There was a King in Egypt Part 1

There was a King in Egypt.

by Norma Lorimer.

PREFACE

The monarch indicated in _There was a King in Egypt_ is Akhnaton, the heretic Pharaoh, first brought home to the English reader by the well known Egyptian archaeologist, Mr. Arthur Weigall. Akhnaton, or Amenhotep IV., has an interest for the whole world as the first Messiah. Like Our Lord, he was of Syrian parentage--on the mother's side. Interest in him is undying, because underlying his Sun-symbolism we have the first foreshadowings of the altruism of Christianity.

The book is not directly devoted to Akhnaton. It is about a young English Egyptologist, who is excavating the tomb of Akhnaton's mother, in which the Pharaoh's exhumed body found its final repose; his sister; and an Irish mystic, who copies the tomb-paintings excavated before their freshness fades. Aton-worship and Mohammedanism have an almost equal fascination for this Irishman, and the romance is permeated with their mysticism. The prophecies of a Mohammedan saint who has attained the light by a life of abstinence and self-discipline, influence the current of the romance no less than the visions of the Pharaoh Messiah, whose pure religion threatened his country with disasters like the Russian revolution.

For the historical facts I am indebted to the brilliant _Akhnaton, Pharaoh of Egypt_,[1] of Mr. Weigall, late Chief Inspector of Monuments in Upper Egypt. The character of the Egyptian Messiah has fascinated me ever since I began to read Egyptian history, and Mr. Weigall writes with the grace and colour of a Pierre Loti. I have always used his translations of Akhnaton's words, and very often his own words in describing Akhnaton.

I take this opportunity of thanking Mr. Weigall for his ungrudging permission to quote from him, and I should like him to know that his book was the inspiration of _There was a King in Egypt_.

I must also acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. Walter Tyndall's fine volume, _Below the Cataracts_,[2]--he is equally successful as author and artist--for my description of the tomb of Queen Thiy.

The teachings of the reformed Mohammedanism scattered through my book are derived from the propaganda works of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, especially his _Teachings of Islam_.[3]

I trust that my readers will find the mysticism of the book not a clog upon the wheels of the romance of Excavation in Egypt, but Virgil's "vital breeze."

NORMA LORIMER.

7, PITCULLEN TERRACE, PERTH, SCOTLAND.

[1] Published by Wm. Blackwood & Sons.

[2] Published by Heinemann.

[3] Published by Dulau.

THERE WAS A KING IN EGYPT

PART I

CHAPTER I

Dawn held the world in stillness. In the vast stretches of barren hills and soft sands there was nothing living or stirring but the figure of an Englishman, standing at the door of his tent.

At the hour of sunrise and sunset the East is its own. Every suggestion of Western influence and foreign invasion is wiped out. The going and the coming of the sun throws the land of the Pharaohs, the kingdom of Ra, the great Sun G.o.d, whose cradle was at Heliopolis, back to the days when Egypt was the world; to the days when the sun governed the religion of her people; to the days when civilization had barely touched the Mediterranean and the world knew not Rome; back again to the days when the Nile, the Mother of Life, bordered by bands of fertile, food-giving land, had not as yet sheltered the infant Moses in her reeds. Dawn in Egypt is the dawn of civilization.

Each dawn saw Michael Amory, wrapped in his thickest coat, standing outside his tent, watching and waiting for the glory of Egypt, for Ra, the Sun G.o.d, to appear above the horizon of the desert.

To stand alone, nerve-tense and oppressed by the soundless sands, and surrounded by the Theban Hills, in whose bosoms lie the eternal remains of the world's first kings, drew him so strongly that, tired as he might be with his previous day's work, he seldom slept later than the hour which links us with the day that is past and the morrow which holds the magic of the future.

For that half-hour only his higher self was conscious of existence, and it was infinitely nearer to G.o.d than he was aware of. The silence of the desert and its simplicity, which to the complex mind of Western man is so mysterious, banished all material thoughts and even the consciousness of his own body, and left him a naked soul, alone in the world, encompa.s.sed with Divinity, a world whose hills and rolling sands had known neither labour nor strife, nor the despotism of kings.

For the dead Pharaohs, lying in their tombs under the hills, in the grandest monuments ever wrought by the vanity of man, were forgotten.

His long days of labour in their depths might never have been. Man and his place in the universe were wiped out.

The cold was intense. Michael shivered and turned up the collar of his coat. A faint light had appeared on the horizon, a pale streak like a silver thread, which widened and widened until it spread into the higher heavens; with its spreading the indefinite forms of moving figures appeared--ghostly figures of dawn.

Michael knew that they would appear; he knew that, just as soon as the streak of light grew in width from a faint thread to a wider band, he would see them, dignified, stately figures, like white-robed priests, walking desertwards from the horizon to his tent.

Although he had seen the same figures every morning for some months, he was not tired of watching them. It always gave him pleasure to recall how vividly they had at first reminded him of the pictures, familiar to him as a boy, of the Wise Men following the star in the east. But these were not wise men coming to pay homage or bring presents to the Galilean Babe who came to be called the Prince of Peace; they were the Mohammedan workmen who were employed by the Exploration School to which Michael Amory had attached himself; their labour was confined to the rougher preliminary digging and the clearing away of the acc.u.mulation of sand and debris on sites which had been selected for excavation.

As the dawn slipped back and counted itself with the years that are spent and the first yellow gleam appeared in the sky, Michael saw the tall figures go down on their knees and press their foreheads to the sand. It was their third prayer of the day: devout Mohammedans begin their new day at sunset; their second prayer is at nightfall, when it is quite dark; their third is at daybreak.

Michael knew that the moment _el isfirar_, or the first yellow glow, appeared in the heavens, the white figures would turn to the east and perform their _subh_, or daybreak devotion. He knew that it would be finished before the golden globe appeared above the rim of the desert, for did not the Prophet counsel his people not to pray exactly at sunrise or sunset or at noon, because they might be confounded with the infidels who worshipped the sun? Yet it gave him a fresh thrill each morning to watch these desert worshippers prostrate themselves in undoubting faith before their omnipotent G.o.d. In the untrodden desert, with its mingling of sky and sand, their perfect trust and faith in Allah seemed a convincing and evident belief. At such times he forgot that these same men were the children of Superst.i.tion and that one and all of them were held in the bondage of _genii_. He also forgot that their performance of five prayers a day, which is the number prescribed for the devout, did not necessarily make them men of honour. A perfect trust in Allah gives a bad man a long rope.

As the figures drew nearer and the golden globe rested for one moment on the sands of the desert, for that one brief moment before its rays broke into the amazing splendour which is Egypt's, the world became less mysterious, more familiar. Things relating to the day's work forced themselves upon Michael's mind. His bath and breakfast and many other practical things began to usurp his thoughts, while the barking of dogs, the movement in the hut of the "boys," brought him back to the common, everyday life of the excavating camp.

While he was dressing he remembered that Freddy Lampton's sister was to arrive that day. For a moment or two his mind was completely usurped with a vision of what the girl would be like. Subconsciously his manhood quickened.

Yet the very idea of a woman intruding herself upon their strange and exquisitely-intellectual life--a life made healthy by the long hours of physical labour in the various portions of the excavation--slightly annoyed him.

Fleeting pictures of Lampton as a girl rose and faded before his eyes as he hurriedly shaved himself, slipped into his flannels and adjusted his necktie as punctiliously as though he were going to a tennis-party at Mena House Hotel. It is typical of Englishmen in the East that the young men in the excavating camps, and especially in the one to which Michael belonged, showed as much regard for their personal appearance and nicety of dress, even when their day's work was to be done in the bowels of the earth, down a shaft as deep as a mine, as they did in the golden days of their life at Oxford or Cambridge. Michael Amory was perhaps as a rule the least careful of the digging party, because he was by temperament a dreamer; and his friend, Freddy Lampton, knew that if he was not careful and on his guard he would become "a slacker."

Freddy, in spite of his acknowledged ability as a scholar and Egyptologist, was practical and conventional in his methods and mode of living. Michael Amory had fits of exactness and fits of what he considered conventionality; he had also his fits of slackness, days in which Freddy Lampton would let his blue eyes rest on his carelessly-tied necktie, or on his shoelaces, which were an offence to his eyes. Freddy's exquisite delicacy of touch and his eyes, which were trained to a fine pitch of exact.i.tude for minute detail, two characteristics essential for his work as an excavator, made it painful for him to be in the company of anyone who offended his sense of personal nicety.

But visions of Lampton's sister were to be dismissed. She would be good-looking, of course, because Freddy's sister could scarcely be anything else; his blue eyes, clear colouring and sunlit hair would be beautiful in a girl. But Michael Amory had no desire to encourage any thoughts which gave woman a place in his mind. The very visualizing of Lampton as a girl, comical as it had been, had forced before his eyes another face and another form which he had been striving to forget.

Whenever he was idle, and too often when he was busy over some piece of work which ought to have engrossed his entire thoughts, her haunting charm and beauty would suddenly become more real and vivid than the bright blues and greens and reds of the pigments on the white walls of the tomb upon which he was at work. With well-practised mind-control he had learned to pull down a blind on her vision, to blot it out from his thoughts. On this morning, when he was hurrying through his dressing so as to be in time for breakfast, always a matter of difficulty with him, even though he had many hours in which to put on his few clothes, he shrank from thinking about the arrival of the girl who was coming to live with her brother in this strange valley, which had been the underground cemetery for countless centuries of the tomb-builders of Egypt.

When he was almost dressed and the sun was high in the heavens and its power was beginning to warm the night-chilled valley, a stone was flung into his tent. "Come out, you lazy beggar! The coffee's getting cold."

It was Lampton's voice and Lampton's nicety of aim. He had not been up since dawn; his boy had only brought him his cup of early tea half an hour ago, yet he was bathed and shaved and as neatly dressed as the most fastidious woman could desire.

"Right-ho!" Michael shouted back. "Don't wait for me."

"I should jolly well think I won't! Who'd be such an a.s.s?" There was the best of human fellowship in Freddy's voice, but he knew his friend too well to risk the chance of spoiling his coffee by waiting for him.

After stretching out his arms and opening his lungs to the fresh dry air of the newborn day, Freddy turned into the dining-room. The mess-room and common sitting-room of the camp was in a wooden hut.

Lampton's bedroom was at the back of it, as was also the one which had been set apart for his sister; it by right belonged to the Overseer-General and Controller of the Excavations and Monuments of Upper Egypt. Margaret Lampton was to use it and her brother was to evacuate his room when the overseer announced that he was coming to pay one of his visits of inspection to the camp.

Michael Amory lived in a tent, as did one or two other Englishmen who in busy and prosperous years helped in the work of excavating. At the present moment they were slack, which meant that funds were low and there was no fine work to be done which necessitated the individual spade and pick work of European Egyptologists. A new site was being cleared, so that the work had consisted for some time of the first clearing away of sand and stones and the debris which had collected during the thousands of years that had pa.s.sed since the tomb which Freddy hoped to discover had been carved in the bowels of the earth, and the Pharaoh had been laid to rest in it. At such times there was little work for experts to do, so the camp shrank and left Lampton, who was the head of it, and one of England's finest Egyptologists, alone with his native workmen.

He had allowed his old Oxford chum, Michael Amory, to join him on condition that he put in so many hours' work every day in connection with the excavations. Michael's stipulated work, the work which he had undertaken to do, was the making of exact copies of the mural paintings and decorations, such as Lampton required, and to help in the evenings to clean and sort and arrange the small objects which the workmen found each day. In the debris they often found amulets and small earthenware vases and minute pieces of broken pottery, the very smallest of which suggested theories as regards the period and history of the monument.

The texture of the glaze used, or the nature of the pottery itself, the small remnant of decoration on them, or the trademark on the broken base of a vase, all were valuable links in the chain of history which is unfolding itself to the eager eyes of Egyptian exploration schools.

When Michael at last appeared, Freddy looked up from his bacon and eggs. "I say, Margaret comes to-night."

"Yes, I know."

Freddy raised his blue eyes and gave Michael one of his quick glances.

"Remembered, did you?"