She went to change her dress and anoint her face with expensive balm and to adorn herself with gold and silver so that only by her hands and feet could she have been distinguished from an eminent woman, though perhaps few ladies had so clear and steady a glance as hers or so proud a mouth. I had the slaves carry us along the Avenue of Rams, and Thebes still was not what it used to be, for flower beds were treaded, and cut branches were still sticking out from the trees, and new houses were still being built where old ones had burned down. But we sat close together in the chair so that I breathed the scent of her ointments, and it was the scent of Thebes, more pungent and intoxicating than all the costly cosmetics of Akhetaten. I held her hand in mine, and there was not one evil thought left in my heart any more, and I felt like I was coming home after a long journey.
We approached the Temple, where black birds circled and squawked above the empty Temple, for they had never returned to their mountains but settled in Thebes, and nobody disturbed them within the Temple precinct for it was accursed ground and people avoided it, terrified. We stepped from the chair and wandered through the deserted forecourts, and the only folk we saw were those about the Houses of Life and of Death for moving these would have been too costly and troublesome a business. But Merit told me that people avoided the House of Life also, for which reason an increasing number of physicians had moved into the city itself to carry on their profession and compete for patients. We walked in the Temple garden, but grass overgrew the paths, and its trees had been felled and stolen and the ancient fish of the sacred lake had been speared — and if there was anyone we encountered in the gardens which Pharaoh had turned into a public park and playground he was a ragged, frightened and dirty vagabond who gave us sidelong looks.
Walking in the area of the deserted Temple, my mind became empty and the shadow of the false god fell heavily on me, for all this proved his power had not fallen along with his images but he still ruled people’s hearts with fear. We also went up to the great Temple, and grass grew between its floor stones and no one prevented us from entering its holy of holies, and the sacred texts on the walls were unsightly and desecrated when stonemasons had carelessly hacked off the names and images of the false god from its inscriptions. Merit said,
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“This is an evil place, and you chill my heart in bringing me here but doubtless, the cross of Aten will protect us though I would prefer you to remove it from your collar since because of it you might be stoned or someone could put a knife in your stomach in a lonely place. Hatred is still rife in Thebes.”
She spoke truly for when we had come back to the open place before the Temple, the people spat on the ground when they saw Aten’s cross in my collar. I was astonished to observe one of the priests of Amun walking boldly amongst the crowd with his head shaven, despite Pharaoh’s order, and arrayed in white. His face gleamed from oil, his robe was of the finest linen, and he seemed to have suffered no hardship or shortage, but people made way for him with veneration. Since certainty is best, I started keeping one hand on my breast to hide the cross of Aten, for I was loath to be the cause of needless uproar. I did not want to hurt anyone’s feelings unnecessarily because, unlike Pharaoh, I wanted to allow each his own faith, and perhaps I wanted to avoid uproar for Merit’s sake too.
We paused by the wall where a storyteller sat on a storyteller’s mat like storytellers do with an empty bowl before him, and people stood around him in a ring, and the poorest amongst them sat on the ground, having no need to consider their clothes. The story he was telling I had never heard before, for he spoke of a false Pharaoh who had lived many, many years ago, fathered by Seth in the womb of a black witch. Using her magic, the witch had won the love of the good Pharaoh. In Seth’s orders, the false Pharaoh wanted to destroy the people of Egypt and deliver them as slaves to black men and barbarians, and to carry this out he let the statues of Ra be felled so that Ra cursed the land and the land was not fertile any more, and the floods drowned people and locusts ate the harvest from the fields and pools were transformed into foul-smelling blood and frogs jumped on people’s beds and dough jars. But the days of the false Pharaoh were numbered for the power of Ra was greater than the power of Seth even though the false Pharaoh tried calling Seth’s power with false names. Therefore the false Pharaoh faced a gruesome death and the witch that had given birth to him, also faced a gruesome death; and Ra hit everyone who had abandoned him to the ground and divided their houses and possessions and land to those who had remained steadfast to Ra throughout these trials and believed in his return.
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