The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

I was doing the doctor’s work and the thought of things to come made my heart tremble for I had seen Aten take over. I would have been content to die thinking how the people blinded themselves from seeing the good that Pharaoh offered them for the sake of his god. But the arrows evaded me, and all that day I tore clothes and made bandages, and by the evening I received patients in my house — for that night there were not many houses without someone wounded in the quarter of the poor. Washing and knitting their wounds, I reproached them and said:

“Are you mindless for Pharaoh only wants good to you and he has promised to give all Amun’s land to those who have nothing? From this day on, the parks of Amun are your parks and you may get fat fish from Amun’s sacred lake.”

But they said, “The false Pharaoh wants to drive us away from our poor homes that are dear to us and with force make us farmers and bondsmen, but we have not born with dung between our toes. You must also know that Amun’s fish have sharp bones that get stuck in a man’s throat and suffocate him, for they are sacred fish.”

They started looking at me suspiciously and said, “You are not Aten’s men, Sinuhe, whom we have learned to respect, are you? If that is the case, we do not need your help, since your knife poisons our wounds and your bandages get stuck on our skin burning it like fire.” I noticed that it was better I didn’t say anything to them but only helped them, for Amun’s frenzy had blinded them.

A young man whose hair gleamed from fine oil was also carried to my garden, with a wound in his throat from which water escaped when he tried to drink. I could have cured him, but the patients whose wounds I had already tied, saw that his collar, dirty from the dust of the street and blood, had a line of crosses of life embroidered on it. Therefore they attacked him and killed him before I could stop them. They didn’t understand why I wept and reproached them for all they wanted was to rid an evil amongst them, and all evil came from Aten. “Before Aten, we were poor but happy,” they said, “for Amun blessed us in our hunger and misery, and we had the opportunity to enter the Western Land with his help. But for the sake of his accursed Aten, Pharaoh deprives us from Amun’s blessing, and we are still poor and miserable for the black men wound us, and plague and hunger will follow Pharaoh’s Aten if Amun abandons us, since Amun is the King of all gods.”

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They threw the body of the young man on the street, and the dogs came to lick his blood, and they licked the fine oil from his hair.

Meanwhile, the black men drank beer on the squares and streets around the Temple, and the Sherdens drank wine in the houses they had robbed, and the officers neither could prevent them or even wanted to — for they also drank. By evening, no lights were lit on the main streets, and the sky was dark above Thebes, but the black men and Sherdens left their camps and lit torches and broke open the doors of pleasure houses and plundered houses and went from street to street asking everyone, “Amun or Aten?” If someone did not answer them, they beat him up and robbed his purse. And if someone answered to them fearfully, “May Aten be blessed,” they shouted, “You lie, you dog, but you don’t deceive us, Theban!” Then they would cut his throat and hit their spears in his stomach and rob his clothes and purse. To see better, they lit up some houses on the streets, and after midnight was the sky over Thebes again red from the blazing fires all over, and that night no one, not even the mightiest, was safe — and no one could escape since the roads were blocked and even the river was blocked, and the guards turned back anyone who tried to flee for they had orders to see that no one attempted secretly to take Amun’s gold and valuables out of the city.

I don’t know what Pharaoh was thinking that night when he saw the glow of fires on the sky of Thebes, but I think a lot was kept secret from him, and he wanted to believe what was told to him for in his heart he did not love Thebes which was the city of Amun. Pepitaten did not lose his commander’s office, but Pharaoh gave him a golden chain decorated with images of cats to show his favour since he was the first one to follow Pharaoh’s example and change his name to remove from his own the accursed name of Amun, that could not be said aloud any more. No one was punished for what had happened, and Pharaoh only ordered that the Temple was to be besieged until hunger would force the priests to give in or until they came to their senses, and no one was allowed to be killed in battle any more. This was the most senseless of all orders since there was wheat in Temple storages and cattle in the stables and pasture in the parks for the cattle — and even if hundred times hundred Amun faithfuls had gathered in the Temple courts, they did not need to starve but it was rather the city itself that starved as the roads and the river were blocked.

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