The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

Keftiu bared her opulent breasts to him, and the executioner raised the heavy sword and with one stroke separated Aziru’s head from his body. His head fell at Keftiu’s feet, and his strong blood spurted violently from his large body with the last beats of his heart, splashing the boys’ clothes so that they were stricken with horror, with the younger one starting to shudder. But Keftiu lifted Aziru’s head from the ground and kissed the swollen lips and stroked the torn cheeks and pressed his face to her bosom, saying to her sons, “Hasten, my valiant boys, follow your father without fear, my little boys, for your mother is all impatient to follow your father.” The two boys knelt down obediently, and the elder one still held protectively the younger by the hand, and the executioner cut their slender boy’s necks with ease and then, having thrust their bodies aside with his foot, severed Keftiu’s fat, white neck at a stroke so that all of them received an easy death. However, Horemheb let their bodies be thrown into a corpse pit to be eaten by beasts.

Thus died my friend Aziru without seeking to bribe death, while Horemheb made peace with the Hittites, although he knew, as well as they did, that this peace was but an armistice, since Sidon, Zemar, Byblos and Kadesh were still under the sway of the Hittites — and the Hittites turned Kadesh into a large fortress and the base of their power in northern Syria. But now both Horemheb and the Hittites were weary of war, and Horemheb greatly rejoiced to be able to make peace, for he had to oversee his interests in Thebes and also needed to pacify the land of Kush as well as the black men who had gone wild from their freedom and were not willing to pay tax to Egypt any more.

During these years, Tutankhamun reigned in Egypt, though he was but a young boy and took interest in nothing but the building of his own tomb, and the people blamed him for all the misery resulting from the war and losses, and they hated him deeply, saying, “What can we expect of a Pharaoh whose wife is of the blood of the accursed Pharaoh?” And Ay did not quell such talk since it benefitted his own interest, but he rather spread amongst the people new stories of Tutankhamun’s thoughtlessness and greed, attempting to gather all the treasures of Egypt into his tomb. He ordered people to pay a tomb tax to equip his own tomb so that whoever died in Egypt had to pay him tax for the eternal preservation of his body. But this thought was planted in his head by Ay who knew it would enrage people.

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Throughout this time, I never once visited Thebes but, suffering from hardship and scarcity, traveled everywhere with the army that required my skill; yet men who came from Thebes told me that Pharaoh Tutankhamun was frail and sickly and that some secret illness consumed his body. They said that it seemed as if the war in Syria used up his strength, since whenever news came of a victory for Horemheb, Pharaoh fell sick, but if news came about Horemheb’s defeat, he recovered and rose from his bed. They said this had every appearance of sorcery, and anyone who kept his eyes open could see that Pharaoh’s health was bound up with the war in Syria.

But as time went on, Ay grew ever more impatient, and ever more often he sent Horemheb a message, “Can you not cease this warfare and give peace to Egypt for I am already an old man and weary of waiting. Win already then, Horemheb, and bring Egypt peace that I may have my reward as we agreed and will see to it that you too have your reward.”

For this reason, I was not at all surprised when, after the war was over and we were sailing up the river in warships with flying pennants in a parade of celebration, we were met by the news that Pharaoh Tutankhamun had stepped into the golden boat of his father Amun to sail to the Western Land. So we needed to lower our pennants and soil our faces with soot and ash. It was said that Pharaoh Tutankhamun had had a severe attack on the day that tidings reached Thebes of the fall of Megiddo and of the peace. But it was the subject of dispute amongst the physicians of the House of Life what was the disease he died from, and it was rumoured that his stomach was blackened with poison, but no one had certain knowledge of the cause; and the people would have it that he died from his own evilness when the war ended, because his greatest delight had been to see Egypt suffer. But I know that in pressing his seal into the clay of the peace treaty, Horemheb killed Pharaoh as surely as if he had thrust a knife into his heart, since peace was all that Ay had been waiting for before sweeping Tutankhamun from his path and ascending the throne of Pharaohs as the ‘King of Peace.’

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