Pandion felt that the majesty of the art of Aigyptos was to a considerable extent the fruit of the natural abilities of slaves of different races; the most talented were selected from millions and these involuntarily devoted all their creative effort to the glorification of the country that oppressed them. When he had freed himself of his submission to the might of Aigyptos, Pandion resolved to escape as soon as possible and to convince his friend Kidogo of the necessity of this step.
His head was filled with these ideas when he, with Kidogo and ten other slaves, made a long trip to the ruins of the ancient town of Akhetaton. (Akhetaton (Tel el-Amarna) — capital of Pharaoh Amenhotep IV, 1375–1358 B.C.) The young sculptor ruffled the smooth surface of the river with his oars, the fast movement of the boat downstream giving him a sensation of joy. The journey was a long one, almost three thousand stadia, a distance virtually equal to that which separated his native land from Crete and which had once seemed to him to be immeasurably great. During this voyage Pandion learned that the Great Green Sea, as the people of Aigyptos called it, and on the northern shores of which Thessa was awaiting his return, was twice as far away as Akhetaton.
Pandion’s happy mood passed very quickly: for the first time he realized how far inland he was in the depths of Aigyptos and how great a distance separated him from the seacoast where there might be a possibility of returning home.
He bent moodily over his oars and the boat slipped over the smooth surface of the endless river, past thickets of green shrubs, tilled fields, reed jungles and white-hot cliffs.
The royal sculptor lay under a striped awning in the sternsheets and was fanned by a servile slave. Rows of tiny huts stretched along the banks — the fertile land fed a tremendous number of people, thousands of people swarmed the fields, gardens and papyrus thickets, toiling to earn a scanty livelihood. Thousands of people packed the narrow streets of the. countless villages on the outskirts of which towered huge ungainly temples, closely shut off from the sun.
It suddenly struck Pandion that not only he and his comrades were doomed to a pitiful existence in Tha-Quem, but the inhabitants of those miserable huts were also enslaved by their joyless drudgery, that they, too, were the slaves of the ruler and his courtiers despite the fact that they despised him, Pandion, as a branded savage…
Lost in thought, Pandion struck his neighbour’s oar with his own.
“Hi, Ekwesha, wake up, look out for yourself!”
At night the slaves were shut up in the prisons that stood in the vicinity of each township or temple.
Pharaoh’s sculptor was everywhere treated with respect by the local authorities and he went away to his rest accompanied by two trusted servants.
On the fifth day the boat turned a bend formed by outjutting. river-washed rocks. Beyond the bend lay an extensive plain cut off from the river by rows of tall palms and sycamores. The boat approached a stone-paved embankment with two wide staircases leading down to the water. A massive tower rose behind a crenellated wall on the river-bank. The heavy gates stood half-open and through them could be seen a garden with ponds and flower-dotted lawns beyond which stood a white building decorated with colourful designs.
This was the house of the High Priest of the local temples.
The royal sculptor, before whom the sentries bowed in servile humility, entered the gates while the slaves remained outside under the surveillance of two soldiers. They did not have to wait long, for the sculptor soon returned with another man who carried a scroll of papyrus and led the slaves past the temples and dwelling houses to a big site occupied by ruined walls and a forest of columns, the roof over which had collapsed. Amongst the ruins of this dead town there were, here and there, small buildings in a better state of preservation. An occasional tree stump indicated the site of former gardens; dried up ponds, basins and canals were filled with sand, a thick layer of sand covered the stone-paved roads and piled up against walls eroded by time. Not a living soul was to be seen anywhere, deadly silence reigned in the blazing heat.
The sculptor explained to Pandion in a few words that these were the ruins of the once beautiful capital of the Heretic Pharaoh (The Heretic Pharaoh — Amenhotep IV who tried to introduce into Egypt a new religion with only one god — the sun disc Aton.)whom the gods had cursed. No true son of the Black Land dare pronounce his name.
Pandion could not discover what this Pharaoh, who had reigned four centuries earlier, had done and why he had built a new capital.
The newcomer unrolled his papyrus and the two Egyptians studied the drawing on it to discover the whereabouts of a long building with the columns at its entrance lying on the ground. The interior walls of this building were faced with azure-blue stones with veins of gold in them.
Pandion and the other slaves were given the job of removing these thin stone slabs that had been firmly cemented to the walls. The job took them several days to complete and they spent the night there amidst the ruins, food and water being brought to them from the neighbouring dwellings.
When they had finished their job Pandion, Kidogo and four other slaves were ordered to search the ruins in any direction they liked and look for any works of art that might have been left there and which could be taken as gifts for Pharaoh’s palace. The Negro and Pandion set out together, the first time without escort and away from the keen eye of the overseer.
The two friends climbed on to the gate turret of some large building in order to get a view of their surroundings. From the east sand crept up to and into the ruins and stretched away in a desert of rolling dunes and piles of stone as far as the eye could reach.
Pandion looked over the silent ruins and in his excitement grasped Kidogo’s arm tightly.
“Let’s run, we won’t be missed for a long time, nobody can see us,” he whispered.
The Negro’s good-natured face spread in a smile.
“Don’t you know what the desert is?” he asked in astonishment. “At this hour tomorrow the soldiers of the search party would find our dead bodies already dried up by the sun. They,” Kidogo meant the Egyptians, “know what they are doing. There is only one road to the east, it follows the water-holes and they are guarded. In this place the desert holds us tighter than any chains…”
Pandion nodded his head gloomily — his momentary excitement had passed. In silence the two friends left the turret and set out in different directions, looking through holes in the walls and entering rooms through their dark doorways.
Inside a small, well-preserved, two-storied palace, where there were remains of the wooden lattice-work on the windows, Kidogo had the good fortune to find a small statue of an Egyptian girl carved from hard yellow limestone. He called Pandion and together they examined the work of some unknown master. The girl’s pretty face was typically Egyptian, such as Pandion already knew — the low forehead, narrow eyes slanting upwards towards the temples, protruding cheek-bones and thick lips with dimples at the corners of the mouth.
Kidogo took his find to the master of the workshops while Pandion penetrated farther into the ruins. He wandered on, stepping mechanically over wreckage and heaps of stones, taking no note of his direction, and soon he found himself in the shade of a length of wall that was still standing. Right in front of him he saw a tightly closed door leading to underground premises. Pandion pressed on the bronze door handle, the rotten boards collapsed under his weight and he entered a room whose only light came from a narrow chink in the ceiling.