Cruel coffin of natronic-ash in sheets
of saltsand – sintered; scorched – ‘n quartz compact
encases, w’thin the domed, culminate room,
a plinth of deep arrogance. Raised aloft,
as if a badge of triumph self-achieved,
a thing of human craft – stolen; abducted.
Brief King;
Queen Eternal in her crown –
Nafereti-Iti!
Stay hidden in a tomb unknown…
Icon enslaved.
Fourth Month; Season Of Emergence; Seventh Day; Year Seven Of Akh-En-Aten
Horizon Of The Aten
Land Of Blackest Soil Upon The Riverbank
High over Akhet-Aten
th’Sun-Disk sears; soars!
The orb’s flametide awash upon the world!
Ra’s rays against the mudbrick,
washed in white,
lay ankhs e’er since the First Occasion!
In the Central City, off th’Royal Road,
just b’fore th’South Suburb’s start,
the workshop of the sculptor called Thutmose
sings choral of the sculptly art:
talatatuh
talatatuh
talatatuhtat
kuhlinkuhlakuhlatter
TUNK
TINK
puhphfffphd
Between the banks of Iteru – white; blue –
‘n th’eastern cliffs of red,
a team of men turn limestone blocks to true
replicas of the royal head.
Effective For The Aten –
found in stone’s his countenance
by hand!
Akh-En-Aten,
chipped into being,
on a bench doth gaze
across the room.
B’side a rushreed woven basket,
lid left ajaraslant,
that waits atop a shelf’s far-end,
a row of her: three incomplete;
one all (but for the eye) adorned.
Time strips the workshop –
‘lone she’s perched
on a shelf that’s about to slip.
The Living Image Of The Aten
lifts Amun!
Sun-Disk City sits in silence – left.
Shelf slips.
She falls.
For a moment; for an age…
‘Mongst gypsum, tools, stone chips, gold foil,
‘n rubbled-earth a-spread
she waits ‘n waited –
brief eternity.
16th December 1912 CE
Tel el-Amarna
Khedivate Of Egypt
The fire of the star that we fall upon
floods into her right eye
once th’chipped, rubbled stone ‘n th’dirtsand is gone,
baring her to the inf’nut sky.
The One Who Makes Live,
just as Ptah with his wheel,
had left her having made her
‘n long turned West.
The plaster skin
atop her limestone form
sings convention in its chosen hue.
High men, red-brown;
high women, pale –
regardless of the living truth.
Taut, tendoned, slender neck from th’clavicle;
th’nape nestled ‘midst a garment gold;
a pluming crown, flat-topped as those
stone-stalks of papyrus in Karnak,
of deeping blue
bound ribbon-‘round
in colours – Cobra-less! – contouring;
a band of sun-colour
clasps across
her proud, discerning forehead!
Her Mother-In-Law’s countenance
merged with her father’s portrait –
a face unfazed
by a fellow pharaoh’s
rending of conserved tradition!
From his side;
from his lap;
from the throne he left behind –
presiding o’er the Two Lands she’d reigned;
now she looks about
only at level ruins
swept with sand.
Hidden;
understated with deceit
to smuggle in plain-sight!
Underplayed
as a plaster princess
not significant beside
the stelastatuary
graciously presented.
Nothing should be leaving Egypt,
leastly Her.
July 1913 CE
Berlin
Federal Empire Of Germany
In darkness, ‘long Iteru, northward to
th’Port Of Alexander;
o’er th’edge of the world ‘n beyond t’where new
blue rivers nurture spruce ‘n fir…
But a mere season on in time,
her trek through space
an eternity incomprehensible!
Lands inconceivable
beset by imperial powers
with a reach
to shock ‘n shame
the gods’ domin’yun!
A home of stone ‘n wood-beams;
of sheet-glass of such translucency!
Lush verdance
of dark-emerald
abounds without, unwild!
What purgatory, now?
What rest in th’future?
An icon for a private home,
after all…
Privately worshipped.
But the denizens are alien;
their fascination secular.
At home ‘midst wealth ‘n leisure,
yet she is lost;
anachronistic.
April 1924 CE
Berlin
Weimar Republic Of Germany
The Living Image Of Amun awakes
after three-thousand years!
Her gold headdress with her rival’s son’s face…
She, too, from darkness appears.
Her successor’s visage
hid yet within
his sealed ‘n nesting coffins,
Nafereti-Iti,
given ‘way again,
emerges in a room of treasures.
An Amarnan Courtyard
in a New Museum –
beside her,
posed in silent stone,
The Flame;
The Lioness Of Power!
She,
Sekh-Met,
seated; alone.
The likenesses
of her family
in sculpture ‘n relief –
subdued; suspended
to her side ‘n back;
her life in her periph’ral vision.
Ushabt Answerers
in Osirid form,
deaf to any spoken words,
cannot take heka command
t’commence their labour
in the Field Of Reeds.
Stripped of their own royals
so recently in history,
this landlocked,
continental force
displays to the world their own great queen!
Slipped, sleight-of-hand,
out of Egypt’s grasp:
Oh, that?
It’s nothing. Plaster head.
We’ll take it, we suppose…
Look away at these other things!
Distract!
Forget!
Someday we’ll reveal what it’s worth.
Unveiled!
A treasure of Egypt for us!
A solid limestone bust
of the Solar Queen!
Our icon now!
Hostage to our envious greed!
October 1933 CE
Berlin
Nazi Germany
A promise imminent to be upkept
as Egypt calls her home…
But blocked by a leader who now has swept
nearly to a rule his own!
Flames across the Reichstag!
Hitler’s hand in Hindenburg’s!
The Chancellor,
who’ll not relinquish th’queen,
continues ‘pon his march!
The jagged cross
within the eagle’s grasp
becomes the golden standard!
As she’s offered back,
he kills the goodwill gesture. On display as a prisoner
as war gestates,
she remains
‘top her courtyard plinth.
In merely whispers
of a pass of time,
war’s birthed
‘n she’s reburied!
A crate contains the kept,
colourful queen –
a bank vault;
a zoo-side bunker!
In a mine
made of nature’s
mineral embalmer,
Nafereti-Iti waits…
September 1945 CE
State Of Thuringia
Soviet Occupation Zone Of Germany
Flames reigned with the heat of lightning lavished
over the Peopled Land!
Th’populace in ruin; th’cities ravaged!
Europe under split command!
Entombed within a wooden box
where salt doth starve the air of moisture,
she lies with treasures,
currency,
‘n gold
awaiting excavation…
A Red Army
across the eastern side –
soldiers clear her short-lived tomb.
A band of allies
in possession now
of the icon Thutmose made.
Unscathed,
unlike the place
displaying her last,
she’s taken to Wiesbaden;
placed before the public eye.
The psychopath that kept her
from her journey southward –
Home! –
is gone
by his own pathetic hand:
thus the promise
that was made
to Egypt?
The Split City
keeps her anyway –
icon of all icons,
f’rever hostage!
August 1961 CE
West Berlin
Federal Republic Of Germany
A new ‘n grand construction rises tall!
An iron-curtain’s drawn!
Severed ‘to East ‘n West! Between new halls
she’s passed in this post-war dawn…
Across this land,
that’s not of the Nine Bows,
a monument of concrete spreads –
no fortress-outpost
on the Red Land’s reach
could’ve matched this
border-barrier!
As she hears them laying out
the beds of nails
‘long the deadly strip spread wide,
she dreams of escape
from this smoke-steel land
to feel the wand’ring Shu
amongst the rushes.
Ironic pleas
from the weeping east:
Give us back our treasure – now!
Her rightful,
only
home calls out:
Release her from your greedful grip!
And still
her sensational successor
b’comes
ambassador for culture shared.
The arrogance of Europe
strong against
the turning of the colonial tide.
June 2023 CE
Berlin
Federal Republic Of Germany
In a domed room,
doomed (ostensibly)
to be a goldmine guarded yet,
she holds her visage up,
uraeus-like,
proud anachronism that she is!
As a wond’rous, new,
majestic home
comes closer to an opening in Cairo,
the face
that should be placed
beside the Golden Mask
still brings her wrongful owners
honours.
A century upon display;
a hundred years they’ve called her home.
For still a decade more she’s been a captive kept –
not another year should pass!
Egyptian schoolchildren should be the ones
stood awed before those panes of glass!
?? ???? ??
Giza Plateau
Arab Republic Of Egypt
Enter in.
Cooling as the sea breeze
sweeping down
along the delta ‘n its floodplains vast,
the air inside
subdues the Aten’s heat –
a sunshade on the grandest scale!
A treasure among treasures;
king of queens –
there’s one thing above all
you’re seeking!
An icon that all icons
look toward
(Yes, even the Golden Mask!)!
She is waiting,
placed atop a righteous plinth
with the right to hold her
as a culture proud!
You’ll see the Bust Of Nefertiti
on Egyptian land!
A girl-child –
with irides brown;
hair as black as floodplain soil –
her head held high;
her countenance
of modern Egypt born.
She stands
with her school’s badge
above her chest,
th’deep olive of her skin
sings sunfire.
In the glass,
upon her head
in reflection rests
the flat-top crown of river-blue!
She’s where she’s meant to be –
she is in Egypt.
هي حيث من المفترض أن تكون
هي في مصر
Image credit – AramcoWorld
william altoft 