The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

in gods, even if they still worship them, because it is the custom and certainty is best. All this I know well for ever since childhood I have grown up in the stables of god and have been initiated into His secret ritual so that no power or witchcraft can separate me from my god. If you also had danced before bulls and in the dance swung yourself between sharp horns and tickled a bellowing muzzle in play with your foot, you would know a little about what I say. But I believe you have never seen youths and girls dancing before bulls.”

“I have heard of it,” I said. “I also know they have played these games in the Lower Kingdom, and I have thought it was only to entertain people even though I could have guessed the gods had their part in it, like in everything that exists and takes place. But if so, in Egypt we also worship a bull who has the god’s signs on him and is born only once in a generation, but I have not heard anyone jumping on his back for that would have been a sacrilege and hurt his dignity. This bull can see the future. But if you want to tell me that you must spare your virginity for the benefit of bulls, I find your talk unheard of though I have heard that in Syria the priests who perform the secret ritual of the Earth Mother sacrifice maidens to he-goats, and these maidens are chosen from amongst the people.”

She smote me hard on both cheeks, and her eyes burned as the eyes of a wildcat burn in the dark as she cried in a fury, “I find there is no difference between a man and a he-goat, for your thoughts turn to bodily things only so that a goat would answer your lusts as well as a woman. You may go to hell for what I care and leave me in peace and plague me no more with your jealousy, for you talk about things you know as much about as a pig knows of silver.”

Her speech was mean and her blows burned my cheeks so that I cooled down and left her and went to the aft of the boat. To pass the time, I opened my medicine chest and began to clean my instruments and weigh medications. She sat in the bow and drummed her heels on the bottom of the boat in exasperation, but after a while she threw off her clothes in a passion and rubbed her body with oil and began so wild and violent a dance that the boat rocked. I could not resist a sideways glance, for her performance was masterly beyond belief. She could bend backward without effort till she rested on her hands, arching her body

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like a bow, then raise herself from that position standing on her arms. All the muscles of her body quivered beneath the skin gleaming from oil, and she grew breathless, and her hair billowed about her head, for the dance demanded such a degree of skill as I have never seen equalled though I have watched dancing girls in the pleasure houses of many lands.

As I watched her, anger melted away from my heart, and I brooded no longer upon what I had lost through stealing this capricious and ungrateful girl from the women’s house of the King of Babylon. I remembered also that she had been ready to stab herself to death in defence of her virginity and knew that I had behaved ill in demanding of her what she could not give. When she had danced so long that the sweat ran down her body and every muscle quivered with exhaustion, she wiped her body and washed her limbs in the river. Then she covered herself, head and all, with a garment, and I heard her weeping. Then I forgot my drugs and instruments and hastened to her, touched her shoulder gently and asked, “Are you ill?” She made no answer, but pushed my hand away and wept the more.

I sat down beside her and said my heart full of grief, “Minea, my sister, do not weep, at least not because of me, for truly I never mean to touch you, never; even if you were to ask me I would save you all pain and sorrow and would have you stay always as you are.”

She raised her head and wiped away her tears in a gesture of annoyance and snapped, “I fear neither pain nor sorrow, if that is what you think, you fool. And I do not weep because of you but because of my fate, which has separated me from my god and made me as weak as a wet rag so that a glance from a stupid man makes my knees soft as dough.” Saying this, she did not look at me, but stared persistently away from me and blinked her teary eyes.

I held her hands, and she did not withdraw them but turned to me at length, to say, “Sinuhe, the Egyptian, in your eyes I must appear ungrateful and annoying, but I can’t help it, for I don’t know myself any more. I would gladly tell you of my god so that you might understand me better but to speak of him to the uninitiated is forbidden. I can tell you only that he is the god of the sea and lives in a dark house inside a mountain, and no one who has entered that house has ever returned but

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