smile or a touch of her fingers. Thus she took from us our peace and our property, and she had by then no less than three hundred deben of gold — to say nothing of silver, copper, linen bands and salves that for years we had stolen from the dead, as the custom is. She vowed to return to us in a year to see how much we had been able to save by then. So now there is more theft in the House of Death of Thebes than there has ever been before, and moreover the corpse washers have learned to pilfer from each other and not only from the bodies, so that our peace has altogether departed. By this you may understand why we gave her the name of Sethnefer, for she is exceedingly fair though her beauty is of Seth.”
It was now I learned how childish my revenge had been since Nefernefernefer returned unharmed from the House of Death richer than before and, as I believe, suffered no ill effects from her stay save the smell, which soaked into her body and for some time prevented her from plying her trade. But I am sure she yearned for rest having socialised with corpse washers, and at the end I was not sorry for her sake since my revenge had eaten at my own heart without harming her; and when I knew this, I knew also that revenge brings no joy, but its sweetness is brief, and it turns against the avenger to eat at his heart like fire.
Having told all this, I need to start a new book to tell what happened while Pharaoh Akhenaten stayed in the city of Akhetaten and what happened in Syria. I also need to tell about Horemheb and Kaptah and my friend Thutmose, without forgetting Merit. Therefore I start a new book.
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Book 11: Merit
1
Everyone has seen water running from a water clock. So also does human life trickle away, though it is measured not by water but by what comes to pass during one’s life. This is a profound truth, to be grasped fully in old age when a man’s time runs away to nothing and nothing happens to him any more, even if he thinks much happens but only later realises that nothing has really happened. For when a lot happens to a man and his heart changes and shifts its shape, then a single day can be longer to him than a year — or two years — working and living a simple life without changing himself. I learned this truth in the city of Akhetaten, where my time flowed smoothly like the current of the Nile, and my life was like a brief dream or like a lovely song, fading into oblivion, and the ten years I spent in the shadow of Pharaoh Akhenaten in his golden house in the city of Akhetaten were shorter than any single year of my youth even if then some travels and events lasted more than a year.
During this time, I added nothing either to my skills or to my knowledge, but drew on the skills and knowledge I had gathered in so many countries during the days of my youth — as a bee survives the winter on the honey it has stored up in its comb from when the flowers bloom. Yet, as running water consumes the shape of a stone, so time may have consumed my heart, and maybe during that time my heart shifted its shape, though of this I remained unaware since I was less lonely than before. I may have grown quieter and did not boast about myself and my skills as much as before, but it may be that this was not my own doing but because Kaptah no longer lived with me; he was but far away in Thebes, where he managed my property and lived in my house and looked after my interests and his own wine tavern whose name was The Crocodile’s Tail.
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