With the change Pharaoh himself seemed to fade. Little nourishment passed his lips. Within the dim shadows of his private chapel, hour after hour the hollow-eyed monarch stood in prayer before the gold and gem-encrusted statue of Aton, the sun-god. At times the statue appeared to his distracted mind to mock him with a smile half-pitying, half-contemptuous!
Verily, the curse of Huy, High Priest of Amen was upon him! Noferith, his wife, had borne him no heir, no son to follow him upon the gold Horus Throne of Egypt! The scepter must go to others, to that hollow cousin of his, whom Thi had been wont to call _the mirage_.
As for old Ay, another distant relative and possible claimant to the Throne, Pharaoh suspected that Ay was even now in secret correspondence with the exiled priests of Amen, whose influence was again making itself felt, not alone in Thebes, but as far north as the new capital, the City of the Sun itself.
To whom then could he turn? Among the courtiers about him there was not one in whom he could trust. Not one could help him. Alas, too late, he bethought him of the exiled Ramses!
In the midst of a rising on the part of his famine-stricken people in the south, an insurrection started by the exiled priests of Amen, Pharaoh took to his ivory couch.
Thereafter few saw him. He held no more audiences. Dedu, Keeper of the Robes, alone attended him. Even Pentu, his physician, was dismissed and shortly after strangled, together with Mei, Chief of the Military Forces in the new capital. Mei and Pentu had both been found in secret correspondence with the priests of Amen in distant Nubia.
Dedu, Keeper of the Robes, entered his royal master’s apartment late one morning to find him sitting bolt upright, his prominent eyes fixed in a horrified stare upon the curtain which screened the door. A single word fell from Pharaoh’s trembling lips as he sank back fainting in Dedu’s outstretched arms. That single word the wondering Dedu swore was ... _Hanit!_
Thereafter, Pharaoh in terror bade his guards drive all visitors, petitioners and beggars from the palace gates. Pharaoh shut himself up within its brightly painted courts and allowed things without to take their course.
The silver-embossed doors remained fast closed. No watchman paced the battlemented walls and pylons. No plumed Syrian horses pawed the flagging before the outer gates. The gay bannerettes no longer rose upon the gold-tipped poles fronting the main entrance to the palace forecourt. Hushed were the voices of the guards and other palace servants. Even the birds which flitted back and forth among the trees seemed to have forgotten their cheerful songs.