The Forgotten: Aten's Last Queen (3 page)

My thoughts departed from my heart for a moment, and I stepped down the landing quay closer to the water and gazed into its depths. How I had always loved immersing my feet in water and letting it’s cool touch surround me. I had looked forward to taking my daughter down here and showing her the gentle touch of Khnum. My husband and I had loved the clear pools at Akhenaten, but the fresh water of the Nile was so much cooler to the toes. On this morning as I took a step down into the waters, the silky, foaming touch helped to calm the burning desire to restore my family’s name, just as it had once eased my husband’s pain.

I took a deep breath and quieted the frantic chattering of my heart.

This marriage was a huge risk, but the country also could gain much from it. And perhaps this marriage I proposed would bring value to my life again. I was not something to be bartered for the golden throne. I was a person who had seen three Pharaohs rule. I had been forced to marry two of them, only one of whom brought me joy, and now
I
would make a choice for my life. My choice…

This will be my last gift to my late husband, Pharaoh Tutankhamun. Even if I could not give him a child, I would still give him life. I would keep his name on the lips of history.

I have to make it right.

My thoughts continued to bubble out from my heart just like the ripples in the Nile stirred up by that one small fish -- one small idea growing and quickly expanding. Or perhaps it was one moment quickly expanding away from the present, only to be remembered by the reliefs left on crumbling tomb walls, shut away from the light of Aten’s love and His life surrounding it.

I closed my eyes and tried to release the dark thoughts from my heart. One more breath…

I opened my eyes and gazed out into the waters. Along the surface, Aten’s reflection danced. I thought about a time long ago. Nineteen years, was it? As my reflection rolled around and swam in the waves below me, my memory fell back to a time that in my heart, compared to this day, felt like the reed fields of Aaru. As I looked down at my face, the light of my God embraced me. My eyes blurred and I saw faces from the past. I could not tell if it was a memory or just the tears playing tricks on my eyes.

Part One:

The Sandbank of Apophis

Chapter One

Both Shadow and Light

1341 B.C.

The screams could be heard all across Akhenaten’s city that night. Henuttaneb was in labor, and it was not going well. Blood seeped into the tiles and across the floor as the birth women tried to deliver the new member of Akhenaten’s family.

The first child was always the hardest one. The nurses were frightened and confused as they did not know what to expect with the princess’s birth, and Henuttaneb had been in the birthing chamber far too long.

This was one of my first memories, and I was only 4 at the time. Those screams would never erase themselves from anyone’s mind that day. The smell of something terribly wrong swept the palace along the evening’s summer breeze. I could not tell what it was at the time, but now I recognize the smell as the opened doors into Duat. I was kept in a holding room with my nurse, but my two older sisters recounted the details of the night when I was years older and curious about my aunt.

As the light crept away from the sky and darkness descended, the young princess Henuttaneb began to drift through the Underworld’s doors. Merytaten, 9, and Meketaten, 5, had hidden behind a pillar and watched the terrifying scene. The birthing room had not been completely walled off from the nurses’ private rooms, and if you knew the palace well enough, you could sneak in during a birth. My sisters were excited for a new baby in the house, but they did not expect what they saw.

Henuttaneb had tried hard to deliver her child, but she could not get him out. Pharaoh’s doctor, Pentu, was called in. He felt inside of her where the baby was supposed to emerge from and said she was all twisted up inside, so he had to cut to find the little babe.

Meketaten had run away when Henuttaneb was cut apart, blindly running through the nurses’ rooms and out into a small patch of garden outside the harem’s quarters. She threw up for hours afterward. A nurse found her in the early morning light lying as if in a trance and staring out into the horizon. The sun’s light formed a blanket around her body, which had been bruised by the pillars and walls from her blind run. She kept calling out for Henuttaneb to leave Amun’s boat and return to them.

The nurse hid her the following day so she could calm down and stop talk of the god Amun, the one Father had banned first and foremost. Any mention of the cursed god would bring about severe punishment as the priests and followers of Amun were thought to be traitors to the livelihood of the throne.

Merytaten, my oldest sister, was rooted in place and found that she could not look away. As the doctor reached inside Henuttaneb to find the baby, Merytaten swore that she could see Henuttaneb’s ka slowly curling out from her body like steam off cooked meat. From that point on, Merytaten did not eat from animal flesh for fear that their ka would sneak into her body as Henuttaneb’s had risen out of hers. And though she loved her aunt, for fear of Henuttaneb stealing her body, no longer a person or an aunt but a dying spirit, a distorted and lost piece of a soul, Merytaten finally found the will to tear herself away. Her legs obeyed her again. She ran from the room and went to find our mother.

Nefertiti stood outside in a stony silence. She listened but did not enter. She feared that the demons ailing Henuttaneb would enter her womb and afflict her too, so she waited outside for cries of a baby. Her long body stood tense. Her hands rested on a small bulge in her belly as she waited for news. She was again showing the first signs of pregnancy.

Her graceful neck swept up into a face that was strikingly beautiful but angled with worry. Her lips were drawn thin, her high cheekbones were sharp, her almond-shaped brown eyes were wide and alert, and her dark hair swept down loosely across the tops of her shoulders. She wore no wig today and only a simple blue flax sheath dress which delicately flowed down from the top of her belly to her ankles. Two wide white straps came up from her belly, over her breasts, around the shoulders, and down her back. I remembered this dress. It was so smooth and clear that it looked like waves of the Great River had drunk in her body and would not let it go. Her only jewelry was a golden full-bloom lotus blossom necklace given to her long ago by Akhenaten, but that was before he knew the touch of another woman’s body against his. It was a gift to protect her when he was not there, and she found herself wearing it more often of late.

As confident as my mother appeared, she was fragile when it came to any other woman pulling away her husband’s attention. Henuttaneb, my father’s younger sister, had always been close to him. When Nefertiti could not produce a son of her own, he then turned to his sister, the last sibling in his family still alive. Though this is quite common for royalty, Nefertiti thought her family would be different. She had captivated the Pharaoh’s attention and entranced a nation. Yet he took a second wife, Tadukhipa, or Kiya as Pharaoh called her playfully. Tadukhipa was a princess from Mittani. She was exotically beautiful and smart. She could prove resourceful when dealing with foreign dignitaries. Mother had found relief when Tadukhipa had produced a daughter as well. She had assumed that Pharaoh would realize he needed no other women in his life. But this was not the case. Bruising my mother’s heart again, father had then taken Henuttaneb to his bed in hopes of producing a son. Around the dawn of my third year, Henuttaneb was made Pharaoh’s third wife.

Nefertiti had tried to console herself in a thin hope that Henuttaneb would become just a harem girl. With running a new capital city and stomping a family of deities from existence, how could Pharaoh possibly find time for a third
wife
? But, again, she was wrong. Pharaoh felt a strong connection with Henuttaneb. She could often make Akhenaten laugh with stories of their youth together and with her sharp wit. Nefertiti was bred for the life of a queen, and though she excelled in running a kingdom alongside her husband, she lacked the ability to share intimately her private thoughts and emotions. It made her feel stripped, unprotected, and so
her
Akhenaten fell more and more for the ba that filled Henuttaneb. Pharaoh loved those qualities which made Henuttaneb who she was, the person which my mother was not. Slowly, Nefertiti realized that Henuttaneb had the power to become a greater wife than her. She saw herself slipping into obscurity, and she was scared.

My mother was strong. She was the daughter of Ay, one of Amenhotep III’s favorite troop commanders as well as Tiya’s brother, the woman who was Amenhotep’s Great Wife. On top of entertaining visits from the Queen of Kemet, Mother had grown up with her own lively and vivacious mother who could run a household full of soldiers with ease as well as service the needs of Nefertiti’s Queen-Aunt. Nefertiti had always been surrounded by power and royalty. She was the flower of a smart and resourceful woman as well as a tactical and thoughtful father, and Nefertiti possessed all of these traits. Both of her parents were engaging and bold in personality. Nefertiti’s presence alone commanded that kind of attention. She got it from her people, but her husband seemed to draw more and more distant from her with each passage of Ra’s boat across the heavens. Henuttaneb was the final blow. She knew that something was changing. She knew that Akhenaten had some other plan for her. The people were beginning to call for her more than him. They prayed to her and worshipped her. It was her greatest pride, but it was the biggest crack in her marriage to Pharaoh.

Nefertiti was driven to help her husband, but she was becoming too great. Did she know then that Pharaoh was bound to fail? She worked endlessly and believed she was establishing
his
authority, leading his people in the belief of Aten, but Pharaoh’s own pride got in the way. She was taking his place even though she never meant to. And because of this, Nefertiti did not know what this night, this birth, would mean for her.

As she listened to the screaming behind closed doors, she could not help but wonder if this pain was her fault. Her fault for going too far? How many nights had she cried silently in agony that her husband no longer loved her as much as she did him? If Henuttaneb gave Pharaoh his long-sought-after son, she knew that her position would collapse. But what feared her most was figuring out what meant more to her -- her people or her husband. In truth, she loved her people passionately. She wanted to lead them. If she lost them too, she was not sure what she would do. She wanted to cry out --

Silence…

The night seemed to disappear into nothing but silence.

It was a ringing silence – a silence that was a haunting echo of what had once filled the halls moments before. It was a shadow in the ears, which only seemed to grow louder and pushed away all other sounds in its wake. Not a heartbeat could be heard as all thoughts became still and empty.

Then the clear sound of a baby crying broke the night air like an egg’s shell tapped by a spoon. Nefertiti began to pick at her fingernails, a sign that she was nervous. Could this lesser wife have produced what she could not? Did Henuttaneb give her Akhenaten a son? Her heart seemed to start beating again, but this time it was beating double than she thought possible. Merytaten came out from the shadows and ran to stand beside her, but the queen took no notice.

The crying grew louder as the baby was carried closer to those outside the birthing room. Ever so gently, the doors drifted open and out came a nurse, Maia, with a tiny baby just starting to settle down in her arms. The child drank from the nursemaid’s breast. Though Maia’s body was like soft linen wrapping around the small baby, her eyes were frightened. She stood silently for a moment before the queen. As she bowed her head, she released the words she knew the queen dreaded.

“Queen Nefertiti, it is a boy.”

The moment had come. Pharaoh had his son.

If the queen was shaken by this news, no one could tell. The women in my mother’s close circle knew of Nefertiti’s secret desire of Henuttaneb producing a female. It is something only women could understand. But it was also a way for my mother to believe that she had done nothing wrong. A way to reassure that she had not failed…

Instead of anger, though, Nefertiti expressed joy. She stretched out her long arms toward the baby.

“Hand me our new prince. I wish to hold my pharaoh’s son. I must tell him of the good news!” she said regally. Maia still had a shroud of nervousness floating about her body, fearing a secret emotion in the queen’s heart, but she gently pulled the baby from her and handed him over. She could not deny a request from Pharaoh’s Great Wife. Nefertiti’s head was held high as she took the little boy in her arms.

The baby’s eyes were bright when he looked up at the queen. All was hushed. It was as if he knew royalty when he saw it. He laid in her arms and simply stared at an errand strand of hair which gently floated along the queen’s cheekbone. The rest had been tucked gently behind her ear.