'No more godlike than you, my lady,' I whispered. 'When will the play begin?' she demanded impatiently. 'I am so excited that I can wait no longer.'
I cocked my ear to the panel of the tent and listened for a moment to the drone of the speeches in the great hall. I realized that this was-the final oration and that at any moment my Lord Intef would call upon my players to perform.
I took Lostris' hand and squeezed it. 'Remember the long pause and the haughty look before you begin your opening speech,' I cautioned her, and she slapped my shoulder playfully.
'Away with you, you old fuss-pot, it will all go perfectly, you'll see.' And at that moment I heard my Lord Intef's voice raised.
'The divine god Pharaoh Mamose, the Great House of Egypt, the Support of the Realm, the Just, the Great, the All-Seeing, the All-Merciful?' The titles and honorifics continued while I hurried out of Lostris' tent and made my way to my opening position behind the central pillar. I peered around the column and saw that the inner courtyard of the temple was packed and that Pharaoh and his senior wives sat in the front rank on low benches of cedar wood, sipping cool sherbet or nibbling dates and sweetmeats.
My Lord Intef was addressing them from the front of the raised platform below the altar that was our stage. The main body of the stage was still .hidden from the audience by the linen curtains. I surveyed it for one last time, although it was too late to do anything further about it now.
Behind the curtains the set was decorated with palms and acacia trees that the palace gardeners had transplanted under my instruction. My masons had been taken from the work on the king's tomb to build a stone cistern at the back of the temple from which a stream could be diverted across the stage to represent the river Nile.
At the rear of the stage, hanging from floor to ceiling, were tightly stretched sheets of linen on which the artists from the necropolis had painted marvellous landscapes. In the half-light of the dusk and the flicker of the torches in 'their brackets the effect was so realistic as to transport the beholder into a different world in a distant time.
There were other delights that I had prepared for Pharaoh's amusement, from cages of animals, birds and butterflies that would be released to simulate the creation of the world by the great god Ammon-Ra, to flares and torches that I had doctored with chemicals to burn with brilliant flames of crimson and green, and flood the stage with eerie light and smoke-clouds, like those of the underworld where the gods live.
'Mamose, son of Ra, may you be granted eternal life! We your loyal subjects, the citizens of Thebes, beg you to draw nigh and give your divine attention to this poor play that we dedicate to Your Majesty.'
My Lord Intef concluded his address of welcome and resumed his seat. To a fanfare of hidden rams' horns, I stepped out from behind the pillar and faced the audience. They had endured discomfort and boredom on the hard flagstones, and by now were ripe for the entertainment to begin. A raucous cheer greeted my entrance and even Pharaoh smiled in anticipation.
I held up both hands for silence, and only when it was total did I begin to speak my overture.
'While I walked in the sunlight, young and filled with the vigour of youth, I heard the fatal music in the reeds by the bank of the Nile. I did not recognize the sound of this harp, and I had no fear, for I was in the full bloom of my manhood and secure in the affection of my beloved.
'The music was of surpassing beauty. Joyously I went to find the musician, and could not know that he was Death and that he played his harp to summoame alone.' We Egyptians are fascinated by death, and I had at once touched a deep chord within my audience. They sighed and shuddered.
'Death seized me and bore me up in his skeletal arms towards Ammon-Ra, the sun god, and I was become one with the white light of his being. At a great distance I heard my beloved weep, but I could not see her and all the days of my life were as though they had never been.' This was the first public recitation of my prose, and I knew almost at once that I had them, their faces were fascinated and intent. There was not a sound in the temple.
'Then Death set me down in a high place from which I could see the world like a shining round shield in the blue sea of the heavens. I saw'all men and all creatures who have ever lived. Like a mighty river, tune ran backwards before mine eyes. For a hundred thousand years I watched their strivings and their deaths. I watched all men go from death and old .age to infancy and birth. Time became more and more remote, going back until the birth of the first man and the first woman. I watched them at the moment of their birth and then before. At last there were no men upon the earth and only the gods existed.
'Yet still the river of time flowed back beyond the time of the gods into Nun, into the time of darkness and primordial chaos. The river of time could flow no further back and so reversed itself. Time began to run forward in the manner that was familiar to me from my days of life upon the earth, and I watched the passion of the gods played out before me.' My audience were all of them well versed in the theology of our pantheon, but none of them had ever heard the mysteries presented in such a novel fashion. They sat silent and enthralled as I went on.
'Out of the chaos and darkness of Nun rose Ammon-Ra, He-Who-Creates-Himself. I watched Ammon-Ra stroke his generative member, masturbating and spurting out his seminal seed in mighty waves that left the silver smear that we know as the Milky Way across the dark void. From this seed were generated Geb and Nut, the earth and the heaven.' 'Bak-her!' a single voice broke the tremulous silence of the temple. 'Bak-her.' Amen!' The old abbot had not been able to contain himself, and now he endorsed my vision of the creation. I was so astonished by his change of heart that I almost forgot my next line. After all, he. had been my sternest critic up to that time. I had won him over completely, and my voice soared in triumph.
'Geb and Nut coupled and copulated, as man and women do, and from their dreadful union were bom the gods Osiris and Seth, and the goddesses Isis and Nephthys.'
I made a wide gesture and the linen curtains were drawn slowly aside to reveal the fantasy world that I had created. Nothing like this had ever been seen in Egypt before and the audience gasped with amazement. With measured tread I withdrew, and my place upon the stage was taken by the god Osiris. The audience recognized him instantly by the tall, bottle-shaped head-dress, by his arms crossed over his chest and by the crook and the flail he held before him. Every household kept his statuette in the family shrine.
A droning cry of reverence went up from every throat, and indeed the sedative that I had administered to Tod glittered weirdly in his eyes and gave him a strange, unearthly presence that was convincingly godlike. With the crook and the flail Osiris made mystical gestures and declaimed in sonorous tones, 'Behold Atur, the river!'
Once more the audience rustled and murmured as they recognized the Nile. The Nile was Egypt and the centre of the world.
'Bak-her!' another voice called out, and, watching from my hidden place amongst the pillars, I was astonished
