VII
I want to have Maki buried according to the ancient custom," the queen said.
"It shall be as you wish," the king answered. He understood what 'according to the ancient custom' meant. The hieroglyphics and mural paintings of the new tombs in the province of Aton contained no name or image of the ancient gods, no prayers, no incantations from the ancient scrolls of Going out into the World, Unsealing of lips and eyes, from the Book of the Gates, the Book of what is beyond the Tomb; no name or image of Osiris himself, the bringer of life to the dead.
It was only now that the king grasped the meaning of the inscription in Merira's tomb: 'may Aton and Unnofer revive the flesh on my bones.' Unnofer was the Good Spirit, Osiris, the King Akhnaton himself. There was a challenge and a temptation in it: "if you are He, conquer death!"
"I am not He! I am not! I am not!" he wanted to cry out in terror.
The mild fanatic, "the holy fool," Panehesy, looked straight into his eyes, as though asking: "Will you renounce the work of your whole life, will you lie, You-Who-live-in-truth, Ankh-em-maat?" And he read in his eyes the answer, "Yes, I will lie."
The best embalmers of Thebes, Memphis and Heliopolis, herhebs and mesras, "divine sealers, cutters and cleaners," were working at the dead body of princess Makitatona.
Cauldrons were boiling night and day in the House of Life, the embalming chamber: ointments and unguents were being cooked—balm, styrax, cinnamon, myrrh and cassia; piles of wood were heaped up—sandal, terebinth, cedar, currant wood, mastic and the fragrant wood of the shuu tree; heaps of incense from Punt in lumps as big as a fist lay about. Clouds of dust rose over the copper mortars in which powders were made. Anyone unaccustomed to these pungent smells would have fainted coming into the chamber.
For thirty days and thirty nights they were cleaning, soaking, drying, salting, embalming, smoking and pickling the body.
The king watched everything. He saw the entrails being taken out through a slanting slit in the stomach, and the lapis lazuli sun beetle, Kheper, being put in the place of the heart. He heard the cracking of the bones when the nose was broken and the brain scooped out with a long flint knife.
Eyes of glass were set into the empty sockets. The hair of the wig, eyebrows and eyelashes was smoothed carefully. The nails, finger and toe, were gilded. A narrow plaited Osiris's beard in a wooden box was tied to the chin, for, in the resurrection of the dead, woman becomes man, the god Osiris. The bandage of the god Ra was put round the forehead, of the god Horus round the neck, of the god Tot on the ears, of the goddess Hathor on the mouth. And the mummy spun round and round like a spindle in the clever hands that bound it in endless bandages like a chrysalis in a cocoon.
A wooden, crescent-shaped support for the head was prepared and a prayer to the Sun—not the new god, Aton, but to the ancient god Ra—was written on a new sheet of papyrus: "Give warmth under his head. Do not forget his name. Come to the Osiris Makitaton. His name is the Radiant, the Ever-Living, the Ancient of Days. He is Thee."
Thus a new great and terrible god Makitaton grew out of little Maki.
Ancient wisdom went hand in hand with ancient crudeness and childishness: the hieroglyphic of the serpent in the tomb inscription was cut into two, so that the snake should not sting the dead, and fledgelings on the paintings had their feet cut so that they should not run away. A silver boat was placed in the tomb for the dead to sail the Sunset Sea, also a mirror, rouge, powder, a book of fairy tales and draughts: the dead could play a game with her soul; toys were also put in, among them Ankhi's broken doll, carefully pieced together.
A tomb effigy was made for the mummy: the bird Ba with a human face and hands, the soul of the dead girl, placing its hands upon her heart and looking lovingly upon her face was saying:
"The heart of my birth, my mother's heart, my earthly heart, do not forsake me. Thou art in me; thou art my Ka, my Double within my body; thou art Khnum, the Potter who hath made my limbs."
The Germinating Osiris was prepared, too: linen was stretched on a wooden frame, the likeness of Osiris's mummy was drawn upon it, a thin layer of black earth was placed over it and thickly sown with wheat. The frame was watered until the seeds germinated; then the crop was cut down smoothly like grass on the lawn. This green, spring-like resurrected body of Osiris was placed in the tomb by the side of the corpse. The living seemed to be teaching the dead: "Look, the seed has come to life—you do the same!"
The ancient custom was not observed in one respect only: the head of queen Nefertiti, the earthly mother, was sculptured in the four corners of the granite tomb instead of the head of Isis, the heavenly mother. When the queen heard of this she was indignant and rebelled against the king for the first time in her life. But it was too late to prepare a new tomb.
On the fortieth day after Maki's death the funeral procession started out. The coffin was put into a boat, the boat into a sledge—the carriage of the ancient times when there were no wheels; two pairs of oxen drew it and the runners slowly creaked on the white sand of the desert as it were on snow.
Mourners dressed in blue—the colour of the sky, the colour of death—walked in front, throwing dust over their heads with a wail, monotonous like the howling of jackals.
"Weep, weep, weep, O sisters! Shed tears, shed endless tears! Draw your mistress to the West, oxen, draw her to the West! Poor darling, you were so fond of talking to me, why are you silent now, why don't you speak a word? So many friends you had, and now you are alone, alone, alone! The little feet that walked so fast, the little hands that held so tight are bound, confined, tied down. Weep, weep, weep, O sisters! shed tears, shed endless tears!"
The sun was setting when they entered the Princesses' Valley, with the yawning openings of the tombs cut in the rocks. Close by an old fig tree was an unfading patch of green against the dead sands and a sweetbriar flowered fragrant with the scent of honey and roses: the secret waters of an underground spring kept them fresh. The drowsy humming of bees sounded like faraway cymbals.
The mummy was placed at the entrance of the tomb and stood against the yawning blackness of the cave, bathed in the last radiance of the setting sun. Two priests, one wearing the mask of the jackal-headed Anubis and the other of the falcon-headed Horus, stood on either side of the mummy, while the officiating priest, herheb, performing the sacrament Apra, the opening of lips and eyes, read the magical words from a papyrus:
"Get up, get up, get up, Osiris Makitaton! I, thy son Horus, have come to give thee back thy life, to join thy bones, to bind thy flesh, to put thy limbs together. I am Horus, thy son, who gives birth to his father. Horus opens thy eyes that they may see, thy lips that they may Speak, thy ears that they may hear; he strengthens thy legs that they may walk and thy arms that they may work!"
The priest embraced the mummy, brought his face near its face and breathed into its mouth.
"Thy flesh increases, thy blood flows and all thy limbs are whole."
"I am, I am! I live, I live! I shall not know corruption," another priest, hidden behind the mummy, answered as though it were itself speaking.
"Thou art a god among gods, transfigured, indestructible, ruling over other gods;" the officiating priest declared.
"I am one. My being is the being of all the gods throughout eternity," the mummy answered and the dead eyes glittered more brightly than the living. "He is—I am; I am—He is."
The king fell on his face: he understood that this new terrible god, Lightgiving, Everlasting, Ancient of days, Makitaton, had overthrown Aton.
He breathed with relief when the body was put back in the coffin and Makitaton became little Maki once more.
He bent over her, kissed her on the mouth and put upon her heart a branch of mimosa: the tender, feathery leaves were to respond with their tremour to the first stir of the heart at resurrection.
The king spent the night in a tent in the desert, waiting for sunrise, to say the morning prayers at the tomb.
He could not go to sleep for hours. At last he got up, lifted the side of the tent and looked out. The Milky Way stretched like a cloud rent in two from one end of the desert to the other, the Pleiades glowed, and the seven stars of Tuart the Hippopotamus glittered with a cold brilliance. Dead stillness was all round; only the jackals' howling and the hooting of owls came from the gorge below.
He lay down again and went to sleep.
He dreamt he was standing on a square platform at the top of Cheops' great pyramid. The desert below was thronged with a countless multitude of men: there seemed to be as many heads as there were grains of sand in the desert; it was as though all tribes and peoples had gathered together for the last judgment on him, Uaenra. They were looking at him and waiting with bated breath.
A puny, black little creature—Shiha, the eunuch, or the god Tot himself, the Wise Monkey—fidgeted by his side. The king wanted to push it away and could not—he felt weak all over.
Suddenly Shiha tore off the king's royal apron, shenshet, and began whipping him with a switch on the naked body, saying:
"Here's something for you, Akhnaton Uaenra, Joy of the Sun, Sun's only Son!"
He did not hurt him but whipped him respectfully, as one ought to whip the god-king according to the mad wisdom of the dream; but the more respectful it was, the more shameful.
And the human multitude down below laughed frantically, shaking the earth and the sky with its laughter. The sun in heaven, a red monstrous face, bared its teeth, turning crimson with laughter; it stretched out its long hand-shaped rays and made a long nose at him.
And Shiha went on whipping him and saying:
"Ah, you naughty boy, you shameless little creature, you have disgraced yourself before all the world! Take this, son of man, son of god!"
The king woke up, recalled his dream and felt as frightened and ashamed in reality as he did in the dream.
He lay for some time in the dark with his eyes open. There was a lump in his throat, his breath failed him as before an epileptic fit; the inhuman scream was ready to burst from his throat. "What shall I do? What shall I do?" he thought with anguish.
Suddenly he felt easier—something had been loosened, the lump in the throat had melted away. He got up and walked out of the tent.
The sky was rose-green and the rose-green waves of the sand seemed as ethereal as the sky. The morning star bright as the sun glittered in the heavens. Not a man, not a beast, not a bird, not a tree, not even a blade of grass—only the sky and the earth—endless freedom, infinite expanse.
Akhnaton raised his eyes to the star and smiled. All at once he seemed to have understood what he was to do.
With joy, as though his words were enough to conquer death—the mocking laughter—he whispered:
"To go away! To go away!"