The Metamorphoses of Titus

Akhenaten's Testament

Titus, sit here at my feet and get your pen and board ready. More than one I think will be needed. We are going to do some work, you and I, for we lack a gospel. You will be as Thoth, scribe to my Aten. It is not I that will write, rather that it that will be written. Through me. After me. By men who come after (there are always men who come after, Titus). These will write again as Thoth, the moon, after I have fallen below the horizon of the dark, when my bright eye no longer shines with the vision of its message. But these will need a point from which to depart. A starting point from which they can take the core of their teaching and change it. For, although this core that you will set down will surely be lost (there is always a lost document, Titus). Without this lost core, without this starting point, there will be nothing for them to change and with nothing to change there will be no new testament. The lost ur-text plays the same game as the lost god. The task of this god and of his text is to remain invisible. The archer aims his arrow at a target that he cannot see and knows he cannot reach. It is there. It may be there. Nonetheless, he must shoot his arrow as best he can. It is our task, Titus, to leave him that target.

I will sit here in the evening light, in the rays of the Aten as it goes to its daily rest, and dictate to you, my scribe, here in my unfinished palace as this city goes up around us and the great stone skeleton of the temple behind us is completed. There is urgency in this task for we are not secure, my god and I. I have to fight for him and see his potency every day, yet he knows not the ways of this land, the way it struggles with itself, against itself. And the old ways are strong, too strong for him, perhaps. I will need all my will to put down what I know and will do it without his help, after he has dropped below the hills to his daily rest. Without him. It will be better thus. He works through me and it is my tongue that must take the risks and speak his power to the world. Thus it is. Tell me if I speak too fast for my thoughts are singing in my mind and we must have a record of them, something to hide in our heart of hearts.

I, Pharaoh Amenhotep IV - Akhenaten wish to speak of the one god who reigns alone in heaven and of his kingdom. Splendid he rises in the lightland of the sky, the living Aten, creator of life, every morning a resurrection into glory. This I found out for myself one morning on the balcony of my father's palace at Malkata. I saw it. I knew it. I had been prepared for it. Tiye my mother had shown me. The wise men of the city of Thoth, master of writing, numbers, measurement and time, had shown me. Take up these words and understand. For we must tell what came before all the gods of Thebes and of our other dominions. Let us enumerate them: Anubis, embodied in the jackal, god of graveyards and their tombs. Hathor, the cow-goddess, the golden one, lady of love, music and drunkenness. Red Seth, god of the desert and of thunderstorms and violence who murdered his brother, he with the body of a greyhound and forked tail. Horus the sky-god, shown as a falcon, protector of kings. Isis the Great Goddess and her sister, Nephthys, heavenly mourners of the dead. Osiris, judge of the Underworld, god of resurrection. Ptah, his wife, lion-headed Sekhmet and the lotus god, Nefertem and Bastet the cat-goddess.

All of these were merely gods and spirits of rocks and sand, of animals and birds, of the thunder and men's hearts, of the light and of the darkness, as many as are needed, born and killed by one another and engendered in all manner of ways, merely shattered fragments as seen in a mirror, glimmering, certainly, and full of the light of their source but light seen as broken colours merely. Myths to make sense of a universe that shows us nothing of structure or purpose, a world of forces fighting one another. Thus we are given a god of thunderstorms and violence, strong and unpredictable, and a god of love and of intoxication, another of storms at sea. Above them all a king who comes to earth attracted by a maiden. None of these can be true as all of these cannot be true. God is not the adding up of his attributes and these hundreds are only attributes or parts of attributes. Behind, beyond, above is a god that cannot be added up from what the eye sees or the ear hears or from what the tender skin can touch, the tongue taste or the nose smell, for these are mere rocks and vapours, hardness and air and the creatures that live among them. Behold that god is one and you must worship no other god but he. Titus, put this down.