II
In the silence of the night a trumpet proclaimed joy unto men. First one, then another, a third—and then scores and hundreds of trumpets played the hymn to Aton:
Glorious is Thy rising in the East,
Lord and giver of life, Aton!
Thou sendest Thy rays and darkness flees,
All the earth is filled with joy.
The trumpets sounded at every end of the city, arousing many-voiced echoes in the mountains. Just as cocks call to one another and crow to the Sun in the night, so did the trumpets call at the hour before dawn when men's sleep is like the sleep of death, as is said in Aton's hymn:
Men sleep in darkness like the dead,
Their heads are wrapped up and their nostrils stopped.
Stolen are the things that are under their heads,
While they know it not.
Every lion cometh forth from his den,
Serpents creep from out of their holes,
The Creator has gone to rest and the world is mute.
But the trumpet was waking the sleepers as the call of the Lord will one day wake the dead. Old men and children, slaves and free, rich and poor, foreigners and Egyptians, were all running to greet the newborn sun, the god Aton.
Dio was roused by the sound of the trumpet in the small chapel of Aton's temple where she slept that night with the girl singers, musicians and dancers who were to accompany her in her dance before the king.
"The trumpets call, the trumpets! Get up, girls! The sun is born, rejoice!" she heard the voices round her.
They embraced and kissed one another, wishing each other new joy with the new sun.
They ran out on to the flat roof of the temple.
It was a warm night: after midnight the wind had changed to the south and the temperature rose at once. Big round white clouds were floating across the sky like sails. Misty, fluffy stars twinkled like wind-blown flames and a waning copper-yellow moon lay on its back over the black ridge of the Lybian mountains.
Heaven, earth, water, plants, animals—all were still asleep; men alone were awake. The town down below was stirring like an ant-heap. Lights were appearing in the windows, lamps were smoking on the roofs, torches glowed in the streets filled with dark crowds that streamed along like rivers. There was a hum of voices, rustle of feet, stamping of hoofs, clatter of wheels, neighing of horses, cries of soldiers and the ceaseless call of the trumpets—the hymn to Aton:
Glorious is Thy rising in the East,
Lord and giver of life, Aton!
Thou sendest Thy rays and darkness flees,
All the earth is filled with joy.
"There goes the royal procession! Let us run downstairs, girls, we can see better from there!" cried one of those who were looking from the roof of Aton's temple, and they all flew downstairs like a flock of turtle-doves, on to the flat top of the gates nearest the street where the procession was passing.
"The king! The king! Down! Down! Down!" cried the runners, scattering the crowd with their staves as they marched along in step, their bare backs bent double.
The king's bodyguard, the Hittite Amazons, came next. Yellow skinned and flat chested, with narrow eyes and high cheek bones, one warrior lock on their shaven heads, they carried bronze double-edged axes, the sacred weapon of the Virgin-Mother.
Then came courtiers, judges, councillors, warlords, treasurers, clerks, priests, soothsayers, scribes, chiefs of the bakers, chiefs of the butlers, chiefs of the king's stables, lords of the bedchamber, masters of the robes, hairdressers, launderers, perfumers and so on: all were dressed in white robes with pointed, stiffly starched aprons; all wore the special skullcaps that made their shaven heads look like the egg-shaped 'royal marrows.'
Then came the censer-bearers, lavishly burning incense, its white clouds turning rosy in the torchlight; these were followed by the fan-bearers waving multi-coloured fans of ostrich feathers and real flowers, fixed on long poles.
Finally there came twenty-four black Ethiopian youths, naked but for short aprons of parrot feathers and wearing golden nose rings; they carried on their shoulders a tall ivory throne covered with leaf gold with lions for a pedestal.
Dio clearly saw the leopard skin on the narrow boyish shoulders, the simple long white robe of such transparent linen that one could see through it above the elbows of the thin dark-skinned boyish arms, the coloured hieroglyphics of Aton's name; she saw the staff—symbol of godhead—in one hand and the scourge in the other; the pear-shaped royal tiara, made of pale cham, a mixture of gold and silver, studded with small stars of lapis lazuli, and the golden snake of the sun, Uta, coiled on the forehead.
She saw all this but she did not dare to look at his face. "I will look when I am dancing before him," she thought, as she ran upstairs to the roof of Aton's temple.
"Down! Down! The king comes! the god comes!" the runners shouted, and people bowed to the ground.
The procession entered the gates of Aton's temple.
The temple of the Sun, the House of Joy, consisted of seven pillared courts, with tower-like pylon gates, side-chapels and three hundred and sixty-five altars. Seven courts were the seven temples of the seven peoples, for as it says in the hymn to Aton:
Thou hast carried them all away captive,
Thou bindest them by Thy love.
There was a time when by 'people'—romet—the Egyptians meant themselves only; all other nations were excluded; but now all were brothers, children of one Heavenly Father, Aton. The Temple of the Sun was the temple for all mankind.
Seven courts, seven temples: the first was dedicated to Tammuz of Babylon, the second to Attis of the Hittites, the third to Adon of Canaan, the fourth to Adun of Crete, the fifth to Mithra of Mitanni, the sixth to Ashmun of Phoenicia, the seventh to Zagreus-Bacchus of Thrace. All these god-men who had suffered, died and risen from the dead, were but shadows of the one sun that was to rise—the Son.
The seven open temples led into the eighth, the secret one, which no one but the king and the high priest dared enter. There in perpetual twilight stood sixteen giant Osirises made of alabaster, pale as phantoms, tightly bound with winding sheets, wearing gods' tiaras and holding a staff—symbol of god-head—in one hand and a scourge in the other; the faces of all were in the likeness of King Akhnaton.
Passing through the seven open temples the procession approached the eighth, the secret one. The king went into it alone, and, while he was praying there, all waited outside. When he came out, they mounted by an outside staircase on to the flat roof of the upper temple, which was built on the roof of the lower.
The great altar of the Sun stood here; it was made of huge blocks of cream-coloured sandstone, pale as a girl's body and shaped like a pyramid with its top cut off; two gradual approaches, without steps, led up to it. On a high platform at the top of the pyramid a sanctuary fire was perpetually burning, and, above it on a column of alabaster, the sun disc of Aton, made of pale cham—a mixture of gold and silver—glistened with a dull brilliance. It was the highest point of the huge edifice and the first and last ray of the sun was always reflected upon it.
The king, the queen, the princesses and the heir apparent—only those in whose veins flowed the blood of the Sun—went up to the top of the pyramid, and then the king alone ascended the platform where the fire was burning.
People thronged in the seven courts of the temple down below, on the pylons, the staircases, the roofs of both temples; it was like a living mountain of people and the highest point of it was one man—the king.
"I come to glorify Thy rays, living Aton, one eternal God!" he said stretching out his arms to the Sun.
"Praise be to Thee, living Aton, who hast made the heavens and the mysteries thereof," answered the high priest Merira, who stood at the base of the pyramid. "Thou art in heaven and Thy beloved son Akhnaton is on earth!"
"I show the way of life to all of you, generations that have been and are to come," the king continued. "Give praise to the God Aton, the living God, and ye shall live! Gather together and come, all ye people of salvation; turn to the Lord, all ye ends of the earth, for Aton is God and there is none other God but He."
"The God Aton is the only God and there is none other God but He," answered the innumerable crowds down below, and the call of thousands was like the roar of the sea.
The moon had set, the stars were hardly visible. The wind dropped, the clouds cleared away, the sky was almost grey. And suddenly a giant ray, shaped like a pyramid with its base on the ground and its top in the zenith, appeared in the morning twilight and white opalescent lights, like sheet lightning, flickered across it—the Light of the Zodiac, the forerunner of the Sun.
The king, with his wife, daughters and the heir apparent, descended from the pyramid altar and went into a painted and gilded tent that stood at the eastern side of it.
There was a sound of flutes and a ringing of citherns, then came subdued singing and a slow procession of priestesses, carrying a coffin on their shoulders, mounted the flat roof of the temple by an outer staircase. A dead body wrapped up in a white winding sheet lay in the coffin. The priestesses placed the coffin on the dark purple carpet before the king's tent.
Two mourners came forward, one stood at the head and the other at the feet of the corpse, weeping and calling to each other like the two sister goddesses Isis and Neftis at the tomb of Osiris, their brother. Meanwhile the others, naked but for a narrow black belt below the navel and a black 'bandage of shame' between the legs, were dancing the wild, ancient, magical dance of Osiris-Bata, the rising god, the vegetating ear of corn: standing in a row on one leg they raised the other leg all at once, lowered it and then raised it again, higher and higher each time, so that at last the toes went up higher than the heads.
"Arise, arise, arise! O Sun of all suns, O first fruits of them that slept, arise!" they repeated, also all at once, to the ringing of the citherns and the squealing of flutes. This meant: "grow up as high as our legs are thrown up, o ear of corn, arise, thou dead one!"
And the mourners wept:
"Come to thy sister, come, my Beloved,
Thou whose heart now beats no more!
I am thy sister who loved thee on earth,
No one has loved thee more than I!"
Suddenly a quiver passed over the corpse, as over a chrysalis when a butterfly stirs within it—a tremor that was like the tremulous lightnings in the sky, as though the same miracle were happening in the human body and in the heavens.
The grave clothes wrapped round the corpse were slowly unwound; the hand was slowly raised to the face as that of one waking from profound slumber; the knees bent slowly; the elbows rested against the bottom of the coffin and the body began to rise.
"Arise! Arise! Arise!" the dancers repeated as an incantation, throwing up their legs higher than their heads in the magical dance.
The light of the Zodiac was no longer visible in the rosy light of the dawn. A glowing ember blazed up in the misty crevice of the Arabian mountains and the first ray of the sun glistened on Aton's disc.
At the same moment the corpse rose, opened its eyes and smiled—and in that smile there was eternal life, the sun that has no setting.
"Dio, the dancer, the Pearl of the Kingdom of the Seas," a whisper was heard in the crowd of the courtiers.
The priestesses finished their magical dance and fell, face downwards, on the ground. The citherns and flutes were silent except one which was still weeping; it was like a lonely bird crying in the twilight:
"On my bed in the night
I looked for him,
For him whom my soul loveth,
I sought him and did not find him."
Stepping out of the coffin, Dio moved towards the sun. She began the dance slowly and quietly, as though in her sleep; there was still something of the stiffness of death in her limbs. But as the sun rose higher the dance grew quicker and more impetuous. Her head was thrown back, her arms were stretched towards the sun; the white veils fell on the purple carpet, revealing the innocent body, neither masculine nor feminine—at once masculine and feminine—a marvel of godlike beauty. The sun was kissing her and she was surrendering herself to it, the mortal uniting with the god as a bride with her lover.
"Put me as a seal upon thine heart,
"As a ring upon thine hand
For strong as death is love,"
sobbed the flute.
The song stopped suddenly; the dancer fell flat on her back as though dead. One of the priestesses ran up to her and covered her with the white grave clothes.
The soft sound of footsteps and a voice that seemed familiar, though she had never heard it, reached Dio's ears. She raised her head and saw the king face to face. He was saying something to her but she could not make it out. She looked into his face eagerly as though recognising him after a long, long parting: this was perhaps how lovers recognised each other in the world beyond the grave.
She recalled her fear of him and was surprised not to be feeling any. A simple, quite a simple, face like anybody else's; the face of the son of man, the brother of man, gentle, very gentle like the face of the god whose name is Quiet Heart.
"Are you very tired?" he was asking, probably not for the first time.
"No, not very."
"How well you danced! Our dancers can't do it. Is this your Cretan dance?"
"Both ours and yours together."
He, too, was gazing at her as though trying to recognise her.
"Where have I seen you?"
"Nowhere, sire."
"Strange, I keep fancying I have seen you before...."
She was sitting at his feet and he stood bending over her. Both were uncomfortable. The white sheet kept slipping off her naked body and she was trying unsuccessfully to keep it on. She suddenly felt confused and blushed.
"Are you cold? Go along and get dressed," he said and blushed, too. 'Just like a little boy,' she thought, and recalled the figure at the Charuk palace—the boy who looked like a girl.
He took a ring off his finger, put it on hers, and, bending down still lower, kissed her on the head. Then he left her and returned to the royal tent.
"The fish has bitten!" an old dignitary, Ay, Tuta's friend and patron, who stood next to him in the crowd of courtiers, whispered in his ear.
"You think so?" Tuta asked joyfully.
"Set your mind at rest: it has bitten. You couldn't find another such pair: they have been made for each other. Man and woman—a hook and an eye—are two in love, but here there are four."
"How do you mean?"
"Why, there are two in him, two in her; an eye—a hook, a hook—an eye; once they catch there will be no disentangling them."
"You are a wise man, Ay!" Tuta said in delight.