Amonhotep,
Son of Hapu
I have watched this family many, many times, and never have I seen its principal members so stern and troubled as they are tonight.
We come now, I believe, to the beginning of the end of the rule of Nefer-Kheperu-Ra Akhenaten, that strange boy we all regard with such sadness because there was a time when we all regarded him with love.
I shall soon be sixty-five years of age, Aye and I having marched the years together and having, in some degree, together been responsible for the creation of the complex character that has brought such disaster on the Two Lands. I wonder now if we could have done it any differently, produced some different end: I do not think so. I think it all came originally from his illness. I think it was all decreed by the gods.
I think, perhaps, it was decreed by Amon, though I have tried valiantly for fifteen years now to convince myself, as Akhenaten would have us convince ourselves, that Amon is no more and only the kindly Aten shines over all. Perhaps my lack of success in sustaining this conviction is that I know Amon has not left us. He is hiding in a secret corridor off Horemheb’s tomb in Sakkara, awaiting only the proper day to reappear. Now the day approaches, I think. I know in my own heart, as I know in the expressions of the faces I see before me, that it is almost here.
The Great Wife is older, too, beginning to shrivel and wrinkle as the years march on. Her face, ravaged by time and worry for her sons and for the Two Lands, carries only a trace of its girlish beauty and self-satisfaction; long gone are the days when she and Amonhotep III (life, health, prosperity!) ruled contented over a contented and unthreatened kingdom. Now all that is gone, save for one thing: alone of them all, she still holds the undivided and unshaken love of the people of Kemet. They respect Aye, they admire, and secretly, perhaps, fear a little, Horemheb; they are deeply fond of Sitamon, they look with anticipation and approval on youthful Tut, they pity and still retain some lingering affection for Nefertiti; but only Queen Tiye do they still simply and unreservedly adore. To them she represents “the great days,” as they have already come to call them, looking backward with a wistful regret. To them she still remains their Queen—and their Pharaoh, too, in a profound emotional sense that neither Akhenaten nor his too amiable and slow witted brother can ever match.
Therefore if she has finally decided, as I think she has, that the time has come when they must go for the good of Kemet, the people, though momentarily shocked and perhaps even horrified (though little feeling remains for either Pharaoh), will speedily embrace whatever happens if it is felt that she approves it. Particularly is this true if one adds to it the fact that this will be a mother’s terrible judgment on her sons.
“If the Great Wife, their mother, feels that way,” the whisper will run, “then who are we to question?”
And no one will. All will unite in unanimous joy that relief has come at last to the Two Lands.
Yet it is not an easy thing for this to happen; it is no light matter. It is tragedy such as Kemet has rarely seen and can hardly remember. Its burden weighs upon us like a thousand stones as we take our seats in Nefertiti’s throne room facing the Great Wife, who by our instinctive courtesy and deferral occupies the dais. She is dressed in her full golden garments and wears her distinctive delicate and beautifully worked golden crown, set with carnelian, turquoise and lapis lazuli.
Aye is frowning and stern, Horemheb is grim and, as always, wary; Queen Tiye herself is sad, tense but determined. Only Nefertiti, as always, remains outwardly calm and unemotional, though we all know the tensions that must be swirling inside. It is perhaps in hopes of releasing these at once so that Nefertiti can join in what may have to be done that Queen Tiye begins so bluntly.
“The time has come,” she says, and though her voice quivers she continues without flinching, “when for the good of the Two Lands Nefer-Kheperu-Ra and Ankh-Kheperu-Ra must be removed from the throne.”
There is terrible silence for a moment. Then Aye speaks, a heavy emotion dragging on his voice, but he too saying what he must:
“Sister, I agree with you.”
We look then to Horemheb, who for a second makes some show of hesitating. Then he bows gravely to the Great Wife and says firmly:
“And I, Your Majesty.”
They look then to me, wanting to unite all of us before we demand of Nefertiti her compliance and support. And so I too bow and say simply:
“It is for the good of the Two Lands.”
Then we turn together to the Chief Wife, who has listened in silence, only the widening of her beautiful eyes and the dead white paleness beneath her make-up (which now looks suddenly garish and obvious, something we have never seen with her before) disclosing her emotion. But what emotion? We wait for her to say.
A long moment passes. The silence grows more terrible still. At last she speaks, very slowly, very carefully, as if seeking time against a judgment she dreads but cannot contradict.
“Why does Your Majesty say this?” she inquires finally; and with a sudden impatience, not unkind but not yielding either, Queen Tiye says:
“Niece, you know as well as I.”
Again the terrible silence, and again the very slow, very careful response, while we all stare fascinated, not wishing to watch her bitter struggle but unable to keep our eyes away.
“What will be Your Majesty’s excuse?”
“The excuse of the paintings in the tombs, Niece,” the Great Wife says. “You know that, too.”
“He will be given a chance to agree about the paintings?” Nefertiti inquires, and we can see she is clinging to some last hope, inspired by a lifelong love.
“He will be given the chance,” Queen Tiye says grimly, “but you know as well as we what his answer will be.”
“Perhaps not,” Nefertiti says with a sudden beseeching eagerness that we all know springs from hope, not reality. “Perhaps he will agree, and then—”
“Then there will be more misrule,” Horemheb says with a sudden bitterness. She turns on him like a lioness.
“You relish this! You wish him dead! You hate him as you always have!”
For a moment he does not reply. Then he looks her squarely in the eyes and replies softly:
“Do I, ‘Little Sister’? Does ‘Big Brother’ hate ‘Little Brother’? It was not so when we were playing together in the happy days at Malkata.”
“‘The happy days at Malkata,’” she repeats, very low. “‘The happy days at Malkata!’ I wish the gods had never let us leave Malkata!”
“They did not take us from Malkata,” Aye remarks quietly. “He did. There was nothing but sand where we sit tonight before he brought us here. That you know also, Daughter.”
“But he will be given the chance,” she repeats, not replying to her father, seeming to speak from some inner world. “And if he says no, as you all expect—”
“And you expect,” Aye says gently, but again she ignores him.
“—then what will become of him?” she concludes. And suddenly, frightening us all, her voice rises almost to a shriek. “What will happen to my husband?”
“We shall try,” Queen Tiye replies, and her voice again trembles but she does not flinch from the import of her words, “not to hurt him. We shall try not to hurt either of them. But if they continue as they are—and we have all decided, Niece, that this is the final test—then they must go. There is no other way.”
“You will not strike down Pharaoh!” she cries. “You dare not strike down Pharaoh! The people would never allow it!”
“No,” Aye agrees, “they would not—not even this Pharaoh, with all his sad misrule—if they knew in time. But who is to tell them, Daughter? Horemheb’s troops surround your palace. They have orders to let no one go out who is not approved by the Great Wife or by me. No one will arouse the people.”
Again there is a silence as she stares at him with unbelieving eyes, the lovely face no longer serene but shadowed with a terrible fear and dismay.
“I am a prisoner, then,” she says in a broken, pathetic voice. “I am a prisoner, then, and cannot even go to him.”
“You are a prisoner for a little time only,” Horemheb says; and adds, his tone more gentle than his words, “And besides, Sister: what makes you think he would want you to go to him?”
To this she replies with a sudden sharp, strangled cry, wordless but filled with pain—because it is true, and she knows it as well as we. She begins to weep, a racking, painful, awful sound; and on her throne Queen Tiye begins to weep in sympathy. But her expression does not yield, and presently Nefertiti rises and half walks—finally half crawls—to the foot of the dais. There she raises her hands in supplication.
“Can it not be done,” she asks between her sobs, “can it not be done—in—in such a way—that it will not—not—hurt him? Can he not be given a warning? Can there not be one more chance?”
“What warning?” Horemheb asks sharply. “What chance? He deserves nothing from the Two Lands, or from us who are their guardians!”
“The gods did not make you their guardians!” she cries with a sudden savage bitterness, turning on him through her tears. “He is their guardian! He alone!”
“And Smenkhkara,” Horemheb answers softly. “Do not ever forget Smenkhkara.”
Instantly her expression changes: inspiration flashes across the now ravaged face with its make-up straggling, its hair at last disheveled, disturbed as we have never seen it. She turns back to the Great Wife, again raises her hands in supplication. I think all of us know instinctively what is coming now. Her voice is suddenly cold, clear and steady.
“Smenkhkara!” she says, with a softness as still and serpentine as Horemheb’s own. “Smenkhkara! Would not that be warning enough, Majesty? Would not that bring him to his senses?”
For several moments no one speaks. We are figures frozen in a frieze, captured in our moment of revelation, devastated and enthralled as she is by the prospect she—and Horemheb (perhaps inadvertently—who ever knows, with Horemheb?)—have opened before us.
At last, because no one else seems able, I clear my throat and venture to break the silence.
“It would save a direct attack upon Pharaoh,” I say cautiously.
Aye agrees, face grim.
“It would have that advantage.”
“I do not think it will succeed,” Horemheb says at last. “But if the Great Wife agrees, I am willing to try it.”
We all look at Queen Tiye. Her tears have stopped, she is staring far away into some distance place—Malkata, I think, in the old days, with little boys running and laughing through the corridors. Almost she does not breathe, so intensely and so tragically is she thinking. Almost do we not breathe either, waiting upon her word. The silence lengthens … lengthens … until at last she utters a great sigh and returns to us.
“Let us see what they say a half hour from now,” she says, her voice firm, a decision of some kind obviously reached. “Then we will know better what to do.”
“You do agree with me!” Nefertiti cries with a rising excitement “You will try what I suggest! Oh, Majesty, Majesty! Tell me you will do as I suggest!”
Queen Tiye stares down upon her still prostrate figure with a look both wondering and compassionate. Gently she rises, steps forward, reaches down and brushes a fallen strand of hair from the Chief Wife’s sweat-drenched forehead.
“Do not worry, Niece,” she says gently. “I shall try to be fair to all. Though the gods help me”—and suddenly she gives us a wild look, almost as though we were not there, swept away again into the world of our terrible decisions, twice as terrible for her, their mother—“though the gods help me, I do not know how!”
“Good!” Nefertiti cries, leaping to her feet like a girl, wildly excited and happy, while the old Queen gropes blindly for her brother’s arm and with his help blindly descends from the throne. “Oh, thank you, Majesty, thank you!”
And she rushes to the door, flings it open, forgetting—probably for the first time in her entire life—how she will appear to the servants—and claps her hands furiously.
From all sides they come running.
Two minutes later we are in the chariots on our way across the still busy nighttime city—past the brightly lighted shops and bazaars where buyers and shopkeepers haggle over bread and meat and vegetables, past the shrilly whistling hawkers of candy and fine linens, the donkey carts pushing through with their loads of straw, the casually strolling soldiers, hand in hand, who know nothing of the terrible drama our hurried passage represents as we race by, scattering them momentarily before they close placidly behind us—on our way to the South Palace to see the two Kings.
Behind us in the doorway Nefertiti stands watching, a strange mixture of triumph, terror and sorrow on her face. Tears are once more running unheeded down her cheeks.
In the savage light of the torches she looks like an avenging goddess—ecstatic, but shaken to the heart in her moment of victory.
She is still a very beautiful woman.
***