Free Return to Thebes by Allen Drury Page A

Hapu—Ramesses—we six alone in all the world know where Amon is, for after the special group of divers I commanded had brought him up from the bottom of the Nile, I had them slain so that there would be no witnesses. Ramesses and I then took him to a secret place in the necropolis of Sakkara, near Memphis, where he stands in an empty tomb carved more than a thousand years ago for some noble who never occupied it. It is at the end of a tiny passage leading off from my own, which has been under construction in Sakkara for many years. After I had the passage dug, the tomb enlarged a little and suitably decorated as a shrine, and a concealed doorway fitted cleverly into place, I had those workmen slain also. Now, as I say, only six in this world know where Amon is; and only I, who have the pretext of visiting my own tomb from time to time to supervise its progress, ever have the chance to visit him. But I take the offerings of the others, and he knows that all of us work toward the day of his restoration, and he favors us in our endeavors and guides us in what we do.
    So does he guide us now as we come finally toward the day of reckoning with the treacherous Aten and his foolish servitors. My cousin has tried for fifteen years to make the Aten the Sole God of Kemet, he has persecuted Amon and all the other gods, he has had his subversive and ridiculous Hymn to the Aten inscribed on a hundred stelae throughout Kemet—and still the people do not love the Aten, any more than they love him. But this does not stop him: he continues, and will continue, to worship his Sole God and try to inflict him upon the rest of us. He will continue this to his death: for such is the nature of my cousin Akhenaten.
    In a curious way, it is almost possible to admire such stubborn determination, however foolish and self-defeating it has been. His whole life since he became Co-Regent with my uncle Amonhotep III (life, health, prosperity!) has been a deliberate challenge to all the ancient traditions of Kemet. He has defied the weight of history: he has risked the wrath of centuries. And now that he nears the end of his rule and his life, for certainly he does, one can only ask: for what? Has he really had a purpose? Has he really known what he was doing? Or has he been simply the creature of an automatic and increasingly insane compulsion, without strategy, without aim, without sense?
    I believe, myself, that he is insane. I have believed this ever since the day of my uncle’s death when Akhenaten assumed full power, ravaged Amon, put aside Nefertiti and sailed off to Akhet-Aten from Thebes with silly, bewitched Smenkhkara singing the Hymn to the Aten at his side. I think on that day he relinquished whatever shreds of reason still remained in him. I think on that day the gods sealed his fate, and that everything thereafter has been simply preparation for the final ending of his crazy dream.
    In this ending I have much part to play. I do not know yet exactly what it will be, what the Great Wife and my father will wish of me; but I feel, though neither has talked to me about it, that both know well what they intend.
    The army is in my hand, though it would take almost impossibly much to make my superstitious soldiers rise against the Living Horus—and so I know it is not by that means that we will bring him down. But bring him down we will. Of that I have no doubt.
    And then in due time—somehow, someday, in some fashion the gods have not yet revealed to me but which I know they will, for I am their faithful servant—the way will open for Horemheb and he will lead Kemet back to what Kemet was when he first arrived, an eager lad, in then flourishing Thebes, so many years ago.
    ***

Aye
    My sister thinks it time, my son thinks it time, I think it time, Amonhotep, Son of Hapu, though he confides nothing direct to any of us about it, indicates the same. We do not know what my daughter Nefertiti thinks but tonight we intend to find out. Then, perhaps,