When we had been sailing for ten days, the river was pure again, and Pharaoh stepped into the bows to look about him. The earth was summer yellow around him, and farmers were gathering the summer’s harvest, and in the evenings the cattle were driven down to the waters’ edge to drink, and herdsmen blew on their double pipes. When the people saw Pharaoh’s ship, they dressed themselves in white and ran down to the shore, where they waved their branches of palm and shouted their greetings. The sight of contented people was better than any medicine to Pharaoh, and now and then he would give orders for the ship to be put in to the bank, and he would go ashore to talk to the people and touch them with his hands and bless the women and children with his hands, and they never forgot it. The sheep also came shyly up, to nuzzle and nibble at the hem of his robe, and he laughed for joy. And he was not afraid of the sun disk, his god, though it was a deadly god in the heat of summer, but exposed his face to the sun, and the sun burnt his face red so that his fever and frenzy returned, and his soul shone from his eyes with terrifying force when he anxiously hurried the journey.
In the darkness of night, he stood in the bows gazing at the burning stars and said to me, “I will divide all the land of the false god amongst those who are content with little and have laboured with their hands, that they may be happy and bless the name of Aten. I will divide all the land amongst them, for my heart rejoices at the sight of plump children and laughing women and men who labour in the name of Aten without hatred or fear of any.”
He said also, “The heart of man is dark, and I should not have believed this had I not seen it for myself. For so bright is my own clarity that I do not comprehend the darkness, and when the light shines in my heart, I forget all false hearts. There must be many who do not comprehend Aten, though they see him and feel his love, for they have lived their lives in darkness — and their eyes do not know the light when they see it, but they call it evil and say that it hurts their eyes. Therefore I shall leave them alone and will not trouble them, unless they
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trouble me and my loved ones — but I will not dwell amongst them, and I will gather about me those who are dearest to me and I will remain amongst them, never to leave them, that I may not suffer those evil pains in my head through seeing things that oppress my spirit and are abominations to Aten.”
He stared at the stars in the darkness of the night and said, “Night is abomination to me, and I do not love the darkness but fear it, and I do not love the stars, for when they shine, jackals slink from their dens, lions leave their lairs and roar with blood lust. Also Thebes is night to me, and so I abandon it, in truth I abandon all that is old and crooked and put my faith in the young and in children for the spring of the world is borne of the young and of the children — and those who from childhood dedicate themselves to the teaching of Aten are purified from evil, and so the whole world shall be purified. All schools shall be transformed, and the old teachers driven forth, and new texts written for the children. Moreover, I want to make writing simpler than it now is, for we need no pictures to understand it, and so I shall cause a script to be adopted that even the humblest may quickly learn, and there shall no longer be a gulf between scribes and people; but the people shall learn to write so that in every village, even the smallest, there shall be one to read what I write to them. For I will write to them often and a lot, and of many things that they should know.”
Pharaoh’s talk disturbed me for I already knew this new script that was easy to learn and to read, but it was not sacred writing nor was it as beautiful nor as rich in content as the old, and every self-respecting scribe despised it and mocked those who used it. Therefore I said, “Popular script is ugly and barbarous, and it is not sacred writing. What will become of Egypt if everyone is made literate for such a thing has never been and no one will then be content to labour with his hands, but the soil will lie unfilled, and people will take no pleasure in their ability to write when they are starving to death.”
I should not have said this, for he became very agitated and shouted at me, “So near to me then is the darkness, and the darkness stands beside me when you stand beside me, Sinuhe. You cast doubts and obstacles in my path but truth burns like fire within me and my eyes see through all barriers like they see through clear water, until I see the
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