The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

Thus did Horemheb wage war in Syria, and I went with his troops, dressing the soldiers’ wounds and witnessing all the evil that a man can do to another man. The war continued for three years, during which Horemheb defeated the Hittites and Aziru’s troops in many battles, and twice his own troops were surprised by Hittite chariots, which wrought great destruction and forced him to withdraw behind the walls of the cities he had captured. But he contrived to maintain sea communications with Egypt, and the Syrian fleet was never able to get the better of his own fleet, which was now accustomed to war. Thus he could always call up reinforcements from Egypt after his defeats and gather strength for renewed thrusts, and the cities of Syria were laid in ruins, and men hid themselves like wild beasts in the recesses of the hills. Entire provinces were laid waste, and ravaging troops trampled the crops and broke down the fruit trees so that the enemy might not live off the land he ruled. Thus the manpower and wealth of Egypt drained away in Syria, and Egypt was like a mother rending her garments and strewing ashes in her hair as she sees her children die — for all along the river, from the Lower Kingdom to the Upper, there was no village nor town, no shore nor hovel whose men and sons had not died in Syria for the sake of Egypt’s greatness.

Horemheb waged war in Syria for three years, and during these years I aged more rapidly than in all my earlier years so that I lost my hair, and my back grew bent, and my face became as wrinkled as a dried fruit. Tears swelled the bags under my eyes for everything I had to witness, and I closed myself off, snapping and speaking harshly to the sick — as many physicians do when they grow old, having wished for good as long as they could. In this respect, I was no different from other doctors, although I had to see more than most.

In the third year, the plague came to Syria, for a plague always follows in the wake of war, being engendered at once when great numbers of rotting corpses are heaped together. Truly, on the third year of the war, the whole of Syria was but one rotting grave, and entire nations and tribes died out so that their speech and customs fell into eternal oblivion. Plague slew those whom the fighting had spared, and within the armies of both Horemheb and the Hittites it claimed so many victims that warfare ceased and the troops fled into the mountains or the desert, where the plague could not follow. And the plague didn’t separate high and low, rich and poor, but killed everyone evenly,

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and ordinary medication had no effect on the plague; and those who sickened drew a cloth over their heads and lay down on their beds and were dead within three days. But those who survived the plague bore terrible scars in armpits and groins, where the pus of the plague gushed out during recovery.

The disease was as capricious in sparing as in slaying for it was not always the strongest and healthiest who survived, but often it was the weakest and most starved who healed — as if in these the plague had found too little to feed on to become lethal. In tending patients, I came at last to let as much blood from them as I dared to weaken them and to forbid them food so long as the sickness lasted. I cured many in this way, but a like number died under my hands regardless of my treatment, so that I cannot be sure if my treatment was correct. Yet I was compelled to do something for them that they might retain their faith in my arts, since a sick man who loses faith in his recovery and his physician’s skill dies more certainly than one who believes in his physician. My treatment was also better than many others in that it was cheap for the patient.

Ships carried the plague to Egypt, but the plague did not kill as many in Egypt as in Syria but lost its virulence in Egypt, and more survived the plague than were slain by it. When the flood arrived, the plague disappeared from Egypt that same year, and in the winter it departed from Syria also, enabling Horemheb to muster his troops again and continue the war. That spring, he crossed the mountains into the plains before Megiddo, defeating the Hittites in a great battle after which the Hittites asked for peace — for having seen the success of Horemheb, Burnaburiash took fresh courage in Babylon and remembered his alliance with Egypt. He became arrogant towards the Hittites, sending his troops into what had been the land of Mitanni and expelling the Hittites from their grazing grounds in Naharin. The Hittites asked for peace because they realised there was nothing left to win in the devastated Syria, and they were wise warriors and thrifty men, unwilling to hazard their chariots for empty glory when they needed them to quiet Babylon.

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