“Is this the reason you have sent for me, Queen Nefertiti?” Cepri asked uneasily.
Nefertiti noticed the reticence. “What worries you about this, Cepri?” She asked.
“I am perplexed more than worried,” Cepri replied, relaxing into the interview. “Lalish is far away. Ištar coming to earth in a distant kingdom has little to do with Aten.”
“Aten is not as powerful as my husband believes,” Nefertiti replied. “Times are changing, Cepri. We need divine help, and I want to bring Ištar to Egypt.”
“Why not bring back Isis or Hathor? They are Egyptian Gods equal to Ištar.”
“Akhenaten gave onto me the strengths of both Isis and Hathor when he outlawed the Amun priesthood. I have no other powerful Egyptian Goddesses I can call on. Akhenaten does not yet see it, but he needs Ištar, Cepri. The Amun priests are angry, maybe this will quiet them.”
The Priests of Amun loathed the intrusion of the Syrians. As the Amun religion became all-powerful their priests incorporated themselves ever more closely into the ruling dynasties, making the Amun theocracy an exclusionary and elitist religion riddled with corruption and cronyism. Initially they succeeded, becoming as powerful as the Pharaoh. Fearing their hold was a danger to the Hyksos royalty Akhenaten bided his time until his parents died. Soon after his mother Tiye died, he changed the entire religion of Egypt, kicking out the old Gods, along with the corrupt priesthood.
