Page 313 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

a dagger of iron with gold and crystal hilt and golden sheath, and
a set of iron awls and chisels, which would introduce his maj­
esty’s craftsmen to the advantages of this new metal.

Tutankhamon and his queen were by now completely
habituated to the state ritual. They had grown up in it, through
six years of audiences and parades, of religious ceremony and
state processions. And outside the duty of the court, life was

still very pleasant. Their childhood comradeship had grown into
a very real affection for each other. Tutankhamon was a clean­
limbed youth, fond of sport and hunting, and Ankhesenamon

had inherited the beauty of her mother Nefertiti. Together they
rode out in their chariots into the desert to hunt gazelle and
antelope, or went duck shooting, with bow and arrow or with
boomerang, in the papyrus swamps along the Nile. And after­

wards in the evenings they would sit in the palace gardens,
drinking the wine from the royal vineyards and listening to the

flutes and harps of the palace musicians. In these halcyon years
something of the warm feeling of peace and security that had
permeated the palace at Akhetaten in the early days, before the
dream of utopia faded, was re-created in the royal palace of

Thebes.
Only one sorrow cast a cloud over their lives. Two stillborn
babies lay in their tiny mummy cases in the palace chapel, wait­

ing to be buried in their parents’ grave. That grave was, of course,
already prepared. Every pharaoh planned his grave chamber as
soon as he ascended the throne. It was many centuries now

since the pharaohs had built themselves pyramids, and in the
Valley of the Kings, where all the pharaohs of his dynasty lay
buried (except only Akhenaten, who lay in his lonely mountain

tomb far to the eastward), the simple four-chamber tomb lay
waiting, cut deep into the living rock. They did not know, then,
how soon it was to be needed.
In 1350 b.c., at the age of nineteen, Tutankhamon died.

It happened suddenly, with no previous illness other than a
couple of days’ fever. And to Ankhesenamon it was the end of
everything. The death of her father, even the death of her

mother not so long ago, had not affected her so deeply. Now her