The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

to be an Egyptian of high rank, will impale you on a stake in the Hittite manner and urinate on your clay tablets. It is also possible that despite your escort you will fall into the hands of the voluntary troops who will strip you and set you to turning their millstones naked until such time as I can ransom you for gold, though I do not think you would last so long since your skin is ashen coloured and can’t bare the heat of the sun, and their whips are fashioned of hippopotamus hide. But it’s as readily possible that after robbing you, they slit your stomach open with their spears and leave your body to be eaten by crows, which is by no means the worst way of ending one’s days, but your death would be fairly easy.”

Hearing all this made my heart quail more than ever, and despite the summer heat my limbs were cold. So I said, “I bitterly regret having left my scarab with Kaptah to look after my possessions, for it might have done more to help me than Pharaoh’s Aten, whose power seems not to extend to these godless places, judging by your words. But by all accounts, I meet either death or Aziru fastest if I travel by land escorted by your chariots. Therefore I travel by land. For the sake of our friendship, Horemheb, should you hear that I am turning millstones as a prisoner in any place, be prompt to purchase my freedom, and do not spare the gold, for I am a rich man and richer than you think, although I cannot now furnish you with a full statement of my property, of which even my own knowledge is incomplete.”

Horemheb answered, “I am well aware of your wealth and have borrowed a considerable quantity of gold from you through Kaptah as I have from other rich men of Egypt, being fair-minded and even-handed and unwilling to deprive you of this privilege. However, for our friendship’s sake I hope you will not dun me for the gold as this might strain our friendship or in the worst case break it. Go then, Sinuhe my friend, go to Tanis and there pick up an escort for your journey and go into the desert — and may my falcon protect you, for I cannot since my authority does not extend into the desert. Should you be taken prisoner, I will buy your freedom with gold, and should you die, I will avenge your death. May this knowledge comfort you when some spear is slitting your belly.”

511

“Should you hear that I am dead, do not waste your vengeance on me,” I said bitterly to him. “You will bring no comfort to my crow-pecked skull by bathing it in the blood of miserable poor wretches. Do but greet princess Beketaten on my behalf, for she is a fair and desirable woman, although haughty, and at her mother’s deathbed she asked so much about you.”

Having loosed this poisoned arrow over my shoulder, I left him, somewhat comforted, and went to bid scribes to draw up and attest with all necessary seals my will by which I bequeathed my whole estate to Kaptah, Merit and Horemheb. I deposited my will in the royal archives of Memphis after which I took a ship for Tanis, where, in a sun-baked fortress at the edge of the desert, I met with Horemheb’s frontier guards.

These men drank beer and cursed the day of their birth, hunted antelope in the desert and then drank more beer. Their mud huts were dirty and smelt of urine, and the most wretched women who were no good even for the sailors in the harbours of the Lower Kingdom gladdened their solitude. In a word, they lived the usual life of frontier troops and longed for the day when Horemheb would arrive and lead them into battle in Syria so that they would get some variation in their lives and better beer and younger women; for any fate, though it were death itself, was to be preferred to the unbearable monotony of their existence in those oven-like quarters amongst the sand fleas. Therefore they were full of ardour and vowed they would form the spearhead of the voluntary forces and press forward to Jerusalem and even to Megiddo, sweeping before them the stinking Syrian troops as the rising Nile sweeps away dry reeds. Yet I cannot repeat what they promised to do to Aziru and the men of Amurru and their Hittite commanders for that was quite godless talk.

This way, they glowed with zeal for Egypt’s honour and cursed Pharaoh Akhenaten because during peaceful times they had the opportunity to tax caravans that arrived to Egypt and rejoice with the wives of the shepherds, but Pharaoh Akhenaten had for the sake of his god created a state of neither war nor peace. There had been no caravans to Egypt though Tanis for years, and the shepherds had fled to the Lower Kingdom. However, if a caravan attempted to reach Egypt through Syria or through the desert, the voluntary troops robbed it on the way before Pharaoh’s border guards had the opportunity to do the same, and thus Pharaoh’s border guards were deeply resentful towards the voluntary troops and called them ugly names.

512