The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

But Horemheb had no intention of allowing them to recover from the surprise, and with a flourish of horns, he made known to his men that his magic had thrown down the Hittite chariots so that the Hittites were now powerless. He sent archers up the hill slopes to harass the Hittites, while other men were set to sweeping the ground with bushes and twigs to raise up more dust — partly to confuse the enemy and partly to conceal from his own troops how terrifyingly great a number of Hittite chariots were still whole and fit for battle. At the same time, he ordered part of his troops to roll down more rocks from the hill slopes to close the breaches in the barricades so that his victory would be complete and he could get the Hittite chariots unharmed.

Meanwhile, the Hittites’ light-chariot squadrons had halted on the plain to water their horses, to mend their harnesses and to repair the broken spokes in their wheels. They saw the dust whirling amongst the hillocks and heard howls and the clash of arms, fancying that the heavy chariots were routing the Egyptians and killing them off like rats.

Under the cover of dust, Horemheb sent his boldest spearmen to the pit to prevent the Hittites from helping up their fallen comrades and filling in the trench. Yet the remaining troops he sent towards the chariots, rolling great rocks before them and pulling rocks with oxen to close the chariots in a tight circle — to deprive them of room to manoeuvre and also, if possible, to cut them off from one another. Soon all along the slopes great stones were in motion towards the chariots, for the Egyptians had always been well-skilled in handling stones, and amongst Horemheb’s troops were only too many men who had learned to handle stones in the quarries.

The Hittites were greatly confused with the continued cloud of dust, which prevented them from seeing what was going on around them, and many were picked off by the archers when they stood in their chariots, looking around. Their commanders argued with one another for they had not experienced anything like this before and didn’t know what to do about it since it had not been in their training to learn how to behave in a situation like this. Thus they wasted time in arguing and sent some chariots toward the dust cloud to scout for Egyptian positions — but these chariots did not return, and their horses stumbled on the rocks and Horemheb’s spearmen pulled the drivers from the chariots, knocking them dead. At length, their officers ordered the horns to be sounded to assemble the chariots and storm down again to the plain, there to reform their forces. But

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when they charged back along the direction they had come, they did not recognise it any more, and their horses stumbled over ropes and traps, and their heavy cars overturned amongst the rocks so that at last they were compelled to alight from them in order to fight on foot. They were brave men and experienced soldiers and killed many Egyptians, but they were not accustomed to fighting on foot but on chariots standing taller than their adversary. Thus they were overcome by Horemheb’s men, although this battle continued all day.

With the approach of evening, a wind from the desert blew away the dust cloud from the valley, revealing the battlefield and the crushing defeat of the Hittites, for they had lost the greater number of their heavy chariots, of which many with their horses and equipment had fallen unharmed into the hands of Horemheb. But regardless of this, Horemheb’s men, wearied and fevered with the fury of battle, with their wounds and with the reek of blood, were aghast at the sight of their own losses, for the Egyptians laying dead in the valley far outnumbered those of the Hittites. The terror -stricken survivors said to one another, “This has been a day of horror, and it was well we saw nothing during the battle, for had we beheld the multitude of the Hittites and the numbers of our own dead, our hearts would certainly have leaped into our throats, and we should not have fought as we did, like lions.”

But at the sight of the scale of their loss, the remaining Hittites, who still fought from behind the cover of their chariots and slain horses, burst into tears, saying, “Our heavy chariots, the flower and pride of our army: all lost, and the heaven and Earth Mother have abandoned us. And this desert must not be Earth Mother’s land any more but it is the land of all devils. Thus it is no use to keep fighting, but let us surrender.” So they hit their spears to the ground before them and dropped the weapons from their hands, raising their hands in the air, and Horemheb ordered them to be bound with ropes, like prisoners are bound — and all the mud rats of the Nile came up to marvel at them, touching their wounds with their fingers and pulling the images of double-headed axes and winged suns from their helmets and clothes.

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