eye: wide, complex, searching, proud, touched with a sense of humour so subtle as to appear and disappear as one looked into it, while the other remained as yet unpainted. And something else, too: hints of pain flecked through the power of the gaze. A secret of sadness, perhaps even suffering, it seemed to me, held in their depths. Did I imagine it? Could plaster and paint and stone reveal so much?
‘Does that help?’ Thutmosis asked.
‘Yes. I’d know her anywhere.’
I could see he was pleased by the intensity of my reaction.
‘And did she see it complete?’
‘No, the eyes were missing. She was due to sit for the eyes. I always leave the eyes until last.’
The sculptor spoke again: ‘There are other works here. Perhaps you would like to see them?’
I nodded, and he went about the room slowly drawing off the sheets to reveal image after image of the Queen. A life story figured in stone: a younger woman, her face less complete, less composed, but alive with the beautiful hesitant power of youth; the young mother sitting with her first child in her arms; Nefertiti on her inauguration day, coming into her power, into this new version of herself; a companion piece to a statue of her husband, her natural beauty a strange contrast to the weird, elongated proportions of his face and limbs. I moved among the images, seeing her from every angle, the lamp in my hand revealing the changing aspects of her many faces in the shadowy world in which they were kept. Khety remained by the door, as if afraid to walk among the living dead.
‘What materials do you use to create these marvels?’ I asked.
‘Limestone, mostly. Plaster. Alabaster and obsidian for the eyes.’
‘And the colours? How do you achieve them? They’re so vivid, so alive.’
He stood behind the image, pointing with his finger, almost but not quite touching the surfaces. ‘Her skin is a fine limestone powder mixed with even finer red ochre, an oxide of some metal. The yellows are sulphide of arsenic, beautiful but poisonous. The green is a glass powder with copper and iron added. The black is charcoal or soot.’
‘And from these powders and metals you create the illusion of reality.’
‘You could put it like that. But then it sounds like make-up. This is its own reality. She will outlast us all.’ He looked at his work with reverence.
‘And have you produced similar images of Akhenaten?’
He shrugged. ‘Only recently. In the early years he worked with another sculptor.’
‘I’ve seen those statues. People found them very strange.’
‘He knows we live in the Age of Images. He demanded to be seen differently to all the kings who came before. So the artists changed the ancient proportions. They made him taller than a man, tall as a god, and they recreated him as both man and woman, and more than either. Images are very powerful. Akhenaten understands this better than anyone. He knows images are a part of politics. He is the incarnation of the Aten, and the images have made him so, no matter how his mortal body appears. Art is not only about beauty. It is not only about truth. It is also about power.’
Then he slipped the dustsheet over the new piece, covering her eyes and those silent lips, and blew out the lamp.
He resealed the room and we walked back up the corridor in silence. Then I happened to notice something gleaming through an open doorway. Thutmosis saw my interest.
‘Ah, my prize possession, the golden fruit of earthly success.’
It was a most magnificent private chariot. Built for ostentatious pleasure, it was exceptionally lightweight- one could easily pick it up with both hands-and of the most perfect design. Its shape-the wide, semi-circular, open- backed bent-wood frame, gilded with gold-leaf-was conventional, but the quality of workmanship and the materials of the fittings were superb. I walked around the vehicle, delighting in its perfections. I touched it gently, and the delicate construction responded immediately to my touch with a light, humming bounce.
‘Can I offer you a lift back?’
There was only room for two. Khety in any case had to drive our own ramshackle contraption back, so he followed us, trying to keep up. The chariot was drawn by two magnificent little black horses-a rare pair-and Thutmosis drove at high speed. The leather mesh floor gave a marvellously smooth sensation to the ride, despite the ruts and stones of the way. The poised and elegant wheels whispered beneath us. For once I could hear the birds singing as we travelled through the light of the late afternoon.
He said, ‘You feel you could almost reach the sky, eh?’
I nodded.
‘I wish you luck in your great task.’
‘I need it. I feel I am investigating images and illusions. The real thing eludes me at every step. I reach out to grasp her, and find that what seemed substantial is nothing but air.’
He grinned. ‘It’s a metaphysical mystery! I suppose a disappearance is just that. The questions are harder: why, not how.’
‘There are reasons for everything, I believe. I just can’t quite get to them. I have bits and pieces but I can’t make out the connections yet. And this city doesn’t help. It’s intricate and strange, and everyone’s playing a role so it’s all charged up, but there’s something about it I just don’t like.’
He laughed. ‘You have to go behind the appearances. It looks impressive, but believe me, behind these magnificent facades it’s the same old story: men who would sell their own children for power, and women who have the hearts of rats.’
We rattled across a temporary bridge of planks laid across a spreading stream.
‘What can you tell me about Mahu?’
Thutmosis glanced at me. ‘He has great influence in the city and much trust within the royal family. He is called The Dog. His loyalty is famous. And so is his wrath against those who fail it in any way.’
‘So I believe.’
He looked at me carefully. ‘I stick to my art. Politics and the like…a dirty business.’
‘Isn’t it the air you have to breathe here?’
‘True. But I try not to breathe too deeply. Or I cover my nose.’
We rode in silence for a while, splashing through shallow streams that crossed the way, and entered the central city, all so neat in its arrangement, its ordered patterning. He dropped me at the crossroads. I had one more question for him.
‘Would it be possible for a woman who looked very much like the Queen to have a place in the royal household, or in the city? Where would such a girl come from?’
‘I’ve never heard of such a thing, but the only place such a woman could be kept in secret, if she were part of the city, would be the Harem. Perhaps you should look into it.’
‘I’ll do that.’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘Can’t say, I’m afraid.’
He was about to move off, but a last thought stopped him. ‘This city, this splendid and enlightened new world, this glorious future. It all looks glorious, but it’s built on sand. Everyone’s either determined or forced to believe in it to make it possible. But without her, without Nefertiti, it’s not believable. It’s not real. It won’t work. It’ll all fall down. She’s like the Great River: she’s what makes the city live. Without her we’re back in the desert. Whoever took her knows this.’ Then, with a practised flick of the reins, he rode off, his chariot flashing in the golden light.
I stood at the crossroads, the city like a strange sundial of bold light and powerful darkness as the buildings set their perfect angled shadows to Ra’s ordered hours. The afternoon was changing into evening. The image of Nefertiti’s face was strong now in my imagination. I held the scarab in my palm and looked at it again. The female Ra. I squinted at it, dazzling in the light, and offered a prayer of my own to the strange god of the sun whose swift journeys in his chariot were measuring out the little time I had left.
