Tutankhamun: The Book of Shadows

44

I was desperate to return to my home, to check that all was well, and that the guard I had ordered Khety to organize was in place. I could afford to take no chances with my family. But as I turned a corner in the riddle of the lanes of the oldest part of the city, I saw a shape whirring through the air, and felt a blow, spreading with something like painful warmth across the side of my head, and then all was darkness.

I came to my senses on the filthy floor of the lane. Thoth was nuzzling my face with his wet muzzle. The shadows of four men stood over me. They were wearing the kilt of the army. One of them tried to kick Thoth, but he turned on him, his teeth bared.

‘Call your animal off,’ said one of them.

I quelled the bile in my throat, and slowly got to my feet.

‘Thoth!’

He came instantly, obediently, to stand beside me, at attention, gazing at the soldiers. I allowed them to shackle me, and then, with them forming a guard of dishonour, I was hurried away, down to the docks. They hustled me on to a boat, and, with Thoth anxious at my side, we set off across the Great River. We landed on the opposite bank, further north. I was pushed on to a waiting chariot, Thoth bounding up to sit at my feet, and we were driven off at speed along the stone ways that led directly towards the desert hills and mortuary temples; and then we turned north-east, towards the hidden valley. Then I was summarily taken from the chariot, and marched up the baking slopes of the rocky grey and orange hills. Our breath sounded loud in the tinder-dry silence. I wondered suddenly whether I was being escorted to some desert grave, but this seemed an absurd way to go about disposing of me. They could simply have caved in my skull and thrown me to the crocodiles, if my death was their intention. No, I was being taken to meet someone.

When we reached the top of the hill, with the great green plain surrounding the city of Thebes stretching far away to the east, hazy in the late afternoon heat, behind me, I was not surprised to see in the shimmering haze a figure waiting for me under a sunshade, with a horse standing nearby. I knew his profile. Horemheb seemed as unaffected as a lizard by the heat. He looked at me, sweating and out of breath, with contempt. He made me stand in the sun, while he remained in his circle of deep shade. I waited for him to address me.

‘I am puzzled. Why does the Queen trust you?’ he said, suddenly.

‘If you wanted to have a conversation, why did you bring me up here?’ I asked.

‘Answer the question.’

‘I am the Queen’s personal guard. You would have to ask her why she trusts me.’

He came closer.

‘Understand me well. If I do not receive satisfactory answers to my questions, I will not hesitate to cut your baboon’s head off. I see you are fond of the creature. I was not happy to have you listening to my conversation with the Queen, and that inclines me further towards the necessity of violence,’ he said.

I considered my few options.

‘I am a detective in the city Medjay. I was called by the Queen to investigate a mystery.’

‘What was the nature of this mystery?’

I hesitated. He nodded to one of his men, who drew out a knife.

‘Suspicious objects were found within the royal quarters,’ I offered.

‘It will save time if you answer as fully as possible.’

‘These objects were threats to the life of the King.’

‘Now we are getting somewhere. And what was the result of your investigation?’

‘No culprit has been decisively identified.’

He gazed at me doubtfully.

‘You can’t be much good, then.’

He beckoned me to follow him to look the other way, down into the hidden valley that lay beyond and far below us, deep into the hills to the west. On the scarred dust-grey of the valley floor I saw tiny figures moving about: workmen.

‘Do you know what that is?’ he asked.

I nodded.

‘That is the King’s tomb being readied,’ he said. ‘Or rather, it is Ay’s tomb being adapted to receive the King.’

It seemed wiser to say nothing.

‘You may be wondering what it is I want from you.’

‘I assumed there must be something,’ I replied. ‘Although what a mere Medjay detective could offer you is unclear.’

‘You have influence with the Queen. I wish you to do two things. One is, to encourage the Queen to a favourable reply to my offer of marriage. The other is, to report to me on Ay’s conversations with her. Is that clear? And of course, there will be great advantages for you in the future. You are an ambitious man, and that should be respected, and your ambitions satisfied.’

‘Presumably, if I do not do as you ask, you will execute my baboon.’

‘No, Rahotep. If you do not do as I wish, and if you are not successful in persuading the Queen of the advantages of marriage to me, I will execute your family. I know more about you than you can imagine. Your three girls. Your young son. Your beautiful wife, and your ageing father. Just think what I could do to them, if I chose. And of course, I would have you live to endure and witness every moment of their suffering. And then I would condemn you to the gold mines of Nubia, where you could lament their deaths at your leisure.’

I tried to keep breathing, and not to give myself away. I was tempted to reveal everything then about the identity of Sobek, and his connection to Horemheb’s wife. I was tempted to ask him about the balls of blood that had been thrown at the King and Queen during the festival. But at this moment, when he seemed to control everything, I held on to my information. It was all I had. I would save it.

I was about to accept his proposal, when somehow, impossibly-for evening was still some hours away-the brilliance of the daylight noticeably faded. It was as if the air and the light were slowing down in time. Everyone noticed it. For a moment Horemheb and his guards looked confused. Thoth began to run in circles, muttering anxiously, his ears laid flat against his skull. Now unnatural cries and animal howls rose from every corner of the valley, and from the more distant settlements. We all stood staring up towards the sun, shading our eyes to try to understand what was happening. A great catastrophe seemed to be taking place in the realm of the sky. Suddenly vast shadows massed and moved across the slopes, hollows and hidden depressions of the mountainside, and, it seemed, from out of the red rock itself, as if the underworld’s ghosts and spirits were rising up to conquer the light of the living.

Distantly, I heard a high-pitched music calling urgently through the air; it must be the ceremonial trumpets blasting their emergency from the temple walls. The great pylon gates would be closing firmly now against the people. Inside, priests in white robes would be scurrying to offer sacrifices to sustain Ra from the unprecedented threat of darkness that was suddenly sweeping over everything.

It felt like the end of the world. I thought of the children, and Tanefert. I hoped they would be at home together, where at least they could shelter behind the solid wooden door. I hoped they would not be afraid. The vast shadows drew even more strength and gathered together into a strange twilight; and then everything suddenly went very quiet. Even the northerly wind, which always sprang up in the late afternoon, faded and then completely died. It was as if the world was abandoned; down below in the far fields, I could only see a few mules standing uncertainly, untended, and the last few workers running for their lives across their carefully tilled rows. I heard the tiny screams of an abandoned child, but I could not see him, and anyway he too was swiftly lost in the encroaching gloom.

By now the sun had faded so much it was possible to watch, between the woven mesh of my fingers, the extraordinary, unaccountable spectacle that was taking place in the heavens. A black curved sword’s edge had imposed itself upon the great disc of the sun. Then, bands of shadow like those at the bottom of a sunlit pool rippled vastly and at speed across the land below, then over us, then onwards across the Red Land; I held my hands out to catch at them, but somehow they made no impression on my skin. As the light dimmed further it turned to something strangely grey, as when all colour is leached away from an overwashed garment.

Everything accelerated; the great black bird of night swept completely over the face of the day, and instantly the imperishable constellations of the heavens shone brilliantly, as day passed into night in a moment of time that could not be measured by the dripping of a water clock. Ra, Lord of Eternity, disappeared as surely as if he had departed below the horizon of the sky at sunset. Now all that remained was a thin corona of light around the great black conquering disc of darkness; it looked as if the God of the Sun had been forced to offer his glory in surrender. All around me was night; and yet impossibly I saw the very edges of the distant horizon in every direction displaying the oranges and yellows of sunset. It was suddenly cold, as in winter, and utterly still.

And then I saw with my own eyes a sight I shall remember until the moment of my death: the great Eye of Creation, staring down at me; the ebony of the pupil, the brilliant white corona of the iris, and momentarily a thin band of crimson, like blood, flickering around the edges of the darkness. I could not breathe, and the world ceased and was silent; and it seemed to me the most beautiful mystery I had ever seen.

But as suddenly as the darkness had conquered the light, the balance of power shifted again, and a shimmering arc of the thinnest brilliance, like the honed blade of a gold knife catching the sunlight, emerged from the opposite side to dazzle the darkness with its triumph. At first the world turned opalescent grey again, and the strange battalions of shadow rippled quickly over and away from us again, but this time in the opposite direction; and quickly the familiar blue of the sky was restored. The stars faded fast; and the world began to fill again with colour and life and time.

Horemheb was fascinated. I had never seen him so enraptured. He turned to me with a look of triumph on his handsome, harsh face.

‘Did you see? The Aten was consumed by the darkness. It is a sign from the Gods that they will not sustain the corrupt power of this pathetic dynasty. There will be a new order! This is a new Sun, shining on a new age!’ he shouted decisively, and he beat his fist against his chest triumphantly. His officers gave him a disciplined cheer.

And with that he rode off down the barren hillside, accompanied by his running officers, leaving Thoth and me to make our own way back to the palace. And as we returned along the dusty path, the image of the Eye of heaven haunted my imagination. It was the symbol of the dark circle made real. My instinct had been right. It was not just the mysterious symbol of a society; it was also a prophecy of something real to come. I suddenly recalled what Nakht had said about the dark circle: ‘It means that in the darkest hour of the night, the soul of Ra is reunited with the body and soul of Osiris. This allows Osiris, and indeed all the dead of the Two Lands, to be reborn. It is the holiest, most profound moment in all creation.’

But the more I thought about that, the more ambivalent it seemed. Did this heavenly event foretell a miracle of the return to life, or an impending catastrophe?