I remained in Memphis for several days, debating the terms of peace with Horemheb and disputing with him. I met envoys from Crete and Babylon and also distinguished fugitives from Mitanni. From their talk, I formed a picture of all that had happened, and I was filled with ambition and desire to comprehend, being aware for the first time that I was an important factor in a great game, the stakes of which were the destinies of cities and nations.
Horemheb was right: at this moment, peace was a more valuable gift to Aziru than to Egypt, although events in the world at large indicated that this peace might only be an armistice, for having stabilised conditions in Syria, Aziru would turn once more against Egypt. Syria was the key to the world, and Egypt could not risk its safety and let Syria be governed by a fickle and hostile alliance, buyable by gold — especially after the Hittites had destroyed the land of Mitanni. The future depended on whether the Hittites, once their power in Mitanni was secured, would march on Babylon or on Egypt through Syria. Reason suggested that they would aim at the weakest resistance, and Babylon was already arming itself while Egypt remained weak and without weapons. Doubtless the land of Hatti was an unwelcome ally to anyone, but having allied with the Hittites, Aziru had power backing him whereas as an ally of Egypt against the Hittites Aziru would face certain doom — so long as Pharaoh Akhenaten ruled Egypt, having only sand at his back.
I understood all this, and cold-blooded reasoning made the horrors of war distant, and I no more thought about the smoke from burning cities and human skulls paling on battlefields, and I did not think about the refugees begging for bread on the streets of Memphis — nor did I care about the nobles of Mitanni, selling their jewels and previous stones to drink wine and touching the oily soil of Naharin with their delicate fingers, having brought it along with themselves, wrapped in cloth bundles. Horemheb told me that he would meet Aziru somewhere between Tanis and Gaza, where he waged war with his chariots against voluntary troops. He described conditions in Zemar, numbering the houses that had been burned during the siege and giving the names of eminent persons who had been slain during the revolt, so that I greatly
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marvelled at all he knew. Then he gave me an account of his spies who visited the Syrian cities and followed Aziru’s troops in the guise of sword swallowers, jugglers and fortune tellers, and of beer merchants and slave traders. But he said that in the same manner arrived Aziru’s spies all the way to Memphis and followed the voluntary troops and border guards in the guise of jugglers and beer merchants and loot traders. Aziru had also employed virgins of Astarte as his spies, and they could have been dangerous for they got lots of valuable information while entertaining Egyptian officers, but luckily they did not understand much about war to be a real danger. There were also spies that served both Horemheb and Aziru, and Horemheb admitted that they were the wisest since neither side posed a threat to them, and they kept their lives and earned lots of gold.
Both the refugees and Horemheb’s officers told me such frightening tales of the men of Amurru and of the voluntary Egyptian forces that my heart quailed and my knees turned to water as the hour of my departure approached. Horemheb said, “You may choose yourself whether to go by sea or by land. If you travel by sea, the Cretan warships might protect you all the way to Gaza, but it’s also just as possible that they don’t protect your ship but instead flee at the sight of warships from Sidon or Tyre that guard the sea in front of Gaza. In that case, your ship will be sunk, if you fight bravely, and you will drown. If you don’t fight bravely, your ship will be taken over, and you will be employed as an oarsman on Syrian warships and die in a few days’ time from flogging and heat. But you are an Egyptian and a distinguished man, and so it is more likely that they will flay you and dry your skin over their shields to make market bags and purses from it. In no way I want to scare you, and it is possible indeed that you may make it safely to Gaza — for the last time my warship made it, though our wheat ship was sunk. But how you should travel from besieged Gaza to meet Aziru, that I don’t know.”
“Perhaps it will be safer to go by land,” I said uncertainly to Horemheb. He nodded in agreement and explained, “I will provide you with an escort from Tanis onward, a few spears and some chariots. Should they fall to Aziru’s troops, they will abandon you in the desert and make off with all speed. It is possible that Aziru’s men, seeing you
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