But then the priests who had returned with the pharaoh to Egypt had taken the cult of the beast as their own, in Thebes, in the Faiyum, reducing the beast to a mere cipher, to another manifestation in the cult of Amun that gave the priests control over the people and the pharaoh. They had caught the beasts and kept them in pools and tamed them, and offered their mummies to the god. But out here, on the edge of darkness, the truth remained: harsh, visceral, a truth of fear and appeasement, of the sacrifice needed to harness the strength and power of the beast to protect the pharaoh and the army. Here, in a place so far into the desert that the gods of the north hardly held sway, a place where a man could look into the souls of his distant ancestors, here the words that the lector-priest would soon read had true meaning. Here, to dip your foot into the Nile was to dip it not into a river controlled by men, but into primeval darkness. Today the man with the staff would draw all the power back into this place, and he would cleanse Egypt of the falsehoods and artifice created by the priests. He had seen the light in the desert; today would be a new beginning, the start of a time of brilliance that he would spread to the world.
He could see the statue more clearly now; the shaft of light that came through an opening high on the chamber wall continued to rise up the body as the sun set in the west. The lower part was the body of a man, one foot forward, wearing a skirt and naked from the waist up, bearing a sceptre in one hand and the ankh symbol of life in the other. The statue towered over the man, at least twice his height, the massive musculature of the upper torso and arms making the head seem almost natural, as if such a creature could have been born that way. But it was the head of a crocodile, jutting out far into the chamber, fierce and terrifying. The head was still in shadow, a dark silhouette, but above it he could make out the plumed headdress of Amun and the horned sun-disc of Ra, with the sacred serpent spiralling around it. As the light rose higher, the snout came into view, mottled green marble with teeth of cloudy quartz, jagged and shimmering. The eyes were just visible, limpid pools of black, and he could see the nostrils, flaring and filled with cut crystals of red agate; they seemed to reveal an inner fire, as if the beast were burning within.
The lector-priest stood before the statue and unravelled his scroll. The man could see the hieroglyphic symbols on it, picked out in gold and red and green. The lector-priest began to recite, his voice high pitched and shrill in the chamber:
The man stared at the head of the statue, waiting. He too would go upstream, searching for perfection. And then it happened: the shaft of sunlight reached the snout and the nostrils. A beam of red seemed to shoot out from the crystals, illuminating the smoke from the incense that rose from the priests, a swirling cloud that wreathed the head of the god as if it were rising from fire. The sunbeam seemed to engorge it with light, to ignite the eyes and the teeth, and at the same time to suck the light energy from it, as if it were awakening the beast and then drawing its essence back into the sun.
The man whispered under his breath: ‘You are no longer Sobek. Now you are Sobek-Re, the pathway of light towards the Aten. And soon you will no longer be Sobek-Re, and the Aten will rule supreme.’
He had completed the ritual of purification, and he turned to go. Through the open doorway he could see the orb of the sun setting into the western horizon, orange and glowing. On the wall to the left, in front of the battle scene, was the cartouche of his own name surmounted by the crocodile symbol of a pharaoh, signifying strength and power. Ahead of that was an image he had ordered his masons to carve when he was last here, when he had left Egypt while his father was still pharaoh, fleeing south with his slave friend to escape the suffocating routine of the palace and the cloying control of the priests, the life that he had known would one day be his. The likeness of himself that he had ordered to be carved on the temple wall he now defiantly put everywhere, in Thebes and at Giza and in his new capital Amarna; it showed the protuberant belly and jutting chin that the priests had so mocked when he was a boy, that were suddenly marks of divine favour when he became pharaoh and married the most beautiful woman in Egypt. The carving depicted him in front of the Aten, its rays enveloping him like arms, the image that had so disturbed the priests. He was portrayed without the symbols of priestly office, but instead was barefoot and naked except for a skirt; the priests may have imagined that he would now order his masons to add the embellishments, but they would have been wrong.
He looked back one last time. The priests were continuing their incantations, turned away from him. The beam of sunlight had risen above the statue and the shaft of red light had vanished, leaving only a dying glow as the reflection faded; soon it would be extinguished entirely. He looked at the ankh symbol again, and then at the jagged row of teeth. Giver of life, taker of life.
He took off his crown and dropped it with his staff on the floor, then cast off his robe; beneath it he was wearing only a loincloth, like the slaves. He opened his arms, face to the sun, feeling it bathe him in warmth, no longer self-conscious about his body. Under the Aten, all were created equal, and all were made beautiful. He passed through the entrance and along the edge of the rock-cut channel that led from the Nile to the temple. The channel was dry now, but was caked with desiccated mud from the river that gave off a putrid smell, reptilian. He walked towards a woman, sensuous in her white robe, her jet-black hair curly and long and her eyes surrounded by kohl; the shape of her breasts and thighs pleased him, aroused him, as he thought of the days and nights ahead when they would at last be man and woman, not pharaoh and high priestess. He took her hand and held it high. ‘Nefertiti-na-Aten,’ he said, smiling at her, using her new name for the first time. ‘May the Aten shine on us, and our children.’
‘It already shines on you, Akhen-Aten. Our son Tutankhamun will be Tutank-Aten, and will for ever be known as that, for he shall embrace the light too and his reign shall be long.’
He breathed in deeply, savouring it. Akhenaten; no longer Amenhotep, high priest of Amun, but Akhenaten, he on whom the light of the Aten shines, he who would soon return north to lift the veil of ignorance from his people and reveal the presence of the one God. He smiled again, and began to walk with her, looking up and seeing his soldiers lining the surrounding clifftops, the attendants and guards of the priests along the banks of the river below. They came to a cluster of shackled slaves and stopped in front of their leader, a young man with fire in his eyes wearing the beard of the Canaanites. He had been held between a pair of priestly guards, but two soldiers came and released him, and he walked forward to greet them.