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and shiny so it seemed as if you were walking on water: so clear it acted like a mirror and caught the reflections of the silver flowers, butterflies and birds carved on the ceiling. The Hall of Two Truths was truly a chamber of beauty as well as justice. Its wall paintings depicted Ma’at, the Goddess of Truth, in many poses and roles: as the beautiful young woman, the divine princess, kneeling before her father Ra; as the judge, standing in the Hall of Judgement with the jackal-faced Anubis and the green-skinned Osiris as the Divine Ones assembled to weigh a soul and determine its final fate. In other paintings she was portrayed as a warrior princess fending off the destroyers, the creatures of the Underworld, who exulted in such names as Devourer of Faeces, Gobbler of Flesh, Supper of Blood, Grinder of Bones. Next to these she appeared in more peaceful roles holding the scales of justice or stretching out the feather of truth.

    All these paintings and carvings reminded everyone assembled in the hall that this was a court of justice, a place of judgement, where men and women faced the all-consuming power of Pharaoh and suffered the consequence of her displeasure. Here, sentence of death was passed, the dreadful decree which dispatched criminals to a suffocating death in the desert or to be hung in chains from the Wall of Death outside the city.
    Now, in the first weeks of the Inundation, in the third year of Pharaoh Hatusu’s reign, sentence of death was to be proclaimed. The onlookers in the court either gasped or held their breath, for the trial recently ended manifested how the Pharaoh Queen, scarcely a woman of mature years, had tightened her grip on the collar of Egypt. When Pharaoh’s power was strong, the princely tombs in the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens were left untouched. If Pharaoh weakened, the powers of darkness always made their presence felt, either in attacks on the temples or in the raiding of tombs across the swollen waters of the Nile in the City of the Dead. Such raids had recently taken place, and all manner of men and women had been involved. Priests of the mortuary temples, priestesses of the serpent goddess Meretseger, whose shrine overlooked the Necropolis, merchants and soldiers, high-ranking ministers and officials: no fewer than two dozen people in all had been arrested. Hatusu, her face mottled with fury, had met her councillors of the Royal Circle and demanded such raids be brought to an end. Now the man responsible for Pharaoh’s justice, Chief Justice Amerotke, was about to pass judgement. He had been left in no doubt that he was to show all of Egypt how Hatusu had tightened her grip on the Kingdom of the Two Lands.
    Hatusu herself had come down to the court early that morning to lecture Amerotke in his chamber behind the shrine. The Chief Justice thought Pharaoh had never looked so beautiful: her flawless skin drawn tight, eyes sparkling
with life, the blood running fast and free. She was so angry she could not stay still, but walked up and down, linen robes swishing, her multicoloured sash swinging backwards and forwards to the clatter of bracelets and necklaces: these reflected the light from the torches and lamps so it seemed the Pharaoh Queen shimmered in an aura of fire. She had even pressed the pearl-encrusted fan used to keep her cheeks cool against Amerotke’s neck.
    â€˜You are sure they are guilty, my lord?’ she demanded.
    â€˜Of course, Divine One.’
    Amerotke kept his eyes on the Uraeus, the spitting cobra, which lunged from the centre of the circlet around Hatusu’s head. In many ways, he thought, the Pharaoh Queen in her present mood was more dangerous than any snake.
    â€˜I want those criminals dead.’ Hatusu took away the fan, snapped it open and began to use it vigorously. She turned, and stared down at her Chief Minister, Senenmut, his thick-set face impassive as he squatted on a footstool and watched his