The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

clothes since there are always so many people. Eat and drink, my friends, and try to calm down, Minea, and if my wife should come, tell her I am with Minos and that I did not wish to disturb her joy with the young bull youth. Or I might go to bed since no one at Minos will observe whether I am there or not, but on the other hand if I went I could look in at the stables on the way and learn how that new bull is shaping, the one with the patch on its flank, so perhaps after all I had better go. It is a truly exceptional bull.” Absently, he took his leave of us until Minea said to him, “We shall also go to Minos that I may meet with all my friends and introduce Sinuhe to them.”

So we went to the palace of Minos, on foot because the old man could not make up his mind whether or not it was worth while to take a chair for so short a distance. Not until we reached the palace did I discover that Minos was the King and that their Kings were always called Minos to distinguish them from other people. But of which Minos line he could be was unknown, for no one had the patience to reckon and record them since one day the Minos disappeared and another Minos took his place; the new one was no different from the old one, and nothing changed in Crete.

The palace had countless rooms, and on the walls of the reception hall were depicted billowing seaweed, cuttlefish and jellyfish swimming in transparent waters. The great hall was filled with people, each more strangely and luxuriously dressed than the last, and they moved about conversing in lively tones with one another, laughing loudly and drinking from small cups — chilled drinks, wine and fruit juice — and the women compared dresses. Minea presented me to many of her friends, who all displayed politeness and the same absent-minded courtesy, and King Minos said a few friendly words to me in my own language, thanking me for having saved Minea for their god and for bringing her home so that she may now enter the god’s house at the first opportunity although her turn according to the lot she had drawn was now long past.

After that, I stayed aside and looked about and felt alien in this company, whose language and delights I could not understand, until an elderly woman, whose coiffure was high like a tower and decorated with fresh flowers and who in my opinion should not have bared her

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breasts, came to me. She said to me in broken Egyptian, “We must have met before, even if your name escapes me, but you must be the Egyptian priest who came to initiate us enthusiasts to the secret ways of Isis.” I said that I did not remember seeing her before and assured that I would certainly have remembered her, had I ever met with her, which was true, so vividly she reminded me of a goat nibbling a tuft of grass. I also said that I was not a priest but a physician, and she asked, “Do you also cure bulls?” I was hurt by this, but there was no need to since in Crete the bulls are more highly regarded than the most distinguished men, and both healing them and making them raving mad are valued skills. But I did not know this, and said, “I have cured some goats and she- baboons, but never a bull before.” She hit me playfully with her fan and said that I was a wicked man. I might have been stuck with her until eternity, but Minea came to my rescue and took me away from her.

Minea went about the palace as if it were her own, leading me from room to room, crying out in pleasure at the sight of some object familiar to her and greeting the servants, who returned her salutation as if she had never been away. Minea told me that an eminent Cretan could, whenever the fancy took him, visit his country estates or set forth on a journey, and though he forgot to mention it to his friends, no one would wonder at his absence, and on his return he would join the rest again as if he had never been away. This habit must have softened the fact of death for them, for when anyone disappeared, no one inquired for him and he was forgotten. His absence from an appointment or a meeting or a reception caused no remark since he might have taken it into his head to do something else instead.

At length, Minea took me to a room that was perched on a rock above the rest of the building so that from its wide windows commanded a view over smiling courts, fields, olive groves and plantations beyond the city. She told me that this was her room, and all her possessions were there as if she had left it but yesterday, though the clothes and jewellery in her trunks and boxes were now out-dated and could no longer be worn. Only now did I learn that she was a kinswoman of Cretan Minos, though I should have guessed this from her name. Gold and silver and costly presents were meaningless to her since she had been accustomed from childhood to have whatever she

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