I, Akhnaton Uaenra, the Joy of the Sun, the only Son of the Sun, speak thus: here will I build a city in the name of Aton, my Father, for it was none other than He brought me to Akhetaton, his portion from all eternity. There was not any man in the whole land who led me to it, saying 'build a city here,' but my heavenly Father has said it. This land belongs not to a god nor to a goddess, not to a prince nor to a princess, but only to Aton, my Father. May the City of God thrive like the sun in heaven. Behold, I raise my hand and swear: I will not pass beyond the boundary of this domain, which Aton has himself desired and fenced in with his hills, and with which He is pleased for ever and ever!"
This inscription was cut in the thickness of the rocks, north, south, east and west of the city of Akhetaton, on fourteen flat boundary stones, which marked the portion of Aton, the kingdom of God upon earth. They were fourteen according to the fourteen parts of the dismembered body of Osiris, the Great Victim, for King Akhnaton was himself the second Osiris.
In the fourth year of his reign he had abandoned the ancient capital of Egypt, Nut Amon or Thebes, and founded a new one.
The city was built with such haste that the newly erected walls were showing cracks; the cracks were patched up with clay and the building carried on. Experienced architects merely shook their heads, remembering the old saying: 'to build in a hurry means no end of worry.'
The king's exchequer was growing empty; innumerable stores of treasure, plundered from the temples of Amon, were being spent; tens of thousands of workmen were driven to Akhetaton from all parts of Egypt; they worked even at night, by torchlight. And the miracle had taken place; within ten years a new city had grown up in the desert; so does the pink lotos, nekheb, break into flower during the night and appear above the water in the morning; so does a beautiful mirage rise over the shimmering heat of the desert; but the water flows away and the lotos fades; the wind blows and the mirage is gone.
Dio came to Akhetaton five days before the great festival, the twelfth anniversary of the city's foundation, coinciding with the day of Aton's nativity, the winter solstice, when the 'little sun,' the baby god Osiris-Sokkaris, rises from the dead and is born. She was to dance before the king for the first time at that festival.
Tuta had intended to present her at court as soon as they arrived, but she did not wish it and he gave way; he gave way to her in everything, waiting upon her wishes; it was evident that she was for him a big stake in a big game; he was bargaining over 'the Pearl of the Seas' like a clever merchant
He was soon comforted for his bad luck in Thebes. While still on the journey he received good news from his friends at court who had done their best for him and gave the king such a version of the rising that Tuta's weakness appeared as mercy, his cowardice as love of peace: he ran away from the battlefield, they said, because he remembered that 'peace was better than war.'
Dio spent the five days before the festival in Tuta's house near the temple of Aton, preparing for the dance. She did not go out nor show herself to anyone in the daytime, but at night she went up to the flat roof of the temple where she was to dance. She practiced there herself and taught others.