The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

Never in my life had I set foot in a pleasure house, and I was a little scared. The one to which Thutmose led me was called Cat and Grapes. It was a pretty little house, full of soft, yellow lamplight. There were soft mats to sit on, and young, in my eyes, lovely girls beat time to the music of flutes and strings with their red-painted hands. When the music stopped, they sat with us and begged me to buy them wine, as their throats were as dry as chaff. The music restarted, and two naked dancers performed a complicated dance requiring great skill, and I followed it with great interest. As a doctor, I was accustomed to the sight of naked girls and yet had never seen breasts swaying or little bellies and bottoms moving so seductively as these.

But the music saddened me again, and I began to long for I knew not what. A beautiful girl took my hand and pressed her side to mine and said my eyes were those of a wise man. But her eyes were not as green as the Nile in the heat of summer, and her dress, though it left her bosom bare, was not of royal linen. So I drank wine and neither looked into her eyes nor felt any wish to call her my sister or take pleasure with her. And the last I remember of that place is a vicious kick from a black man and a lump I got on my head when I fell down the steps. So it came about just as my mother Kipa had foretold. I lay in the street without a copper piece in my pocket until Thutmose drew my arm over his strong shoulder and led me to the jetty, where I could drink my fill of the Nile water and bathe my face and my hands and my feet.

That morning, I entered the House of Life with swollen eyes and a smarting lump on my head, a dirty shoulder cloth and not even the smallest wish to ask, why? I was to be on duty among the deaf and those with ear diseases, so I washed myself quickly and put on the white robe. On the way, I met my teacher and supervisor, who looked at me in the face and began to upbraid me with phrases I had read in the books and knew by heart.

“What is to become of you if you run along the walls by night and drink wine without keeping tally of your cups? What is to become of you if you idle away your time in pleasure houses, smiting wine jars with your stick to the alarm of the people? What is to become of you if you shed blood and run from the watchmen?”

But when he had thus done his duty, he smiled to himself with relief, took me to his room and gave me a potion to cleanse my stomach. My spirits rose as I realised that wine and even pleasure houses were allowed in the House of Life, provided I stopped asking, why?

So I too was smitten with Thebes fever and began to love the night more than the day, the flickering of torches more than sunlight, Syrian music more than the moans of the sick and the whispering of pretty girls more than crabbed old writings on yellow papers. But no one had anything to say against this as I fulfilled my tasks in the House of Life, satisfied my examiners and kept my hand steady. It was all part of the initiate’s life, and only few students could afford to set up house on their own and marry during their training, and my teacher led me to understand that I would do well to sow my wild oats, give rein to my body and be of a merry heart. But I meddled with no woman even though I thought I knew their embrace did not really burn worse than fire.

The times were full of unrest, and the great Pharaoh was ill. I saw his shrivelled old man’s face when he was carried to the Temple at the Autumn Festival, adorned with gold and precious stones, motionless as a statue with his head bowed beneath the weight of the double crown. He was sick, and the royal physicians could no longer help him, and thus the rumour had it that his days were numbered and that his heir would soon succeed him on the Pharaoh’s throne. But the heir was only a stripling like myself.

There were services and sacrifices in the Temple of Amun, but Amun could not help his divine son though Pharaoh Amenhotep III had built for him the mightiest Temple of all time. It was said that the King had grown wroth with the Egyptian gods and that he had sent a swift messenger to his father-in-law, the king of Mitanni in Naharin, desiring that the miracle-working Ishtar of Niniveh be sent to heal him. This was such a shame to Amun that it was only whispered about in the Temple of Amun and in the House of Life.

The image of Ishtar arrived, and I saw sweating, curly-bearded priests with strange head-pieces and thick woollen coats carrying it through Thebes, with metal instruments playing and small drums tolling. But to the joy of the priests, even foreign gods could not cure Pharaoh. When the river began to rise, the royal skull opener was summoned to the palace.