The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

Thus died the little princess in her father’s arms before sunrise, and I could not help her with my skill, and she was the second oldest of the princesses and ten years old.

Also I shed tears for her sake, for a death of a child is always more sorrowful than a death of an adult, but Pharaoh Akhenaten’s pain as a father was so terrifying that I feared for his life as well — since Pharaoh Akhenaten felt deeper than ordinary men not only in his joy and ecstasy, but also in his grief. Therefore I tried to comfort him and said:

“Pharaoh Akhenaten, my friend, I would gladly have given my life if that would have spared you from this grief. But a flower is most beautiful right before it blooms, and the death of an innocent is more beautiful than the death of a sinner. Perhaps your god loved your little daughter so much that he lifted her to his ship this early to spare her from the heat of the day and the cold of the night — to spare her from the sorrow and pain of life, for life is hot dust yet death is cool water. Truly, Pharaoh Akhenaten, she will live from eternity to eternity, and her golden ball will never cease from rolling and her colourful top will never fall — but the skilful men of the House of Death will wrap her small fingers in golden leaves and preserve her small face and slight body by wrapping it in royal linen so that she lives forever without pain and sorrow.”

All this I said to Pharaoh Akhenaten to comfort him, for in all his sorrow I loved him again, though I did not love him in the ecstasy of his power. Frightened servants washed the blood from the little girl’s face, and in death her emaciated face smiled so that I did not reproach myself too much though I had neglected her — and in any case she had her own doctor, and I was not responsible for her. The small dog was carried away though it resisted heavily and continued howling in the dog cage.

But no one dared to touch Pharaoh Akhenaten until my medicines finally started to have an effect on him, and he fell asleep at dawn so that the porters from the House of Life had time to retrieve the princess to the House of Death before Pharaoh woke up and thus save him from that pain. Her body was preserved with the embalmer’s greatest skill, and her face was covered with a golden mask, and she got a royal funeral, and all her toys followed her to the grave. The embalmers did

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not regard it unbecoming to their dignity to embalm also her small dog’s body, for the small dog could not eat any more after its mistress had departed to the House of Death and it died from grief. This way, the dog followed her and rests from eternity to eternity at the foot of her eternal bed.

But while embalmers and corpse washers carried out their work in the House of Death, Pharaoh could not sleep, wandering his nights in palace rooms and walking alone in his garden, overcome with grief, and refusing everyone’s company and banishing the guards. The thirty-year festival had brought a large crowd of visitors to Akhetaten, and one morning when Akhenaten was walking beside the sacred lake, two assassins fell on him to kill him with their knives. However, a young pupil of Thutmose was sitting on the bank making drawings of the ducks — for Thutmose made his pupils draw according to their own eyes and not from patterns which was very difficult since the pupils needed to draw what they saw and not only what they knew. This boy warded off the assassins’ knives with his stylus until the guards had rushed up to help and had saved Pharaoh’s life, so that he suffered no more than a wound from a knife in the shoulder. But the boy died, and his blood flowed over Pharaoh Akhenaten’s hands. Thus started death to follow Akhenaten though he had never tasted death before, and amidst the autumn glory of his garden, he saw blood running over his hands and death darken the eyes and slacken the jaw of the young boy, all for Pharaoh’s sake.

I was summoned in haste to bind up Pharaoh’s wound, which was not dangerous but healed fast. In this way, I chanced to see the two assassins, and one was shaven-headed, and his face gleamed with sacred oil, and the ears of the other had been cut off for some shameful offence and he was unable to look anyone directly in the eye. Even as the guards had bound them with reed ropes, they tore at their bonds, shouting hideous imprecations in the name of Amun and would not cease even when the guards struck them on the mouth with the blue shafts of their spears until the blood flowed. Doubtless the priests had bewitched them so that they could feel no pain.

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