The Season of the Hyaena (Ancient Egyptian Mysteries) Read Online Free PDF

Magnificent.’
    ‘Like that?’ Tutu smacked his hands together. He had risen to a half-crouch. He clapped his hands again. ‘Like that, Mahu?’ he repeated. ‘As if the Great Vision did not exist?’
    ‘A dream,’ I replied, ‘a nightmare. We were all led astray; now we have returned to the path of truth. We speak with one true voice. We have won the favour of the old gods. Once again Ma’at will rule from the Great Green to beyond the Fourth Cataract.’
    ‘We will still be blamed!’ Maya shouted.
    ‘Will we?’ Ay declared. ‘Give a man a good meal, let him drink deep of the wine, and he’ll soon forget his hunger and his thirst.’
    ‘You have decided on this, haven’t you?’ Meryre shouted. ‘You and your …’ He gestured at me. ‘Your Baboon of the South.’
    ‘We have discussed this,’ Ay agreed, smiling. ‘We see no other path forward. What do you recommend, my lord? That we all troop down to the Nile and take a barge upriver, back to the City of the Aten?’
    ‘I object,’ Meryre bellowed.
    ‘We will compromise,’ Ay declared soothingly. ‘It’s best if Tutankhamun, at least for a while, was moved from Thebes. Let him return to the City of the Aten until,’ he gestured with his fan, ‘Ma’at, truth and harmony are restored. Look, my lords.’ Ay turned in his chair to address Meryre and his coven. ‘The worship of the Aten will not be proscribed; he is just one God amongst many.’ He gestured across the Royal Circle. ‘Our proposal has the support of many. Generals Horemheb and Rameses will bring the other regiments down to Memphis and Thebes; their ranks will be purged, incompetent officers, derelict in their duty, asked to retire.’
    ‘You mean those owing allegiance to the Aten?’ Meryre asked.
    ‘No capable officer will be dismissed,’ Horemheb responded.
    ‘Well, that’s our plan.’ Ay unrolled the scroll. ‘Or at least it was, but I have some news for you which will cast a shadow over all our well-laid schemes.’
    ‘My lord?’ Huy asked.
    ‘According to this,’ Ay shook his piece of papyrus, ‘Pharaoh Akenhaten has returned to Egypt.’

neka

(Ancient Egyptian for ‘a serpent fiend’)

Chapter 2
    For a while the council chamber echoed with cries and shouts. I could only gape at Ay. Horemheb and Rameses sat shocked. Meryre, however, sprang to his feet, screaming at Ay.
    ‘Why didn’t you tell us immediately? Why now?’ Even then I thought he was overacting!
    Ay’s gaze shifted to me, a faint smile on his lips. The wily mongoose! He’d kept this information back to shock us but only after he had reminded us that in the eyes of many we were reviled as traitors, the cause of Egypt’s downfall, cursed by both factions, those who hated Akenhaten as well as those who supported him. The only reason we hadn’t lost our heads or been hung from the Wall of Death was that we still held power, the reins of the chariots firmly gripped in our hands. Whatever happened, we were damned and damned again. If Akenhaten had returned, he’d show little mercy to those he’d once considered his friends, who had betrayed his Great Vision.
    ‘But he’s dead! He’s dead!’ Rameses sprang to his feet, his face contorted with fury, his screams drowning out the rest of the cries and shouts. ‘Akenhaten is dead! He has to be dead!’
    ‘Is he?’ Meryre yelled back. ‘Where’s his corpse? Where?’
    The question stilled the clamour. Meryre had raised the spectre of all our nightmares. Ay held up his hand for silence.
    ‘Let us,’ he announced, ‘tell you what we know. An impostor, yes,’ he continued stilling the clamour, ‘an impostor has emerged out of the deserts of Sinai claiming to be the Pharaoh Akenhaten, proclaiming himself “Beautiful as the Forms of Ra, the Unique One of Ra”. He is accompanied by a woman who claims to be Nefertiti. They hold the Imperial Cartouche and are issuing proclamations under those seals. They fly the standards and pennants of the