A God Against the Gods by Allen Drury Read Free Book Online Page A

they? I am the God, and gods are not understood by mortal men because, as everyone knows, they do not live like mortal men. Gods are not worried about their families, concerned for their power, surrounded by shifting shadows that may be friendly one moment, hostile the next.…
    I live with other gods, hundreds of them: strange figures of men with heads of falcons, rams, baboons, dogs, crocodiles—women in the form of cows, lionesses, scorpions, vultures, cobras …
    I am their equal, their companion, their master and their slave. They surround me in all I do.
    They surround me.…
    Today began, as all days in Kemet begin, with my awakening. When Pharaoh awakes the world awakes, for I am the incarnation on earth of Ra the Sun, and of Ra’s son Horus as well; and no life starts, and no life lives, without me. All things start with me. So it has always been in Kemet, and so it will always be, forever and ever.
    I arose and went into my House of Morning, the small private chapel in the Palace of Malkata—and at once I was surrounded. Amon-Ra was instantly with me in the persons of a dozen white-clad priests led by my brother-in-law Aanen. Amon-Ra is the greatest of gods, the god of Thebes, the god of my House, the “King of all the gods” of Kemet and the Empire. He is also the god who owns half my kingdom: he is the god who surrounds me most of all.
    Thus he surrounded me this day, as on all days since I inherited the throne, to watch me take the ritual bath in which I duplicate the way in which Ra bathes each morning in the ocean of heaven. As I bathed, I restored the life force that flows from me to the Two Lands, just as Ra’s bathing restores the life force that flows from him to the universe. When I finished, the priests, some wearing the falcon mask of Horus, others the ibis or baboon mask of Thoth, the god of wisdom and learning, anointed, robed and invested me with the crook and flail, the uraeus and other insignia of office. They gave me the most important of all, the “Ankh,” or symbol of life, which comes each day from the God Amon to the Good God, myself, so that I may in turn pass it on and thus give life to the Two Lands. Then I said the words that I say every morning to start life on earth going again after the night, just as Ra says them in heaven. And simultaneously, from the Fourth Cataract to the Delta, in all the many temples of Amon-Ra, priests representing me representing Ra received the Ankh and spoke the same life-giving words.
    And so, in Kemet and in the whole world, life began again.
    Now of course I would not have you think that in Kemet we actually believe that all life ends at nightfall and does not resume until dawning when Pharaoh-as-Ra says so. We are, so those who observe us tell us, a practical and pragmatic people, and we know, naturally enough, that many things go on at night—feasts, businesses, arrivals, departures, birth, death, love, robbery, murder—many things, while Ra is making the journey in his sacred boat back under the earth from west to east, passing through the stomach of the sky-goddess Nut so that he may be born again at dawn.
    We know life goes on while Ra makes his journey. But we also know that ritual and order hold Kemet together, and we know that without them Kemet would not be the great kingdom and powerful empire she is. And since we wish to preserve her so, we preserve the rituals that preserve her order. Even on days when I am ill, the people never know that I do not rise and say the words for Ra. Aanen or one of his fellow priests of Amon says them for me, and it is announced, as it is every day, that I have done it. Thus the ritual is preserved—and the order is preserved.
    Thus it has been for almost two thousand years, and so it will be, forever and ever.
    So: I worshiped, I said the words, I discharged the first daily obligation of my divinity, and then, like mortal men, I ate. Priests and servants hovered, anxious to seize for themselves whatever