The palace at Thebes boasted a garden that was widely regarded as the most magnificent in the world. As well as stately trees and carefully tended beds of flowers and fishponds, there was a menagerie filled with exotic animals from all parts of the kingdom and from foreign countries. Kings would send gifts to Amenhotep, and for a while, to Akhenaten too; often including animals like a leopard on a leash and collar, a pair of hunting cheetahs, a rhinoceros or giraffe, or a baboon. These gifts, along with other animals captured by the king's hunters, ended up in cages in the palace gardens for nobles to gawk at and point.

I rarely visited the animals. Not because I did not like animals but rather because I could not bear to see them locked up. The ones that were not locked up, gazelles and baby animals, were popular with the other children and being shy, I seldom put myself forward to pet them. I generally stayed at the other end of the garden. There was a fishpond there, set about with shrubbery and papyrus and shadowed by a magnificent tamarind tree. It dropped leaves into the pond, and pods. I would fish the pods out and break them open, sucking out the sweet-sour brown pulp.

There were animals there too, though none that would interest a king or even the other children. Butterflies flitted above the flowerbeds, bees too, and a myriad of other insects. Lizards scuttled on the sandy paths, basking in the early morning and late afternoon sun, or seeking the shade in the heat of the day. Frogs lived in the ponds; and schools of little silver fish thrilled me with their precise movements as I lay on my belly in the dust, watching them. Kingfishers took their dues from the ponds and brightly colored dragonflies hovered and darted, dipping down to the water surface or clinging like jewels to the tips of the reeds. The air hung still in those days, heavy and scented with exotic perfumes from the flowers all about me. Left alone, I turned my mind to the tiny wonders that lay all about me.

I have always been curious. When I started my schooling I would drive my teachers to distraction wanting to know about things for which there was no real answer. Why was the sky blue? Why were leaves green? Why did crickets sing but butterflies not? It was never enough for me to be told it was because the gods had made it that way. I looked at the frenetic ants, listened to the different songs of grasshoppers and cicadas, stared into the intricacies of a flower, smelled their varied perfumes, marveled at the shimmering colors in a tiny blue butterfly's wing, or watched fascinated as two lizards mated.

One day, on a day that I came to know as my first naming day, I played in the dust in the shade of my great tamarind tree, watching one of the great scarab beetles roll a ball of dung across the ground. It would back itself against the roughly-shaped ball, gripping it with its hind legs and pushing backward. Not seeing where it was going, it often ran into an obstacle, scrabbling futilely at the ground. Eventually it would let go of the ball and investigate the obstruction before taking hold again and trundling off in another direction. The beetle moved out of the shade and into the bright sun and I followed on my hands and knees, my attention riveted.

A shadow fell across me and I looked up to see king Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti standing over me. I sat back on my haunches and stared at them, not saying a word. The king smiled at me and, disengaging his arm from around his wife, squatted down beside me in the dust.

"What is your name, child?"

I shook my head, staring solemnly up at my elder brother.

"I think she is your youngest sister, beloved," Nefertiti said. "She does not have a name as she was never given one."

"And what are you doing, child? Out here, without even a nurse to look after you?"

I pointed at the beetle, now jammed up against a fallen seed pod. It heaved the ball of dung up, only to have it slip sideways and down again.

"He struggles so hard. I want to help him but I don't know whether I should," I whispered. "That is why I watch him, so I may learn."

Akhenaten laughed. "And what have you learned by watching him, little one?"

"He is beautiful. He looks just like a dull beetle but if you look close you can see lovely colors - green, blue, red."

"What else?"

"He works hard, never resting, pushing his ball of dung across the ground."

"And why does he do that?"

"My uncle Aanen says it is because he is the god Khepri and he pushes the ball of the sun across the sky each day." I was repeating what my uncle had said but I did not understand it.

"That is what the priests say." Akhenaten nodded. He put out a finger and removed the tamarind pod obstruction. The scarab resumed its journey. "It is hard to imagine this little beetle contains a god though, what do you think?"

I said nothing, just screwed up my face in thought.

Akhenaten got to his feet and brushed the sand and dust from his knees. "What about you, beautiful one?" he asked Nefertiti. "What do you think? Is this beetle a god?"

Nefertiti smiled, her eyes fixed on her husband's face. "Perhaps a very small god."

Akhenaten laughed. "Yes, very small and without much power." He stared down at the insect by his feet for several moments. "I could stretch out my foot and crush him beneath my sandal. Would that mean I had killed a god?" He nudged the dung ball with his toe, sending the ball rolling and the scarab end over end as it frantically tried to recover its balance. "I wonder if other gods would be that easy to kill."

I put out a hand and touched Akhenaten's leg. "Please don't kill him."

He looked down at me, a bemused expression on his elongated face. "Why not, child? If he truly is a god, as the priests say, I could not kill him. In fact I would be struck down for my presumption."

"I love him," I said. "Please don't kill him."

Akhenaten nodded. "As you wish, though I have never heard of anyone loving a dung beetle. Perhaps you wish to be his wife?" He laughed loudly, joined a few seconds later by Nefertiti. "Let them be married, scarab and … and no-name."

"Scarab and Scarab, beloved husband," murmured Nefertiti.

"Indeed, beautiful one, that shall be her name from this day. Scarab." Akhenaten grinned down at me. "How do you like your name, little one?"

I turned the name over in my mind. Although not a beautiful name like so many of the little girls I knew, it was at least mine. "Thank you," I whispered.

"Run along now, little Scarab. I wish to sit and talk to my wife in this beautiful shade."

I left them there, turning back as I entered the palace. They were still standing where I had left them, staring down at the ground. When I returned to my tree the next day I found the scattered wing cases and horny shell of a scarab in that spot, picked clean by the ants. I buried the husks of Khepri but thought no more of it at the time, certainly made no connection between the dead beetle and my brother.

It was only later that I wondered whether my brother had, on that hot day, in the dust beneath the tamarind tree, braved the gods of Egypt by killing a very small one beneath his sandal.


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