For The Love of Aten

By V. Ann Catherall-Penttila

An epic historical novel charting the turbulent life of one of history’s most enigmatic women. Nefertiti and pharaoh Akhenaten ruled over the wealthiest period of ancient Egyptian history, breaking with all conventions to realise their dynastic and religious dreams in the face of great hostility. Their legacy would stay buried for millennia under the sands of modern-day Amarna (the ancient city of Akhetaten), until 1912 and the discovery of her iconic bust.



This book tells the tale of a small girl from humble origins who, against the backdrop of an empire at its peak, is drawn inextricably and turbulently into the highest echelons of power to become the teenage Queen to Prince Akhenaton. Nefertiti must navigate the dangerous world of the court, where priests, soldiers and courtiers harbour ruthless personal ambitions that threaten her very existence. When her mercurial husband becomes Pharaoh, he begins a religious revolution which undermines the stability of the whole empire, endangers her children, and forces her into the arms of another.



This piece of historical fiction brings Nefertiti’s story alive, meanwhile, increasing questions abound about this beautiful powerbroker and the feverish hunt for Nefertiti’s tomb continues.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brown Dog Books
• Release date: Aug 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9781839525322

Book preview

PROLOGUE

In order that my reader will more easily understand the background to my story, I will give a brief outline of some of the history of Egypt, with a short description of the peoples of the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea at that epoch, prior to the emergence of Atenism.

About 1700 BCE the Greek island of Thera (modern Santorini) had suffered a series of volcanic eruptions over a period of two-hundred years. To the end of this there was an eruption of such magnitude that the ancient island of Caphtor (modern Crete) was destroyed by tidal waves, and of Santorini itself only one-third of the island remained above the waves. Most of the island disappeared beneath the waves within days. The tidal waves and atmospheric disturbances that ensued caused massive floods and widespread destruction in all the lands around the Mediterraneum. More especially, the sophisticated and advanced cultures of Mycenae and Minoa were almost completely extinguished and never afterwards were they to regain their former glory. Even today, the levels of pink volcanic ash on Santorini are up to fifty metres deep in places. All around the coasts of Anatolia and North Africa too there are corresponding levels of this pink ash at levels contemporaneous with the explosion. This cataclysm was very likely the cause of the biblical flood of Genesis. Noah was obviously more far-sighted than many of his countrymen, as was the Babylonian Gilgamesh who also recorded the flood.

Prior to the Theran catastrophe, the civilisation of Egypt was already more than a thousand years old. The ancient shepherd astronomers of old had given way to the highly organised priesthood of Amun. There is a school of thought (me!) who believes that the first pyramid was built to provide a constant, from whose corners the astronomer priests could observe the sky through generation to generation and plot the movements of the heavens.

At that epoch the earth was in the age of Aries the ram, and therefore it is no coincidence that the god Amun was symbolised by statues of a human body with the head of a ram. Other, lesser gods were Anubis the jackal, who represented Sirius the dog star, and Hathor the cow goddess, who represented Taurus the bull. The other symbols of the Egyptian pantheon corresponded with the ancient Babylonian symbols too.

The priests of Amun recognised the temporal sway of the pharaohs, although it is doubtful that even Cheops, the first pharaoh of the first dynasty, could have remained in power without the backing of the powerful priesthood. It may be that Cheops was flattered and cajoled into providing the required investment and manpower to build the first pyramid by the promise of having the most illustrious mausoleum in the world.

Even the scientists of today are compelled to provide pragmatic applications of their research in order to attract the necessary funding for their projects. There is nothing new under the sun.

Prior to the flooding and damage to northern Egypt in the wake of the destruction of Thera, the Egyptian capital was On, close to the later capital called Memphis and situated near modern Cairo.

Throughout the history of Ancient Egypt and the Ancient Greek cultures of Mycenae and Minoa, there appears to have existed close and harmonious social and trading relationships. This may have been because both cultures had diverged from the same original people and culture. It is possible that Ancient Greek and Ancient Egyptian were related languages, although written in different scripts. They may have been as closely related as modern English and Swedish.

At the same epoch, Caphtor’s population were known as Keftiu. Extant Egyptian scripts refer extensively to these Keftiu. The tidal waves generated by the explosion of Thera swamped Caphtor, and Knossos, the major city, was destroyed. Refugees from Caphtor and many other of the Greek islands landed on the surrounding coasts of Anatolia, the Near East and North Africa. Sometimes their numbers were large enough for them to re-populate themselves as a distinct people from the indigenous people around them.

The Book of Amos in the Bible tells us that the Philistines (modern Palestinians) were Greek in origin. ‘And did I not deliver the Israelites out of Egypt and rescue the Philistines from Caphtor?’ To support this evidence, the tale of David and Goliath tells us that the giant wore chain mail. Only the Greeks are known to have had knowledge of iron-working at this stage of history; indeed the Bible tells us that the Hebrews had to take their plough shares down to the Philistines to be sharpened.

The Tuareg of Libya and the Sahara are also thought to be of Greek extract. There is evidence that they were a tribe called Garamantes with a capital at Garama (modern-day Germa) and had a written script of their own, which even they can no longer decipher. The men cover their faces even today, which could be explained by the evidence that they became brigands in ancient times, attacking the caravans going to West Africa from the East.

Ancient Egyptian was a language like Pitman’s shorthand system in that it involved writing down only the consonants. Vowels were only written if they appeared at the beginning of a word or if they were at the end of a word and are pronounced, such as ‘lvli’ meaning ‘lovely’, ‘agn’ meaning ‘again’ and ‘tmrw’ meaning ‘tomorrow’. Modern Arabic is written like this. From the point of view of later linguistic reconstruction this is not a good thing, because vowel quality tends to change with time and, later in time, the true quality of the vowels is difficult to determine. The word ‘Tuareg’ shows an opposing consonant sequence to the word ‘Garamantes’ but this may have been a deliberate attempt to hide their tribal identity to avoid vengeance for the attacks on the caravan routes. ‘Tuareg’ may therefore be the modern version of this ancient strategic change.

Northern Egypt was seriously weakened by the destruction that occurred in the aftermath of the destruction of Thera. The breakdown in the social organisation of the country that followed left Egypt vulnerable to invasion. Northern Egypt (Lower Egypt) was attacked and occupied by a Semitic horde called the Hyksos. They occupied the north of Egypt for nearly two-hundred years.

During this time a new capital was built in southern (Upper Egypt) at Thebes, which was five-hundred miles south of Memphis. Thebes became the centre of resistance against these hated foreigners who had subjugated their country. They had been able to subjugate Egypt so quickly because they came from the east on horseback. There were no horses in Egypt before this time. Eventually the superior social and administrative organisation of the Egyptians bore fruit and the first pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty led an army to the north and succeeded in defeating the Hyksos and driving them out of Egypt.

With the re-unification of Upper and Lower Egypt came the realisation that nearly two-hundred years of separation had led to important social changes, especially in the area of religion. In the south, Amun had continued to reign supreme amongst the gods of the Egyptian pantheon, but in the north the position of Re, the sun god, had become immensely strengthened by the large influx of Keftiu refugees who had brought with them their ancient traditions of worshipping the sun god Helios. To the Keftiu, Re was merely the Egyptian name for Ra.

The potential for political strife did not go undetected and in the post re-unification period it was considered prudent to accord Amun and Re equal divine powers and combine the two religious organisations into one dual system of worship. In this way religious unrest was avoided and power could be conveniently retained by the same groups as before. This policy appears to have been successful from the point of view of history, although there might have been some unrest at grassroot levels at the time. It is interesting at this point to note that the Keftiu continued to keep a separate identity in Egypt and, indeed, do so to this day, though their name has undergone linguistic change and they now call themselves Copts. In truth, the Copts are still identified in origin by the Ancient Greek texts of their religious books, although the language is now far removed from modern Greek.

Less than one-hundred years after the expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt, a pharaoh by the name of Tuthmosis IV came to the throne of Upper and Lower Egypt. Tuthmosis IV had resided at Thebes, which continued to be the capital of the Two Lands, as it was often referred to. Tuthmosis IV is thought to be the pharaoh who promoted the Hebrew patriarch Joseph to the position of grand vizier, the leading advisor to the pharaoh. As a Semite, Joseph must have been looked upon with great mistrust by many of the Egyptian nobles who, no doubt, equated him with the hated Hyksos. The Bible tells us that the Egyptians would not eat at the same table as Semites, so it must have been a sort of cold war situation. In spite of such disastrous beginnings as an imprisoned slave, his intuition and intelligence served him well when he was brought before the pharaoh as an interpreter of dreams.

The Bible (Genesis 41:43) says that Joseph rode in the second chariot after pharaoh, therefore, we know that Joseph could not have been in Egypt before the eighteenth dynasty because there were no horses in Egypt before then. Genesis also tells us that Joseph became ‘father unto pharaoh’ but this could not be so unless Joseph had a daughter who was married to the pharaoh. Although the Bible gives no direct evidence that Joseph did have a daughter, it does say that he married the daughter of the high priest of On in northern Egypt. His wife was called Asenaath. The Bible also tells us that he had two sons Manasseh and Ephraim. Later on in Genesis we are told that the total number of Israelites who came into Egypt were three score and six (66) and that altogether the number of ‘Israelite souls’ in Egypt were three score and ten (70). Sixty-six plus Joseph, Manasseh and Ephraim make sixty-nine, so who was the seventieth soul? Being important enough to be considered a soul, but not important enough to be named, indicates that this soul was a female! Simple mathematical deduction implies that Joseph had a daughter and that she married the pharaoh, thus making Joseph ‘father unto pharaoh’.

It is obvious that Joseph did not use his own name officially as grand vizier because there is no written evidence of a Joseph, or Yussef, as it was in Arabic and Hebrew, in the Egyptian records. There is, however, a grand vizier called Yuya. He was the only commoner to be buried in the Valley of the Kings, which denotes his closeness to the throne. Yuya was the father of a daughter called Tiya (note the ya- suffix). The Egyptian records tell us that Queen Tiya was the daughter of a slave and that she married Amenophis III, the son of Tuthmosis IV, when he was thirteen and Tiya was nine years old. It is known that Tuthmosis IV died young, and marriage at such an age, young even for that period, could have been used as a method of securing the throne.

It was the custom of the Egyptians to incorporate in their own names the name of their god. This may have been a way of denoting their birth month. In this way Tuthmosis means Moses, whose god was Toth, and Amenophis means Ophis, whose god was Amun. If Joseph also adopted this custom as a way of assimilating into Egyptian society, he may have become Yussef, whose god was Yahweh, i.e. Yuya.

Yahweh is Ancient Hebrew for Jehovah. In this way Joseph would have been able to ‘Egyptianise’ his name without renouncing his faith, while at the same time no offence could be caused to the priesthood of Amun-Re because they did not know what the Ya stood for. As his father-in-law was the high priest of On, he may have received some judicious advice in this matter.

Added weight is given to the above theory by the fact that the mummy of Yuya in Cairo museum shows that the body was laid out with its arms crossed over its chest, whereas Egyptians were always buried with their arms straight down by their sides. In addition to this, the mummy does not have pierced ears, and yet pierced ears were an integral sign of Egyptian nobility.

It is obvious that Joseph’s faith was very important to him; perhaps it was all he had to cling to during the seven years he spent in prison on trumped-up charges. It is probable that Abraham and Sarah, with their small clan, had left Ur in Chaldea (present-day Iraq) because of their strong beliefs on monotheism, in what was a refusal to accept the polytheistic beliefs in the society around them. Babylon and the surrounding states were all societies with a plethora of gods and goddesses. Indeed, both Abram and Sara incorporated the infix ‘ah’ into their names after leaving Ur, according to the Bible. This syllable obviously had meaning, because it appears in many names in Hebrew, including Noah. ‘Ya’ might have been a later form of the idea, which also appears as ‘ah’ and ‘ha’. Unfortunately, I do not have a real knowledge of Ancient Aramaic to research this further! As Joseph’s wife also changed her name and assumed the same suffix, Tuya must have converted to her husband’s religion and their daughter Tiya also. This conversion was probably kept secret, one would think. It seems that Joseph tried to assimilate as far as he could without compromising his principles. People in love do not accentuate their differences, after all, and Joseph seems to have been a born diplomat.

Amenophis III came to the throne on the death of his father, Tuthmosis IV, when the young prince was only thirteen years old. With Yuya as grand vizier, and effectively regent, he would have had a great influence on the ideas of the young pharaoh and it must be assumed that Joseph would have instructed the young Amenophis in his ideas of religion as he probably also did to Tuthmosis before him. Joseph’s ability to interpret the pharaoh’s dream as a prediction of the forthcoming famine must have impressed Tuthmosis, the priests of Amun not being able to interpret the dream.

Why did Yuya choose the name ‘Aten’ for the Egyptian name of Yahweh? According to some texts the word meant ‘breath’ and also ‘ray’. Both these meanings denote abstracts, as in the phrase ‘the breath of life’, and the meaning ‘ray’ would have a fortuitous connection with the sun and, therefore, could lull a sun-worshipper into believing that the difference between Atenism and Re-ism was only marginal. I suspect it was crafty manipulation of a very dangerous situation, which allowed him to continue worship of his own god without alienating the priesthood of Amun-Re too much. Genesis describes God as ‘a spirit moving over the waters’, i.e. their god could not be symbolised with statues like the Babylonian gods or the Egyptian gods. It seems that Joseph tried to stay as close as he could to the Ancient Hebrew word ‘ruach’, meaning ‘spirit’.

For whatever reason, Amenophis III began to elevate a new god called ‘Aten’ to a position of prominence early on in his reign. The young pharaoh gave Tiya a present of a new royal barge called The Aten Gleams. The priesthood of Amun must have looked upon this with displeasure if not downright rancour. It was a definite encroachment upon their power. As Tiya was the mother off Amenophis IV, who later took the name Akhenaten, meaning ‘Devoted to the Aten’ and instituted monotheism in Egypt, then we can be pretty sure he absorbed monotheism with his mother’s milk. The message to the priesthood could not have been clearer.

During the years of famine, so accurately predicted by Joseph, the pharaoh’s silos had been full of grain when many Egyptian landowners were suffering hunger. The priests of Amun had failed to prophesy the famine. Tuthmosis IV must have become convinced that the Aten was at least as powerful as Amun-Re.

The Bible tells us that many people had to sell their land to the pharaoh in order to obtain grain to make bread and fodder to keep their cattle alive. Many old and proud families must have been affected by these events. We are told that when the famine was over they were allowed to continue on their land as tenant farmers who had to pay an annual tax of twenty percent of their income. Such laws as these must have been exceedingly unpopular with the people and the priesthood, as sacrifices too would have become much less generous in a time of hardship. The personal wealth of the royal family was enormously increased, making them much less dependent upon the priests of Amun-Re for their power. No doubt but that Joseph was vilified for his strategic part in all this. In addition, when he brought his sixty-six relatives into Egypt and established them at Goshen in the north-east of the Nile delta, it must have seemed to many that the Hyksos had returned under a different name to usurp the throne of Egypt. Perhaps Joseph changed the name of his family from Hebrew, meaning descendants of Abraham to Israelites, as this was a name unknown to the Egyptians, who were previously cognizant of the Hebrews, whom they called the Hapiru. The poisonous seeds of rancour between the Hebrews and the Egyptians may have been sown during the summer of Joseph’s success.

In contrast to the above, the long history of peaceful co-existence between the Egyptians and the Greeks meant that the assimilation of the Keftiu into Egypt was different in degree and quality from that of the Israelites, who were settled into the north-eastern district of Goshen. Perhaps their immigration into this area entailed compulsory land redistribution within the local population. This was an area that had suffered occupation of the Hyksos. Joseph perhaps underestimated the bitterness of the Egyptians’ feelings towards the Semites and his own agrarian reforms. We shall never know, but I suspect that the Hebrews were established in Goshen because Joseph may have wanted them at least near to their previous region in case things went badly wrong for him.

My story is not the story of Joseph, however, interesting though he was. It is the story of Nefertiti and Akhenaten, whom history disgraced and time forgot until their statues emerged again from the sands of time, having survived the millennia intact. Nefertiti, with her classical beauty, and Akhenaten, with his body badly deformed by rickets, may have been opposites from the accepted norms of beauty, but history preserved through more than three-thousand three-hundred years clear evidence of the love between them. It was a love which was intense in its passion and poignant in its manifestations.

The statue of Nefertiti wearing the blue and gold crown of Upper and Lower Egypt shows that she was much lighter in complexion than the Egyptians of southern Egypt. There is a slight rosiness to her skin colour which indicates that she might have been Keftiu in origin. In any case, as a citizen of the north she would have grown up in the more densely populated area of the Nile delta and been influenced by its maritime aspects, a more cosmopolitan environment than the people who surrounded her at the Theban court. Much more important, she would have grown up with the legends of the time the gods were angry and almost destroyed the world with fire and floods. She would have been used to the festivals of Re-Helios to placate his anger. How much closer was Re to her traditions than Amun with his ram’s head, whose constellation was far away in the night sky. Re’s size and power were apparent every morning and every sunset.

How understandable that her beloved Amio should try to reconcile the differences between their faiths. How normal that the young lovers should be so full of enthusiasm and optimism that they truly believed that they could change, almost overnight, a system which had endured for more than one-thousand five-hundred years. How deep their despair and disappointment when that self-same system finally destroyed all their dreams.

Dear Amio and Neferu. May you rise again from your ashes like the phoenix, to live and love again in another time and space. May this be the will of the Aten.

CHAPTER 1

When Nefertiti was born in Heliopolis, the city was known as On. It was one of the main dwelling places of the Keftiu in Egypt and had preserved its Greek identity even throughout the Hyksos occupation. The town was busy, situated as it was just north of Memphis on the east bank of the Nile. All the river traffic stopped here, and it was an important centre of commerce, though it lacked the large palaces of Memphis and the grand administrative buildings with the comings and goings of its vast military contingent. The second largest division of the Egyptian army was based at Memphis and served to protect the whole of Lower Egypt, though Egyptians did not feel that they were under threat at that epoch.

In the streets of On, the Keftiu language was almost as common as Egyptian, and the dress of the women was also somewhat different from that of the women of Upper Egypt. Here the women wore their hair long and twisted into large chignons at the nape of the neck. Here and there could be seen women who affected the sharp fringes and intricate plaits of the modish ladies of Thebes but, in general, these were the wives of important public officials, and the majority of the wives and daughters of merchants and more minor officials continued to wear the loosely folded dresses and uplifted hairstyles of the classical Minoan period, now long past its glory days.

On was also different in its religious life from Memphis. There were few temples here to the many gods of the Egyptian pantheon so popular elsewhere. The majority of the temples at On, certainly all the important ones, were dedicated to Re, the sun god, known also as Helios to the Keftiu. Helios had always been the most important of the Greek gods. He was thought to drive his chariot across the sky in his daily ritual which brought life and warmth to the earth.

Nefertiti was born in the year that we call 1390 BCE. Her parents were Greek in origin, but her name was Egyptian and meant ‘A beautiful one has come’. Nefertiti was born at a happy and prosperous time in her parent’s marriage, when her father had recently been made a potiphar of On. Amenophis III was pharaoh of all Egypt at the time, and Tiya was his great queen and chief wife. Egypt was at peace and there had been several years of good harvests. Life seemed secure and unruffled.

Vassiliou, Nefertiti’s father, came from a long line of merchants and the family was very close knit, as most Greek families still are today. Their shop in On sold spices, dried fruits, nuts, sugars, pottery, polished mirrors and wines. On the coast at Rashid, the brother of Vassiliou, Nefertiti’s Uncle Giorgios, was also a merchant and he stocked and sold silks and other materials of all kinds from all over the Mediterraneum and from the Orient, brought by the caravans led by strange looking men from the east. There were silks from China, beautifully woven cottons from Damascus, lace from Cyprus and light muslin and heavy cottons from Egypt itself. Just as important as the texture of these fabrics was their colour, and in Uncle Giorgios’ warehouse it was possible to find every colour that the heart of a little girl could desire.

When Nefertiti was two years old her brother Demetrious was born, but in the second decan after the birth of his son, Vassiliou was widowed and left to bring up his children without his beloved Elena, who died of an infection, an all-too-common occurrence in those days. Neferu and Demi, as Nefertiti and Demetrious were affectionately known, grew up in the day-to-day care of their maternal grandparents and their mother’s sister, Aunt Lea. Neferu never later remembered her mother directly and it was mainly from Grandma’s stories that she built up a picture of the mother who had died.

Grandma never tired of telling the children stories of her own childhood and of how their ancestors had arrived here in Egypt. Neferu would sit enthralled on Grandma’s knee, cushioned by her ample bosom, listening to the frightening tale of earthquakes and explosions. It seemed that those distant ancestors had fled from Mykonos to Crete, but finding that too covered in thick, muddy silt, and death and despair around them, they had continued south until they had landed at Rashid, on the coast of the Nile delta in the west. Other Greeks like them, who had also survived the deluge that the gods had sent on them for their sins, fled to wherever they could find a refuge. Some had gone to Libya, where some of them had become semi-nomadic, travelling by camel at night to attack the rich caravans bringing the silks and spices of the faraway Orient to trade across the wide continent of Africa.

Grandma would purse her lips in disapproval in the telling of this, as their trading boats had also been attacked occasionally by pirates when on the sea at night-time. Still others of the Minoan and Mycenean peoples had been soldiers of the palace guard, and many of these Palastoi had landed on the coast of Byblos and moved south to form a nation of their own called Palestine. Although they had formed an uneasy peace with their Semitic neighbours, they had never again managed to achieve the level of culture that the refugees who came to Egypt had been lucky enough to access. Neferu never tired of hearing Grandma’s stories, even though sometimes, when Grandma kissed her goodnight, she would feel afraid in the dark. Occasionally, only if she was very afraid, she would creep into Demi’s bed and, if she was very, very afraid, she would poke him until he woke up. Then she would say, ‘There is no need to be afraid, Demi. I am here and I won’t let the bogeyman get you.’ Sometimes Demi would whimper in fright at this, and she would hug him tight to protect him and, in doing so, she would forget her own fright. Retrospectively, when she thought about this as a teenager, Neferu used to feel very guilty, especially as poor Demi was always so grateful for his big sister’s protective presence.

Grandfather was a jeweller. He mainly worked in silver, which comprised about two-thirds of his work. Gold was expensive and large pieces were made only on the order of the customer. Grandpa was very proud of his craftsmanship. He made the traditional designs, but he also liked to make up pieces of his own design, and Grandma had many beautiful earrings and bracelets made by Grandpa. When Grandma was in a good mood and her work was done, she would bring out her jewellery box and Neferu would play with the jewels and pretend she was a beautiful princess at the court, and how the pharaoh and all the princes would fall in love with her.

Aunt Lea would smile at her fancies and say ‘Maybe’, but Grandma had no time for Neferu’s fancies and would tell Neferu that her feet were not on the ground properly. She was to marry a nice Keftiu boy from a good family and give her father many grandsons! Neferu would sniff. She didn’t know any suitably romantic Keftiu boys. In the mornings she attended school and there were only the neighbour’s sons and daughters there. The only other boy she knew was Yussef, her cousin, and he was two whole years older than her and teased her unmercifully. At seven she could already read and write, but she found mathematics difficult. She was good at adding but taking away was a bit of a problem and, if she asked Yussef to help, she had to suffer his arrogant remarks on how girls just were not up to it.

The week in Egypt consisted of ten days and, at the end of every decan, the family would go to the temple to make their sacrifice to Re-Helios. At the age of seven Neferu was allowed to go for the first time, and the occasion was one of great excitement. Grandma brushed her hair until it shone, and then pinned it up on top of her head in grown-up style. Neferu felt very proud. At the entrance to the temple the family divided into two groups, the males on one side and the females on the other. After the intense heat of the sun bearing down on her head and shoulders, the coolness of the shadowed temple was a relief, and Neferu would watch the vestal virgins as they performed the traditional rituals. They looked very glamorous to her, whereas she always found the solemn figure of the high priestess a little frightening. In truth, Neferu found that after the usual rituals had been completed and the chanting of the prayers begun in earnest, her attention would wander. After a while, the smell of the incense and the other pungent smells made her feel sleepy, and only a warning tug on her arm from Grandma or Aunt Lea would bring her back to the present. By the time they left for home, Neferu was always ravenously hungry.

Every summer Grandma would pack all their clothes and they would take the river boat down to the coast to stay at the empty villa by the sea at Rashid. This was the time that Neferu and Demi loved most of all. Yussef would come with them too, and the three children would spend the four hottest decans on the coast. Afterwards, these times always seemed to Neferu to have been halcyon days and she wondered that she had not known at the time to savour them for the future in more detail.

Yussef was an orphan. He was really the second cousin of Neferu and Demi. His grandfather and her grandpa had been brothers, and his father had been Elena’s cousin. Like Elena, Yussef’s mother had also died in childbirth, and his father had died of a sudden fever four years later. Neferu’s uncle, Leandros, had taken the boy into his home and it was planned that he would eventually inherit his father’s share of the jewellery business and take his father’s place. To this end, Yussef was apprenticed to his uncle and Neferu’s grandpa at the age of nine in order to learn all the necessary skills of a goldsmith.

The vast majority of Keftiu in Egypt had done fairly well in their new motherland. Greeks have always had a flair for business, and in the narrow streets of the towns and villages of the Nile delta there were many little whitewashed shops with Keftiu names written over them. Most of these were only three or four metres wide, often consisting of no more than recesses into the long lines of buildings along the street. At the end of the day the little shops would be cleared of their goods and re-stocked the next day, or in the case of the more affluent businesses, thick wooden shutters would be locked into place with large copper keys. There were few Keftiu in positions of real power in government. Partly this stemmed from the fact that Thebes was located almost five-hundred miles from On and, even though there was a flourishing river traffic on the Nile, it seemed that the Keftiu were not drawn in large numbers to the stultifying climate of southern Egypt. They were a people who liked to feel a proximity to the sea. Those Keftiu who were involved in politics tended to band together and were, in the main, holding middle-ranking administrative positions in Memphis, On and the other important towns of the Nile delta area.

Neferu’s father, Vassiliou, who had been devoted to his wife, was a handsome man, and Grandma was constantly trying to marry him off to one of the daughters of her friends. So far, Vassiliou had remained a widower. As a potiphar of On, he was quite well known in the community and the family was respected. Vassiliou had progressed in both his business and official career and was a very busy man, often away from home for long periods. It was Yuya the Israelite who had promoted Vassiliou to the rank of potiphar, during one of his frequent visits to Lower Egypt on the pharaoh’s business. Perhaps the old Hapiru felt an empathy with the Keftiu, who were also a minority in this land. As the years passed, Vassiliou was away from home more and more often and Uncle Demetrious, after whom Demi had been named, had to run the business with the help of hired salesmen. Sometimes her father had to travel as far as Thebes and when he returned there would always be presents for Neferu and Demi and exciting descriptions of life in the faraway, exotic capital.

When her father was away Neferu would attach herself closely to Grandpa. Uncle Leandros almost ran the workshop now and Yussef was a very apt pupil. Grandpa often took time off nowadays to sit outside the shop on a plain stool and pass the time of day in conversation with his friends or playing backgammon with them. The old man was very fond of Yussef and treated him just like his own grandson, Demi. When Grandpa was busy there was always Aunt Lea to talk to. She was Mother’s older sister and had been widowed many years ago before Neferu was born. Aunt Lea had no children of her own and was somewhat under Grandma’s thumb. She reminded Neferu sometimes of a little, bright bird with her sharp, nervous movements and her quiet, self-effacing manner. Lea was as plain as her sister Elena had been pretty, but there was a decided charm about her that stemmed from the goodness of her heart. When she smiled the round twinkling eyes transformed her face, making it suddenly enormously attractive. She was very shy and let Grandma dominate her too much in Neferu’s opinion. Still, it was a loving domination, and the mouse-like Lea did not seem to object. Neferu adored Aunt Lea, who could be prevailed upon to support her and Demi if they wanted to resort to strategies contrary to Grandma’s will. Aunt Lea was very good at pouring oil on troubled waters. She had taken upon herself the role of surrogate mother to all three children and applied herself willingly to the task.

In the spring of Neferu’s seventh birthday her father married again, and for a time a dark and jealous cloud entered Neferu’s life. Both she and Demi felt themselves shut out of their father’s life. His new wife, Shosen, was Egyptian and therefore they were no longer allowed to speak Keftiu at home. Neferu felt an intense jealousy of the woman who she felt had taken her place in her father’s heart. More and more she found herself passing most of her time after lessons with Grandma and Aunt Lea. She and Demi grew much closer, and though Shosen was kind, there was always a distance between them which never entirely disappeared. Neferu loved her father as much as she had ever done, and he remained as warm and affectionate as before, but things were never quite the same. When Shosen’s first child was born, Neferu found pleasure in helping to care for it, and the ones which came after, but Demi and Yussef became the most important people in her world.

CHAPTER 2

The summer of Neferu’s tenth year was different from all previous ones, yet there was no portent of this in the spring. Grandma and Aunt Lea had packed as usual for the summer move to the coast. Grandpa retired officially that year and Uncle Leandros had to take on extra help so that Yussef could be spared for the summer. He was twelve now and felt himself very grown up. All the men said that he had the talent of an excellent goldsmith, and his designs were much in demand by the customers. Grandpa reckoned that in another year Yussef could be counted a qualified artist.

In previous years Vassiliou had often accompanied them to Rashid for at least part of the holiday, but this summer Shosen was expecting her second baby and she wanted to stay in On so as to be close to her own family, who lived in Memphis. Although Neferu knew she would miss her father very much, nothing could dim the pleasure of anticipation. All the year round she looked forward to the summer holiday in the little whitewashed, mud brick villa a little way along the coast from Rashid. She and Demi talked about it for decans in advance and even the newly sophisticated Yussef was heard to make excited remarks.

Packing was the worst part and Grandma grumbled constantly that she was getting too old for all this upheaval, but while she grumbled, she packed and talked about how she was looking forward to seeing Giorgios and the family again. It was not until their luggage had been put on board the river boat that Neferu felt that the holiday was upon them.

The Nile was constantly busy with traffic. Some of the bigger boats carried crews of fifty or more with the oarsmen counting for about thirty of these. These large boats made very good time and could cover the distance between On and Thebes in just five days. The smaller boats were slower, of course, and their speed depended in part upon the amount of freight and number of passengers they carried. Usually, the journey between On and Rashid took four days, although it was only a distance of two-hundred miles. The cause of this were the many stops to drop passengers off and pick up new ones.

Yussef was two years older than Neferu and therefore it seemed normal to both her and Demi that it should be Yussef who organised their play. That year was no different in its beginning than any of the previous ones and once they arrived at Rashid, they made their usual sorties to the beach to swim, collect shells and generally have a good time. Uncle Giorgios and his family would come and visit them, and they would, in turn, visit them. Every year the grown-ups would remark upon how much taller the children had grown.

When the children left in the mornings to go to the beach, Grandma would make up a basket of bread and fruit and warn them not to swim too far out. They always played in the same cove, which was only five minutes from the villa. This was their secret place and they all made promises to each other that they would never share it with anyone else.

That year Grandma and Aunt Lea decided that the children were growing up past the age of innocence. It was obvious to them that Yussef was maturing fast, and the two women did not wish to accentuate this fact by making Yussef alone wear a loin cloth. To this end all the children were made to wear loin cloths now that they were growing up. That was the first sign that things were about to change, but it was lost on Neferu and Demi, who merely felt pleasure that they were considered in a more mature light. Yussef understood the meaning of the move and was alternatively proud and embarrassed.

As before, the children continued to explore the caves and to collect unusual and beautiful stones and shells, to scratch their names in the rocks and to swim races out to the rock situated about a hundred metres from the shore. Just as before it was always Yussef who won, though occasionally he would throw the race to her or Demi, pretending to be tired. She always knew when he did it that he was just humouring her, but she appreciated the gesture.

In the evenings the family would sit outside with the moonlight and an oil lamp to illuminate their evening. Grandpa would tell stories of Caphtor and the fabulous minotaur who terrorised the island. He would sigh and talk of retiring to the island home of his ancestors, but Grandma would only snort and tell him that he would be going on his own. She understood that it was only his fantasy and that he did not really intend to undertake such a perilous journey. In his heart of hearts Grandpa was amply satisfied by his present circumstances and way of life.

It was a wonderful summer that year and, as usual, the time they all had dreaded began to draw close. Neferu had not even been unduly disturbed by the fact that her father had not even managed to pay them a single visit. Previously his impromptu appearances at the villa had been the cause of great jubilation with the children. This year there had only been greetings sent by one of his business associates who happened to be journeying in their direction. Only one more decan to go before they must commence the return journey to On, Yussef to his final year of apprenticeship and Neferu and Demi to their classes.

On a particularly sultry morning towards the middle of their last decan at Rashid, the children were in the back yard feeding the hens with grain. Grandma and Aunt Lea were in the kitchen preparing the vegetables for lunch. Neferu felt a little overcome by the intense heat and went to sit on the threshold at the back door. She became aware that Grandma and Aunt Lea were talking about them, and she shamelessly began to eavesdrop. Grandma was debating with Aunt Lea the wisdom of allowing the children to continue their unrestricted play together. Aunt Lea observed that Neferu still had the childish figure of a little girl, with the slight pot belly and undifferentiated waistline of that age, but that this time next year things would be entirely different. She begged Grandma not to spoil this last year of childhood innocence by touching upon the subject with Neferu before they returned to On.

Neferu pricked up her ears, her curiosity whetted. What did Aunt Lea mean? Grandma replied to her daughter in a tone of self-congratulation on how well she had instigated the novelty of the loin cloths that were not to be taken off even for swimming. The children had accepted the innovation without question. It was true, Neferu thought. She had noticed, of course, but strangely enough for her, she had not commented upon it or even stopped to analyse the reason for it for more than a fleeting second. Yussef’s attitude towards Neferu remained that of a slightly arrogant elder brother, affectionate but with superior camaraderie, and her attitude to Yussef remained that of an adoring younger sister, between their heated exchanges and infrequent quarrels, that is. As Neferu was considering what had been said, Grandma went on to say that it was her intention that Yussef and Neferu would eventually wed. It would cement the family together and be a most advantageous marriage.

In one brief moment Grandma had managed, entirely without her knowledge or intention, to blow away that innocence of childhood forever as far as Neferu was concerned. Fortunately, for Grandma’s own peace of mind, she remained unaware of the fact. The noise of footsteps alerted Neferu to the impending approach of Aunt Lea and she jumped up quickly and made as if she had just entered the passageway.

‘Aunt Lea, we have fed the hens. Can we go down to the beach now?’ she asked with just the faintest hint of a warmth in her cheeks.

‘Of course you can, child! The food basket is ready on the side there.’ Her aunt replied, pointing at the basket.

Grandma looked up as Neferu entered the kitchen. ‘Now mind you don’t lie out in the sun too long, Neferu!’ she remarked as she always did.

‘No grandma,’ Neferu dutifully replied.

‘And don’t go too far out to sea or go swimming alone,’ the old lady continued.

‘No, Grandma.’ Replied Neferu yet again.

‘And mind you are back here in time for your rest.’

‘Yes, Grandma.’

It was the same conversation they had every day before they went to the beach. It was a sort of ritual which suddenly this morning gained a new importance as Neferu wondered whether next summer she would be allowed to go swimming with the others at all. Grandma looked at her inquiringly. ‘Well! What is it child?’

Neferu started. ‘Nothing, Grandma,’ she said, leaning forward and planting a kiss on the old lady’s lips. ‘I love you, Grandma,’ she said suddenly.

‘And I love you too. Now be off with you and mind my words.’

‘Yes, Grandma.’

Carrying the basket, Neferu went to the door and called the boys to come. They made their way round the path and opened the gate into the front yard. The smell of the roses was mixed with the jasmine, and it was almost overpowering. Not for the first time she observed to herself that there was something very unpleasant about jasmine when its smell was so concentrated. Once on the little pathway on the cliffs they began to play ‘I spy’ as they walked, and Demi was annoyed because Neferu guessed ‘poppy’ right away. They had to give him another turn to appease him. He was only eight, after all.

At a special point on the edge of the cliff the children began to scramble down. Yussef and Neferu took it in turns to carry the basket. It weighed heavy with all the fruit and the pitcher of juice. They made their way to their secret cove. There was almost no breeze and the blue water lapped tentatively the edge of the sand. Even much further out there was very little spume to indicate the presence of those delicious rolls of water which enveloped you when you went further out.

The children made their way to the shallow cave where they usually deposited their food basket to keep it cool. Today they lingered in the cave longer than usual, making shapes and scratches with a sharp piece of rock. Demi was not managing very well and began to insist that Yussef engrave his name for him on the wall of the cave. Yussef did so carefully and with deliberation, taking his time until he was satisfied with the result. Demi was pleased, and after admiring it, he sat down on the damp sand to make a sandcastle with a moat around it.

Yussef continued to carve and Neferu began to be eager to get into the cool water of the sea. Even in the shadow of the cave it was very hot. She wanted to feel the delicious ripple of the tiny waves washing over her shoulders and her sticky face. Just then Yussef called Neferu over to admire his work. Neferu went up close and saw that he had carved his own name and hers in a cartouche. It was not something he had ever done before. Neferu was pleased. Somehow it looked very grown up, and she sensed something of a compliment. Yussef looked at her and smiled before saying lightly,

‘When we grow up, we will bring our children here and teach them how to swim.’

‘Will we?’ Neferu asked, her mind thrown back to the curious conversation between Grandma and Aunt Lea. She looked up at Yussef and was surprised to see him looking at her with a serious expression on his face.

‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘When we grow up, we will get married, and you can help me with the accounts. I will make all the most beautiful jewellery for you.’ Neferu happily nodded her head in agreement. She felt pleased at the implied continuity of a world where they would all always be together having fun. An image of herself as a beautiful lady, wearing jewellery of gold inlaid with lapis lazuli, entered her mind. Everyone would be green with envy, of course, she thought dreamily.

‘Will you teach me how to make the jewellery too?’ she asked suddenly.

‘Of course not,’ said Yussef flatly. ‘That’s men’s work. Ladies can’t do that,’ he added, a trifle scornfully.

‘Oh,’ said Neferu, feeling somewhat put down.

Noticing her crestfallen expression, Yussef added in a kinder tone, ‘You will look so beautiful that even the pharaoh will be envious when he sees you.’ Neferu’s good humour was restored by this gratifying remark, and she smiled again.

‘Well, I want to have a beautiful silver necklace so that everyone will notice me when I wear my court dress of silk, which covers my right shoulder and hangs in graceful folds down to my ankles, like the wife of the governor of Memphis. I saw her once when I went with father to visit his friends.’ Neferu pivoted daintily around and held out the imaginary folds of her gown.

Yussef laughed, and pulling her arm said, ‘Well, you’ve got a lot more growing up to do yet! Come on, let’s go for a swim! Come on, Demi, let’s have a race!’

The little boy scrambled up and they all raced down to the shore. Once at the edge they decided which rock was to be their goal and then they gave Demi his usual start. Yussef and Neferu plunged in simultaneously and the race was on. Yussef soon overtook Demi and was well ahead. Neferu was not a fast swimmer, but she soon caught up with her little brother and she hovered just behind him pretending that she just could not quite make it. Demi made valiant efforts, spurred on by her closeness and just managed, he thought, to reach the rock ahead of her.

In his haste to scramble up the rock, Demi caught his shin and an ugly graze appeared on his leg. It bled quite freely, and Demi began to cry when he saw it. Yussef reached down to help him up and looked at the leg closely. ‘It isn’t dangerous,’ he said. ‘It’s only a scratch.’

Neferu scrambled up the rock after him and took a look. ‘Don’t worry, Demi,’ she said reassuringly. ‘I’ll wrap a towel round it when we get back to the beach. It will soon stop bleeding.’ She put her wet hand over the graze. Whether this was to hide it from Demi’s frightened gaze or to stop the bleeding she really didn’t know. After a while Demi calmed down. Yussef showed Demi a scar on his arm where he had cut it a few months ago. The scar was about two centimetres long but quite wide. It was fully healed and a white colour. Demi was reassured. They lay back on the rock to get their breath back and enjoyed the warmth of the sun on their wet bodies. Yussef began to prise a limpet off the rock but, in spite of his efforts, it would not budge and after a while he gave up the attempt. He lay back and closed his eyes. After a companionable silence lasting a few minutes he said lazily, ‘Tell me when you have got your breath back and we’ll race back to the beach.’

‘Not yet.’ answered Neferu.

When Demi was ready, they gave him a start and watched as his lithe little body dived into the water and, after surfacing, began to swim with strong, sure strokes towards the shore. They gave him a bigger start than usual and allowed him to reach the shore first. He was jubilant. ‘I won, I won!’ he proclaimed loudly. The graze on his leg had started to bleed again slightly but Neferu patted it with a towel, and it soon stopped. Neferu brought out their basket and they sat down on the sand to eat a leisurely lunch. Swimming always made them hungry. Demi looked up and brought their attention to two people further along the beach about to take a dip. ‘I hope they don’t decide to come down here and discover our secret cave. This is ours and no one else is allowed in it.’

Neferu laughed but Yussef also looked suddenly annoyed, and he said aggressively, ‘You are right, Demi. This is our cave and no one else is allowed to come here. We mustn’t tell anyone else about it. Pact?’ They each held out their right hand and extended the index finger so that all three index fingers were touching at the tips. It was their own secret sign. Yussef withdrew his hand and said, ‘Don’t forget, or something dreadful will happen.’

Neferu shivered, in spite of the heat. ‘What will happen?’ she said with a slight intake of breath.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Yussef, regretting that he had said it. It seemed to give the whole thing a presentiment of fear. ‘I only meant that it would be a betrayal of our promise and that is a very, very serious thing.’ The other two nodded and felt special, wrapped up in the cocoon of their secrecy.

After eating their fill, the children stood up and began to collect their things together. Looking a little bedraggled, they made their way up the cliff. Somehow Neferu knew that it had been a very special day, though she could not think why. Something important had happened, a day to remember, she knew. She decided, as she sometimes did, that when she went to bed that night she would ponder over the day’s events until what it was had crystallised clearly and she could store it in her memory for future reference.

As the little white house came into view, they could see Grandma’s plump figure sitting on the porch. Neferu forgot her meditations in the excitement of showing the injury on Demi’s leg to her grandmother. Demi basked in the sympathy of Grandma’s tut-tuttings and began to enjoy the little drama. Little did they realise that Demi’s drama was only just beginning.

CHAPTER 3

The following day, the graze on Demi’s leg appeared a little red and inflamed. He declared it tender to the touch and Grandma made Yussef and Neferu take a large bowl down to the shore and bring her back some sea water. Grandma was a keen believer in the beneficial properties of sea water. It was an old Keftiu tradition that the salt in it was very good for healing wounds. Grandma boiled the water and waited until it was slightly warmer than tepid before she began to bathe Demi’s leg. Grandma was full of these ancient ideas of folk medicine and Grandpa would often mutter ‘mumbo jumbo’ or words to that effect. Still, he never interfered, and had cause to be grateful for Grandma’s mumbo jumbo in the past.

Demi was a bit tearful and tried to pull his leg away, so Grandpa sat with him and kept telling him about all the accidents he had suffered as a boy. According to him, he had never been known to cry. Demi’s eyes met Neferu’s, and she smothered a smile. Some of Grandpa’s tales were a bit tall even for him. After Grandma had bathed the leg, she bound it up with strips of cotton material left over from an old bed sheet and told Demi to rest. He was not allowed to go swimming that morning with Yussef and Neferu.

Grandpa was unwilling to let the older two go off alone and in the end a compromise was reached whereby Aunt Lea accompanied them. She said that she rather fancied a visit to the beach that day. It was decided that Grandpa would keep Demi company while Grandma prepared lunch. When Yussef and Neferu got up to leave, Demi tried to jump up too, to follow them, but Grandma pushed him down firmly, refusing to heed his objections, and Neferu could hear his angry protestations all the way down the path.

‘Poor Demi,’ she said, as they turned onto the cliff pathway. ‘I hope his leg gets better quickly.’

Aunt Lea smiled reassuringly. ‘Of course it will. Mother has always been the careful kind. It was just the same with us when we were small.’ Yussef and Neferu exchanged glances and smiled. It was hard to imagine Aunt Lea as a small girl. It was easier to imagine that Helios would come down from the heavens in his golden chariot. Grandma had always been Grandma, that was for sure; no two ways about it.

Once on the beach, Yussef and Neferu showed Aunt Lea their cave, and she was sworn to secrecy. She sat in the shade and watched them as they raced to the shoreline, her hand over her eyes to protect them from the glare. This time it was a race to win, as there was no Demi whose sensibilities had to be protected. In spite of her best efforts, Yussef still beat her to the rock, and she was panting breathlessly when she finally reached out to grab a gnarled outstretch of porous-looking rock whose surface was dented with hundreds of small holes as is typical of old larval eruptions. Carefully Neferu made her way up. It was rather painful trying to find a smooth foothold on the jagged surface of the rock and Yussef watched her with an amused expression on his face. He had found a good position on top of the rock. Finally Neferu sat down, her body glistening as the sun reflected off its wet surface.

For a time, she watched the little drops of water sparkling in the rays of the sun and wondered if that is what diamonds looked like. Grandpa had told her about this very rare, precious stone of which few had passed through his hands in his long career as a jeweller. Grandpa had said that there was no more beautiful stone in the whole world and that the light reflected from such a stone dazzled the eyes. After a moment Neferu lifted her gaze towards Aunt Lea on the beach. She seemed small now in the distance and was sitting up sharply, looking in their direction. Neferu waved to her and said to Yussef, ‘Wave to Aunt Lea, Yussef!’ He did so and they watched as Aunt Lea relaxed, leaning backwards against the wall of the cave. After a while she seemed to have fallen asleep.

When they had got their breath back, Yussef stood up. ‘Look Neferu!’ he said, pointing down the beach in the direction away from Rashid.

‘What is it?’ Neferu asked, scrambling up beside him, the wet loin cloth clinging uncomfortably to her.

‘Let’s explore down there. We’ve never been that way before,’ he said, looking down at her.

‘What about Aunt Lea?’ Neferu asked carefully. ‘Do you think she would let us?’

‘Why not?’ replied Yussef. ‘If we go right now before lunch she won’t mind.’

‘We’ll have to tell her,’ said Neferu doubtfully.

‘Of course.’ the boy replied with a shrug.

Moments later Yussef dived into the water and Neferu quickly followed. This time she made no effort to