The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

send a chair for me, for I am not a man to be despised, and I have no wish to come before him with donkey’s dung between my toes.” The servant replied, “For these words of yours, you filthy Egyptian, I fear you will come before the King with a spear prodding your behind.” But he went and was certainly impressed, for the next day the King’s chair came to Ishtar’s House of Joy to fetch me.

But the chair was a common one, such as is sent to bring tradesmen and other common people to the palace to show jewellery and feathers and apes. Kaptah shouted loudly to the porters and to the runner and said, “In the name of Seth and all devils, may Marduk scourge you with a scorpion whip, and be gone already. As if it were seemly for my lord to travel in such a rickety old coop as that.” The porters looked blank, and the runner threatened Kaptah with his staff. Onlookers began to gather at the inn door. They laughed and shouted, “In truth, we long to see your lord for whom the King’s chair is inadequate.” But Kaptah hired the great chair belonging to the inn, which required forty strong slaves to carry it and in which the ambassadors from powerful kingdoms went about their business and in which also foreign gods were carried when they visited the city. And the bystanders laughed no longer when I came down from my room in a robe on which were embroidered in silver and gold the symbols of physician’s profession, and my collar glittered in the sunshine with gold and precious stones, and golden chains rattled about my neck; and the inn slaves followed with chests of cedar wood and ebony inlaid with ivory in which lay my medicines and my physician’s instruments. Indeed, people did not laugh any more, but bowed deep before me and said one to another, “Truly this man must be as the lesser gods in wisdom. Let us follow him to the palace.” So a great crowd followed the chair to the gates of the palace, and Kaptah rode a white donkey in the front of the chair, silver bells jingling in donkey’s reins. I didn’t do all this for my sake but for Horemheb’s sake, for he had given me much gold and my eyes were his eyes and my ears were his ears.

At the palace gates, the guards dispersed the crowd with their spears and raised their shields as a barrier, a very wall of gold and silver. Winged lions lined the way along which I was carried to the inner courts of the palace. Here an old man came to meet me whose

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chin was shaven after the fashion of scholars. There were golden rings dangling from his ears, and his cheeks hung in discontented folds, and there was anger in his eyes as he watched me and said, “My liver is incensed because of the needless uproar you have caused by your arrival. The lord of the four quarters of the world is already asking what manner of man this is who comes when it suits him rather than when it suits the King, and who, when he does come, brings tumult with him.”

I said to him, “Old man! Your speech is as the buzz of flies in my ear, but nevertheless, I ask who you may be to address me thus.” He said, “I am physician in chief to the lord of the four quarters of the world and highest of his doctors, and what swindler are you who come to entice silver or gold from the King. Know that if of his bounty he reward you with minted gold or silver, you must give half of it to me.”

I said to him, “I care not about your liver, and I see that you would do better to talk to my servant, whose business it is to clear blackmailers and parasites from my path. Yet I shall be your friend since you are an old man and know no better. I shall give you these gold rings from my arm to show you that gold and silver are as but dust beneath my feet and that it is not for gold that I have come but for wisdom.”

I gave him the gold bracelets from my wrists, and he was astonished and knew not what to say to me. He even allowed Kaptah to accompany me and brought us into the presence of the King. King Burnaburiash sat on soft cushions in an airy room with the walls gleaming with brightly coloured tiles. He was just a spoiled, sulky boy with his hand to his cheek, and beside him lay a lion that growled softly as we appeared. The old man prostrated himself to wipe the floor with his mouth before the King, and Kaptah did the same, but when he heard the lion’s growl, he bounced up on hands and feet like a frog with a yelp of fear, which made the King burst out laughing and tumble backward on his cushions, squirming with mirth. But Kaptah got angry and said, “Take away this devil’s beast before it bites me, for I have never in my life seen a more frightening creature, and its roar is like chariots’ thunder in the square of Thebes when still drunk guards drive to their practises after a festival.” He squatted on the floor and raised his hands defensively, and also the lion sat up and yawned at great length, then clashed its fangs together as a temple’s coffers close on a widow’s mite.

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