The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

present, and our profits are infinite and will increase the longer we hold onto our stocks — for next autumn famine will creep into Egypt because the fields of the settlers are unploughed and unsown, the slaves have fled from Pharaoh’s fields, and the farmers are hiding their corn lest it be taken from them and sent to Syria. For all this, I can do no more than praise your cunning to the heavens, my lord, for in grain trading you are more crafty than I, although I believed you to be mad.”

Kaptah became greatly excited while he was recounting this and he said, “I praise these times, which make the rich man richer — and make him richer even if he did not want it. Also grain traders rejoice again, feasting from dawn till dusk and from dusk till dawn, and wine flows at their parties, for anyone who buys grain for his storage gets rich while lying down. Truly, these are wonderful times, for now gold and silver flow from nowhere into my chests and coffers. Know, my lord, that by selling empty jars I have made as much profit as through grain, and this is not crazy talk but completely true though no one would believe it. There are buyers of empty and used jars across Egypt, and they settle with any jar whatsoever, so that brewers and wine-growers moan and pull their hair when they run out of jars. Truly, these are wonderful times when a man becomes rich with nothing, for when I heard this, I hired slaves by the hundreds to buy up and collect jars — and indeed people gave to my slaves their used jars for nothing, just to have the smelly vessels removed from their courtyards. If I say that this winter I have sold a thousand times a thousand jars, I may exaggerate somewhat, but not that much. It is no use for me to make up this kind of lie for this truth about jars is more unbelievable than even my best lies.”

“What fool would buy empty jars?” I asked.

Kaptah gave me a sly wink with his one eye and said, “The buyers affirm that in the Lower Kingdom a new way has been discovered of preserving fish in water and salt, but having gone into the matter, I know that these jars are being sent to Syria. Shiploads of jars have been discharged at Tanis and conveyed from there to Syria by caravans, and they have discharged jars also from Gaza and conveyed from there to Syria — but what the Syrians do with them, is incomprehensible to man though I have put this question to many a wise man. No one can perceive how it pays them to buy used jars for the price of new ones and what do they do with the empty jars.”

547

Kaptah’s tale of the jars was surprising, but I did not puzzle my head over it, the grain question being of more importance to me. When I had listened to Kaptah’s full account, I said to him, “Sell all you have if need be, and buy grain, buy all the stocks to storage you can, no matter at what price. But do not buy any that has not yet been harvested, only that which you see with your own eyes and which can run through your fingers. Consider also whether you can buy back what has already been shipped to Syria, for although Pharaoh by the terms of the peace treaty must send it thither, Syria can always import grain from Babylon and does not need all this grain. Truly, in the autumn famine will creep into the land of Kem, and therefore let that man be cursed who sells grain from Pharaoh’s stores to compete with the grain of Babylon.”

Having said this, Kaptah further commended my wisdom and said, “You speak well, my lord. When these deals have been brought to a happy conclusion, you will be the wealthiest man in Egypt. I believe I can still buy grain, though it be at the usurer’s prices. But the man you should curse is that stupid priest Ay, who sold Pharaoh’s grain to Syria at the beginning of peace while the price was still low, and in his stupidity he sold enough to supply Syria for many years. And he did this because Syria paid immediately and in gold, and he needed an immeasurable amount of gold for Pharaoh’s thirty-year anniversary. The Syrians do not want to sell it back to us any more, though grain traders have asked about it, and they already shipped it off during the winter and won’t sell a single grain. Syrians are wily merchants, and I fancy they will wait until a grain of corn is weighed in gold in Egypt. Only then will they sell our grains back to us and so suck all the gold of Egypt into their coffers — I mean that gold which we have no time to suck, you and I, my lord.”

But I soon forgot grains and the famine that threatened Egypt and the future that had lain hidden in darkness, sunset having cast its last blood-red glow over Akhetaten, for I looked into Merit’s eyes, and my heart drank its fill of her beauty, and she was the wine in my mouth and the balsam in my hair. We parted from Kaptah, and she spread her mat for me to lay on, and no more did I hesitate to call her my sister, although I had once supposed that I could never again call any woman

548