The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

They all arrived in Akhetaten rejoicing and singing Aten’s hymns, and they arrived in boats decorated with flowers as if on a jaunt and brought the court’s women and many jars of wine with them. They camped in tents and under canopies by the river bank and ate and drank and enjoyed their lives, for the flood had abated and it was springtime, and the countryside air was fresh as young wine, and the birds whistled in the planted trees, and doves cooed. So many servants and slaves were needed to assist them that their camp formed a small town since they couldn’t even wash their hands or anoint their faces with oil — and without servants they would have been helpless like children learning to walk.

Courageously, they escorted Pharaoh when Pharaoh was showing them the locations of streets and houses, and slaves kept parasols over their precious heads. They became inspired to build their houses together with the builders since Pharaoh himself occasionally picked up a tile and put it on its place. Panting, they carried tiles to the walls of their rising houses and laughed when they got scratches on their hands, and distinguished women mixed clay with their feet. If they were young and good-looking, they used this as an excuse to undress, keeping only their loincloths on them like the women of the common people do when they grind grain.

But while they were mixing the clay, the slaves had to keep the parasols on them so that the sun would not darken their costly-treated limbs, and after mixing for a while, they departed and left everything in a mess behind them so that the builders cursed them bitterly and dismantled the tiles placed by the distinguished hands. Yet they did not curse young noble women and they were anxious to watch them and they splashed clay on their skins pretending to be simple, so that the women screamed in fright and excitement. However, when the old, ugly court women approached and encouraged the builders in their work and pinched admiringly their muscles and caressed their muddy cheeks and kept sniffing their sweat in the name of Aten, they started cursing again and dropped tiles on the women’s feet to get rid of them.

419

Courtiers prided themselves on their construction work and boasted about their deeds, counting to each other the numbers of tiles they had placed and showing their scratched hands to Pharaoh to get his favour.

But having spent enough time on construction, they became tired of their game and started tending their gardens and dig soil like children. The gardeners called upon gods and cursed them as they endlessly had trees and bushes moved from one place to another, and the men building irrigation ditches named them as ‘the children of Seth’ — for every day they came up with new places for fish pools. And I do not think they meant any harm with all this for they did not realise how much they disrupted the builders but only thought they were of great assistance, and every night they drank wine and boasted about their doings.

But soon they became weary of this game, too, and started complaining about the heat of the day, and sand fleas came to their tents and mats so that they moaned throughout the night and came to me in the morning asking for healing balms for their flea bites. Finally, they cursed all of Akhetaten, and many left to their estates, and a few travelled secretly to have fun in Thebes, but the most faithful sat in the shade of their tents and drank cooled wine and played dice and gambled, losing and winning all their gold and clothes to each other, thus finding some solace to their monotone lives. But day by day, the walls of the houses rose higher, and, in a few months, grew the city of Akhetaten from the desert with its wonderful gardens as in a fairytale. But what all this cost, I cannot count. I only know that all of Amun’s gold was not enough, for the Amun’s coffers were empty when the seals were opened — for the priests of Amun, anticipating the storm, had distributed a lot of gold for safekeeping by trusted people.

I also need to tell that the founding of Akhetaten brought division into the royal family, for the great Queen Mother refused to follow her son into the desert. Thebes was her city, and the golden house of Pharaoh, glowing hazy blue and russet amongst its walls and gardens by the river, had been built by Pharaoh Amenhotep for his beloved, and Tiye, the Queen Mother, had begun life as a poor fowler girl in the reed swamps of the Lower Kingdom. Therefore Tiye did not want to give up on Thebes, and also Princess Beketaten stayed with her mother in Thebes, and Ay the priest, bearer of the crook on the right hand of the

420