Before the Throne

28

HORUS HERALDED, “King Amenmessu, King Siptah, and King Seti the Second!”

The three walked in, wrapped in their winding sheets, until they stood before the throne.

Thoth, the sacred scribe, recited from their record, “They were all preoccupied with contending for the throne. Corruption reigned supreme, as greed rent the unity of the country asunder, and killing, looting, and plunder ran rampant in the land.”

Osiris called upon them to speak, and Amenmessu was the first to respond. “I took the throne by right. Yet I was surrounded by conspiracies, and fell after only one year.”

“I was entitled to rule,” asserted Siptah, “but it was usurped from me in a dispute that arose between myself and Merneptah near the end of his reign. I was distracted from my duties in chasing down malicious plots, until I was forced to give up the throne.”

“I strove to the limits of my strength to be a good ruler,” insisted Seti II. “But the corruption worsened, and the general putrefaction swept us away.”

“How quickly corruption replaces virtue,” lamented the Sage Imhotep, vizier to King Djoser. “See how the weakness of a single ruler is reflected back onto an entire civilization!”

“Perhaps the problem in the end is,” Thutmose III suggested, “how to find the right, powerful man at the right time?”

“There wasn’t any man in the royal family who was powerful enough,” countered Horemheb. “Yet could it be that there was no such man to be found in the land?”

“The law demands that the heir who is present be granted the throne,” said Isis, “not to suffer the difficulties of finding someone else who has the right qualities. These three could only do what they were able to do.”

“Get all ye to Purgatory,” said Osiris imperiously.