Nefertiti
“Fair of Face, Joyous with the Double Plume, Mistress of Happiness, Endowed with Favor, at hearing whose voice one rejoices, Lady of Grace, Great of Love, whose disposition cheers the Lord of the Two Lands.”
So did he have me described on the boundary stelae that ring the city and still carry these endearments, undisturbed.
Nefertiti, which means “A Beautiful Woman Has Come”—so was I named by my mother on her deathbed, in the hour of my birth.
And what is the object of all these brave and flowery words now, as faithful Anser-Wossett works diligently to hide my sorrow with lotions and ointments, sweet perfume and pretty things? What of the “Mistress of Happiness” now, when it is another’s voice at which the Lord of the Two Lands rejoices, and another’s disposition that cheers him in his lonely life? What remains for her who was “Great of Love” when love is denied and sent away to an empty and distant place?
For three years I have lived in the North Palace, nevermore seeing the Lord of the Two Lands save only on those rare occasions when we happen to meet unexpectedly while passing to or from worshiping the Aten. We do not speak, our glances hardly cross. I am afraid I cannot keep some lingering entreaty out of mine when they do: in return I receive nothing but a frozen stare. Whether this truly represents his feelings or whether he looks thus to avoid showing more genuine emotion, I do not know and probably will never know. I like to think it is because he dares not look at me naturally for fear of what his eyes would show. But that may be pretending to myself. It may all be as dead as my heart so often feels.
Beside him always is my cousin Smenkhkara, performing the weak pretext of government that Akhenaten no longer favors with his attention. But though he is still diligent about his visits to Memphis and Thebes, Smenkhkara is growing a little indolent as he grows more secure in his brother’s affection. He is tending to become increasingly like his father, a lover of luxury, indulging himself—and being indulged—in fine food, fine wines, fine jewelry. Another year or two and he will no doubt begin to grow a bit fat, the golden perfection will soften and bloat: give him five years and he will waddle. But I do not expect even that to turn my husband from his obsession, so closely have their lives become entwined.
Nor do I expect it to have any effect on my selfish and hateful daughter Merytaten, who lords it over the Southern Palace as though she were the Chief Wife, or possibly even the Great Wife herself. Nothing suits her better than to have things stay exactly as they are, for she exercises my rights, my privileges, my honors with none of the responsibility—and none of the concern for Kemet—that always marked my conduct when I was at her father’s side. She was always ambitious, always grasping, always shrewish, even as a child. Now she has it all, and makes sure that I know it. Possibly this is because I used to punish her from time to time, used to impose a stern and evenhanded discipline upon all the girls but particularly upon her and Ankhesenpaaten, who has many of the same characteristics but has learned under my tutelage to modify them to more subtle and more skillful ways. I do not know: I know only that she is hurtful to me and encourages both her father and her uncle-husband to continue in their foolish and fateful lives.
Thereby she invites upon herself the retribution that may fall upon them. I hope she will be happy with her bargain, if that time comes.
I suspect that my mother-in-law intends that it come fast, else she would not have called us together in family council tonight. She is looking much aged, tired and worn; the plump-faced girl who sits smugly beside smug Amonhotep III (life, health, prosperity!) in the colossal statues that still guard the deserted temple of Amon at Luxor now walks the earth a wrinkled old woman while he lies beneath it a shriveled mummy. But the indomitable character that made the Great Wife Pharaoh in all but name of the Two Lands for so many years remains indomitable still; and now I fear that she has decided at last to turn irrevocably against her sons. I do not know what she contemplates: I do not know yet how I shall respond to it. Many things in me cry out for vengeance: many cry equally for forbearance and compassion. Smenkhkara is an amiable fool who may have to be sacrificed, but Akhenaten is another matter. His life has been so hard, beginning so brightly, turning so sad. Many and grievous are the crimes he has committed against ma’at, but many and grievous have been the compulsions driving him to it. And he did create out of his own heart and mind—the only Pharaoh in our two thousand years of history who ever dared defy the pattern—the decision to raise the Aten to be the Sole and Only God, a beacon to light Kemet’s way from centuries of superstition and darkness toward a new and glorious freedom … which Kemet does not want, and which I am afraid the Great Wife, my father and the others have finally decided can never be.
But the Aten still lives in my heart, as love still lives there; which is one of the reasons I approach with such great apprehension our conference tonight and what may flow from it. In my house the Aten lives, as it does in his; and I am raising the children, particularly Tut and Ankhesenpaaten who may eventually reach the throne, to know the Aten’s truth and loving kindness. I am determined that neither the Aten nor his principal prophet will be forgotten. Perhaps Amon and the others must be restored someday, but modestly—modestly. I intend to make certain that the Aten never loses the dominant position to which Akhenaten has raised him, for the Aten is bright and shining and good. The old darkness of Amon must never return to dominate the Two Lands with fear as it used to do. This I shall always try to prevent, and I believe Tut and Ankhesenpaaten will help me should they be called, as I am afraid they soon might be, to the Double Crown.
It is for this reason that I ordered three years ago, shortly after he put me aside, my own temple to the Aten to be built within the confines of the enormous one he built just east of Karnak soon after he became Co-Regent fifteen years ago. This temple I commanded to consist of nothing but glorification of me and our daughters (in a happy unity we do not, of course, possess) worshiping the Aten and being strengthened by him. I did this as an act of homage to the Aten, so that it would be understood that I was still loyal to the Sole God no matter what might happen to my husband; and also as an act of defiance toward my husband, so that he would know that he could not break my spirit or my loyalty to the god, whatever he might do to me. I did not try to have it built here in Akhet-Aten, for he could have prevented me here and probably would have done so. By ordering it built at Karnak I secured the assistance and support of the Great Wife. She confirmed my orders, and he did not dare countermand them. In any event, I doubt that he even noticed, or if he did, remained uncaring, because he has never returned to Thebes since the day of his father’s entombment. Perhaps he even pretends to himself that my temple does not exist, since he has never seen it and apparently never intends to. But there it stands within the confines of his, lovely in colors and brightness—a temple to the Aten and a temple to me, whom he can never destroy for all his unfairness that hurts me so bitterly in my heart.
Tonight we have an issue on its face small, by implication and timing great: the depiction of the coronation durbar in the tombs of Huy and Meryra. Those two gentlemen, properly cowed, slink fearfully about their business, caught between the conflicting commands of Pharaoh that the scene be portrayed exactly as it was in all its pathetic sparseness and more than fraternal indignity, and the demands of the Great Wife and myself that the honor of the Dynasty be maintained for all time by depicting it as it should have been: myself and all six girls, alive and well and happy at the side of Akhenaten, receiving the fulsome tributes of our allies and vassals, blessed through eternity in the rays of the Aten.
I believe it may be the Great Wife’s intention that we should present our demands (I doubt if I shall attend that session, but she wants my consent) to the two Kings as a united family; and that then, if Akhenaten and Smenkhkara refuse to comply, move swiftly to take some action we will have agreed upon here before they are confronted. What action does she have in mind? It is this that frightens me. I sense an end of patience in the air—perhaps even an end of love, as duty to Kemet persuades both the Great Wife and my father that they must put aside personal feelings and move at last to challenge Akhenaten’s unhappy rule.
In this I do not know where I shall stand or what I shall do. I may not know until the moment actually comes. I cannot conceive of turning against him irrevocably myself; love ingrained in me since childhood—ingrained, ironically, by the very ones who may now wish to put love aside forever—would seem to make it impossible. Yet I agree with them: the Two Lands cannot go on like this. Somehow there must be a stop.
Anser-Wossett puts the final touches, for the many-thousandth time, to the changeless perfection of my face and hands me the mirror. Together, as always, we survey what her handiwork has accomplished with the gifts of the gods I received at birth. My eyes meet hers in the mirror and we exchange smiles: in my own, I am afraid, but a ghost of the delighted satisfaction with which I performed this little ritual in happier times.
As our eyes meet, there comes a sudden disturbance in the courtyard, a hurrying down the corridors, the distant sounds of arrival. My eyes widen and, despite my firmest attempts, grow frightened. Instinctively she places a reassuring hand upon my shoulder, a familiarity she has never dared before in all our years together: but these are not usual times. I place my hand upon hers, exert a grateful pressure in return. I hand the mirror to her carefully, rise slowly to my feet, turn with a careful dignity toward the door, take a deep breath and lift my head to its proudest height upon my long, graceful neck.
“Do not be afraid, Majesty,” she says hurriedly at my back. “The gods will not desert you this night.”
“I pray not,” I say over my shoulder as I leave the room, “for I need their strengthening now as I never have before.”
***