The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

buildings alight, robbed houses and knocked down everyone they met, whether cross or horn. Their commander was that same Pepitaten who had people killed in the Avenue of Rams and in front of the Temple of Amun, but now his name was Pepitamun again, and he had been chosen by Ay because he was the highest-ranking and the most learned of Pharaoh’s officers.

But I, Sinuhe, bound up the wounds of slaves and treated the porters’ broken heads at The Crocodile’s Tail, while Merit tore up all my clothes and also her own and Kaptah’s clothes to make bandages for them, and little Thoth carried wine to those whose pain needed to be soothed. Those who could, returned to the battle even if wounded, and on the last day, the fighting was confined to the harbour and the poor quarter, where the war-skilled black men and Sherdens mowed down the people like standing crops, so that blood flowed along the narrow alleys and over the stone quays into the river. And death never reaped so abundant a harvest in the land of Kem as it did on that day, for if a man fell and lay down without able to get up, the black men and horns pierced him with their spears — and the slaves and porters did the same to horns whom they got hold of. But I did not know much about all this, since I treated the wounded in The Crocodile’s Tail and didn’t look around, and I did all this for Pharaoh Akhenaten’s sake, so I think, although I am not certain, for a man does not know his own heart.

But the porters and slaves had elected the strongest and the loudest as their leaders, and the leaders came to The Crocodile’s Tail while the fighting was raging to refresh themselves with wine, and they were drunk already with blood and the heat of battle and laughed at me and slapped me on the shoulders with their hard fists, saying, “We have prepared for you a comfortable basket in the harbour where you can hide, Sinuhe, for doubtless you have no desire to hang head downward beside us on the wall this evening? Is it not time for you to hide, Sinuhe since it is in vain you bind up wounds which are instantly opened again.” But I replied to them and said, “I am a royal physician, and none dare raise a hand against me.” Then they laughed at me even harder and drank a lot of wine and returned to the fighting.

At length, Kaptah came to me and said, “Your house is burning, Sinuhe, and the horns have stabbed Muti with their knives because she threatened them with her washing club when they were alighting your house. Now is the time for you to array yourself in the finest linen and assume all the emblems of your rank to save yourself. Leave these wounded slaves and

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robbers and follow me to the back room, where we may prepare ourselves to receive the officers of priest Ay in a way consistent with our dignity. I have hidden a couple of wine jars from these robbers so as to be able to appease the priests and officers and to continue my respectable profession.”

Also Merit put her arms about my neck and implored me, saying, “Save yourself, Sinuhe, and if you don’t want to do it for your own sake, then do it for mine and little Thoth’s.”

But lack of sleep and disillusion and death and the din of battle had so befuddled me that I no longer knew my own heart and said, “What care I for my house, for myself or for you and Thoth! The blood that flows here is the blood of my brothers in the sight of Aten, and if Aten’s kingdom falls, I have no desire to live.” But why I spoke thus wildly, I do not know, for it was someone else in me speaking and not my weak heart.

Nor do I know whether I should have had time to fly, since shortly afterward, the Sherdens and black men broke open the wine tavern door and forced their way in, led by a priest whose head was shaven and whose face gleamed with sacred oil. They began killing the wounded who lay bloody on the floor, and the priest put out their eyes with a sacred horn while the black men with striped paint jumped on them with their feet together so that the blood spurted from their wounds. The priest cried, “This is a den of Aten, let us purify it with fire.” Before my sight, they smashed in the head of little Thoth and slew Merit with a spear as she sought to protect him in her arms, and I was no use defending them, but the priest struck me on the head with his horn, and my cry was stifled in my throat, after which I knew no more.

I came to myself in the alley in front of The Crocodile’s Tail, and at first I did not know where I was, fancying that I had been dreaming or that I was now dead. The priest had left and the soldiers had laid down their spears and were drinking the wine Kaptah set before them, while their officers urged them with their silver-braided whips to continue the fight; and The Crocodile’s Tail was ablaze in front of me, for inside it

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