returning to the dust of its making.
The King was standing before a great stone statue of his father. The statue’s angular features were chiselled by shadows; all the lineaments of power were embodied in those strange features. Once they had been the epitome of kingship. But now the very style, with its strange, ambiguous elongations, had become a thing of the past. The young King’s face was enigmatic as he stood, small, human and frail, before the might of his stone father, among the desolate ruins of his father’s great vision. And then he did a strange thing: he sank down on his knees, and venerated the statue. We watched, and wondered whether we should join him. But none of his entourage seemed willing to do so. I moved towards him, and held a sunshade over his head. When he looked up, I saw his eyes were full of tears.
We toured the city’s palaces, stepping across the strange evidence of former human occupation: single dusty sandals; pieces of faded clothing; broken jugs and hollow wine jars, their contents long evaporated; small domestic things, cups and dishes still unbroken but full of little drifts of sand and dust. We wandered through high, decorated halls once home to glorious affluence and exquisite music, and now to nesting birds, snakes, rats and woodworm. Beneath our feet, exquisite painted floors of water-gardens full of glazed fish and birds were faded and cracked by time’s careless attrition.
‘I find I am suddenly remembering things I had forgotten. I was a boy here. I grew up in the Northern Riverside Palace. But now I remember being brought to this chamber.’ The King spoke quietly, as we stood in the hall of the Great Palace near the river. The long beams of the morning sun slanted in, dusty and strong. A multitude of graceful columns supported the lofty ceiling still vividly decorated with the indigo of the night sky and the glittering gold of the stars.
‘My father rarely spoke. I lived in awe of him. We sometimes worshipped together. Occasionally I would be brought to see him by myself. It was always a special occasion. I would be dressed formally, and carried along many corridors full of silence and alarming, gloomy, ugly old men who bowed low to me, but never spoke. And then I would be ushered into his presence. Often he would leave me to stand waiting for some time before he decided to notice me. I dared not move. I was frightened.’
I was not quite sure what to do with this unexpected confession. So I returned the compliment.
‘My own father is also a quiet man. He taught me to fish. When I was a child we would drift along the riverbank for many hours at dusk on a reed boat, our lines in the water, neither of us speaking, enjoying the silence.’
‘That is a good memory,’ he said.
‘It was a simple time.’
‘“
He repeated the words with a strange nostalgia, and I felt sure he had never had a simple time in his life. Perhaps it was what he most desired; as the poor desire great riches, so the rich, in their appalling ignorance, believe they desire the simplicity of poverty.
The King was staring up at the Window of Appearances where his father had once stood, high above his people, passing down gifts of treasure and collars of honour. Above the window was a carving of the disc of the Aten, and the many rays of the sun radiated like slender arms, some ending in a delicate hand offering the Ankh of Life. But the window was empty now, with no one left to give or receive such blessings.
‘I remember this hall. I remember a great crowd of men, and a long silence. I remember everyone staring at me. I remember…’
He stopped, uncertainly. ‘But my father was not here. I remember I was looking for him. Instead there was Ay. And I had to walk through the crowd into that chamber, with him.’
He pointed.
‘And what happened then?’
He moved slowly across the faded river scenes of the great floor, towards a door whose ornate carving had provided a glorious feast for the termites. He pushed it open. I followed him into a long chamber. All the furniture and any other contents had been removed. It had the hollow acoustic of a long-unoccupied place. He shivered.
‘After this, nothing was the same again. I saw my father only once more, and when he saw me he began to shout, like a madman. He took up a chair, and he tried to bring it down upon my head. And then he sat upon the ground, and wept and groaned. And that was the last time I ever saw him. You see, he was quite mad. It was a terrible secret, but I knew it. I was taken away to Memphis. I was educated, and I lived with my nurse, and Horemheb became my tutor. He tried to be a good father to me. No one even spoke my father’s name again. It was as if he had never existed. My own father had become a non-person. And then one day, I was readied for coronation. I was nine years old. I was married to Ankhesenpaaten. We were given new names. I, who had all my life been called Tutankhaten, was now renamed Tutankhamun. She became Ankhesenamun. Names are powers, Rahotep. We lost who we were, and became something else. We were like little orphans, confused and lost and miserable. And I was married to the daughter of the woman who they say destroyed my mother. But still there was a surprise to come, for I liked her well. And somehow we have managed not to hate each other because of the past. We realize it is not our fault. And, in truth, she is almost the only person in the whole world I can trust.’
His eyes glittered as emotion brimmed inside him. I decided I could not remain silent.
‘Who was your mother?’
‘Her name, like that of my father, has turned to dust and been blown away.’
‘Kiya,’ I said.
He nodded slowly.
‘I am glad you know of her. At least somewhere her name lives on.’
‘I know her name. I do not know her fate.’
‘She disappeared. One afternoon she was there, and then by the evening-she had vanished. I remember I ran to her clothing chests, and I hid inside one, and refused to leave, because all that was left was her scent in her clothes. I still keep them, although everyone has tried to persuade me to get rid of them. I won’t. Some days I still catch a faint ghost of her scent. It is very comforting.’
‘And you never discovered what happened to her?’ I asked.
‘Who would tell me the truth? And now, the people who hold such secrets are dead. Apart from Ay…And he would never tell. So I am left with a mystery. Sometimes I wake in the night, because in my dreams she has called out to me-but I can never hear what she is saying. And when I wake, I lose her all over again.’
A bird sang somewhere, in the shadows.
‘The dead live on in our dreams, don’t you think, Rahotep? Their eternity is in here. For as long as we live.’
And he gently tapped his own skull, gazing at me with his golden eyes.
27
Two days later the Great River’s deep currents brought us near to the southern domains of the city of Memphis. The ancient necropolises, built in the desert margins above the cultivation, and the ageless temple and pyramid of Saqqara, being the first of the great buildings of the Two Lands, were hidden way up on the plateau. Simut described the other monuments which lay further to the north, but which we could also not see from our river view; the shining white pyramids of Khufu and his Queens; the more recently constructed temple to Horus of the Horizon; and the great Sphinx, where Thutmose IV had erected the Carving of his Dream, in which he vowed to clear the encroaching sands from the Sphinx in return for being made King-and which indeed came to pass, although he had no legitimate claim to the throne at that time.
Thebes suddenly seemed a small settlement in comparison with the vast metropolis that slowly unfolded before our eyes; we sailed for some considerable time, observing the many outlying temple districts, the vast cemeteries that bordered the desert to the west, the middle-class suburbs, and the poor quarters, those slums of humanity that spread out in chaotic shanty districts towards the endless green of the fields; and everywhere, rising above the low dwellings, the white walls of temple enclosures.
Surrounded by welcoming boats and barges, and smaller private yachts and skiffs, we sailed into the main port. Many jetties spread out along the dockside; here were trading and naval ships from many countries, unloading
