I want to have Maki buried according to the ancient custom," the queen said.
"It shall be as you wish," the king answered. He understood what 'according to the ancient custom' meant. The hieroglyphics and mural paintings of the new tombs in the province of Aton contained no name or image of the ancient gods, no prayers, no incantations from the ancient scrolls of Going out into the World, Unsealing of lips and eyes, from the Book of the Gates, the Book of what is beyond the Tomb; no name or image of Osiris himself, the bringer of life to the dead.
It was only now that the king grasped the meaning of the inscription in Merira's tomb: 'may Aton and Unnofer revive the flesh on my bones.' Unnofer was the Good Spirit, Osiris, the King Akhnaton himself. There was a challenge and a temptation in it: "if you are He, conquer death!"
"I am not He! I am not! I am not!" he wanted to cry out in terror.
The mild fanatic, "the holy fool," Panehesy, looked straight into his eyes, as though asking: "Will you renounce the work of your whole life, will you lie, You-Who-live-in-truth, Ankh-em-maat?" And he read in his eyes the answer, "Yes, I will lie."
The best embalmers of Thebes, Memphis and Heliopolis, herhebs and mesras, "divine sealers, cutters and cleaners," were working at the dead body of princess Makitatona.
Cauldrons were boiling night and day in the House of Life, the embalming chamber: ointments and unguents were being cooked—balm, styrax, cinnamon, myrrh and cassia; piles of wood were heaped up—sandal, terebinth, cedar, currant wood, mastic and the fragrant wood of the shuu tree; heaps of incense from Punt in lumps as big as a fist lay about. Clouds of dust rose over the copper mortars in which powders were made. Anyone unaccustomed to these pungent smells would have fainted coming into the chamber.
For thirty days and thirty nights they were cleaning, soaking, drying, salting, embalming, smoking and pickling the body.
The king watched everything. He saw the entrails being taken out through a slanting slit in the stomach, and the lapis lazuli sun beetle, Kheper, being put in the place of the heart. He heard the cracking of the bones when the nose was broken and the brain scooped out with a long flint knife.
Eyes of glass were set into the empty sockets. The hair of the wig, eyebrows and eyelashes was smoothed carefully. The nails, finger and toe, were gilded. A narrow plaited Osiris's beard in a wooden box was tied to the chin, for, in the resurrection of the dead, woman becomes man, the god Osiris. The bandage of the god Ra was put round the forehead, of the god Horus round the neck, of the god Tot on the ears, of the goddess Hathor on the mouth. And the mummy spun round and round like a spindle in the clever hands that bound it in endless bandages like a chrysalis in a cocoon.
A wooden, crescent-shaped support for the head was prepared and a prayer to the Sun—not the new god, Aton, but to the ancient god Ra—was written on a new sheet of papyrus: "Give warmth under his head. Do not forget his name. Come to the Osiris Makitaton. His name is the Radiant, the Ever-Living, the Ancient of Days. He is Thee."
Thus a new great and terrible god Makitaton grew out of little Maki.
Ancient wisdom went hand in hand with ancient crudeness and childishness: the hieroglyphic of the serpent in the tomb inscription was cut into two, so that the snake should not sting the dead, and fledgelings on the paintings had their feet cut so that they should not run away. A silver boat was placed in the tomb for the dead to sail the Sunset Sea, also a mirror, rouge, powder, a book of fairy tales and draughts: the dead could play a game with her soul; toys were also put in, among them Ankhi's broken doll, carefully pieced together.
A tomb effigy was made for the mummy: the bird Ba with a human face and hands, the soul of the dead girl, placing its hands upon her heart and looking lovingly upon her face was saying:
"The heart of my birth, my mother's heart, my earthly heart, do not forsake me. Thou art in me; thou art my Ka, my Double within my body; thou art Khnum, the Potter who hath made my limbs."
The Germinating Osiris was prepared, too: linen was stretched on a wooden frame, the likeness of Osiris's mummy was drawn upon it, a thin layer of black earth was placed over it and thickly sown with wheat. The frame was watered until the seeds germinated; then the crop was cut down smoothly like grass on the lawn. This green, spring-like resurrected body of Osiris was placed in the tomb by the side of the corpse. The living seemed to be teaching the dead: "Look, the seed has come to life—you do the same!"
The ancient custom was not observed in one respect only: the head of queen Nefertiti, the earthly mother, was sculptured in the four corners of the granite tomb instead of the head of Isis, the heavenly mother. When the queen heard of this she was indignant and rebelled against the king for the first time in her life. But it was too late to prepare a new tomb.
On the fortieth day after Maki's death the funeral procession started out. The coffin was put into a boat, the boat into a sledge—the carriage of the ancient times when there were no wheels; two pairs of oxen drew it and the runners slowly creaked on the white sand of the desert as it were on snow.
Mourners dressed in blue—the colour of the sky, the colour of death—walked in front, throwing dust over their heads with a wail, monotonous like the howling of jackals.
"Weep, weep, weep, O sisters! Shed tears, shed endless tears! Draw your mistress to the West, oxen, draw her to the West! Poor darling, you were so fond of talking to me, why are you silent now, why don't you speak a word? So many friends you had, and now you are alone, alone, alone! The little feet that walked so fast, the little hands that held so tight are bound, confined, tied down. Weep, weep, weep, O sisters! shed tears, shed endless tears!"
The sun was setting when they entered the Princesses' Valley, with the yawning openings of the tombs cut in the rocks. Close by an old fig tree was an unfading patch of green against the dead sands and a sweetbriar flowered fragrant with the scent of honey and roses: the secret waters of an underground spring kept them fresh. The drowsy humming of bees sounded like faraway cymbals.
The mummy was placed at the entrance of the tomb and stood against the yawning blackness of the cave, bathed in the last radiance of the setting sun. Two priests, one wearing the mask of the jackal-headed Anubis and the other of the falcon-headed Horus, stood on either side of the mummy, while the officiating priest, herheb, performing the sacrament Apra, the opening of lips and eyes, read the magical words from a papyrus:
"Get up, get up, get up, Osiris Makitaton! I, thy son Horus, have come to give thee back thy life, to join thy bones, to bind thy flesh, to put thy limbs together. I am Horus, thy son, who gives birth to his father. Horus opens thy eyes that they may see, thy lips that they may Speak, thy ears that they may hear; he strengthens thy legs that they may walk and thy arms that they may work!"
The priest embraced the mummy, brought his face near its face and breathed into its mouth.
"Thy flesh increases, thy blood flows and all thy limbs are whole."
"I am, I am! I live, I live! I shall not know corruption," another priest, hidden behind the mummy, answered as though it were itself speaking.
"Thou art a god among gods, transfigured, indestructible, ruling over other gods;" the officiating priest declared.
"I am one. My being is the being of all the gods throughout eternity," the mummy answered and the dead eyes glittered more brightly than the living. "He is—I am; I am—He is."
The king fell on his face: he understood that this new terrible god, Lightgiving, Everlasting, Ancient of days, Makitaton, had overthrown Aton.
He breathed with relief when the body was put back in the coffin and Makitaton became little Maki once more.
He bent over her, kissed her on the mouth and put upon her heart a branch of mimosa: the tender, feathery leaves were to respond with their tremour to the first stir of the heart at resurrection.
The king spent the night in a tent in the desert, waiting for sunrise, to say the morning prayers at the tomb.
He could not go to sleep for hours. At last he got up, lifted the side of the tent and looked out. The Milky Way stretched like a cloud rent in two from one end of the desert to the other, the Pleiades glowed, and the seven stars of Tuart the Hippopotamus glittered with a cold brilliance. Dead stillness was all round; only the jackals' howling and the hooting of owls came from the gorge below.
He lay down again and went to sleep.
He dreamt he was standing on a square platform at the top of Cheops' great pyramid. The desert below was thronged with a countless multitude of men: there seemed to be as many heads as there were grains of sand in the desert; it was as though all tribes and peoples had gathered together for the last judgment on him, Uaenra. They were looking at him and waiting with bated breath.
A puny, black little creature—Shiha, the eunuch, or the god Tot himself, the Wise Monkey—fidgeted by his side. The king wanted to push it away and could not—he felt weak all over.
Suddenly Shiha tore off the king's royal apron, shenshet, and began whipping him with a switch on the naked body, saying:
"Here's something for you, Akhnaton Uaenra, Joy of the Sun, Sun's only Son!"
He did not hurt him but whipped him respectfully, as one ought to whip the god-king according to the mad wisdom of the dream; but the more respectful it was, the more shameful.
And the human multitude down below laughed frantically, shaking the earth and the sky with its laughter. The sun in heaven, a red monstrous face, bared its teeth, turning crimson with laughter; it stretched out its long hand-shaped rays and made a long nose at him.
And Shiha went on whipping him and saying:
"Ah, you naughty boy, you shameless little creature, you have disgraced yourself before all the world! Take this, son of man, son of god!"
The king woke up, recalled his dream and felt as frightened and ashamed in reality as he did in the dream.
He lay for some time in the dark with his eyes open. There was a lump in his throat, his breath failed him as before an epileptic fit; the inhuman scream was ready to burst from his throat. "What shall I do? What shall I do?" he thought with anguish.
Suddenly he felt easier—something had been loosened, the lump in the throat had melted away. He got up and walked out of the tent.
The sky was rose-green and the rose-green waves of the sand seemed as ethereal as the sky. The morning star bright as the sun glittered in the heavens. Not a man, not a beast, not a bird, not a tree, not even a blade of grass—only the sky and the earth—endless freedom, infinite expanse.
Akhnaton raised his eyes to the star and smiled. All at once he seemed to have understood what he was to do.
With joy, as though his words were enough to conquer death—the mocking laughter—he whispered:
"To go away! To go away!"
PART IV
THE SHADOW OF THE ONE TO COME
I
Saakera came up to Dio, his face so distorted that she hardly knew him.
"The king is waiting for you, go to him," he said, and was about to go when she stopped him.
"What has happened, prince?"
"He will tell you himself, go to him."
"I am keeping watch; I must wait till I am relieved."
"Never mind. I will take your place."
Dio ran up the stairs to the flat roof of Aton's temple.
The day was just dawning. The sky seemed empty and glassy like the open eye of a corpse. The waters of the river looked leaden. The earth was under the spell of sleep. The town below appeared dead. It was the hour when men's sleep is like death as is said in the hymn to Aton:
Men sleep in darkness like the dead,
Their heads are wrapped up, their nostrils stopped,
Stolen are all their things that are under their heads,
While they know it not.
Every lion comes forth from his den,
All serpents creep out of their holes,
The creator has gone to rest and the world is silent.
The white walls of the temple were dull-green as though under water. All was dead; only on the great altar of the Sun a perpetual fire was burning and the sun disc of Aton above it—the highest point of the whole huge edifice—glowed with a dull-red glow as though a ray of an invisible sun were reflected in it.
Dio saw the king in the distance, but she did not recognise him at once. He was sitting on the altar steps in a curiously cramped attitude, with his chin resting against his knees and his face buried in his hands. "Sitting on their heels in the dust," she recalled the refrain of the Babylonian song about the dead in the underworld, mournful as the howling of the night wind. He probably did not hear her step, for he did not stir. She did not dare to call him, thinking he was asleep.
Suddenly he raised his head and looked at her in a way that made her heart stand still.
"Ah, Dio! Have you seen Saakera?"
"Yes."
"Has he told you what I wanted to say to you?"
"No."
"Sit down."
She sat down beside him. He took her hand, kissed the palm of it and smiled in a way that wrung her heart again.
"There, now I have forgotten. I remember what I wanted to say, but I can't think how to say it. It must be the fit that has made me so forgetful."
She understood he was referring to the epileptic fit he had had recently.
He stretched himself so that the knuckles of his fingers cracked, and yawned loudly. Two deep wrinkles formed round his mouth. He looked like the ancient Sphinx with the face of Akhnaton.
"Do you remember my telling you, Dio, that my kingdom was coming to an end? Well, it has come to an end. I want to go away."
"How go away? Where?"
"Anywhere, so long as I go away from here, escape out of this prison.... But why do you ask? You know it all better than I do."
"But how are you to go? Will they let you?"
"No one is to know, except you and Saakera. You two will help me. He has already promised."
"Promised what?"
"I will tell you. It was he who killed Maki; she had the child by him. He has just confessed it. He is so wretched that he wants to kill himself and drink the remainder of the poison out of Merira's ring, my present to him. But I have thought of a worse punishment for him: he is to be king when I go away."
"But can he do it?"
"He will be no worse than I am. And it won't be for long: he will hand over the power to Horemheb, the Viceroy of the North. Horemheb refuses to be king so long as I live, but I expect he will agree when I am dead."
"How, when you are dead?"
"When I go away I shall be dead to all. No one will know that I have gone, and those who hear of it will not believe it but will think me dead."
Dio knew that Horemheb was an enemy of Aton's faith. Would the king ruin the work of his whole life by putting him into power? She wanted to ask the question, but felt she had better not.
"This is how Saakera is going to help me," the king went on. "We shall set out for Memphis together to see Horemheb and on the way I shall go ashore somewhere in the night—and that will be the last they will see of me."
"Will you go alone?"
"Yes. I will take off my royal dress, put on the clothes of a nab priest—you know, those that walk about the high roads collecting money for the temples, and go off with a staff and wallet."
"What for? What will you do?"
"What I have done all my life. Do you remember, Iserker said 'Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight'? Well, I shall be preparing it. I will leave the great and go to the small, leave the first and go to the last; the first have not heard me—perhaps the last will...."
He was saying extraordinary things in a dull, dreary way. He kept yawning; perhaps those who 'sit in the dust on their heels in the underworld' yawn like that, too.
"Well, why are you silent? Do you think I am mad?"
"No, it isn't that...."
"Speak, don't be afraid."
"I think .... forgive me, sire, but all you kings are like babies: you don't know what poor, hard life is like. As soon as you have gone you will perish senselessly—of thirst, of hunger, from a wild beast, or a brigand's knife. You will be like a naked child on naked earth...."
"'Be merciful to yourself, Uaenra!' Is that it? Do you remember who said it? My friend, Merira. No, Dio, my Father will not leave me. He who preserves worms and midges of the air will not forsake a man. And what is more terrible—a robber's knife or Tuta's flattery, thirst in the desert or Merira's poison? Isn't this so, Dio the prophetess?"
"It is. But I shall say, like Merira again: can't a king do more good than a beggar?"
He laughed.
"No, you are not Merira. You don't believe what you are saying. I have reigned for many years and much good I have done! Ramose is right: nothing is more vile than empty noble words, nothing more wicked than empty good words. I thought I could make people happy, bring heaven down to earth—and this is the happiness I have bestowed upon them: blood is being shed everywhere between the Delta and the Waterfalls, it is hell upon earth. I wanted to efface the boundaries of the fields, to make the poor equal with the rich, and what has happened is that the whole of Egypt is like a dirty Jews' village where people live and die like cattle in perfect equality! And it is all done by the decree of the king Who-lives-in-Truth—Ankh-em-Maat—a fine name! Iserker wanted to stab me, Merira to poison me, but isn't it doing me too much honour? To spit into the liar's face would be punishment enough.... Do you ever have shameful dreams, Dio, so ridiculous that one could die of laughter?"
"Yes, I know."
"Ah, so you have them, too.... Well, I have had such a dream—I nearly died of laughter. To laugh at oneself is death. 'I am He,' is what I laugh at, what is killing me. Laughter will kill me one day like epilepsy.... Dio, Dio, if you love me, save me, help me!"
"How can I help you?"
"Stay with her!"
She understood: with the queen.
"Does she know?"
"No."
"How then will you .... deceive her?"
"I can't deceive her—she will find out. But if at least it weren't just now, after Maki's death—one wound on the top of another.... Later on, when everything is over, you will tell her, you alone will know how to tell her so that she should forgive me...."
"No, she won't forgive, and if she does...."
"I know, you need not tell me! Oh, it would be better if she didn't forgive me! But she is sure to forgive.... What am I to do, what am I to do? To stay is to kill myself: to go away is to kill her, to trample upon her heart? ... Help me, stay with her. Perhaps you will save her. Remember, if she dies I shall die, too."
"You ask me for a miracle?"
"Yes, do a miracle—a miracle of love. You do love her, don't you? Love her to the end. Relieve me of my burden and take it upon yourself. Will you?"
"I will."
She was silent for a while and then asked:
"You will go away and I shall never see you again?"
"Yes, you will; I will call you as soon as I can and we will go to Him together!"
He spoke no more, and raising his knees as before put his chin on them and wept, covering his face with his hands.
She put her arm round his head and pressed it to her bosom, stroking it gently with the other hand.
Shiha, the eunuch, was right: the king did not know how to cry: he swallowed his tears convulsively, choked, trembled as in a shivering fit. But Dio's caress gradually calmed him, and he only shuddered from time to time with a sob like a child tired of crying.
"Perhaps you are right," he began again, "and I shall perish senselessly. Saakera wants to kill himself; perhaps I do also.... Dio, my sister, oh if you only could...."
"What is it? Tell me."
"If you could only tell me whether I ought to go away?"
Dio knew that the right answer was "no one but yourself can tell." But she also knew that saying this would mean abandoning him—the naked child upon the naked earth.
She pressed his head to her bosom and said:
"You ought."
The trumpets down below played the hymn to Aton:
"Glorious is Thy rising in the East
Lord and giver of life, Aton!"
The dead sky revived and turned rosy. A red ember blazed up in the misty gorge of the Arabian mountains and the first ray of the sun glittered on Aton's disc.
The king rose, took Dio by the hand and led her up the sloping approach to the great altar of the Sun. He turned to the East, raised his arms and said:
"I come to glorify thy rays, living Aton..."
But his voice failed him: he suddenly felt that he could no longer pray to Aton.
He fell on his knees and cried:
"My God, my God, have mercy upon me, a sinner! In thee have I put my trust, let me never be ashamed...."
And with a sob he beat his head against the flagstones:
"Let me never, never be ashamed!"
On the twenty-ninth day of the month of Hoyak, December, on the thirteenth anniversary of the foundation of the City of the Sun and the day of Aton's nativity, the king set out on his journey.
Everyone wondered at his breaking his oath not to leave the domain of Aton, but they did not wonder very much; it was the privilege of a king and a god to release himself from his vows, and besides, many had noticed that his fervour for the new faith had begun to cool. The decree prohibiting the worship of the gods had never been declared after all, and the day of departure was fixed on the very day of the great festival, as though on purpose to cancel it.
The king made no secret of his journey: he was going to Memphis to see Horemheb, the Viceroy of the North, to persuade him to take Saakera's place as heir to the throne. Sensible people rejoiced: they did not want Saakera for king; there was nothing to be proud of in being ruled by a king who had his ears boxed by his Ethiopian concubine; Horemheb, the husband of the queen's sister, Nezemmut, a direct descendant of the great king Tutmose the Third, had every right to reign; the gods themselves had commanded him to do so. "The gods rocked thy cradle," as it said in the song of Amon's priests. He was a faithful servant of the king and was not implicated in any court or priestly intrigue; but he had not been false to the faith of his fathers, had not worshipped the new god, and the enemies of Aton hoped he would destroy the work of the apostate king and restore the old gods.
Everyone rejoiced except the queen. The parting from her husband frightened her; she had never been parted from him during the fifteen years of their married life. Did she suspect anything? If she did she showed no sign of it, but submitted without a murmur. She did not ask him to take her with him—she knew he would not; and besides she could not leave Rita, who was ill. And she herself was not well: she had a racking cough, was feverish at night and there was an ominous flush in her cheeks.
The king had not been seen so joyful for years as he was on the day of his departure. Only when he took leave of the queen a shadow passed over his face; but he looked at Dio and was happy again.
The crowd on the quay was joyful, too. When the king's ship set sail, a white falcon, the bird of Horus, circled over it, foretelling a happy journey.
The people stood for some time watching the three ships, magnificently painted and gilded—marvels of gold, purple, and azure, half birds, half flowers—glide along the white water: after the overflow the Nile turns white 'like the milk of Isis.'
Memphis was four hundred aters from the City of the Sun, down the river.
The further the king went the happier he was, as though he had, indeed, escaped from prison. It made him happy that the yellow streak of the dead sands and the black of fertile earth stretched on either side of the river simply, quietly and monotonously: life and death side by side in eternal union, eternal peace; that the slow oxen were drawing deep furrows in rich earth and the bright green crops already showed here and there, and the monotonous singing of the ploughman echoed far in the stillness of the fields.
A deserted temple of the Sun, built a thousand years before Akhnaton, stood at the edge of the desert in the middle of a great pyramid cemetery, within four or five hours' journey from Memphis down the river.
A full moon, huge and red-hot, was rising beyond the Arabian Mountains when the king's ship stopped by the temple. The king, Saakera and two priests, with sacred utensils, the bread of offering, wine for libations and incense, came ashore.
The only priest and guardian of the temple, an old man of a hundred years, met them and wept when he heard that the king wanted to offer a sacrifice: the last person to visit the temple was king Tutmose the Fourth, Akhnaton's grandfather.
They walked from the harbour to the temple down a long covered passage. On the large flat roof of the temple a huge obelisk, the Sun stone, Ben-ben, stood on a pyramid-shaped base, facing an altar made of five huge blocks of alabaster, exactly like the one in the City of the Sun, on the roof of Aton's temple.
The king burned incense, made the libation and prayed in silence for a few minutes. Then he sent everyone away and walked with Saakera to the secret gates that led into the desert. He gave him a scroll of papyrus—his resignation from the throne, and a letter to Horemheb, in which he implored him to save Egypt and accept the crown.
When Saakera had sworn that all should be done, the king embraced and kissed him on the mouth and, taking off his royal tiara, with a golden snake of the sun, Uta, over the forehead, put it on Saakera's head; he took off all his royal robes, put on the dress of a wandering priest, uab, slung a wallet over his shoulder, took a staff in his hand and walked out of the gate.
The full, dazzlingly bright moon stood high in the starless sky. Coal-black shadows fell upon the white sand that sparkled like snow with sapphire sparks, and the black triangles of the pyramids stood out against the sky on the distant horizon.
Saakera watched the king go. He walked as though he had been a wanderer all his life, with a light quick step, along a faint path—a jackals' track—to the neighbouring fishing village, Ptah-Sokkaris, consisting of some two dozen mud huts.
His figure grew smaller as he walked away; he had been the size of an animal, now he was the size of a bird, a mouse, an ant, a point, and finally he disappeared, melted away in the fire of the moon.
"Strange!" Saakera thought, unconscious of the tears that were trickling down his face. "There is no God, I know there isn't, then why...?"
He broke off and started as though someone else had finished for him:
"There is God, there is! It is because there is God that he has gone away!"
II
The pyramid cemetery of the ancient kings stretched along the edge of the desert from Memphis to Heliopolis—a three days' journey.
A great battle of men with death had once been fought here; death conquered, men ran away, the field became a desert; only the pyramids remained like fortresses, besieged but not taken.
In the very middle of the cemetery, in the plain of Rostia, the three largest pyramids stood—those of Menkaur, Hafra and Cheops. The many hundred-weight blocks of stone over the king's tomb within were packed so close together that a needle could not be thrust between them; outside, the mirror-like facing of sandstone was so perfect that the pyramids looked like huge crystals. The eternal triangles, rising from the earth to one point in the sky, proclaimed to men the mystery of Three: "I began to be as one God, but three Gods were within me."
All the other tombs had been destroyed; the royal mummies had been thrown out and lay about in the sand, turning to dust under the feet of the passers-by. Bats, hyenas and jackals lived in the tombs. Thieves had plundered them for a thousand years, but had not yet succeeded in clearing everything away.
As the blind singers sang at feasts:
"I have heard of what befell my forefathers:
The walls of their tombs are destroyed,
Their coffins are empty like coffins of beggars,
Forsaken by everyone on earth.
Their dwelling-place is no more.
It is as though they had never been.
In a wild rock close by that looked like a lion at rest, the great Sphinx was carved, no one knew by whom and when. Its face was the first human face sculptured in stone. Its names were Ra-Harmahu—the Sun-at-the-edge-of-the-horizon; Khu-Zeshep—Shining Terror, and Kheper—Rising from the Dead.
Perpetually buried by the sand, it lifted its head from under it with a mysterious smile on the flat lips, to see the first ray of the rising sun; and there was the dazzling terror of death and resurrection in its eyes of stone.
Not far from the Sphinx stood a temple built also no one knew when and by whom. The square pillars and rafters of such enormous stones that one could hardly believe them to have been carved by human hands were of black granite; all was smooth, bare and divinely simple.
The temple had not been destroyed and, indeed, there was nothing to destroy in it; but it had fallen into decay like everything around it. The high road from Memphis to Heliopolis went past it and part of the temple had been turned into an inn. The alabaster floors were dirty and the mirror-like granite had turned dull with the smoke of kitchen fires.
One day towards the end of winter shepherds were keeping the night watch in the field of Rostia; the tombs in the hills close by served as cattle sheds. They lighted a bonfire of manure bricks and straw right at the foot of the Sphinx. The night was cold; the tall grass was white with hoar frost.
Wayfarers who had not been able to obtain shelter at the inn settled by the shepherds' bonfire. Issachar was among them. When King Akhnaton had left the City of the Sun for Memphis, he went after him and, not finding him there, set out in search of him. Issachar's uncle, the merchant Ahiram, who was going with his young daughter-in-law, Tabitha, to the town of Tanis on business, was there, too, and so was Yubra, the former slave of Khnumhotep; wounded in the Nut-Amon rising, he had only just recovered after a long illness.
"Blessed is He who cometh in the name of the Lord," Yubra was saying. "He shall come down like rain upon the freshly cut meadow, like dew upon parched-up earth. He shall save the souls of the humble and the oppressor he shall lay low...."
"Of whom are you speaking?" asked Merik, a shepherd, with a kind and intelligent face somewhat like that of King Hafra, the pyramid builder, whose effigies stood in the temple by the inn. "Do you mean the new prophet?"
"No, the One of Whom the prophet speaks."
"Prophets prophesy, magpies chatter and it makes no difference to us one way or another," grunted Mermose, a sickly-looking man with a sarcastic smile on his thin lips, a saltworker from the Miuer lakes.
"Very true! Prophets are no use to poor people," Anupu, an old peasant, confirmed. Rough and shaggy he looked like a tree-stump dug out of the ground and covered with earth. He had been silent, eating bread soaked in water and wrapping his sheepskin closer round him, but suddenly he grew lively and began talking as though he had recalled something.
"I have dragged the plough myself for forty years—never had any money to buy oxen; and you know how little land we have. And the summer before last part of the bank was washed away during the overflow and a quarter of my field had fallen into the river and the house very nearly went, too. Tax collectors came: 'You are in great arrears, Anupu,' they said, 'sixty bushels of wheat, sixty of spelt and a hundred and seventy of barley.' 'I have nothing at all,' I said, 'have patience with me, fathers!' 'No,' they said, 'the treasury cannot wait, lie down.' And one made a sign behind the other's back to give him a bribe, but I had nothing to do it with. So they laid me out and gave me a flogging, and to my wife, too—she had stood up for me and abused them. And they sent me to clean the canals in Set's salt marshes during the very fierce heat. I had to stand up to my knees in water, devoured by midges, shaking with fever. I still get a shivering fit when the night comes on. And a neighbour told me the other day that my wife is dead, my house has tumbled down, my two sons have been taken for the army, and my daughter has been led astray by some Midian merchants. I have nothing now to return to.... And so I say, what is the use of prophets to me?"
Merik added some straw to the bonfire. The flames leapt up, lighting the face of the Sphinx in the black starry sky. Tabitha, with a baby in her arms, was sleeping between the Sphinx's lion paws.
Tabitha means 'gazelle.' She had the eyes of a gazelle, the long, dark eyelashes of a child, and such a smile that Merik's son User, a young man with a sad and girlishly charming face, wanted to cry with happiness at the sight of her. He looked at her as though he were praying: he fancied that she was Mother Isis with the baby Horus and that the Shining Terror fixed its stony eyes into the starlit darkness merely so that it might watch over the Mother and the Babe.
"It goes ill with peasants, but soldiers are no better off," said a thin little old man, rather like a grasshopper—a retired centurion, Aziri. "A soldier climbs up the hills carrying burdens like a donkey, drinks water out of pools like a dog; when he sees the enemy he trembles like a bird in a net; and when he comes home he is covered with wounds, cankered with illness, like an old wormeaten tree; he cannot work and is ashamed to beg—he may as well lie down and die."
He did not say it, but all understood "prophets are no use to a soldier."
"Come, friends, don't be so gloomy," Merik said, looking round at them all with a serene smile. "I have lived in the world for forty years, I have seen much evil, but also a great deal of good. One can't say of a man's life that it is quite good, nor that it is quite bad either; it's all mixed up; to-day is bad, to-morrow will be better."
"No, it won't be better," Mermose retorted. "It is bad now but it will be worse. It is written in the ancient scrolls: 'the Lord will give men a tremulous heart, their eyes shall melt away, their souls shall pine and they shall tremble night and day; in the day they shall say, 'oh, if it were night!' and at night 'oh, if it were day!' 'The sky over their head shall be brass and the earth under their feet shall be iron and dust shall fall upon them till they all perish.'"
"No, they will not perish: the Saviour will come and save the perishing," Yubra said, simply and quietly.
"How will he save them, by the sword or by the word?" asked a puny little man, with a spotty face, a sharp red little nose and squinting, shifty eyes. He was a scribe, dismissed from the service, Herihor or Heri, a quarrelsome, debauched and backbiting man, as one could see from his face.
"And what do you think?" Yubra answered evasively: he was afraid of Heri who was said to be a spy.
Heri did not answer at once; he had a pull at his flask and then said, with a wink:
"The sword. Or, if there is no sword at hand, with an axe or a stick. Until we get the rich by the throat and give their fat bellies a shake, they won't give back what they have plundered.... But it's enough babbling, we must act!"
"How?"
"Raise a cry throughout the world, 'rise up, rebel, paupers, kill, plunder, burn!' A great fire will be kindled and a thing that has never been will happen; beggars will be as gods and then the earth will turn upside down like a potter's wheel!"
"You should not say such things, my son!" Ahiram stopped him. "You must not rail against the rulers even in your thoughts, nor speak evil against the rich in your own chamber, for a bird of the air may carry your words."
"A-ah, you are afraid? Well, then it's no use talking," Heri laughed and he drained the last drop out of his flask.
"But who are you, where do you come from?" Yubra asked with sudden alarm.
"And who are you and your prophet? Tramps, I expect, runaway slaves, rogues, game for the gallows, we have seen enough of such, ugh!"
He paused, looking round at them all with sleepy but still cunning eyes, and then spoke amiably again.
"Come, dear old man, don't be cross, let us kiss! Ah, mates, I am sorry for you! You are poor, ignorant people, anyone can injure you and there's no one to stand up for you. And I am so fond of poor people—I am ready to lay down my life for them!"
And suddenly bending down to Yubra, he whispered in his ear: "Do you know Kiki the Noseless? He is a man of sense, cleverer than any prophet. They say he is stirring things up again on the Upper Nile! That's the man to join! Shall I take you to him?"
Yubra said nothing, and drew back. All were silent, as though they really were afraid to speak.
Far away in the desert the hungry roar of a lion was heard suddenly, and the dogs by the sheep-fold barked and howled frantically.
Merik rose and thanking his guests for their conversation with stately courtesy typical of the men of the desert, went with two shepherds on his watch round. The others began to settle down for the night on the warm sand by the bonfire, wrapping themselves in furs and cloaks.
Issachar went up to Yubra and said, taking him aside:
"May I see the prophet?"
"Why not? Everyone will see him to-morrow."
Isaachar paused and, looking round to see if anyone was listening, asked in a whisper:
"Who is he, where does he come from?"
"A uab priest, but where he comes from I do not know."
"You really don't know or don't want to tell me?"
"No, I really don't know."
"And what is his name?"
"Neser-Bata."
Issachar knew that Bata was one of the names of Osiris: the Soul of Bread, of God's flesh broken and eaten by men; and Neser meant offspring, Son. Neser Bata—Son of Osiris, second Osiris.
"Are you an Israelite?" Yubra asked.
"Yes."
"Your Moses is a great prophet, but this one is greater than he."
"Only one Man on earth will be greater than Moses—do you know Who?"
"I know."
Issachar looked at Yubra as though wishing to ask something else.
"You will see for yourself and know," Yubra said in answer to that silent question, and walked away.
Issachar lay down by the bonfire, wrapping his cloak round him, but could not go to sleep for thinking about the prophet. There was something in Yubra's words and reservations that suggested the mysterious smile of Khu-Zeshep, the Shining Terror. He dropped asleep just before daybreak; he vaguely heard the distant roar of the lion and remembered the voice crying in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make His paths straight.'
Merik's son, too, could not go to sleep that night: he kept looking as though in prayer at the mother with the child asleep between the lion paws of the Sphinx.
Tabitha's ass dozed, hanging its head. The flame of the dying fire seemed to stand like a fine and sharp sword in the still air. From the low-lying meadows down by the river came the melancholy call of the hoopoo. The stars grew dim and twinkled like flames blown out by the wind. The sky turned white and rosy and there glowed in it a star, pure and dazzling like the sun. A red-hot ember blazed up in the misty gorge of the Arabian Mountains and the first ray of the sun lighted the Sphinx's face.
The baby woke up and cried. The mother gave him the breast. Then she held him up, showing him the sun. The boy laughed and stretched out his arms as though he would seize the sun.
The same mystery was in the smile of the baby as in the smile of the Sphinx. User fell on his face and worshipped Baby Horus—the Shining Terror.
Issachar woke up when the sun had already risen above the palm trees. He jumped up, afraid of having slept too late and missed the prophet.
Some people were hurrying past him.
"Where are you going?" he asked them.
"To Ieket-Chufu, to hear the prophet," they answered.
He followed them. Walking ankle-deep in sand along a trade between sharp, projecting rocks, they climbed on to the flat top of the hill Ieket-Chufu, facing the Great Pyramid of the same name. In the shadow the grass was still white with hoar-frost, but in the sun it had melted and fell in drops clear and bright as tears.
The expanse seen from the top of the hill was boundless: sands, yellow as the lion's hair, stretching to the edge of the horizon; bluish-green meadows and palm groves by the river; golden points of the Heliopolis obelisks, sparkling against the bare parched rocks of the Arabian hills purple as amethyst and yellow as topaz; and close by, opposite the hill, the huge pale phantom of Cheops' pyramid glimmering in the rosy sunlit mist. The perfect triangles rising from the earth to one point in the sky proclaimed to men the mystery of Three: "I began to be as one God but three Gods were in me."
The people crowding on the flat top of the hill surrounded the prophet so closely that Issachar could not squeeze his way to him. The lame, the halt, the dumb, the blind were among the crowd, as well as lepers, paralytics and men possessed by the devil. Neser-Bata laid his hands upon them with prayer and they were healed. Then he stood on a hillock in the middle of the plateau. The sun rising behind him surrounded the prophet with dazzling brilliance that seemed to come from his body. Issachar could not see his face. "Thy flesh is the flesh of the Sun; thy limbs are beautiful rays. In truth thou dost proceed from the Sun as the child from its mother's womb," he recalled the words of the service to Aton.
The prophet's voice was heard and the crowd grew so still that one could hear the drops of melting hoar-frost falling to the ground. The sound of that voice was so familiar that Issachar's heart throbbed with an incredible presentiment. He looked down: he was afraid of seeing and recognizing him.
Neser-Bata was speaking of the second Osiris, of the Son who was to come, of Him Whom the prophets of Israel called the Messiah.
Issachar raised his eyes, saw and recognized: "it is he!" and covered his face with his hands as though blinded by the sun. Yet he did not believe his eyes and looked once more, but by that time the prophet had gone down from the hillock and could not be seen for the crowd.
Issachar went up to Yubra and said:
"I want to speak to Neser-Bata."
"Go down to Khu-Zeshep, he will walk past there," Yubra answered.
Issachar walked down the hill and sat down on the sand at the foot of the Sphinx.
The sun was rising and the black shadow of the great pyramid slowly moved along the white sand like the shadow on a sundial measuring out minutes and ages, the passage of time and eternity. "How many minutes—how many ages will it be till He comes?" Issachar thought.
He suddenly saw Neser-Bata coming towards him down the hill. He went to meet him, fell at his feet and cried:
"Rejoice, Akhnaton, King of Egypt!"
He gazed into his face still unable to believe his eyes; he recognized him and yet he did not.
The prophet looked at him in silence and said, shaking his head:
"No, my son, you are mistaken, I am a beggar and a wanderer, Bata. And who are you?"
"Issachar, son of Hamuel, the one who wanted to kill you. Don't you know me?"
Suddenly Bata bent quickly down to him and whispered:
"If you love me, don't tell!"
And he looked into his eyes. There was such power in that look that had he said "die!" Issachar would have died.
But when Bata turned to go he embraced his feet and asked:
"May I follow you?"
"No, you may not. Go your way and I shall go mine: we shall both come to Him and meet there."
"To Him? But aren't you....?"
He gazed into his face once more, terror-stricken: it suddenly seemed to him that this was neither the beggar Bata, nor the king of Egypt, Akhnaton, but Someone else.
"Who are you? Who are you? I adjure you by the living God, who are you?" he whispered desperately.
The prophet shook his head and smiling pointed to the black shadow on the white sand.
"Do you see my shadow? As this shadow is from me, I am from Him. He comes after me but I am not He!"
He said it and walked along the foot of the Sphinx, followed by his shadow. He turned the corner and disappeared, and the shadow disappeared too. Only the light footprints were left on the white sand.
Issachar bent down and not daring to kiss them kissed the sand where the shadow had passed.