The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

Due to her bitterness, Queen Nefertiti saw clearer than anyone else how far beyond all good customs Pharaoh Akhenaten stepped by speaking to nobles in the ecstasy of his power and how his words disgraced his own dignity. And she did not conceal this understanding when they returned to the palace, and Pharaoh Akhenaten, still agitated, walked around his rooms without peace, clenching his hands together and raising his gaze upward as if seeing Aten in all his glory through the painted images on the ceiling. But Pharaoh Akhenaten ignored her words, although she spoke how women speak and her words were more stinging than poisonous flies, and he still stayed in the bliss of his visions and agitated himself with yet more powerful emotions so that as a doctor I was worried about him. He was not able to peacefully lay down on his bed and could not sleep but walked back and forth and spoke endlessly of Aten and the brightness of his visions and raised his arms convulsively in firm belief that it was in his power to set the world free from the sorcery of fear and darkness. And he did not sleep, even if I as a doctor made him drink intoxicating and narcotic potions, but said to me:

“Sinuhe, Sinuhe, this is the happiest day of my life, and my power makes me tremble. Look, you create millions of forms from yourself, from your strength, from your only one — the cities, villages, fields, streets and river. All eyes see you while you shine over the land as the sun. But when you are gone — when people have closed their eyes created by you in their faces — when people sleep soundly without seeing you since you are gone, then you still shine in my heart with all your rays.”

He was drowned in the brightness of his visions, and the visions burned his heart making him pant, so that his heart would not break in his chest. He weeped in his ecstasy and raised his hands and sang passionately:

“There is no one else who would really know

you, Only your son, Pharaoh Akhenaten, knows

you And forever you shine in his heart

Night and day, day and night.

Only to him you have revealed your plans and might,

The whole world rests on your hand

The way you created it.

When you rise to shine, man blossoms,

When you remove your light, man dies,

You are their lifetime,

Man lives only in you.”

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His ecstasy was so overwhelming that I would doubtless have listened to him, and the power of his heart would have enchanted my mind again, were it not for the fact that I was his doctor and thus responsible for his health. Therefore I tried to pacify him and held his thin wrist with my fingers and counted anxiously his heartbeats that rushed way faster than the drops in the water clock, and blood did not come down from his head. Thus the night went by and the stars moved slowly in the sky and there was deadly silence in the great palace — and only Pharaoh stayed awake as well as I stayed awake as his doctor.

Suddenly in a faraway room a small dog started howling, and the small dog howled and cried, its voice passing through all walls, until the small dog started barking at death like a jackal. For a man this is a terrifying sound, and it can only be heard in the darkness of the night before sunrise when both the man and the dog are closest to death. So Pharaoh woke up from his visions, and in an instant blood came down from his head, and his face became greyish pale and thin and his eyes became red. The god left him, and human emotions took over him, and his heart was filled with the fear and love of a caring father. He ran through all rooms, and I followed him lighting up his way with a lamp, and we arrived to the room of the ailing princess Meketaten. The servants, drunk from festival and wine and all good foods, had left her alone and were in deep sleep. Only the small dog guarded her sleep at the foot of her bed, and during the night she had started coughing, and her worn body could not stand her cough any more, but bright blood flowed from her lungs and wet her bed, and the small dog could not help her though it licked her hands and face in passionate tenderness. Therefore the dog started howling at the death for dogs sense the death before men and they know the smell of death before a man knows it.

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