VIII
Tutankhaton was king of Egypt. On his accession to the throne he changed his name from Tutankhaton—the living image of Aton—to Tutankhamon—the living image of Amon. He changed his religion just as easily. He took off his feet Amon's sandals with the divine image on the soles and bowed down before the god on whom he had trampled.
He moved from the City of the Sun to the ancient capital, Thebes, and began restoring Amon's temples throughout Egypt: he raised up idols of pure gold to him, multiplied gifts and levys, re-established feasts and sacrifices. He demolished the temples of Aton and destroyed his name wherever it was found—on granite colossi or personal amulets, on the high obelisks or in underground tombs. The same masons were hammering with their mallets as in King Akhnaton's reign: then they had been destroying the name of Amon and now the name of Aton; the same spies who had then been tracking Amon's secret worshippers were now hunting down the servants of Aton.
King Akhnaton's memory was anathematized. The curse was proclaimed throughout Egypt:
"May the Lord destroy the memory of him in the land of the living and may his double, Ka, find no rest in the kingdom of the dead. Woe to thine enemies, Lord, their dwelling-place is in darkness, but the rest of the earth in thy light. The sun of them that hate thee is darkened, the sun of them that love thee is rising!"
No one dared to mention his name and he was called the Enemy, the Criminal, the Monster, or the Buffoon, the Fool.
The first men of the land—the well-born, the rich, the happy, soon forgot him; but the last—the beggars, the sick, the wretched remembered him for years. They did not believe in his death: "he died and rose from the dead," said some of them, while others asserted that he did not die at all, but escaped from the palace and wandered about the world as a beggar, secretly. But all equally believed that he would come again and restore truth and justice; would punish the wicked, show mercy to the good, comfort the sorrowful, free the slaves, make the poor and the rich equal, wipe out the field boundaries, like the Nile, with the waters of inexhaustible love; would save the world that was perishing in evil and be the second Osiris, the true Redeemer and Son.
"Do you know what rumours there are about?" Tuta said one day to Merira, the high priest of Amon, and his chief helper in the war upon Aton.
"What rumours, sire?"
"That the Criminal is alive."
"I have known it all along," Merira answered, with a smile so strange that Tuta was surprised, almost alarmed.
"Known what?"
"That he is alive. He may die any number of times, but the Fool will always live for the fools! Foolishness is the sun of the world, and he, Uaenra, is the son of the Sun."
Tuta laughed and was reassured. But then he sighed and added sadly:
"Yes, my friend, foolishness is immortal. It is hard to combat it—harder than we had thought."
They spoke of other things. But in the middle of the conversation Merira asked as though recalling something:
"Do you know for certain, sire, that Akhnaton is dead?"
Tuta thought at first he was still joking, but, looking attentively into his face, was again surprised, almost frightened.
"How can you ask, my friend? Why, how could I not be certain when I saw with my own eyes...."
"Yes, you must have excellent eyes: it is not easy to see from the battlefield and recognise a man's face at the top of a house in the night, through thickets of trees, smoke and flame!"
"But not I alone, everyone says he was there and Dio with him, and I certainly did see her."
"You saw her, but did you see him?"
"I think I did."
"You think—that means you are not certain."
"Come, Merira, can you really think?—"
"I don't think anything, sire, I only want to know."
They looked at each other in silence and both felt uncomfortable. Again they spoke of other things. And when Merira rose to go, Tuta asked him:
"How is your health?"
"I am well, why?"
"You don't look well, you have grown much thinner in the face."
"I must be tired of waging war upon the Fool," Merira answered, with the same queer smile as before.
Tuta was holding his hand affectionately and looking into his eyes, as though he wanted to say something more, but did not venture to do so. Merira was silent also.
"And do you know where these rumours come from, about the Criminal being alive?" Tuta said at last. "From that accursed hole, the City of the Sun, damnation take it! Our friend Panehesy is still hiding there like a scorpion in a chink—there is no catching him...."
Panehesy, the second priest of Aton, a mild fanatic, a 'holy fool,' in Ay's words, was one of the few people who had remained faithful to King Akhnaton.
"And it is not only he," Tuta continued. "All sorts of rascals keep going there. Living fools do their best for the dead, spreading seditious rumours among the people...."
He paused and said, after a moment's thought:
"Do me the favour, my friend, go to the City and find out what is going on there; I have long meant to ask you. That wasps' nest ought to be destroyed and burnt down utterly!"
"No, sire, spare me. You have spies enough and I am not any good at that kind of thing," Merira replied so drily that Tuta did not insist.
But two days later Merira returned to the subject himself and suddenly said that he was ready to go. Tuta was overjoyed and at once sent him on the journey, with a whole pack of spies, an assembly of priests and a strong detachment of bodyguards.
The City of the Sun was deserted. Several times during the war the rebellious mob and Tuta's troops burned and plundered it. And when the new king ascended the throne he ordered that it should be destroyed completely and the inhabitants driven out. At first they had to be driven out by force and, afterwards, they fled of their own accord from the accursed place where nothing but ruins remained.
The royal gardens of Maru-Aton were even more desolate than the city. Their walls were destroyed and waves of drifting sand covered the burnt-out flower beds, the dried-up ponds, the fallen trees and the charred remains of the lodges, arbours and chapels. The place that had once been God's paradise was now a desert.
Some three days after his arrival in the town Merira visited Maru-Aton gardens to see the spot where the Criminal perished.
It was the month of Paonzu, March—already hot summer in Egypt. The sun had just set and the Lybian hills stood out black and flat, like the charred edge of a papyrus against the red sky. The Nile, too, seemed black and heavy, streaked with red here and there. The sail of a boat looked like a blood-stained rag against its dark surface.
The breath of the wind was hot as that of a man in a fever; the evening had brought it neither freshness nor rest. The grasshoppers chirped like dry sticks crackling in the fire; felled palms, lying on the ground, rustled with their yellow leaves as the sand dropped from them on the ground.
A shepherd's pipe wailed in the distance; monotonously sad, the sounds fell slowly one after the other like tear after tear.
"The wail is raised for Tatmmiz far away.
The mother-goat and the kid are slain,
The mother sheep and the lamb are slain,
The wail is raised for the beloved Son."
The old shepherd was Engur, son of Nurdahan, a Babylonian slave of Tammuzadad, brought by Dio to Egypt from the island of Crete.
As he drove up to Maru-Aton Merira saw Engur's lean sheep and goats nibbling the dry grass on the hills. "It must be he singing," Merira guessed, listening to the sounds of the pipe. He knew the song: he had heard it once together with Dio and she translated the Babylonian words into Egyptian for him. He recalled them now: "The wail is raised for the beloved Son!"
"It's always about Him, there is no getting away from Him," he thought drearily, frowning with disgust.
A young priest, Horus, a pupil of Ptamose, was walking beside him. He was the young man with the austere and meagre face whom Dio had seen once in the subterranean sanctuary of the god Ram. He was telling Merira about the rebels who had just been arrested as secret worshippers of the Criminal—the king's dwarf, Iagu, the runaway slave, Yubra, old Zenra, Dio's nurse, and other poor and obscure people. He hoped to trace through them Issachar and Aton's priest Panehesy, the two chief rebels.
"Have you questioned them?" Merira asked.
"I have."
"What do they say?"
"That the Criminal is alive."
"How could they believe anything so absurd?"
"They say they have seen him."
"Where, when, how?"
"They would rather die than say."
"What are you going to do with them?"
"Whatever you tell me, father."
"It is all one to me, but remember: if you put the living fools to death the dead one will be alive all the more. I should release them all and make an end of it."
"As you like, master, but what will the king say?"
"Oh yes, the king. You want to please the king? Very well, do what you like, only don't talk to me about it.... What day is it?"
"The twenty-fourth of Paonzu."
"And when did King Akhnaton die?"
"On the twenty-fifth."
"What a coincidence!"
"How do you mean?" Horus asked him, with sudden alarm.
Merira made no answer and stopped to look round.
"Where have you brought me, my friend? A cheerful sort of place!"
The burning sky was a deep red, the breath of the wind was hot and feverish, the yellow palm leaves made a dry rustle as the sand dropped from them on the ground, the crickets chirped and the pipe wailed.
"Always about Him—there is no getting away from Him!" Merira thought again, drearily. He sat down heavily on a tree-trunk on the ground, stretched himself, raising his arms above his head and yawned convulsively like a man who had not slept for several nights.
"How dreary it all is, oh dear!" he said, as he yawned. "Don't you find it dreary, Horus?"
"Find what dreary, father?"
"Everything, my friend, everything: being born, living, dying and rising from the dead. It would not be so bad if there were something new there, but what if it is the same as here—everlasting dreariness!"
He suddenly raised his eyes to Horus and laughed.
"Why, my son, you seem to have two little lumps on your forehead! That's a strange thing. You have grown horns just like a little ram. Bend down, let me feel them."
Horus was frightened. He knew that Merira was seriously ill and knew what his complaint was, but he feared to think of it. He always hoped that God would have mercy and spare the great prophet who had saved the earth from the Criminal.
He stood more dead than alive. But so strong was the habit of obeying the master that at the words 'bend down,' he submissively bent his shaven head. Merira gently moved his palm over it and again a smile that was like a grimace of disgust appeared on his face.
"No, there's nothing, it is smooth.... But why are you so frightened, you foolish boy? Come, I was joking, I wanted to test you. You keep watching me, afraid I will go mad. But I won't, don't you fear. I have only grown rather foolish through my war with the Fool, but it will soon pass off...."
Horus bent down again, seized his hand and kissed it. "If he dies, I will die with him," he thought and calmed down.
"I know you love me, dear boy," Merira said, kissing him on the head. "There, that's enough talking, let us go. Where is the place of the fire?"
Walking a few steps they came to a sandy open space—the big pond. Beside it, Maki's birch tree, buried in the sand, showed a bit of the broken white stem.
As he passed it, Merira for some reason recalled Dio, and he suddenly wanted to kiss the white slender stem, rosy in the light of the setting sun. But he felt shy of Horus: the young man might again imagine something. He merely slowed his pace and touched the stem as though it were a living hand stretched out to him from the earth, and for the first time after many days he smiled a real and not a jeering smile.
Passing the pond they came to a small sandy hillock, with charred planks and beams sticking out here and there. These were the ruins of the burnt palace—the tomb of Akhnaton and Dio.
"Was it here he perished?" Merira asked.
"Yes," Horus replied. "This is a holy place to them: they come here to worship the Criminal."
On the top of the hill two charred cross-beams, with a brass hoop at the top—probably a bolt that had been curled in the fire—stood out clearly against the red evening sky, like the hieroglyphic of life, the looped cross Ankh.
"What is this? Did it happen of itself in the fire?" Merira asked, pointing to it.
"No, the Criminal's worshippers must have made it," Horus answered, and calling one of the soldiers of the bodyguard, who were standing by the hillock, he told him to take away the cross.
The man climbed up, drew the poles out of the sand, broke them and flinging them on the ground, trampled upon them.
"He is alive, alive, alive! He was dead and behold he is alive!" Merira heard a loud voice behind him and, turning round, saw a thin ragged man, blackened by the sun and shaggy like a wild beast, walking towards him with a distorted face and fiercely burning eyes.
"I know what you have come for, murderer!" he cried, like one possessed. "You want to kill the dead, but behold he is alive and you are dead!"
At a sign from Horus the soldiers seized the man.
"Let him go," Merira commanded, and turning to the man asked him:
"Who are you?"
"Don't you recognise me? And yet we are old friends, berries from the same vine. We both are his murderers—only I have grown wiser and you are still foolish!"
Merira looked at him and recognized Issachar the Jew.
"Thus speaks the Lord God of Israel," Issachar cried again, lifting up his hands. "They shall look upon Him Whom they have pierced and they shall mourn for Him as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him as one is in bitterness for his firstborn!"
And as though in answer to the cry the shepherd's pipe wailed:
"Dead is the Lord, dead is Tammuz!
Dogs wander about in the ruined house,
Ravens flock to his funeral feast.
O heart of the Lord! O pierced side!"
Merira walked up to Issachar, took him by the hand, led him aside, and said:
"Stop shouting and tell me plainly what do you want of me?"
"Don't you know?"
"I don't."
"Then I won't tell you: you wouldn't believe me if I did. He will tell you himself."
Merira understood that 'he' meant King Akhnaton.
"Thine hour is at hand, Merira. To-morrow is a great day, do you know what it is?"
"Yes, the day of the Fool's death."
"Mind you don't find yourself among the fools, you clever one!" Issachar said, turning to go.
At a sign from Horus the soldiers again ran up and seized him, but Merira said once more:
"Let him go, don't interfere with him!"
The soldiers released him, and he went without quickening his pace or turning round, as though certain of not being touched again.
"Are you going to let him off, father?" Horus asked Merira. "This is Issachar, the Jew, their prophet, the chief rebel," he added, thinking that Merira had not recognised him.
"But what are we to do with him? You see he is crazy, nothing is to be gained from him!" Merira answered, shrugging his shoulders, and went to where his chariot was waiting for him. He stepped into it and drove into the town.