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.