Akhnaton, King of Egypt

by Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky

VI

Poor queen! To give the god hot fomentations when he has stomach-ache and still believe that he is a god is no joke," the old courtier Ay said, laughing.

Tuta, who was very fond of witty remarks, repeated it to Dio in a moment of confidence, and she often recalled it as she looked at Queen Nefertiti.

Mother of six children at the age of twenty-eight, she still looked like a girl: slender girlish waist, bosom only slightly marked, narrow shoulders, collar bones that stood out under the skin, a thin long neck—'like a giraffe's,' she used herself to say jokingly. The round face looked childishly tender under the high bucket-shaped royal tiara, worn low over the forehead so that no hair showed. There was something childishly piteous in the short slightly protruding upper lip; there was an inward brooding look and a fathomless depth of sadness in the big lustreless, rather slanting black eyes under the heavy drooping eyelids.

She seemed to be all on guard, as though listening, spell-bound, to something within herself, motionless as an arrow on the bow string or a chord stretched to the uttermost but not sounding as yet; if it did sound it would break. It was as though she had received a mortal wound and were concealing it from all.

Daughter of Tadukhipa, a princess of Mitanni, and Amenhotep the Third, king of Egypt, Queen Nefertiti was King Akhnaton's half-sister: kings of Egypt, children of the Sun, often married their sisters in order to preserve the purity of the race.

The king and queen were so much alike that when, as boy and girl, they used to wear almost the same clothes, people found it hard to distinguish them. There was the same languid charm about them, the charm of a half-opened flower drooping with the heat of the sun.

"Oh plant that never tasted running water,
Oh flower, plucked out by the roots."

Dio recalled the dirge for the dead god Tammuz when she looked at the bas-relief of the king and queen in one of the palace chambers. They were represented sitting side by side on a double throne; she had her left arm round his waist, the fingers of the right hand were intertwined with his fingers and their faces were so close together that one could hardly see her through him; he was in her and she in him. As it said in the hymn to Aton:

"When Thou didst establish the earth
Thou didst reveal thy will to me
Thy son Akhnaton Uaenra,
And to thy beloved daughter
Nefertiti, delight of the Son
Who flourishes for ever and ever!"

It was then that this brother's and sister's marriage was made.

"They cannot be loved separately, they must be loved together—two in one," Dio understood this at once.

After her dance on the day of Aton's Nativity, she received the rank of 'the chief fan-bearer on the right side of the gracious god-king' and, leaving Tuta's house, settled in the palace where a room was assigned to her in the women's quarters close to the queen's chambers. She soon made friends with the queen, but a barrier which she herself could not understand separated her from the king.

She was no longer afraid of his being 'not quite human': she had learned from the queen that he certainly was human. There was profound meaning in the flat joke about 'the god having stomach-ache.' And the horror that the king's blasphemous words about being 'the son of God' had inspired in her at the festival of the Sun had disappeared, too: all kings of Egypt called themselves 'sons of God.'

She felt no fear, but something that was perhaps worse than fear.

It used to happen in the autumn when she was hunting on Mount Ida in Crete that on a bright, sunny day mist suddenly crept up from the mountain gorges, and the molten gold of the forest, the blue sky, the blue sea grew dim and grey and the sun itself looked out of the fog like a dead fish's eye. "What if the Joy of the Sun, Akhnaton, also looks at me with the eyes of a dead fish?" she thought.

She danced for him every day, and he admired her. "Only a dancer—I will never be anything more for him," she said to herself, with a grey fog of boredom in her mind.

She stood for hours behind the king's throne, raising and lowering with a slow, measured movement, in accordance with the ancient ritual, the big ostrich-feather fan on a long pole. Sometimes when left alone with her he turned suddenly and smiled at her with such appealing tenderness that her heart stood still at the thought that he would speak and the barrier would fall. But he said nothing or spoke about trifles: asked whether she was tired and would like to sit down; or wondered at the quickness with which she had learned to wave the fan—an art more difficult than it appeared; or, with jesting courtesy, blessed the stupid old custom of keeping cool in winter and fanning away the non-existent flies because it gave him a chance of being with her.

One day Dio was reluctantly—she did not like talking about it—telling the queen who questioned her how she had killed the god Bull on the Knossos arena to avenge a human victim, her best friend, Eoia; how she had been sentenced to be burned and was saved by Tammuzadad, the Babylonian, who went to the stake in her place.

The king was present, too, and seemed to listen attentively. When Dio finished there were tears in the queen's eyes, but the king, as though coming to himself suddenly, glanced at them both with a strange quiet smile, and muttered hurriedly and excitedly, repeating the same words, as he often did:

"You mustn't shave it off! You mustn't shave it off!"

It was so inappropriate that Dio was alarmed and wondered if he were ill. But the queen smiled calmly and said, laying her hand on Dio's head:

"No, certainly not: it would be a pity to shave such beautiful hair!"

It was only then that Dio remembered that she had asked the queen a day or two ago whether she ought to shave her head and wear a wig, as the custom in Egypt was.

After saying these sudden words the king went out and the queen, as though apologizing for him, said that he had not been very well lately.

It took Dio some time to forget that at that moment she had caught a glimpse of the decrepit monster of Gem-ton—that the sun looked through the fog like a dead fish's eye.

The same evening when he was left alone with her, he got up suddenly, put his hands on her shoulders and brought his face near hers, as though he would kiss her; but did not—he merely smiled so that her heart stood still: she recalled the girl-like boy with a face as gentle as the face of the god whose name is Quiet-Heart.

A man dreams sometimes a dream of paradise, as though in sleep his soul had returned to its heavenly home; and on waking he cannot believe that it has been a dream only, cannot get used to his earthly exile and is full of sadness and yearning: such was the sadness in his face. The long lashes of the drooping eyelids, as though weighed down with sleep, seemed moist with tears, but there was a smile on the lips—a trace of paradise—heavenly joy shining through earthly sorrow like the sun through a cloud.

"I heard everything you said this afternoon, only I did not want to speak before her: one may not speak about this to anyone. You know this, don't you?" he asked, looking at her with the same smile.

"I know," Dio answered.

"Darling, how good it is that you came, how I have been waiting for you!"

He brought his face still nearer so that their lips almost touched.

"Do you love me?" he asked as simply as a child.

"I love you," she answered, as simply.

And it was a joy like a dream of paradise that he left her without a kiss.

On the following day, the eleventh after Aton's nativity, Dio was standing with her fan behind the queen's chair in the palace-chamber of the Flood, in which the flooding of the Nile was depicted.

The morning sun shone through the melting mist of the clouds into the square opening of the ceiling, adorned with faience wreaths of vine, with dark red clusters of grapes and dark blue leaves. The tiled walls were painted with water-flowers and plants, the pillars, shaped like sheaves of papyrus, had for capitals figures of wild geese and ducks hanging head downwards—the spoils of river hunting; the paintings on the floor represented a backwater on the Nile; fishes swam among the blue, wavy lines of the river, butterflies fluttered among the lotos thickets, ducklings flew up, and an absurd spotted calf galloped about with its tail in the air. As it said in the morning hymn to Aton:

"The earth rejoices and is glad
All cattle graze in pastures green,
All plants are growing in the fields.
The birds are flying o'er their nests,
And lift their wings like hands in prayer,
Lambs leap and dance upon their feet.
All winged things fly gaily round,
They all live in thy life, O Lord!"

The king was playing with his six daughters: Meritatona, Makitatona, Ankhsenbatona, Neferatona, Neferura and Setepenra. The eldest was fifteen, the youngest five and there was a year's difference between the others. When they stood in a row to say their prayers, their smoothly shaven egg-shaped heads—royal marrows—formed a series of descending steps, like the reeds on a shepherd's pipe.

The four elder girls were dressed in shifts of transparent linen—'woven air'—and the two youngest were quite naked. Their arms and legs, thin as sticks were almost brown; they wore heavy gold rings in their ears and broad necklaces of crystal and chrysolite tears arranged like rays round their necks.

The king's dwarf, Iagu, took part in the games; he came of the wild tribe of Pygmies, Ua-Ua, who lived like monkeys in the trees of the marshy forests in the extreme South. Two feet in height, bow-legged, fat-bellied, black, wrinkled, old and monstrous like the god Bes, the primaeval monster, he looked ferocious but was in truth as mild as a lamb; he was a splendid dancer and an unwearying nurse to the princesses who loved and tormented him; a faithful servant of the king's household, he would have gladly died for each and all of them.

First they played 'nine-pins,' rolling ivory balls through reed hoops so as to knock down at one blow nine wooden dolls with ugly faces—nine kings hostile to Egypt.

Then Iagu's pupil, the trained white poodle, Dang, with a cap of fiery red feathers on its head and ruby earrings, jumped through a hoop and walked on its hind legs, holding a marshall's staff in its front paws and a piece of antelope meat on its nose, not daring to swallow it until Iagu cried "eat."

Then they went into the winter hot-house garden, where there were rare foreign flowers and an ornamental pool with floating lotuses, and made two dreadful monsters of clay—the Babylonian king, Burnaburiash and his son, prince Karakardash, who wanted to marry the eight year old princess Neferatona. The king was so smeared with clay that he had to be washed in the pool.

Then they amused themselves with the cock—the bird, unknown in Egypt, had just been brought from the kingdom of Mitanni; upset by its long journey, the cock ruffled its feathers in gloomy silence, but suddenly flapped its wings and crowed for the first time so loudly that all were frightened and then delighted—'a regular trumpet'!—and began to imitate him; the king did it so badly that the girls laughed at him.

Then they returned to the chamber and played blind man's buff. Iagu caught the king, who then had his eyes bandaged. The girls jumped about and scurried to and fro under his very nose, strummed on citherns, stamped with their bare feet on the floor, imitating the oxen threshing and sang a song:

"Hey! Hey! Hey!
It's fine and fresh to-day,
Fine workmen, oxen,
Work, work away!
Stamp upon the threshing floor!
You'll have something for your trouble.
We'll have the grain and you the straw!"

The king, awkwardly spreading out his arms, kept catching empty air or embracing pillars. At last he caught Ankhi, Tuta's twelve year old wife.

"You moved the bandage," she cried. "There, the left eye is peeping out! You mustn't cheat, abby!"

'Abby' was the diminutive from the Canaan word Abba—father.

"No, I haven't, it slid off," the king tried to justify himself.

"You have moved it, you have!" Ankhi kept on shouting. "I know you, abby, you are a dreadful little rogue! But that's not the way to play. You must catch again."

She bandaged his eyes tighter than before and he had to catch them again.

The poodle, Dang, as though also playing, walked about on its hind legs holding a sounding cithern in its front paws. The king, imagining from the sound, that it was the little Zeta—Zetepenra—bent down rapidly and threw his arms round Dang. The dog barked and licked him in the face. The king cried out in alarm, sat down on the floor and pushed Dang away. But it rushed up to him again, put its front paws on the king's shoulders and licked him squealing with delight.

All laughed and shouted.

"Abby has kissed Dang! Doggy has made friends with the king."

The queen laughed, too.

"There, you've done enough fanning, sit down and rest," she said to Dio, and Dio sat down at the foot of her chair.

"The kingdom is for the children," she suddenly recalled aloud the king's words that she had heard from little Ankhi.

"The kingdom is for the children," the queen repeated. "And do you know how it goes on?"

"How?"

"What is most divine in men? Tears of the wise? No, laughter of children."

"So this is why the god Aton has children's hands for rays?" Dio asked.

"Yes, the whole of wisdom is in this: what is childlike is divine," the queen answered and, gently placing her hand on Dio's head, looked straight into her eyes.

"How is it you are so pretty to-day? Have you fallen in love by any chance?" she said, smiling—'quite like him—' Dio thought.

"Why fallen in love?" she asked, smiling, too.

"Because when girls are in love they grow particularly pretty."

Dio shook her head, blushed and bending quickly down, caught the queen's hand and began kissing it eagerly, as though she were kissing him through her.

Suddenly she felt the queen's hand tremble. Raising her eyes and seeing that the queen was looking at the door, she, too, looked in the same direction. Merira, son of Nehtaneb, the high priest of the god Aton, was standing in the doorway.

Dio had been struck by his face at the festival of the Sun and since then she often looked at him wondering whether she felt repelled or attracted by him.

He somewhat resembled Tammuzadad: there was the same stony heaviness about their faces; but there had been something childlike and piteous in the Babylonian's face, while Merira looked hopelessly grown up. There was a stony heaviness in the low overhanging brows, in the eyes immoveably intent and yet, as it were, unseeing, the wide cheekbones, the firmly set jaw and the tightly closed lips that seemed sealed with bitterness and were always ready to jeer, though they could never smile.

"He that increases knowledge increases sorrow," Dio recalled Tammuzadad's words as she looked at that face. "To know all is to despise all," it seemed to say, "not to curse, but merely to despise in secret, to spew out of one's mouth." If a very courageous man firmly determined on suicide had drunk poison and then calmly awaited death, his face would wear the same expression.

Merira came of a very old family of the Heliopolis priests of the Sun. He had once been the favourite pupil of Ptamose and an ardent devotee of Amon; but he gave up the old faith and worshipped Aton. The king was very fond of him. "You alone have followed my teaching, no one else has," he said, when he conferred on Merira the rank of high priest.

Merira came in while the king was sitting on the floor and the poodle, Dang, with its paws on his shoulders, was licking his face and the princesses were laughing and shouting.

"Abby has kissed Dang! Doggie has made friends with the king."

Merira probably failed to notice the queen and stopped in the doorway looking intently at the king. The queen, bending slightly forward and craning her neck, looked at Merira as intently as he did at the king.

"Merira, Merira!" she cried suddenly and there was fear in her eyes. "Why do you look at the king like that, do you want to cast a spell over him?" she laughed, but there was fear in her laughter.

He slowly turned to her and made the low ceremonial bow, bending down from his waist and stretching out his hands, palms upwards.

"Rejoice, queen Nefertiti, the delight of the Sun's delights! I have come to call the king to the Council. It seems I have come at the wrong moment."

"Why wrong? Go and tell the king."

Merira went up to the players. Laughter died down. The king jumped up and looked at him with a guilty smile.

"What is it, Merira?"

"Nothing, sire. You were pleased to call the Council for to-day."

"Oh yes, the Council! I had forgotten..... Well, let us go, let us go!" he hurried.

The bandage he had round his eyes during the game was dangling on his neck; he tried to pull it off, but could not—it got tied into a knot. Ankhi went up to him, undid the knot and took off the bandage, while Rita—Meritatona—put on his head the royal tiara he had taken off for the game.

The girls' faces fell. The poodle slightly growled at Merira and the dwarf made funny and frightful faces at him behind the king's back. It was as though a shadow had come upon everything and the sun had grown dim and looked like a 'fish's eye.'

As the king walked past the queen and Dio he looked at them dejectedly and resignedly like a schoolboy going to a dull lesson.

Dio glanced at the queen.

"Yes, follow him," she said, and Dio followed the king.

He looked round at her with a grateful smile and Merira looked at them both with his usual mute derision.