Introduction
In the great bend of the River Nile at present-day Tell-el-Amarna in Egypt, where some thirty-three hundred years ago the Pharaoh Akhenaten built his city of Akhet-Aten, there remains today nothing but a great empty plain broken in a couple of places by a few low lines of crumbling mud-brick wall—all that is left of what was once the capital, under “the Heretic,” “the Criminal of Akhet-Aten,” as his own people came to call him, of Ancient Egypt.
As recently as the turn of the present century much more of the city was visible and quite a few excavations were made. Today the desert has reclaimed it, awaiting a time when Egyptian and foreign archaeologists may have the opportunity, and the money, to dig again.
For the present it is desolate, empty, haunted, brooding. Boundless and bare, the level sands stretch far away.
Yet there is here, of course, much more than a poetic cliché from Shelley. There is here the mystery of the man who was either “history’s first idealist” as he has been called, or history’s first great royal madman. It is entirely within the bounds of human possibility that he was both. I have my own ideas, developed herein. But the chances are good that we will never know for sure.
Who was he, what was he—unhappy Akhenaten, whose hooded, self-defensive eyes stare out of his long, pain-filled face in the colossal statues that now stand in the Cairo Museum? Over and over in these pages you will find the men and women of his family, the men and women of his Court, asking themselves and one another these questions. None ever finds the final answer, as no Egyptologist or novelist has ever found the final answer. One version is in these pages, the one that seems to me most logical out of the fragmentary, conflicting evidence that Egypt’s secretive sands have so far yielded up to us. But it is only one.…
It is necessary for the novelist of this magnificent but misty time to do exactly what the professional Egyptologist does: assemble the few scraps of known fact—try to reach conclusions as logical as possible about them—take a deep breath—and make a firm and arbitrary decision.
So it is with dates, spelling of names, familial relationships, personal motivations.
For instance:
Estimates of how long Ancient Egypt had been an entity prior to the events of this novel and its sequel, Return to Thebes, range from a minimum of one thousand to a maximum of almost three thousand years. I have chosen arbitrarily, on what seems the main burden of the evidence, to put it somewhere approaching two thousand years. We do not know: only the sands of Egypt, which cover all, know; and until there is time and money to dig to the full beneath them (assuming that might be physically possible, in itself an optimistic conjecture), we will never know with any degree of certainty. Somewhere in the neighborhood of two thousand years would seem to encompass logically and comfortably the earliest beginnings, the seventeen dynasties recognized by the Egyptian historian Manetho (who himself did not come along with his arbitrary guesses until 305 B.C., more than a thousand years after the events of these novels), and the so-called “Hyksos invasion,” which preceded the Eighteenth Dynasty.
In the same fashion I have chosen 1392 B.C. as the birth year of both Akhenaten and his wife and cousin, Nefertiti. It was somewhere around that time: there are as many guesses as there are Egyptologists. I have grounded my time frame on that arbitrary date and have anchored it at the far end to the year 1330 B.C., which allows sixty-two years for Akhenaten’s birth and adolescence, his co-regency with his father Amonhotep III, his co-regency with his younger brother Smenkhkara, the reign of his youngest brother Tutankhamon, the reign of their uncle Aye and much of the reign of Horemheb, last Pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Some professionals may dispute this, but anyone who delves into Egyptian history soon finds that his own guess is just about as good as anyone else’s—providing it allows sufficient elbow room for the generally agreed-upon lengths of these various kings of the Eighteenth Dynasty. This I have sought to do.
Similarly with names. Horemheb, for instance, is “Har-em-hab” to the brilliant present-day Egyptologist Cyril Aldred; “Harmhab” to the first great historian of Ancient Egypt, James H. Breasted; and appears elsewhere variously as Horemheb, Horemhab, Haremhab, Haremheb, Harmhab, Harmheb, Heru-em-heb—somebody has to make a decision, and in this case I’m it. “Horemheb” has a solid ring to me, so “Horemheb” he is herein.
This decision, as with many other names, is based on what to me seems easiest and most euphonious for the present-day reader to articulate and understand. Akhenaten’s father was known to the Greeks, Romans, and to modern-day Egyptians who follow their lead, as “Amenophis III.” Aldred renders him “Amon-Hot-pe.” I have chosen the third most popular version, “Amonhotep,” as the simplest for the modern reader’s purposes. Similarly the Sun God himself appears in many texts as “Re,” pronounced “Ray” or “Reh.” I prefer the simpler rendition “Ra,” pronounced “Rah,” which seems to fall easiest on the tongue. He is also “Amon,” “Amun,” and “Amen.” “Amon” seems the simplest, both when standing alone and when used as part of a name.
I have also adopted the practice of breaking down into their components, for the first three times they appear in the text, the more difficult names of the Eighteenth Dynasty. If one gives to a, e, and i (which were unknown to the ancients and only introduced in Greco-Roman times for much the same purposes of convenience that I am striving for here) the sounds “ah,” “eh,” and “ee,” it becomes relatively easy. The name of Akhenaten’s (Akh-eh-nah-ten’s) third daughter, who appears here as a young girl and will play a major role in Return to Thebes, is a real jawbreaker—Ankhesenpaaten. But if the reader will take a moment to sound it out slowly—“Ankh-eh-sen-pah-ah-ten”—the going becomes much easier and the name quite beautiful. And so with Nefer-Kheperu-Ra, Ankh-Kheperu-Ra, Neb-Kheperu-Ra (the brothers Akhenaten, Smenkhkara and Tutankhamen), and the rest.
For easy reference by the modern reader I have also, in common with many Egyptologists, adopted certain recognizable locutions. For Amonhotep III to refer to his family as “the Eighteenth Dynasty,” for instance, is a complete prolepsis, since Manetho and his list did not come along until more than a thousand years later. And yet the Ancient Egyptians were a time-minded and orderly people and undoubtedly (to use a word beloved of the professionals) had some sense of what went before, and in their own minds must have had some cataloguing of the royal houses that preceded theirs. Accordingly I have them refer to their own “Eighteenth Dynasty” and their own “House of Thebes,” because this makes it easier for us to understand what they are talking about.
By the same token, they did not know the terms “Valley of the Kings” or “Valley of the Queens,” although they did have some general way of referring to the royal necropolis on the west bank of the Nile opposite Thebes. “Beneath the Peak of the West” is one with some historical foundation, and I have used it fairly often; but, for us, “Valley of the Kings” is more instantly recognizable, and so I have often used it too. “The blood of Ra” is a locution for the blood royal that they may not have used, but it is understandable here. They did not know the terms “mother-in-law,” “brother-in-law” and the like. They did not know that millennia later we would refer to the oddly elongated skulls of Akhenaten’s family as “platycephalic.” But we know that, and it simplifies understanding in the text.
One name I have retained in its original form is “Akhet-Aten,” the name of Akhenaten’s new capital. We know it more readily as “Tell-el-Amarna,” yet it seems fitting to keep the name he gave it—and to syllabify it throughout, so that it will not be confused with his own.
We do not know how the King was addressed by his intimate circle, particularly by family members, and so I have assumed that, as with all royal families, a certain human informality must have existed behind palace doors, especially in moments of stress. Thus I have freely interchanged “Majesty,” “Son of the Sun” and occasional direct personal use of names such as “Neb-Ma’at-Ra” (Amonhotep III), “Nefer-Kheperu-Ra” (Akhenaten) and so on. To Nefertiti’s father, later the Pharaoh Aye, I have given the all-purpose title of “Councilor,” because that seems to best represent what he was to the four kings of his immediate family prior to his own assumption of the crown. Virtually all other names, titles, and terms I use come directly from the ancients, without change. Akhenaten’s mother, Queen Tiye, was “the Great Wife,” Nefertiti was “the Chief Wife” and so on.
As for characters, the pageant of Ancient Egypt provides ample for any novelistic need. I have created only the names of Hebmet, Nefertiti’s mother who died in giving birth to her; the Lady Anser-Wossett, Nefertiti’s chief lady in waiting; Pani, overseer of the necropolis under Amonhotep III; Hatsuret, the young priest who leads the forces of Amon in the restoration under Tutankhamon; the peasant Amonemhet; and the two dwarfs, Ipy and Senna, who historically always accompanied the Lady Mutnedjmet, daughter of Aye and half sister of Nefertiti. These individuals existed but their names are lost to us. I have supplied them. All the rest actually lived and died with the names used herein, in Ancient Egypt, thirty-three hundred years ago.
Certain things that Egyptologists have made a great mystery of, I have chosen to believe were exactly what logic indicates they were on the basis of the records that have come down to us.
There is, for instance, the matter of Akhenaten’s relationship with his younger brother Smenkhkara. He made Smenkhkara his Co-Regent, gave him Nefertiti’s name, conferred upon him the formal title “Beloved of Akhenaten,” and had his sculptors portray them together in poses that are considerably more than fraternal. Yet there are substantial Egyptologists who refuse to admit the clear implications of all this. Instead they go off into some mystical realm of rationalization in which they claim that this relationship was purely platonic and that its frank portrayal only proved, to quote one of them, that “Akhenaten was simply carrying to the extreme his pursuit of a dream-ideal, and insisting upon perpetuating this symbol of life passing from the Globe (Aten) to the double-principle of the couple, itself essential to the enduring omnipotence of the Globe (Aten).”
This is mystical indeed, especially since Akhenaten constantly emphasized that he and he alone was the sole spokesman for, and sole representative of, the Aten. Simple logic would indicate that any other explanation of his relationship with his younger brother is tortuous rationalization, and that the facts were exactly as Akhenaten, who prided himself on “living in truth” in all things, publicly and unabashedly proclaimed them to be.
And there is the mystery about Horemheb, who, prior to his own assumption of the crown, refers to himself as “Son of the Living Horus”—in other words, of the then reigning Pharaoh, Aye. The logical probability is that Horemheb, being a practical and pragmatic man, styled himself the son of Aye because he was indeed just that; and the Mutnedjmet he married was his own half sister, last surviving bearer of the legitimacy of the throne, whom he married to secure his own claim to it.
Much is made of the fact, also, that Akhenaten apparently suffered the deformities of what we know as Frölich’s syndrome, which usually results in impotence. Therefore, some argue, he could not have fathered the six daughters (to say nothing of the three daughters by three of his daughters) whom historically he did father. Yet it is not impossible for Frölich’s syndrome to be arrested prior to impotence, and I have assumed that it was in his case, for the simple reason that this is the only logical way to explain both his deformities and the daughters he made such a show of—as if to say, “You thought I couldn’t do it, didn’t you?”—which, as I understand him, is exactly how he would have felt about it.
And there is the famous mystery of one of his colossal statues, which stands now in the Cairo Museum devoid of genitals. Much has been made of this. Yet over the empty genital area there is a large irregular plaster patch, noticeably darker than the surrounding plaster, and there is a very definite difference in texture between it and the rest of the statue. Now, undoubtedly this has been noted by others, and perhaps the difference means nothing: and yet, again, the simplest and most logical explanation is the very strong possibility that someone, probably Horemheb, ordered the statue emasculated as a sign of contempt for Akhenaten and his rather wide-ranging sexual activities. Great mysteries are made of things like these by the professionals, and great battles rage.
My approach has been to stick to the simple facts of what we know and follow them as nearly as possible to their logical conclusions.
As a general principle, the novelist must also guard against, and bring a healthy skepticism to, the professional Egyptologist’s tendency to insist that simply because a fragment from a certain era indicates that such-and-such was the case at that time, therefore it was always and eternally the case throughout the three millennia of Ancient Egypt. Thus it may possibly have been the general custom that the ceremonies of co-regency were held at the northern capital of Memphis in the Delta. But if Amonhotep III was really the supreme power that all Egyptologists would argue, then if he (and I) wanted to decree that Akhenaten’s ceremony be held in Thebes, then he (and I) could certainly do so—and there is no evidence anywhere that this is not what actually happened. Similarly, the article of faith that no one but Pharaoh and the high priests of Amon ever entered the inner precincts of the temple at Karnak. Circumstances—and power—alter cases. Certainly there must have been many times in three thousand changeable years when they did.
It cannot be argued on the one hand that Pharaoh was all-powerful and on the other that he was so tradition-bound that he couldn’t change his own mind. The records show, in fact, that on many occasions many Pharaohs did exactly as they pleased. The reader must keep in mind that much of professional Egyptology consists of intrepid conjectures stoutly declared, passionately defended, and constantly revised. In such a milieu the novelist must consider himself, within the bounds of logic and common sense, quite as free as any Pharaoh to decide for himself what Pharaoh did.
“Within the bounds of logic and common sense”—and so I have tried to keep my imaginings here. I have tried to hold always to the basic thesis—in itself denied, by implication if not by outright statement, by many of the older school of Egyptologists—that the ancients were, in fact, human beings before they were anything else. They might have been considered gods by their contemporaries, and have considered themselves gods; but that did not make them any less human, as the great personalities of the Eighteenth Dynasty, from the Tuthmoses and the woman Pharaoh, Hatshepsut, on down, make abundantly clear.
For the basic historical outline of the novels I have followed most closely the great present-day Egyptologist Cyril Aldred, recently retired as Keeper of Antiquities of the Royal Scottish Museum in Edinburgh. Not only in his books, but in a most generous personal correspondence, he has been consistently helpful. I part company with him, as he knows, on his fundamental thesis that there was no real conflict between Akhenaten and the priests of Amon whose power and wealth he destroyed. I am afraid my own view, conditioned by some years as a political correspondent, is much more cynical concerning the lengths to which human beings, of whatever era, will go in order to get, and keep, power.
But for the basic facts of the Amarna period—the familial relationships, Akhenaten’s co-regency with his father, his relationships with his daughters and his brother Smenkhkara, and an infinite number of illuminating facts about the whole era—I have found no expert more astute, perceptive, and generally entertaining than Mr. Aldred. His Akhenaten: Pharaoh of Egypt (Abacus paperbacks, Sphere Books Ltd., London, 1972) has been my desk bible and now threatens to fall apart from innumerable under-linings and re-thumbings.
He (like all other authorities consulted) is of course absolved completely of any responsibility whatsoever for my own conclusions concerning motivations, psychological interpretations, conversations, detailed fictitious events leading up to actual historical episodes—the clothing of these bones with life—which are my own, and for which I am solely responsible.
I have followed Aldred completely in his translation of the Aten’s cartouches and Akhenaten’s Hymn to the Aten, only inserting directly the words “Akhenaten,” “raised,” “as the Nile” and “of thy quality,” where he has them in parentheses. Since I have the King speak his own Hymn, this seems a permissible liberty. I have in general followed Carl Niebuhr’s translation of the so-called “Amarna Letters,” again taking an occasional literary liberty with the letters of Tushratta of Mittani which I have quoted, and in addition placing some thoughts of my own invention in the mouths of such nagging gentlemen as Burnaburiash of Babylon. I think in these I have retained the essential spirit of these gold-begging, archly critical, and at times desperately worried correspondents of the unheeding Sons of the Sun.
In addition to Mr. Aldred (who also generated an excellent character by calling my attention to recent studies of Akhenaten’s second wife, Kia), other friends have been most helpful in gathering material and increasing my appreciation for, and interest in, what may well be history’s most fascinating civilization.
In London, Mrs. Herbert R. Mayes was indefatigable in tracking down and securing for me various out-of-print books by older Egyptologists; to Grace, dear friend and excellent book detective, I shall always be grateful. With a comparable diligence my uncle, Winthrop S. Drury, assisted in gathering books and research materials in New York. Three other dear friends, Mrs. Olga Burns of Sausalito and Edith and Raul Dalle-Feste of Cosmopolitan Travel in San Francisco, organized delightful tours which did much to give me the feel and atmosphere of the teeming life that has run for so many centuries beside the Nile. Bill Howard Eichstadt did his usual fine job of research and manuscript typing, and in addition contributed unflagging good humor and numerous lively songs to adventures in the field, especially during our eighteen-mile donkey ride over the otherwise silent sands of Akhet-Aten. From Eastmar Travel in Cairo, the invaluable Baki Fawzi and the lovely Zeenab Chawki were models of what highly intelligent, thoroughly informed guides, who truly love their country’s history, can do to illuminate it for the foreigner. And at San Francisco State University, Dr. Andreina Leanza Becker-Colonna of the department of Archaeology was most helpful in securing translations of important texts.
For those who wish to delve further in the period, I append at the end a partial list, headed by Mr. Aldred, of some of the authors who have been most helpful to me in constructing A God Against the Gods and its sequel—which will in due course complete my particular version of the closing years of the all-powerful but ill-fated Eighteenth Dynasty—Return to Thebes.
I offer them as a very modest introduction to a vast and ever growing literature, and I do so with a warning:
Once enthralled by the Ancient Egyptians, you will be enthralled, as they themselves said so often about so many things, “forever and ever—for millions and millions of years.”
Allen Drury
***