The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

Horemheb said to himself, “I have given everyone according to his measure, and the poor get their measure full again, and even mud hovels lack no oil or fat. It also brings me great joy to see many fat children in Egypt, for the children are the wealth of Egypt, and healthy boys make good soldiers and fat girls make more babies than skinny girls. Also idleness creates laziness, and luxury creates restlessness and ill talk. Therefore I have to watch for my power, because otherwise the people of Egypt may soon start thinking they are too good to be ruled by my crook.”

Therefore he greatly burdened people with public works and built stone-paved roads and had large canals dug so that people had no time to scheme against his power during good, idle days. While he ruled, people were like an ox that gains fat but has a spear tickling its side constantly so that it doesn’t have a moment of rest. Horemheb had the temples he built carved with images and inscriptions which praised his deeds and victories so that every day people saw before their eyes how he had replaced wrong with right in Egypt and gave everyone’s his full measure. He also favoured storytellers, who sat on their mats at the gates and street corners, praising his great deeds and telling divine tales of his origins — and so he gave them gifts and shared with them grain, oil and beer. But storytellers are often a stubborn and mischievous lot who hold nothing sacred, and they wove many colourful threads in their tales, making people laugh at their stories. Horemheb was however too vain to understand that the storytellers he so remunerated secretly mocked him in their tales, and not many in their audience understood them either but listened with their mouths open in wonderment and raising their hands in amazement when storytellers made them believe how Horemheb had been born when god Horus on one of his journeys stopped at Nen-nesu to squat by the roadside.

But as time went by, Horemheb became exceedingly suspicious, and there came a day when his guards visited my house, put sandals on my feet and dressed me up, driving away the sick from my courtyard with their spear shafts as they brought me before Horemheb. That day it was spring again, and the flood had fallen, and squeaking swallows were restlessly darting above the water that was heavy from yellow mud. The guards took me before Horemheb, who had aged during these years: his head was bowed, his face had become yellow, and the muscles stood out like cords on his long, thin body. He looked me with joyless eyes and spoke to me, saying:

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“Sinuhe, I have warned you many times but you do not heed my warnings and continue to tell the people that the warrior’s profession is the most contemptible and lowest of all professions; and you say that it would be better for children to die in their mothers’ wombs than to be born warriors and that two or three children are enough for any woman — and that it is better for her to be happy with three children than unhappy and poor with nine or ten children. You have also said that all gods are alike and all temples are dark houses, and you have said that the god of the false Pharaoh was greater than all other gods. No man should buy or sell another as a slave — this is what you have said — and you have said that the people who plough, sow, reap and gather harvest to stores ought to possess the land they cultivate and the stores they collect the harvest to, though it be Pharaoh’s or gods’ land. Furthermore, you have said that my rule differs little from that of the Hittites, and you have said much that was even more foolish so that any other man would have been long ago for far less sent to the quarries to cut stones and pay service to the stick. But I have been patient with you, Sinuhe, because you were once my friend, and as long as priest Ay was alive, I had need of you because you were my only witness against him. Now I need you no longer but rather think that you and everything you know may be harmful to me as long as you live. Had you been wise, you would have held your tongue and lived a quiet life and been content with your share, for truly you have lacked nothing — but instead, you throw dung on me, and that I will no longer endure.”

His anger increased as he spoke, and he started slashing his thinned legs with his whip, frowning as he went on, “Truly, you are like a sand flea between my toes or a horsefly on my shoulder, and I allow no barren bushes that bear only poisonous thorns in my garden. It is springtime again in the land of Kem, and swallows start digging in the mud for summer when the waters go down while doves coo and acacia blossoms. These are evil times, for spring always brings forth uneasiness and vain talk, and excited boys see red in their eyes, picking up stones and throwing them at guards — and my images in the temples

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