The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

Ay went up to curiously finger the crowns and try the weight of the golden flail in his hand, saying, “Pharaoh Akhenaten, your friend Sinuhe has mixed you a good medicine. Drink it, and you will be healed, and tomorrow we will talk again of unpleasant things.”

Pharaoh sat up on his bed and took the cup in his hands and looked at each of us in turn, and his weary glance pierced me so that my spine shivered under the power of his eyes. Then he said to me, “Men show mercy to a sick animal with a blow from a club. Is it you who have mercy for me, Sinuhe? If so I thank you, for my disillusion is more bitter to my tongue than earthly death, and death today is sweeter than the scent of myrrh.”

“Drink, Pharaoh Akhenaten,” I said. “Drink for your Aten’s sake.”

Also Horemheb said, “Drink, Akhenaten my friend. Drink that Egypt may be saved. With my shoulder cloth I will cover your weakness, as once before in the desert outside Thebes.”

Pharaoh Akhenaten drank from the cup, but his hand shook so badly that wine splashed down his chin. Then he gripped the cup in both hands, emptied it and sank back on his bed, laying his neck on the wooden rest. We all three watched him for a long time, and he said no word but stared with dim, bloodshot eyes into his visions. After some time, his body began to shiver as with cold, and Horemheb slipped off his shoulder cloth and spread it over him, but Ay took the crowns in both hands and tried the feel of them upon his head with both hands.

So died Pharaoh Akhenaten, and I gave him death to drink, and he drank death from my hand. Yet why I did it, I do not know, for a man does not know his own heart. However, I believe I did it less for Egypt’s sake than for Merit’s and for my son Thoth’s sake. I did it less from love of Akhenaten than from my hatred and bitterness and from all the evil he had brought about. But above all, I must have done it because it was written in the stars that my cup should be full. When I saw him die, I believed that I had got my cup full; but a man does not know his own heart, and a man’s heart is insatiable — more insatiable than a crocodile in the river.

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Once we had seen him die, we left the golden house, forbidding the servants to disturb him because he slept. Not until the following morning did they find his body and raise their voices in mourning. The golden house was filled with weeping, although I believe that the minds of many were easier for his death. Yet Queen Nefertiti stood tearless beside his bed, and the look on her face was such that none could interpret. She was touching Pharaoh Akhenaten’s thin fingers with her beautiful hands and stroking his cheeks when I came in, as my duty required, to attend his body to the House of Death. The only houses still alive in Akhetaten were the House of Death and the golden house. There I entrusted Pharaoh Akhetaten to the corpse washers and embalmers, that they might preserve his body for eternal life.

According to law and good custom, the young Smenkhkare was Pharaoh, but he was altogether beside himself with grief and stared about him, unable to utter a sensible word for he had been accustomed to taking all his thoughts from Pharaoh Akhenaten. Ay and Horemheb spoke to him, saying to him that he must now hasten to Thebes to make sacrifice to Amun if he desired to keep the crowns upon his head. However, he did not believe them, being a childish boy and given to daydreaming. Therefore he said, “I will make known the light of Aten to all people and build a temple to my father Akhenaten and worship him as a god in his temple, for he was not like other men.”

About Smenkhkare’s childishness it is told that when the guards left the accursed city in good order, he ran after them, crying and begging, and he adjured them to return for the sake of Pharaoh, saying to them, “You cannot leave your homes and wives and children.” But the Sherdens and Syrians mocked and laughed at him, and one Sherden sergeant revealed his phallus to him, saying, “Our home and wives and children are where this thing is.” So Smenkhkare in his childishness disgraced his royal dignity by pleading and begging the mercenaries to return.

When Ay and Horemheb saw the hardness of his head, they left him, and on the following day when he went to spear fish in the river, it chanced that his reed boat overturned and his body was devoured by crocodiles. So the story went, but exactly how the matter fell out, I do not know. I however believe it was not Horemheb who had him slain but rather Ay, who was in haste to return to Thebes for the sake of his power.

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