The Amarnan Kings, Book 4: Scarab - Ay Read online

  * * *

  The Amarnan Kings, Book 4: Scarab - Ay

  By Max Overton

  Writers Exchange E-Publishing

  http://www.writers-exchange.com

  * * *

  The Amarnan Kings, Book 4: Scarab - Ay

  Copyright 2012, 2016 By 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 978-1-921636-87-5

  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.

  * * *

  Contents

  Who's Who and What's What in Scarab - Ay

  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

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Epilogue

  The Main Characters & Places in Scarab-Ay

  Gods of the Scarab Books

  About The Author

  Books By This Author

  Other Historical Books By This Publisher

  Back Cover

  Return to Contents

  * * *

  Who's Who and What's What in Scarab - Ay

  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 Egyptian 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 Thebes 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 the Scarab books, and every name that includes that of the same god is spelled Amen- or -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 Heru (or 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 Heru name dates from pre-dynastic times and was given to a king upon his coronation. All kings had a Heru 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 symbolises the reconciliation of Heru and Seth, rather than the victory of Heru 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 Heru name in many inscriptions. Since the eleventh dynasty, the prenomen has always contained the name of 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. I have tried to keep both nomen and prenomen to the fore in my books. Generally, in formal occasions, the prenomen is used, sometimes with the nomen; in casual talk or narrative, the more familiar nomen predominates.

  Another simplification has occurred with place names and titles. In the fourteenth century 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. Much later, Greeks called it Aigyptos from which we get Egypt. Other common terms for the country were The Two Lands or Ta Mehu and Ta Shemau (Lower and Upper Egypt), and the Land of Nine Bows (the nine traditional enemies).

  Similarly, the king of Kemet or Egypt 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 kept with the generic term 'King'.

  During the eighteenth dynasty, the kings ruled from a city known variously as Apet, No-Amun or Waset in the Fourth province, nome or sepat of Upper Egypt, which itself was also called Waset. 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 used the name Waset.

  I have endeavored to be accurate as far as possible, and have retained the original Egyptian names for people and places. 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 Kemet--Asar, Djehuti and Heru. The Greek names for some unfamiliar gods can be found in the section Gods of the Scarab books .

  Return to Contents

  * * *

  Prologue

  Syria 1960

  The rain was an unusual event for the eastern flank of the Syrian mountains, more so as it fell steadily rather than the intermittent showers more common to the region at this time of year. Already, the stream snaking along the bottom of the shallow valley was swollen, the boulders in its bed grumbling to themselves as they were buffeted by rising waters.

  Dr Danielle Hanser moved as quickly as she dared along the rain-slicked goat track that led up the side of the valley to the dark blot of the cave entrance set in the sandstone cliffs that towered above her. She held a hoodless plastic rain slicker above her, trying to keep the worst of the water from her hair and sweater. Her boots squelched in the mud and in the few minutes it had taken her to cross the stream from the camp site, her jeans had become sodden and uncomfortable.

  Behind her plodded a Syrian soldier, his rifle slung over one shoulder. His duty called for him to accompany Dani wherever she went. He did not enjoy keeping company with the foreign woman but Dr Ahmed Bashir, Under Minister of the Syrian Department of National History had ordered it and so it must be. His orders did not prevent him from voicing a few choice expletives concerning the woman and her dubious ancestry, but he was careful to keep his voice low. It would be just like the foreign woman to understand what he said and report him to the Under Minister.

  Dani heard the man swearing but put it from her mind. She had no idea what was upsetting him and cared less. Her attention was focused solely on the cave mouth and the chambers that lay within. The rain drove in from the west and as she approached the cliff face it started to offer some protection. The small flat area in front of the cave was relatively dry, a slight overhang protecting it from the occasional flurry or easing of the westerly wind. Dani stopped and shook out her rain slicker, looking left and right along the line of cliffs. She smiled as she remembered her reasons for coming here in the first place, reasons that had evaporated in the face of a much greater mystery.

  Last year she had led a British University team to the Orontes Valley in Syria, following what she believed was the Neanderthal migration route through the Middle East. The cave in a small side valley looked like a good bet for archaeological remains. Instead they had found what looked like the tomb of an eighteenth dynasty princess, Beketaten, sister of the heretic King Akhenaten and the boy-king Tutankhamen. An Egyptian tomb had no business being in Syria, but this was no ordinary tomb. There was, so far, no body, no grave goods, and none of the usual wall inscriptions. Instead, the walls were packed with tiny hieroglyphs giving a first-hand account of the Amarnan kings from the point of view of this little-known princess.

  None of the team was specialist Egyptologists but they had voted to keep quiet about their find and return this year to investigate further. They had found another chamber, the walls likewise covered in writing and they had spent several weeks following the on-going story. Then disaster had struck in the form of the Syrian authorities. A letter to one of the team members had been opened and the deception discovered. The Under Minister had threatened to shut down the dig and deport the team but had been persuaded to read the account for himself. Hints of a hidden king's treasure had piqued his interest and he had allowed the excavations to continue. Dani was sure his interest was purely mercenary and she could foresee problems arising in the future, but for now she was content to let things slide. The only disturbing factor was they had reached the end of the second chamber and there was no hint of the existence of a third.

  Under Minister Bashir brought in Bosing equipment--basically a modified pile driver--to create sound waves and a sophisticated series of pens and graphs to record the echoes. In theory, any hidden spaces in the walls would be revealed. Whether it would have worked or not was not known as the first few thumps of the hammer brought pieces of the wall plaster down in fragments. Bashir was willing to continue but Daffyd Rhys-Williams, the senior archaeologist after Dani, had put his foot down and forbidden further testing. Surprisingly, Bashir had backed down and sent for alternative equipment. Dani was coming up to the chamber to see the preliminary results.

  Dani turned and walked into the cave, followed by her escort. After about twenty paces she came to a large tent set to one side of the cave. The muffled roar of a small generator intruded on the senses and a string of lights and moving shadows on the walls of the tent told of activity within. She stepped through the tent flap and nodded at several Syrian technicians engaged in a variety of scientific pursuits at a large trestle table. They stopped and stared at Dani, watching her as she crossed the tent to the back wall. In the wall, a rough hole had been carved in what appeared to be sandstone but was in fact several courses of dressed stone topped by mud brick. Electrical cables snaked into the chamber that lay beyond and Dani could hear voices. She stepped over the stone lintel and into the first chamber.

  Only low wattage filament lamps sufficient to light the way but not to dispel the shadows that hung in the corners lighted the chamber. Dani did not need to see the artwork on the walls as the images were locked in her memory, but she stopped and stared anyway. A great golden Aten, the disc of the sun that Pharaoh Akhenaten had worshipped, hung above her, covering the plastered ceiling. It dominated the chamber and the beams of painted light that ran down the walls from it ended in little hands as if the Sun God was blessing the figures on the chamber wall. There were several of these, the most notable being a portrait of princess Beketaten. Drawn in a lifelike pose totally unlike the stiff two-dimensional portraits usual in Egyptian murals, the young woman in question looked ready to step down from the plaster. What made the image even more startling was its uncanny resemblance to Dani herself. The others in the team had commented on it but Dani had deflected discussion, merely saying she had an Egyptian grandmother and the likeness was purely coincidental. She knew there was more to it than that.

  The back wall of the first chamber revealed another mural. Nine strange figures representing the Ennead of Heliopolis, the Nine of Iunu stood in a semicircle facing the woman who knelt with her back to the chamber. These primal gods of ancient Egypt evidently were of great significance to princess Beketaten.

  Marring the picture was a gaping hole where the team had broken through into the next chamber. They had tried to do as little damage as possible and had photographed the wall before destroying a small part of it, but Dani still felt her heart wrench every time she saw the destruction of such beauty. She hesitated at the tunnel entrance, hearing muffled voices from the inner chamber. Bashir was one of the men waiting within and he had with him technicians to run the sonic spectroscope and interpret its findings. Dani dreaded what they would find.

  No, that's not quite right , she thought. Part of me wants to find out, but I'm afraid of what will happen when we reach the end of the story .

  The guard behind her said something incomprehensible but his gesture was self-explanatory. Dani nodded and ducked down, shuffling awkwardly into the short tunnel. The second chamber blazed with light, almost drowning out the packed hieroglyphs and murals in the dazzling glare. Dani shaded her eyes and looked across the chamber to the men standing around several piece
s of equipment. One of them looked up as she started toward them.

  "Ah, Dr Hanser. You're just in time. We're starting to get some results."

  Dani nodded politely. "Minister Bashir. I understood you started running the spectroscope some hours ago. Has it taken this long to find the next chamber?"

  "We haven't found it. It takes no little time to calibrate the machine. You must understand that this machine is still experimental and of course, I couldn't allow the Italian technicians into this site."

  "Who are these men then?" Dani gestured at the men hovering over the machinery.

  "These are Syrian army technicians seconded to the Ministry. They answer to me personally. You need have no fear our secret is compromised."

  "There has been no more destruction of the inscriptions?"

  "No. Please believe me, Dr Hanser, I regret the damage caused by the Bosing equipment."

  "So you say, boyo. If I hadn't stopped you, you'd be doing it still." The speaker was a short, darkhaired Welshman with a hand-rolled cigarette hanging from his lips.

  "You exaggerate, Dr Rhys-Williams," Bashir said. "It's entirely possible that the small section of the plaster that shattered was all that was going to fall anyway. It was unfortunate but the damage wasn't too severe. We have photographs of the section."