Drury - A god against the gods. Return to Thebes

Book Description

The spectacular conclusion to the Egyptian epic begun in A God Against the Gods. After his brothers assassination, a new Pharaoh must take the throne and battle the corrupt and violent priesthood.

His name is TUTANKHAMUN.

Pulitzer Prize winning author Allen Drury paints a vivid, dramatic picture of the most tumultuous times in one of the greatest empires in human history. Following the murder of Akhenaten and the beautiful Nefertiti and the religious uproar that threatens to tear Egypt apart, the pharaoh has to defy the gods in order to rule his people.

The master writer recreates ancient Egypt with all its pomp, glory, politics, and treachery, and brings legendary titans of history to life, with all their tragicand all too humanflaws.

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Smashwords Edition 2015

WordFire Press
wordfirepress.com

ISBN: 978-1-61475-280-6

Copyright 2015 Kenneth A. Killiany and Kevin D. Killiany

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law. This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the authors imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover design by Janet McDonald

Art Director Kevin J. Anderson

Cover artwork images by Dollar Photo Club

Book Design by RuneWright, LLC
www.RuneWright.com

Kevin J. Anderson & Rebecca Moesta, Publishers

Published by
WordFire Press, an imprint of
WordFire, Inc.
PO Box 1840
Monument, CO 80132

***

Dedicated,

once again,

to

THEM

Sitting or standing, as the mood or the ritual occasion dictated when they posed for the royal sculptors millennia ago, they stare pleasantly out upon the long green snake of Egyptwhich they called Kemet, the Black Landand the desert wastes of the Red Land beyond.

They have been there, some of them, five thousand years and more.

If there is an Earth five thousand years from now, some of them will doubtless be there still.

Smiling, happy, confident, serene, ravaged no longer by the fierce ambitions and violent passions that often moved behind those deliberately impervious formal masks, they have a satisfaction, not given to many, which they will never know but seldom doubted:

They always said they would live forever.

And as forever goes in the lives of men, they have.

***

Introduction

In the novel A God Against the Gods, to which this novel is sequel, there is related the early life and rise to supreme power of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, tenth god-king of the Eighteenth Dynasty, who thirty-four hundred years ago ruled the Two Lands of Upper and Lower Egypt.

Akhenaten, husband of one of historys most beautiful women, his cousin, Nefertiti, was the son of Amonhotep III and Queen Tiyethe Great Wife, who for many years directed (or thought she did) the destinies of Egypt while her amiable but indolent husband enjoyed his luxuries and let his countrys tenuous grasp upon its poorly defined and loosely held empire in the Middle East gradually slip away.

The slippage was not helped by Akhenaten, who, after suffering in early youth what we now know as Frolichs syndrome, a disease of the pituitary gland that left him malformed with sagging belly, womans hips, thin arms and elongated neck and face, became Co-Regent with his father at the age of fifteen, sixteen, seventeen or eighteen. (Egyptologists differ, as they do on so many other things. A novelist must make choices from among their conjectures, adding here and there a few of his own. This I have done, trying always to remain within the bounds of what seems humanly logical and eschewing those intense arguments over fragmentary details that understandably make up much of the world of professional Egyptology.)

Quite soon after his coronation as Co-Regent, Akhenaten changed his original name, Amonhotep IV, to Akhenaten, which means Pleasing to the Aten, the Aten being the traditional Sun God in the form of a bright and visible disk. He also established a new capital halfway between Thebes and the Nile Delta that he named Akhet-Aten, meaning Horizon (or Resting Place) of the Aten. And he began a lengthy attempt to establish the Aten as the sole god of Egyptthe first such attempt at monotheism in recorded historythereby seeking to supersede all of Egypts myriad animal- and bird-headed gods, and doing particular violence to the powerful and deeply entrenched priesthood of Amon-Ra. Amon-Ra was another form of the Sun God, his very essence, hidden and mysterious. His priests had for a century and a half been inextricably entwined with the fortunes of the Eighteenth Dynasty.

Thus Akhenaten began what is now known as the Amarna Revolution, Tell-el-Amarna being the present Arabic name for the empty plain halfway up the Nile which is all that remains of the briefly flourishing city he established there.

For more than a decade, according to the version I have set forth in A God Against the Gods, the revolution proceeded in desultory fashion while Akhenaten, Nefertiti and their six daughters attempted to win over the people of Egypt, rather more by example than by any strong overt insistence on Akhenatens part, to the worship of the Aten. Finally convinced that this easygoing policy would not work, and enraged by the continuing opposition of Amon, Akhenaten became more active.

At the conclusion of A God Against the Gods, Amonhotep III has died and Akhenaten has assumed full power. He has also by that time fathered three daughters by his three oldest daughters, in a vain attempt to produce sons who could succeed him and carry on the cult of the Aten. In addition he has alienated most of the members of the royal family (the House of Thebes,) including his mother Queen Tiye and his powerful uncle Aye; he has raised to power his cousin, the scribe and general of the army Horemheb, who eventually became the last Pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty; he has finally turned in full fury upon Amon and all its fellow priesthoods; and he has begun the emotional and physical relationship with his younger brother Smenkhkara that has resulted in estrangement from Nefertiti and the beginnings of the final break with both his family and his people.

At that point, with his father mummified and entombed after the ritual seventy days of mourning, with Smenkhkara named Co-Regent and destruction loosed upon his fellow gods, Akhenaten and Smenkhkara set sail from Thebes to return to Akhet-Aten and A God Against the Gods concludes.

Here, three years later, in 1362 B.C., begins Return to Thebeswhich means, in essence, return to the city of Amon, who will eventually win their bitter battle and, with the assistance of many powerful court figures including Tiye, Aye, Horemheb and Akhenatens youngest brother, Tutankhamon, (born Tutankhaten) be restored to all his powers and privileges.

Again, I am indebted to the friends mentioned in the Introduction to