Tutankhamon-Tutankhaton, the envoy of Akhnaton, the king of Egypt, brought him a marvellous gift from the island of Crete—Dio, the dancer, the pearl of the Kingdom of the Seas. He boasted that he had saved her from death: but it was not he who saved her. When she killed the god-Bull in the Knossos arena to avenge her friend Eoia who had been sacrificed to the Beast, she was sentenced to be burned at the stake. But Tammuzadad, a Babylonian who loved Dio, went to the stake in her place and Tutankhaton merely hid her in his ship and brought her to Egypt. Before bringing Dio to the king in the new capital, Akhetaton, the City of the Sun, he settled her near Thebes, or Nut-Amon, in the country house of his distant relative Khnumhotep, formerly the chief superintendent of the granaries of Amon's temple. Khnumhotep's estate was enclosed by high brick walls that formed an oblong quadrangle making it look like a fortress. Within it were granaries, cattle-yards, wine-presses, hay-lofts, barns and other buildings, vineyards and gardens divided into regular squares: kitchen garden, orchard, flower garden, woods of pine and other trees and a palm plantation with three ponds, one large and two small ones. Two high three-storied houses, a brick one for winter and a wooden one with a brick bottom storey for the summer, stood facing each other on opposite sides of the big pond. Dio spent a couple of months in this quiet country place resting from all that had happened to her in Crete and learning Egyptian dances.