also Pharaoh Akhenaten’s wives with his wet nurses and the ladies-in-waiting. This court woman’s name was Mehunefer, and her face showed me that she loved men and wine. As her duty required, she began to weep and sob and tear her hair beside the body of the great Queen Mother. In the meantime, I fetched wine, and after she had been mourning for some time, she consented to drink some wine when I as a physician assured her that it would not harm her in her great grief. As she drank, I started teasing her and spoke about her former beauty. I spoke also of children and of Pharaoh Akhenaten’s little daughters, until I was able to, feigning simplicity, ask from her, “Is it true what they say that Queen Mother was the only one of immortal Pharaoh’s wives to bear him a son?”
Mehunefer shot a terrified glance at the deceased and shook her head to silence me. I plied her once more with fair and flattering words, speaking of her hair and clothes and jewels. I also spoke of her eyes and lips until she altogether forgot her weeping and gazed at me enchanted. For a woman will always accept such talk, however false she knows it to be, and the older and uglier she is, the more readily will she do so, because she desires to believe it. Thus we became good friends, and when the porters from the House of Death came and carried away the body, she invited me to her rooms in Pharaoh’s women’s house with much flirtation and drank more wine with me. As she got more drunk, her tongue loosened and all locks in her broke, and she stroked my cheeks and called me a handsome boy, and recounted to me a quantity of palace gossip of the most shameless order to encourage me. She also let me understand that the great Queen Mother had often publicly taken pleasure with her black witches and said giggling:
“She, the Queen Mother, was a horrible and frightening woman, and I breathe easier now that she is dead, and I simply didn’t understand her taste as there are pretty Egyptian youths whose flesh is brown and soft and who smell nice.”
She sniffed at my shoulders and ears, but I held her from me and said, “The great Queen Tiye was clever at tying reeds, was she not? Didn’t she fashion little boats of them, did she, and send them down the river by night?”
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These words of mine severely startled her, and she asked, “How can you know that?” But the wine distorted her judgment, and she started desiring to boast about her knowledge and said, “I know more than you, and I know that at least three newborn boys floated away downstream like the children of the very poor. Before the coming of Ay, the old witch feared the gods and was loath to soil her hands with blood. It was only Ay who taught her how to administer poison, so that princess Tadukhipa of Mitanni died while she was yet weeping and calling for her son and would have fled from the palace to seek him.”
“Oh, fair Mehunefer,” I said, stroking her heavily painted cheeks with my hands. “You must take advantage of my youth and inexperience and stuff me with tales that have no truth in them. The princess of Mitanni bore no son, and if she did, then when did the birth occur?”
“You are far from being young and inexperienced, Sinuhe the physician,” she said and sniggered loudly. “On the contrary, your hands are sly and treacherous, and your eyes are sly, and the slyest of all is your tongue, which spits bitter lies into my face. Yet such lies are sweet to an old woman’s ears, Sinuhe, and I cannot choose but tell you of the princess of Mitanni, who might have become the great royal consort, even if these words might wrap a thin wire about my neck, if Tiye was still alive. Know then, Sinuhe, that princess Tadukhipa was but a little girl when she arrived at the women’s house of Pharaoh from a faraway land. She played with dolls as she grew up in the women’s house, just like that other little princess who was married to Akhenaten and who also died. Pharaoh Amenhotep did not possess her but loved her as a child and played with her with dolls and gave her toys of gold. But Tadukhipa grew to womanhood, and at fourteen she was fair to behold, and her limbs were delicate and slender, and her dark eyes gazed off to distant lands, and her skin was white as ash like the skin of all Mitannian women. Then Pharaoh fulfilled his duty to her as he fulfilled it joyfully with many women despite Tiye’s intrigues — for in such matters a man is difficult to restrain until the roots of his tree are dried up. Thus a seed of barley began to sprout for Tadukhipa, and after a little while for Tiye also, who rejoiced, for she had only given Pharaoh a daughter — who is this haughty and self-conscious Beketamun, I mean Beketaten of course, such an old woman I am, and my tongue gets tied easily.”
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