Naguib Mahfouz - Akhenaten - Dweller in Truth

When he became king, I declared my faith again before him and he appointed me first sculptor of the king. When God inspired him to build the new city and move his throne to it, I was in charge of eighty thousand workers, building the most beautiful city ever known, the city of light and faith, Akhetaten.

We built the largest roads, the finest palaces, and the most beautiful of gardens and ponds. It was an artist's masterpiece, but in the end it fell prey to the malice of the priests.

Bek remained silent for a while, unable to conceal his grief for his most cherished creation, which was now slowly vanishing into the dust of the earth. I, too, remained silent out of respect for him, until finally he continued.

Akhenaten was an artist himself. He recited poetry, painted, and even tried his slender hand at carving stone. I will tell you a secret that few people know. He carved a sculpture of Nefertiti that was by all standards an ideal of beauty. It may still be in the abandoned palace, or in Nefertiti's palace, or perhaps it was destroyed with everything else. When the queen abandoned him unexpectedly, he took out the left eye of the sculpture to express his disappointment, but left the rest of it intact as a token of eternal love.

The queen and Akhenaten were a symbol of the God who was father and mother in one. They were united by a deep love that weathered many storms. I still do not understand why she left him at the very end. Her enemies accused her of leaving the sinking ship. They said she wanted to find herself a place in the new nation. But she did not try to win anyone over after that. Of her own will, she remained isolated in her palace, until it became her prison. It was not true that she had been nursing her own interest. I believe that her faith might have been shaken when God did not come to their aid at the time of those painful events. In a dark hour she deserted both the throne and her religion. As for Akhenaten, he was determined until the end. How could he give up his faith when it was he who had heard the heavenly voice of God call him his dear son? After that Akhenaten could not hear any other voice, nor did he care for any other opinion or listen to anyone's advice as a person should when he seeks the truth. It was not he who was defeated, but us. I, too, had my doubts, particularly when they asked him to relinquish the throne, and even more when everyone abandoned him. I saw him once standing alone, calmly watching everyone leave. When he saw me approach he said, “You must go with them, Bek.”

“No one dared speak to me of this, my King,” I said agitatedly.

“But you will go,” he replied with a smile.

“I will remain by my king forever.”

“Bek,” he said gently, “you will go, whether willingly, or by force.”

I remained silent for a moment, then asked, “My Master, can evil overcome?”

He seemed to disappear in his thoughts for a moment, then I heard him say, “Evil can never overcome. What we are witnessing is only a fleeting moment. Only death can keep us from seeing the truth.”

Then he began to sing:

In the same way that he never gave up his faith, he never stopped loving either. Even when he saw the pyramid he built destroyed, and saw his own men join his enemies and his beloved wife desert him without explanation, even then his heart did not know a moment of hatred or spite. He was above punishment; he had nothing but love for man, animal, and even inanimate matter. When he first took the throne, Egypt was a vast empire with loving, obedient subjects. He could have chosen to indulge in worldly comforts: women, wine, food. But he looked away from such temptations and gave himself to the truth, challenging the powers of greed and selfishness. So he sacrificed everything, without ever losing the smile on his face.

“Why don't you use force to defend love and peace?” I asked him one day after the seeds of evil had started growing.

He replied, “Vicious people and criminals always find an excuse to justify their thirst for blood, and I am not one of those, Bek.”

I will never forget his kindness when he sensed that I liked Mutnedjmet, his sister-in-law. He tried to pave the way for me to ask her hand in marriage. When she refused me he consoled me: “Do not be sorry, she is like a vulture waiting for her chance to attack.” I asked him what he meant, but he did not answer.

When everyone else had left, I insisted on remaining with him, as did Meri-Ra, the priest of the One God. But the sage Ay met with us and said, “We are only leaving to protect him from an attack that we cannot ward off. It is the only way we can save his life. Believe me, if anyone was to remain with him I would have chosen to be that one. I am the father of his wife, and his first teacher.”

“But Ay, my staying with him will not change the course of events anyhow.”

“The agreement between us and the priests was that Akhenaten would not be harmed, on the condition that none of his followers and men remain in the city with him. The priests will assign a few servants to watch over him.”

My heart was seared with pain as I was forced to join everyone else. I still have doubts, for I, too, cannot understand why God abandoned him. Sometimes I pray to God and sometimes not. When I received the news of his death, I wept until my eyes exhausted their tears. I had a deep feeling that he did not just die but that they killed him by sorcery or in some other brutal way. Now, here I am living without purpose or a trace of happiness, waiting for death to take me, as it took my beautiful city.

Tadukhipa was the daughter of Tushratta, the king of Mitanni, Egypt's closest ally. At the end of his life, King Amenhotep III married Tadukhipa. He was sixty years old and she was fifteen. When Amenhotep died and Akhenaten became king, he inherited Tadukhipa as a part of his father's harem. Now she lives in a palace in northern Thebes with three hundred slaves in her service. She agreed to speak to me only on the recommendation of Haremhab. She was a beautiful woman, in her thirties, with an aura of mystery and dignity. I met her in the grand reception room, where she was seated on a chair of ebony inlaid with gold. Her smile encouraged me to ask her to tell her story.

I lived with King Amenhotep III for a very short period, a period filled with jealousy and bitterness. When I met the Great Queen Tiye I was rather surprised. I could not understand how a woman like her was able to rise to such status. In my father's palace the likes of Tiye were more than happy just to serve in his harem. I was even more surprised when I first saw the crown prince walking in the garden. What a wasted and hideous creature he was. I felt more contempt than pity for him.

Soon after my marriage to Amenhotep III his health began to deteriorate. Some spiteful people dared to blame me for the king's ill health. My concerns, however, were different. From the very first night of our marriage I could see in the king's wrinkled face my imminent misfortune-that wretched boy would soon take me as part of his inheritance. I found myself thinking that life with his old father was probably better than life with him. After all, Amenhotep III, despite what one might expect of an ailing man his age, was lively, cheerful, and full of vigor. In the harem quarters the woman often talked about the crown prince. We amused ourselves by making fun of his passion for feminine art forms like painting and singing, and his dubious disinterest in women. We thought he was quite unfit for the throne.