The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

So we were compelled to soil our faces and to haul down the bright pennants of victory in the ships, and Horemheb was fairly annoyed as he had to loose and drop to the river the bodies of Syrian and Hittite commanders, which he had hung head downward from the bows of his ship in the manner of the great Pharaohs. The dung snouts, whom he had taken with him to celebrate peace in Thebes — while leaving the mud rats in Syria to bring peace to the country and to stuff themselves on the fat of the land after all the hardships and tribulations of the war — they were also annoyed and cursed Tutankhamun, who even in death spoiled their pleasure.

Vexed, they played dice on the ship for the loot that they had gathered in Syria and fought amongst themselves for the girls they had taken on board to sell in Thebes — after having already rejoiced enough with them. They hit each other causing bumps and wounds, and they sang obscene songs instead of mourning hymns — so that pious people who had gathered on the river shores to watch the ships were aghast about their behaviour. And it was hard to recognise Horemheb’s dung snouts as Egyptians any more since many dressed in the Syrian or Hittite manner, having looted their handsome clothes; and they mixed Syrian and Hittite words and curses with their speech, and many had started to worship Baal in Syria, bringing Baals with them to Egypt. I had no reason to reproach them about this, since I had myself made a great drink and meat sacrifice to the Baal of Amurru before I left Syria for the sake of my friend Aziru’s memory, but I only tell this to show how people shunned them and feared them like strangers even though they were also proud of their victories in Syria.

On the other hand, Horemheb’s soldiers were looking at Egypt which they hadn’t seen for many years and found it strange as they did not recognise it as the same land from which they had left for the war — and neither did I know Egypt any more. Wherever we went ashore from the ships to spend the night on land, all we saw was sorrow and misery and poverty around us. People’s clothes were grey from washing and colourful from patches, and their faces were dry and rough from the lack of oil, and their eyes were exhausted and suspicious — and we saw the strikes of tax gatherers’ sticks in the backs of the poor. Public buildings were decayed, and birds were nesting in the gutters of Pharaoh’s judges’ houses,

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and crumbling mud tiles were falling on the streets from Pharaoh’s buildings. Roads had not been repaired for years due to lack of manpower, for the living force of Egypt waged war in Syria, and the walls of the irrigation ditches had collapsed, and water dykes of the fields had become overgrown.

Only the temples thrived, and fresh golden and red inscriptions glowed on their walls, praising Amun, and the priests of Amun were fat, with their bald heads gleaming from oil. But while they were tucking away the sacrificial meat, the poor people drank the water of the Nile to push down their dry bread and porridge, and men who had been wealthy and who had drunk wine from decorated goblets, were content if they only had a jarful of thin beer once during a moon’s cycle. On the shores, there was no women’s laughter nor the sounds of children’s joy, but women waved washing bats in their thin arms on the shore and children crept on the streets like scared animals who have been beaten, digging water plants’ roots from the mud as their food. This was what war had made Egypt into, and the war had taken everything that Aten had saved. People did not have strength to rejoice for the peace but watched fearfully as Horemheb’s warships sailed upstream.

Yet swallows were were still darting over the water’s surface with wings fast as arrows, and hippopotamuses were bellowing amongst the rushes of empty beaches while crocodiles rested their limbs on shallows with their jaws open, letting small birds clean their teeth. On board, we drank the water of the Nile, and there is no water in the world like the water of the Nile that revives a thirsty man the same way. We breathed the smell of mud and heard the papyrus reed whisper in the wind, and we heard the ducks’ cries, and Amun sailed across the glowing blue sky in his golden boat, and we knew we had come back to our home country.

Thus came the day when the three mountaintops, the three eternal guardians of Thebes, became visible behind the river; we saw the great roofs of the Temple, and the golden peaks of the obelisks were flashing fire in our eyes. We saw the western mountains and the endless city of the dead, the stone piers of Thebes and the harbour, the endless alleys of the poor quarter, lined with mud huts, and the quarters of the rich and

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