The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

revelling of soldiers in the tavern, for the landlord and Kaptah felt bound to entertain them, that they might the more readily protect the house when unrest began. So there was no end to the noise that night, and blind players and dancing girls were brought to the tavern, and I think the soldiers had good time, but I did not enjoy myself, for I reflected that knives and sickles were being whetted in every house in Thebes, and wooden stakes sharpened, and kitchen pestles strengthened with copper. I think there were few in Thebes who slept that night, and certainly Pharaoh was not amongst them, but Horemheb slept soundly. Perhaps that was because he was born a soldier.

All night long, crowds watched in the courtyards and in front of the Temple of Amun, and the poor lay on the cool lawns of the flower gardens while the priests made lavish sacrifices on all altars of Amun and dispensed sacrificial meat, bread and wine to the people. They called on Amun in a loud voice and promised eternal life to all who believed in Amun and gave their lives for Amun’s sake. The priests might have prevented bloodshed if they had so wished. They had but to submit, and Pharaoh would have let them go in peace and not persecuted them since his god abominated persecution and hatred. But power and wealth had gone to heads of the priests of Amun so that not even death deterred them when they cried Amun to their rescue, and perhaps during that last night many of them once again believed and did not fear death. They knew well that neither the people nor Amun’s few guards could oppose an armed force trained and toughened in war and that such an army would soon sweep all aside as a flooding river sweeps aside dry straw. They desired bloodshed between Amun and Aten so as to make a murderer and criminal of Pharaoh, who would then be allowing dirty black men to shed the pure blood of Egypt. They desired sacrifice to be made to their Amun so that the steam of blood would make their Amun endure to all eternity, even were his image to be overthrown and his Temple closed.

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After this long night, the disk of Aten rose at last above the three eastern mountains, and cool darkness gave place to the scorching heat of the day in an instant. Then, in every street and square, horns were blown and Pharaoh’s heralds read aloud Pharaoh’s proclamation in which he affirmed that Amun was a false god and deposed Amun and cursed him to all eternity so that even his name should be erased from all inscriptions and monuments and also from the tombs. All the temples of Amun in the Upper and Lower Kingdoms, and all Amun’s land, cattle, slaves, buildings, gold, silver and copper were to be forfeited to Pharaoh and his god; and Pharaoh promised to open his temples for public walking, and declared his gardens as public parks and turned his sacred lakes into public lakes where the poor might bathe on hot days and draw water freely. He promised to divide all land of Amun amongst those who owned nothing, that they might cultivate it in Aten’s name.

The people listened to Pharaoh’s proclamation in silence, as custom required, but then from every street, square and temple front there arose a thunderous shout of people, “Amun! Amun!” So tremendous was the shout that the very street stones and walls seemed to give it utterance. Then the black troops faltered, and their faces turned grey beneath the red and white paint, and their eyes rolled white in their heads, and as they looked about them, they saw that despite their great numbers, they were but a few in this mighty city they were seeing for the first time in their lives. Because of the great noise, there were not many who heard that Pharaoh, to rid his own name of the name of the accursed Amun, assumed that day the name of Akhenaten, the favoured of Aten.

The shout woke also Horemheb in the back room of The Crocodile’s Tail, and he stretched himself and said to me smilingly, with his eyes still shut, “It is you, Beket, the beloved of Amun, my princess? Did you call me?” But when I nudged him in the side, he opened his eyes, and the smile fell from his face like an old garment, and he felt his head and said, “By Seth and all devils, yours was a potent drink, Sinuhe, and I must have been dreaming.” I said to him, “The people are calling on Amun.” Then he remembered everything and was in haste to go, and we went through the wine shop, where we stumbled over the bare legs of girls and laying soldiers. Horemheb snatched a loaf from the shelf and emptied a jug of beer, and together we hastened to the Temple through streets deserted as never before. On the way, he washed at the fountain of rams, plunging his head into the water with much puffing and blowing, for the crocodile’s tails still pounded in his head.

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