The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

beneath my wig, and there were days when I forgot my duties and dreamed daydreams and walked the Babylonian roads again with my nostrils full of the smell of dried grain on earthen threshing floors. I noticed that I had put on weight and that my sleep was heavy during the night and that I needed a carrying chair because even a short walk left me breathless so that a carrying chair became a necessity to me, although formerly the longest distances hadn’t left me breathless.

But my heart was languid and said to me, “You are good here, Sinuhe, and your bed is comfortable and as the royal skull opener you need not worry about your bread. You have friends who are glad to drink wine with you and respect your words and think you are wise. Your eyes rejoice for the beauty of the new art, and many artists have painted wonderful and lively pictures on the walls of your rooms when you have healed their hands, which were shaking from wine and hangover. Pharaoh has also let you carve a grave in the eastern mountains, and in the walls of the grave you shall live forever, blessed by Pharaoh and his daughters. Why worry about tomorrow when every tomorrow will be the same as today. And if that were not the case, there is nothing you can do for you are just a man, and enough many times you have ruined the joy and mixed wormwood in Aten’s cup of jubilation. Why get yourself into trouble and make your eyes hurt for whatever increases the knowledge, increases the sorrow, and there is no firmer truth than that.

These were my conversations with my heart, but suddenly I became repulsed by the idea that every day would follow another the same as this day and that nothing would come to pass in my life any more except what happened on this day. Such is the madness of man’s heart as it is never satisfied with what it has but does whatever it can to disturb man’s peace and seed unease in his mind, and so I became greatly weary of my heart. But when autumn came again and the river rose and the swallows emerged from the mud of the river bed to dart restlessly in the air above, the health of Pharaoh’s daughter mended, and she smiled and no longer felt the pains in her chest. My heart followed the swallows in their flight, and I boarded a ship to travel upstream and see Thebes again, and Pharaoh allowed me to go and bade me to greet on his behalf all the river-side settlers amongst whom he had divided the land of the false god. He sent greetings also to the schools he had founded and hoped to hear good tidings of them on my return.

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Therefore I let my ship land at many villages and summoned the elders to talk with me, and the journey was more comfortable than I had hoped, for Pharaoh’s pennant fluttered at the masthead, and my bed was soft, and there were no flies on the river. My cook followed me in the kitchen boat, and gifts were brought to him from all the villages so that I had no lack of fresh food. Yet when the settlers visited me, their men were thin as skeletons and their wives stared about them with terrified eyes, afraid of every sound, and the children were sickly and bowlegged. They showed me their corn bins, which were less than half full, and the grain in them was speckled red as if it had been exposed to a shower of blood. And they said to me:

“At first, we thought that our failures were the result of ignorance since we had never tilled the soil before. We thought it was our fault that our harvest was small and our cattle died, but we know now that the land Pharaoh divided among us is accursed, and he who cultivates it is accursed also. At night, unseen feet trample down our crops and unseen hands break the fruit trees we have planted, and our cattle perish without cause, and our irrigation ditches are stopped up, and we find carrion in our wells so that even drinking water is lacking. Many have abandoned their land and returned to the towns poorer than they were before, cursing the name of Pharaoh and his god. But we have persevered for the sake of our hope, trusting to the magic cross and the letters Pharaoh has sent us which we hang out on stakes in our fields as a protection against locusts. But Amun’s magic is more powerful than the magic of Pharaoh, and it is no use however often we cry for Pharaoh’s god to help us. Therefore our faith is failing us, and we mean to leave this noisome land before we all die as the wives and children of many have already done.”

I also went to see their schools, and when the teachers saw the cross of Aten on my clothes, they hid their canes and made the sign of Aten, while the children sat cross legged on the threshing floors staring at me so fixedly that they neglected to wipe their noses. The teachers said, “We know that there is no greater madness than the notion that every child should learn to read and write, but what would we not do for

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