and woman were one body with two faces; but the Lord cut their body in two and gave to each a spinal cord; 'that's how people cut eggs in two with a hair for pickling,' old Mother Akakalla, the prophetess, used to add with a queer, uncanny laugh when she told this legend in Dio's ear.

"The hair could not have passed right through his body," she thought, looking at the King's image, and she recalled the prophecy: "the kingdom of God shall come when the two shall be one, and male shall be female and there shall be neither male nor female."

She knelt down and stretched out her arms to the marvel of godlike charm.

"My brother, my sister, the two horned moon, the double-edged axe, my lover, my loved one!" she whispered devoutly.

A whiff of wind came from the window; the flame of the lamp flickered, the outline of the figure grew dim and through the marvel the monster peered—neither old nor young, neither man nor woman, a eunuch, a decrepit babe, the horror of Gem-Aton.

"Go to him then, the seducer, the son of perdition, the devil," the voice of Ptamose sounded over her and she buried her face in her hands, terrified.

At the same moment she felt that someone was standing behind her; she turned round and saw a little girl.

A robe, transparent like running water, fell in flowing folds over the slender body. The over-dress had come open in front and the amber-brown skin could be seen through the shift worn underneath. The girl wore on her head a huge shiny black wig of tightly plaited tresses cut evenly round the edge. A tiny talc cup, turned upside down and filled with the kemi ointment made up of seven perfumes—the royal ointment—was fixed on the top of the head. Slowly melting with the warmth of the body it dropped like fragrant dew on the hair, face and clothes. The long stem of a pink lotos was thrust through a hole in the cup in such a way that the half-open flower, with a sweet smell of anise, hung over the forehead.

The girl was about twelve years old. The childish face was charming though irregular, with a protruding mouth and a receding forehead; the large slightly squinting eyes had a fixed heavy look such as one sees in the eyes of an epileptic.

At one moment she seemed a child, at another a woman; there was something pathetic and charming in this elusive twilight between childhood and womanhood. She was a half-open bud like the rosy lotos nekheb over her forehead, fragrant with the freshness of water; it closes its petals and shortens its stem at night as it hides under the water and when, in the morning, it comes up again and opens its chalice, a golden winged beetle flies out of it—Horus, the newly-born god of the Sun.

The little girl appeared so suddenly, so like a phantom that Dio looked at her almost in fear. Both were silent for a second.

"Dio?" the visitor asked at last.

"Yes. And who are you?"

She made no answer; but raising her left eyebrow and shrugging her shoulders, asked again:

"What were you doing here? Praying?"

"No .... simply looking at the figure...."

"But why were you kneeling, then?"

Dio blushed in confusion. The child lifted her eyebrow again and shrugged her shoulders.

"You don't want to tell me? Very well, don't."

She went up to the couch and picked up from it the gazelle skin which she had taken off when she came into the room.

"It is cold and damp in your room. You don't know how to keep a fire in," she said, wrapping herself up. "Well, aren't you going to say anything? I want to talk to you."

She sat on the couch in the Egyptian fashion, clasping her knees with her hands and resting her chin on them. Dio sat down beside her.

"You don't know yet who I am?" asked the child, fixing her heavy gaze upon Dio.

"I don't."

"His wife."

"Whose wife?"

"Are you pretending, or what?"

"The princess?" Dio guessed suddenly.

"Thank heaven, at last!" said the visitor. "Well, why do you sit and stare at me?"

"Why, what's wrong?"

"What's wrong? The king's daughter, a child of the Sun, is before you and it doesn't occur to you to make the slightest bow?"

Dio smiled and knelt before her on the couch, as a grown up person kneels before a child to caress it.

"Rejoice, Princess Ankhsenbatona, my dear, welcome guest!" she said with all her heart and was about to kiss the princess's hand, when the girl quickly drew it away.

"There, now she is grabbing my hand! Is that the way to bow to royalty?"

"Isn't it?"

"You should bow down to the ground! Well, I don't care, I don't want your bows, sit down.... Wait a minute though!"

She also knelt suddenly in front of Dio.

"Turn to the light, please; that's it!"

Dio turned her face to the lamp that stood on the floor by the couch—a flower of blue glass on a high alabaster stand. Ankhi approached her face to Dio's and with a business-like frown began to scrutinize her in silence.

"Yes, very beautiful," she whispered at last as though speaking to herself. "What rouge do you use?"

"I don't use any."

"What next?"

She licked her little finger and raising it to Dio's face asked:

"May I try?"

"Do."

Ankhi slowly moved her finger along Dio's cheek and looked to see if the tip of it was red. No, it was not red.

"Strange!" she said in surprise. "How old are you?"

"Twenty."

"How is it you are so young?"

"But twenty isn't old, is it?"

"Oh yes, it is with us. We are married at ten and grandmothers at thirty. But, of course, with you in the north everything is different: the sun makes people old and the cold keeps them young," she said complacently, evidently repeating somebody else's words.

She sat down in the same attitude as before, clasping her knees with her hands, and sank into thought.

"Why do you laugh?" she asked, again fixing her heavy gaze on Dio.

"I am not laughing, I am merely happy."

"What about?"

"I don't know. Simply because you have come."

"It's always 'simply' with you.... Do you imagine I am a little girl? .... What has he said to you about me?"

Dio understood that 'he' was Tuta.

"He said you were very clever and a beauty and that he loved you more than anything in the world."

"Nonsense! You just say this out of kindness.... You must have both been laughing at me. Has he told you that I play dolls?"

"No, he hasn't."

"But I do play! I played last summer and will play again if I want to. I don't care if they do laugh at me. The king says children are better than grown-ups, wiser, they know more. Eternity, he says, is a child playing with, playing..."

She forgot what Eternity was playing with and flushed crimson.

"Ah, curse the thing! The wool has again made my head hot." She pulled the wig off her head and flung it away. The talc cup clinked against the wall; the lotos stem broke and the flower hung down piteously.

"Do you imagine that I have dressed up for you? Not likely! I am going to supper at the palace..."

Her head was shaven and had such a long, vegetable, marrow-like skull that Dio almost cried out with surprise. In Egypt long heads were regarded as particularly beautiful in girls. The strange custom of bandaging newborn children's heads in order to lengthen their skulls was brought to Egypt from the Kingdom of Mitanni, the midnight land by the upper Euphrates, whence Akhnaton's mother, Queen Tiy, came. All the King's daughters were long-headed. Noble ladies and, later on, men suddenly developed long skulls also: they wore special skull caps—"royal marrows"—made of the finest antelope skins.

Very likely Princess Ankhi took off her wig on purpose to boast of the shape of her head to Dio: "You may have rosy cheeks, but I have a royal marrow!"

"And is it true you are a sorceress, they say?"

"No, it isn't."

"Then what did they want to burn you for?"

Dio said nothing.

"Again, you don't want to tell me?"

"I don't."

"You killed the god Bull, your Mreura, or was it Hapius?"

Hapius was the bull of Memphis and Mreura the bull of Heliopolis, the incarnate god of the Sun. "We, too, had a Mreura," Ankhi went on, not waiting for an answer. "It died two years ago: I was very fond of it. It was old and blind. I used to go into its stable, put my arms round it and kiss its head, and it would lick my face and bellow into my ear as though to say something. To kill a creature like that, good heavens! It's like killing a baby...."

She paused, and looking at Dio from under her brows said suddenly:

"They have found a wax doll in the palace."

"What wax doll?"

"A charmed one, with its heart pierced by a needle; the person whose name is written on the wax is sure to die. The king's name was written on it; they found it in the king's bedchamber...."

She paused again and asked:

"How long have you been here?"

"Five days."

"And the wax doll was found the day before yesterday."

"Well, what of it?"

"Nothing. One can't stop people talking and they say all sorts of things .... And why do you sit at home hiding from everyone and only come out at night?"

Her face worked suddenly, the eyes flashed angrily, the lips trembled and she said, looking straight at Dio:

"Are you his concubine?"

"Whose?"

"Tuta's."

Dio clasped her hands in dismay.

"What nonsense, princess darling!"

"Why nonsense?"

"Because I cannot be anybody's concubine: priestesses of the Mother are perpetual virgins. And, besides it's a matter of taste. His Highness ... may I speak the truth, you won't be angry?"

"No, speak."

"His Highness is very nice, but I don't like him at all."

Ankhi looked at her, heaved a deep sigh, as a person suddenly relieved of violent pain, and whispered:

"Is it true?"

"Why, look into my eyes, don't you see it is true?"

Ankhi looked straight into her eyes; then turned away and buried her face in her hands; her thin shoulders quivered and all her body trembled with silent sobs.

Dio moved up to her and putting her arms round her pressed the girl's long shaven head—the royal marrow—to her bosom.

"Don't you believe me?"

"Yes, I do. I have known all along that it was all untrue about your being a sorceress, and the wax doll. I said it all on purpose..."

"Then why are you crying?"

"Oh, because I am so mean, so horrid! I liked you the moment I saw you and so I got angry. I am always angry with the people I am fond of.... But you don't know all yet! I made old Iagu promise—he is an old servant, a faithful dog and loves me as his own soul—I made him promise that he would kill you if you really were Tuta's mistress. I would have killed him and myself, too—that's what I am like! When the devil gets hold of me I can do anything...."

She wept again.

"There, there, my little darling, my sweet little girl!" Dio whispered, stroking her head, and suddenly she remembered she had said almost the same words when she caressed Eoia just like that. "That's all over now and done with! Let us be friends, shall we?"

Ankhi said nothing but pressed more closely to her. Dio kissed her on the lips without speaking and herself wept for joy.

Joy rose in her heart, like the sun, and the fear she had felt melted away like a shadow.

"Darling, darling child!" she thought, "it is he himself, Akhnaton, the Joy of the Sun, has sent you to me as joy's messenger!"