arms of the chair with force enough to crush the wood. The cry came again, and the child was born into my mother Tey's hands in a slippery flash followed by a fountain of blood.
I heard my sister Merope retch, but I was not sick. I was fascinated. As Tey cleared its mouth, the baby began to gasp and then to cry. Tey held it carefully close.
'Rejoice, Great Queen,' she said to the woman, as the attendants swathed her loins in red cloth, bound tight to stop the bleeding. 'You have given your Lord another son.'
'Smenkhare,' whispered Tiye. Then she collapsed, and we were thrown out.
Ptah-hotep
I occupied the remainder of the day by instructing my new scribes, ordering more wine for Mentu's visits, and inspecting the chest full of beautiful cloths. As a Great Royal Scribe, I could wear what I chose and I did not like much decoration. It smacked of ostentation. I was therefore considering the difference between creamy linen with a thin gold border and a starkly white one when Meryt announced, 'Someone's coming - someone with a lot of attendants - sit in your chair, Master, take your writing board, tell your scribes to instruct you in something; it's the King Akhnamen may he live!'
I did as she bade me, throwing myself into my chair and grabbing a plaster board. Hanufer stood beside me and read the complaint from the temple of Osiris that the Nomarch of Heliopolis was reducing his offerings - just as Mentu had said. It was a long wait, and I had time to give him orders to send an investigator to the Nomarch and suggest that he hand over the ingot-shavings to the temple or suffer an afterlife spent inside the Great Snake, Apep. What sort of idiot risks his Eternity for a minor quarrel?
Khety, on my other side, had time to begin a summary of the preparations for the feast of Hathor-at-Dendera - she goes to Horus-of-Edfu at the end of Ephipi and there are always problems with public order - when the King finally arrived, flanked by two soldiers.
He stood in the doorway as we registered his presence and threw ourselves to the floor. I crawled forward to kiss his sandal and he signalled to me to rise by brushing his fly-whisk across my shoulder.
'You have only a small staff,' he commented, flicking the whisk at Khety and Hanufer. Meryt stayed where she was until one of the soldiers, shoving her with his foot, said, 'Fetch wine' and she rose and slid away.
'Lord of the Two Lands, more are expected, but not many more.'
'And you have appointed Mentu as your second. Do you believe that he will be of assistance?'
'Lord, I believe that he may be of great assistance.'
I did not specify as to how he might assist me, and it was always difficult to discern how much the Lord Akhnamen understood. I had dared to raise my eyes to his face. He was smooth and well tended, this younger son of the King. His eyes were strange, unfocussed, a dreamer's eyes, a visionary's. I never knew how to read them. Was he pleased with his selection from the School of Scribes? Was he about to order me back to obscurity? Hope rose in my breast. I could go then and find the Captain Horemheb and rejoin my own dear friend Kheperren.
'What have you found out? You gave your scribe an order. What was it?' he asked Hanufer directly.
Hanufer was not over-awed. He stood up straight, smoothed down his cloth, took his ostracon and repeated my order, word for word including the comment about the afterlife, as emotionlessly as though he was reading a laundry list. I held my breath. The King laughed and sat down in my chair.
'I think I may have chosen well,' he commented, accepting a cup of wine from Meryt's hand, after the soldier had tasted it and nodded to her to continue. 'You have everything you need? No one has offered you affront?'
I shook my head.
'And you have a guardian,' he commented, glancing at Anubis who was sitting as still as a stone hound by the door.
'Yes, Lord, I have.'
'That should preserve you from any annoyance,' he murmured ambiguously. 'I understand that you have been summoned to dine with the Chief Priest at Karnak tonight.'
'I have, Lord. Is it your will that I should attend?'
'Mmm...' he was thinking. 'Who is your god, boy?'
'Amen-Re,' I replied, surprised. Everyone's god was Amen-Re, the Sun.
'You come from the Nome of the Black Bull, do you not? Have you a special devotion to Apis or Osiris?'
'No more than usual, Lord of the Two Thrones.'
'Be careful,' he advised me. 'Yes, you must attend, of course; even I must attend on him if the High Priest summons me. But he will suspect you, Ptah-hotep, because you are young and because I selected you instead of an old man with whom that same High Priest had an understanding.
'My father the Divine Amenhotep says that the priests of Amen-Re are becoming too bold, too powerful and too rich. I am minded to mend this situation, but not yet. I am thinking of a new city.'
'A new city, Lord?' I was following his train of thought as well as I could, but logic was not helping. I decided to just follow this fascinating breeze wherever it went.
'I will speak of it again. I have been given permission by my father to move from Thebes to a new place, clean, unstained by other worship. On the left bank of the river, at Amarna,' he said, waiting for my shocked reaction.
The left bank was reserved for Houses of Eternity, the cities of the dead, but I made no comment. If Pharaoh wanted to build a city in a tomb, who was I to argue? I nodded. The King rose.
'Attend on me early in the morning tomorrow,' he ordered. We all flung ourselves to the floor again, and he was gone.
Anubis, by the door, gave a faint growl and a long considering sniff. The King had, indeed, smelt powerfully of spikenard, and perhaps that offended my hound's sensitive nose.
We had barely recovered from the royal visit when another Divine Personage deigned to enter and we were back on the floor again. Fortunately Meryt had ordered it swept and sprinkled or I might have betrayed my dignity with a sneeze.
'Rise, rise,' said a slightly impatient female voice, and I came up nose-to-hem with the Chantress of the Temple of Neith, the Princess Sitamen, only daughter of Amenhotep and also his wife.
'You are Ptah-hotep,' she observed, motioning to Meryt to bring her a chair. 'Go on with your work, honoured scribes, I do not wish to interrupt you more than I must.'
Hanufer and Khety collected their wits, closed their mouths, which had gaped, and withdrew to the inner room. I was alone with one of the most powerful women in the Kingdom, and one of the most beautiful.
The Princess Sitamen was slim and strong, with wide shoulders and long legs. It was said that she did not wish to wed at all, and had accepted a marriage with her father with relief, as she could not thereafter be pressured to accept another mate. She loved to run, ride, dance and swim, lived with her maidens in seclusion, and was seldom seen at palace functions or feasts. Her charities were legendary. She had endowed a school of priestesses for the temple of the Divine Huntress Neith, sister of Isis, out of her own fortune, telling her ladies, 'Melt down a few thousand bracelets, I do not wish to wear anything more decorative than my skin'. Or so it was said. She certainly wore nothing more than
