The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

Minea grew daily more radiant: her hair floated in the wind, her eyes were like moonlight on the sea, and she was so slender and beautiful to see that my heart melted within me as I beheld her and remembered how soon she would be gone. To return to Zemar or to Egypt without her seemed an empty thing; and life was like ashes in my mouth at the thought of the time when I would not see her and she would no longer put her hands in mine and press against my side, and when I should behold her no longer. The captain and his men held her in deep veneration when they heard that she danced before bulls and that the lot had fallen to her to enter the god’s house at the full moon, although she had hitherto been prevented by shipwreck. When I tried to ask them about their god, they made no answer, and only said, “We do not know” And some said, “We do not understand your tongue, stranger.” I knew only that the Cretan god ruled the sea and that the islands in the sea sent their young men and girls to dance before his bulls.

The day came when Crete rose like a blue cloud from the ocean, and the seamen uttered cries of joy, while the captain made sacrifice to the god of the sea who had sent us good winds and weather. The mountains of Crete and its steep, olive-clad shores rose before my eyes, and I saw a strange land of which I knew nothing, though I was to leave my heart buried there. But Minea saw in it her mother country and wept with joy at the majesty of the mountains and the tender green of the earth within the sea’s embrace until the sail was lowered, and the oarsmen unshipped their oars and rowed the ship alongside the quay, past other craft from every land, both warships and merchantmen, which lay at anchor. There must have been a thousand vessels in the harbour of Crete, and Kaptah surveying them said that had someone said there were so many ships in the world, he would not have believed it. Here were neither towers nor walls nor any fortifications, and the city adjoined the port. So assured was Crete’s sovereignty of the seas and so powerful was its god.

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I shall now speak of Crete and of what I have seen there, but of what I think of the country and its god I shall say nothing, but I shall seal my heart from saying it and let my eyes report. Nowhere in the world, then, have I beheld anything so beautiful and strange as Crete, though I have journeyed to all known lands. As glistening spume is blown ashore, as bubbles glow in all five colours of the rainbow, as mussel shells are bright with mother of pearl, so was Crete shining and glowing to my eyes. Nowhere are human pleasures so immediate and so capricious as here, and no one acts but by the impulse of the moment, and the minds of the people veer from hour to hour so that it is difficult to make agreements with them or to extract promises from them for everyone changes their opinion from one moment to another. Therefore they also speak everything that sounds beautiful or pleasant, even if it were not true, because they delight in the music of words; and death is not acknowledged amongst them, nor do I believe they have a word for death for it is concealed — and when a man dies, he is removed in secret that others be not oppressed. I believe they burn the bodies of their dead, though of this I cannot be sure, for throughout my stay I saw not one dead person nor any graves save those of former Kings which had been built of huge stones in some bygone age, and today people go far out of their way to avoid them as if by turning their thoughts away from death they might escape it.

Their art also is wonderful and capricious, and every painter paints as the fancy takes him, heedless of rules, and he paints only such things as in his own eyes are beautiful. Their vases and bowls blaze with rich colour, and round their sides swim all the strange creatures and fish of the sea; flowers grow upon them and butterflies hover over them, so that a man accustomed to an art regulated by convention is disturbed when he sees the work and thinks himself in a dream.

Buildings are not imposing like the temples and palaces of other countries, convenience and luxury being the aim rather than outward appearance. Cretans love air and cleanliness, and their lattice windows admit the breeze, and their houses contain many bathrooms where both hot and cold water runs from silver pipes into silver baths at the mere

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