The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

Upon this, I went out to ask after my friends. At The Syrian Jar I asked for Thutmose, but a new landlord was there who could tell me nothing of a certain poor painter who lived by drawing cats in picture books for rich men’s children. I then went to the barracks to inquire for Horemheb, but the place was empty. In the courtyard were no wrestlers, no spearmen lunging at sacks stuffed with rushes, nor were the great cauldrons steaming in the cooking sheds as formerly, but all was deserted. A taciturn sergeant of the Sherdens stared at me, wriggling his toes in the sand, his face bony and without oil, but he bowed before me when I asked for Horemheb, Pharaoh’s commander who some years ago had waged war against the Habirus at the edge of the desert in Syria. He was still a royal commander, the man told me in broken Egyptian, but had been absent for some months in the land of Kush, where he was to disband the garrisons and release the troops from service, and no one knew when he would return. I gave the man a silver piece because he seemed so dejected, and at this he became so delighted that he forgot his dignity as a Sherden, smiled and, in his astonishment, swore by the name of some unknown god. When I would have left, he detained me and helplessly pointed at the courtyard with his hand.

“Horemheb is a great officer who understands soldiers, is a soldier, and has no fear,” he said. “Horemheb is a lion, Pharaoh a hornless goat. The barracks are empty, no pay, no food. My comrades beg about the country. What will come, I don’t know. Amun bless you for your silver, dear man. I haven’t got drunk for months. My belly is full of dread. I left my own country for many promises. Egyptian recruiters went from tent to tent and promised much silver, much women, much drunk. And now? No silver, no drunk, and the women!” He spat to show his disgust and ground the spittle into the dust with his calloused foot. He was a very sorrowful Sherden, and I was concerned for him, gathering from what he said that Pharaoh had dismissed his soldiers and disbanded the troops that had been levied and employed from abroad with great expenses in the days of his father. My thoughts turned to old Ptahor, and in order to find out where he might live, I summoned up my courage and went to the House of Life in the Temple of Amun to seek his name amongst the records. But the keeper of the records told me that the royal skull opener had died and lain in the City of the Dead for a year and more. So I found not one single friend left in Thebes any more.

337

Being already in the Temple, I went to the great hall of pillars, and felt the holy twilight of Amun about me, and the fragrance of incense hung about the coloured stone columns with manifold sacred inscriptions carved on them, and far above swallows darted in and out through the stone tracery of the windows. But the Temple was almost empty and the forecourt also, and in the countless booths and workshops there was less chaffering and bustle than in former days. Shaven, oily-headed priests in white cloaks regarded me diffidently, and the people in the forecourt conversed in low voices, with many sideways glances as if they feared eavesdroppers. The busy hum and hustle of this courtyard which started early in the morning and was so familiar to me in my student days, when it was like the soughing of wind through reeds, was muffled now to silence. I bore no love for Amun but despite myself was seized with melancholy, as a man must be who thinks of his forever-escaped youth, whether that youth was good or bad.

When I stepped out between the pylons and the gigantic statues of Pharaohs, I observed that a new temple had grown up beside the old, of massive proportions and utterly strange in its design so that I had never seen such before. There were no enclosing walls, and when I entered, I found that the colonnade surrounded an open court, on the altar of which had been placed offerings of grain, flowers and fruit. A great carved relief showed Aten showering his rays on Pharaoh, who made sacrifice, each ray ending in a hand of benediction that held the cross of life. The heads of the white- robed priests were not shaven, and most of these men were but youths, and from their faces glowed an ecstasy as they sang that holy song whose words I remembered having heard once before, in far-off Jerusalem in Syria. But more impressive than priests or images were the forty huge pillars from each of which the new Pharaoh, carved in supernatural size, gazed at the observer with his arms tightly crossed over his breast, holding in his hands the crook and the scourge of majesty.

That these sculptured pillars were representations of Pharaoh I could plainly see, for I recognised the face, frightening in its passion, and the broad-hipped form with its slender arms and legs. I was seized with awestruck admiration for the artist skilled enough and bold enough to carve these statues, since the free art that my friend Thutmose had

338