The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

Also the islands of the sea were deeply grieving Pharaoh’s death, and the King of Babylon and the King of the land of Hatti, who ruled over the Hittites, sent clay tablets to Queen Mother regretting Pharaoh’s death and asking for some gold so that they could set up his statues in their temples, since Pharaoh had been like a father or brother to them. The King of the land of Mitanni, in Naharin, sent his daughter as a bride to the new Pharaoh as his father had done before him and as had been agreed with the Celestial Pharaoh before his death. Tadukhipa, for such was her name, arrived in Thebes with servants and slaves and asses laden with merchandise of great value. She was a child just six years old, and the prince took her to wife, for the kingdom of Mitanni was a wall between the wealth of Syria and the lands of the north, and it guarded the caravan routes all the way from the land of the twin rivers to the sea. Rejoicing ceased among the priests of the celestial daughter of Amun, the lion-headed Sekhmet, and the hinges of her temple gates were rusted fast.

It was of this we spoke, Thutmose and I, and we rejoiced our hearts with wine as we listened to Syrian music and watched the dancing girls. Thebes fever was in my blood, but each morning my one-eyed servant came to my bedside, stretched forth his hands at knee level and gave me bread and a salt fish and filled my beaker with ale. Then I would wash myself and sit down to await my patients, to listen to their woes and to heal them.

But I did not become rich for patients came seldom to me, and those who came were poor, so it was better for me to heal them right away than waste expensive medicines that did not hurt anyone. I pulled teeth and tied bandages and burned wounds, eased stomach pains and reduced fevers. Women came to me who wanted to be cured from their barrenness, and they looked at me in the eye and opened their garments in front of me, but I told them to go to the Temple of Amun and ask advice from the priest, for fertility was under their power. Women came to me who covered their faces and asked me to help their daughters who had become pregnant from sailors or foreign soldiers, but I could not help them, for they were not rich enough to cover my damages if my name was crossed over from the book in the House of Life and I was exiled from Thebes. But women who came to me asking for their lost

beauty back, I mixed drinks that did not hurt them. And women who complained how their husbands had become lazy and were without desire, I gave medicinal berries that they could secretly slip in their husbands’ wine, and often they came back and brought me presents according to their wealth — but sometimes it happened that they complained how their husbands had turned to other women. But that was beyond my power, since a doctor can wake up love and make a man call a woman his sister and caress her, but which woman a man chooses, cannot be decided by a doctor. However, I thought it was likely that a man chose a woman closest to him, and indeed that was the case, as most women brought me presents and only few complained.

Sometimes mothers brought children to me, and if the mothers were skinny and the children malnourished with the skin around their eyes eaten by flies, I let my slave Kaptah buy them some meat and fruits and gave those as presents to them. But this was not a way to become rich, and the next day there were five to ten mothers in front of my house with their children, so that I could not let them in; but I told my slave to close my door from them and urge them to go to the Temple, where meat was sometimes distributed to poor people after great sacrifices when the priests could not eat all of it.

On seventy days had my name been read in the Temple forecourts, and I had thought this fame to bring me rich patients, but I was mistaken. Although I received guests who were carried in a chair to the front of my house, they were interested in my reputation as a skull opener, and they offered me great gifts if I opened a skull of someone standing between them and a great inheritance. But I told them to go to Ptahor, the royal skull opener. And if I was brought a sick person whose life was but pain and I saw nothing could heal them, I asked them to be brought to the House of Life after reducing their pain.

But every night the torches and lights burned on the streets of Thebes, music played in taverns and pleasure houses, and the sky glimmered red over the city. I wanted to rejoice my heart with wine, but there was no joy in my heart any more, and my assets were running out, and I needed to borrow gold from the Temple against my house to dress up properly and make my heart happy from wine.