As time went on, the tidings from Syria grew ever more alarming, and whenever a courier ship berthed, I went to the King’s archives to study the latest tablets with their renewed appeals for help. As I read them, I seemed to hear the singing of arrows past my ears, and they smelled like the smoke of fires in my nostrils, and through the respectful phrases I could hear the shrieks of dying men and cries of mutilated children for the men of Amurru were brutal, and they waged war following the advice of Hittite officers so that eventually not one single garrison in Syria was able to withstand them. I read messages from the King of Byblos and the Prince of Jerusalem, and to get help from Pharaoh, they pleaded their age and their fidelity and they pleaded the memory of his father and their friendship with the previous Pharaoh, until Pharaoh was weary of their supplications and sent their letters to the archives unread so that the scribes and I were the only ones reading them, and the scribes held no other interest in them than enumerating and archiving them in the order of their arrival.
When Jerusalem had fallen, the last of the cities faithful to Egypt capitulated in Syria, Joppa also, and formed alliances with King Aziru. Then Horemheb journeyed from Memphis to have audience with Pharaoh and to demand from him an army in order to wage war in Syria, for he could not travel to Syria to organise resistance without troops and without losing his reputation. Hitherto, he had but carried on a secret war with letters and gold in order to save at least one outpost for Egypt in Syria. He said to Pharaoh Akhenaten:
“Let me hire at least one hundred times one hundred spearmen and archers and a hundred chariots, and I will win back Syria for you. Now that even Joppa has yielded, power of Egypt in Syria is lost.”
Pharaoh Akhenaten was greatly cast down, when he heard that Jerusalem had been destroyed, for he had already taken steps to make it a city of Aten to pacify Syria. Therefore he said, “This old man in Jerusalem, whose name I cannot just now recall, was a friend of my father’s, and when I was a boy, I saw him in the golden house at Thebes, and he had a long beard. By way of compensation, I will pension him out of Egyptian funds although the revenues have notably diminished since trade with Syria ceased.”
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“He is hardly in a condition to enjoy a pension and his Egyptian necklaces,” said Horemheb. “King Aziru has had an exquisite bowl, ornamented with gold, fashioned of his skull and sent it as a gift to King Suppiluliuma in Hattusa, unless my spies are very much in error.”
Pharaoh’s countenance went grey, and his eyes were bloodshot, but mastering his pain, he said calmly, “I find it hard to believe such a thing of King Aziru, whom I consider my friend and who so willingly received the cross of life at my hands, but perhaps I have been mistaken in him and his heart is blacker than I supposed. But you, Horemheb, desire of me an impossibility in asking for spears and chariots for already the people are complaining at the taxes, and the harvest has not been what I hoped for.”
Horemheb said, “For the sake of your Aten, at least give me an authority for ten chariots and ten times ten spearmen, that I may travel to Syria and save what may be saved.”
But Pharaoh Akhenaten said, “I cannot wage war for Aten’s sake, for bloodshed is an abomination to him, and I would rather relinquish Syria. Let Syria be free and form its own united state, and let us trade with it as before, for Syria cannot do without Egyptian grain.”
“Do you suppose that they will be content with that, Akhenaten?” exclaimed Horemheb thunderstruck. “Every Egyptian slain, every breached wall, every city captured increases their self-esteem and urges them to reach for madness. After Syria will come the copper mines of Sinai, without which we can no longer forge spears and arrowheads.”
“I have already said that wooden spears suffice for the guards,” said Pharaoh irritably. “Why do you torment me with ceaseless talk of spears and arrowheads so that the words go round and round in my head when I try to compose a hymn to Aten.”
“After Sinai comes the turn of the Lower Kingdom,” said Horemheb bitterly. “As you said yourself, Syria cannot do without Egyptian grain, although I hear they are now obtaining it from Babylon. But if you do not fear Syria, then fear at least the Hittites, to whose lust for power there are no bounds.”
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