Tutankhamun: The Book of Shadows

2

The streets were suddenly crowded. People were emerging from different quarters, from the upper-class villas behind their high walls and reinforced gates, as well as from the poor back streets and rubbish-strewn alleys. Today, for once, the city’s mules and their burdens of mud-bricks and rubble, vegetables and fruits, were not on the streets, and the immigrant labourers who would normally be hurrying to their harsh work were enjoying a rare day of rest. Elite men of the bureaucracies in their pleated white clothing clung on to the back of their little horse-drawn chariots as they bumped and rattled along the ways of the city, some accompanied by running bodyguards. Men of the lower hierarchies walked with their servants and sunshades, along with rich children and their guardians, and expensively groomed women setting forth on early visits accompanied by their excited maids; everyone making their way, as if in time to some unheard drumbeat, towards the Southern Temple at the end of the city’s territory in order to attend the ceremonies of the festival. Everyone wanted to watch the arrival of the sacred boats bearing the shrines of the Gods, and even more importantly to get a glimpse of the King receiving them in public-before he entered the most secret and sacred of the temple shrines to commune with the Gods and receive their divinity into himself.

But whereas, once upon a time, everyone’s concern would have been about making sure the whole family was as finely dressed, as neatly styled, as well fed, and as impressive as possible-in these days of strained obedience, the wonder and the awe had been replaced by uncertainty and anxiety. The festivals were not as I remembered them from my own childhood, when the world had seemed like a boundless fable: the processions and the visitations, station by station, of the divine figures in their gold shrines, carried on gold barges, all unfolding and passing in pageant, revealed to the overheated crowds like great images on a living scroll.

I entered my courtyard, and untied Thoth from his leash. He immediately loped over to his bed, and settled down to watch from the corner of his eye one of the cats working at her exquisite toilet, an elegant front paw thrust out in the air as she licked it clean. She looked like the coy mistress of an older gentleman, playing up to her audience.

Inside, the house was in chaos. Amenmose was sitting cross-legged at the low table like a little king, beating his clenched fist in time to some tune in his cheerful head, as the milk in his bowl slopped out on to the floor for another of the cats to lick up. The girls were running to and fro, getting themselves ready. They barely registered my presence. ‘Good morning!’ I shouted, and they chorused back some semblance of a greeting. Tanefert kissed me briefly as she passed. So I settled down at the table with my son, who regarded me with mild curiosity for a moment, as if he had never met me before. Then, suddenly, he honoured me with one of his vast smiles of recognition, and continued to bash at his dish to show me how well he could do it. He is the golden child we did not expect, the surprise and delight of my middle years. At his age, he still believes everything I tell him, so I tell him the best of everything. Of course, he doesn’t understand a word. I tried to amuse him by feeding him his milk, and as if it were a special occasion, he solemnly drank.

As I watched him, I thought about the dead boy in his shattered condition; his grotesque image suddenly like a shadow at the table of life. That he had been killed in this fashion on the very day of the festival might not be a coincidence. It might not also be any kind of coincidence that the victim’s imperfections recalled those of our young King. Although of course no one publicly dares make any mention of his infirmities-his alleged infirmities-it is rumoured that Tutankhamun is less than perfect in his earthly body. But since he is rarely seen in public-and even then he always rides in a chariot, or sits on a throne-no one can say for sure what truth lies in the matter. But it is common knowledge he has never exercised power on his own account, even though he must now have come of age.

I had met his father several times, years ago, in the city of Akhetaten. And on one of those occasions I had also glimpsed the boy who had now become the King, if in name only; I remembered the tap, tap, tap of his cane down the echoey corridor of that vain, tragic and now surely derelict palace. I remembered his face, charismatic, angled, with a small, shy chin. He had looked like an old soul in a young body. And I remembered what my friend Nakht had said to me about the boy, who in those days was called Tutankhaten: ‘When the time of the Aten is over, the Amun will be restored. He may yet be called by a new name. Tutankhamun.’ And so it had proved to be. For the maddened Akhenaten had been confined to his palace in the dusty Otherworld of his crumbling dream city. And after his death, all its vast open temples and multitudes of great statues of the King and Nefertiti had begun their inevitable return to rubble; the very bricks of the city’s hasty construction were now said to be turning back into the dust of their making.

After Akhenaten’s death, throughout the Two Lands of Egypt and its dominions, his cult of the Aten had been abandoned. The image of the sun disc, and its many hands reaching down with the Ankh, sign of life, to bless the world, was no longer carved upon the walls of the temples in any of our cities. Life in Thebes had continued as if everyone had agreed to pretend that none of these things had ever happened. But of course people’s private memories are not so easily wiped clean of history; the new religion had had many committed supporters, and many more who, in the hope of worldly preferment, had placed the fate of their livelihoods and futures upon its triumph. And many remained privately opposed to the Amun priests’ astounding earthly powers, and to the absolute authority of one man in particular: Ay, a man not truly of the natural world, his blood cool, his heart as deliberate and indifferent as the drip, drip, drip of a water clock. Egypt in our times is the richest, most powerful kingdom the world has ever known, and yet no one feels safe. Fear, that unknowable and all-powerful enemy, has invaded us all, like a secret army of shadows.

We set out together in a hurry, for we were, as usual, late. The intense light of dawn had given way to the broad, powerful heat of morning. Amenmose sat on my shoulders clapping his hands and yelling with excitement. I pushed ahead, shouting at people to make way. The official insignia of my Medjay office seemed to have less effect than Thoth’s bark; he helped to clear a path through the excited mass of sweaty bodies jostling for space and air, congesting the crooked, narrow lanes and passageways leading to the Great River. Music from strings and trumpets warred with shouts and songs and jeers as men called out to each other in cheerful recognition or fantastic abuse. Tied monkeys jabbered and caged birds shrieked. Street-sellers bellowed their wares and their snacks, and insisted on the perfection of their offerings. A lunatic, with a bony face and wild eyes searching the heavens, proclaimed the coming of the Gods and the end of the world. I loved it all as much as my son.

The girls followed, dressed in their finest linens, their hair shining and scented with moringa and lotus oil. Behind them Tanefert made sure no one got lost, and no one tried to approach. My girls are becoming women. How will I feel when the three great glories of my life leave me for their adulthood? I have loved each one from before the moment they entered the world yelling in answer to their names. As the thought of their leaving began to hurt me, I glanced back. Sekhmet, the oldest, smiled quietly; the scholar of the family, she claims she can hear me thinking, which is an alarming thought, given the nonsense that makes up most of my musings.

‘Father, we should hurry.’

She was right, as usual. The time of the arrival of the Gods was approaching.

We found seats on the official stands under the shade of the riverside trees. All along the east bank, offering booths and shrines had been set up, and large crowds had gathered, full of expectation, waiting for the ship to appear. I nodded to various people I recognized. Below us, young Medjay officers were failing to impose much order on the crowd, but it has always been this way during the festival. I glanced around; the numbers of troops seemed surprisingly high, but security has become a national obsession in our times.

Then Thuyu shouted and pointed at the first of the towing boats as it came into view from the north; and at the same time we glimpsed the boat gangs on the riverbank struggling to pull the Userhet, the Great Ship of the God Amun. At this distance the famous and ancient floating temple of gold was just a glow on the glittering waters. But as it drew closer and made a turn towards the shoreline, the rams’ heads at the prow and stern became clear, and the sun’s full glory hit the polished solar discs above their heads, sending blinding light scintillating across the vast green and brown waters, glancing and flashing among the crowds. The girls gasped and stood up, waving and shouting. From the flagpole of the ship, and from the oar at the rear, brightly coloured streamers fluttered. And there at the centre was the golden shrine, veiling the hidden God himself, which would be carried ceremonially through the crowds for the short distance from the dock to the temple entrance.

The rowers at the rear of the ship, and the gangs on the shore, efficiently brought the vessel alongside the great stone dock. Now we could see the protecting frieze of cobras above the shrine, the crowns above the rams’ heads, and the gold falcons on their poles. Amenmose was utterly silenced, his little mouth wide open, amazed by this vision of another world. Then, to a vast and deafening roar, which made my son nestle into my chest anxiously, the God’s carrying shrine was raised upon the shoulders of the priests. They struggled to balance the burden of so much solid gold as they processed slowly and carefully down the gangplank on to the dock. The crowds surged forward against the linked arms of the guards. Dignitaries, priests and foreign potentates knelt down and made their offerings.

The temple was only a short distance from the riverbank. There was a ritual way station where the shrine would pause briefly for the hidden God to accept offerings, before being carried across the open ground towards the temple gateway.

It was time to move, if we were to get a good view of the carrying shrine’s arrival.