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any other. In that, I think, His Majesty has found the seeds of his downfall, at last.
    ***

Amonemhet
    I am Amon-em-het the peasant, and you will remember how I saw His Majesty with the Prince Smenkhkara—whom we must now call “His Majesty,” too—sailing downriver to Akhet-Aten from Thebes, golden in the torchlight against the dark bosom of Hapi, god of the Nile, chanting His Majesty’s Hymn to his god the Aten, on that night three years ago when my wife and I frolicked too much and wound up with child number three. Not that I mind him, or the method of his getting, which is always pleasant any time, but he does have to be fed, of course, and that poses a problem. But we love children, and we manage. Number four will be here in another two weeks. Then, I suppose, will come five, six, seven, eight—may the gods stop us!
    Ho, ho !Let them try!
    Anyway, I told you on that night when I saw His Majesty that it did not matter much to us here in the village what happens in the great cities among the great men. But in this I think I spoke too easily and too fast, because it has come to matter much in these last three years.
    It used to be that we would hear distant reports that all was not going well in Kemet. Before His Majesty’s father died—Amonhotep III (life, health, prosperity!), that good man who governed us so well and looks better all the time compared to what we have now—we used to hear rumors, sometimes, about troubles in far-off places. It was said our allies, or countries we owned, or were friendly with, were not friendly any more. But this did not bother us in the village. It was all far away.
    It was also reported—particularly by old Sahura, he who once was a scribe and went to the cities before he came home to sit in the square all day and demand that we listen to his old man’s warnings of disaster—that there was trouble in the whole government. He said order was breaking down, ma’at was being violated, bad times were coming to the Two Lands because of the Pharaoh Akhenaten. And even though we did notice that the priests of Amon were worried and seemed not quite so powerful, and occasionally a tax collector tried to take more than what seemed to us to be our fair share of taxes (the last such wound up that night in the bosom of Hapi and nevermore was seen again, may the Forty-two Judges of the Dead keep him drowning forever in the jaws of Sebek the crocodile god!), still it all seemed far away and not much of our concern.
    But now that His Majesty Akhenaten is King, with His Majesty Smenkhkara beside him on the throne (and somewhere else, too, so everyone says), I have to admit it: there is real trouble in Kemet. It is not far away now, it is in the village. Now it concerns us because it is in our own place. Now we must pay attention—although there is not much that we can do about it now, of course: it has gone too far. It has got away from us almost before we knew it was happening. And of course we are only ignorant peasants who must obey the will of His Majesty in all things, as has ever been the way of the Two Lands.
    But, I tell you! Now we have tax collectors who come, not in ones or twos who can be killed or cheated, but in gangs and bands who rove through the village and demand great sums and call in soldiers to help them destroy our dikes and fields if we will not pay. Who gets these sums we do not know, but we do not think they can go to His Majesty, or that His Majesty knows of this, for surely he would not permit it, being just and good and a father to us as Pharaoh has always been. But somebody gets this money. Somebody sends the thieves and the soldiers. Who is it? Who is to protect us?
    And now we do not see priests of Amon any more, who also used to take taxes from us, but who gave us in return food and shelter when we needed it, and helped us from their granaries if we got a low Nile and the Inundation did not flood our fields properly with water and new soil. Now the priests of