O l i v e r B e n j a m i n
Finally, Hopkins announced that the new temple had been
completed and that all should come to witness its dedication. He
prepared a grand ceremony, complete with dancers and acrobats,
and an enormous vegetarian buffet. But it was not the elaborate
production that would entice them to the unveiling, he knew. Fear of
the wrath of God, of whom he was supposed to be an incarnation, was
more effective at motivating people than free food could ever be.
On the day of the dedication, the elites of Egypt amassed in front
of the new temple, hidden from view by a great tarpaulin, for what
was to be a day of festivities and religious glory. The sun-king gazed
into the crowd. Adorned in their finest tunics and enhanced with
striking cosmetics, the beauty of the Egyptian women left him
breathless. It impressed him as well that this archaic culture allowed
women many of the same liberties and status as men, in some cases
more.
From the podium outside the temple, he sat with his wife
Nefertiti. She surveyed the assembled masses while he gazed happily
at her profile. The area around her eye was painted in the traditional
Egyptian style, decorated with the shape of a fish.
Nefertiti was angry at him for planning the unveiling on the same
day as their anniversary. “It’s like you just don’t remember anything
anymore,” she said. “Ever since you got in your head this idea about
the temple, you seem like a different person.”
“Ah, Nefertiti,” he said, “Doll, you know I love you. Once this is
over, I promise you, everything will be back to normal again.”
Of course it would. He wasn’t her husband, Akhnaton, after all.
He was an impostor. But he couldn’t tell her that, and for the moment
she would just have to think that he had gone a little mad. And he
would just have to enjoy this temporary boon of having this
legendary archetype of beauty for a wife.
The time came for him to address the crowd. In the waning heat of
the afternoon, thousands were gathered to await the sun-king’s
speech. It had been promised to be prophetic in the grandest sense.
At the moment that the king emerged onto his palace balcony, there
came a roar of applause such as was rarely heard in the world in
those days.
“Hello, my people,” said the king.
More cheering came from below.
“Thank you. Thank you. You’re beautiful,” the king bellowed,
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