The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

Book 12: The Water Clock Measures Time

This way, materialised Kaptah’s wish that he had made when I had sent him on a troublesome journey to distribute grains to Aten’s settlers, and it materialised in the worse way imaginable for I not only had to give up my house and comfortable bed, like him, but I also had to face the horrors of war for Pharaoh’s sake. So I discovered that a man needs to carefully consider the wishes that he utters aloud, for the wishes that are uttered aloud have an evil tendency of coming to pass — and ill wishes uttered aloud come to pass the easiest. When a man wishes ill to someone else, it comes to pass notably easier than if he wished good for someone else.

All this I thought and talked about while we were travelling downstream in Pharaoh’s ship and drank wine together with Thutmose. But Thutmose asked me to keep quiet and draw images of flying birds in his papers. He also drew my picture, and it did not flatter me at all so I reproached him and said that he could not be my true friend, drawing me like that. But he said that an artist, while drawing and painting, could not be anyone’s friend, but an artist could only follow his own eye. I fretted and said to him, “If that is the case, then is your eye under a spell since you see everything as ugly and ridiculous and lowly and even make me look ridiculous in your drawing. Only Nefertiti remains beautiful in your eyes, even if her neck is long and thin, and her cheeks have narrowed, and her pregnancy makes her uglier by the day.”

Thutmose threw the wine from his cup on my face and shouted, “Do not talk to me about Nefertiti.” But soon he calmed down and deeply regretted his drunken action and wiped the wine from my face and said humbly, “I did not mean any harm, but maybe that woman has indeed put a spell on my eyes, like you said, for I am not able to see anything as beautiful any more except her — and I see Pharaoh Akhenaten as the ugliest and the most repulsive though I should love him for everything that he has done for me.”

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I said to him as a friend, “Your dreams are bad, and Nefertiti could not give you anything more than the paltriest slave girl could.” But my wisdom did not comfort him but only made him agitated again. Thus we eagerly drank even more wine, since wine — though it creates quarrels and brawls — it also soothes all quarrels and brawls and strengthens men’s friendships, and there is no quarrel so big that wine could not soothe if one just drinks enough.

Thus we arrived in Nen-nesu, and it was a small town by the river and so small that sheep and cattle grazed its streets and the temple was made of adobe. The men from the town administration received us with great honours, and Thutmose erected Horemheb’s statue in a temple that had in previous times been a temple of Horus but had since been consecrated to Aten for Pharaoh’s sake. This in no way bothered the townsfolk for they continued to worship Horus, the falcon-headed, in their temple, even though his image had been taken away. They very much rejoiced for having Horemheb’s image in their temple, and I assumed that they would soon link him with Horus and worship him as Horus and make sacrifices to him, for Aten had no image and only few people in the town were literate.

We also met Horemheb’s parents, whom Horemheb had sent lavish gifts so that they now lived in a house built of wood though they had earlier been amongst the poorest in town. In his vanity, Horemheb had had Pharaoh appoint them to high offices as if they were nobles and hadn’t herded cattle and cooked cheese all their lives. His father was now Keeper of the Seal and guardian of many buildings in various towns and villages, and his mother was a court woman and Caretaker of Pharaoh’s Cows even if neither of them knew how to read or write. These appointments were of course purely honourable and in no way interfered with their lives, but they nevertheless enabled Horemheb to mark his parents as nobles when he wrote his name, and there was no one in Egypt who could think he was not a noble-born — so great was his vanity.

In any case, his parents were simple and pious people and they stood in the temple uncomfortably in their fine clothes, digging earthenware floor with their toes, while the crowd wrapped flower garlands about the image of their son. After the festivities were over, they invited Thutmose and me to their house and took off their

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