Page 316 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

[1370-1300 b.c.] The Philosopher King a6

And the messenger, realizing the urgency of the situation left
at once for Syria. ’
But before he reached the camp of the Great King, the
funeral of Tutankhamon took place with all the pomp” that
traditionally attends the last journey of a pharaoh. The body
of the king, dressed in all the finery that he wore in life, with
rings and bracelets on his arms and his gold and iron dagger
at his belt, was wrapped in linen and placed in the great gold
coffin shaped to his living likeness. And in the alabaster sarcopha­
gus he was taken across the river in the royal barge, borne down
the sixteen steps to his tomb, and reverently placed within the
gilded shrine in the inner chamber. With him went the golden
statues of the gods and goddesses who would protect his pas­
sage to the world beyond.
The door to the inner chamber was sealed, and before it
were placed two lifesize statues of the king to guard the portals.
And all his possessions were piled up in the two antechambers,
to await his pleasure in the world to come. With them went jars
of wine and baskets of corn and dates and meats. And with
them, too, went two great bunches of flowering oleander, which
Ankhesenamon had cut herself that morning in the garden of the
palace. And in the presence of the queen and the assembled
priests, and to the mournful music of the horns, the passage to
the grave was walled up and sealed, the last time that the seal
of Tutankhamon would be used. Ankhesenamon felt that behind
the sealed doors she had left her youth, and she wondered how
many thousands of years would pass before any mortal eye
would again see the treasures among which the happiest years

of her life had been spent.
Not many days later she heard the announcement of her
betrothal to the high priest Ai. It was announced by the priests
of Amon as the expressed will of the god. And she could not
reject the command of the god whose daughter she was. e
could, of course, persuade the priests to persuade Amon to re
consider his decision, but that she could only do wit 1 an army
at her back. And the army in the south was under Ai s corn™aJ}
She looked often to the north in the days that followed. For