CHAPTER XVI

THE CURSE OF HUY, GREAT HIGH PRIEST OF AMEN

What Belur the Hittite Ambassador had said, concerning the expected outbreak of a religious war throughout Egypt, was true. Moreover, no one was greatly surprised at his report of the disaffection of Egypt’s Asiatic vassals.

In his efforts to establish the cult of the Syrian sun-god, in place of that of the various Egyptian deities, Pharaoh had little time to attend to the exacting affairs of his country’s vast empire abroad.

However, Belur’s words cannot have taken him altogether by surprise, since runners had brought letters daily from the few faithful vassal-kings along his Syrian border, letters begging help from Egypt.

Indeed, of late, these hints of troubles to come had resolved themselves into the most urgent appeals for troops to assist in stemming the advance of the dreaded Hittites. Two messengers had Noferhotep sent from the frontier on a like errand. After a protracted delay Pharaoh had despatched one division of Ethiopian troops to his support.

Yet, not until this moment, when a swift cedar boat was carrying Belur and his suite northward, did Pharaoh appreciate to the full the significance of those despairing cries for aid. As he now saw it, Belur had come as spokesman for a combined array of Egypt’s Asiatic foes, the very mention of whose names froze the blood in Pharaoh’s veins.

Thereafter Pharaoh’s spies were very active, along the border.

Time went by, yet nothing happened. Perhaps the boastful words of the Hittite were but intended to intimidate him. Or could it have been that the bold front which he had assumed had in turn deceived the Hittite?

Hearing nothing further of Rimur of Charchemish, or of the kings of Kadesh and Megiddo, Pharaoh again took up the work so near his heart. All his best efforts were now centered upon the establishment of the Syrian solar-cult throughout Egypt.

To this drastic move Pharaoh was incited by Yakab and by his mother, Thi, not so much on account of any real love they had for Aton, the Syrian deity, but mainly as a means of ridding themselves of the obstructive influence of Huy, Enana and the powerful priesthood of Amen in Karnak.

Realizing that the vast buildings of Amen’s temples in Karnak could never be moved, Thi pointed out to Pharaoh how comparatively easy it would be for him to forsake Thebes and the Palace of Amenhotep, his father, and to erect a new palace, a new city, elsewhere.

To this end Thi had urged Pharaoh to abandon Thebes and had prevailed upon him to erect a new capital, the City of the Sun, far to the north.

It was to raise this new capital, together with all the houses and villas surrounding it, that thousands of captive slaves were now put to work deep within the quarries of Hatnub, quarries famed alike on account of the superb quality of their fine white limestone and the translucency of their striated alabasters.

In building Pharaoh’s new city gigantic blocks in both of these rich materials were brought down from the hills along a specially leveled causeway. Each giant block had been secured upon great wooden sleds of hardened sycamore, and hauled to the new site by the concerted efforts of sweating oxen and groaning sleds.

Overseers were told of to prod the oxen; others to lash the scarred backs of the unhappy Asiatic slaves. The chief of each section occupied himself in pouring water upon the ground to prevent the sled from taking fire by friction, or oil to facilitate the movement of the sled.

When not so engaged the chief sang a love-song in time to the thwack of the overseers’ staves, as they further lacerated the bloody backs of the staggering captives. It was commonly said of a chief of a quarry-gang that he needed but _three_ canopic jars at _his_ entombment, since he lacked—a heart.

At the site of the new city other dull-eyed Asiatics, similarly flogged into line, worked waist-deep in sandy pits or muddy ditches. Day in, day out, the heavy wooden brick-carriers bit into the cracked and blistered shoulders of emasculated Amu.

Indeed, long before the quickening rays of Aton had mounted above the low hills which shut in the City of the Sun to the east, sweat, mud and blood had baked upon the naked backs of Ethiopian, Libyan, Canaanite and Kheftiu alike. Nay, Egyptians themselves, the down-trodden herdsmen, were as like as not torn from their ripening fields to toil perhaps at pressing bricks for Pharaoh’s palace, library and villa, or, cursed, cuffed and beaten by the shrieking taskmasters, to crack their thews at the well-nigh smoking ropes which encircle some colossal shaft, shrine or statue intended for the great temple of the sun-god Aton.

From their lofty posts above the valley watchful vultures craned their necks, as they slowly circled earthward. Such a stupendous undertaking exacted a heavy toll of death.

But what of deserted Thebes, of Huy and the priests of Amen?

Ever since the theft of the cultus-statue of the temple by the Atonites the priests at Karnak had shut themselves up behind the great walls of the Temple of Amen. Behind those massive walls they had continued to intone the ritual of Amen to an empty shrine and the Theban Recention of the Book of the Dead to deserted courts and forgotten offering-tables. Aton and its ritual they anathematized, though an Aton shrine had, for a time, been forced upon them.

In their present extremity Huy, the great High Priest of Amen, relied for support upon the people, as did indeed his brother hierophants of Memphis, Thinis and Abydos.

Yet, no help came from the priests of Ptah, of Atum, of Osiris. The starving and plague-stricken peasants in whom they trusted failed to assist them.

For their part the peasants well knew that no matter which of the opposing factions gained the upper hand, _their_ present state of utter wretchedness would remain unchanged.

What cared they for Amen, Ptah or Aton, when the Nile-god failed them, when Hapi neglected to pour his life-giving waters over their parched and stricken fields!

What was Amen or Aton to them, as they watched their ashen, granite-hard soil crack beneath the pitiless shafts of a ruthless sun-god! ’Twas an ill time to pray to him under any one of his three hundred names.

And so it happened that, at Pharaoh’s command, an Atonite force attacked the battlemented walls of Amen’s temple in Karnak.

As a result, the ancient temple of Sesostris was utterly destroyed. Oldest of all the temples within the encircling walls, its cedar columns, its silver floors, its walls of gold inlaid with malachite and lazuli, together with its hundreds of gold and silver statues of the kings of old, all were lost in a conflagration started by the overturning of a colossal incense-bowl which stood in front of the shadow of the god Min, outlined in silver in the panels of the sanctuary door.

That night Huy, great High Priest of Amen, lay dead, the poisoned cup clenched in his hand.

Yet, before he went forth upon his last long journey across the rocky heights of Duat and the demon-haunted valleys of the Underworld, Huy had arrayed himself in full regalia and taken his stand before the yellow curtain which screened the now empty shrine of the great god Amen.

Aloud he cried, “O Ancient One, Primordial God! By the power of thy Hidden Name, by the Heads of the Demigods that surround thee, hear the prayer of Huy, thy servant!

“Grant that the line of Ahmes be broken! Grant that no child of Pharaoh sit upon thy golden throne!

“Let Pharaoh’s name be blotted from remembrance! Let Pharaoh’s _ka_ be forced to wander among the dunghills of forgotten cities!”

Slowly Huy raised the poisoned cup: “And now, O nameless One, before I go forth upon the way of trial, a token that thou dost grant my prayer. Give me a sign, O Holy One, a sign, O Amen, Lord of Lords!”

As if in answer to the High Priest’s cry, there came a sound as of the shaking of distant sistra and silver cymbals. There followed the thrumming of many harps and the sound of reed pipes. Suddenly, through the yellow curtain, there was seen a light which slowly increased in brightness.

In terror the awe-struck priests surrounding Huy hid their eyes. When again they dared to open them, they saw that the great curtain had been rent in two and, below it, stretched at full length, lay the white-robed figure of Huy, their leader.

In sorrow, Antefy, his successor, commanded his bearers to carry him to the chariot of Mei, the Atonite, where seven and seventy times seven at the feet of Pharaoh’s victorious representative, in words at least, he fell.

The other disheartened ministers of Amen nominally embraced the Aton creed then and there, or, with Antefy, their new leader, retired to a self-imposed exile among the arid sands of Nubia far to the south.

The fall of Huy and the priests of Amen, seeming to prove the strength and determination of Pharaoh, Memphis, Thinis and Abydos, and thereafter, nearly every local shrine throughout Egypt, at once raised altars to Aton, the Syrian sun-god.

Once again fortune favored the Atonites!