The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

and she’d be governing your house — which would bring about its own troubles that I don’t care to list here, but those troubles would be small compared to what awaits us now. Neither is the preservation of my body a small matter to me like it is to you, and for the sake of my body I am greatly worried what will happen to me in the coming life. But what you can’t prevent, will happen, said the woman when she left her finger between the grinding stones.”

I knew Kaptah could go on endlessly when he got started, and now fear had made his tongue ever more slippery. Therefore I said, “Cease this chattering and bring the wine if you wish, but let us start now for I believe the guards are asleep and overcome by the wine I mixed for them.”

The guards were already sleeping soundly, and the priest also, so I was able to remove the key of the Minotaur’s gate without difficulty from the place in the priest’s house where he had shown it to me. We also took with us a dish of embers and some torches, though we did not light them then, for the moon was bright and the little door was easy to unlock with the key. We stepped into the house of god and shut the door behind us, and in the darkness I heard Kaptah’s teeth rattle against the rim of the wine jar.

When Kaptah had fortified his valour with wine, he said in a faint voice, “My lord, let us light a torch since its glow will not be seen from outside, and this obscurity is worse than the darkness of the underworld, which no one can avoid, yet we have entered this darkness of our own free will.”

I blew on the charcoal and, lighting a torch, perceived that we were in a large vault, the entrance of which was closed by the copper gates. From this vault issued ten passages leading in different directions and separated one another by massive walls of brick. I was prepared for this as I had heard that the god of Crete dwelt in a labyrinth, and the Babylonian priests had taught me that labyrinths were constructed on the same plan as the viscera of sacrificial animals. For this reason, I believed that I might find my way, so often had I beheld the entrails of bulls at the sacrifice, and I assumed that the Cretan labyrinth was built on this plan. Therefore I pointed to Kaptah the passage that lay farthest to one side and said, “We will go in there.”

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But Kaptah said, “We are in no great hurry, and nothing was ever lost by caution. Let us beware of going astray, and above all let us ensure that we find our way back if we are ever to come back, which I gravely doubt for I am very much afraid we won’t come back.” Upon this, he took a ball of thread from his pouch and fastened the end of it to a bone pin, which he drove tightly between the bricks. The device was so cunning in its simplicity that I should never have hit on it myself, though I did not say this lest I lose dignity in his eyes. I merely told him sharply to hasten. Thus I entered the mazes of the dark house with the image of bovine entrails impressed upon my memory, while Kaptah followed unrolling the thread as we went forward.

We wandered about endlessly in the darkness following the corridors, and new passages continually opened out before us, and at times we came up against a wall and had to turn and go some other way, when at last Kaptah stood still and sniffed the air, and his teeth started to chatter, and the torch wavered in his grasp as he said, “My lord, do you recognize the smell of the bulls?”

I, too, was by now aware of a cruel, repulsive stench like the stench of bulls, though even more vile, and it seemed to issue from the very walls around us as if the whole labyrinth had been a gigantic cattle shed. I ordered Kaptah to continue without smelling the air, and when he had taken a deep draught from the wine jar, we hurried forward until my foot slid on some slippery object, and on bending down, I found it to be the rotting skull of a woman, to which hair still adhered. Then I knew that I should not see Minea alive again, but a lunatic urge to make sure drove me forward so that I cuffed Kaptah and forbade him to whimper, and we went on, unrolling the thread as we advanced. But soon we encountered another wall and had to turn about and choose another corridor.

All at once, Kaptah stopped short, pointing to the ground, and his scanty hair rose on his head, and his face was contorted and grey. I also looked and observed some dried cattle dung on the ground, but the heap was as high as a man so that if a bull had left it, that bull must have been

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