Queen Liberty
Volume 1 : The Empire of Darkness
When a young rebel girl says no to the occupation and the barbarians…
In the XVIIIth century before Christ, at the end of the Middle Empire, an army of barbarians comes from Asia on chariots pulled by horses (the Egyptians have never seen this before!), manage to invade Egypt, ravaging everything in their path with incredible violence. They are called the Hyksos, the “heads of the foreign countries”.
Forty years later, Egypt, in its death throes, renounces any type of fight, and collapses under the taxes levied, the injustice and the slavery. The head of the invaders, Apophis, rules as a cruel master over the former Empire, setting up his military capital in Avaris, on the northern shore of the Delta, and determined to destroy what is left of the past sumptuous civilisation. Only one city has not ceded, Thebes, still headed by a desperate queen, Téti la Petite. For Téti knows that the men have capitulated, that she is alone and impotent in her deserted palace.
But Téti has an eighteen year old daughter, Ahotep. And Ahotep has never accepted defeat: “When we do not have a choice”, she often says, “we are free!” She is proud, beautiful, courageous, she is afraid of nothing. And thus she decides, in front of her terrified mother, to head the Egyptian resistance! First alone! And then with those who wish to join her! With freedom as the rallying call . . . The first to present himself, barely older than the princess, is an assistant gardener, Séquen. He has also decided to fight, and Ahotep takes him on straight away. Of course, Queen Téti stands by her daughter, as does Qaris, the Palace intendant. Soon Héray the baker joins the small group, and little by little the resistance takes shape, thanks to the charisma of Ahotep – whom Téti names Queen in her stead, to render her just fight official.
What they do not know is that the uprising is also bubbling elsewhere: in Memphis, where two men, an Afghan and an Egyptian, have managed on their part and at the risk of their lives to organise a troop of itinerant fighters; at Edfou, where the governor has also refused to accept the rules of the invader; at Avaris itself, where the terrible exactions of Apophis who has become Emperor, serial rapes, incessant torture, summary executions, awaken rebel consciences. How many are they, ready to die to liberate Egypt from tyranny, Ahotep and Séqen do not really have the means to know, but they love each other, and this love gives them the strength to face the worst… For it is truly the worst that occurs, given the power and strength of the occupier.
