There was a King in Egypt

by Norma Lorimer

Abdul assured his master that the camels were real camels and that he was almost certain that it was an European outfit; it did not belong to desert natives.

Michael again rode on ahead for a few moments. He wondered where the travellers were coming from, and whither they were bound. This fourth morning's journey had certainly brought them slightly nearer again to the border of civilization. He knew that they were skirting an ancient oasis. Perhaps the travellers had come from it. He was still some distance from Tel-el-Amarna—not the modern Tel-el-Amarna or Haggi Kandil, which lies about five miles back from the banks of the river, where passengers travelling by railway alight when they come from Cairo to visit the ruins of the ancient city—but the ruins of Akhnaton's capital. At the point on the Nile where Akhnaton chose to build his city, the limestone cliffs go back from the river about three miles, returning to it some six miles further on.

Michael's objective was not the ruins of Akhnaton's city, but the desert and the hills which lie beyond it. The boundaries of the "City of the Horizon," Akhnaton's new capital, the seat of the heretic King, were so carefully laid down and defined by him that there has been no mistaking its exact size and circumference.

Michael was going to the original tomb of Akhnaton, cut out of the hills which formed a half-crescent round the city, like a bay, reaching back from the river. In these encircling hills the King's body was buried; the hills were his chosen resting-place.

"Here Akhnaton elected to be buried, where hyenas prowled and jackals wandered, and where the desolate cry of the night-owls echoed over the rocks. In winter the wind sweeps up the valley and howls round the rocks; in summer the sun makes it a veritable furnace, unendurable to man. There is nothing here to remind one of the God Who watches over him, and the tender Aton of the Pharaoh's conception would seem to have abandoned this place to the spirits of evil. There are no flowers where Akhnaton cut his sepulchre, and no birds sing; for the King believed that his soul, caught up into the noon of Paradise, would need no more delights on earth.

"The tomb consisted of a passage descending into the hill and leading to a rock-cut hall, the roof of which was supported by four columns. Here stood the sarcophagus of pink granite in which the Pharaoh's mummy would lie. The walls of this hall were covered with scenes carved in plaster, representing various phases in the Aton worship. From the passage there led another small chamber, beyond which a further passage was cut, perhaps to lead to the second hall in which the Queen should be buried, but the work was never finished." [1]

Later on, for political and religious reasons, his mummy was disentombed, taken up the river to the western desert and placed in his mother's splendid tomb in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings. It was in these same hills that Michael believed the King to have concealed his treasure.

The treasure was Michael's practical objective. To others the idea might seem absurd and unpractical; to him it was quite possible and practical. He could not have been more businesslike in his marching and halts if he had been a general taking his troops across the desert to relieve a beleaguered city. It was a part of his nature to be practical about the unpractical. The words of his old friend in el-Azhar often came back to him as his camel bore him through a spell of light, or as he listened to the thundering silence of the Arabian desert. He recalled his counsel, to journey undoubtingly, to follow in the steps of a "child of God," who would lead him to the treasure which no eyes had seen for countless centuries.

So far no child of God had crossed his path. From dawn until dusk he had seen nothing living or moving but one pale lizard, almost colourless as the rocks from which it had come; it had scurried across his path, the sole inhabitant of the untrodden sands, alarmed at the invasion of its kingdom.

These thoughts were passing through his mind as his camel bore him nearer and nearer to the cavalcade which was coming towards him. The unexpected sight of travellers had raised a whirlwind of new doubts in his brain and called up undesired visions before his eyes. For the last three days nothing had disturbed the divine calm of his desert surroundings. He had contentedly become a part of his camel; its somnolent tread had lulled his senses like the gentle movement of an ocean steamer on the high seas.