This tale was very long and exciting, and the people shuffled their feet and raised their hands in impatience to hear what the conclusion might be, and my mouth also hung open as I listened. But when the story was ended and the false Pharaoh received his punishment and was hurled into the bottomless pit of the underworld and his name had been cursed and Ra was dividing houses and land and cattle and things to his faithful, then the listeners leaped and cried out in their delight and threw copper into the storyteller’s bowl and some even silver. I was greatly puzzled and said to Merit:
“This is indeed a new tale, which I have never heard before, although I fancied I had learnt them all as a child since my mother Kipa was passionately fond of them and favoured the storytellers highly to such a degree that my father Senmut would sometimes menace them with his stick when she fed them in our kitchen. Yes, this is a new story and a dangerous one for were it not impossible, I should say that it concerns Pharaoh Akhenaten and the false god whose name we dare not speak aloud. Telling this tale should be forbidden.”
Merit smiled and said, “Who can forbid a story, and this one is told in both Kingdoms, at every gateway and beneath every wall, and even on the threshing floors of the smallest villages they tell this tale, and the people like it a lot. When the guards threaten the storytellers, they maintain that the tale is an ancient one and they can prove it for the priests have found it in writings that are centuries old and can verify it. Therefore the guards can do nothing to the storytellers although I have heard that Horemheb, who is a cruel man and cares nothing for proofs and writings, has had a few storytellers hung from the walls in Memphis and thrown their bodies to the crocodiles accusing them not for storytelling but some other crimes.”
Merit held my hand and smiled as she said, “Many prophecies are spoken of in Thebes, and whenever two men meet, they tell one another of the prophecies and ill omens they have heard — for as you know the grain is getting increasingly more expensive and the poor people starve, and taxes lie heavily upon rich and poor. But even worse things are foretold, and I tremble when I think of all the evil with which these
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prophecies unanimously threaten Egypt. Let me tell you a prophecy I heard from the man who washes The Crocodile’s Tail ’s walls, who had heard it from a root vegetable seller in the market who had heard it from one of his friends. This friend is a very reliable man and had himself met with the wealthy paper maker’s widow, who encountered all of this, and heard it from her own mouth. This happened: on a festival day before the flood, the paper maker’s widow had boarded a public boat by the wall to greet her husband in the City of the Dead and make sacrifice at his grave. On the boat opposite to her, sat a sacred woman, though nobody knew first she was sacred for her clothes were dirty and in shreds, and she had not anointed her hair. But this sacred woman said to the widow, ‘The departed one must have loved nut cakes since you bring him nut cakes.’ The widow was greatly puzzled for the nut cakes were in a closed basket before her feet, and the woman could not have seen them. But the woman said, ‘That amazes me since I have never seen anyone bring nut cakes to the departed, since there is porridge made from milk in that jar, and a roasted duck in that jar as well as thick Syrian beer in that jar.’ This way she listed everything that each on the boat had with them in closed baskets and jars, and she even listed the names of their dead ones, so that people were in great wonderment and realised she was a sacred woman. Finally she said, ‘Today, the people of Egypt live the times of great ordeal for the sake of a curse that you all know well, and because of this curse there will be a day when gold does not buy bread, but be steadfast in your faith for the gods of Egypt only abandon those who forsake them and serve a false god, and as a sign of this the witch whom you know well will suffer a horrible death before the grains ripen on the fields.’ All this she said, and her words made people tremble, fearing for the guards, but when the ship landed on the public quay of the City of the Dead, the sacred woman disappeared and has not been seen since.”
I was greatly displeased and asked Merit, “Do you believe this stupid story and do you believe in wall washers and root sellers and babbling widows even if you know that this story has the priests’ smell all over it. I understand already how the priests want to make people restless with their stories.”
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