The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

not prepared to receive it. Had I time to prepare, perhaps I would not have been that scared. But I thought of the swallows’ arrow-fast flight above the river, and I thought of the wine from the harbour, and I thought of the goose Muti roasted in the Theban manner, and suddenly life was unexpectedly sweet to me. Therefore I thought of Egypt and thought that Pharaoh Akhenaten had to die so that Egypt might live and so that Horemheb might defeat the Hittite attack by force. Yet Akhenaten was my friend, and this stranger of a prince unknown to me, and doubtless he had done such deeds in the course of the war as to merit a thousand deaths. Why should I hesitate to murder him to save Egypt once again, since I had already had Akhenaten drink death to save Egypt? I became exceedingly sleepy and said, yawning:

“Lay aside your knife, Horemheb, for the sight of a blunt knife makes me nervous. Be it as you say. I will save Egypt from the power of the Hittites, though how I will manage to do it, I really do not know yet — and in all probability, I shall lose my life in the doing of it, for the Hittites will certainly slay me if the prince dies. But I care little for my life, and I do not desire the Hittites to rule in Egypt, and I won’t do this for the sake of gifts or good promises, but I do this because this deed was written in the stars before the day of my birth and may not be evaded. Receive the crowns from my hand, Horemheb and Ay, receive your crowns and bless my name, for I, the insignificant physician Sinuhe, will make Pharaohs of you.”

I felt a great desire to laugh as I said this, thinking that probably the sacred blood ran in my own veins and that I was the only rightful heir to the throne of Pharaohs, while Ay was by origin no more than a minor priest of the sun and Horemheb’s parents smelled of cattle and cheese. I put my hand over my mouth and giggled aloud like a woman. I laughed to myself, thinking that had I had hardness, like Horemheb, or cold-blooded cunning, like Ay had, I might have been able to lead my life to the point where I stepped on the Pharaoh’s throne, proving my origins. During these times of upheaval, anything was possible, but power frightened me, and the bloody crowns of Pharaohs frightened me — and in my veins had the blood of sun mixed with the thin blood of Mitanni, the blood of sunset. So I just laughed with a hand over my mouth, and I could not control my laughter, for when I am in a shock I start laughing, and when I am frightened I become sleepy. I think here I differ from most people.

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My laughter bothered Horemheb so that he started frowning and smiting his legs with a golden whip, but Ay was not bothered by my laughter since he was already an old and tired man and did not care about people’s laughter or tears, only about himself. At that moment, I saw them both for what they were without the colourful fantasy feathers: I saw them as robbers despoiling the dying body of Egypt, and I saw them as children who wanted to play with crowns and emblems of power — and their will and lust chained them so that they could never be happy. Therefore I suddenly fell silent, and my eyes looked into the future, and I said to Horemheb:

“My friend Horemheb, the crown is heavy. You will learn this some evening of a hot day when the cattle come down to the water’s edge to drink, and the voices about you fall silent.”

But Horemheb said, “Make haste now and go, for a ship awaits you, and you must meet Zannanza in the Sinai desert before he reaches Tanis with his entourage.”

Thus I once more departed from Thebes, suddenly and by night, and Horemheb gave me his fastest ship, and I had my medicine chest and the remains of the roast goose that Muti had served me for dinner, prepared in Theban style, taken on board. I had also some wine taken on board to keep me company during the journey because I did not much care about what was to happen to me.

On board the ship, I had time to think, and after I had been thinking long enough I hastened my travel as much as I could by encouraging the oarsmen with my stick and by promising them lavish gifts — for the more I thought about the matter, the better I understood the mortal danger that threatened Egypt, rising like a black cloud of sand from the desert. It would be easy to make myself appear in good light and say I did everything for the sake of Egypt, but the deeds of men are not that easily explained, and the wine of deeds is never pure but mixed. I write this for my own sake, and so I confess that I might not have accepted

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