Nefertiti

It looked as though a windstorm had swept through the palace.

Within days, the hangings were torn down, the cabinets emptied, the storage rooms picked clean. Whatever didn’t fit in our caravan of ships would remain in Amarna, to be collected later by servants or by the sands of time. Beer remained in the depths of the cellars, as well as bottles of Akhenaten’s favorite wine. I took some of the oldest reds for Ipu and stored them with my herbs. The rest would remain until someone broke into the palace and pillaged its stores, or the guards left behind grew desperate enough to raid Pharaoh’s cellar. After all, no one would check, and who knew if we’d ever return.

There was no formal good-bye as we stood at the quay. All that mattered to my father was that we moved swiftly. Nefertiti’s grip on the crook and flail of Egypt could be broken by a usurper in the army, or a High Priest of Aten, or an angry follower of Amun. Anything might happen, and everything depended on the people’s support. The people no longer believed in Amarna. They wanted a return to the old gods, and my father and Nefertiti would give it to them. As we sailed for Thebes, no one thought of what we were leaving behind.

On the prow, Nefertiti looked toward Thebes as she had once done as a girl.

“There will have to be a ceremony,” my father said, coming to stand by her. There was a chill in the air. The breeze on the water was crisp.

“A ceremony?” Nefertiti asked numbly.

“A renaming ceremony,” my father explained. “The princesses must no longer use Aten in their name. We must show the people we have forgotten Aten and have returned to Amun.”

“Forgotten?” Nefertiti’s voice broke. “He was my husband. He was a visionary.” I saw true affection for him as she closed her eyes. He’d made her Pharaoh of all of Egypt. He’d given her six children. “I will never forget.”

“Nevertheless, it must be done.”

Chapter Thirty

THEBES

1343 BCE

first of Pachons

WE STOOD BEFORE the columns of the temple, looking down to the avenue of ram-headed sphinxes that crouched in the sunset’s glow, reminders of what Amunhotep the Magnificent had built and what his son had tried to destroy. The bald-headed priests of Amun and the nobility had gathered. The High Priest of Amun raised his vessel in the air, and I held my breath before the water fell, washing away the name of the Pharaoh who had nearly destroyed Egypt.

“Tutankh-aten, in the name of Amun, god of Thebes and father of us all, you are now Tutankh-amun in the eyes of Osiris.”

Nakhtmin held Tut’s little head steady as the water washed over him, a child yet too young to understand the significance of his name, while Nefertiti stood beside her daughters.

Ankhesenpaaten knelt upon the ground, baring her neck to the sacred water so that she could become Ankhesenamun. Then the High Priest called for the princess Meritaten, but Nefertiti stepped forward and said forcefully, “No.”

There was a brief commotion as those who had gathered realized what she was doing.

“Not Meritaten. She will rule with me. She will be my consort and reminder of our past. Anoint her Meritaten, Queen of Egypt, so that the Aten priests will know they are not abandoned.”

Either Nefertiti was clever, pacifying the abandoned Aten priests, or she was not willing to erase the husband who had crowned her Pharaoh of Egypt.

My father inhaled sharply and the High Priest forced an agreeing smile. He took a second vessel filled with oil, raising it above Meritaten. The little princess stepped forward with a grace beyond her seven years, then lowered her head and accepted her crown.

The High Priest hesitated. “And how shall I anoint the Pharaoh of Egypt?” he asked Nefertiti.

The crowd turned to my sister and she looked at me. “As Smenkhare,” she announced.

Strong is the Soul of Ra.

Nefertiti had taken an official name without reference to Aten, making it clear to the people that this was a different reign, a return to the time when our empire had spanned from the Euphrates to Sudan. Now there was Egypt and Nubia alone; Akhenaten had given it all away: Knossos, Rhodes, the Jordan Valley, Mycenae. I turned to see Horemheb salute Pharaoh and thought, It shall not always be this way. Someday Egypt will be great again.

I looked at Nakhtmin. “You won’t return with Horemheb to fight the Hittites?” I asked him.

He smiled down at our sons in their nurses’ arms. “No, miw-sher. There will be enough work to do here. Soldiers who have never been taught properly under Akhenaten will need to be trained. I can do that. Horemheb will have to make do with someone else.”

“But who?” I worried.

“Ramesses, perhaps.” My husband indicated a decorated soldier with hair as red as the flaming sun. “He’s been commander of the fortress of Sile and will be a vizier someday. I fought with him in Nubia. He’s smart as a scribe and a gifted soldier. No one else can outshoot him with the bow and arrow.”

“Except you.”

Nakhtmin smiled and said nothing to deny it.

That evening, Pharaoh Nefertiti promised the people great victories. In the dazzling vulture-headdress of Nekhbet, the great goddess of war, she vowed that Egypt would take back the land the Heretic had been foolish enough to let slip away.

“We shall take back Rhodes, Mycenae, and Knossos! We shall march into the deserts of Palestine and reclaim the territory that Amunhotep the Magnificent made a vassal to Egypt. And we will not stop until the Hittites are driven from Mitanni back into the hills from which they came!”

The army sent up a cheer to deafen the gods, and only I could see what becoming Pharaoh had cost her. There were lines around her eyes where there had not been before, and a hardness about her countenance that Tiye used to have. My sister raised her fist in the air. “With the protection of Amun, Egypt cannot fail. The reign of the Heretic Pharaoh is done!”

The men cheered as if she had already delivered them victory.

The shields in their hands were new, melted from vessels in the Temple of Aten, and the stone-tipped spears had come from the hundreds of sculptures that had once stood in the halls of Riverside Palace. And while Nefertiti raised her arms triumphantly, I was not fooled. I imagined her beautiful villas filled with sand, and the palace with its windswept curtains standing empty, and I could only guess how heavy her crook and flail must be. Still, she had not lost everything. They could destroy Amarna, her glittering city overlooking the Nile, and they could use her statues for tinder, but they could not erase her. She could still etch her name on the monuments of Thebes.

“There will be no more heresy!” she cried. “Amun, the great god of Egypt, has returned!”

Behind the pylons, my father nodded. He had written to the king of Assyria, sending a gift of seven gold thrones—payment for a single plague-ridden arm. Only time would tell if seven thrones were enough, or if there would be war in Assyria as well.

My mother stood beside me. “All that’s left is Meritaten,” she murmured. “There will never be a prince.”

“There’s Ankhesenamun,” I told her.

We watched the four-year-old princess creep nearer the Window of Appearances. She had all of Nefertiti’s wild beauty and none of Meritaten’s seriousness. She would be full of mischief when she was older.

When the army marched out, ten thousand strong to the kingdom of Mitanni, Nakhtmin touched my elbow.