It was a warm night: after midnight the wind had changed to the south and the temperature rose at once. Big round white clouds were floating across the sky like sails. Misty, fluffy stars twinkled like wind-blown flames and a waning copper-yellow moon lay on its back over the black ridge of the Lybian mountains.
Heaven, earth, water, plants, animals—all were still asleep; men alone were awake. The town down below was stirring like an ant-heap. Lights were appearing in the windows, lamps were smoking on the roofs, torches glowed in the streets filled with dark crowds that streamed along like rivers. There was a hum of voices, rustle of feet, stamping of hoofs, clatter of wheels, neighing of horses, cries of soldiers and the ceaseless call of the trumpets—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.
"There goes the royal procession! Let us run downstairs, girls, we can see better from there!" cried one of those who were looking from the roof of Aton's temple, and they all flew downstairs like a flock of turtle-doves, on to the flat top of the gates nearest the street where the procession was passing.
"The king! The king! Down! Down! Down!" cried the runners, scattering the crowd with their staves as they marched along in step, their bare backs bent double.
The king's bodyguard, the Hittite Amazons, came next. Yellow skinned and flat chested, with narrow eyes and high cheek bones, one warrior lock on their shaven heads, they carried bronze double-edged axes, the sacred weapon of the Virgin-Mother.
Then came courtiers, judges, councillors, warlords, treasurers, clerks, priests, soothsayers, scribes, chiefs of the bakers, chiefs of the butlers, chiefs of the king's stables, lords of the bedchamber, masters of the robes, hairdressers, launderers, perfumers and so on: all were dressed in white robes with pointed, stiffly starched aprons; all wore the special skullcaps that made their shaven heads look like the egg-shaped 'royal marrows.'
Then came the censer-bearers, lavishly burning incense, its white clouds turning rosy in the torchlight; these were followed by the fan-bearers waving multi-coloured fans of ostrich feathers and real flowers, fixed on long poles.
Finally there came twenty-four black Ethiopian youths, naked but for short aprons of parrot feathers and wearing golden nose rings; they carried on their shoulders a tall ivory throne covered with leaf gold with lions for a pedestal.
Dio clearly saw the leopard skin on the narrow boyish shoulders, the simple long white robe of such transparent linen that one could see through it above the elbows of the thin dark-skinned boyish arms, the coloured hieroglyphics of Aton's name; she saw the staff—symbol of godhead—in one hand and the scourge in the other; the pear-shaped royal tiara, made of pale cham, a mixture of gold and silver, studded with small stars of lapis lazuli, and the golden snake of the sun, Uta, coiled on the forehead.