Tiye
I am getting old. I find that I am thinking often now, with frequent tears and deepening sadness, of the old bright days before trouble came upon this House. We were happy then. All was laughter, gaiety and pleasure. Nothing clouded our sky, from which Ra smiled benignly on us all. The world was filled with life and love and brilliant colors everywhere. Contentment—real contentment—blessed the House of Thebes and the fortunate people of our dear Two Lands.
I see the contrast in far too many things today. To take one example: the temples. “Colors everywhere,” I said. Do you, too, remember how the great pylons looked, the giant figures of Pharaoh and the gods striding across the stone, painted in vivid reds and blues and yellows, with lovely gold and scarlet banners flying from every aperture? The palaces were lovely too, corridors, floors, doors, ceilings painted with a thousand scenes of gods, of Pharaoh, of comfortable domestic things and carefree hunting and fishing along the Nile. And on the river the bright sails going up and down, and in the streets the busy, happy bustle of our handsome people, the men dark and deeply tanned, the women fair, protected from the sun, gracefully languorous as they were carried by in litters and couches or, if assigned by the gods to a lower station in life, yet moving gracefully about their burdens with happy smiles, quick laughter, warm welcoming faces.
All, all has changed. A drabness has come upon the land. Since my son closed all the temples save those of his jealous Sole God, the work crews that once kept all bright and shining with their constant attentions have been dispersed. Care and love are gone from the world. The colors of the giant statues and paintings on all temples but the Aten’s have faded and become splotchy, the banners are long since taken down and destroyed, the palaces themselves have been allowed to fall into shabby disrepair save in a few places where the orders of myself and Nefertiti have been able to preserve some semblance of former beauty. (She built her own temple to the Aten at Karnak. He did not dare object. It stands alone, a single note of brightness in the ruined surround.) On the river there is less and less color as if the boatmen were afraid to show it, and in the streets few smiles, little laughter, no longer the constant happy chatter—mingled so often with the sound of music, which also has almost vanished from our world—that used to fill Kemet with good will and laughter from Memphis to Karoy.
A sullen sourness grips the land, a deep unease. Joy has fled from Kemet and with it the air of well-being that used to be the principal distinguishing feature of our divinely ordered life.
It is because there is no order that this is so. It is because order—ma’at—the eternal fitness of things—has been destroyed. It is because my son has remade our world in his own sad image and that of his hurtful, vengeful god.
Long ago when his father and I first decided that we would dedicate him to the Aten, we intended the Aten to be a counterweight to then overweening Amon. We never contemplated that out of Akhenaten’s illness would come his great hatred for Amon and the other gods, or that out of his worship of the Aten would come his final decision to overturn them all and make the Aten, alone, supreme.
Now the Aten is inescapable. His round, empty face and long spidery arms, ending in tiny hands conferring ankhs and gifts, look down upon us everywhere; and to him my son has given titles heretofore reserved for Pharaohs alone when they have celebrated jubilees of their reigns:
“Live, Ra, ruler of the Horizon, rejoicing in the Horizon, in his role of light coming from the Sun’s Disk, giving life forever and to all eternity, Aten the living, the Great, Lord of Jubilees, Master of all that encompasses the Sun’s Disk, Lord of the Heavens, Lord of the Earth, THE ATEN.”
So high has he raised him.
I know he still conceives the Aten to be a sunny, bright and loving god. But seeing what has been done in Aten’s name, it has been long since the Aten has appeared that way to our people. In Akhenaten’s eyes—for he has told me so on many occasions—his “Father Aten” still gleams happy and beneficent above us all. In the eyes of the people he is a dark and vindictive god whose jealousy and intolerance of all others make him forever impossible to love.
Such is the tragedy of my son Akhenaten. And such is the tragedy of our House, which now must deal with him, since the people cannot—and will not, so deeply instilled in them lies the fear and worship of Pharaoh, even when they know—know—what he is doing to the land. They would never dare rise against him; they would never dare risk the vengeance of centuries. In the land of Kemet, this is not done.
Yet it must be done; and I, his mother, for many years Pharaoh in all but name of the Two Lands, must now perform a terrible service for my people. Nothing will be done unless I give the word: the Family waits upon me. So I must give the word, because there is no one else to give it, and nothing else left to do.
I see them both, in those early happy days: Akhenaten running and leaping down the sandy pathways of Malkata, ten years old, shortly before the illness struck; Smenkhkara the newborn, crooning in my arms, suckling at my breast, beaming upon all the world with happy smiles and welcoming gurgles. They were such happy children. All my children have been happy children, though Sitamon is on her way to becoming a soured and disappointed old woman because marriage to her no longer has a place in Horemheb’s ambitions … and Tut is aging rapidly before his time as the weight of the Double Crown comes ever closer … and Beketaten goes about a shy and frightened little girl because she, too, senses gathering storms … and Akhenaten and Smenkhkara are far, far now from the innocent and carefree days when we all laughed and loved one another in harmony and happiness in the Palace of Malkata.…
I envy my husband, sleeping peacefully in the Valley of the Kings beneath the Peak of the West, because he does not have to make the decision I must make. Were he alive, of course, he never would, because he was always weaker than I. He would flinch and smile and ease away from it, as he did from so many unpleasant things that, looking back, were clearly unmistakable warnings. We used to worry about these things, sometimes sharing our worries, sometimes not, but each sensing the other’s concerns. From time to time it would come into the open: I would urge upon him some course of action—insist upon it, finally, for the good of Kemet. Sometimes he would comply and sometimes not. When he did, things righted temporarily; when he did not, they continued their downward slide. Never could he control Akhenaten, and as his health failed so steadily in those later years, he lost even the desire to try.
So came the awful and disgraceful day of his entombment, the destruction of Amon and the other gods, the final ascendance of Akhenaten and the Aten, the putting aside of Nefertiti, the shameless enthronement of Smenkhkara in intimate co-regency with his brother, the full impact, at last, of all Akhenaten’s crazy dreams upon the Two Kingdoms. Because I think he is crazy—literally insane, and far gone now from any place where we who love him can reach him any more.
I blame myself for this, as I blame us all—but myself most of all, for I am his mother and it must have been my failure, somehow, that started it all: though I cannot honestly see how. I tried, I did my best. I have always thought to love and save him: but I failed.…
The hours I have wept for him, the Niles of tears I have shed! Even now, as I make ready to leave for the North Palace, I am shedding more. But something cold lies deep inside, at last. It is not my son—my sons—I weep for any more. It is for two alien beings, and for us who at last must regard and treat them as such if Kemet is to be saved from their infinite and awful folly.
I believe I have the support of my brother Aye, my nephew Horemheb and of Amonhotep, Son of Hapu. I am not so sure of my daughter-in-law, for I think her love still lives as it used to do, with something of the happy innocence of Malkata still alive beneath all the unhappy bitterness of these recent years. I think she also still believes in the Aten, which I have come to regard, I think realistically, as an experiment that failed.
Had Akhenaten been stronger, more insistent, had he moved from the beginning to impose his will as a Pharaoh should, instead of being so gentle, so cautious, so anxious to win the people to Aten through love instead of fear, then he might have achieved the religious revolution he sought and rid our House forever of Amon. But he wanted the people to come to the Aten of their own free will and he waited too long for them to do it. Then when he finally became enraged and decided to force them, it was too late and he went too far. And so the Aten’s temples stand empty save for fawning priests who flatter him, and the nobility and sycophants of the Court who must worship as Pharaoh directs if they would keep their positions, wealth and power. Among the people, Hatsuret and his spies tell us—we think accurately—the time is ripe for Amon and his fellows to return.
But before Amon can return my sons must go: the bargain of the gods is as simple and as ruthless as that.
Later tonight we will confront the two Kings, ostensibly to argue out the question of what is to be placed in the tombs of Huy and Meryra to depict the coronation durbar. On the surface it will be an argument decided before it is begun, for Akhenaten of course will have the final say as long as he is Pharaoh. If he wishes to depict the durbar in all its pathetic “living in truth” reality, instead of as a dignified and opulent ceremony designed to strengthen and preserve through all eternity the hitherto glorious image of the Eighteenth Dynasty, then he can order it done. But before we argue that we will have met at the North Palace and there other decisions will, I think, have been reached; and they may influence him far differently than he now dreams.
My tears are drying as I prepare to go. They may never flow again for my sons or for their mother, who will perform her last service for her beloved land of Kemet though it kills her heart forever in the breast that nourished them.
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