Sometimes, a breath of perfumed ointments would reach the veranda when a lovely woman went by on foot, robed transparently, with cheeks, lips and eyebrows beautifully painted and in her liquid eyes a glint never seen in those of the virtuous. When I gazed spellbound upon such a one, my father would say gravely, “Beware of a woman who calls you pretty boy and entices you, for her heart is a net and a snare, and her body burns worse than fire.”
It was no wonder that after such teachings, my childish soul began to fear the wine jar and beautiful women who were not like ordinary women, though both became endowed with the perilous charm of feared and forbidden things.
While I was yet a child, my father let me attend his consultations, and he showed me his scalpels, forceps and jars of medicine and explained their uses to me. When he examined his patients, I had to stand beside him and hand him bowls of water, dressings, oil and wine. My mother could not endure to see wounds and sores and never understood my interest in disease. A child does not appreciate suffering until he has experienced it. To me, the lancing of a boil was a thrilling operation, and I would proudly tell the other boys all I had seen to win their respect. Whenever a new patient arrived, I would follow my father’s examination and questions with close attention until at last he said, “This disease can be cured,” or “I will undertake your treatment”. There were also those whom he did not feel competent to treat. Then he would write a few lines on a strip of papyrus and send them to the House of Life, in the Temple. When such a patient had left him, he would usually sigh, shake his head, and say, “Poor creature!”
Not all my father’s patients were needy. Patrons of nearby pleasure houses were sent to him now and again to be bandaged after some brawl, and their clothes were of finest linen. Masters of Syrian ships came sometimes when they had boils or toothache. I was not surprised, therefore, when the wife of a spice dealer came for examination one day, wearing jewellery and a collar sparkling with precious stones. She sighed and moaned and lamented over her many afflictions while my father listened attentively. I was greatly disappointed when at last he took up a strip of paper to write upon, for I had hoped he would be able to cure her and so acquire many fine presents. I sighed, shook my head and whispered to myself, “Poor creature!”
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The sick woman gave a frightened start and looked uneasily at my father. But father copied on a piece of paper a line of old-fashioned characters and pictures from a worn papyrus scroll, then poured oil and wine into a mixing bowl and soaked the paper in it until the ink had been dissolved by the wine. Then he poured the liquid into an earthenware jar and gave it to the spice dealer’s wife as a medicine, telling her to take some of it whenever her head or stomach began to pain her. When the woman had gone, I looked at my father questioningly. He was embarrassed, coughed once or twice and said:
“Many diseases can be cured with ink that has been used for a powerful invocation.”
He said no more aloud, but muttered to himself after a time, “At least it can do the patient no harm.”
When I was seven years old, I was given a boy’s loincloth and my mother took me to the Temple to attend a sacrifice. Amun’s Temple in Thebes was at that time the mightiest in all of Egypt. An avenue lined with carved stone of rams-headed sphinxes led to it, right through the city from the Temple and Pool of the Moon Goddess. The Temple area was surrounded by massive brick walls and with its many buildings formed a city within the city. From the tops of the towering pylons floated colourful pennants, and gigantic statues of Kings guarded the copper gates on each side of the Temple area.
We went through the gates, and the sellers of Books of the Dead pulled at my mother’s clothes and made their offers shrilly or in a whisper. Mother took me to look at the carpenters’ shops with their display of wooden images of slaves and servants, which, after consecration by the priests, would serve their owners in the next world so that these need never lift a finger to help themselves. But why tell about all this, what everyone knows, as things have already returned back to what they were and the human heart has not changed. My mother paid the fee demanded of spectators, and I saw white -robed, deft-handed priests slay and quarter a bull between whose horns a braid of papyrus bore a seal, testifying that the beast was without blemish or a single black hair. The priests were fat and holy, and their shaven heads gleamed with oil. There were a hundred or so people who had come to attend the sacrifice, but the priests paid little heed to them and chatted indifferently to one another of their own affairs throughout the ceremony. I gazed at the warlike pictures on the Temple walls and
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