The fate of Prince Menna, Pharaoh’s Overseer, was still upon the lips of palace-servant, priest and peasant alike. Menna’s enemies were many. It might well be that someone whom Menna had misused or wronged had at last struck back and that successfully.
But the sudden disappearance of the Queen-Mother from the midst of her ladies, from a mighty building guarded within and without, caused a thrill of horror and a nameless fear to run through palace and countryside alike. It was inexplicable.
The Temple of Sekhmet, the lake, the palace and the palace-gardens, were searched and researched again and again. Not a spot was overlooked. When at last it became necessary to send the evil tidings to the new capital, the City of the Sun, Pharaoh himself came hurriedly back to Thebes.
As, day after day, the searching parties returned empty-handed, Pharaoh lost patience. Hundreds were slain. Soken and many of the palace eunuchs met their death at the strangler’s hands. Men soon went to the task of searching for the lost Queen as criminals already condemned to death.
For a full week the search was renewed. Fresh men were called up for the task. Finally, the soldiers of the Divisions of Khonsu, Ptah and Sutekh were pressed into service. All in vain.
One remarkable circumstance was discovered, following the disappearance of the Queen-Mother, and that by the Princess Bekit-aton. The portrait of the Ex-Queen Hanit, which had been painted on a column in the Audience Hall of the late Pharaoh, had been carefully and completely obliterated. This had been done just prior to or immediately following the Queen-Mother’s disappearance. Nothing remained, where once the portrait stood, but six words written in red in roughly drawn hieratic: “By the Power of the Book of Thoth.”
No one could explain this desecration of the former Queen’s portrait. Mention of the magic Book of Thoth struck terror into every heart, not excepting that of Pharaoh himself.
Thenceforth Pharaoh’s fanatical zeal in the interest of Aton, his Syrian sun-cult, slowly waned and finally ceased. The innumerable gifts to the many new Aton shrines throughout Egypt—one had been set up against the very walls of the Temple of Amen in the Apt—the gorgeous religious processions, the ceaseless theological studies and debates, all were suddenly abandoned.