City of the Sea Read online

  CITY OF THE SEA

  Anton Gill

  © Anton Gill 1993

  Anton Gill has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1993 by Bloomsbury Publishing Ltd.

  This edition published in 2015 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue: The Background to Huy’s Egypt

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Author’s Note

  Prologue: The Background to Huy’s Egypt

  The nine years of the reign of the young Pharaoh Tutankhamun, 1361-1352 BC, were troubled ones for Egypt. They came towards the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty, the most glorious of all the thirty dynasties of the empire. Tutankhamun’s predecessors had included illustrious warrior kings, lawmakers and innovators, who had created a new kingdom and consolidated the old one. But shortly before his reign a strange, visionary pharaoh had occupied the throne: Akhenaten. What had happened essentially was this: Akhenaten had thrown out all the old gods and replaced them with one, the Aten, who had his being in the life-giving sunlight. Akhenaten was the world’s first philosopher, and the creator of the idea of monotheism. In the seventeen years of his reign, and he was only 29 when he died, he made enormous changes in the way his country thought and in the way it was run; but in the process he lost the whole of the northern part of the empire (modern Palestine and Syria), and brought the country to the brink of ruin. Now, powerful enemies gathered there.

  Akhenaten’s religious reforms had driven doubt into the minds of his people after generations of unchanged certainty which went back to the building of the pyramids, over 1,000 years earlier, and beyond; and although the empire itself, already over 1,500 years old in Huy’s time, had been through bad times before, Egypt now entered a short Dark Age. Akhenaten had not been popular with the priests of the old religion, whose power he took away, nor with ordinary people, who saw him as a defiler of their long-held beliefs, especially in the Afterlife and the Dead. After his death in about 1362 BC, the new capital city he had had built for himself - Akhetaten - the City of the Horizon - quickly fell into ruin as power reverted to Thebes - the Southern Capital. The northern seat of government was at the city we call Memphis, but at this period it was less important than Thebes. Akhenaten’s name was cut from every monument, and people were not even allowed to speak it.

  Akhenaten died without a direct heir, and the short reigns of the three kings who succeeded him, of which Tutankhamun’s was the second and by far the longest, were fraught with uncertainty. None of the three left a direct heir, and during this time the pharaohs themselves very probably had their power curbed and controlled by Horemheb, formerly commander-in-chief of Akhenaten’s army, but now bent on fulfilling his own ambition to restore the empire and the old religion, and to become pharaoh himself. He did so finally in 1348 BC, possibly after a power struggle with his immediate predecessor, Ay, an old man who had also been a senior official in Akhenaten’s court. Like Horemheb, Ay was an ambitious commoner; but his daughter, who became Akhenaten’s chief wife, was the most famous queen in Egyptian history after Cleopatra - Nefertiti. The story which follows takes place during the five-year reign of Ay - about 1352 - 1348 BC; but Horemheb is very much a power in the land.

  Horemheb himself reigned for about 28 years, well into old age, marrying Akhenaten’s sister-in-law to reinforce his remote claim to the throne. He, too, died without a direct heir, and his reign ended the Eighteenth Dynasty.

  Egypt was to rally under Horemheb, and early in the Nineteenth Dynasty it achieved one last peak under Ramesses II. It was by far the most powerful and the wealthiest country in the known world, rich in gold, copper and precious stones. Trade was carried out the length of the Nile - known simply as The River - from the coast down to Nubia and the Sudan, on the Mediterranean (The Great Green), and on the Red Sea as far as Somalia (Punt). But it was a narrow strip of a country, clinging to the banks of the Nile and hemmed in to the east and west by deserts. It was governed by three seasons: Spring, Shemu, was the time of drought, from February to May; Summer, Akhet, was the time of the Nile flood, from June to October; and Autumn, Peret, was the time of Coming-Forth, when the crops grew. The level of the annual flood was of vital importance: too high, and farms and building could be swept away; too low, and no crop could be grown: the difference between prosperity and ruin was a matter of a few metres.

  The Ancient Egyptians lived closer to the seasons than we do, and to their natural surroundings. They also believed that the heart was the centre of all thought and feeling. The brain’s only function, they thought, was to pass mucus to the nose, with which it was assumed to be connected.

  The period during which these stories take place is a tiny part of Ancient Egypt’s 3,000 - year history; but it was a crucial one for the country. Egypt was becoming aware of the less-blessed, more aggressive world beyond its frontiers, and of the possibility that it, too, might one day be conquered and come to an end. It was a time of uncertainty, questioning, intrigue and violence: a distant mirror in which we can see something of ourselves.

  The people worshipped a large number of gods. Some of these were restricted to cities or localities, while others waxed or waned in importance with time. Certain gods were duplications of the same ‘idea’. Here are some of the most important:

  AMUN - The chief god of the Southern Capital, Thebes. Represented as a man, and associated with the supreme sun god, Ra. Animals dedicated to him were the ram and the goose.

  ANUBIS - The jackal or dog-headed god of embalming, and the protector of the mummy from the forces of evil during the night.

  ATEN – The god of the sun’s energy, represented as the sun’s disk whose rays end in protecting hands.

  BESA – A grotesque dwarf who protected the household from demons.

  GEB – The god of the Earth, represented as a man.

  HAPY – The god of the Nile, especially in flood. A man whose woman’s breasts represented fecundity.

  HATHOR – The goddess of love, music and dance. Often represented as a cow, or a human whose head is surmounted by a cow’s horns and the sun’s disk, she was also the suckler and protectress of the king.

  HORUS – One of the most popular gods. Horus was a defender of good against evil, the hawk-headed son of Isis and Osiris, and therefore a member of the most important trinity in Ancient Egyptian theology. He was also associated with the sun.

  ISIS – The divine mother; wife and sister of Osiris.

  KHONS – The god of the moon; the son of Amun.

  MAAT – The goddess of law, truth and world harmony.

  MIN – The god of sexual fertility.

  MUT – The wife of Amun, originally a vulture goddess.

  NEKHBET – The vulture goddess of Upper Egypt. The lotus and the White Crown were associated with this region, the southern of the ‘Two Lands’ which made up the ‘Black Land’ of Egypt.

  NUT – The goddess of the sky and the sister of Geb.

  OSIRIS – The god of the underworld and of resurrection. The afterlife was of great importance to the Ancient Egyptians.

  RA – The principal sun god.

  SEKHMET – The lioness-headed goddess of destruction, a defender of the gods against evil and associated with healing; but also dangerous when uncontrolled.

  SET – The god of storms and violence; brother and murderer of Osiris. Although sometimes regarded as a protector god, he is very roughly equivalent to
Satan.

  SOBEK – The crocodile god.

  THOTH – The god of time, also associated with writing: usually ibis-headed, he sometimes takes the form of a baboon.

  WADJET – The cobra goddess of Lower Egypt, the northern of the ‘Two Lands’. The papyrus was associated with this region, as was the Red Crown.

  Death is to me today

  like a sick man’s recovery,

  like going out of doors after being shut in.

  Death is to me today

  like the scent of myrrh,

  like sitting under a sail on a windy day.

  Death is to me today

  like the scent of lotuses,

  like sitting on the shore of Drunkenness.

  Death is to me today

  like a well-trodden path,

  like homecoming after travel.

  Death is to me today

  like the sky opening,

  like understanding what is not known.

  Death is to me today

  like a man’s longing to see home

  after many years away.

  - from Dialogue between a man tired of life and his soul, 12th Dynasty, after a translation by Richard Parkinson.

  Chapter One

  In truth the gods were cruel. Or blind. Perhaps only a blind fate could have decreed this. It was hard to believe that it had been preordained. But as it could not have been foreseen, so it could not have been prevented.

  It was the season of Shemu – the time of drought during which the harvesting ended and the people, freed from their work on the land, were conscripted to work on the pharaoh’s great construction projects – unless they could afford to pay a friend to deputise for them. Wars in the north occupied the pharaoh’s heart, and there had been little time for new building.

  But now two new tombs were being prepared. Two great tombs, that is, on the West Bank opposite the city, among the ochre cliffs of the Great Place and the Place of Beauty. Other, humbler burials were taking place in their hundreds everywhere. Nergal, the god of pestilence, had again been ravaging the Black Land. The worst of the plague was past now, but the Southern Capital was still reeling. The curled forms of its victims were being placed in the Boat of Night under the sand, with their few pots and perhaps a sickle to use in the Fields of Aarru, beneath their wicker canopy, where their sahu would sleep forever.

  The pharaoh, Ay, alone in his private chamber, leant one thin arm against the window frame and looked out over the rooftops of the city which spread to the north of the Palace Compound. His face was haggard and his heart saw few of the pictures his eyes brought it.

  The gods must be blind... Was this how Amun rewarded him for his protection and his championship? Amun, the god of the Southern Capital, whom Ay had made the god of the Black Land – was he turning his back on the king? It could not be the work of the Aten. The Aten, whose power Ay and his predecessors had deposed, lived in light, danced in the warmth of the sun. The Aten was eternal, would not seek revenge, Ay was sure of that. The Aten was above the little manoeuvrings of men. But Amun was a jealous god, and it would have been impolitic to continue to neglect him. Had not the high priests said as much, after the fall of the champion of the Aten, the pharaoh Akhenaten, now known as the Great Criminal? He who had lost the Northern Lands. He who had ploughed the land in which the seeds of the current war against the Kheta and the Khabiri had grown.

  Ay thought of General Horemheb. Still, after all these cycles of the seasons, he was away to the north, beating back the rebels, bringing the northern lands back into the fold. The news from the front was good. The gods had smiled.

  But in truth no-one could control the god Nergal, and the god Nergal did not fear to enter palaces. Barely weeks before, secretly exulting, Ay had sent news of the death of the general’s son northward. Little Tuthmosis, brought forth in pain, had barely clung to life through the short three years of his life. How his mother had nursed him, the only comforter of her loneliness! While he was away, Horemheb kept his small family virtual prisoners of his attendants in his mansion in the Palace Compound. Security. Tuthmosis was a royal name. Ay, who had no male heirs of his own, knew full well what Horemheb’s ambitions were. The Pharaoh had sent the news to the General with his falcon-ship Soul of the Gods; its bows had been draped with white linen for mourning. How the River had sparkled in the sun on the day it departed!

  How Ay had rejoiced when the boy died! And yet he was Ay’s own grandson – Horemheb had married the pharaoh’s older daughter, Nezemmut. The younger, Nefertiti, the loveliest woman the Black Land had ever seen, had been married to the Great Criminal, and had preceded him into the Boat of Night.

  Broodingly, Ay switched his all but unseeing gaze to the River, where the little craft of ferrymen and local traders jostled each other in energetic indifference to the fates which controlled their rulers. Perhaps the king’s present trouble was the gods’ revenge on him for exulting in the death of his own blood. For Ay wanted a male heir of his own. But he was old, not far from the completion of his seventh decade, and his Chief Wife was past the stage when her birth cave could bear fruit any more. The years had gone by and they had been like sand through his fingers. Now it was late.

  Ay tapped the wall with his long nails and sighed impatiently. He was in the hands of the gods and there was nothing he could do but wait.

  He had made plans. He had married his granddaughter, Ankhesenamun, daughter of Nefertiti and Great Queen of the young pharaoh who had preceded Ay: Tutankhamun. Ay was not a king by blood: he had been Master of Horse to the Great Criminal, but had saved himself from the ruin of that ruler’s fall. He had outplayed Horemheb when Tutankhamun had died without an heir. Ankhsi, he had planned, would give him one: she had been consort: their son would be the first issue of the new House. No man could contest his claim.

  The only shadow on the sand had been little Tuthmosis. Ay’s spies on Horemheb’s staff had brought the king reports of the boy’s health; but the king stopped short of killing him. He had hoped instead. Nergal had fulfilled his hope.

  But if Nergal could give luck, Nergal could also take it away.

  Wearily he turned to face the room. Its cold, golden furniture offered him no comfort. For this he had fought and suffered: to be master of rooms like this one, to have his subjects lower their faces to the earth at the sound of the trumpets which heralded his approach: the god on earth. But his heart fought hard to balance his reason now: it was not only the trappings he had desired: it was the power. But... to do what? He shook his head as if to clear it. Old age brought doubt. He shut those demons out of the centre of his heart. But they did not go away. They would not go away. They lurked in the remote corners and corridors, looking for a chance to ambush him. Ay made himself turn back to the view, and counted the number of boats on the River.

  The sense of powerlessness in the face of the gods did not leave him, yet there was something in his heart which could appreciate, if that was the word, the balancing act of fate. He had rejoiced to see the growing reed of his rival’s stock broken. Now, it was his own breeding-house over which the shadow of death hung.

  Little Ankhsi. He had danced her on his lap as a baby. He knew every secret ridge of her body. Now she was dying – or, though he still hoped against hope, close enough to dying to make him give orders for her tomb, on which work had begun the day after she was born, to be made ready to receive her.

  He remembered how he had returned with Nezemmut from inspecting Tuthmosis’ little mausoleum within that being excavated for his family. The boy would lie here and await his parents, his little ka anxious and alone in the great night, though protected by words of power from the thousand horrors of the nether world. Ay guessed that this would not be his last resting place. Horemheb was a northerner, and the soothsayers had long ago predicted that his sahu would lie near the ancient step pyramid of Imhotep, who built it for Zoser. Ay wondered if he himself would live to see the day. He nursed a secret joy at the hope.

  The Ch
ief Embalmer had reassured the mother. In the wabet house they would care for the boy well. Soon he could go to his rest. Ay had granted his daughter the right to the full burial rites of one who is high-born, but he stopped short at letting the obsequies be those accorded to a king’s son. Horemheb was a fine general. Despite their rivalry, ironically, between them they had rebuilt the Black Land. They were like two sides of the same disc; two brothers, light and dark, Horus and Seth. They complemented each other and each was the other’s worst enemy. Not that any such thing was ever spoken of – except in their secret hearts and to their closest spies. Could either in truth exist without the other?

  Ay berated himself for turning his thoughts towards his own centre. He had comforted Nezemmut, but he had not recognised his daughter in the pallid, overweight creature in whose eyes the lustre of life seemed already to have gone out. Her grief, too, seemed automatic – what was expected of her rather than what she felt – as if she were too tired, too used-up, truly to grieve. Did she do so for herself? She seemed past that, too. But her marriage to Horemheb had been expedient at the time.

  And now this.

  Ankhsi dying.

  Would Horemheb’s spies already have sent the news to him? Would it mitigate the grief he would feel at his son’s death? Horemheb was not much younger than Ay but he was vigorous and Nezemmut’s birth cave still had moisture in it. Ay had needed a child by Ankhsi and after three years of trying he had not got one and now she was dying.

  Was it for her that he grieved or for himself, for the missed opportunity, for the setback in the game of senet he had been playing with Horemheb for the Golden Chair and the succession now for as long, it seemed, as he could remember – was it for this that he really lamented?

  He suspected that it was so, in truth, but he wondered if it mattered. For the first time in his life he felt tired, and for the first time in his life he felt old. The seasons rolled round and did not change; the demon within him remained the hardest of all to master.