The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

Kaptah stuck his tousled head out of the jar and looked about bewildered, and I have never seen a more astonished man as he was at that moment. He moaned and said, “What is this foolery? Where am I, and where is my royal diadem; and where have the symbols of my majesty been hidden for I am all naked and chilled. Also my head is full of wasps, and my limbs are heavy like lead as if I had been bitten by a venomous serpent. Beware how you make sport of me, Sinuhe, for it is dangerous to jest with Kings.”

I wanted to punish him for his arrogance of the day before. I looked blankly and said, “I don’t know what you are saying, Kaptah, and you must still be in a fog of wine for you surely remember that when we left Babylon you drank too much and became so violent in the boat and talked so wildly that the oarsmen had to shut you up in that jar lest you should do them some harm. You were talking about kings and judges and babbled much else.”

Kaptah shut his eyes and strove to recollect himself, and at last he replied, “My lord, never again will I drink wine, for wine and dreams have led me into terrible adventures so altogether ghastly that I cannot relate them to you. But this I can say: that it seemed to me that by the grace of the scarab I was a King, dispensing justice from my throne, also that I entered the women’s house and took exceedingly great pleasure there with a beautiful girl. Many other things happened also, but I don’t dare think of them now for my head hurts a lot and it would be merciful of you, my lord, if you gave me some of that medicine which wine drinkers use the day after in that accursed Babylon.”

Having said this, Kaptah noticed Minea and ducked hastily down into the jar again and said in a pitiful voice, “My lord, I am not yet quite recovered or else I am still dreaming for there in the stern of the boat I seem to see the girl whom I met in my dream in the women’s house. May the scarab protect me for I fear I am going mad.” He touched his black eye and swollen nose and mourned aloud. But Minea went up to the jar and grabbed him by the hair and pulled out his head and said, “Look at me! Am I really the woman with whom you took pleasure last night?” Kaptah gazed at her in terror, shut his one eye and said moaning, “All the gods of Egypt have mercy on me and pardon me for having worshiped strange gods and made sacrifice to them, but you are she and forgive me, for it was but a dream.” Minea took a slipper from

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her foot and slapped him on both of his cheeks and said, “May this be the punishment for your inappropriate dream so that you know you are awake now.” But Kaptah moaned even more and said, “I can’t say if I am at sleep or awake any more, as this same thing happened to me in my dream, when this dreadful woman came to me in the King’s women’s house.”

I helped him out of the jar and gave him a bitter stomach-cleansing potion, then tying a rope about his waist I dipped him in the river despite his loud shouting and held him floating in the water to clear his head of the poppy juice and wine. But when I had hauled him aboard again, I relented, saying, “May this be a lesson to you for your impudence to me, your master. Everything that happened to you is true, and had it not been for my help, you would now be lying lifeless in a jar amongst all the other false kings.” I then told him all that had taken place, and I had to tell it many times before he grasped it all and believed me. Finally I told him, “Our lives are in danger, and what has passed no longer seems funny, for as surely as we sit here in this boat, we shall hang head downward on the wall if the King finds us and he may do even worse. Good planning is now essential for our oarsmen have run away, and you, Kaptah, must hit on some way for us to escape with our lives into the land of Mitanni.”

Kaptah scratched his hair and mused. At length he said, “If I have understood you rightly, all that has happened is true and no wine-born delusion. This being so, I will praise this day as a good day, for I can now drink wine without misgivings for my head’s sake though I thought that never again in my life should I dare to taste it.” Having said this, he crept into the cabin and broke the seal of a wine jar and took a deep draught, for which he praised all the gods of Egypt and also of Babylon whose names he did not know. For each divinity he named, he bowed forward over the wine jar till at last he sank down on the mat in slumber, snoring like a hippopotamus.

I was so enraged at his behaviour that I would have rolled him into the water and drowned him, but Minea said, “Kaptah is right for to each day its own vexations. Therefore, why shouldn’t we drink wine and be happy in the place the river has brought us, for it is a beautiful place, and we are hidden by the reeds, and the storks are calling amongst them.

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