you first came in, but only now since you have drunk too much wine. Therefore as a physician I prescribe this uncomfortable journey for you because of the love I bear you, for you are altogether too fat, which is a strain on your heart and constricts your breathing, and I hope that you will thin down in the course of this expedition and become a respectable human being once more so that I need not blush for my servant’s obesity. Truly, Kaptah, remember how we rejoiced as we walked the dusty Babylonian roads and with what rapture you rode your donkey amongst the mountains of Lebanon and with what even greater rapture you descended from the donkey in Kadesh? Truly, if I were younger — that is, had I not so many important missions to fulfil here on Pharaoh’s behalf — I would come with you myself to gladden my heart, for many will bless your name because of this journey.”
While I was talking, Kaptah had contemplated severely and only frowned when I mentioned the donkey, and all the time he was making complicated calculations with his fingers. Finally he said, “I need to haste to have all done during this sowing and need to mobilise all my servants and employ more servants to distribute all grains. Also I need scribes to accompany me to have everything done in a lawful manner for these Aten worshippers are crooked people, and I will have my measure taken from their backs if they can’t make the grains sprout and reaped. Luckily, we have our own ships so that my journey does not need to be too troublesome, and I plan to take also the kitchen ship along, for my stomach that you so reproach is weak and only digests the best food these days. I will have myself carried in a chair over the ditches, to say the least, for just look at me, my lord, is it becoming to my dignity to jump over ditches — if I even can because of my old and stiff legs. But otherwise your words may be wise for the girls of pleasure houses have started to laugh at me, and since my belly swelled, women have been little joy to me as I am short of breath when I try to rejoice with them — and this is a pity since I have enough gold to buy any woman in Thebes to rejoice with me, if I like her, though you do not need to think that I spend my gold on women for I am not that mad — and you know well how a simple slave girl can do the same than an anointed woman with a golden ring in her nose from a pleasure house. But I did not intend to talk about women to you, since you don’t
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anyway understand anything about women and the joy of life, and your face has remained as sour as before. However, I hope that the power of scarab will turn your foolish command into a blessing and not into a curse for us, and to ensure this I will take various precautions which are no use to share with you for you wouldn’t understand them anyway. I only wish someone would send you off to a similar troublesome journey so that you’d feel in your own flesh what you are now doing to me.”
His wish was granted soon, like I will tell later. Now I only mention that we wrangled no more, and Kaptah resigned himself to the project, and we sat late into the night drinking, and Merit also drank with us, and she bared her brown knees that I might touch them with my mouth. Kaptah recited his memories of the roads and threshing floors of Babylonia, and if he had accomplished as much as he claimed, then my love for Minea must have rendered me blind and deaf at the time. For I did not forget Minea although I lay that night on Merit’s mat and took pleasure with her so that my heart was warmed and my loneliness melted away. But I did not call her my sister, but lay with her because she was my friend, and she did for me the friendliest thing that a woman may do for a man. I was willing to break the jar with her, but she would not, saying that she was tavern bred and I too wealthy and eminent a man for her. Yet I think she desired to keep her freedom so that I would remain as her friend.
4
On the following day, I had to visit the golden house for an audience with the Queen Mother, whom all of Thebes already called ‘the witch’ and ‘the black witch’ so that no one needed to explain whom they meant when they talked about the witch. However, I think that despite her wisdom and skill, she had earned the name through her own deeds — for she was a cruel and treacherous old woman, and her great power had obliterated what good had once been in her. When I had dressed up in royal linen aboard my ship and put all the symbols of my rank on myself, my cook Muti came from the old copper founder’s house and said to me angrily:
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