Amarna: Part Eight of the Late Bronze Age Stories

By Joan H. Parks

Part Eight of the Late Bronze Age Stories has Nahid, driven by prophetic dreams, leaving the hills above the Great Green Sea. With Bakiri and his band of protectors, he sets out for Egypt, Bakiri’s home, and then to Amarna, where their ancestor Thutmose created his greatest work.

Amarna was dismantled when the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten died, but Nahid is sure that a treasure still exists for him to find. Bakiri’s daughter, Rabiah, and Nahid fall in love, and they meld his jewelry and her linen garments. He has found his mate, and perhaps the treasure he was meant to find. She insists on being a part of the trip to Amarna. In the course of finding the treasure, Rabiah is put in great danger, and they have to flee Amarna to save Rabiah.

Nahid further matures into a wise and protective mate to Rabiah. All are astonished at the secrets revealed by their quick journey to Amarna. The artists will forever have the images of the great art they have witnessed, in their minds and hearts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 26, 2019
• ISBN: 9781532067358

Joan H. Parks

Joan H Parks lives in Chicago, IL, and after a career in clinical research refreshed her life by becoming a fiction writer. Her undergraduate degree was from the University of Rochester in Non-Western Civilizations, her MBA from the University of Chicago. She studies poetry, including Yeats and the Canterbury Tales (in Middle English); has an interest in the ancient world which she has gratified by studying at the Oriental Institute of The University of Chicago; is an aficionado of The Tales of Genji, which she rereads every year or so. Her family regards these activities with amusement, for she also listens to Willie Nelson and Dierks Bentley. She can be contacted at joanhparks.com

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Copyright © 2019 Joan H Parks.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Certain characters in this work are historical figures, and certain events portrayed did take place. However, this is a work of fiction. All of the other characters, names, and events as well as all places, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-6734-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-6733-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-6735-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019900952

iUniverse rev. date:  01/25/2019

Dedicate

d to:

Jared Lehr

Artist, Inspiration, Friend

HISTORICAL NOTE

The sea peoples menaced the eastern coast of the Mediterranean during the late Bronze Age. The movement of tribes and peoples has left a confusing and scant archeological record. The palace cultures of Minos, and most of the cities along the Mediterranean were destroyed—by whom is still a matter of conjecture. Egypt barely escaped, and the destruction did not extend to Mesopotamia. Whether it was internal corruption, changing climate that provoked tribes to move, or technological advances in weaponry that caused the destruction is still hotly argued in books and articles.

Amarna, located in central Egypt approximately midway between Cairo and Luxor, is the modern name for the city built by the Pharaoh Akhenaten. In roughly 1346 BCE when the heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten died, his capital city was deserted and the remains recycled. Amarna was the center of the global empire of the time.

On December 6, 1912 German archeologists excavating Amarna broke through a wall of what proved to be Thutmose’s storeroom. Among other glorious works of art found was the famous Nefertiti bust which now resides in Berlin, seemingly aloof from the controversy that had dogged her removal from Egypt.

There is no evidence that Thutmose’s workrooms were opened before 1912 but then again, a lot of time has gone by – about 3000 years. I used the excavation reports, maps of the city, the layout of Thutmose’s workrooms and photographs of the Amarna collection, all of which were published in one volume in 2012.

Nahid’s adventures in this story, then, are purely imaginary for there is no reason to think the storeroom was broached before 1912. But, who knows? The evidence from the late bronze age is fragmentary – Thutmose, his name and job title, is described on one ivory horse blinker.

That’s it.

Perfect for a novelist.

CONTENTS

Chapter 1:   The Beginning

Chapter 2:   Serena and Nahid

Chapter 3:   Bakiri Tries to Persuade Nahid

Chapter 4:   Rabiah

Chapter 5:   Rabiah and Nahid Unload the Donkeys

Chapter 6:   Bakiri Recounts the Adventures of his Journey

Chapter 7:   The Journey to Amarna

Chapter 8:   Arrival at Amarna – the Cliffs, the Boundary Stelae

Chapter 9:   Amarna (The Search)

Chapter 10:   The Search in the Night

Chapter 11:   Amarna, The Aftershocks

Chapter 12:   Rabiah is Detained

Chapter 13:   Bakiri is Incensed

Chapter 14:   Nahid is Relieved

Chapter 15:   Questions are Answered, Plans are Made

Chapter 16:   What Route to Take?

Chapter 17:   Return to Bakiri’s Compound

Chapter 18:   An End and a New Beginning

Chapter 19:   Diripi Has the Last Word

Cast of Characters:

Nahid: Jeweler

Rabiah: Worker in Linen

Bakiri: Head of the kin in Egypt, descended from Thutmose, as are all the kin

Petros the Wise: Head of the wandering kin who are now in Lebanon

Serena the Wise: sister to Petros the Wise, newly mated to The Bedouin, mother to Diripi and Arudara, among others.

Thutmose: master sculptor to the Pharaoh Akhenaten

Hasna: Thutmose’s beloved, gifted in languages

Glossary:

The Great Green Sea – the Mediterranean

The Land of the Two Rivers – Mesopotamia

I

THE BEGINNING

NAHID, WHEN WILL we leave? Arudara asked.

Arudara will sail in Diripi’s tidy boat, both to provide him company and to help with the boat, which is too large to safely sail alone. Both know about the images that are driving me, driving me to go to the abandoned city of Amarna. Diripi and Arudara understand, for it is the way of our kin to be plagued by images that cannot be resisted, indeed, should not be resisted. My kin well remember the dream images from one now dead, that warned of the destruction of Ugarit. My kin heeded and fled to safety before they were trapped in that doomed city.

Soon, before the rains and the winds become common, I answered, and when we decide who will come with us.

We three sat on the hillside as Diripi and Arudara morosely looked at the last resting place of their father, Lukenow. Between the towering trees that shaded his last resting place, my father, too, lay in that hillside. Birds flitted among the bushes, a goat looked at us curiously, the sounds from our kin at their daily tasks drifted up the hillside. The sun shone benignly down on us as we three sat, staring at where our fathers remains lay beneath the earth. It was time to say farewell, leave that hillside with its burdens. Leave our fathers.

Diripi is a sailor to his core. If he is not out upon the Great Green Sea, he droops, bored and cranky, although he is the least cranky of fellows when sailing. He needs the stiff winds ruffling his hair, needs the soft winds caressing his cheeks, needs to feel the salt spray from high winds soaking him. He revels in testing his skills against pirates who inhabit the waters, as he revels in testing his skills against the storms which sweep through unexpectedly. He knows the trade routes; he knows all those who live along the sea coasts. He knows the traders and how to make a living buying and selling the luxury goods that have become necessary all along the routes: wool and ceramics from Crete to Egypt, linen and glassware from Egypt to Crete, cedars from where my kin now live, to Egypt for masts and sturdy planks for the sailing ships, perfumes and unguents from the far places, and gems that make their way from the far hills.

Who might want to come with us that might be useful? Arudara asked.

Arudara, although a jeweler, will be Diripi’s sailing companion. Except when he is in the presence of jewels, Arudara is as practical as Diripi—he can buy and sell anything. Armed with his woven, leather-handled knife from Egypt, he is a good man in a fight—and there are enough of those to keep the two of them wary and alert.

Bakiri and his companions might be ready to return to Egypt, for I think they tire of being absent from their homes, I replied.

My desire to see Amarna has brought us down from that hillside of mourning and sadness. The images that come to me in the night are becoming stronger and more insistent, clearer – I see Thutmose walking around his workshop; I see Hasna coming to him on errands from Pharaoh, and I see her, calm by Thutmose’s side as he works on a clay sculpture. They walk in the bright sun, learning each other’s minds before they come together as man and woman. All around them is menace. In my nighttime dreams, they seemed to know that their time, and Amarna’s time, was short. Now these dreams appear to me in the daytime, too. I must go to where Thutmose, our revered artist ancestor lived, worked, wooed and won Hasna, and in doing so founded our kin. I am to find something, discover something of great beauty in the dead city of Amarna.

There is danger—that, I know—but danger is everywhere. My kin knows that our refuge is temporary, as are all refuges. Here, the trees are tall and protect us from the sun; the rain comes so that crops grow. All of us leave our homes to stand in the rain, glad to be away from the drought in the Land of Two Rivers. The children are putting on weight and growing as food becomes easier to find: dates from the thriving trees, meat from plump goats and sheep, and succulent grapes that hang heavy on their vines.

Later, as the sun beamed down through the green leaves, I found our leader, Petros the Wise, along with Bakiri and the other elders, quietly walking among the new homes of the kin. A small child raced around a corner, pursued by a vengeful goose, bumped into the elder, and fell over. The dirt was brushed off and he was set on his feet as the complacent goose waddled off. Petros the Wise, with the child tugging at his hand, listened to the child’s mother, who was telling him of crops she had put in. He asked her if she had enough fuel for fires, for frost on the grass in the early morning heralded the cold season’s approach.

Bakiri, a visiting elder from Egypt, was talking war mares with the men, listening carefully. Petros the Wise and Bakiri stopped by the small house that the Healer used for those who were ill or very old and asked him if he had all the help that he needed. He could always use more, he replied.

Bakiri and Petros the Wise walked arm and arm, almost as if they were brothers, although they are not. The bright light exposed white streaks in their hair, exposed skins lined from years in the sun and harsh weather, but their lean bodies still showed their vitality and strength. Kaliq, my childhood friend and fellow mischief-maker, was preparing himself for the day, hopefully far off, when he would take up the burden of leadership that Petros the Wise has carried with such shrewd skill for so long. Kaliq would be ready.

Nahid, come and join us. Petros the Wise narrowed his eyes when I paced alongside him. What are you planning? And how can we help you?

There was no need for ceremonial greetings—this was my kinsman and leader. I need to go to the abandoned city of Amarna. Diripi and Arudara wish to come along.

Why? Bakiri looked at me in astonishment. Nothing remains. Amarna is nothing but ruins now—everyone left when Pharaoh died. They took everything of value and even took the stones of the buildings to use elsewhere, as my people have always done.

There is something still there. I’m sure of it. My dream images tell me so.

Petros nodded. He was accustomed to hearing about images. Bakiri, taking his cue from him, relaxed.

I needed knowledge and so asked, Bakiri, is it safe to go there? I have asked the gold workers, but they left your land some time ago and are unsure.

Bakiri and Petros glanced at each other, linked arms with me, and headed towards the war mares, who were gathered in a fenced area. The war mares, ears alert, intelligent eyes fixed on their human visitors, came over to nuzzle them, lowering their heads and blowing warm air through their nostrils, sure of affection. Bakiri thought best when he was with