the various doorkeepers in the Tuat.
‘He was a good man and a good king and he will dwell with Osiris forever,’ said the Princess Sitamen to her mother, ‘Will you come, Mother, and live with me? Thebes is being deserted by the royal court and there are beggars in the streets. Now that the temple has been closed there will be no one to care for the poor. The priests of Amen-Re are dispersed.’
‘You are my daughter and I love you, but I will go where I might still be of some use,’ said Tiye the Queen, so softly that the tall princess had to bend to hear her.
‘So far the temples of Isis have not been attacked, daughter,’ the Queen said to me. ‘But I do not know how long their immunity may last. Sitamen will go back to her estates, which are hers in her own right and cannot be removed. She may visit us, perhaps, if you will come with me and my widow-daughter Merope? We leave in twenty days.’
‘Where are you going?’ I asked, though I knew the answer.
‘To the City of the Sun,’ said the Queen with great determination. ‘To save what can be saved.’
So it was settled. I officiated at the secret funeral of the old man Snefru, cried for him and saw his tomb sealed. The new edict was making the city nervous. It was rumoured that all worship was to be forbidden except that of the Aten; and people were burying even their little household gods, the pottery statues of the fanged dwarf Bes who assists in childbirth, and the little images of Amen-Re as a ram or Osiris as a bull.
At the end of twenty days I gathered my texts and my robes, packed up in oilcloth and buried what I could not carry with me, and left the temple where I had been happy for many years. The Singer of Isis, Lady of her own kingdom, escorted me to the great door.
‘Be of good cheer about us, daughter, we have places to go and things to do, and we are not without resource,’ she said.
Duammerset had died a year before, and this Lady of Isis was young. Her name was Peri, and she had a sweetness of character. A childhood accident had burned one side of her face, and her parents had abandoned her on the temple steps, hoping Isis might heal her. Isis had not removed the scar, but she had accepted Peri as her most intelligent and devoted priestess, a natural successor to the old woman. Some even whispered that she was Duammerset come again; that her spirit had passed from one body to the other. Certainly she had a lot of the old woman’s mannerisms, including a low, soft voice full of authority.
‘But what will you do if your worship is forbidden?’ I asked.
She smiled—it was certainly Duammerset’s smile, a cool, calculating turn of the mouth. ‘Better that you should not know. Now, do not forget what you have learned of us, daughter Mutnodjme. Even if humans forget Isis, she will not forget us. Farewell,’ she said, and kissed me, and I went with my bundle down the steps of the temple and into the street.
I had abandoned my robes, and felt naked. I was wearing just what every woman in Thebes was wearing, a white cloth and a delicate square of fabric covering my breasts, and I bore my bundle on my shoulder as women do. But voices fell as I walked into a market, and I heard hisses behind me, saying, ‘The woman of Isis, there is no Isis, there is no god!’ and I had to exercise considerable self control not to run. I reminded myself that I was still a priestess of a very strong-minded deity who did not care whether people believed in her or not, and picked up my pace unobtrusively.
There were soldiers at the palace gates. There had never been soldiers there before. They were well armed with spear, sword and shield, and they wore the Pharaoh’s red plumes, his personal guard. They crossed spears before me and opposed my entry.
‘I am Mutnodjme, sister to the Great Royal Spouse Nefertiti, let me through,’ I said into their unmoving faces. They looked like statues, not men, and they did not react. I was wondering what to do—kick one in the shin, perhaps, to test whether he was stone or flesh?—when I was relieved of the burden of decision.
‘Let the lady in,’