The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

to me of gratitude, only to make false accusations against me? Didn’t I poison the horses of the Hittites, and didn’t I smuggle corn into Gaza, and didn’t I hire bold men to bring you details of enemy dispositions in the wilderness, and didn’t I hire slaves to slit the water skins in the chariots when the Hittites drove their chariots against you to the desert? All this I did for you and for Egypt without thought of my own gain, and so it was but fair and right that I should perform certain services for the Hittites and for Aziru, and these services brought no special harm to you. For this reason, I had with me Aziru’s clay tablet of safe-conduct when I fled to Gaza from the enraged Hittites who accused me of their sick horses and of their defeat in the Field of Human Bones. You see, a wise man protects himself at every point and does not trust a single arrow alone but carries many arrows in his quiver, and I would be no use to you unless I was wise, and I would neither be of the smallest use to you nor to Egypt were my skin now hanging out to dry on the wall. The Hittites might well have conquered Gaza before your arrival, and for that purpose I had to take Aziru’s safe-conduct with me to betray Gaza to the Hittites should the need arise and should you be delayed too long and they able to take Gaza anyway. I hid Aziru’s safe-conduct carefully in my clothes, but this Roju is a suspicious man, and his men tore my clothes and found the clay tablet — though I did my best putting my hand over my blind eye and spoke of the venomous beetles of Syria, like we had agreed. But after he found Aziru’s clay tablet, Roju believed in no passwords any more but started stretching me out on the wheel until I bellowed like a bull and confessed that I was a spy of Aziru’s so that he wouldn’t have torn my limbs from my body, for without limbs I would have been totally useless to you, isn’t that true, Horemheb, or am I mistaken?”

But Horemheb laughed at him and said, “May your troubles be your reward, my good Kaptah. I know you, and you know me, and therefore pester me no longer in this matter of gold, for such talk vexes me and puts me out of temper.”

Kaptah nevertheless persisted until at last he had extracted from Horemheb the sole right to buy and sell all war plunder in Syria. This way he alone could purchase from the soldiers any spoils that had been shared out amongst them from the Field of Human Bones in the Hittite camp and from the front of Gaza in the besiegers’ camp — exchanging them for beer, wine, dice and women; and he alone was also authorised to sell and exchange Pharaoh’s and Horemheb’s shares of the loot for goods of which the army stood in need. This right alone would have made him a rich man since many merchants had arrived in Gaza via ships from Egypt;

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and also merchants from Syrian cities had arrived, heedless of the Hittites and Aziru, lured by their cupidity to trade for the loot and to buy prisoners for slavery — and after this no one could trade in Gaza without paying Kaptah his share of every deal. But without settling for this, Kaptah demanded the same conditions for all Syrian spoils whatsoever Horemheb’s army might come by in the future, and having bargained for a while, Horemheb agreed since this promise cost him nothing, and he was not a merchant himself, and in return for this concession, Kaptah promised him liberal gifts.

Kaptah was however displeased, since Horemheb’s words had hurt him deeply, and after we left Horemheb and returned to our rooms, we drank wine together, and Kaptah became grim, lamenting the ingratitude of the world and saying, “It is natural and goes without saying that a wise man is always on the winner’s side and prepares in advance to be on the winner’s side, whatever comes to pass. It was not possible for me to live and trade in Syria without doing favours both to Aziru and the Hittites, and had Horemheb lost, I would have been forced to betray Gaza to the Hittites, however bad it would have made me feel since the Hittites are more well-versed in matters of trade than Horemheb and thus less beneficial to me than Horemheb — but luckily that did not happen, and I thank our scarab for it. Truly, nothing is as hard as man’s ingratitude, since also the slaves and porters in Thebes cursed my name even if I let them drink wine for free and used your wealth to get them weapons, my lord, thus putting myself in great risk in the eyes of Amun. And Amun would never have forgiven me, unless I had guided Pepitamun’s men to the slaves’ secret armoury and led the porters’ leaders to his hands when I realised that Aten would lose anyway. And no harm was done to anyone but instead many lives were saved, and the leaders of slaves and porters would eventually have been in Amun’s hands anyway, and it was not my fault that Ay and Pepitamun set their thrones on the quay of Thebes and had their bodies

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