Page 314 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

bulwark against the world was gone. She stood alone, exposed to
the cold winds that blow about a throne.

There was no successor. After eleven generations in which
the kingship had descended from father to son, there was no
son to carry on the line. Over and above her personal sorrow,
Ankhesenamon knew that she was the successor, that through

her alone the divine blood of Amose could be perpetuated, and
that whoever married her would be the only rightful lord of the
Two Lands. Even so, at least a fortnight passed, with the em­

balmers and funerary furnishers and goldsmiths and stonecut­
ters busy on their preparations, before she fully realized that it
was intended that her new husband should be Ai.
She had known, and disliked, Ai all her life. He had been

priest to her father and her grandfather, and had practically
run the court and the government, at least of upper Egypt, during
the eight years of her reign. He was old enough to be her father—

in fact his present wife was Tutankhamon’s former nurse. But
what chiefly shocked her was that he was a mortal, a commoner,
without a drop of the blood of the royal house. It was at first
unbelievable that a mere human could aspire to marry the

daughter of Amon, the descendant of half a score of kings.
Ankhesenamon was in despair. A man of the people was to
obtain the divine throne of Egypt as a dowry, just as in the old

days the throne of the Hittites had gone with the hand of the
king’s daughter.
The memory of the tales of the Hittite ambassadors stirred
the young queen—she was only twenty years old—to a desperate

strategem to forestall Ai. She sent a trusted envoy with in­
structions to bear a letter with all speed to Suppihiliumas, Great
King of Hatti. The messenger passed through Horemheb’s army

on the Palestine frontier, and made north as fast as relays of
chariots could bear him. But it was not necessary to go all the
way to Hattusas. He found Suppiluliumas encamped around
Carchemish on the upper Euphrates. For the Great King had

at last moved out with his armies. From his son’s dependency of
Yamkhad he had overrun northern Syria and was now at the

gates of the Mitanni kingdom. He was preoccupied with his