The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

So I washed and dressed, and Muti served me with beer and salt fish with her eyes red from weeping and deeply despising me because I was a man. I then took a chair to the House of Life, where I examined patients, but I did not find a single case where a skull was needed to be opened. I left the House of Life passing by the deserted Temple and out between the pylons and heard fat crows squawking at the edge of the roof, next to the stone grate windows of the Temple.

But a swallow sped past me toward the temple of Aten, and my steps followed the swallow, and I went to the temple of Aten where priests sang hymns to Aten and sacrificed incense and fruits and wheat to him. And the temple was not empty at all, but there were many people, listening to the hymns of Aten and raising their hands in Aten’s praise, while the priests instructed the people in Pharaoh’s truth. This in itself was of no great significance for Thebes was a large city, and there was no place where people would not have gathered out of curiosity. The swallow was darting in front of me, and I followed it and watched the stone carvings on the temple walls, and from the numerous pillars Pharaoh Akhenaten gazed down on me with a frightening face in its passion. On this route, I also found an image done in the new way, and there I saw the great Pharaoh Amenhotep sitting on the royal throne, old and frail, his head bent beneath the weight of the crowns, and Queen Tiye sitting beside him. I also found images of every member of the royal house and I paused watching an image of princess Tadukhipa of Mitanni making sacrifice to the gods of Egypt, but the original inscription had been hewn away from the image, and the text claimed that she was sacrificing to Aten although Aten was not worshiped in Thebes during her lifetime.

This image was carved in the old convention and showed her as a young, beautiful woman, scarcely more than a girl, and she wore a royal headpiece; her limbs were slender and delicate, and her head fair and delicate. I gazed long upon the image, while the swallow darted above my head with an occasional joyful scream, until a frightening emotion filled my head which was tired of thinking and staying awake, and I bowed my head and wept over the destiny of this lonely girl from a foreign land. For her sake I could have wished to be as beautiful as herself, but my limbs were soft and thick and my head bald beneath the doctor’s wig, and thoughts had ploughed furrows throughout my forehead, and my face was puffy from easy living in Akhetaten. No, comparing myself with her, I could not imagine myself as her son, but

491

nevertheless, I was profoundly moved and wept for her loneliness in Pharaoh’s golden house, and still the swallow darted joyfully about my head. I remembered the fine houses and the plaintive people of Mitanni, and I also remembered the dusty roads and the clayey threshing floors of Babylon and felt that youth had slipped past me forever and that my manhood had sunk into mud and standing water at Akhetaten

Thus my day was spent, and evening came, and I went to The Crocodile’s Tail to eat and to reconcile with Merit. But Merit received me uncaringly and treated me like a stranger, serving me food standing next to my seat and watching me with exceeding coldness. When I had eaten, she asked, “Did you meet your beloved?”

I said irritably that I had not gone out to meet with any women but had practiced my profession in the House of Life and visited Aten’s temple. To make clear to her my sense of insult, I described minutely every step I had taken that day, but she regarded me throughout with a mocking smile. When I finished, she said:

“Never for a moment did I fancy that you had gone to visit women, for you wore yourself out already last night and are capable of nothing further, bald and fat as you are. I meant only that your beloved was here to ask for you, and I directed her steps to the House of Life.”

I sprang up so violently as to overturn my seat, and cried, “What do you mean, mad woman?”

Merit fixed her hair with her hand and smiled mockingly and said, “Truly, she came here to seek you, arrayed like a bride and adorned with glittering jewels and painted like a monkey, and the reek of her ointments wafted as far as the river. She left you a greeting and a letter also, in case she should not find you, and from my heart I wish you would tell her to keep away, for this is a respectable house, and she behaved like a brothel hostess.”

She handed me an unsealed letter, and I opened it with trembling hands. Reading it, the blood surged into my head and my heart thudded hurriedly in my breast. This is what Mehunefer wrote to me:

492