A BARK arrived, with curving lotos prow and purple sail; it fairly flew up so light it was, manned by five oarsmen on either side, and bear-ing the sign of royalty, an express boat from Pharaoh's own flotilla.
It lay to neatly alongside the landing-stage of Zawi-Re, and a youth leaped ashore, slender and light as the boat that bore him, with lean face and long sinewy legs. His chest heaved beneath the linen gar-ment, he was out of breath or at least he seemed to be , he behaved as  

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though he were. There was no real reason for breathlessness; after all, he had come by boat not run all the way. Anyhow he ran, or flew, with extreme celerity through the gate and courtyard of Zawi-Re, opening a way for himself and preventing anyone from stopping him, by uttering a series of little shouts, not loud, but very disconcerting to the astonished and ineffectual guards in his path, and demanding to see the captain at once. He ran, then, or he flew, with such speed towards the citadel they pointed out to him that despite his slim build the pretended breathlessness might well have become real by the time he reached it. Certainly the little wings on the heels of his san-dals and on his cap could not help him along, they were there merely in token of his office.
     Joseph, occupied in the counting-house, saw this new arrival run-ning, but paid him no heed, even when his attention was called to him. He went on turning over papers with the chief clerk until an un-derling came running, breathless too with the order that Joseph was to drop everything, no matter how important, and present himself at once before the captain.  
     "I am coming," said he; yet finished first the paper he was going over with the clerk. Then of course not loitering, but not running either, he betook himself to the captain in the tower.
     The end of Mai-Sachme's nose was rather white when Joseph came into the dispensary. His heavy brows were drawn up higher than ever, his full lips parted.  
    "Here you are," he said with abated voice to Joseph. "You should have been up here before. Hearken to this." He gestured toward the winged youth who stood beside him, or rather did not stand, or not still, for his arms, head, shoulders, and legs kept moving in such a way that he seemed to run to and fro without stopping, in order to go on being breathless. Sometimes he stood on his toes, as though about to take flight.
    "Your name is Usarsiph?" he asked in a low, hurried voice, keeping his quick, close-lying eyes upon Joseph's face. You are the captain's aide who was in charge of certain occupants of the vulture-house here two years ago?"
    "I am" answered Joseph.
    "Then you must come with me just as you are," the other stated, with even more speaking play of limb. "I am Pharaoh's first runner, his swift messenger am I, and came with the express boat. You must straightway join me so that I can take you to court, for you to stand before Pharaoh."  
     "I?" asked Joseph "How could that be ? I am too unimportant."
     "Unimportant or no, it is Pharaoh's beautiful will and command. Breathless I bore it to your captain and breathless you must obey the summons."

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9 x 5  = 45  4 + 5 = 9

" I have been put into this prison," responded Joseph, "certainly by way of mistake, and in a manner of speaking I have been stolen down here. But here I am, a convict at hard labour, and though you cannot see my chains, yet I have them. How could I go out with you through these walls and gates onto your boat? "  
      "That has not the least thing in the world to do with it," hurried on the runner, by comparison with the beautiful command, which makes all that vanish into thin air and in a trice bursts all your bonds. Before Pharaoh's wonderful will nothing can stand. But have no fear, it is more than unlikely that you will stand the test; much more than likely they will bring you back in short order to the place of your punishment. You will hardly be wiser than Pharaoh's greatest schol-ars and magicians of the book-house and shame the seers and sooth-sayers and interpreters of the house of Re Horakhte, who invented the sun-year."
      "That is in Gods hands, whether He is with me or not," answered Joseph. "Has Pharaoh dreamed?"
      "You are not here to ask but to answer," said the messenger, "and woe to you if you cannot. Then will you fall, I suppose deeper than just back into this prison"
      "Why am I thus to be tested," asked Joseph, "and how does Pharaoh know of me, that he sends forth his beautiful command down here to me? "
     "You have been mentioned and named and called attention to in this crisis," the other replied. "On the way you may learn more; now you must follow me breathless, that you may straightway stand before Pharaoh."
     "Wese is far," said Joseph "and far is Merimat, the palace. How-ever winged boat and messenger, Pharaoh must wait before his will is obeyed and I stand before him for my test. He might even have for-gotten his beautiful command before I come, and himself find it no longer beautiful."
     "Pharaoh is near," responded the runner. "It pleases the beautiful sun of the world to shine now in On, at the point of the delta; he has betaken himself thither in the boat Star of the Two Lands. In a few hours my bark will fly and flit to its goal. Up with you, then not a word more."  
     "But I must have my hair cut first and put on proper clothes if I am to stand before Pharaoh," said Joseph. He had been wearing his own hair in the prison, and his clothing was only of the very common coarse linen. But the runner replied:
     "That can be done on board as we flit and we fly. All has been provided. You imagine that one thing may delay
another, instead of all being crowded into one time, in order to save it; but you know not what breathlessness is when
Pharaoh commands."  

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9 x 6 = 54  5 + 4 = 9  

So then Joseph turned to the captain to take his leave, and he called him "my friend."
"You see, my friend," said he, "how things stand and how they are to go with me after these three years. They hurry me out of the pit and draw me up out of the well - it is the old pattern. This courier thinks I shall come back down again to you , but I believe it not, and since I do not believe it, so it will not be. Fare thee well, and take all of my thanks for the kindness and the peace which have made bear-able this pause in my affairs, this penance and obscurity; for you have let me be your brother in the time of waiting. You were waiting for Nekhbet's third appearance and I was waiting upon my own busi-ness. Farewell, but not for long. Someone has thought of me after long forgetfulness, when he stubbed his toe against the memory of me. But I will think of you without forgetting; and if the God of my father is with me whereof  
- not to offend Him - I do not doubt, then you too shall be drawn out of this tedious hole. There are three beautiful things and three beautiful tokens which your servant cherishes in his heart: they are called 'snatching away,' 'lifting up' and 'making to come after.' If God lift up my head, and I should fear to insult him if  Idid not certainly expect it, then I promise you you shall come after and have a share in more stimulating circumstances than these, where your tranquillity will not be in danger of degenerating into sleepiness, and where the prospects for the third incarnation will be improved . Shall that be a promise betwixt thee and me? "
    "Thanks in any case" said Mai-Sachme, and embraced him; a thing which up till now he could not have done and which he vaguely felt, he would not be able to do later either, on opposite grounds. Only just now, at the the moment of parting, was the right time. "For a minute" said he, "I thought I was quite upset this man arrived hot-foot. But I am not, my heart beats evenly as ever - for how shall a thing one has long been expecting upset one? Calmness means noth-ing
but that a man is prepared for every event and when it comes he is not surprised. But with feeling it is different; there is room for it even with self-control, and it touches me very much that you will think of me when you come into your kingdom. The wisdom of the Lord of Khum be with you farewell.
    The courier, hopping from one foot to the other had barely let the captain say his say to the end. Now he took Joseph
by the hand, manifestly panting, and ran down with him from the tower, through the court and passages of
Zawi-Re to the boat. They leaped aboard and off it went flying. And as it flitted and flew, Joseph, in the little pavilion
on the after-deck, was shaved, rouged, and dressed while listening to the winged one's  tale of what had happened in On,  
City of the Sun, and why he had been sent for. The thing was, Pharaoh  

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had actually dreamed, and most portentously . But when the dream interpreters were summoned, they had failed to give satisfaction and had fallen into disfavour . In the ensuing
embarrassment the chief but-ler, Nefer-em-Wese, had spoken up and mentioned him - that is, Joseph - saying that if
anybody could help out, perhaps he could, they might at least try it. What Pharaoh had actually dreamed, that the courier
could not say, save in an obviously distorted and confused version, which had seeped through to the court from the council-chamber where the sages had suffered their discomfiture: the majesty of this god, it was said, had dreamed first
that seven cows ate seven ears of corn and second that seven cows had been eaten by seven ears of corn - in short, a pack of nonsense such as occurs to nobody, even in a dream. Yet it was of some use to Joseph on his way , and his thoughts played about mental images of hunger and food of need and supply.  

 

 

OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS

What had really happened, leading up to the summoning of Joseph was this:
      The year before - towards the end of the second year Joseph spent in the prison -  Amenhotpe, the fourth of his name, was sixteen years old and ceased to be a minor; the regency of Tiy, his mother, came to an end and the government of the two lands passed automatically to the successor of Nebmare the Magnificent. Thus ended a situa-tion which the people and all those concerned had seen in the sign of the early morning sun, the young day born of the night, when the shining son is as yet more son than man, still belongs to the mother and is her fledgling, before he soars to the full height and strength of midday. Then Eset the mother withdraws and yields up her sov-ereignty, although the maternal dignity still remains to her, the dig-nity of the source and fount of life and power, and always is the man her son. She gives over the power to him: but he exerts it for her, as she exerted it for him.
     Tiy, the mother - goddess, who had been ruling and guarding the life of the lands since the years when her husband fell prey to the aging of Re, now removed from her chin the braided Usir beard which like Hatshepsut, Pharaoh with the breasts, she had been wear-ing and surrended it to the young son of the sun, whom it became as oddly when on occasions of high ceremony he assumed it. On such he was also obliged to appear with a tail; that is, to fasten a jackal's tail to his apron at the back. This animal attribute belonged to the strict and primitive ceremonial costume of his majesty, and still formed an item in the sacred and jealously preserved ritual, though nobody any longer knew why it was there. However, they  

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did know at court that young Pharaoh hated it. Wearing it even had a bad effect on his digestion; inclined His Majesty to feel quite sick and made him look pale or even green in the face; though, frankly
speaking, even without the tail that was a feature of the attacks to which his health was subject.
     Unless all observers erred, the shifting of the royal power from the mother to the son had been occupied by much
misgiving: would not one do better to put it off or void it altogether, leaving the young son under the shelter of the
mother's wing for good and all? The mother of the god herself entertained these doubts; her chief councillors had them,
and a mighty man of our acquaintance, Beknechons, sought to feed and further them: Beknechons of the strict
observance, great prophet and first priest of Amun. He had not, strictly speaking, been a servant of the crown or, as many of his prede-cessors had done, united the office of high priest with that of the head of the administration of the two lands. King Nebmare, Amen-Hotep III, had seen himself called upon to separate the spiritual from the secular arm and set up laymen as viziers of the North and South. But as the mouth of the imperial god, Beknechons had a right to the ear of the regent, and she lent it to him graciously, though aware that it was the voice of political rivalry that she lent it. She had a decided share in her husband's decision to separate the two functions and in that way damning back the weight of the College of Karnak and preventing a prepon-derance of power which - and not only since yesterday - had been a threat to the royal house. It had inherited the problem from early days. Tutmose, Meni's great-grandfather, had dreamed his promise dream at the feet of the Sphinx and freed her from the sand, naming as his father the lord of the prehistoric giant statue, Harmakhis-Khepere-Atum-Re, to whom he owed his crown. But this, as every-body understood and as Joseph too learned to understand, was nothing but the hieroglyphic circumscription of the very same posi-tion: the religious formulation of political self assertion. And it es-caped nobody that this fresh definition of Aton as a new constella-tion in the firmament, a process begun back at the court of the son of Tutmose and dwelt on so lovingly in his little grandson's thoughts' had as its aim to prize Amun Re loose from his arbitrary and despotic union with the sun, to which he owed his universal character, and reduce him to the rank of a local power, as the city god of Wese, which he had been before his political coup.
       We fail to recognize the indivisibility of the world when we think of religion and politics as fundamentally separated fields, which neither have nor should have anything to do with each other; to the extent even that the one would be devalued and exposed as false if any trace of the other were to be found in it. For the truth is that they change

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but the garment, as Ishtar and Tammuz wear the veil by turns, and it is the whole that speaks when one speaks the language of the other. And it speaks besides in other tongues: for instance through the works of Ptah, the creations of taste, skill and love of ornament; for to consider these as things apart, quite outside
World indivisibility and having nothing to do with either religion or politics, would be equally foolish. Joseph knew that young Pharaoh, on his own initia-tive, without any maternal prompting, devoted the most zealous even jealous attention to the fostering of beauty and ornament in his world, in intimate connection with the effort he made to think into existence the god Aton in all his purity and truth. He cherished sur-prising ideas of change, of relaxation of the conservative tradition, feeling sure that his dearly loved god would have it so. The cause lay close to his heart, he fostered it for its own sake, in accordance with his convictions about what was true and pleasing in the world of form.
But had it on that account nothing to do with religion and politics? Since the memory of man, or, as the children of
Keme loved to say, since millions of years, the world of art had been regulated by pretty stiff religious conventions, now imposed and continued in force by Amun-Re in his chapel or by his powerful priesthood for him. To relax or indeed wholly to remove these fetters for the sake of a new truth and beauty which the Aton god had revealed to Pharaoh was a blow in the face to Amun-Re, the head and front of a religion and politics indissolubly bound up with certain pictorial conceptions con-secrated by time. . In young Pharaoh's disintegrating theories on the subject of the pictorial arts, the world-whole spoke the language of good taste, one language among many, in which it expresses itself. For with the world-whole and its unity the human being has always to do whether he knows it or not.
     He might know it, Amenhotep, the boy king; but the world whole was manifestly too much for him. His strength seemed to be too slender, he suffered too much. Often he was pale or green, even when he did not have to wear the
jackal's tail; he was so tortured by headaches that he could not keep his eyes open; often and often he had to give up his food. He was obliged to lie in the dark for days - he whose whole love was the light, the golden bond between heaven and earth, those rays ending in the caressing, life-giving hands of his father Aton. Of course, it was a matter of grave concern when a reigning king was constantly prevented by such attacks from fulfilling his rep-resentational duties: such as offering sacrifice, dedicating this and that, receiving his wise men and councillors. But unfortunately
there was even worse: one could never tell what attack might suddenly seize His Majesty in the middle of these duties, in the presence of dig-nitaries or even of masses of people. Pharaoh, holding his thumbs clamped round by the other four fingers and rolling his eyeballs back  

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under half closed lids, might fall into a not quite normal unconscious state, not lasting very
long but still a disturbing interruption to the business in hand. He himself explained these incidents as abrupt visi-tations from his father the god; and he feared much less than he desired to receive them. For he returned from them with his daily life en-riched by first-hand instruction and revelation on the true and beautiful nature of Aton.
      Thus it need cause us neither surprise nor doubt to learn that when the new sun reached his majority the point was discussed whether it might not be better to leave him under the maternal wing and let things go on as they were. But the idea came to nothing, despite Amun's representations in its favour. However much there was for it, there was too much against it. For to admit that Pharaoh was so ill, or so sickly, that he could not take over the government was contrary to the interests of the hereditary sun-rulers and might give rise to dangerous notions in the kingdom and tributary states  Moreover, Pharaoh's attacks were of a nature which forbade their use as a reason for continuing his minority: they were holy, they contributed to his popularity rather than otherwise; it would be unwise to make them the ground for a prolongation of his minority, it was much better to exploit them against Amun, whose private intention to unite the double crown with his own feather headress and himself found a new dynasty lurked in the background of every situation.
      And so the maternal bird turned over to her son the full authority of the zenith of his manhood But looking very closely, we can see that he himself, Amenhotpe, had conflicting feelings on the whole subject . He felt pride and joy in his new powers, but he felt embar-rassment as well; all in all he might have preferred to remain under his mother's wing. There was one reason why he looked forward with positive horror to his majority, and it was this: every Pharaoh at the beginning of his reign, by fixed tradition, personally undertook, as commander in chief, a military campaign of war and plunder, into either the asiatic or the negro lands. And upon its glorious conclu-sion he was solemnly received at the border and escorted back to his capital, where he offered as tribute to Amun-Ra, who had thus set the princes of Zahi and Kush under his feet, a goodly share of the swag. Pharaoh had also with his own hand to slay a half-dozen prisoners of war, as high as possible in rank - in case of need they were elevated for the purpose.  
     Of all such ceremonies the lord of the sweet breath knew himself to be utterly incapable. He was attacked by facial twitchings, pallor and greenness whenever they were mentioned or even whenever he thought of them. He loathed war; it might be Amun's business but was far from being that of "my father Aton," who in one of those holy and questionable attacks of Meni's had expressly revealed himself  

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to his son as the "Prince of Peace." Meni could neither take the field with steed and chariot, nor plunder, nor make presents of booty to Amun, nor slay in his honour princely or theoretically princely cap-tives. He neither could nor would do any of that, even ostensibly and for form's sake; and he refused to be pictured on temple walls and arches shooting arrows from a lofty war chariot at terrified foes or holding a bunch of them with one hand by the hair of their heads and with the other brandishing the bludgeon. All that was to him - that is to say, to his god and so to him - intolerable and impossible. It must be clearly understood by church and state that the inaugural cam-paign of plunder would not take place; that after all it could be some-how got round, by good will and good words. One could say that all the lands of the globe already lay at Pharaoh's feet, and tribute poured in so promptly and copiously that any warlike demonstration was superfluous; that indeed it was Pharaoh's wish to signal his ac-cession by the absence of such events.
      But even after this easement Meni's feelings continued to be mixed. He did not conceal from himself that as a
reigning monarch he came into immediate contact with the whole world and all its languages and ways of expressing itself, whereas up till then he could regard it from the one point of view which he preferred, the religious one. Not taken up with earthly affairs, among the flowers and trees of his gar-dens he could dream of his loving god, think him forth, muse upon him, and consider how his essence could best be comprehended in one name and represented by a single image. That had been strain and responsibility enough; but he loved it, and gladly bore with the head-aches it gave him. Now he had that to do and to think about which gave him headaches he did not love at all. Every morning , with sleep still in all his members, he received the Vizier of the South, a tall man with a little chin beard and two gold neck-rings, named Ramose. The man greeted him with a fixed form address, like a litany, very florid and long -winded, and then for endless hours badgered him with rolls of marvellously executed writings about current adminis-trative problems: judicial business, sentences, tax registers, plans for new canals, foundation-stone laying, building supplies, opening of quarries and mines in the desert, and so on and on, instructing Pharaoh in Pharaoh's beautiful will.  After that with upraised hands he would marvel at the beauty of Pharaoh's will. It was Pharaoh's beautiful will to take such and such journeys into the desert, to designate the right spots for wells and  post stations, after they had been picked out before hand beforehand by people more competent in such matters. It was his admirably beautiful will to summon the city Count of El-Kab to come before his face for a hearing upon why he so unpunctually and insufficiently paid his official assessments of gold, silver, cattle and linen into the treasury at Thebes. The next day it was  

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his exalted will to set out for miserable Nubia, to lay a cornerstone or preside at the opening of a temple - usually one dedicated to Amun-Re and thus in Meni's mind by no means compensating for the ex-haustion and headache brought on by the journey.
       At best the obligatory temple service, the cumbersome ritual of the imperial god took up a great part of his time and strength. Out-wardly it was his beautiful will to perform it; but inwardly it was the reverse for it prevented him from thinking about Aton, and also it inflicted on him the society of Beknechons, Amon's autocratic serv-ant, whom he could not abide. In vain had he tried to have his capital city called "City of the Brightness of Aton." The name was not taken up by the people, the priests prevented them, and Wese was and remained Nowet-Amun, the city of the Great Ram, who by the b right arms of his royal sons had reduced foreign lands to subjection and made Egypt rich. Even thus early, Pharaoh was secretly playing with the idea of removing his residence from Thebes, where the image of Amun-Re shone from every column and arch, column and obelisk and was a vexation to his eyes. Certainly he did not yet think of founding a new city all his own, wholly dedicated to Aton; he only contemplated transferring the court to On at the top of the delta, where he felt more at home himself. There in the vicinity of the sun-temple, he had a pleasant palace, not so brilliant as Merimat in the west of Thebes, but provided with all the comforts his delicate health required. The court chroniclers had often to record the journeys of the good god by boat or wagon down to On. True, it was the seat of the Vizier of the North, who had under him the administra-tion and judiciary functions of all the districts between Asyut and the delta, and who in his turn lost no time in giving him headaches. But at least at On Meni was spared burning incense to Amun under the supervision of  Beknechons; and he very much enjoyed talking with the shiny-pates from the house of Atum-Re-Horakhte about the nature of the glorious god his father and his inner life, which despite his vast age was so fresh and lively that it proved capable of the most beautiful variations, clarifications, and development; if one may so express it, there emerged out of the old god, with the aid of human brain-power, slowly, yet more completely, a new unspeakably lovely one, namely the wonderful, universally illuminating Aton.  
Oh, that one might give oneself wholly to him  and be his son, mid-wife, herald and confessor, instead of being
King of Egypt as well, as successor of those who had enlarged the boundaries of Keme and made it an empire! He was tied fast to them and to the deeds they had done; he was vowed to them and to all their acts; probably the reason why he could not endure Beknechons, Amon's man, was that he was right when he constantly emphasized the fact. In other words

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young Pharaoh himself, in his most private self - examination, suspected it: he suspected first that it was one thing to found an empire and another to help a world god into being; and second that the latter occupation might easily be in some kind of contradiction to the royal task and responsibility of preserving and sustaining the achievments of the past. And the headaches which made him shut his eyes when the Viziers of the North  
and the South set upon him with imperial business were connected with suspicions to the effect (or not quite to the effect, but moving in that direction) that they, namely the head-aches, were not caused so much by fatigue and boredom as by a vague but disquieting insight into the conflict between devotion to the beloved Aton theology and the duties of a King of Egypt. In other words, they were conscience and conflict headaches. Knowing them for what they were only made them worse instead of better, and in-creased his nostalgia for his former state of protection under the wing of maternal night .
     Doubtless not only he but the country too would have been better of . For an earthly land and its prosperity are always better taken care of by the mother, however much the spiritual side may be so in the hands of the son. This was Amenhotep's private conviction, and it was probably the feeling of Egypt itself, the Isis belief in the black earth which she instilled into it. Meni made a mental distinction be-tween the material earthly, "natural" welfare of the earth and its mental and spiritual weal; he vaguely feared that the two concerns might not only not coincide but even conflict rather fundamentally. To be charged with both of them at once, to be both priest and king, was the source of many headaches. The material and natural well-being and prosperity were the business of the king, or, even better it was the business of a queen, of the mother, the great Cow - in order that the priest's son in freedom and without responsibility for material well-being might dwell on the spiritual side and spin his sun thoughts. His royal responsibility for the material side oppressed young Pharaoh. His kingship was for him bound up with the black Egyptian loam between desert and desert - black and fertile from the impregnating water. Whereas his passion was the pure light, the golden sun - youth of the heights - and he had no good conscience about it. The Vizier of the South, who got all the reports, even about the early rising of the dog-star which heralds the swelling of the waters - this Ramose, then, constantly called his attention to the lat-est news on the state of the river, the prospects of a good rise, the fertilization, the harvest. To Meni, however attentively, yes, conscientiously he listened, it seemed as though the man would much rather give his reports as he used to, to the mother, the Isis-Queen. She knew more about these things, they were better off in her hands. And yet for him too, as for his lands, everything depended on a  

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blessing-issue in the dark fields of fertility. Failure or deficiency, if it came reflected on him. Not for nothing did Egypt's people have a king who was God's son and so in God's name represented an assurance against stoppages in holy and necessary processes upon which nobody else had any influence. Mistakes or damages in this depart-ment of the black earth meant that his people were disappointed in him, whose mere existence should have prevented them. His credit was shaken and after all, he needed all he could get, that he might make to triumph the beautiful teaching of Aton and his nature of heavenly light.
      That was the difficulty and the dilemma. He had no bond with the blackness below, loving alone the upper light. But if things did not go smoothly and well with the blackness that fed them all, he lost his authority as teacher of the light. And so young Pharaoh's feelings suffered from a split when the motherly night took away her wing from above him and handed him over the kingdom.