Tutankhamun Uncovered Read Free Page A

had this much fun for months! Be seated and hush!”
    “Neither has Dashir!” acknowledged Ugele. “We wouldn’t be being treated to this insight were he not in such an extreme state of excitement in
    expectation of what he assures us lies in wait for him later this night!”
    The fat carpenter winked at the goldsmith.
    Dashir blinked back. By this time he had consumed several beers and was having trouble focusing. “Where...? Where am...? Where was I?” “The wax was drying in your creases,” said Parneb. “Ah,” Dashir acknowledged. “Most uncomfortable. Quite takes the edge off the passion.”
    “Softens the complexion, though,” followed Ugele, grinning.
    “Ah. That it does... That it does. Devilish crisp, however, and a devil of a job to remove when you get it on the member...” The group laughed. “...Especially when it dries before you lose your hardness,” observed Dashir.
    Their laughter became louder.
    “What’s going on over there?” Hammad yelled from behind the bar. “Quieten it down will you? We’ll have the priests among us.”
    Parneb ignored the landlord. “You, Dashir? Are you trying to tell us you do not lose your hardness easily? Come on, man... You are but a frail thing, not the likes of myself or Ugele we have real trouble losing our hardness!”
    “Speak for yourself,” said the black man. “My hardness is my affair. As should it be for every man. You talk about it like the washer women! An end to this nonsense. An end to the beer. I am to my bed.”
    “Me too,” said the goldsmith with renewed urgency.
    “Don’t over extend yourself now,” said Parneb. “But, if in the event you do not rise to the occasion, remember, I am just two doors down be glad to help.”
    Dashir raised his fist as if to strike the scribe but Meneg’s large right hand closed around his wrist. “Indeed, master goldsmith, it is time for bed. We all wish you the strength to create.”
    He and Ugele bundled the drunken Dashir out into the street and guided him to his front door. Back at Hammad’s, Parneb tilted back on his stool and rested his back against the wall. That washer woman was looking at him again.
    The death of Pharaoh Akhenaten, the great builder and heretic, had occurred eleven years earlier. Akhenaten had reigned for eighteen years, some of them in co-regency with his father, Amenophis III, whose steadily declining health had rendered him not incapable of reliably carrying out his kingly duties, just less interested in doing so. The old Pharaoh preferred the duties of the bedroom. In his later years, successful unions brought him two further sons, the first through his chief wife. They named him Smenkhkare. The second came some twelve years later, through one of his younger wives. This latter issue came to be called Tutankhaten.
    Not long after taking power, Akhenaten set about accelerating the religious changes his father had initiated. By order of their primary physical deity Pharaoh the fundamental basis for religious belief that had held the Egyptian people together for as long as they could remember was about to be torn from them.
    For time immemorial there had been a multitude of gods, each with its own specialisation a god for every need. The father, Amenophis III, revered by the people for his heroic deeds in foreign lands and believed to have singlehandedly engineered the consistency of maat in Upper and Lower Egypt, had skilfully manipulated the introduction of the sun disc, the Aten, already deified in a number of different guises. Publicly the Pharaoh had gone no further than this. Within the confines of the palace, however, worship of the Aten had become a daily ritual. Preparation for ultimate succession and education in affairs of state were the responsibility of the next in line, Prince Thutmosis. The mind of the Pharaoh’s second son, Akhenaten, shy, slight in build, sensitive and impressionable, was not occupied with these matters. Akhenaten had the opportunity, the