The Amarnan Kings, Book 1: Scarab - Akhenaten Read online

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  The Amarnan Kings, Book 1: Scarab-Akhenaten

  By Max Overton

  Writers Exchange E-Publishing

  http://www.writers-exchange.com

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  Publisher note :

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  The Amarnan Kings, Book 1: Scarab-Akhenaten

  Copyright 2010, 2016 Max Overton

  Writers Exchange E-Publishing

  PO Box 372

  ATHERTON QLD 4883

  AUSTRALIA

  Cover design by: Julie Napier

  Published by Writers Exchange E-Publishing

  http://www.writers-exchange.com

  ISBN 978-1-921636-24-0

  The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 (five) years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

  Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author's imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher.

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  Contents

  Other Books in the Series

  Dedication

  Who's Who and What's What in Scarab

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Epilogue

  The Main Characters in Scarab-Akhenaten

  Gods of the Scarab Books

  About The Author

  Books By This Author

  Other Historical Books By This Publisher

  Back Cover

  Return to Contents

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  Other Books in The Amarnan Kings Series

  Book 1: Scarab - Akhenaten

  Book 2: Scarab - Smenkhkare

  Book 3: Scarab - Tutankhamen

  Book 4: Scarab - Ay

  Book 5: Scarab - Horemheb

  Book 6: Descendents

  Return to Contents

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  Dedication

  Dedicated to the woman I love, Julie Napier, my wife,

  whose love of Ancient Egypt persuaded me to take a half-conceived story sitting around in the back of my mind and write it down.

  Return to Contents

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  Who's Who and What's What in Scarab

  In any novel about ancient cultures and races, some of the hardest things to get used to are the names of people and places. Often these names are unfamiliar in spelling and pronunciation. It does not help that for reasons dealt with below, the spelling, and hence the pronunciation is sometimes arbitrary. To help readers keep track of the characters in this book I have included some notes on names in the ancient Kemetu language. I hope they will be useful.

  In Ancient Egypt a person's name was much more than just an identifying label. A name meant something, it was descriptive, and a part of a person's being. For instance, Amenhotep means 'Amen is at peace', and Nefertiti means 'the beautiful one has come'. Knowledge of the true name of something gave one power over it, and in primitive societies a person's real name is not revealed to any save the chief or immediate family. A myth tells of the creator god Atum speaking the name of a thing and it would spring fully formed into existence. Another myth says the god Re had a secret name and went to extraordinary lengths to keep it secret.

  The Egyptian language, like written Arabic and Hebrew, was without vowels. This produces some confusion when ancient Egyptian words are transliterated. The god of Waset in Egyptian reads mn , but in English this can be represented as Amen, Amon, Ammon or Amun. The form one chooses for proper names is largely arbitrary, but I have tried to keep to accepted forms where possible. King Akhenaten's birth name was Amenhotep, though this name can have various spellings depending on the author's choice. It is also sometimes seen as Amenhotpe, Amenophis, Amunhotep and Amonhotep. I have used the first of these spellings (Amenhotep) in Scarab , and every name that includes that of the same god is spelled Amen-. The god himself I have chosen to call Amun, largely because the word Amen can have an alternate meaning in Western religious thought. The god of the sun's disk I have called Aten, though Aton is an alternative spelling. The City of Aten I have called Akhet-Aten (the Horizon of the Aten), rather than Akhetaten as it is normally written, to distinguish it easily for readers from the similar name of its king, Akhenaten.

  The names of the kings themselves have been simplified. Egyptian pharaohs had five names, known as the Horus name, the Nebti name, the Golden Falcon name, the Prenomen and the Nomen. Only the nomen was given at birth, the other names being coronation names. The Horus name dates from pre-dynastic times and was given to a king upon his coronation. All kings had a Horus name, but by the eighteenth dynasty it was seldom used. The Nebti name dates from the time of the unification of Egypt and shows the special relationship the king had to the vulture-goddess Nekhbet of Upper Egypt and the cobra-goddess Wadjet of Lower Egypt. The Golden Falcon name conveys the idea of eternity, as gold neither rusts nor tarnishes, and dates from the Old Kingdom. It perhaps symbolizes the reconciliation of Horus and Seth, rather than the victory of Horus over Seth as the titles are usually non-aggressive in nature.

  By the time of the eighteenth dynasty, the prenomen had become the most important coronation name, replacing the Horus name in many inscriptions. Since the eleventh dynasty, the prenomen has always contained the name of Ra or Re.

  The nomen was the birth name, and this is the name by which the kings in this book are commonly known. The birth names most common in the eighteenth dynasty were Tuthmosis and Amenhotep. Successive kings with the same birth name did not use the method we use to distinguish between them--namely numbers (Amenhotep III and Amenhotep IV). In fact, the birth name ceased to be used once they became king and the coronation prenomen distinguished them. Amenhotep (III) became Nebmaetre, and Amenhotep (IV) became Waenre. In this book I have used prenomen and nomen, depending on the circumstance.

  Another simplification has occurred with place names and titles. In the fourteenth c
entury B.C., Egypt as a name for the country did not exist. The land around the Nile Valley and Delta was called Kemet or The Black Land by its inhabitants, and the desert Deshret or The Red Land. Much later, Greeks called it Aigyptos from which we get Egypt. Other common terms for the country were The Two Lands (Upper and Lower Egypt), and the Land of Nine Bows (the nine traditional enemies). I have opted for Kemet though I have used the other titles. Likewise Lower Egypt (to the north) was known as Ta Mehu, and Upper Egypt (to the south) was known as Ta Shemau.

  Similarly, the king of Egypt or Kemet was later known as 'pharaoh', but this term derives from the phrase Per-Aa which originally meant the Great House or royal palace. Over the years the meaning changed to encompass the idea of the central government, and later the person of the king himself. The Greeks changed Per-Aa to Pharaoh. I have decided to remain with 'king' though I do use 'Per-Aa' from time to time, when referring to royalty larger than the person of the king.

  During the eighteenth dynasty, the kings ruled from a city known variously as Apet, No-Amun or Waset in the Fourth province or sepat of Ta Shemau, which itself was also called Waset; or just 'nwt' which meant 'city'. This capital city the Greeks called Thebes. The worship of Amun was centered here and the city was sometimes referred to as the City of Amun. I have called this great city Waset.

  The gods of Egypt are largely known to modern readers by their Greek names; for instance, Osiris, Thoth and Horus. I have decided to keep the names as they were originally known to the inhabitants of Egypt--Asar, Djehuti and Heru. The Greek names for unfamiliar gods can be found in the section Gods of the Scarab books , at the end.

  Names and terms used in this and succeeding books will be unfamiliar to many readers. I have therefore included a section - The Main Characters in Scarab-Akhenaten --in which possible pronunciations and definitions can be found. This is to be found at the end of the book.

  Return to Contents

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  Prologue

  Syria, 1959

  Dr Dani Hanser stared out morosely at the sodden slopes steeply descending to the tiny rivulet, now in danger of becoming a full-fledged stream. Rain fell in misty swathes, obscuring the craggy rocks on the far side of the valley. She looked up from her position at the entrance of a large cave etched in sandstone cliffs, wiping the rain from her eyes and hair. Scowling, she turned back to her contemplation of the weather and the workers' campsite huddled at the base of the cliffs.

  Soft footsteps in the dirt and gravel of the cave floor brought Dani out of her reverie. Turning, she caught sight of a lanky young man in tattered jeans and tee shirt picking his way through the rubble toward her, his face almost obscured by luxuriant growths of chestnut hair.

  The man grinned, white teeth flashing in his full beard. "Not joining us, Dani? I thought you'd be eager to get what you can from our last day's dig." A cultured British accent belied his scruffy appearance.

  Dani jerked her head toward the rain and the deserted-looking campsite. Despite her despondency, the man's youthful enthusiasm made her smile. "I'm just fed up, Marc, rainy day blues, I guess. And those lazy bastards down there."

  Marc flicked his eyes toward the campsite and snorted. "What do you expect? The Syrian government is paying them whether they work or not. Besides, they don't have our lust for knowledge, the desire to wrest information from a few scattered bones and stone tools."

  "That's just it, Marc. A few bones and tools is all we have to show for the last four months. I really thought we were going to find something important here. The signs are right; I know the Neanderthal migration route passed through this area. I thought this cave was a sure bet for our excavations." Dani kicked idly at the rubble on the cave floor, her head turning toward the muffled sounds of conversation from deeper inside the cave.

  Marc shrugged. "Perhaps the cave wasn't so enticing thirty thousand years ago. Al says there are signs the walls were worked in relatively recent times."

  Dani sighed and thrust her hands into the pockets of her parka. "I know. This whole cliff face has been quarried sporadically over the last four thousand years, yet there are Neanderthal remains here. We have evidence that it was used as a shelter."

  "Just not the evidence the migration was coordinated rather than random." Marc smiled again and gestured toward the interior of the cave. "Never mind, Dani. This year may be a washout--literally, but there's always next season. Now come and join us, we have need of the guiding hand of our esteemed leader."

  Dani grinned. "Will you be back next year, Marc? You'll have your doctorate by then. Maybe you'd rather be doing your own research rather than following a middle-aged frump into the Syrian Desert."

  The young man turned his eyes up to the rock ceiling. "'Frump,' she says. And middle-aged yet." He looked back down at Dani and his face became serious. "Don't you know your loyal team would follow you anywhere, Dr Hanser?" He pursed his lips, considering. "Well, almost all. I can think of one exception."

  Dani's grin slipped and she blushed slightly, covering it by turning away toward the cave. "Well, we'll see," she muttered.

  Marc ambled along behind her. "Be careful by the wall over there. This rain brought down some earth and stone. I think water must be eating away at a fault in the rock." He reached out and gripped Dani's elbow when she slipped in the mud.

  "I'm okay," Dani replied, stepping carefully along the muddy trail. She eyed the pile of rubble spreading out from a crevice in the cave wall. "I see what you mean. Well, it won't worry us this year, but we'll have ..." She broke off and peered into the gloom. "What's that?" She shook off Marc's hand and gingerly picked her way through the mud toward the rock wall. She picked something up and slogged back to the trail before examining her find.

  "What is it? Another tool?"

  Dani wiped the mud from the small rounded object in her hand and held it up to the light. "I don't believe it," she whispered. "What the hell is something like this doing here?"

  "What?" Marc leaned over and took the object from Dani's hand. He turned it over and stared at the little carving wide-eyed. "It's gold," he breathed. "A bloody gold beetle."

  "Not a beetle, Marc, a scarab, an Egyptian scarab." Dani shook her head and took the scarab back, peering at it in the dim light filtering back from the cave entrance. "It looks genuine enough. The workmanship is what I'd expect from, say, late Middle Kingdom or early New Kingdom, but ..." She turned the scarab over and picked at the mud caked between the molded golden legs of the insect. "Holy mother!" she murmured.

  "Egyptian, eh? Well, I suppose those gyppos got around. I seem to remember some of the pharaohs like Tuthmosis and Ramses got up this far."

  "Not with something like this." Dani held up the scarab, displaying the underside. "See what's inscribed on it?"

  Marc peered closely in the dim light. "A spiky ball?" he said doubtfully.

  "The sun disc, the Aten," Dani replied, wonder in her voice. "This is the symbol of the Heretic King. The pharaohs after him tried to destroy all traces of him. What's his scarab doing in Syria?"

  "Heretic king? Sounds interesting. Who was he?"

  "Akhenaten, pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty and possible father of Pharaoh Tutankhamen." Dani shook her head. "Scary times if you believed in the gods of Kemet. He tried to abolish all the old gods and set up a new religion worshiping the disk of the sun."

  "Never heard of him." Marc grinned. "I've heard of old king Tut, though. Curse of the pharaohs and all that." He looked over his shoulder at the dark recesses of the cave. "What horror from beyond the grave will come to haunt us?" He broke into a peal of laughter and pointed a finger at Dani. "Beware, Dr Hanser, the mummy always comes for the pretty girl."

  "Idiot!" Dani grinned despite herself. She gripped the scarab tightly in her right hand and pivoted slowly, searching the bare rock walls around her. "Get the others, Marc."

  "Eh?" Marc sobered and he peered at Dani, his eyebrows coming together in perplexity. "What for? There's nothing here. We went over this s
ection when we first arrived."

  "Please, just get them." Dani waited until the squelching footsteps receded into the depths of the cave before relaxing her tense shoulders. She lowered her head and unclenched her hand, staring at the golden scarab. "It is true, then," she muttered. She paused, smiling self-consciously. "Nut, show me that which is hidden."

  Several minutes passed in silence as Dani stared, eyes unfocused, at the rough stone walls of the wide cave. She blinked, and then shook her head when the sound of voices intruded on her. Turning, she watched her small group of graduate students negotiate the muddy track that led from deep in the cave system and the anthropological dig. Flashlights bobbed and danced, sending little disks of light skittering over the ground before fading into the gray light seeping from the cave entrance.

  A small dark man with long, wavy, black hair sweeping down over his eyes led the group. He stared up at the tall woman standing by the rock wall, a sour expression distorting his features.