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.