me. His eyes were very weary and his hair was quite white under the Nubian wig.
‘Thy brother Kheperren?’
‘Still with the General Horemheb, and alive,’ I replied. ‘I am glad to have found you, Master, and he will be glad to have news of you. But all things pass, Master,’ I said. ‘The Osiris-Amenhotep is to be buried in the old way.’
‘Return the copy of the Recension when the funeral is over,’ said Ammemmes. ‘Send it to me near Sais, at the village of the Crossed Arrows. And survive, dearest son; survive. But do not do evil in the name of any god. The only one who accepts evil deeds is the demon Set—oh, no, I am mistaken. Set does not exist any more.’
‘But evil does,’ I responded, and left the temple.
Thus I stood with the King Akhnaten at the door of the tomb in the Valley of the Kings and prompted him as he recited the litany of offerings to Osiris-Amenhotep. A priest at his right side offered the things as he named them, and passed them to another who piled them in the tomb.
Outside the funeral procession waited, thousands of mourners weeping and crying. There were no colours, no dyed fabrics or rich jewellery. Every person wore a white cloth now stained with mud and ash. Their hair was loose and tangled, as was mine and the King’s. Four sacrificial oxen lowed their displeasure, children cried and the chorus never ceased of women calling for the Osiris-Amenhotep to return. They wailed:
Come to thy house, thy lovers, thy sisters.
Overhead, no good birds flew, but the birds of ill-omen, the vulture and the crow. The vulture was the Goddess Renennet once, before Aten had come upon us. Now she was just a carrion-eating bird. On consideration, I liked the goddess better.
Akhnaten had almost conquered his loathing for the ceremony, overruled by his fear of his mother. He recited:
This libation is for thee, I have brought thee before the eye of Horus, that thy heart may be refreshed thereby. I have brought it unto thee so that no thirst may torment thee.
Queen Tiye was at the door of the tomb, linked with her daughters and the Priestess of Isis Mutnodjme; and Queen Tiye never took her eyes off her son for the whole long, long recital. Her obedient son, Akhnaten, who implored:
Open thy mouth, Osiris-Amenhotep. I cleanse thee, I cleanse thee, the fluid of life shall not be destroyed in thee.
He presented milk in a clay vessel.
Here is the nipple of the breast of thy sister Isis; milk of thy mother has found thy mouth.
The other Sem-priest, an ugly youth, took the vessel and put it on the sarcophagus; and my lord Akhnaten, presenting two iron instruments to the south and the north, continued:
Osiris-Amenhotep, the two gods have opened thy mouth.
He was doing quite well. I remembered what my master Ammemmes had said about fear being a bad teacher, but clearly it had done wonders for my lord’s powers of concentration.
Day hath made an offering for thee in the sky, and the south and the north have caused an offering to have been made. Night hath made an offering to thee, and south and north have caused an offering to be made. An offering hath been made to thee, thou seest the offering, thou hear’st it. The King giveth an offering to the ka of Osiris-Amenhotep.
He repeated this four times. He then began the long—and mostly jumbled and nonsensical—ritual involving cheeses, cakes, beer and perfumes, which seem to some scholars to relate to plays on words whose original meanings are forgotten.
My mind wandered. I had already mourned for the death of the wise old king, and for the future I felt nothing but unease. I did not like the way the rule of my lord Akhnaten was going. His edicts, for a start, had caused the death of an innocent old man, harmless and learned Snefru, who loved his scrolls and hoarded writings as much as any father loved his children. I was keeping my place in the Recension with one finger, and was amazed to find that my tears were blotting the ink. I hastily wiped my face.
It was probably not for Osiris-Amenhotep that I was weeping.
Chapter Fourteen
Mutnodjme
We wept ourselves out. The Queen was led wailing from the door of the tomb and the priests sealed it with the great clay seals of the City of the Houses of Eternity, and we left Osiris-Amenhotep to the silence and his interviews with