The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

infantry since, being no mariners, they dared not attempt the invasion of Egypt from the sea. Without sparing their horses, he and his men pressed onward, and many horses died and became exhausted during this wild advance, but those who saw his advance, told that hundreds of chariots sent up a pillar of dust, all the way up to the very skies, and that their progress was like that of a whirlwind. Each night, beacons were kindled along the ranges of the Sinai mountains, bringing out the voluntary forces from their hiding places to destroy the Hittite guards and their stores all over the desert. From this, grew the legend that Horemheb tore to Syria across the wilderness of Sinai in the form of a pillar of storm by day and in the form of a pillar of fire by night. After this campaign, his fame was so illustrious that the people started telling stories of him as they tell stories of the gods, and not only Egyptians told stories of him, but also Syrians told stories of him — and they had all the reason to tell them.

So Horemheb took over one water store after another in Sinai, and he entirely surprised the Hittites, who — with their knowledge of Egypt’s weakness — could not conceive how he dared to attack across the desert while their vanguard was harrying the Lower Kingdom. Their main forces were not gathered together but scattered throughout the cities and villages of Syria in the expectation of Gaza’s surrender — because Gaza’s surroundings and the desert’s edge could not support the colossal army the Hittites had assembled in Syria in order for them to be able to lay their power over Egypt. The Hittites were exceedingly thorough in their warfare and never attacked until they had assured themselves of their superiority, and their commanders had noted on their clay tablets every grazing ground, every watering place and every village in the area they intended to attack. Because of these preparations, they had postponed their invasion and were thunderstruck at Horemheb’s advance, since never until now had anyone dared to assail them first and they had not believed that Egypt possessed chariots enough for so great an enterprise. Thus they were greatly bewildered, seeing Horemheb’s chariots appear at the desert’s edge in Syria, and they wasted a lot of time spying and scouting the number of the chariots and the purpose of the attack.

But the purpose of the attack was unknown to all but Horemheb, and he didn’t know it either for he later related to me that his purpose had been at most to destroy the Hittite water stores in the desert and thus disrupt their attack and postpone it by a year to gain enough time to train and equip his men for the great war. But his unexpected success intoxicated him,

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and the charioteers were blinded by their easy victories. Therefore he whirled on with his chariots like the storm wind to the front of Gaza and fell on the besiegers in their rear, scattering them, destroying their engines of war and battering rams and setting their camps on fire. Yet he could not go into Gaza for when the besiegers saw how few were his chariots, they rallied and counterattacked, and the brooding and stiff commander of Gaza wouldn’t open the gates of Gaza even for him when total chaos ensued.

Thus Horemheb would have been lost had the besiegers had chariots at their disposal, but the chariots of the Hittites and Aziru were spread out to small detachments here and there in Syria — since chariots were not needed to besiege Gaza and they wanted to rest and feed their horses before the great attack on Egypt. So Horemheb was able to return to the desert and had time to destroy the water stores on the fringes of the desert in Syria before the infuriated Hittites could call up enough chariots against him. They were careful to wage war and did not want to risk their expensive chariots on a group too small, but they wanted to be certain of their victory and therefore waited too long to gather enough chariots against Horemheb — yet Horemheb’s chariots were so exhausted from the long journey and battle that even a hundred chariots could have knocked them down.

From all this Horemheb rightly augured that his falcon was with him, and remembering the burning tree he had once seen among the Sinai hills, he sent word to his spearmen and archers, ordering them to advance in forced march across the desert along one of the roads constructed by the Hittites — where stood hundreds of thousands of earthenware jars, containing water enough to supply a large body of foot soldiers. This way, he intended to fight in the desert, although the desert was better suited to chariot warfare, and the power of the Hittites lay with their chariots. But I think he had no choice, for after managing to flee from the enraged Hittites back to the desert, he and his men and the horses were so exhausted that they could hardly have reached the Lower

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