The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

Kaptah said, “I have said what I wanted to say and shall not repeat it. I burn to tell you a little secret, but as it is not my secret, I don’t dare tell it, and perhaps it would have no effect on you in your madness. Don’t blame me hereafter, my lord, if later you gash your face and knees upon the stones in your despair. Don’t blame me if the monster devours you. It is all one to me, being but a one-time slave with no children to bewail my death. Therefore I will follow you, my lord, along this last road, though I know it to be in vain. Let us enter the dark house together, my lord, as before, and I will follow you, but if you allow it, I will take a wine jar with me this time also.”

On that same day, Kaptah began to drink, and he drank from morning till night and from night till morning, but yet in his drunkenness he obeyed my commands and had his servants distribute arms in the harbour around the blue and red rods and secretly had the officers of the guard called to The Crocodile’s Tail and bribed them to join the poor against the rich. And while Kaptah drank, he did not differ much from other people for also others drank incessantly; and Thutmose drank, and the slaves drank the loot they had plundered, and the wealthy sold their last jewels to buy wine, and everyone said, “Let us eat and drink, for no one knows what tomorrow brings.”

One of those days, a Theban poet came to The Crocodile’s Tail, and he owed so much for his drinks to Kaptah that Kaptah had to keep him drinking more wine in hopes of getting his own back later. He came with his eyes blazing, groping his hair and said, “I have come up with a great thing, and this thing is the greatest and the most important that anyone has ever come up with — and my idea is more wonderful than all of Pharaoh’s ideas and visions. Everything that happens around us is bad and wrong, and wrong conquers right, and cruelty conquers goodness, and evilness conquers innocence. But don’t worry about this since this is all but a dream, and in death we wake up, and the dream is gone and does not harm us any more. I wouldn’t say anything if we all saw pleasant dreams like we used to, but now we all see nightmares, and our dreams are so restless and evil that waking up is better than dreaming. Therefore I say: There is no Thebes nor river, nor Egypt, nor fields, nor towns, nor rich, nor poor, nor lords, nor slaves — but all these are but an unpleasant nightmare which I dream, and Pharaoh with

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his visions is nothing but my dream, too. But now I am very weary of my dream since this dream is worse than several days’ hangover. So I plan to wake up, and when I am awake, there will be no Egypt nor Pharaoh.” Having said that, he took a silicon stick that he used as a razor and cut his throat open from ear to ear so suddenly that no one could stop him, and his blood stained the seat and carpets so that his death brought Kaptah even bigger loss than his life.

But his words spread across Thebes, and many peaceful and gentle people who were tired of the prevailing frenzy said to each other, “Our life is but a bad dream, and death is a sweet awakening. Let us calmly step from the dark corridor of life to the dawn of death.” This way, many killed themselves, and some killed also their wives and children so that they wouldn’t need to see and live through all the evil that happened in Thebes for Aten’s sake.

Hunger and frenzy prevailed in Thebes with this coming of Aten’s kingdom on earth, and delirium seized the people’s minds so that they were drunk without drinking wine. There was no longer any difference between those who bore the cross and those who did not, and the only things that counted were a weapon, a hard fist and a loud voice — for whoever could shout the loudest, he was listened to. If anyone in the street saw a loaf in the hand of another, he snatched the loaf and said, “Give me the loaf, for are we not all brothers in the sight of Aten — and it is not right if I starve when my brother gets his stomach full of bread.” And if he met another arrayed in fine linen, he said, “Give me your garment, for we are brothers in the name of Aten, and no man should be better dressed than his brother.” If the horn was spied upon a man’s neck or on his clothes, he was put to grinding millstones or digging roots from the ground or tearing down burned-out houses, but some were beaten to death and thrown to the crocodiles — for the crocodiles had arrived to the landing stages of Thebes harbour, and no one disturbed them; and the champing of their jaws and splashing of their tails mixed with the voices of people who argued around the blue and red rods.

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