Tuta, as usual, surpassed them all.
"My king, my god, who hast made me, grant me to enjoy the sight of thy face forever!" he exclaimed, rolling his eyes so ecstatically that everyone envied him.
The king sat down in his chair on a low alabaster platform between four pillars. Dio stood behind him with the fan.
All looked at her curiously. She felt she was already regarded as the king's mistress; she flushed and looked down.
A bodyguard of Hittite amazons stood in the depths of the many pillared room. The dignitaries sat on their heels in a semicircle on mats on the floor; only three sat on folding chairs: Tuta, Merira, and the commander-in-chief and king's vizier, Ramose, a heavy fat old man of seventy, with a red puffy face, like an old woman's, a courtly smile on his lips and small eyes lost in fat, very kind and intelligent.
Grandson of General Amenemheb, fellow-soldier of the great Tutmose the Third, the Conqueror, he had covered himself with glory in the different campaigns he led against the wild tribes of Kush and the Sinai nomads. He had been promoted to the rank of Vizier under King Amenhotep the Third, Akhnaton's father, and the people were fond of him and called him 'a just man.' He would have given his life for the king, but he regarded the new faith in Aton and the betrayal of the old gods as madness and disaster. "The best and most unfortunate of kings," he used to say about Akhnaton, "he is ruining himself and his kingdom for nothing."
The sitting of the Council began. The king listened to the officials' reports about the failure of crops, famine, rebellions, brigandage, robberies, bribe-taking, secessions of provincial governors and feuds between them.
Standing slightly on one side Dio could see his face. He listened with his head bent and his face seemed expressionless.
The chief of the guards, Mahu, reported on the last rising—the one in Thebes.
"Very likely nothing would have happened had not the Lybian mercenaries joined the rebels," he said in conclusion.