The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

attention by her beauty, and many offered to buy her of me. Kaptah rested after his labours and grew fat and met many women who granted him their favours for the sake of his stories. When he became drunk in the pleasure houses, he would tell of his day as the King of Babylon, and everyone laughed and slapped his knees and said, “Never have we met such a liar. His tongue is as long and fluent as the river.”

So the time passed until Minea began to gaze at me with misgiving, and at night she lay awake weeping. Then I said to her, “I know that you yearn for your own country and your god, and we have a long journey before us. Yet I must first visit the land of Hatti, where the Hittites live, for reasons I cannot tell you. After asking about from merchants and travellers and inns, I have gathered much information, although conflicting at times, and I believe that from their country one may sail for Crete, though of this I am not sure, and if you prefer it, I will take you straight to the Syrian coast, whence vessels bound for Crete sail every week. But I have heard that a caravan is soon to start from here to take the annual gifts from the King of Mitanni to the King of the Hittites, and with this we may travel in safety and see and hear many new things that we have not known before, and it will be another year before similar opportunity presents itself to me. However, I do not want to decide this, and you can make up your own mind.”

In my heart, I knew that I deceived her, for my desire to visit the land of Hatti was simply my desire to keep her with me longer before relinquishing her to her god. But she replied, “Who am I to meddle with your plans. I go with you willingly wherever it may be since you have promised to take me back to my country. I also know that on the coast in the land of the Hittites it is the custom of the young women and men to dance before wild oxen on the meadow, so it cannot be too far from Crete. So I can practise my dance for it is soon a year since I last danced before oxen and I fear they pierce me with their horns if I dance before them in Crete.”

I said to her, “I do not know anything about oxen but I have to say that according to all information the Hittites are a cruel and treacherous people, so we may meet many dangers on our journey and even death. Therefore it might be best if you wait in Mitanni until I return, and I can leave you some gold so you can live well all that time.” But she said, “Where you go, I go, and should death overtake us, I will mourn not for my sake but for yours.”

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I therefore resolved to join the royal caravan as a physician and so travel under the protection of the King of Mitanni to the land of Hatti, which is also called Cheta. When Kaptah heard this, he started swearing and invoked the gods to his aid and said, “Hardly are we out of the jaws of one death before my lord yearns to plunge down the gullet of another. Everyone knows that the Hittites are like beasts and worse than beasts — and they eat human flesh and pierce the strangers’ eyes and put them to work rolling their large stone mills. Gods have cursed my lord with madness, and you are mad too, Minea, by defending him, and it would be better for us to tie up our lord and take him in a closed room and put leeches under his arms and knees to calm him down. By the scarab, I have barely got all my fat back, when another useless journey comes upon me. Cursed be the day I was born into this world to suffer the mad whims of my lunatic lord.”

I had to call him to order with a stick until he was calm again, and when he was calm, I said, “Be it as you wish. I will send you in company with some merchants direct to Zemar and pay for your journey. Look after my house there until I return, for I am sick to death of your eternal lamentations.”

But Kaptah blazed up again, saying, “And where would be the sense in that? How can I allow my lord to journey alone to the land of Hatti for I might as well loose a newborn kid amongst hounds in a cage, and my heart would never cease to upbraid me for such a crime. I ask but one question, and reply to me openly according to your knowledge: is the land of Hatti reached by sea?”

I told him that so far as I knew there was no sea between the lands of Hatti and Mitanni, even if one said this and another that, and there was no certainty of the length of the journey. To this Kaptah replied, “Blessed be my scarab for if it had been necessary to go by sea I could not have accompanied you since for reasons that are too long to explain, I have sworn to the gods never to set foot on the deck of a sea-going ship. Not even for your sake or for the sake of this impudent Minea, who talks and behaves like a boy, can I break my oath to gods whose names I can list right away if that is needed.”

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