The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

Meanwhile priest Ay exulted in the blindness of his power, and he said to me, “In the whole land of Kem no one stands higher than myself, and it matters not whether I live or die, for Pharaoh does not die, but lives forever, and if I die, I shall in my death step aboard the golden boat of my father Amun and sail across the heavens straight to the Western Land. This is good indeed since I don’t fancy Osiris weighing my heart with his scales, and his jurors, the rightful baboons, might make evil accusations against me and cast my Ba in the mouth of the Devourer. I am already an old man, and often my deeds glare out at me from the darkness of night. So I am quite glad that I am Pharaoh and need no longer fear death.”

He spoke to me this way since my deeds had bound me to him, and I could not say a bad word about him without saying a bad word about myself. He was already an old and tired man: his knees trembled as he walked, his face was wrinkled and pale from age, and his dark hair had become grey. He felt lonely and turned to me since the shared crimes united us, and he held no secrets from me. But I laughed bitterly at his words and mocked him, saying:

“You are an old man, and I believed you to be wise. You cannot suppose that the stinking oil of the priests has rendered you immortal. Truly, with the royal headdress you are still the same man as without the headdress, and soon death will catch up to you, and you will be no more.”

Then his mouth began to quiver, and fear glinted in his eyes, and he whined aloud, saying, “Have I then committed all my bad deeds in vain, and was it in vain that I sowed death about me all my days? No, assuredly you are wrong, Sinuhe, and the priests will save me from the abyss of the underworld and will preserve my body for all eternity. My body is divine, since I am Pharaoh, and also my deeds are divine, and no one can accuse me of my deeds, since I am Pharaoh.”

Thus did his reason begin to fade, and he had no joy in his power. And he had no joy in anything any more, since in the horror of death, he guarded his health and dared not even to drink wine, and his diet was dry bread and boiled milk. His body was already too worn to be able to rejoice with women, for during the days of his power, he had poisoned his body with various drugs to maximise his zeal and thus win Queen Tiye’s favour. As time went on, he became increasingly dreadful of assassins, and whole days passed during which he dared not touch any

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food — and he didn’t even dare pick fruits from the garden of the golden house, fearing they had been poisoned already when they were raw. This way, his own fears laid siege on him during the days of his old age, and he became so suspicious and cruel that courtiers fled from him, slaves shied away from him, and the golden house soon became deserted while he lived there as Pharaoh.

Yet a seed of barley quickened for Beketamun, for the priests had skilfully calculated her time in Horemheb’s advantage, and in her powerless hate she harmed herself and let her beauty wither in attempting to destroy the child while it was yet in her womb, heedless of her own life. The life in her was however stronger than death, and when her time came, she bore a son to Horemheb in painful labour for her loins were narrow and the boy was large, but the physicians and slaves were compelled to hide the child from her lest she do him ill. People told many tales afterward of this child and his birth: that he had been born with the head of a lion, and some even said that he was born with a helmet. But I can bear witness that there was nothing abnormal about the boy, and he was a healthy, robust child, and Horemheb sent a message from the land of Kush and let his name be written as Ramesses in the golden book of life.

Horemheb was still fighting in the land of Kush, and his chariots rode the meadows of Kush from end to end, bringing great destruction amongst the black men since the black men were not accustomed to fighting chariots. He burned their villages and straw huts and sent women and children into slavery in Egypt — but the men he enrolled in his army, where they proved good warriors, no longer having homes, wives or children. Thus Horemheb, while waging war in the land of Kush, at the same time built up a new army against the Hittites, for the black men were strong, and once they had worked themselves up into a frenzy with the sound of their sacred drums and by jumping in long lines around their drums, they felt no fear of death.

Thus Horemheb was able to send a multitude of slaves to Egypt to cultivate land, and he let great herds of cattle be driven from the land of Kush to Egypt so that once more grain grew luxuriantly in the land of Kem — so the children had no lack of milk or the priests no lack of sacrificial animals and meat. But whole tribes left their habitats in the

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