PART II

WHO IS HE?

I

I, Akhnaton Uaenra, the Joy of the Sun, the only Son of the Sun, speak thus: here will I build a city in the name of Aton, my Father, for it was none other than He brought me to Akhetaton, his portion from all eternity. There was not any man in the whole land who led me to it, saying 'build a city here,' but my heavenly Father has said it. This land belongs not to a god nor to a goddess, not to a prince nor to a princess, but only to Aton, my Father. May the City of God thrive like the sun in heaven. Behold, I raise my hand and swear: I will not pass beyond the boundary of this domain, which Aton has himself desired and fenced in with his hills, and with which He is pleased for ever and ever!"

This inscription was cut in the thickness of the rocks, north, south, east and west of the city of Akhetaton, on fourteen flat boundary stones, which marked the portion of Aton, the kingdom of God upon earth. They were fourteen according to the fourteen parts of the dismembered body of Osiris, the Great Victim, for King Akhnaton was himself the second Osiris.

In the fourth year of his reign he had abandoned the ancient capital of Egypt, Nut Amon or Thebes, and founded a new one.

The city was built with such haste that the newly erected walls were showing cracks; the cracks were patched up with clay and the building carried on. Experienced architects merely shook their heads, remembering the old saying: 'to build in a hurry means no end of worry.'

The king's exchequer was growing empty; innumerable stores of treasure, plundered from the temples of Amon, were being spent; tens of thousands of workmen were driven to Akhetaton from all parts of Egypt; they worked even at night, by torchlight. And the miracle had taken place; within ten years a new city had grown up in the desert; so does the pink lotos, nekheb, break into flower during the night and appear above the water in the morning; so does a beautiful mirage rise over the shimmering heat of the desert; but the water flows away and the lotos fades; the wind blows and the mirage is gone.

Dio came to Akhetaton five days before the great festival, the twelfth anniversary of the city's foundation, coinciding with the day of Aton's nativity, the winter solstice, when the 'little sun,' the baby god Osiris-Sokkaris, rises from the dead and is born. She was to dance before the king for the first time at that festival.

Tuta had intended to present her at court as soon as they arrived, but she did not wish it and he gave way; he gave way to her in everything, waiting upon her wishes; it was evident that she was for him a big stake in a big game; he was bargaining over 'the Pearl of the Seas' like a clever merchant

He was soon comforted for his bad luck in Thebes. While still on the journey he received good news from his friends at court who had done their best for him and gave the king such a version of the rising that Tuta's weakness appeared as mercy, his cowardice as love of peace: he ran away from the battlefield, they said, because he remembered that 'peace was better than war.'

Dio spent the five days before the festival in Tuta's house near the temple of Aton, preparing for the dance. She did not go out nor show herself to anyone in the daytime, but at night she went up to the flat roof of the temple where she was to dance. She practiced there herself and taught others.

The day before the feast she was sitting alone, late in the evening, in the newly decorated room of Tuta's summer house; he and his wife, the king's daughter Ankhsenbatona, or Ankhi, lived in the winter house. The smell of fresh paint and plaster came from the still unfinished part of the house, where in the daytime masons, carpenters and painters were at work. It seemed to Dio that the whole town was pervaded by this smell.

Red pillars with green garlands of palm leaves supported the sky-blue ceiling. The white walls were decorated with a delicate design of yellow butterflies, fluttering over fine seaweed.

The freshness of a winter evening came through the long, narrow stone-trellised windows, right up by the ceiling. Sitting on a low couch--a brick platform covered with rugs and cushions--Dio, wrapped up in her Cretan wolf-fur, was warming herself by the hearth--an earthenware platter of hot embers.

"To-morrow I shall see _him_," she thought with fear. She had begun to be afraid on the very first day she arrived, and grew more so as time went oh; and on this last night before the meeting such fear possessed her that she felt she might run away if she did not control herself. She went hot and cold at the thought that the next day she was to dance before the king. "My legs will give way under me, I shall stumble, fall flat, disgrace poor Tuta!" she laughed, as though to make her fear worse.

In the depth of the room two sanctuary lamps were hanging in two niches decorated with alabaster bas-reliefs of the king on the left and the queen on the right. The wall space between them was covered with rows of turquoise blue hieroglyphics on golden yellow ground, glorifying the god Aton.

Dio got up, and going to the niche on the left, looked at the bas-relief of the king standing at an altar. He was raising two round sacrificial loaves, one on each palm, towards the Sun. The enormously tall royal tiara, tapering to a point, seemed too heavy for the childish head on the slender neck, flexible like the stem of a flower. The childish face was irregular, with a receding forehead and a protruding mouth. The charm of his naked body was like that of a flower that had just opened and was already fading with the heat:

"Thou art the flower uprooted from the ground, Thou art the plant unmoistened by running water."

Dio recalled the song of weeping for the dead god Tammuz.

The neck, the shoulders, the hands, the calves and the ankles were slender and narrow like those of a boy of ten, but the hips were wide like a woman's and the breasts too full: neither he nor she--he and she at the same time--a marvel of god-like beauty.

On Mount Dicte in the Island of Crete, Dio had heard an ancient legend: in the beginning man and woman were one body with two faces; but the Lord cut their body in two and gave to each a spinal cord; 'that's how people cut eggs in two with a hair for pickling,' old Mother Akakalla, the prophetess, used to add with a queer, uncanny laugh when she told this legend in Dio's ear.

"The hair could not have passed right through his body," she thought, looking at the King's image, and she recalled the prophecy: "the kingdom of God shall come when the two shall be one, and male shall be female and there shall be neither male nor female."

She knelt down and stretched out her arms to the marvel of godlike charm.

"My brother, my sister, the two horned moon, the double-edged axe, my lover, my loved one!" she whispered devoutly.

A whiff of wind came from the window; the flame of the lamp flickered, the outline of the figure grew dim and through the marvel the monster peered--neither old nor young, neither man nor woman, a eunuch, a decrepit babe, the horror of Gem-Aton.

"Go to him then, the seducer, the son of perdition, the devil," the voice of Ptamose sounded over her and she buried her face in her hands, terrified.

At the same moment she felt that someone was standing behind her; she turned round and saw a little girl.

A robe, transparent like running water, fell in flowing folds over the slender body. The over-dress had come open in front and the amber-brown skin could be seen through the shift worn underneath. The girl wore on her head a huge shiny black wig of tightly plaited tresses cut evenly round the edge. A tiny talc cup, turned upside down and filled with the _kemi_ ointment made up of seven perfumes--the royal ointment--was fixed on the top of the head. Slowly melting with the warmth of the body it dropped like fragrant dew on the hair, face and clothes. The long stem of a pink lotos was thrust through a hole in the cup in such a way that the half-open flower, with a sweet smell of anise, hung over the forehead.

The girl was about twelve years old. The childish face was charming though irregular, with a protruding mouth and a receding forehead; the large slightly squinting eyes had a fixed heavy look such as one sees in the eyes of an epileptic.

At one moment she seemed a child, at another a woman; there was something pathetic and charming in this elusive twilight between childhood and womanhood. She was a half-open bud like the rosy lotos _nekheb_ over her forehead, fragrant with the freshness of water; it closes its petals and shortens its stem at night as it hides under the water and when, in the morning, it comes up again and opens its chalice, a golden winged beetle flies out of it--Horus, the newly-born god of the Sun.

The little girl appeared so suddenly, so like a phantom that Dio looked at her almost in fear. Both were silent for a second.

"Dio?" the visitor asked at last.

"Yes. And who are you?"

She made no answer; but raising her left eyebrow and shrugging her shoulders, asked again:

"What were you doing here? Praying?"

"No .... simply looking at the figure...."

"But why were you kneeling, then?"

Dio blushed in confusion. The child lifted her eyebrow again and shrugged her shoulders.

"You don't want to tell me? Very well, don't."

She went up to the couch and picked up from it the gazelle skin which she had taken off when she came into the room.

"It is cold and damp in your room. You don't know how to keep a fire in," she said, wrapping herself up. "Well, aren't you going to say anything? I want to talk to you."

She sat on the couch in the Egyptian fashion, clasping her knees with her hands and resting her chin on them. Dio sat down beside her.

"You don't know yet who I am?" asked the child, fixing her heavy gaze upon Dio.

"I don't."

"His wife."

"Whose wife?"

"Are you pretending, or what?"

"The princess?" Dio guessed suddenly.

"Thank heaven, at last!" said the visitor. "Well, why do you sit and stare at me?"

"Why, what's wrong?"

"What's wrong? The king's daughter, a child of the Sun, is before you and it doesn't occur to you to make the slightest bow?"

Dio smiled and knelt before her on the couch, as a grown up person kneels before a child to caress it.

"Rejoice, Princess Ankhsenbatona, my dear, welcome guest!" she said with all her heart and was about to kiss the princess's hand, when the girl quickly drew it away.

"There, now she is grabbing my hand! Is that the way to bow to royalty?"

"Isn't it?"

"You should bow down to the ground! Well, I don't care, I don't want your bows, sit down.... Wait a minute though!"

She also knelt suddenly in front of Dio.

"Turn to the light, please; that's it!"

Dio turned her face to the lamp that stood on the floor by the couch--a flower of blue glass on a high alabaster stand. Ankhi approached her face to Dio's and with a business-like frown began to scrutinize her in silence.

"Yes, very beautiful," she whispered at last as though speaking to herself. "What rouge do you use?"

"I don't use any."

"What next?"

She licked her little finger and raising it to Dio's face asked:

"May I try?"

"Do."

Ankhi slowly moved her finger along Dio's cheek and looked to see if the tip of it was red. No, it was not red.

"Strange!" she said in surprise. "How old are you?"

"Twenty."

"How is it you are so young?"

"But twenty isn't old, is it?"

"Oh yes, it is with us. We are married at ten and grandmothers at thirty. But, of course, with you in the north everything is different: the sun makes people old and the cold keeps them young," she said complacently, evidently repeating somebody else's words.

She sat down in the same attitude as before, clasping her knees with her hands, and sank into thought.

"Why do you laugh?" she asked, again fixing her heavy gaze on Dio.

"I am not laughing, I am merely happy."

"What about?"

"I don't know. Simply because you have come."

"It's always 'simply' with you.... Do you imagine I am a little girl? .... What has he said to you about me?"

Dio understood that 'he' was Tuta.

"He said you were very clever and a beauty and that he loved you more than anything in the world."

"Nonsense! You just say this out of kindness.... You must have both been laughing at me. Has he told you that I play dolls?"

"No, he hasn't."

"But I do play! I played last summer and will play again if I want to. I don't care if they do laugh at me. The king says children are better than grown-ups, wiser, they know more. Eternity, he says, is a child playing with, playing..."

She forgot what Eternity was playing with and flushed crimson.

"Ah, curse the thing! The wool has again made my head hot." She pulled the wig off her head and flung it away. The talc cup clinked against the wall; the lotos stem broke and the flower hung down piteously.

"Do you imagine that I have dressed up for you? Not likely! I am going to supper at the palace..."

Her head was shaven and had such a long, vegetable, marrow-like skull that Dio almost cried out with surprise. In Egypt long heads were regarded as particularly beautiful in girls. The strange custom of bandaging newborn children's heads in order to lengthen their skulls was brought to Egypt from the Kingdom of Mitanni, the midnight land by the upper Euphrates, whence Akhnaton's mother, Queen Tiy, came. All the King's daughters were long-headed. Noble ladies and, later on, men suddenly developed long skulls also: they wore special skull caps--"royal marrows"--made of the finest antelope skins.

Very likely Princess Ankhi took off her wig on purpose to boast of the shape of her head to Dio: "You may have rosy cheeks, but I have a royal marrow!"

"And is it true you are a sorceress, they say?"

"No, it isn't."

"Then what did they want to burn you for?"

Dio said nothing.

"Again, you don't want to tell me?"

"I don't."

"You killed the god Bull, your Mreura, or was it Hapius?"

Hapius was the bull of Memphis and Mreura the bull of Heliopolis, the incarnate god of the Sun. "We, too, had a Mreura," Ankhi went on, not waiting for an answer. "It died two years ago: I was very fond of it. It was old and blind. I used to go into its stable, put my arms round it and kiss its head, and it would lick my face and bellow into my ear as though to say something. To kill a creature like that, good heavens! It's like killing a baby...."

She paused, and looking at Dio from under her brows said suddenly:

"They have found a wax doll in the palace."

"What wax doll?"

"A charmed one, with its heart pierced by a needle; the person whose name is written on the wax is sure to die. The king's name was written on it; they found it in the king's bedchamber...."

She paused again and asked:

"How long have you been here?"

"Five days."

"And the wax doll was found the day before yesterday."

"Well, what of it?"

"Nothing. One can't stop people talking and they say all sorts of things .... And why do you sit at home hiding from everyone and only come out at night?"

Her face worked suddenly, the eyes flashed angrily, the lips trembled and she said, looking straight at Dio:

"Are you his concubine?"

"Whose?"

"Tuta's."

Dio clasped her hands in dismay.

"What nonsense, princess darling!"

"Why nonsense?"

"Because I cannot be anybody's concubine: priestesses of the Mother are perpetual virgins. And, besides it's a matter of taste. His Highness ... may I speak the truth, you won't be angry?"

"No, speak."

"His Highness is very nice, but I don't like him at all."

Ankhi looked at her, heaved a deep sigh, as a person suddenly relieved of violent pain, and whispered:

"Is it true?"

"Why, look into my eyes, don't you see it is true?"

Ankhi looked straight into her eyes; then turned away and buried her face in her hands; her thin shoulders quivered and all her body trembled with silent sobs.

Dio moved up to her and putting her arms round her pressed the girl's long shaven head--the royal marrow--to her bosom.

"Don't you believe me?"

"Yes, I do. I have known all along that it was all untrue about your being a sorceress, and the wax doll. I said it all on purpose..."

"Then why are you crying?"

"Oh, because I am so mean, so horrid! I liked you the moment I saw you and so I got angry. I am always angry with the people I am fond of.... But you don't know all yet! I made old Iagu promise--he is an old servant, a faithful dog and loves me as his own soul--I made him promise that he would kill you if you really were Tuta's mistress. I would have killed him and myself, too--that's what I am like! When the devil gets hold of me I can do anything...."

She wept again.

"There, there, my little darling, my sweet little girl!" Dio whispered, stroking her head, and suddenly she remembered she had said almost the same words when she caressed Eoia just like that. "That's all over now and done with! Let us be friends, shall we?"

Ankhi said nothing but pressed more closely to her. Dio kissed her on the lips without speaking and herself wept for joy.

Joy rose in her heart, like the sun, and the fear she had felt melted away like a shadow.

"Darling, darling child!" she thought, "it is he himself, Akhnaton, the Joy of the Sun, has sent you to me as joy's messenger!"

II

In the silence of the night a trumpet proclaimed joy unto men. First one, then another, a third--and then scores and hundreds of trumpets played the hymn to Aton:

Glorious is Thy rising in the East, Lord and giver of life, Aton! Thou sendest Thy rays and darkness flees, All the earth is filled with joy.

The trumpets sounded at every end of the city, arousing many-voiced echoes in the mountains. Just as cocks call to one another and crow to the Sun in the night, so did the trumpets call at the hour before dawn when men's sleep is like the sleep of death, as is said in Aton's hymn:

Men sleep in darkness like the dead, Their heads are wrapped up and their nostrils stopped. Stolen are the things that are under their heads, While they know it not. Every lion cometh forth from his den, Serpents creep from out of their holes, The Creator has gone to rest and the world is mute.

But the trumpet was waking the sleepers as the call of the Lord will one day wake the dead. Old men and children, slaves and free, rich and poor, foreigners and Egyptians, were all running to greet the newborn sun, the god Aton.

Dio was roused by the sound of the trumpet in the small chapel of Aton's temple where she slept that night with the girl singers, musicians and dancers who were to accompany her in her dance before the king.

"The trumpets call, the trumpets! Get up, girls! The sun is born, rejoice!" she heard the voices round her.

They embraced and kissed one another, wishing each other new joy with the new sun.

They ran out on to the flat roof of the temple.

It was a warm night: after midnight the wind had changed to the south and the temperature rose at once. Big round white clouds were floating across the sky like sails. Misty, fluffy stars twinkled like wind-blown flames and a waning copper-yellow moon lay on its back over the black ridge of the Lybian mountains.

Heaven, earth, water, plants, animals--all were still asleep; men alone were awake. The town down below was stirring like an ant-heap. Lights were appearing in the windows, lamps were smoking on the roofs, torches glowed in the streets filled with dark crowds that streamed along like rivers. There was a hum of voices, rustle of feet, stamping of hoofs, clatter of wheels, neighing of horses, cries of soldiers and the ceaseless call of the trumpets--the hymn to Aton:

Glorious is Thy rising in the East, Lord and giver of life, Aton! Thou sendest Thy rays and darkness flees, All the earth is filled with joy.

"There goes the royal procession! Let us run downstairs, girls, we can see better from there!" cried one of those who were looking from the roof of Aton's temple, and they all flew downstairs like a flock of turtle-doves, on to the flat top of the gates nearest the street where the procession was passing.

"The king! The king! Down! Down! Down!" cried the runners, scattering the crowd with their staves as they marched along in step, their bare backs bent double.

The king's bodyguard, the Hittite Amazons, came next. Yellow skinned and flat chested, with narrow eyes and high cheek bones, one warrior lock on their shaven heads, they carried bronze double-edged axes, the sacred weapon of the Virgin-Mother.

Then came courtiers, judges, councillors, warlords, treasurers, clerks, priests, soothsayers, scribes, chiefs of the bakers, chiefs of the butlers, chiefs of the king's stables, lords of the bedchamber, masters of the robes, hairdressers, launderers, perfumers and so on: all were dressed in white robes with pointed, stiffly starched aprons; all wore the special skullcaps that made their shaven heads look like the egg-shaped 'royal marrows.'

Then came the censer-bearers, lavishly burning incense, its white clouds turning rosy in the torchlight; these were followed by the fan-bearers waving multi-coloured fans of ostrich feathers and real flowers, fixed on long poles.

Finally there came twenty-four black Ethiopian youths, naked but for short aprons of parrot feathers and wearing golden nose rings; they carried on their shoulders a tall ivory throne covered with leaf gold with lions for a pedestal.

Dio clearly saw the leopard skin on the narrow boyish shoulders, the simple long white robe of such transparent linen that one could see through it above the elbows of the thin dark-skinned boyish arms, the coloured hieroglyphics of Aton's name; she saw the staff--symbol of godhead--in one hand and the scourge in the other; the pear-shaped royal tiara, made of pale cham, a mixture of gold and silver, studded with small stars of lapis lazuli, and the golden snake of the sun, Uta, coiled on the forehead.

She saw all this but she did not dare to look at his face. "I will look when I am dancing before him," she thought, as she ran upstairs to the roof of Aton's temple.

"Down! Down! The king comes! the god comes!" the runners shouted, and people bowed to the ground.

The procession entered the gates of Aton's temple.

The temple of the Sun, the House of Joy, consisted of seven pillared courts, with tower-like pylon gates, side-chapels and three hundred and sixty-five altars. Seven courts were the seven temples of the seven peoples, for as it says in the hymn to Aton:

Thou hast carried them all away captive, Thou bindest them by Thy love.

There was a time when by 'people'--_romet_--the Egyptians meant themselves only; all other nations were excluded; but now all were brothers, children of one Heavenly Father, Aton. The Temple of the Sun was the temple for all mankind.

Seven courts, seven temples: the first was dedicated to Tammuz of Babylon, the second to Attis of the Hittites, the third to Adon of Canaan, the fourth to Adun of Crete, the fifth to Mithra of Mitanni, the sixth to Ashmun of Phoenicia, the seventh to Zagreus-Bacchus of Thrace. All these god-men who had suffered, died and risen from the dead, were but shadows of the one sun that was to rise--the Son.

The seven open temples led into the eighth, the secret one, which no one but the king and the high priest dared enter. There in perpetual twilight stood sixteen giant Osirises made of alabaster, pale as phantoms, tightly bound with winding sheets, wearing gods' tiaras and holding a staff--symbol of god-head--in one hand and a scourge in the other; the faces of all were in the likeness of King Akhnaton.

Passing through the seven open temples the procession approached the eighth, the secret one. The king went into it alone, and, while he was praying there, all waited outside. When he came out, they mounted by an outside staircase on to the flat roof of the upper temple, which was built on the roof of the lower.

The great altar of the Sun stood here; it was made of huge blocks of cream-coloured sandstone, pale as a girl's body and shaped like a pyramid with its top cut off; two gradual approaches, without steps, led up to it. On a high platform at the top of the pyramid a sanctuary fire was perpetually burning, and, above it on a column of alabaster, the sun disc of Aton, made of pale cham--a mixture of gold and silver--glistened with a dull brilliance. It was the highest point of the huge edifice and the first and last ray of the sun was always reflected upon it.

The king, the queen, the princesses and the heir apparent--only those in whose veins flowed the blood of the Sun--went up to the top of the pyramid, and then the king alone ascended the platform where the fire was burning.

People thronged in the seven courts of the temple down below, on the pylons, the staircases, the roofs of both temples; it was like a living mountain of people and the highest point of it was one man--the king.

"I come to glorify Thy rays, living Aton, one eternal God!" he said stretching out his arms to the Sun.

"Praise be to Thee, living Aton, who hast made the heavens and the mysteries thereof," answered the high priest Merira, who stood at the base of the pyramid. "Thou art in heaven and Thy beloved son Akhnaton is on earth!"

"I show the way of life to all of you, generations that have been and are to come," the king continued. "Give praise to the God Aton, the living God, and ye shall live! Gather together and come, all ye people of salvation; turn to the Lord, all ye ends of the earth, for Aton is God and there is none other God but He."

"The God Aton is the only God and there is none other God but He," answered the innumerable crowds down below, and the call of thousands was like the roar of the sea.

The moon had set, the stars were hardly visible. The wind dropped, the clouds cleared away, the sky was almost grey. And suddenly a giant ray, shaped like a pyramid with its base on the ground and its top in the zenith, appeared in the morning twilight and white opalescent lights, like sheet lightning, flickered across it--the Light of the Zodiac, the forerunner of the Sun.

The king, with his wife, daughters and the heir apparent, descended from the pyramid altar and went into a painted and gilded tent that stood at the eastern side of it.

There was a sound of flutes and a ringing of citherns, then came subdued singing and a slow procession of priestesses, carrying a coffin on their shoulders, mounted the flat roof of the temple by an outer staircase. A dead body wrapped up in a white winding sheet lay in the coffin. The priestesses placed the coffin on the dark purple carpet before the king's tent.

Two mourners came forward, one stood at the head and the other at the feet of the corpse, weeping and calling to each other like the two sister goddesses Isis and Neftis at the tomb of Osiris, their brother. Meanwhile the others, naked but for a narrow black belt below the navel and a black 'bandage of shame' between the legs, were dancing the wild, ancient, magical dance of Osiris-Bata, the rising god, the vegetating ear of corn: standing in a row on one leg they raised the other leg all at once, lowered it and then raised it again, higher and higher each time, so that at last the toes went up higher than the heads.

"Arise, arise, arise! O Sun of all suns, O first fruits of them that slept, arise!" they repeated, also all at once, to the ringing of the citherns and the squealing of flutes. This meant: "grow up as high as our legs are thrown up, o ear of corn, arise, thou dead one!"

And the mourners wept:

"Come to thy sister, come, my Beloved, Thou whose heart now beats no more! I am thy sister who loved thee on earth, No one has loved thee more than I!"

Suddenly a quiver passed over the corpse, as over a chrysalis when a butterfly stirs within it--a tremor that was like the tremulous lightnings in the sky, as though the same miracle were happening in the human body and in the heavens.

The grave clothes wrapped round the corpse were slowly unwound; the hand was slowly raised to the face as that of one waking from profound slumber; the knees bent slowly; the elbows rested against the bottom of the coffin and the body began to rise.

"Arise! Arise! Arise!" the dancers repeated as an incantation, throwing up their legs higher than their heads in the magical dance.

The light of the Zodiac was no longer visible in the rosy light of the dawn. A glowing ember blazed up in the misty crevice of the Arabian mountains and the first ray of the sun glistened on Aton's disc.

At the same moment the corpse rose, opened its eyes and smiled--and in that smile there was eternal life, the sun that has no setting.

"Dio, the dancer, the Pearl of the Kingdom of the Seas," a whisper was heard in the crowd of the courtiers.

The priestesses finished their magical dance and fell, face downwards, on the ground. The citherns and flutes were silent except one which was still weeping; it was like a lonely bird crying in the twilight:

"On my bed in the night I looked for him, For him whom my soul loveth, I sought him and did not find him."

Stepping out of the coffin, Dio moved towards the sun. She began the dance slowly and quietly, as though in her sleep; there was still something of the stiffness of death in her limbs. But as the sun rose higher the dance grew quicker and more impetuous. Her head was thrown back, her arms were stretched towards the sun; the white veils fell on the purple carpet, revealing the innocent body, neither masculine nor feminine--at once masculine and feminine--a marvel of godlike beauty. The sun was kissing her and she was surrendering herself to it, the mortal uniting with the god as a bride with her lover.

"Put me as a seal upon thine heart, "As a ring upon thine hand For strong as death is love,"

sobbed the flute.

The song stopped suddenly; the dancer fell flat on her back as though dead. One of the priestesses ran up to her and covered her with the white grave clothes.

The soft sound of footsteps and a voice that seemed familiar, though she had never heard it, reached Dio's ears. She raised her head and saw the king face to face. He was saying something to her but she could not make it out. She looked into his face eagerly as though recognising him after a long, long parting: this was perhaps how lovers recognised each other in the world beyond the grave.

She recalled her fear of him and was surprised not to be feeling any. A simple, quite a simple, face like anybody else's; the face of the son of man, the brother of man, gentle, very gentle like the face of the god whose name is Quiet Heart.

"Are you very tired?" he was asking, probably not for the first time.

"No, not very."

"How well you danced! Our dancers can't do it. Is this your Cretan dance?"

"Both ours and yours together."

He, too, was gazing at her as though trying to recognise her.

"Where have I seen you?"

"Nowhere, sire."

"Strange, I keep fancying I have seen you before...."

She was sitting at his feet and he stood bending over her. Both were uncomfortable. The white sheet kept slipping off her naked body and she was trying unsuccessfully to keep it on. She suddenly felt confused and blushed.

"Are you cold? Go along and get dressed," he said and blushed, too. 'Just like a little boy,' she thought, and recalled the figure at the Charuk palace--the boy who looked like a girl.

He took a ring off his finger, put it on hers, and, bending down still lower, kissed her on the head. Then he left her and returned to the royal tent.

"The fish has bitten!" an old dignitary, Ay, Tuta's friend and patron, who stood next to him in the crowd of courtiers, whispered in his ear.

"You think so?" Tuta asked joyfully.

"Set your mind at rest: it has bitten. You couldn't find another such pair: they have been made for each other. Man and woman--a hook and an eye--are two in love, but here there are four."

"How do you mean?"

"Why, there are two in him, two in her; an eye--a hook, a hook--an eye; once they catch there will be no disentangling them."

"You are a wise man, Ay!" Tuta said in delight.

III

A choir of blind singers began the hymn to Aton.

They had been tramps and beggars walking along the high roads from village to village. One day the king heard them at the gates of Aton's temple and liked their singing so much that he made them temple choristers--that God might receive praise not only from the happy, the wise and the seeing, but also from the blind, wretched and ignorant.

There were seven of them. They sat on their heels in a row before the king's tent, dressed only in short white aprons, their limbs thin as sticks, their bodies, with distended stomachs and the ribs showing through the skin, blackened by the sun, their heads shaven, their faces wrinkled; the folds of the skin near the mouth resembled those of an old sick dog; they were snub-nosed and, like dogs, seemed to be always sniffing; there were narrow, inflamed slits where their eyes should have been.

The leader of the choir sat in front playing a high seven-stringed harp, while the others, clapping their hands in time, sang in nasal voices but with remarkable intensity of feeling. They looked straight at the sun with their blind eyes but, not seeing the god of light, Ra, they glorified the god of warmth, Shu:

"Shu our Father, Shu our Mother! Weeping we have lost our sight. We praise the sun out of the night. Have mercy on us, poor blind men!"

And when they finished the melancholy song they began a joyous one:

Glorious is thy rising in the East, Lord and giver of life, Aton Thou sendest thy rays and darkness flees, And the earth is filled with joy.

The roof of the temple was flooded with sunshine, but the seven courts below were still in the shadow and only the high tops of the pylons were gilded by the sun; the bright-coloured pennants on the masts above them fluttered gaily in the morning breeze, white doves flapped their wings joyfully and winter swallows, in their whistling flight, cleft the air singing to the sun, shouting and shrilly calling with joy: 'Ra!'

The king mounted the pyramidal altar once more and threw a handful of incense into the fire. The flame blazed up, turning pale in the sun, clouds of rosy-white smoke rose in the air and immediately similar clouds rose from the three hundred and sixty-five altars in the seven courts below: anyone seeing it from a distance would have thought the city was on fire.

Slowly raising his arms to the sky, as though offering an invisible sacrifice, the king proclaimed:

"All there is between the eastern hills and the western hills--fields, waters, villages, plants, animals, men--all is brought as sacrifice to thee, Aton, the living Sun, so that thy kingdom may be on earth as it is in heaven, O Father!"

The black harvest of human heads bent down like the harvest corn in the wind. Trumpets, flutes, citherns, harps, lyres, timbrels, cymbals, kinnors combined with the thousands of voices into one deafening chorus.

"Sing unto the Lord a new song, sing unto the Lord, the earth and all that therein is! Give unto the Lord glory and honour, oh ye tribes of the earth! Let the heavens rejoice and the earth sing in triumph! Rejoice, Joy of the Sun, the only begotten Son of the Sun, Akhnaton Uaenra!"

Gazing into the king's face, Dio thought with as much joy as though she were already seeing the Son Who was to come: "no son of man has been nearer to Him than he!"

Only high officials were admitted into the enclosure round the king's tent. But beyond the enclosure a special place was set apart for the new converts--men of all classes and nationalities--Babylonians, Hittites, Canaanites, Aegians, Lybians, Mitannians, Thracians, Ethiopians and even Jews.

Suddenly Dio saw in that crowd Issachar, the son of Hamuel. He was watching the king intently, his mouth twisted in a malignant smile. Dio could not take her eyes off Issachar's face: she was trying to remember something.

The singing stopped and in the sudden stillness the king's voice was heard:

"Lord, before the world was made, thou hast revealed thy will to thy Son who lives forever. Thou, Father, art in my heart and no one knows thee but me, thy Son."

"Cursed be the deceiver who said 'I am the Son,'"--Dio suddenly recalled Issachar's words in the Gem-ton Chapel and, looking at the king again, she thought with terror: "Who is he? Who is he? Who is he?"

IV

The children of Israel which came into Egypt were seventy souls; but now the Lord has made us as many as the stars in heaven. And the king of Egypt said unto his people 'behold the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we. Come on, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply and it come to pass that when there falleth out any war they join also unto our enemies.' And so they did set over us taskmasters to afflict us with their burdens and they made our lives bitter with hard bondage in mortar and in brick. And we sighed and groaned by reason of the bondage and our cry had come unto the Lord. And the Lord stretched out his hand and brought us out of Egypt, from the house of bondage. And when the King of Egypt and his army overtook us by the Red Sea, Moses stretched out his hand over the sea and the waters were divided and the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground and the waters, were a wall unto them on their right hand and on their left. And the waters came again upon the Egyptians and covered them; they sank to the bottom as a stone."

This was the story as the Israelites told it, but the Egyptians laughed at them:

"Nothing of the kind has happened: no king of Egypt ever perished in the sea, and the leader of the Jews whom they call in Egyptian _Mosu--Child, Son_--is not a 'Son of God' at all, as they imagine, but the son of a slave, a wicked sorcerer, murderer and thief, who ran away into the desert to the Midian nomads and then secretly returned to Egypt and became the leader of a robber band of Khabiri, the Plunderers, who are the same as the Jews. The Khabiri are continually rising in the border lands of Egypt. In the days of King Tutmose the Fourth there was such a rising; a band of Khabiri went to the desert of Sinai and perished there of hunger and thirst together with _Mosu_ or Moses, their leader."

This was how the sons of Ham mocked the sons of Israel. And, indeed, not only the Egyptians but many of the Israelites themselves--for Moses led only a part of them out of Egypt--refused to believe the miracles of Exodus or to worship the new god, Jahve.

"What sort of god is it?" they asked. "We do not know him. Jahve in the Midian language means 'Destroyer.' He is the god of the nomads of Sinai and not of the Israelites, the demon of the desert, a consuming fire. His son, Moses, covered his face when he appeared before the people lest they should discover whom he was like. No, the gods of our fathers, the gentle Elohim, were different: Eliun, the Father, El-Shaddai the Son, and El Ruach, the Mother. This new god is anger, tempest, consuming fire and those three are mercy, loving kindness, dewy freshness."

And they also said:

"There has been no Exodus but there will be; there has been no Son yet but the Son is to come according to the words of our father Jacob: 'the sceptre shall not depart from Judah nor a lawgiver from between his feet until the Messiah come.'"

Hamuel, son of Avinoam of the house of Judah, a priest of El-Shaddai, worshipped the old gods, the Elohim, hated the new god Jahve and awaited the coming of the Messiah.

He was a wise man; he doctored the sick; told fortunes by throwing dice--_teraphim_--which revealed the divine preordination of human destinies; he received good pay for this and also made money by a traffic, of which the Customs officers knew nothing, in silphium, a medicinal herb from Lybia, and the balm of Gilead for anointing the dead. He lived in the town of Bubastis at the mouth of the Nile, protected by gods and respected by men.

He had two sons: the elder Eliav by Thamar, an Israelite, and the younger Issachar by Asta, an Egyptian.

It had happened that Hamuel went on business to the town of Mendes; there, in the temple of the god Goat, he saw a little girl priestess, Asta, and fell in love with her so much that he did not hesitate to give a hundred gold rings, _utens_, the price of thirty pairs of oxen, to pay for her flight from the temple: the priestesses betrothed to the god could not under the penalty of death marry anyone and especially not an 'unclean' Jew. Asta loved her mortal husband ardently, but could not forgive herself for being unfaithful to the immortal one and suffered such remorse that her mind became slightly deranged. When she gave birth to a son she imagined that she had conceived him by the god: the priestesses believed that the god Goat, the fiery-red Bindidi--Sun-Ra in the flesh and the source of virility in men and beasts--had carnal union with them. Asta whispered strange stories to the little Iserker, as she called Issachar in Egyptian, and sang strange songs to him about the golden-fleeced, golden-horned Goat that grazed in the azure meadows of the sky and came down sometimes to love the beautiful daughters of the earth.

Hamuel's first wife, the Israelite, Thamar, bitterly hated the Egyptian and her 'devil's brood, the son of the stinking Goat.' And there really was something goat-like in Issachar's face--in his thick hooked nose, thick lips, slanting yellow eyes and, when he grew up, in the long reddish curls that hung alongside his cheeks, the long parted reddish beard and the raucous, high-pitched, bleating voice.

The schoolboys teased little Iserker and called him "the red goat!" Egyptians considered red-haired people unclean because Set, the devil, was red like the sand of the desert, his kingdom: seeing a red-haired man in the street passers-by spat to avert bad fortune and mothers hid their children from his evil eye. 'It is a bad thing to be red-haired'--the little boy had known this ever since he could remember himself, but he could not decide, even when he had grown up, whether it was a good or a bad thing to be the son of the god Goat. It might be good for Iserker, the Egyptian, but bad for Issachar, the Israelite; but he never knew whether he was Iserker or Issachar and this was perpetual torture to him.

When, in the early years of the reign of Amenhotep the Fourth, or Akhnaton, as he was to call himself later--news came of the victories of Joshua in the Promised Land, a rebellion broke out among the Israelites left in Egypt. The rebellion started in the town of Bubastis. Hamuel's son Eliav, who was about twenty-five years old, had been seen at the head of the rebels' army. The rebellion was crushed; Eliav ran away and instead of him Issachar, his brother, who was completely innocent, was seized and thrown into prison as a hostage. Asta went from one judge to another giving bribes right and left; they took the bribes but kept the hostage. Then someone informed against Eliav, who had been hiding in the marshy jungles of the Delta; he was seized and Issachar released.

Soon after this Asta died suddenly after drinking some cold beer on a hot day; a few days later two maid-servants in Hamuel's house had a quarrel and one of them told that the other had poisoned their mistress. When both were cross-examined, the accused confessed that she poisoned Asta at the instigation of Thamar. The latter did not deny it and said to her husband straight out:

"I have killed Asta because she informed against Eliav. Kill me, too: blood for blood, life for life."

She spoke in this way because she worshipped the fierce Jahve, the Avenger. But Hamuel, a priest of the gentle El-Shaddai, had mercy on her and merely ordered her to leave his house for ever. That same night Thamar hanged herself and Hamuel did not survive her long--he died of grief. On his deathbed he admonished Issachar, his son, to await the Messiah.

Left alone in the world, Issachar went to Nut-Amon--Thebes--to his maternal grandfather, the priest Ptahotep, who was the keeper of scrolls in the sanctuary of Amon; there he assumed the rank of a junior priest--_uab_--and became a pupil of Ptamose, the high priest of Amon.

When the apostate king began to persecute the old faith, many of Ptamose's pupils proved false to their teacher either through fear or love of gain; but Issachar remained true to him.

Issachar's perpetual torment was that he could not decide whether he was a Jew or an Egyptian; through revealing to him the mysteries of the divine wisdom, Ptamose solved the question for him: the deeper Issachar studied them, the clearer he saw that the god-man, Osiris, who had been slain, and He of Whom the prophets of Israel had said: "He has poured out His soul unto death and made intercession for the transgressors" were one and the same Messiah.

V

After the mutiny at Thebes, Issachar went to Akhetaton, the City of the Sun, to see his brother Eliav and to carry out a behest of Ptamose so secret and terrible that he was afraid even to think of it, to say nothing of discussing it with anyone.

At the bottom of a deep cauldron-shaped hollow among the rocks of the Arabian hills, east of the City and within half an hour's walk from it, lay the penal settlement of the Israelites sentenced to work in the neighbouring quarries of Hat-Nub. The Egyptians called it the Dirty Jews' Village and the Israelite's name for it was Sheol--Hell.

Some ten days after Aton's nativity, Issachar walked to Sheol to see his brother Eliav.

An old man of seventy, looking like Abraham, with a fine, deeply lined, dark-skinned face and a long white beard, was walking beside him; he was Issachar's uncle, Ahiram, son of Halev, a rich merchant from the town of Tanis. They were climbing by a narrow goat's path one of the hills west of Sheol.

The sun was setting in the red mist, as in a pool of blood, and the bare rocks of yellow sandstone, covered in places with waves of loose sand, glowed with a red hot glow.

"I suppose you took part in the Nut-Amon rising, my boy, didn't you?" Ahiram asked.

"I? Oh, no. I am a peaceful man. And besides the holy father does not allow us to fight," Issachar answered. By 'holy father' he meant Ptamose.

The old man shook his head doubtfully.

"Come, come, you are telling fibs, I see it from your eyes! All of you, priests of Amon, are rebels. But remember, my son, nothing is to be gained by rebellion."

"What is one to do then?" Issachar asked.

The old man stroked his long white beard with a sly smile.

"Why, this; listen. When our forefather, Abraham, went to Egypt from Canaan because of the famine, he said to Sarah, his wife: 'you are a fair woman to look upon; say to the Egyptians you are my sister that it may be well with me for your sake.' She did as he asked and was taken into Pharaoh's house, and it was well with Abraham for her sake and he had sheep and oxen and he-asses, and men-servants and maidservants and she-asses, and camels. And the Lord plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarah, Abraham's wife. This is how it was, my son! Blessed be the children of Israel, the people preserved by the Lord! They shall overthrow their enemies by cunning and not by rebellion or violence," the old man said in conclusion, and his eyes sparkled with Abraham's slyness.

A young eagle flew up from the rock, silvery-grey in the glow of sunset that lighted it from below; the royal bird circled round and round, looking out for prey in the desert--a baby antelope or a bustard.

"I bare you on eagles' wings and brought you unto myself," Issachar recalled the words of God to Israel. "This is how he bears me now," he thought. He remembered, too, what Ptamose said when he sent him to the City of the Sun: "Be firm and have courage, my son, for the Lord is with you: He will do it for you." And he gave him a small bronze sacrificial knife, with the head of the god Amon-Ra for a handle; Ptamose did not say what the knife was for and Issachar did not ask--he knew.

Recalling this he thrust his hand under his cloak, and feeling the knife hidden in his broad leather belt, clasped its handle firmly and tenderly as a lover clasps the hand of his mistress. "Well, am I afraid?" he thought. "No, not afraid at all: He will do it for me. He bears me and will bring me unto Himself!" And turning to Ahiram he said:

"Dear uncle, will you get me a pass?"

He had wanted to say this for several days, but did not dare to, and he had not known a minute before that he would say it.

"What pass?"

"Into the palace to-morrow."

"Have you gone crazy, my boy? Where am I to get a permit for you with the night coming on?"

"Uncle dear, you can do anything, you know everybody, you have influence. Do get it for me, please do!" Issachar entreated him as though it were a matter of life and death.

"What do you want it for?" Ahiram asked, looking at him attentively.

"To see the king!"

"But you have seen him already."

"Only from a distance. To-morrow is the day of petitions, everybody will be allowed to go right up to the throne. I should see him quite near, face to face. I like him very much. Joy of the Sun, Joy of the Sun, to see him is a joy." Issachar said ecstatically.

"No, you shall not have a pass," Ahiram said decidedly, shaking his head. "God only knows what is in your mind, you might get me into trouble...."

Issachar took a purse from his bosom and producing from it a two-inch sacred scarabee, Kheper, made of beautiful Sinai lapis-lazuli, gave it Ahiram.

The old man seized it greedily, weighed it on his palm and scrutinized it for a few minutes.

"A fine stone," he said at last, divided between the delight of a connoisseur and the wish to beat down the price. "There is a little flaw in it, it looks dull and greenish in one place, but it is a lovely thing all the same. It's from Amon's treasury, isn't it? Did you steal it?"

"What next, uncle! I am not a thief. Holy father gave it to me."

"Oh, what for? Though indeed there are all sorts of fools in the world--some give presents for nothing. How much do you want for it?"

"Nothing, only get me the pass."

The old man's eyes glittered, he examined the stone again, and even tried it with his tongue and teeth; then he stroked his beard with a quick, as it were, thievish movement, and lifting an eyebrow and screwing up one eye, said giving back the stone:

"Look here, my son, don't sleep in the town to-night: there will be a search. The chief of the guards, Mahu, has got wind of something and is looking for the Nut-Amon rebels. Spend the night in the Goats' cave above Sheol; Naaman will take you there. If I procure the pass I will come there before midnight, and if I don't it will mean things have gone wrong--then save yourself and run away."

Issachar handed him the stone once more, but he did not take it.

"No, I will not take it in advance. Payment is due when the goods are delivered. I am an honest merchant."

He was speaking the truth--he was honest; an honest man and a rogue at the same time, after the manner of Abraham.

"I am sorry for you, my red-haired boy!" he said quietly, with an old man's benignity. "Your brother Eliav has perished for nothing; mind the same thing does not happen to you.... Remember, my son: man is born to suffering as a spark flies upward, and yet the sight of the sun is sweet to the living; a living dog is better than a dead lion."

"He has bought my soul for a stone and here he pities me," Issachar marvelled. He looked once more at the eagle still circling in the sky, thought of what was to happen next day and his heart throbbed with joy: "He hears me and will bring me unto himself!"

They climbed to the top of the hill and saw in the hollow below a regular quadrangle of uniform houses, intersected by a network of streets and surrounded by high walls.

The dead desert was all round; not a tree, not a bush, nothing but stones and sand; in the winter it was a cold grave, in the summer a scorching oven, a true Hell--Sheol.

A stench as though of decaying carrion came from below. Ahiram sniffed and frowned.

"Oho-hoho! It's the human smell, the smell of two-legged cattle. There is no well or spring near, and one can't be forever going to the river to fetch water; they stifle in their own stench, poor things!"

They descended rapidly by the goats' path to the bottom of the valley and approached the entrance to Sheol. Ahiram knocked. A window in the wall was opened, the gatekeeper peeped out and, recognizing the old man, unlocked the gate. He did not mean to admit Issachar, but Ahiram whispered something in his ear, thrust something into his hand and he let them both in.

Long, narrow, perfectly straight streets led from the square at the entrance into the centre of the settlement. One side of each street was a bare wall and the other a uniform row of mud huts that resembled stable stalls; the streets were like prison corridors, the huts like prison cells. There were no storehouses or granaries; all the inhabitants of Sheol received government rations.

Dirty pools with clouds of flies buzzing over them and heaps of filth and dung spread such an evil smell that the whole village seemed to be one enormous heap of refuse.

"I put the plague of leprosy in a house of the land of your possession," the Lord said to Israel. "If the plague be in the walls of the house with hollow strokes, greenish and reddish, the stones in which the plague is shall be taken away and cast into an unclean place; and if the plague come again and be spread in the house, it is a fretting leprosy; the house shall be broken down."

All the houses in Sheol had such leprosy. Lifeless stones were cankered by filth, and living bodies of men even more so; the unfortunate creatures which came down into Hell while still on earth were covered with rashes, ulcers, spots, festers, and the terrible white scabs of leprosy.

The king in his mercy allowed the prisoners' families to live with them, but this only made matters worse: people were suffering from overcrowding more than ever. "The dirty Jews' wives are fruitful," the gaolers said jeeringly. "In multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven." The Lord blessed Israel, but this blessing turned into a curse; numberless children were born and died, teeming in the filthy place like maggots in carrion.

"Thou hast carried them all away captive. Thou bindest them by Thy love."

Issachar recalled the king's hymn to the god Aton. "Fine sort of love," he thought, "casting the living into hell!"

Ahiram brought his nephew to Eliav's hut and saying good-bye to him went back to the city to get the pass.

Issachar walked into the half-dark entry. Two mangy sheep dozed in their stall; a sick old mule and a scraggy ass stood dejectedly by an empty water trough: beasts of burden carried stones in the quarry and lived together with the prisoners.

Beside them a decrepit old man, naked but for a ragged loin cloth, sat on a heap of dung and ashes scraping with a potsherd the white scabs of leprosy on his body, with a dull, monotonous wail, like the howling of wind at night. This was Shammai the Righteous, the grandfather of Eliav's wife Naomi.

He had once been rich, happy and respected by all; he had salt mines by the Bitter Lakes and a lot of cattle in the Goshen pastures, and he used to send caravans with wool and salt into Midia. He was a godfearing man and led so blameless a life that he was surnamed 'Righteous.' He had hoped to live to a happy old age and to die filled with days. But it pleased God to test him and he was suddenly deprived of everything. Two of his sons were lost with their caravan in the desert, probably killed by robbers; the other two perished in the rebellion. His son-in-law, who was steward over all his property, falsely accused Shammai of having taken part in the rebellion. The old man was seized and tried; the judges acquitted him, but they had a compact with his son-in-law and robbed him of all he had. Now that he was a beggar all his friends forsook him; his wife died. He thought of Naomi, his favourite granddaughter, and came to live with her in Sheol where he fell ill with leprosy.

Sitting day and night among the ashes, he scraped his scabs with a potsherd and comforted his heart with wailing. All the family had grown so used to his endless wail that they noticed it no more than one notices the creaking of a door, the sound of the wind or the chirping of a grasshopper.

Issachar stopped in the entry and listened.

"Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said there is a man child conceived. Why died I not from the womb? For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept, then had I been at rest. My soul is weary of my life; I will say unto God, do not condemn me; show me wherefore thou contendest with me. Is it good unto thee that thou shouldst destroy the innocent?"

And it seemed to Issachar that Shammai's wail was the lament of the whole people of Israel and, perhaps, of all mankind from the beginning to the end of time.

Walking past Shammai, he entered a dark and narrow room dimly lighted by two small lamps filled with mutton fat, one by the wall, on a wooden shelf with little clay idols of the gods Elohim, and another on the low brick platform with a block of stone on it that served as a table.

Eliav was having supper at that table with his two guests--Aviezer, a priest, and Naaman, a prophet.

Aviezer was a stout, important-looking man with red cheeks and a black beard. His luxurious dress of Phoenician patterned material was not very clean; a number of rings with imitation stones glittered on his fingers. He came to Sheol bringing alms for the prisoners from the rich Goshen merchants.

Naaman, a plumber and a prophet--_nabi_--was a little bald old man, gentle, shy and timid, with the kind and simple face of a poor Israelite labourer. He came from Thebes with Issachar.

There were other visitors present, but they sat at a distance and took no part in the supper or the conversation.

When Issachar saw his brother, a tall, round-shouldered, bony man, with a face so deeply lined that it seemed crumpled, everything else suddenly vanished from his eyes and he only saw this face--familiar, strange, pitiful, dear, and terrible.

"Ah, so you have arrived at last; I began to think you weren't coming," Eliav said, getting up.

Issachar went up to him and was going to embrace him when Eliav seized his hands with a quick movement and holding him back looked into his eyes with a laugh:

"Well, I should think we might embrace each Other, or is it beneath your dignity?" he said, as though it had been Issachar who held himself back.

Issachar threw his arms round Eliav's neck.

"Well, sit down," said Eliav, disengaging himself and pointing to the place of honour by his side--a low, half-circular stone chair. "You see, we are feasting here, enjoying your gifts without you. Thank you for remembering us and sending alms to us poor beggars. I dare not offer you anything: you Egyptians think our Jewish food unclean!"

"Why do you say such things, brother?" Issachar began, but broke off, looking down and flushing crimson. He took a piece off the dish.

"Why, he is eating! He really is, he doesn't despise our food!" Eliav cried, with the same unkind smile.

Aviezer also smiled into his beard, and Naaman anxiously looked round at them all with his kind eyes.

"Perhaps you will have a drink, too?" Eliav asked.

Issachar moved up his cup and Eliav filled it from a jug with pomegranate wine, blood-red and thick as oil--also his brother's present. He poured some out for himself, also.

"Your health, Iserker!"

He swallowed it at one gulp.

"Splendid wine this! I have never drunk anything like it."

He poured out some more. His wife, Naomi, a young, worn-looking woman with child, came up to him and whispered in his ear:

"You must not take any more, sir."

"Why not? I haven't seen my brother all these years and I mayn't have a drink on the occasion?"

He rudely pushed her away, giving her such a blow on the stomach with his elbow that she nearly fell.

"Oh, my dears, please don't let him drink, there will be trouble!" she begged the guests, retreating submissively like a beaten dog.

"A second cup to the success of your errand!" Eliav said. "You must have come to us on business I expect, and not for the pleasure of seeing your brother. Well, speak up, Iserker! What have you come for?"

"Issachar, not Iserker," his brother corrected him, paling slightly and frowning.

"Issachar in Hebrew and Iserker in Egyptian," Eliav answered. "Do you know yourself what your name is, I wonder? There now, don't be cross, don't look at me like Abel. I know you want to be an Abel, but I am not a Cain... Rabbi, what did Cain kill Abel for?" he asked Aviezer.

"Because God accepted Abel's gift and rejected Cain's."

"And why did God reject it?"

"No one knows this."

"That's always the way: no one knows the chief thing. But that was just the beginning of it all. The beginning was bad and I expect the end will be bad, too.... Well then, tell me what news have you brought us, Abel?"

"Good news, brother: the Lord has heard at last the cry of Israel. You will soon leave Sheol, captives.... Nabi Naaman, you are God's prophet, you know it all better than I do. Speak!"

Naaman shook his head, with a shy smile.

"Prophet, indeed! I am a simple man: all my wisdom is in mending cauldrons and saucepans..."

"Never mind, speak; God will teach you!"

The old man looked down and was silent for a time; then he began timidly and in a low voice, obviously repeating somebody else's words:

"Thus speaks the Lord of Sabaoth, the God of Israel: strengthen your arms which have grown weak, steady your knees that tremble. Behold your God! He shall come and save you; He shall stretch out his arm, He shall judge and lead his people out of Egypt, as out of the house of bondage. The second Exodus will be greater than the first, and the new Leader of Israel greater than Moses!"

He raised his eyes and his voice rang out with sudden force:

"How long, O Lord, shall the ungodly triumph? They trample upon thy people, they oppress thine inheritance, God of vengeance, Lord God of vengeance, show thyself, punish the proud! The Lord is to sit in judgment upon the peoples; He shall be judge of all flesh!"

"He is rather slow about it," Eliav said, with a jeering smile and, as though in answer to him, Shammai's wail was heard:

"Behold I cry out of wrong but I am not heard; I cry aloud and there is no judgment! Why does God mock the torture of the innocent? Why do the wicked live and spend their days in wealth? Why is the earth given over to evildoers and God gives them countenance? If it is not His doing, whose doing is it?"

"Do you hear?" Eliav asked, looking straight into Issachar's eyes. "Shammai is right: there is no judgment of God in the doings of men. All your prophecies are empty babble. The earth is a paradise for evildoers and a hell for the innocent, a Sheol. You are wretched comforters, useless physicians, all of you, damnation upon you and your God!"

Aviezar looked at Eliav and said, "Do not blaspheme, my son. Woe to him who disputes with his Maker."

"And what do you say, brother?" Eliav asked, still looking straight into Issachar's eyes. "Is Shammai right?"

"Yes, he is."

"Who is to answer him, then?"

"The Redeemer."

"And who is the Redeemer?"

"You know yourself."

"No, I don't. So many prophets come to us--not you alone. Some say that King Akhnaton is the Redeemer. Perhaps you have come to us from him?"

"Why do you laugh, brother, why do you jeer at what is holy?"

"But do you think you know what is holy? Is it true, they say you have been converted to the king's faith?"

"No, it is not."

"How is it, then, you were seen the other day at the festival of the Sun, among the converts? Whom are you deceiving, them or us? Why are you silent? Speak!"

"What am I to say, brother? You won't believe me in any case. Wait till to-morrow--to-morrow you shall know all."

"To-morrow? No, tell me at once, at once, what do you mean by saying 'you will soon leave Sheol, captives'? We shall not leave it without a rebellion. Have you come to stir us up, then?"

"You shall know everything to-morrow," Issachar repeated, getting up.

Eliav got up, too, and seized him by the hand.

"Stop, you shan't go like this! If you won't tell us, you will tell the king's overseer!"

"Will you inform against me?"

"And why not? An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. I have suffered for ten years on your account, and now it is your turn. Come along!"

"Oh, my dears, hold him, hold him, there will be trouble!" Naomi cried again.

All rushed at Eliav, but before they had time to restrain him, he dashed to the corner, seized the copper pickaxe, with which he broke stones in the quarry, ran towards Issachar, and raised it over his head, shouting:

"Get out of my sight, you son of the stinking Goat, or I'll kill you!"

Issachar ran out of the house, covering his face with his hands.

He ran along the dark streets, stumbling, falling, getting up, and running on again in terror.

He only came to himself outside the Sheol gates. Naaman had been running beside him and saying to him something he could not make out; at last he grasped that Naaman said:

"Let us run to the Goats' Cave and spend the night there."

By a steep narrow footpath cut in the rock, they ascended from the Sheol valley to the open ground at the top of the hill. A small red light flickered in the distance. They walked towards it. Fierce sheep dogs, with heads like spiders, rushed at them barking.

An old shepherd came out to meet them; he drove away the dogs and welcomed his guests with a low bow, calling Naaman by name. He had evidently been expecting them and led them straight to the cave at the top of the cliff overhanging Sheol.

Two young shepherds, who had been sitting by the bonfire in the cave among a sleeping flock of goats and sheep, got up and also made a low bow. They put more wood on the fire, spread some sheep-skins on the ground, and wishing their guests good-night, went out together with the old shepherd.

Issachar and Naaman sat down by the fire.

"Man is born to suffering as a spark flies upward," Issachar recalled Ahiram's words as he gazed at the sparks in the smoking fire and he thought "To-morrow Eliav will learn everything and will forgive and love me."

He lay down and as soon as he closed his eyes began to descend by the dark subterranean passages into the Nut-Amon sanctuary of the god Ram; he went on and on, but he could not reach it--he had lost his way. A small red light flickered in the distance. He walked towards it. The light grew bigger and bigger and became at last a red sun upon the black sky. Someone was standing under it, dressed in white, with a face as gentle as that of the god whose name is Quiet Heart. A quiet voice said, "Thou, Father, art in my heart and no one knows thee but me, thy son." "Cursed be the deceiver who said 'I am the Son'," Issachar cried, and drawing the knife from his belt was about to strike him. But he saw the red blood flowing on the white robe. "They shall look upon him whom they pierced and shall mourn for Him as for a son," he recalled the prophecy, and, throwing down the knife, flung himself at the feet of the Pierced One, crying "Who are you?"

"Ahiram, your uncle, who did you think I was? Come, wake up, my son," he heard Ahiram's voice and woke up.

"What is the matter with you, my boy? Have you had a bad dream?" the old man said, stroking Issachar's hair affectionately. "See, here is your pass!"

He took a day tablet from his bosom and gave it to Issachar: the king's seal--the sun disc of Aton--was at the top, next to the date of the month and below was the signature Tutankhaton.'

Issachar took the tablet and gazed at it, still trembling, so that his teeth chattered.

"Give me the stone!" Ahiram said, looking at him suspiciously, wondering if he would refuse payment.

Issachar took the stone out of his purse and gave it to Ahiram.

"But why are you so frightened? Have you changed your mind? Won't you go?" the old man said.

"Yes, I will go," Issachar answered.

VI

Poor queen! To give the god hot fomentations when he has stomach-ache and still believe that he is a god is no joke," the old courtier Ay said, laughing.

Tuta, who was very fond of witty remarks, repeated it to Dio in a moment of confidence, and she often recalled it as she looked at Queen Nefertiti.

Mother of six children at the age of twenty-eight, she still looked like a girl: slender girlish waist, bosom only slightly marked, narrow shoulders, collar bones that stood out under the skin, a thin long neck--'like a giraffe's,' she used herself to say jokingly. The round face looked childishly tender under the high bucket-shaped royal tiara, worn low over the forehead so that no hair showed. There was something childishly piteous in the short slightly protruding upper lip; there was an inward brooding look and a fathomless depth of sadness in the big lustreless, rather slanting black eyes under the heavy drooping eyelids.

She seemed to be all on guard, as though listening, spell-bound, to something within herself, motionless as an arrow on the bow string or a chord stretched to the uttermost but not sounding as yet; if it did sound it would break. It was as though she had received a mortal wound and were concealing it from all.

Daughter of Tadukhipa, a princess of Mitanni, and Amenhotep the Third, king of Egypt, Queen Nefertiti was King Akhnaton's half-sister: kings of Egypt, children of the Sun, often married their sisters in order to preserve the purity of the race.

The king and queen were so much alike that when, as boy and girl, they used to wear almost the same clothes, people found it hard to distinguish them. There was the same languid charm about them, the charm of a half-opened flower drooping with the heat of the sun.

"Oh plant that never tasted running water, Oh flower, plucked out by the roots."

Dio recalled the dirge for the dead god Tammuz when she looked at the bas-relief of the king and queen in one of the palace chambers. They were represented sitting side by side on a double throne; she had her left arm round his waist, the fingers of the right hand were intertwined with his fingers and their faces were so close together that one could hardly see her through him; he was in her and she in him. As it said in the hymn to Aton:

"When Thou didst establish the earth Thou didst reveal thy will to me Thy son Akhnaton Uaenra, And to thy beloved daughter Nefertiti, delight of the Son Who flourishes for ever and ever!"

It was then that this brother's and sister's marriage was made.

"They cannot be loved separately, they must be loved together--two in one," Dio understood this at once.

After her dance on the day of Aton's Nativity, she received the rank of 'the chief fan-bearer on the right side of the gracious god-king' and, leaving Tuta's house, settled in the palace where a room was assigned to her in the women's quarters close to the queen's chambers. She soon made friends with the queen, but a barrier which she herself could not understand separated her from the king.

She was no longer afraid of his being 'not quite human': she had learned from the queen that he certainly was human. There was profound meaning in the flat joke about 'the god having stomach-ache.' And the horror that the king's blasphemous words about being 'the son of God' had inspired in her at the festival of the Sun had disappeared, too: all kings of Egypt called themselves 'sons of God.'

She felt no fear, but something that was perhaps worse than fear.

It used to happen in the autumn when she was hunting on Mount Ida in Crete that on a bright, sunny day mist suddenly crept up from the mountain gorges, and the molten gold of the forest, the blue sky, the blue sea grew dim and grey and the sun itself looked out of the fog like a dead fish's eye. "What if the Joy of the Sun, Akhnaton, also looks at me with the eyes of a dead fish?" she thought.

She danced for him every day, and he admired her. "Only a dancer--I will never be anything more for him," she said to herself, with a grey fog of boredom in her mind.

She stood for hours behind the king's throne, raising and lowering with a slow, measured movement, in accordance with the ancient ritual, the big ostrich-feather fan on a long pole. Sometimes when left alone with her he turned suddenly and smiled at her with such appealing tenderness that her heart stood still at the thought that he would speak and the barrier would fall. But he said nothing or spoke about trifles: asked whether she was tired and would like to sit down; or wondered at the quickness with which she had learned to wave the fan--an art more difficult than it appeared; or, with jesting courtesy, blessed the stupid old custom of keeping cool in winter and fanning away the non-existent flies because it gave him a chance of being with her.

One day Dio was reluctantly--she did not like talking about it--telling the queen who questioned her how she had killed the god Bull on the Knossos arena to avenge a human victim, her best friend, Eoia; how she had been sentenced to be burned and was saved by Tammuzadad, the Babylonian, who went to the stake in her place.

The king was present, too, and seemed to listen attentively. When Dio finished there were tears in the queen's eyes, but the king, as though coming to himself suddenly, glanced at them both with a strange quiet smile, and muttered hurriedly and excitedly, repeating the same words, as he often did:

"You mustn't shave it off! You mustn't shave it off!"

It was so inappropriate that Dio was alarmed and wondered if he were