Queen Noferith was about to visit the hillset tomb of one of her daughters, who had died shortly after the royal family had taken up its residence in the new city. The royal-nurse, Thuya, and the three sisters of the dead Princess, were already well on their way to the tomb, bearing offerings of food, flowers and cosmetics for the use of the ka.
Within the interior of the palace, Pharaoh was busily engaged with that corpulent official, the chief-scribe, Enei. At the moment Enei was squatting cross-legged among the reeds and water-fowl painted upon the stucco floor of the room. Upon his kilted knees lay the open sheet of a long leather-roll already closely written in red and black with lines of deftly inscribed hieratic.
Enei held a long reed pen in one hand; two others stuck out behind his elephantine ears. He had been occupied all morning transcribing from Pharaoh’s own lips the “Hymn to Aton,” which for weeks had engrossed his fanatical master.
Famine and pestilence at home, revolt in Nubia, new mutterings of trouble along the Asiatic frontier, one and all had to give place now to the completion of this Sun-hymn, and the ritual of the Aton cult.
The ritual had already been chanted in the Temple of the Sun. Indeed, it had been intoned for the first time in a little chapel erected among the now well-nigh deserted temples of Amen at Karnak. Here was bitter hearing for the exiled priest of Amen!
Pharaoh was extremely anxious to hear the High Priest Merira chant his “Hymn to the Sun,” a composition which Pharaoh had written for the express use of the Priests of the Temple of Aton. In order to finish the hymn Pharaoh had shut himself up in his library with orders that on no account should he be disturbed. Ambassadors, envoys, nobles of the empire, spies and messengers, all must wait who sought an audience of the engrossed monarch.
But a few moments before, Pentu, Chief Court Physician, had backed from his master’s presence, loaded down with chains and bracelets of gold.
Pentu had gained some real or fancied ascendancy over Enei the Scribe in a heated argument as to a probable connection between the sun-god Ra of Heliopolis, Aton, and Adon, the Syrian God of Fertility. Pentu’s bald head glistened like the mirror clasped in the hand of his waiting daughter. Pentu’s broad smile widened, if indeed that might be, as his waiting servants hurled themselves into the dust at sight of his gleaming decorations, those “gifts which the king bestows.”
“What stiff campaign hath earned such rich rewards?” asks the travel-worn Rabba, messenger of Ribaddi, one of Egypt’s vassals in Asia.
“Peace, peace, soldier! Hold thy tongue, fit but to frighten lousy Sand-dwellers! Hast thou not heard? Egypt hath done with war! Corn grows upon our spearshafts, boys swim in our shields; our curved swords cut wheat and spelt, our slings kill reed-birds. The ‘gifts of Majesty’ now reach priests, poets and potters. Breath of Ra—ahem—Aton, I should have said, a soldier now must stand aside that shaven-headed sucklings from the new religious school may pass! Amemet seize me! Five hours’ waiting is enough for me! Honors to thy son’s son,” and the officer passes out.