At last chamberlains announced the return of the Divine One who, accompanied by Nefertiti and Ay, swept into the chamber. Akhenaten accepted our obeisance and sat down on the throne. He hardly waited for us to take our positions before taking the flail and rod handed to him by Ay and, crossing his arms, issued a decree which would have an effect throughout Egypt: the complete and utter destruction of the cult of Amun. Statues were to be removed and destroyed. All references to the god, be they on a public monument or a private tomb, were to be summarily removed. Anyone who objected or resisted was to be treated as a traitor and dealt with accordingly. The King’s writ would run from the Great Green to beyond the Third Cataract and even across Sinai to any temple, chapel or tomb which carried a prayer, an inscription or a carving to Amun the Silent One of Thebes. We sat in shocked silence listening as Akhenaten’s voice carried through the chamber. When he had finished Akhenaten pointed the flail at Horemheb and Rameses. ‘You are responsible for the implementation of this decree and it is immediate! Mahu, you are to search out the Sekhmets. You are to arrest them. You are to destroy them and anyone connected with them. This is Pharaoh’s speech, this is Pharaoh’s will and our will shall be done!’
Horemheb and Rameses might curse and complain in private but Akhenaten’s decree was written out by scribes and despatched to every village and city throughout the Empire. Horemheb and Rameses were given explicit instructions to move into Thebes and carry out his orders, even if it meant the removal of inscriptions in the Royal Necropolis where the Magnificent One lay buried. Of course, Queen Tiye, Ay and others tried to advise caution and prudence but Akhenaten and Nefertiti were united on this. They believed the Sekhmets had been hired by the priests of Amun so they were determined to cut out that cult, branch and root. Within a year, Akhenaten boasted, Amun would be no more!
Horemheb and Rameses met with little resistance. Their troops, not to mention the mercenaries, were paid directly out of the Royal Treasury. Akhenaten had shown great cunning. He had not struck at the other gods such as Osiris at Abydos or Ptah at Memphis but only Amun of Thebes. The other priests and temples bemoaned such attacks but they were secretly pleased to see the supremacy of the Theban god shattered once and for all, his temples dishonoured, his priesthood scattered. Of course there were riots and disturbances, particularly in Karnak and Luxor, but Horemheb’s Syrian archers and Kushite mercenaries brutally repressed them.
My concerns were the Sekhmets. I quietly passed instructions for all entrances to the palace to be closely guarded. Food and wine served to the Divine One was always to be tasted. Day and night I continued my hunt. One thing I did discover. The Sekhmets had left a trail of destruction in the cities along the Nile except for one place, Akhmin, the home of Nefertiti and Ay and the rest of their tribe. Why was this? Did they come from that city? Were they members of the Akhmin gang? But who? Ay and Nefertiti’s fortunes, not to mention those of the Queen Mother Tiye, were closely bound up with Akhenaten and his great religious vision. Of course, as I reasoned to Djarka, I may have got it wrong. Other cities could report nothing about the Sekhmets. I found it strange, perhaps a mere coincidence, that Akhmin was one of these. I went through police report after police report. A dim picture of the Sekhmets emerged, though sometimes it was more distinct than others.
‘It would seem,’ I confided to Djarka, ‘that the Sekhmets are respectable and wealthy. They move up and down the River Nile with impunity. There may be two of them, possibly man and wife, that’s all I have learned.’
I returned to my searches and in doing so stumbled across something else. I became interested in a family who had moved into the Street of Scribes; they constantly petitioned the Great Writing House for employment at the palace. The group consisted of a man, his wife and their three grown sons. I had the house watched and managed to bribe one of the servants. He eventually told us a different story. The sons in question did not belong to the family but were priest-scribes from the Temple of Amun in Thebes. We raided the house, arrested everyone and went through their documents. Eventually we applied torture, whipping them on their legs and the soles of their feet. One of the younger men broke down and confessed. They had been forced to leave Thebes after the Temple of Amun had been closed and its priestly rank depleted. They had used papyrus and paid forgers to draw up false documents and arrived in the City of Aten eager for employment. Of course I had to submit this report to the Great House. Akhenaten himself, accompanied by Nefertiti and Ay, came down to question the prisoners. In his retinue came Tutu (I’m sure he kept Akhenaten advised of all my doings) and Meryre whose look of smug piety was more offensive than ever.
Akhenaten, fervently supported by Ay, truly believed I had discovered the Sekhmets. Of course, I had found no amulet or any reference to Sekhmet amongst the possessions of these so-called conspirators but Akhenaten refused to listen. The very sight of his enemy, the fact that they had lied, was evidence enough. He brushed aside their protests that they were merely scribe priests of Amun attempting to find fresh work. Ay, too, would not listen to their objections. He regarded the false documents and the small bundle of weapons they had hidden in their house as evidence of their guilt. Akhenaten himself passed sentence. The woman, the wife of the elder priest, was banished to the Red Lands. The four males were taken out into the desert and summarily executed.
Of course I was hailed as the hero of the hour, given fresh Collars of Gold and wine from Akhenaten’s own cellar. My brow was blessed with sacred oil. Akhenaten summoned me formally before the Window of Appearances where Nefertiti showered me with scented rose petals. I did my best to reason with Ay.
‘They were not the Sekhmets,’ I protested. I paced up and down his palatial chapel. ‘They have been conspirators, they may have had malice in their hearts. Only the gods know …’
‘Pardon?’ Ay called out.
I beat my breast. ‘Only the One who sees all things truly knew what was in their hearts, but I do not think they were the Sekhmets.’
‘Why not?’
‘They were too clumsy, too easy to discover. Moreover, they had spent most of their lives in Thebes, yet we know from police reports that the Sekhmets have been busy in Memphis and Abydos.’
‘They lied,’ Ay countered. ‘Assassins always lie to protect themselves. Mahu, be content. Pharaoh has smiled on you. You have won Pharaoh’s favour. The task he assigned you is now finished.’
I stared at that cunning face, those eyes which betrayed nothing. Was it Ay who’d hired the Sekhmets? Was that why he was so eager to pass the blame onto the scribe priests? Ay with his genius for questioning, for weighing everything carefully in his own dark heart. Why had he been so quick to point the finger of accusation? I bowed, quickly left and returned to my searches. I had almost given up hope, decided to let matters be and dismiss Sobeck’s report as idle babble, rootless chatter when, one night, Djarka let slip a remark which made my heart skip a beat. I’d stumbled, quite unexpectedly, on the identity of the Sekhmets.
Mahu, leaning on his staff, listens to the news: the whereabouts of some malefactor has been discovered.
(Scene from Mahu’s tomb at El-Amarna, the City of the Aten.)
Chapter 18
Horemheb and Rameses hunted Amun and all his followers in the temples and along the avenues and streets of Thebes: not even private tombs were safe. I quietly laughed at the stories of how Akhenaten’s agents broke the seals of sepulchres and went in to wipe out the picture of a goose, sacred to Amun, from paintings on the wall. In the City of the Aten Meryre and the rest of the toadies, those sanctimonious hypocrites, rose to the occasion only too eager to prove their subservience and unquestioned loyalty. Houses, shops and warehouses were raided, statuettes of any other god seized and destroyed. Those who had offended the majesty of the Aten were publicly ridiculed, being placed on donkeys, their faces towards the tails and paraded through the streets. It was now a crime in the City of the Aten to praise the wrong god, to honour some other deity. A growing restlessness manifested itself, not helped by shooting stars scrawling the heavens at night and heartchilling rumours about a hideous pestilence which had broken out across Sinai.