Dmitri Merezhkovsky

“ Or, the real Merira was taking her into the holy of holies of Aton's temple, as he really had done, three days before Issachar's attack on the king; she did not want to go in, knowing that no one but the king and the high priest were supposed to do so, but Merira reassured her, saying, "Yes, with me you may!" And, taking her by the hand, he led her in. In the dim light of sanctuary lamps the bas-relief of the Sphinx seemed a pale phantom: a lion's body and legs, human arms and head and an inexpressibly strange, fine, birdlike face—old, ancient, eternal. ”

“ Merira raised his eyes to him and smiled so strangely that Dio thought 'madman!' But he looked down again at once and his face turned to stone, grew heavy with a stony heaviness.
"Why do you ask me?" he answered calmly. "You know it all better than I, Uaenra: does not the Son know the Father? God is the measure of all things. I say it not to you but to others: seek for measure in everything—in peace as in the sword."
"Quite so! Quite so!" Ramose cried. "I am no friend of yours, Merira, but for this saying I am ready to bow down at your feet—it couldn't be said better!" ”

“ People thronged in the seven courts of the temple down below, on the pylons, the staircases, the roofs of both temples; it was like a living mountain of people and the highest point of it was one man—the king.
"I come to glorify Thy rays, living Aton, one eternal God!" he said stretching out his arms to the Sun.
"Praise be to Thee, living Aton, who hast made the heavens and the mysteries thereof," answered the high priest Merira, who stood at the base of the pyramid. "Thou art in heaven and Thy beloved son Akhnaton is on earth!" ”

“ Mahu glanced at Merira. He sat with his head bent and his eyes half closed, his face as unmoved as that of a man asleep or dead.
"Why don't you speak, sire?" Panehesy cried, turning to the king.
"I don't speak because there is nothing to say: he is right," the king answered.
"Well said, Abby darling!" Princess Meritatona exclaimed, clapping her hands with delight.
Everyone looked at her with surprise.
"What does this mean, sire?" Panehesy faltered.
"It means, my friend, that if there is no God man is worse off than a beast, because a beast does not know its end and a man does." ”

“ The black, parched, withered earth, deathlike and terrible was aching under the terrible sun; the waters of the Nile barely covered its slimy bed. Men, animals, and plants were perishing with the heat. Had the heat lasted, everything, it seemed, would have been burnt up as with the fire of a conflagration or of the Sheheb.
But at the exact day, at the exact hour, God's miracle took place: Mother Isis wept over her dead son—the dried-up Nile; her tear—the star Sirius, the forerunner of the sun—fell into it and the ram-headed Khnum unsealed the springs of water. ”

“ The Milky Way like a cloud rent in two stretched from one end of the desert to the other; the Pleiades glowed and the seven stars of Tuart, the Hippopotamus, glittered with a cold brilliance.
The king uncovered his face and looked at Dio. His face was as still as the sleeping desert and the starry heavens above. But Dio shuddered: she recalled the Sphinx with the face of Akhnaton; if a man had been tortured for a thousand years in hell and then came to earth again, he would have such a face. ”

“ Memphis was four hundred aters from the City of the Sun, down the river.
The further the king went the happier he was, as though he had, indeed, escaped from prison. It made him happy that the yellow streak of the dead sands and the black of fertile earth stretched on either side of the river simply, quietly and monotonously: life and death side by side in eternal union, eternal peace; that the slow oxen were drawing deep furrows in rich earth and the bright green crops already showed here and there, and the monotonous singing of the ploughman echoed far in the stillness of the fields. ”

“ Do you remember how you spoke about me with the king in the desert? I know everything—I know that you betray me."
He gave her a long, intent look.
"No, Merira," she said quietly. "It is not I who betray you—you do it yourself. You deceive yourself: you want to hate him and you cannot—you love him...."
"I don't know. Perhaps I do love him. But love, too, is sometimes cruel—more cruel than hate. It is said 'love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire; many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.' Do you know this?" ”

“ Mahu replied. "Tuta's rabble may be here any minute. I can't answer for your life."
"No, my friend, I cannot. If I run away, what will happen here, in the holy province of Aton? Endless war because of me! I have begun with peace and I shall end with war? I say one thing and do another? No, I have had enough of this shame. And from whom should I run away? From Tuta? But what can he do to me? Take away my kingdom? Why, this is just what I wish. From the rebels? And what will they do to me? Kill me? Let them—death is better than shame. ”

“ The needle of the obelisk showed black against the moonlit sky: the hieroglyphics on the mirror-like polished surface of its granite glorified King Akhnaton, the Joy of the Sun, and someone was sitting hunched up against the base of it—-dead or alive Dio could not make out. She came nearer and, bending down, saw a dead woman, thin as a skeleton, stiffly pressing a dead baby to her wrinkled, black, charred-looking breasts, as she gazed at it with glassy eyes; her white teeth were bared as though she were laughing. It was the beggar woman from the province of the Black Heifer. ”

“ Dio gazed at this face, trying in vain to recall something. All of a sudden she remembered.
In the Charuk Palace near Thebes, where Akhnaton was born and spent his childhood, she had seen his sculptured head: a boy looking like a girl; an oval, egg-shaped face, childishly, girlishly charming, quiet and gentle as that of the god whose name is Quiet-Heart.
A man dreams sometimes a dream of paradise, as though his soul returned to its heavenly home; and long after waking he refuses to believe that it had only been a dream and is full of sadness and yearning. Such was the sadness in that face. ”

“ Her dumb guide took her past the couch into the depths of the chamber, where a vaulted niche, lined with leaf-copper, glowed, like sunset, in the light of innumerable lamps. There, in the smoke of fragrant incense, a huge black lop-eared Lybian ram—probably transferred from the upper temple—lay asleep on a couch of purple. This was the sacred animal, "the bleating prophet," the living heart of the temple.
A girl of thirteen—not an Egyptian to judge by her fair hair and skin—lay beside it, with her head on the animal's back and her eyes half-closed, like a bride on the bed of love. ”

“ The sun of southern winter—of winter's summer—bright but not dazzling, warm but not scorching, was like the smile of a child asleep. Half closing her eyes, she looked straight at it and the light broke into a diamond rainbow like a tear on the eyelashes.
"Ra the Sun, the Sun Ra—no better name than Ra could be invented for the sun: Ra cleaves the darkness with a sword," thought Dio.
The winter swallows cleaved the radiant darkness of the blue with the sword of their whirring flight: they sang to the sun, crying and shrilling with joy: 'Ra'! ”

“ Slowly raising his arms to the sky, as though offering an invisible sacrifice, the king proclaimed:
"All there is between the eastern hills and the western hills—fields, waters, villages, plants, animals, men—all is brought as sacrifice to thee, Aton, the living Sun, so that thy kingdom may be on earth as it is in heaven, O Father!"
The black harvest of human heads bent down like the harvest corn in the wind. Trumpets, flutes, citherns, harps, lyres, timbrels, cymbals, kinnors combined with the thousands of voices into one deafening chorus. ”

“ With a low moan she opened her eyes and looked at him with a blissful smile, repeating:
"It's you! It's you!"
Suddenly she trembled all over and struggled like a fish on a hook. Her head was thrown back and he felt her body growing heavy. He laid her on the floor and, bending down, kissed her on the lips, receiving her last breath in that kiss.
That same evening the queen's body lay on the bed in her chamber and all except the king and Dio were weeping over her.
"I am thy sister who loved thee on earth,
No one has loved thee more than I."
Dio recalled the wail of Isis. ”

“ Walking a few steps they came to a sandy open space—the big pond. Beside it, Maki's birch tree, buried in the sand, showed a bit of the broken white stem.
As he passed it, Merira for some reason recalled Dio, and he suddenly wanted to kiss the white slender stem, rosy in the light of the setting sun. But he felt shy of Horus: the young man might again imagine something. He merely slowed his pace and touched the stem as though it were a living hand stretched out to him from the earth, and for the first time after many days he smiled a real and not a jeering smile. ”

“ A tiny cup of poison was concealed under the fiery yellow carbuncle—'Amon's eye.' On his deathbed the king commanded that if any king of Egypt were false to Amon he was to be killed with that poison.
"My spirit be upon you, my son, and the Spirit of the Secret One!" Ptamose said, laying his hands on Merira's head. "Henceforth, you, Merira, son of Nehtaneb, are the High Priest of Amon. Woe to thy enemies, O Lord! Their dwelling-place is in darkness but the rest of the earth in thy light: the sun of them that hate thee is darkened, the sun of them that love thee is rising!" ”

“ You know yourself, hired assassins, sent by Tuta, are all over the city. You remember Iserker's knife and Merira's poison? Of course I must protect you! You are laughing again?"
"Forgive me, my friend. You are no good at lies: Ramose lying is like a hippopotamus catching a flea! It isn't from assassins but from myself you are trying to protect me. Be frank, tell me what do you want of me?"
"I have told you many times, Uaenra: you are king—so be a king...."
"I am no longer king: I have resigned the throne."
"A king cannot resign when he has no heir. And Saakera is dead...." ”

“ I thought I could make people happy, bring heaven down to earth—and this is the happiness I have bestowed upon them: blood is being shed everywhere between the Delta and the Waterfalls, it is hell upon earth. I wanted to efface the boundaries of the fields, to make the poor equal with the rich, and what has happened is that the whole of Egypt is like a dirty Jews' village where people live and die like cattle in perfect equality! ”

“ The visible face of the Sun is Aton, its hidden face is Amon, but there is only one Sun, only one God. No, the dispute is not between Aton and Amon, but between Set and Osiris. Set has killed and dismembered Osiris and he wants to kill and dismember the holy land of Osiris, Egypt. This is why he has entered the king.... You are not listening, Dio."
"Yes, I am. But you keep telling me by whom the king is possessed and I want to know what he himself is. Simply wicked?"
"No, not wicked. It is just like the devil's cunning to possess a saint and not a man of evil. ”

“ Tuta said one day to Merira, the high priest of Amon, and his chief helper in the war upon Aton.
"What rumours, sire?"
"That the Criminal is alive."
"I have known it all along," Merira answered, with a smile so strange that Tuta was surprised, almost alarmed.
"Known what?"
"That he is alive. He may die any number of times, but the Fool will always live for the fools! Foolishness is the sun of the world, and he, Uaenra, is the son of the Sun." ”

“ I, too, know the day when I shall not be. It is drawing near—it has come already. Now my kingdom is coming to an end, now fulfil the last will of your king, Merira, son of Nehtaneb, and proclaim to men my decree concerning the false gods and the one true God, whose is the glory for ever and ever!"
"Your will shall be done, sire, but remember: once the fire is kindled, there is no putting it out."
"Why, did you think we should just play with the fire and then let it out?" the king said, with a smile. He put both his hands on Merira's shoulders and again looked deep into his eyes. ”

“ Sheheb, the south-east wind, blows from the Arabian desert. Fiery clouds of sand, thrown up by the whirlwind, fall slanting upon the ground with the noise of hail. The sun turns crimson, then dark like an ember. At midday lamps have to be lit. Neither men nor animals can breathe in the black stuffy darkness; plants perish. The whirlwind never lasts more than an hour; if it lasted longer everything would be burned up as with fire.
In the fiery darkness of the Sheheb Dio lay on her couch like one dead. ”

“ Tuta thrust himself forward again—like the poodle Dang licking the king in the face. "You are the second Osiris, conquering the world by peace and not by sword. If you say to the water 'let there be peace'—there shall be peace."
"Listen, Ramose," the king began, "I am not such a scoundrel as Ribaddi thought, and I am not such a fool as Tuta takes me to be...." ”

“ After much wrangling the crowd divided into two: the bigger part went to the other side of the river with Kiki and the smaller set out towards Amon's temple.
Pentaur led them. Expecting another ambush they put out the torches. Men walked in silence, with stern faces; they knew that perhaps they were going to their death. "We shall all die for Him!" Yubra thought, with quiet joy.
When they reached the temple they saw there were no guards there. Two granite colossi and two obelisks, as though keeping watch, threw black, menacing shadows on to the square of white stone bathed in moonlight. ”

“ And it is all done by the decree of the king Who-lives-in-Truth—Ankh-em-Maat—a fine name! Iserker wanted to stab me, Merira to poison me, but isn't it doing me too much honour? To spit into the liar's face would be punishment enough.... Do you ever have shameful dreams, Dio, so ridiculous that one could die of laughter?"
"Yes, I know."
"Ah, so you have them, too.... Well, I have had such a dream—I nearly died of laughter. To laugh at oneself is death. 'I am He,' is what I laugh at, what is killing me. Laughter will kill me one day like epilepsy.... ”

“ But as soon as they took it out into the light of day it screamed and struggled as in a fit; they had to take it back into the dark. It was born an enemy of Aton the Sun.
"Is it night outside?" Maki asked in one of her lucid intervals.
"No, it is day," the king answered.
"The day of life is short, the night of death is long," she said, with a quiet smile, looking into his eyes, as it were into his very heart. "Shiha says 'darkness was before light; sunshine is a veil over darkness.' Shall the dead see the sun? What do you think, Enra?" ”

“ It was only now that the king grasped the meaning of the inscription in Merira's tomb: 'may Aton and Unnofer revive the flesh on my bones.' Unnofer was the Good Spirit, Osiris, the King Akhnaton himself. There was a challenge and a temptation in it: "if you are He, conquer death!"
"I am not He! I am not! I am not!" he wanted to cry out in terror.
The mild fanatic, "the holy fool," Panehesy, looked straight into his eyes, as though asking: "Will you renounce the work of your whole life, will you lie, You-Who-live-in-truth, Ankh-em-maat?" ”

“ Dio remembered. It seemed to her that here the dead were as warm lying in their tombs in the bosom of the earth as a child in its mother's womb.
The endless mural paintings represented the journey of the Sun-god down the subterranean Nile: the sail of the boat hung limply in the breathless stillness and the dead oarsmen were dragging it over dry land through the twelve caves—the twelve hours of the night, from the eternal night to the eternal morn. ”

“ He lies that the world kills Him; He kills the world. He calls Himself the Son of God in order to kill the true Son—the world. I know it is hard to go against Him, but I don't care, I don't seek for what is easy: I am the first but not the last to rise against Him. There will be men like me when He comes: they will kill Him and destroy His work; they will perish but will not save the world; this is how it will be, Enra!"
He paused again and smiled suddenly, as he did in the Maru-Aton garden that afternoon when looking at Maki's birch tree he recalled Dio. ”