Casting the Gods Adrift Read Free Page A

the sun and our own god-king Akhenatenrule here. Is the news so slow to travel throughout their kingdom?’
    â€˜I had heard something of the kind,’ said my father guardedly.
    â€˜So it shall be, as it is here, from end to end of the Nile. One god, just as there is one sun.’
    Ibrim took hold of my hand. The floor was patterned, and he did not feel safe walking across it, for fear there were steps he could not see. ‘I want to ask a priest to put an offering on his altar. On Akhenaten’s altar,’ he whispered to me. I could see from his face that he was as happy as I at the way things were turning out. ‘But I only have the elephant you gave me. Everything else was lost with the boat.’
    â€˜Give it,’ I said, brimming over with joy. ‘I can make you something else. Soon I’ll be able to make you
anything
! I’ll be the best craftsman in all Egypt!’ I led him over to a priest, and Ibrim took the elephant out of a little shoulder bag which hung, still river-sodden, against his dry clothes. We asked if it could be laid, with two figs, on an altar to Akhenaten.
    On the wall beside us, a huge depiction of the pharaoh looked benignly down upon us. He was wearing the full panoply of kingship; the blue cobra crown, the crook and flail of kingly power crossed on his chest. The face looked pleased, gratified.
    The heat bounded off the high, bright walls, redoubling like an echo. We sweated joy, my brother and I.
    No more than a few steps from the temple, the courtier jerked his head abruptly at a house. ‘You may stay here, since it is the pharaoh’s wish,’ he said grudgingly and, duty done, he scurried back to the palace.
    â€˜Isn’t it wonderful, Father?’ I burst out, dancing around, shaking my hands in the air. ‘Music for Ibrim, and I shall be a sculptor! In the pharaoh’s own workshops!’ But even as I said it, I knew that somehow I was throwing straws on a fire, fuelling my father’s rage, making his eyes bulge with pent-up fury.
    Father was not overjoyed. He was on the verge of cursing or bursting into tears.

4
Man of Gold
    â€˜What? Am I to collect animals to decorate a room? To entertain babies? For slaves to walk them on a lead?’
    Ibrim pressed himself against me. I put an arm around his shoulders, but we were reeds in front of a howling wind. I had never seen my father so angry.
    â€˜Are there to be no temples for my crocodiles? Are my baboons to be given no sacred burial?’
    Ibrim began to whimper. Foolishly, I said, ‘I don’t know, Father.’
    He bent down to yell into my face, ‘My animals are the embodiment of the gods! Does this serpent-demon think he can overturn the Ship of a Million Days? Doeshe think to cast the gods adrift – to spill them back into the ocean of nothingness and drown them? His father, Amenhotep, may his name live for ever, was chosen by the gods to be pharaoh over Egypt! And does his son deny that the gods exist?’ His hand reached out and snatched hold of the gold case strung around Ibrim’s neck. ‘If there is no Thoth, what good is this promise, eh? Who is protecting your brother’s life? Eh? Eh?’ And he let go so violently that the talisman flew up and hit Ibrim on the forehead.
    I barely understood what he was talking about – only that this same Akhenaten who, with a word, had made my dreams come true, loosed some terrible nightmare on my father. The god-king so eager to employ him was a traitor to his own kind. Father had no choice but to serve the new pharaoh. He was a god, after all. But as a believer in the many other gods – Hathor, Khon, Thoth, Anubis, Osiris, Amun-Ra – he was bound by religious duty to hate Pharaoh Akhenaten with all his might.
    â€˜That’s no reason to be angry with us,’I snivelled, after he had stalked away into the house and we could hear him kicking the furniture.
    â€˜He’s not