III
There was a riot in Busiris, a town in the Northern district.
As usual it was started by the Israelites working in the brick factories when they were no longer given any chopped straw necessary for making bricks, but were ordered to chop it themselves, while producing the usual quantity of bricks. Porters and loaders from the harbour joined them when they heard that boys younger than fifteen were to be taken for the army. The mothers said indignantly, "What is the good of bearing sons? They are no sooner grown up than they are driven to the slaughter, and you, their fathers, put up with it!" Part of the garrison of Kidjevadan mercenaries, who had received in their monthly ration nasty smelling sesame oil instead of olive oil for ointment, also joined the rioters.
Usirmar, son of Ziamon, the governor of the province of Busiris and an old soldier of the times of Tutmose the Fourth, sternly put down the rebellion. With a number of other rioters the tramp Bata, the slave Yubra and the Jew Avinoam—this was the assumed name of Issachar—denounced by the scribe Herihor, were seized as the chief culprits.
"This accursed Bata," so the denunciation ran, "a godless and seditious fellow, having gathered a band of thieves and brigands like himself, intended to cause rebellion not only in the Busiris province, but throughout Egypt, preaching that people should not obey the authorities and that they should refuse to serve in the army, that the poor ought to be equal to the rich, saying that the boundaries between fields should be effaced and the land be common property, and wealth taken from the rich and given to the poor. The said accursed man blasphemes against the gracious god-king and says in his vain talk that there is only one King in heaven and on earth—the god Ra-Aton."
The denunciation was illiterate but cleverly put together. It was a troubled time. Horemheb, the governor of the North, had just set out to the eastern province, Goshen, to put down a rising of the Israelites who were always dreaming of a second Exodus, and to repulse the attack of the Sinai nomads against the Great Wall of Egypt. Terrible rumours reached Usirmar of King Akhnaton's madness, suicide, or assassination, of a new rising in Thebes and an imminent war between the two rivals for the throne, Saakera and Tutankhaton.
The riotous band of the false prophet, Bata, might be the first spark of a new conflagration.
When Bata had been brought in fetters from the prison to the governor's white house, Usirmar ordered everyone out of the room and looked at him with surprise: he was so unlike a criminal. Usirmar had seen King Akhnaton only once, some twenty years ago, and would not have known him now.
"What is your name?" he asked the prisoner.
"Bata."
"Whose son are you?"
"God's."
"Are you joking? Take care."
"No, I am not joking. I do not know my earthly father; I know only the Heavenly."
"Who are you, where do you come from?"
"You see, I am a tramp. I walk about all over the country but I do not remember where I come from."
"Is it true that you incite the mob to rebellion and want to make the poor equal to the rich?"
"No, it is not true. Rebellion is an evil thing, and I want what is good."
"Why then don't you honour our gracious god-king?"
"I do honour the king, but the king is not God; only one Man on earth shall be God."
"What man?"
"Men call him Osiris, but they do not know his real name."
"Do you know it?"
"No, I don't know it either."
"And will He be like you?"
"No, the sun is not like the shadow."
"Is it he then who will make the rich and the poor equal?"
"He, He alone and no one but He! You have said it well, my brother."
"I am not a brother to you, but a judge. Don't you know that I have the power to put you to death or to pardon you?"
"Whether you put me to death or pardon me, either will be a welcome gift to me," Bata answered with such a serene smile that Usimar marvelled more than ever and thought 'Poor crazy creature, one can't be angry with him.'
He asked him many more questions, but could not discover anything. Usirmar was a just and intelligent man: he understood that the denunciation was for the most part untrue and wanted to pardon the unfortunate prisoner, but could not do so legally; he gave him a light sentence, however; a light corporal punishment and then three years labour in the Nubian gold mines.
The sentence was carried out. With a number of other convicts Bata was sent in a large flat-bottomed barge, a floating prison, up the Nile to the distant Elephant City, Ieb, in the South. A caravan route went from Ieb through the terrible desert of Kush. There in the mining wells in the burning hot depths of the earth old and young men, women and children, with chains on their naked bodies, worked day and night under the overseer's whip, grinding quartz on hand mills, washing gold sand, and dying like flies of heat and thirst.
Issachar had escaped out of prison before the trial. The cunning sons of Israel bribed the gaolers and helped him to run away. Yubra escaped with him. They hired from a fisherman a sailing boat, old and damaged but swift, and sailed up the Nile following the prison barge at a distance.
They overtook and passed it by the City of the Sun. Issachar went ashore, found the chief of the guards, Mahu, and told him that Akhnaton, King of Egypt, was on the barge that was approaching the city.
Knowing something about the king's sudden disappearance, Mahu was not very much surprised, but he did not believe Issachar at once. Detaining him, he promised to reward him if his words proved to be true and, if not, to put him to death; he gave orders to stop the barge and at nightfall went to the harbour with fifty black soldiers on whose loyalty he could rely. Going on board he called the chief gaoler and ordered him to bring the prisoner called Bata; he took Bata into a deck cabin, shut the doors and windows and bringing a lamp close to his face recognised King Akhnaton.
"We guards are used to all sorts of things," Mahu used to tell afterwards. "We have seen so much that our hearts are like stone. But at that moment my heart melted like wax!"
It would have been terrible to him to see a wretched madman instead of King Akhnaton, Joy of the Sun; but it was more terrible to find before him a happy and rational man.
"Life, strength and health to the king," he began, but his voice failed him, his knees gave way under him and, falling at the king's feet, he wept.
The king bent down and said, putting his arms round him:
"There, Mahu, don't cry. I am happy here...."
And added, after a pause:
"I am better here than at home."
Mahu was still looking intently at him, hoping to see a madman; but the king certainly was not mad, and, all at once, Mahu felt as though he himself were going out of his mind.
"What are you saying, what are you saying, sire? You are better here among thieves and murderers than among your faithful servants?"
"Yes, Mahu. My brother, do you love me? I know you love me. Do then what I ask you: tell no one about me and let me go."
"God knows, Uaenra, I would gladly give my soul for you, but it is easier for me to kill you than leave you here."
"You will kill me if you don't leave me," the king said, and again he bent down and, putting both arms round Mahu's head, looked into his eyes with entreaty.
Mahu said afterwards that in another minute he would have broken down, lost his reason and gone, leaving the king behind. But Akhnaton had pity on him.
"You cannot?" he whispered as though lost in thought, looking at Mahu so that his heart again melted like wax. "Well, there is nothing for it then, let us go!"
They went from the cabin on to the deck. The king stepped into a litter. The soldiers lifted it and carried him to the palace.