The first chapter

Today, as a plain, old man, living in a region which is alien to me, ridden with sicknesses which befall old people, I feel Iike Nestor must have felt staying in his immense palace, being condemned to sit imrnobile in his chair, unable to move his limbs because of the rheumatisme he catched while traversing the great salt deserts. When somebody like for example Telemachos, Odysseus' son, visits him, he can, at last, tell him during hours of his deeds during the siege of Troja, stories, which his own sons and daughters and the other people at his palast don't listen to anymore, as they have heard them hundreds of times, probably. Otherwise, who is interested today in this besieging of a town which doesn't exist anymore and of king Priamos, his multitude of sons and daughters, and the rest of the people of a town which today doesn't interest anybodv any longer. I heard Helena has now become an old witch always thinking how to make bad practical jokes together with this maleficious Hekabe, wife of an impostor, the king Agarnemnon, son of a monster who tried to kill his own brother to gain more might and who himself didn't hesitate to kill his daughter to becorne the hero of Troy and was killed by another daughter , who thraws rnaledictions around herself Iike sweeties. I and my son and his wife and children don't live any longer in Greece, not even in a palace, my old nearly deaf father Alekis and me, Phillip, his only son. My wonderful fathers Alekis' bones, now burnt to ashes lie in the earth, well hidden below the pluvial of our house. For me, his great mind still seems present , seems to live within these old crumpling walls. As foreigners in a little country, even as high esteemed refugee from the former egyptian pharao Echnaton, who is now banned and forgotten in his own country, my father is counsellor to the king of Sudan. Though we are not of his kins, we have been accepted at his court and have climbed to a high position within the counsellors, my father always regretted it deply not to live any longer in the cultured world, certainly regretted it very much not being allowed to visit his native peloponnese but within people who cannot read or write, living in an old hut, sleeping on old straw beds, bitten by lice. He was so embittered during his last years, was my father, and completely different from how I had known him in all the years since my birth. I am sure when he died he really was so fed up that he wanted it.
 
I try to teach the love of other men and women to these uncivilized people, who adore wild animals as their Gods, so much inferior to Amun and are thinking only of war and the of which kingdom to pilage next. No wonder they were they once the most hated neighbours of Egypt. But I try to converse them to our hettite culture, to persuade them that the one great God, be it the sun or any immortal being able to show himself either as a bush or a light wind, or the storm destroying everything on his passage, reigns above all our known earth. One of our most ardent listeners, the boy Moses, of yewish origins, who follows us since Egypt, might be the one who brings our peace loving religion to further people So at least thinks my father. And maybe in two or three thousand years a historian will come to our country looking for our culture and the double axe and learn about our culture and write a book about how you can succeed to live happy and make friends of all people you meet and receive an immense echo! At least I dreamt about this and made the knowledge of this guy, Ramon Gandarian, as he is called who was the friend of one of my great-great-great sons who unfortunately died by a bomb attack. Yes, a bomb attack, we in our times do not know bombs, it es another terrible arm to kill people in wars, as we in our time are also capable of inventing. But he is old, his capacity of judginq people is lessening. I fear, that this boy Moses, who already begins to think to be the offspring of a Pharao, is conceited, small minded and war seeking, like all the offspring of these small tribes bordering the small corridor between Hattusa and Egypt, a few fertile miles betweep the easter share of the great salt sea and the Western share of the great stone desert.

My father Alekis teils rne that it was not always like this. His father, Alekis, brought the Egyptians the wealth, peace and freedom they later on knew under Akhenaton one God, Alekls choose to die with his friend Semenkhare, when he was encircled by his enernies like this petty usurper Aye, who forced Thut ankh Aton to alter his believe and was poisoned all the same later on. Alekis could never stand by his beloved Semenkhanre, when he was cruelly murdered by the enemies of his father and he was chased from the sacred chamber were we had all assembled in fear of what was going on. Only thanks to the help of a faithful friend were we able to leave the country, fugitives, leaving behind our beloved grandfather, who was dying and Alekis ' love Semenkhare. Later on my father shed many a tear, kneeling before me and resting his head on my lap, unlike a father, when we were staying alone in the small rooms they had allowed us as refugees. we had heard the news about Semank­re '5 death, strangled around the neck, laid in chains, imprisoned for months in a pitch­dark, Viindow-Iess, damp cell yards below the earth, cruelly tortured and always uttering my tather 5 name. Alekis so suffered that he could not stand beside him and suffer for him. BIJt it would have been too dangerous for us all, and also for our friends in Egypt, had we turned back. As I said, the only possibility left for us as foreigners, had been to leave the country where xenophobie, to mention a Greek mode word, had aroused again to unforeseeable heights and we had to flee the grounds of Egypt, which had become holy father or motherland to us after all these years, to save not merely ours but our bellevers ' skins, to take refuge with the these dark coloured barbarians in the south. As it turned out, much too late for our destinees,they, in fact, were the really civilized ones when they welcomed us, just having passed the frontiers, clad in rugs, dirty with the vase were we had had to creep through. They all accepted us as we were, as their teachers, even as Alekis kept telling them that he had no right to teach them humanity, that he had to take lessons from them. Now, on his deathbed, my father, the great, in Christian terms holy man, my beloved father Alekis, dictating his story to me, his faithful son. A follower of him, whom he knew during his odyssey through the country of the Hittites, or was it the on the island of the phoacian, he is also writing about in his memoirs. Phaidos, the faithful, remained at his side during all these terrible last years, sometimes in peril of his own life and certainly he would never have wanted to be repaid for all his troubles. All kinqs, queens, tyrants are only egoistically following the theories which help them, this also concerns Pharao Akhenaton, I am sorry, because he misused by grandfathers religion for his own aim to divert money from the temples to use it to rearm his army. Though he was an much more open rninded and wise man then others who are also sitting on thrones. He too, a shining exception under the narrow rninded souls reigning in the different countries nowadays, but he too could not leap over his shadow. Also he used my grandfather's Alekis theory, he never really thought of doing to help the poor and simple in his country and to eliminate sexual and social barriers, as hls son and Alekis ' lover Semenkhare advised him, and probably because of his double minded action he was never accepted by his people, they continued to believe in the lies spread by the priests, and succombed to a coup. Now, the worst vermin is reigning again in the cultured country on the nile.

I won't loose any words about the clan around Nofretete and her mother. It's simply not worth loosing any thought about such lazy, self-centered people who contributed a lot to damaging the appearance of Akhenaton and didn't refreign from poisoning their own daughters when it suited their well-being. Certainly Nofretete was beautiful, clever and maybe within her own conceited mind she tried to do her best.

Before he died, he a will faithfully cite the words of my beloved father Alekis:

Nowadavs, as I am slowly dying, in the mith of my nubien tribesmen, my son and stepson, who venere me like the God having come to them directly frorn haven, of this clan of Nubiens to whom I have taught my ideas and my philosophy as weil as I could do it. Before my arrival, they did understand universal love with their unspoilt faih in the river and tree Gods. Fortunately, th_ey did not yet invent an all embracing, perverse God. And I hope, that in future they will directly come to the Gods who accept all human beings as being equals, despite of their gender, their skin colour, their hair and eye colour, their language and the tribes or the countries they come frorn, Everybody must come to this conclusion in the end] and I hope that the period of trials and errars, which cost so much people their lives, is now coming to it 's end. I don't regret any of my hardships, they helped me to realise that God, the real God, neither the Sun nor the moon, nor animals eating other animals and the shining warrior clan chiefs they are now inventing in Greece, will win. The real God never manifested himself directly and personally to me. But he gave me many signs of his existence. I will write in the name of my father and for the sake of my beloved son, bring the chapters chronologically, beginning with the beginnings of the history of my beloved folks and tell faithfully of their faults, their ate and the hardships which followed.

My father told me while dying, while we were cowering in the midths of the "Schilf' and papyros, shivering on the thought that our Egyptian enemies could discover us before our friends came back. My father had not the physical strength to survive and had cought a cold. I envied him and now I knew that my lover samek-ra was dead, decapitated and his head buried in the sand. I would have preferred that my days were over too, but "chance" did not think like this, many a hard day was planned for my coming Iife and I cannot be egoistic enough to put an end to my life myself. In his beschlagen, low voice my father told me the following, the story of his youth. It has remained in my mind word by word. People who don ' t know him can 't judge wether this is really the truth, in fact he is the offspring of these barbarians from the far north, of these uncultured folk who adore Gods who are killing other people. So many Egyptia~ns can 't appreciate them, can 't believe think that men could annihilate a whole town, without any other reason than to rape women and children, to steal. My father not only is a kinsman of these barbarians, he emanates from one of their greatest kings, of whom one as it is said didn 't hesitate to present his own son as meat to the Gods tQ be welcome by them. I ask: Who knows his father better then his own son. And I must confess that I admire my father, also I would prefer to hate him to keep my Unabhänqiqkeit. He was, alas was such a upright person. Open to all races of men, to all religious and moral beliefs. Believing in the good of men nonobstant the wrong many of them did to him. Before judging an enemy, he always tried to find out what the reasons were for his wrongdoings.