The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

Candidates for the lowest grade were divided into groups according to the profession they were to follow. We — that is to say those of us who were to be disciples in the House of Life — formed a group of our own, but I found no close friend among my companions. I had taken Ptahor’s wise warning to heart and kept myself aloof, meekly obeying every order and feigning stupidity when the others jested or blasphemed as boys will. Among us were the sons of medical specialists whose advice and treatment were requited in gold. And there were with us also the sons of country doctors, often older than the rest of us, full-grown, gawky, sunburned fellows who strove to hide their shyness and committed themselves laboriously to their tasks. There were lads from the lower classes who wanted to rise above their fathers’ trade and social level and had a natural thirst for knowledge, but they received the severest treatment of any, for the priests were by nature mistrustful of all who were not content with the old ways.

My caution stood me in good stead, for I soon noticed that the priests had their spies and agents among us. A careless word, a spoken doubt or a joke among friends soon came to the knowledge of the priests, and the culprit was summoned for examination and punishment. Some boys were flogged, and some even expelled from the Temple so that Houses of Life in Thebes and in the rest of Egypt were closed to them forever. If they had it in them, they could become leg cutter’s assistants in colony garrisons or make their own fortunes in the land of Kush or Syria, since Egyptian doctors had become renowned throughout the world. But most of them resigned to their faith and became petty scribes, if they had already mastered the skill of writing.

My ability to read and write gave me a marked advantage over many of my fellows, including some of the older ones. I considered myself ripe to enter the House of Life, but my initiation was delayed. I lacked courage to ask the reason since that would have been regarded as insubordination to Amun. I frittered away my time in copying out texts of the dead, which were sold in the forecourts, and I grew rebellious and depressed for already many of the less talented among my fellows had begun their studies in the House of Life. But under my father’s direction, I was to gain a better grounding than they, and I have since reflected that Amun’s priests were wiser than me. They saw through me, noted my defiance and my unbelief, and therefore put me to the test.

My sadness increased, my dreams became restless, and often at night I sought solitude by the Nile looking at the sunset and the stars lighting up. I felt I was sick. The laughter of the girls on the streets bothered and angered me. I longed for something that I did not know, and when I was alone the poisonous honey of stories and poems made my heart weak and my eyes teary. At times, my father looked at me smiling to himself, and Kipa was ever more passionately telling me stories about deceitful women, whose husbands were on a journey and who asked beautiful young men to rejoice with them.

At last, I was told that my turn had come to hold vigil in the Temple. I lived in the inner rooms of the Temple for a week, during which time I was forbidden to leave the Temple precincts. I had to purify myself and fast, and my father hastened to cut my boy’s locks and invite the neighbours to a feast in celebration of the day of my maturity. For from this time, being now ripe for initiation, I would be regarded as fully grown — simple and meaningless though the ceremony was in fact. But even thus, it made me superior to my neighbours and to all other boys of my age.

Kipa had done her best, but to me her honey bread was tasteless, and the mirth and coarse jests of the neighbours did not amuse me. In the evening after the guests had gone, Senmut and Kipa caught my sadness, too. Senmut began to tell me the truth about my birth, Kipa prompting when his memory failed, while I gazed at the reed boat above my bed. Its blackened, broken struts made my heart ache. In all the world, I had no real father and mother. I was alone beneath the stars in a great city. Perhaps I was but a miserable foreigner in the land of Kem. Perhaps my origin was a shameful secret.

When I went to the Temple wearing the initiation robe that Kipa, with such care and love, had made for me, there was a wound in my heart.

There were twenty-five of us young men and boys who were preparing for the initiation. When we had bathed in the Temple pool, our heads were shaved and we put on coarse clothes. The priest appointed as our director was not so pettily meticulous as others. Tradition entitled him to subject us to every kind of humiliating ceremony, but there were