The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

Pharaoh, whom we love and who is our father and our mother and whom we venerate as the son of his god. But we are learned men, and it ill befits our dignity to sit on threshing floors to wipe the noses of grimy children and draw ugly signs in the sand for we have no tablets or reed pens, and these new characters can never reproduce all the wisdom and knowledge that, with great trouble and cost, we have acquired. Our salaries are also irregularly paid, and the parents reward us less than they should, and their beer is weak and sour, and the oil in our jars is rancid. Yet we persist, to demonstrate to Pharaoh that it is impossible to teach all children to read and write, for only the best pupils whose heads are soft enough can learn. We also think it is foolish that girls would learn to write for that has never happened, and we guessed Pharaoh’s scribe must have made a mistake in his writing which also demonstrates how useless and incomplete this new method is.”

I tested their proficiency, with which I was far from satisfied, and still less pleased was I by their swollen faces and unsteady gaze, for these teachers were broken-down scribes to whom no one would give employment. Their skill was low, and they had accepted the cross of Aten only to save their bread, and even if there were an exception among them whom I could praise, one fly cannot turn winter to summer. Also the settlers and elders of the villages swore bitterly in the name of Aten and said:

“Our Lord Sinuhe, speak for us to Pharaoh, and beg him at least to lift from us the burden of these schools, or we cannot long survive for our boys come home black and blue from the beatings and with torn locks, and these terrible teachers eat us poor and are as insatiable as crocodiles, and nothing is good enough for them but they despise our bread and beer and extort our last copper and hides of our cattle to buy wine, and when we are out in the fields, they enter our houses and take pleasure with our wives, saying that this is the will of Aten in whose sight there is no difference between man and man or between woman and woman.”

But Pharaoh had only vested me with powers to greet them on his behalf, and I could not help them in their distress. Nevertheless, I said, “Pharaoh cannot do everything for you but there must be something wrong with you if Aten does not bless you and your fields. I also know

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you are greedy men and wouldn’t let your children go to school since you need them for field work and digging irrigation ditches so that you could laze around. Neither can I do anything to your wives’ chastity for it is up to them with whom they rejoice. For the sake of Pharaoh, I am greatly ashamed looking at you for he gave you a great task and full hands to carry it out so that a great change could happen in the world. But instead, you have spoiled the most fertile fields of Egypt and sold the cattle that priests painstakingly bred.”

But they shouted in one voice and said, “Truly we desired no change in our lives, for if indeed we were poor in the cities, yet we were happy also and every day we saw something new, but here we see nothing but muddy ditches and lowing cattle. They were right who warned us, saying, beware of change for among the poor it must always be for the worse. Whatever changes are made in the world, be assured that with them the grain measure of the poor must dwindle and the oil sink in his jar.”

My heart told me that maybe they were right in this matter, and I did not want to argue with them any longer, but continued on my journey. My heart was heavy on Pharaoh’s account, and I marvelled that all he touched he blighted so that the diligent grew lazy because of his gifts, and only the worthless clustered about Aten like flies on a carcass. But I also remembered what I had thought myself travelling down the river before Akhetaten was built, and I had thought: I have nothing to lose so why not follow Aten. Did I have any right to reproach lazy, greedy or poor people who had nothing to lose if they followed Aten, bringing their laziness, misery and greed with them. What had I done these years but eaten like a fatling and leech in Pharaoh’s golden house, and I had done more in one month for the betterment of people as the poor’s physician in Thebes than during all these years gilded and sated in the city of Akhetaten.

Then my heart was seized with a terrible suspicion: Pharaoh wants that there comes a time when there are no poor and no rich, but all men are equal. But if that’s the case and the ultimate purpose, then the common people who work with their hands are the ultimate purpose and everything else is but a golden shell on its skin. Maybe Pharaoh himself and the courtiers of his golden house and the wealthy and the noble who

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