Tutankhamun and the Daughter of Ra

1
The Coronation
The boy stood barefoot and almost naked in front of the gigantic cedar doors of Amun's temple - a simple kilt of fine white linen his only garment. Behind him were the most important priests and dignitaries of the Two Lands. He knew they were there. He could feel the pressure of their determination that he would be the king they had waited for since his grandfather Neb-maat-Ra, Amenhotep III, Great Bull of the Two Lands, had stepped into the solar boat and gone to join his ancestors in the Land of the Ever Living.
He was frightened. When this door opened he would no longer be Prince Tutankhaten, free to roam the palaces of his father and his grandfather, free to swim in the lakes with his sisters, play with other children, say what he liked. He would be Pharaoh, with all the world dependent on his every whim, his every word. He would wear clothes stiff with gold and jewels and would have to move with dignity. No longer would he chase his friends through the garden and throw stones at the birds. When these great doors opened he would enter a prison from which there was no escape. He would have to endure endless boring ceremonies; mouth again and again the words he had been taught; perform monotonous rituals; listen to the lengthy sacred texts endlessly intoned. He would be expected to know everything, see everything, be everything. He would be the sole conveyor of the gods' power to earth.
As the only surviving son of the king among many daughters he knew he would have to take on this role one day. His mother Kia, for one, had never let him forget it. But when he had been learning to be a pharaoh he had looked on the lessons as elaborate games, remote from reality. Reality was the fun he had with his sisters and his friends. The hot, closed rooms of the House of Life where he was trained and instructed in the skills and knowledge he would need as Pharaoh he had endured as best he could, only waiting for the hour of release. His heart skipped a beat. If only he had paid more attention. But even if he had - no one expected him to inherit the throne at the age of nine. No one had prepared him for this.
He knew Ay was close behind him - Master of Chariots, Companion of the Great King, Vizier in charge of all things under the King. Ay who had been powerful in his grandfather's court and because of this had not disappeared with all the rest who had been close to his father.
Everything had happened so quickly - his father's death; Nefertiti, the Great Royal Wife, taking the throne; the murder of his uncle Djehuti-kheper-Ra whom he had liked and trusted; and, most frightening of all, the violent disorder in his father's capital, Akhetaten, in which so many of his family and friends had perished. He shuddered to think of what it must have been like for the beautiful Nefertiti and his beloved sister Merytaten when the mobs turned on them and beat them to death. How could such things happen? General Horemheb said it was because his father had destroyed the rule of Maat, of Order and Justice, in the Two Lands by turning against the old gods who had kept the country in peace since the ancient days. "See," he said, "what happens when the common people have no gods to respect and obey; when they have only themselves to consider." But his father had not left the country without gods. There was the Aten, the greatest god of all, who held the whole earth in its care.
The young prince had not seen the ugly massacre at Akhetaten, nor General Horemheb's fierce vengeance on those who perpetrated it, because he had been safe with his sisters on his grandfather's estates at Per-hay, near Waset. But he had witnessed the confusion that followed and seen a distraught Kia at one moment preparing for them to flee, and at the next, grooming him to be King.