‘I see. And is our Queen Nefertiti decoration? Or is she of deep soul?’ She smiled at me, an invitation to share her amusement.
‘We know too little of her,’ he said.
‘Oh no, sir,’ she responded. ‘We know she is beautiful. We know she is clever. And we know she is the most powerful woman alive today. She drives her own chariot, and she wears her hair as she wishes, not as tradition would dictate. She smites her enemies as a King. And no-one tells her what to do. She is, in fact, the epitome of the modern woman.’
A small silence ensued around the table. Finally, the Moon spoke: ‘Indeed, and that may very well be why we find ourselves in a world which is changing faster than perhaps everyone would like.’
The conversation was becoming more charged; the stakes of the game increased. She answered him with a counter-play.
‘Do you not, then, approve of the new religion?’
This was a subject not to be carelessly discussed among strangers. Moon Man squirmed with discomfort and uncertainty, caught between speaking his mind and fearing for his future. ‘I approve it with all my heart. Of course I do. I am merely a music-maker. It is not my business to ask questions, merely to do what is asked of me and make it sound as tuneful as possible. I only wonder, privately, and I am not alone in this, whether our Lord and his Lady, she-who-will-not-be-told-what-to-do, have not bitten off more than they can chew.’ And with that, he placed a fried sprat between his lips and teased off the flesh from the bones as if he were playing a tune on a small reed pipe.
The handsome woman’s eyes were alive with amusement at the absurdity of his turn of phrase, which she seemed to want to share with me.
‘We live in a time of great turbulence,’ said her husband. ‘Can we know whether we are blessed or cursed? Will the people miss their old gods, and the Priests their easy riches? Or are we moving forward, together, as a society, towards a higher and greater truth, however challenging?’
Moon Man spoke again: ‘Higher truths need proper financing. Enlightenment is expensive. So I am pleased to hear you’-here he pointed a greasy finger at me-‘can confirm the finances of our Lord are drawn from so perpetual a spring of plenty. I hear the harvest is poor again this year. And I hear salaries are in arrears, sometimes by several years. Indeed, it is the guarantee of regular gifts from Akhenaten that has persuaded me to uproot my life and cast my fortune on the success of the new capital.’
I did not respond. Instead, the handsome woman gracefully changed the subject. She turned to the young man to her left, who had remained silent throughout these exchanges. He was an apprentice architect.
‘So, what can you tell us about the construction of the city?’ she asked. ‘And more importantly whether the bigger houses have gardens, for little else would have persuaded me to sacrifice my own home and friends for the desert.’
‘I believe the villas are luxurious. And the supply of water to the gardens is prodigious. So although the city is surrounded by the desert, and would seem an arid and unpropitious place to build a new world, yet it is now green and fertile. But alas, I am working only in a minor capacity.’ He paused, embarrassed.
‘And what is that?’ I asked.
‘I am designing the toilet area near the Great Aten Temple.’ Everyone laughed at that. Encouraged, he added, ‘Even Priests must take their libatory shits in sacred surroundings!’
‘Don’t talk to me about the Priests,’ Moon Man said. ‘Their calling is riches. And that’s all there is to it. The least Akhenaten will have achieved is the destruction of their great temples to the gods of profit!’
We all fell into silence. It is dangerous to criticize the Priests, or let us say the Old Families who have commanded so much inherited power for so many generations and are now in turmoil, like an enraged monster, at their losses of status, land and income. Likewise the Medjay: many believe that elements within the force are compelling the less orthodox members of society to accept and conform to the new religion by the use of the old techniques-intimidation, violence and suffering. I have heard stories of people disappearing, of unidentifiable bodies washing up in the river, their hands chopped off, their eyes plucked out. But it is hearsay. We are a force for order over chaos, for the harmony of maat and the rightness of things. It is how things must be.
We retired, with bids and nods of goodnight, to our hammocks and blankets. I found some solitude in my couch in the stern of the boat, among the coils of rope, beneath the great guiding oars now driven into the mud of the riverbed. The captain lay in the prow in a hammock, with a candle. Soon all the passengers were snoring beneath tents of cloth and insect nets.
And so I sit here now with this journal and think about what I may encounter in the city of Akhetaten. Essentially, I have no idea. It is a blank. Akhenaten’s so-called great idea, to initiate a new religion and to forbid the old, strikes me as insane. It is a revolution against sense. This is not an original thought: I doubt if there are more than a handful of people-the close circle of the King, and those like the builders and architects who have jobs for life-who think he has not lost his mind. A new religion, based upon himself and Nefertiti as the incarnations and only intermediaries of the Aten, the sun disc? Akhenaten has banished the minor gods the people have worshipped all their lives, as well as the major deities of the Otherworld, the World and the Sky. These days I only believe what I can see with my own eyes, or glean from the clues available to me here in this world, so he may well be right to disclaim the power of the invisible. And indeed he may be right to play the Priests at their own game, which they have been winning, at enormous personal gain, for generations. But then to take all power from them unto himself at one stroke, to drive them from their ancient temples at Karnak, and (worst of all) to leave them at large in the country wandering without employment or purpose other than inventing revenge? How is this possible? How can it end but in disaster? We hear he is hardly a god to look at. They say he is as unusual in body as he is curious in mind. His limbs long and spindly as a grasshopper, his belly like a water butt. But this is from those who have not seen the man himself. The only thing he has done right is come from a powerful mother and father, and marry well. Nefertiti. The Perfect One. They say her ancestry is mysterious, but that she is greatly admired.
Perhaps I will see all this for myself. What is clear is that these are changing times, and we must change with them or perish-at least until the powers-that-be bring about a reversal of all this, and what has come to pass crumbles back into the dust of its making. For surely Akhenaten cannot survive long. The Priests will not allow their riches and their earthly powers to be taken away from them.
But what all this has to do with the mystery to which I am called, I cannot tell.
4
I lay beneath the moon and observed the many serene and imperishable stars of the Otherworld. But the night always stirs with hidden struggles. From the bank came the sounds of birds and beasts busy with their nocturnal lives. I remembered how, when we first met, at that party, Tanefert and I stepped out from the lights and noise and walked along the water’s edge, our hands just beginning to risk a touch here and there, each apparently casual brushing of skin on skin sending shivers through my whole body. It was as if we could finish each other’s thoughts, without speaking. We sat on a bench and watched the moon. I said it was a mad old woman left alone in the sky, but Tanefert said, ‘No, she is a great lady in mourning for her lost love. Look how she calls to him.’ We talked more. She told me the truth about everything in her heart, the good and the bad, with the risks attending her confession, and I knew then, from her honesty, that she would change my life with love. Of course, it hasn’t all been easy. The gods know how I can be: moody, selfish, sad.