Out of the Black Land - By Kerry Greenwood Page 0,120

as possible as fast as they can.’

‘Ah,’ Horemheb put his chin in his hand.

‘Shut up here in this city which the King says he will never leave,’ I said, ‘we know nothing of what is happening in the rest of the Black Land.’

‘I will tell you all if you wish and have the heart to hear it, but it can be summed up in one word: ruin,’ said Kheperren quietly.

Horemheb nodded. Ptah-hotep sighed and Widow-Queen Tiye sighed with him.

‘The festival of Opet did not take place this year, it was forbidden by the King Akhnaten, and the priests have been expelled from the temples of Amen-Re all over the country. The Nile did not flood and the people are saying that the country has been cursed for abandoning its old gods. The harvest last year was small and this year it will be less,’ Kheperren said.

‘The King takes more and more taxes for the building of his temples and this city, and the farmers will be on short rations this year. Without the central authority of the temple of Amen-Re, the local officials are cheating the people but not the King. The Watchers are being bribed and I even heard that Houses of Eternity are being robbed; the thieves’ excuse being that they were made without acknowledgment of the Aten and are thus heretical. Some of the officials of the Necropolis are allowing this to happen provided that they get a percentage of the stolen treasure.

‘Men are being taken for building labour even in the sowing season—even though this year all water for inner cultivation has to be lifted by hand from the river—so less land is being farmed and there will be less wheat.

‘And since the loss of the Temple of Isis, lady…’ Kheperren looked at me, ‘superstition rages, fevers sweep villages and sorcerers have made their appearance. A whole Nome worshipped the birth of a two-headed calf last year. A wandering magician convinced three villages to slaughter all their cattle and have a great feast, because the world would end the next day. The people did as he said because there was no one to persuade them otherwise. They committed murders and various abominations because it was the end of the world, and then when they woke up the next morning the world was still there but…’ he hesitated.

‘ But the magician had gone and so had all of their goods,’ I concluded. ‘There have always been people who see their chance for gain in a bad situation. And as Duammerset, Singer of Isis, used to say, There is never a disaster but humans will make it worse.’

Ptah-hotep

‘There’s worse,’ said my dear Kheperren. ‘Wise women are shunned now, and most children under five die because the mothers have no one to help and advise them. Many women die in childbirth because midwives are banned as witches.

‘In one village in the Delta they burned an old woman in a fire, saying she was a sorceress and had put a curse on their cattle, and in Elephantine they are throwing offenders to the crocodiles.’

‘The system of government is breaking down,’ mused Widow-Queen Tiye, ‘that means that all people will revert to whatever they believed before the wise lords of old introduced gods into Egypt. I would expect that fetishes and house gods will be venerated again, and that, as you say, human sacrifice and the long-forbidden cannibal feast will happen once more in places where there has been peace and stability for centuries. That would explain the crocodiles,’ she said. ‘Sobek was a local god before ever he was placed in the pantheon.’

‘And the old woman,’ Lady Mutnodjme agreed. ‘Before Isis there was a female demon with her head turned backward who crept into houses and put the evil eye on children, gave cattle diseases and blighted crops.’

‘And now,’ I added to the general gloom, ‘our lord is not only going to offend all of our allies by giving away their princesses like honey-cakes to beggars, but he is refusing to send aid to Tushratta of the Mittani; and if the Mittani fall we shall have Assyrians on the threshold.’

‘There is something, at least, that can be done for Tushratta, evil old scoundrel that he is,’ said Lady Tiye. ‘General, you have your own honour guard, have you not?’

‘Lady, I have,’

‘And how many men are they?’

‘Lady, one thousand. Three hundred mounted archers, three hundred light infantry, three hundred heavy cavalry and one hundred cooks, runners, scribes and others who count