The Exodus Quest

SIX
I

'The groundbreaking bit?' asked Gaille.

Stafford hesitated, but he was clearly proud of his ideas and wanted to impress her: the maverick historian showing up the establishment academic. 'I'll not tell you everything,' he said. 'But I'll say this much. Yes, nearly every modern work on Akhenaten mentions the possibility of some disease or other. But as an adjunct, you know. A sidebar. They get it out of the way and then move on. But I don't think you can get it out the way and move on. If it's true, after all, it would have had the most profound impact. Think about it. A young man suddenly developing a bewildering, disfiguring and incurable disease. And no ordinary young man, but one of almost unlimited power, viewed as a living God by his sycophantic court. Can't you see how that would be a catalyst for all kinds of new thinking? Priests devising new theologies to explain his ravages as blessings not curses; artists striving to represent disfigurement as beauty. Akhenaten was constantly pledging never to leave Amarna because it was the spiritual home of his new God, the Aten. But actually his vows sound much more like the wheedling of a frightened young man finding excuses to stay home. Amarna was sanctuary. People here knew better than to make him feel a freak.'

'Maybe,' said Gaille.

'There's no maybe about it,' said Stafford. 'Disease explains so much. His children all died young, you know.'

They'd reached the last of the cultivated fields, and now passed between a thin line of trees out shockingly into the raw desert, nothing but dunes between them and the high ridge of sandstone cliffs ahead. 'Christ!' muttered Lily from the back.

'Quite a sight, isn't it,' agreed Gaille. It felt like true border territory this, the tall grey water towers every kilometre or two resembling nothing quite so much as guard-posts struggling to keep the hostile desert at bay. She pointed through her windscreen. 'See that walled compound with the trees in front? That's where we're going. It used to be the local power station, but they abandoned it for a new one further south, so Fatima took it over. It's almost exactly halfway between Hermopolis and Tuna el-Gabel, which puts us right in the-'

'I'm sorry you find my theories so boring,' said Stafford.

'I don't at all,' protested Gaille. 'You were telling us about how all Akhenaten's children died young.'

'Yes,' said Stafford, a little mollified. 'His six daughters certainly, and Smenkhkare and the famous Tutankhamun too, if they were his sons, as some scholars suggest. Marfan's Syndrome drastically reduces life expectancy. Aortic dissection mostly. Pregnancy is a particularly dangerous time because of the additional pressures on the heart. At least two of Akhenaten's daughters died in childbirth.'

'So did a lot of women back then,' pointed out Gaille. Life expectancy for women had been less than thirty years, significantly less than for men, largely because of the dangers of pregnancy.

'And Akhenaten is often criticized for letting his empire fall apart while he lazed around worshipping the Aten. Marfan's causes extreme fatigue. Maybe that's why he's never portrayed doing anything energetic, except riding his chariot. And it would explain his love of the sun too. Marfan's sufferers really feel the cold, you know. And their eyesight is afflicted, so that they need good light to see anything.'

'Quite a risk, isn't it? Basing your whole thesis on such a speculation.'

'You academics!' snorted Stafford. 'Always so frightened of being proved wrong. You've lost your nerve; you hedge everything. But I'm not wrong. My theory explains Akhenaten perfectly. Can you offer another theory that even comes close?'

'How about the opium-den theory?'

Stafford slid her a glance. 'I beg your pardon?'

Gaille nodded. 'You know they've got the mummy of Akhenaten's father, Amenhotep III, in the vaults of the Cairo Museum?'

'So?'

'It's been examined by palaeopathologists. His teeth were in a wretched state, apparently.' She glanced around at Lily. 'They used to grind up their grain with stone,' she said. 'Little bits of grit were always getting in the mix. Like eating sandpaper. All Egyptians of a certain age had worn-down teeth, but Amenhotep particularly so. He must have been constantly plagued by abscesses. Have you ever had a tooth abscess?'

Lily winced sympathetically, touched a hand to her cheek. 'Once,' she said.

'Then you'll know just how much pain he'd have been in. No antibiotics, of course. You just had to wait it out. He'd almost certainly have drunk to numb the pain. Wine, mostly, though the Egyptians loved their beer. But there's another possibility. According to something called the Ebers Papyrus, opium was well known to Eighteenth Dynasty medics. They imported it from Cyprus, made it into a paste and spread it as an analgesic over the sore area: the gums in Amenhotep's case. Is it really too much of a stretch to imagine doctors prescribing opium for Akhenaten too, particularly if he was suffering from some disease, as you claim?'

They reached the outside of Fatima's compound. The gates were closed, so Gaille gave a short squirt of horn. 'Maybe he got the taste for it. Opium was certainly used at Amarna. We've found poppy-shaped juglets there, with traces of opiates inside. The Minoans used opium to induce religious ecstasy and inspire their art. Isn't it possible that Akhenaten and his courtiers did the same? I mean, there's something rather hallucinogenic about the whole Amarna period, isn't there? The art, the court, the religion, the hapless foreign policy?'

Lily laughed. 'You're saying Akhenaten was a junkie?'

'I'm saying it's a theory that explains the Amarna era. One of several. As to whether it's right or not…'

'I've never heard it before,' said Stafford. 'Has anyone published on it?'

'A couple of articles in the journals,' said Gaille, as the front gates finally swung open. 'But nothing major.'

'Interesting,' murmured Stafford. 'Most interesting.'