didn’t do it for the sake of my heart but for the sake of being tired of myself, but now had Aten revealed himself to me as that unknown outside human thought and knowledge, and the images of Pharaoh staring at me from stone pillars did not displease nor terrify me any more — but I looked at them in strange fascination, as if those stone eyes saw something that no one else had seen before. That was why that mouth smiled such majestic mocking smile, full of mysterious certainty. But I wondered if these young priests had any idea what they were talking about in their inexperience. Therefore I did not accept the cross of life they were pushing to me.
I stepped out of the temple of Aten feeling that until then my life had been like a stone -walled chamber without an exit and now for the first time I had found a small opening between the blocks where the sun shone in and air came through for my heart to breath. Just as when I felt the skill and power of being a physician for the first time, I again felt as life had opened to me anew. But I think only a man who is very lonely and has lost a lot can have this feeling. I, Sinuhe, a stranger on earth, once felt it in the temple of Aten, anticipating what Pharaoh’s sick eyes beheld. I anticipated it full of amazement and fascination of him, but I also knew that he should never have been Pharaoh for power is dangerous to someone who sees outside this world.
5
It was dusk when I returned to my house, and above my door hung a simple physician’s signboard, and in the courtyard squatted a few dirty-looking patients unhurriedly awaiting me. Kaptah, looking discontented, was sitting on the porch fanning the flies — that had come along with the poor — away from his face and his legs with a palm leaf, but to console him he had a newly broached jar of ale next to him.
I bade him first send in to me a mother who held an emaciated baby in her arms since the remedy for her was a few copper pieces with which to buy herself proper food so that she might suckle her child. Next, I tended a slave, who had crushed his fingers in a mill, by setting the bones and joints in place and administering a soothing draught of wine that he might forget his pain. I also helped an old scribe with a
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growth as big as a child’s head upon his neck, so that he was pop-eyed and held his head awry and found difficulty in breathing. I gave him an extract of seaweed that I had learned of in Zemar, although I did not think it could do much for him now. He brought out two copper pieces from a clean rag and offered them to me with pleading eyes, ashamed of his poverty but I did not take them, telling him that I should call upon his services when next I needed any writing done, and he departed rejoicing because he had saved his copper.
A girl from a nearby pleasure house also begged my help, for her eyes were so scabby that they disrupted her profession. I cleansed her eyes and mixed her a lotion with which to bathe them and rid them of the evil, and shyly she stood naked before me to offer me the only possible gift she had. Being unwilling to hurt her feelings, I told her that I must abstain from women on account of an important treatment I was about to give, and knowing nothing about doctor’s profession she believed it and admired me for my self-discipline. So that her willingness might not be altogether in vain, I removed a few disfiguring warts from her flank and belly, having first rubbed in a numbing salve to render the operation almost painless, and she went her way rejoicing.
Thus my first days work brought me less than enough to buy salt for my bread, and Kaptah sneered as he served me with a fat goose prepared in the Theban manner, a dish unmatched in any other part of the world. He had brought it from a superior wine shop in the city and kept it hot in the roasting pit and poured into a coloured glass goblet the best wine from Amun’s vineyard, mocking me meanwhile for my profitable day’s work. But because of the work I was light of heart and happier than if I had treated a wealthy merchant and had been rewarded with a gold chain as a physician’s gift. And I should add that the mill slave returned in a few days to show me his fingers, which were healing well, and to give me a jarful of porridge flakes he had stolen from the mill for me, whereby my first day’s work did not go wholly unrewarded.
But Kaptah consoled me and said, “I believe that from today your fame will spread throughout the quarter, and by dawn your courtyard will be full of patients for I already seem to hear the beggars babbling to one another: hasten to the old copper founder’s house at the corner, for a
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