54 foul “heretic” could never do, for he loved not mankind but only his own self and his mad dreams. It was well not to kill those people, and for that I praise thee, Captain of the Guard. We do not wish to shed the blood of heretics when, in their bosoms, error can be replaced by understanding, and when a new and lawful zeal, kindled in time, can make of them good men and loyal servants of the king. And now that none remain of Aton’s worshippers; now that all yielded in the end to reason or to fear, and speak as though they never were attached to Him Whom I name not, it is time for us to cleanse the very spot where error and rebellion so long triumphed; it is time to level to the dust this temple built by Him—the first and last stronghold of the forbidden cult—and hack to pieces all that which remains of the “heretic’s” likenesses. Come forth, ye warriors of Pharaoh, and ye priests of the gods on whom this man waged war! I shall strike first! (He raises a bronze mace, ready to strike at the already mutilated statue of King Akhnaton) ZETUT-NEFERU-ATON (Walking towards him) Not, until I, the only faithful one of over a hundred thousand, am lying dead! Indeed, not until then shalt thou raise axe or hammer, or even thy mere hand, against His holy form! NEKHTAMON And who art thou, who darest . . .?

55 ZETUT-NEFERU-ATON The only loving one among the luke-warm crowd; the brave one among cowards; the first and last of His defenders! CAPTAIN OF THE GUARD Woman, draw back! Thy useless courage will only bring disaster on thyself. ZETUT-NEFERU-ATON No worse disaster can I think of than to witness the life-work of my King perish with me within the memory of men. NEKHTAMON But who art thou? I want no more defying boasts, but just thy name and family. ZETUT-NEFERU-ATON Zetut-Neferu-Aton is my name. CAPTAIN OF THE GUARD The daughter of Amenemapt, a priest of Amon, and a descendant of the hero-king, Seqenen-ra. NEKHTAMON (To ZETUT-NEFERU-ATON) And so thou darest call thyself the follower of that “arch-criminal” who schemed the downfall of the gods and brought the land to ruin? ZETUT-NEFERU-ATON . . . Who hailed the splendour of the Sun as the one thing divine; the hidden Power within heat

56 and light as the One God; who schemed the end of strife among all nations, and sang the joy of life in all that lives! NEKHTAMON Enough of insolence! Was thy father of those who stood for Amon till the end? Was he that priest of the same name who fell under the sword of some infamous apostate, or of some foreign dog, during the reign of Smenkhkara? We all remember; it was here in Thebes, in a street brawl, purposely contrived by the “heretics.” The murderer was never caught. ZETUT-NEFERU-ATON The victim was my father. I was born six months after the happening of which thou speakest. NEKHTAMON And thou knowest the facts, I see. ZETUT-NEFERU-ATON I know them all. NEKHTAMON And still thou sidest with the Man against Whom all thy blood should have cried out in horror and in hatred. Thou praisest Him; thou adorest Him; thou art ready to die for Him! Canst thou not understand how monstrous thy feelings are? ZETUT-NEFERU-ATON My King has never shed the blood of man or beast. Thou canst not hold Him chargeable for

57 incidents that occurred in His successor’s reign, and, moreover, of which too little can be proved. As for my feelings, they are genuine, whatever be the name by which thou choosest to call them—as genuine as my father’s loyalty to the old faith. He served the gods in whom his heart found peace. Why should not I, with equal fearless love, stand by the Only Child of Him Who shines on high—my King? NEKHTAMON The man against whose tyranny thy father fought. ZETUT-NEFERU-ATON Why not? Why should I advocate a bondage of the blood which I have never felt? That which is “tyranny” to thee is, in my eyes, the glimpse of a new light, the call to a new life, more rational, more beautiful, more true than all I have known. Am I to remain blind and deaf to it because my father was? And to deny my love for Him-Who-lives-in-Truth? To renounce that everlasting beauty that resplends in Him and in His Teaching, for a mere tradition, meaningless to me? Not if all the wise men of Egypt and of other lands spoke to me as thou dost, would I listen to them instead of to my heart. NEKHTAMON Was not thy father’s memory dear to thee in the least? ZETUT-NEFERU-ATON The King Whom I adore honoured His father and His ancestors—those men who, without knowing what they did, had given Him the body through

58 whose nerves He felt the Everlasting, and understood the truth of Life. He honoured them; He erected shrines to them. But His uncompromising love of truth was never for a moment weakened by the remembrance of their ignorance. And even in the tombs in which their mummies lay the hated name of Amon was erased. I follow Him—the great Individual, Who drew His inspiration, not from the fathers from whose life He sprang; not from the wisdom of the past or any authority, but from His silent deeper Self. I know no call of blood; no ties whatsoever with a past forced upon me by birth, or with the crowds of men who share needs that were never mine. I live for Him alone, and for the joy of making His great dreams a reality—to what extent I can. NEKHTAMON All right. Defy authority; defy the dead who curse thee; defy tradition, in the depth of which the future has its roots. What power hast thou got, alone against the mocking world? ZETUT-NEFERU-ATON The power to resist His enemies, at least, until they crush my body. And—who knows?—if after this short life another life begins, the power to remain from age to age His witness, until the end of time.

59 SCENE II. (The same, and NEFERHETEP, High Priest of Amon) The CAPTAIN OF THE GUARD, PRIESTS and SOLDIERS bow down as NEFERHETEP enters. NEFERHETEP (Looking around) This place has not been cleansed yet, I see. Nekhtamon, may I ask thee why? Were not our orders that the hymns to Amon should be sung on this very spot, before sunset? NEKHTAMON They were. And still I hope all will be well. NEFERHETEP Then why delay? The followers of Him Whose name no man should utter, have all repented of their folly before me. Yet, though defaced, His likenesses in stone and alabaster still stand in the sunshine, and still defy the wrath of Amon and the king’s command. NEKHTAMON They shall all be reduced to dust before sunset. I only wish I could, in the meantime, break this woman’s obstinacy. NEFERHETEP Is there still one of that rebellious gang that will not yield?

60 NEKHTAMON This single one; but her discourse is more unbearable than that of fifty “heretics.” NEFERHETEP (To the CAPTAIN OF THE GUARD) And why is she still free? The orders of the king were to thrust into prison those who would not give up the “criminal’s” creed at once. CAPTAIN OF THE GUARD The others gave it up, prompted by varied reasons. I trusted I would find a motive for the sake of which this one could also be drawn back to lawfulness, and spared. Of all the worshippers of the gods’ Enemy, she is the one of highest rank. NEKHTAMON Daughter of priests and kings-and yet a rebel and an apostate! ZETUT-NEFERU-ATON A follower of a greater King than all of them thou hast in mind. NEFERHETEP Leave her to us, and go. We know better than thee the art of winning souls. It is no need thy staying here. But come within an hour, and see the triumph of Amon upon this spot! (Exit of NEKHTAMON, PRIESTS, CAPTAIN OF THE GUARD and SOLDIERS)

61 SCENE III. (NEFERHETEP; ZETUT-NEFERU-ATON) NEFERHETEP Art thou willing to hear the voice of reason, woman? Wilt thou not consider the uselessness of struggling for a lost cause? ZETUT-NEFERU-ATON The fact that it is lost, or at least seems to be, is of no weight to me. The success of a creed does not depend upon its value. NEFERHETEP What value dost thou see in this forbidden cult and its Originator? Thou lovest Him. That may well be. But see what misery He brought upon this land. All that our people loved, all that, for centuries had been a feature of our life—the homely likenesses of gods that spoke to eye and heart, age-old symbols keeping alive eternal secret wisdom; the stories that had cradled our childhood, and the hopes of a new life beyond this one; the time-honoured traditions, foundations of society, that rendered tangible and lovable to all the vital truth-He took it all away from us, giving us, instead, what? A God of His own making, alien to us, and deaf to our needs; a fancy of His sickly brain; a dream of no import to aught but to Himself. All that which Egypt struggled for, all that she had achieved by the strong arm of her great kings and Amon’s help; all that it was His duty to preserve at any cost: the fruit of centuries of toil

62 and sacrifice at home, and of expensive wars abroad; our wealth, our honour, and above all our Empire, won in Asia by streams of blood; that restless Empire within which the all-powerful hand of ten king-gods, sons of Amon, had kept order and peace . . . He lost it all. For His mad dream, He flung it to the winds—that one solid reality which He could not rebuild. And while His loyal vassals begged for help; while speedy messengers brought before Him the distressed cry of their beleaguered cities—the groan of agony of scores and scores of men—what did He do, but nothing? Not even a word of hope did He send them. But, hardening His heart, He sang, just as before, the beauty of the world, mocking the hopeless loyalty of those whom He abandoned; mocking their struggle and their death by shameful apathy—a coward or a madman? perhaps both. A man, at all events, unfit to be a king; an idle dreamer! ZETUT-NEFERU-ATON No. A man ten thousand years ahead of our times; a man who saw, and knew, what all the sages of this land can neither see nor know; the herald of a new mankind, further above this present one than all the wise men think themselves above the simple beasts. NEFERHETEP What frenzied speech is this? Explain. Say frankly all thou meanest, and do not try to astound me with paradoxes.

63 ZETUT-NEFERU-ATON O priest, thou knowest better than I do what love of slavery fills the dull hearts of average men: upon it rests thy power. Men take pride in being above the beasts inasmuch as they think, and yet they hate the toil of thought; the adventurous task of questioning the truth of what they are told; of judging what their fathers did or said or held to be beyond discussion. An inborn laziness makes them obey the cunning ones who, in the name of law or custom or propriety, tell them what they must think both of this world and of the next, if any “next” there be; the ones who bring them to believe, through clever, subtle means, that they are sick and miserable, and need a saving hand, and then stretch out that hand to them on behalf of the gods. The might of all ye priests is, since the dawn of time, founded upon that weakness of most men; upon their inability to think; and also upon that consciousness of sin and misery, that restlessness of those who are exiles in this fair world. NEFERHETEP But we are all exiles, seeking the home of our souls. ZETUT-NEFERU-ATON That is just what we are not—not all of us, I mean. O, how can I express the certitude I have? Out of the lazy, slavish herd of faithful devotees to gods that they were taught to hold as theirs; out of the immense unthinking herd, of people who respect the dictates of their fathers and of priests, there come a few who really think—who question and who doubt, and walk in their own light. And

64 out of these, a fewer still never regret the illusions and bondage dear to all. Those blessed ones lift up their heads and, in the gold of dawn and sunset, in the limpid blue of a resplendent sky, they hail the God they also feel within their hearts, and are content. They need no liberator, for they are free; no healer, for they are whole; no comfort, for they are happy. They are the strong and beautiful. And He, my King, for ever young, stands out as the most beautiful and strongest of them all: their pattern for all times to come. NEFERHETEP Was the neglect of His imperial duties also a sign of strength? Was it because He did not care to be a Comforter, that He allowed fair Syria and Canaan to fall into the hands of Egypt’s enemies? ZETUT-NEFERU-ATON Thou lookest on the Syrian war with eyes of our times, while He has viewed it in the light in which the better men, in countless centuries to come, will see it—if indeed there be a slow, a very slow, but steady awakening of man’s hard heart and stupid mind through unfurling time. NEFERHETEP Can carelessness and apathy ever be hailed as virtues? ZETUT-NEFERU-ATON Not carelessness, not apathy, but bold and stem refusal to heap new crimes upon the crimes of old; the stem refusal to wage war in order to defend the fruits of unjust conquest, and maintain by force in His obedience princes who did not want Egyptian rule.

65 NEFERHETEP But our rule was just. The gods themselves had shown the path of victory to Thotmose the Great, and caused the men of Naharin to fall into his hands for their own good as well as for his glory. ZETUT-NEFERU-ATON Those gods of thine, just as all other gods who show an undue preference for this or for that nation, or even for the bulk of mankind as a whole, are but the vain creations of their worshippers. Each tribe fights in its own gods’ name for nasty selfish ends. But He Whom thou accusest of criminal neglect, He Whom thou hatest, hath beheld all kingdoms and all tribes in the light of His Father Who is also theirs: the shining Father of all life, the Sun. All lands are His, He said, Whom men and beasts all praise alike, in different ways. And that collective greed which urges any tribe to force its sway upon the weaker neighbouring ones, or any monarch to keep down a restless conquered land by might of arms, that greed, I say, was, in His eyes, no better than the lust for riches of a common robber. NEFERHETEP How darest thou . . . ? ZETUT-NEFERU-ATON I say: just as the Theban kings fought to expel their foreign overlords, in bygone days, and render Egypt free, so did those Syrian chiefs whom thou condemnest fight to overthrow Egyptian yoke. If they were wrong in doing so, so was also Seqenen-ra, the royal hero whom ye all admire.

66 NEFERHETEP How darest thou express these, most unholy thoughts? The gods shall curse thee in thy pride and thy rebellion, and crush thee, that nothing be left of thee, as of the “criminal.” ZETUT-NEFERU-ATON How darest thou accuse the Child of Light? Ignoring thee and all His enemies, both South and North one day shall hail His name—when Karnak lies in dust; when Amon and thy other gods are looked upon as sickly children’s fantasies. The South and North shall say of Him: “He lost a great empire, for the sake of a greater truth.” NEFERHETEP Accursed, accursed He be, and thou also, and whosoever now, or in the distant future, attempts to walk in his foul path! Such men as He pull down the patient work of ages, when they are left to do so, and bring confusion and disaster upon the world. Accursed! Accursed! SCENE IV. (The same: THE CAPTAIN OF THE GUARD, with SOLDIERS; PRIESTS, headed by NEKHTAMON) (They take their place around the open court) NEKHTAMON (To NEFERHETEP) We have come back, according to thy orders. Shall not the curses now be uttered and this place cleansed?

67 NEFERHETEP Indeed it shall! NEKHTAMON Surely the woman has submitted, so that now there is not within all the land a single voice praising that “criminal.” ZETUT-NEFERU-ATON There is still mine. NEFERHETEP (To ZETUT-NEFERU-ATON) Hold thy peace, I tell thee! (To NEKHTAMON) In evil as in good, women are more wholehearted than we are. This one, at least, will never yield. (To the CAPTAIN OF THE GUARD) Enchain her! CAPTAIN OF THE GUARD I have brought no fetters, believing there would be no need of any after she heard thy speech. NEFERHETEP A rope will be enough—for after all, those who discourse so violently are seldom strong. (To a SOLDIER) Tie her against this pillar. CAPTAIN OF THE GUARD (Aside, to the SOLDIER) Do not hurt her. NEFERHETEP From this place she will soon be witnessing a sight which she will not forget. (To the PRIESTS

68 and SOLDIERS) And now, let us proceed, before the Sun doth set. Let him at first be praised, the king of gods, Lord of Karnak, the Mighty Hidden One, protector of the land—Amon! Let him be praised. How bountiful are the possessions of the man who knows the gifts of that great god above all gods! Wise is he who knows him; favoured is he who serves him; there is protection for him who follows him. There is protection for the nation who puts her trust in him. Egypt was groaning under alien yoke. He made her free. He strengthened her. He stretched her boundaries. He caused her kings, his sons, to rule over many foreign kings, from Kush to the great bend of Naharin. He caused rich tribute to pour in from Kush and Retenu, and from the isles in the midst of the great sea. He caused the land of Egypt to become the abode of wealth and splendour, the seat of domination, the nation without a rival on this earth. Great are thy works, indeed, O Amon, Lord of Karnak, Mighty One! Great is thy name, in war and peace; great is the favour thou dispensest to those who love and honour thee! But woe to those who love and fear thee not! Woe to those who ignore thee! Woe to the man who rises against thee! THE PRIESTS (Together) Woe, woe, woe to Him who assailed thee!

69 NEFERHETEP Woe to him who endeavours to measure his might to thine! Woe to him who endeavours, to oppose his own wisdom to thine! Woe to him who endeavours to change that which thou hast established, and alter the cult of the land after his own thoughts! He labours, in vain. But thou triumphest! His labours are as a sword-thrust into the sea. And lo, nothing is left of them—not even a memory. His monuments are dust; his monuments are a dream. But thine endure for ever. Woe to the man who rises against thee! THE PRIESTS (Together) Woe, woe, woe to Him Who assailed thee! NEFERHETEP Woe to him who assails thee! Thy City endures, But He Who assailed thee falls. The sun of him who knows thee not goes down, O Amon! But as for him who knows thee, he shines. The abode of Him Who assailed thee is in darkness, But the rest of the earth is in light. Whoever puts thee in his heart, O Amon, Lo, his sun dawns! THE PRIESTS (Together) Woe, woe, woe to Him Who assailed thee!

70 NEFERHETEP Woe to Him Who assailed thee! Woe to the “heretic”! Woe to the “criminal”! (He strikes and overthrows what is left of King Akhnaton’s statue) ZETUT-NEFERU-ATON (Who has cut the rope which binds her while he was speaking, now slowly pulls a knife from under her robe and springs forward towards him to strike) Woe to all persecutors of my King! PRIESTS AND SOLDIERS (Rushing forward and disarming her) Sacrilege! Infamy! Death to the apostate! End of Act III.