The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

hands of the corpse washers, which was a great miracle in honour of Amun and a joy to the woman’s parents and husband. Therefore it was their pious duty to try to perform further miracles and to warm with their horrible bodies the women brought to the House of Death, unless they were so old that reviving them would not bring joy to anyone. But whether the priests knew what was going on, I could not tell, for all this happened in secret at night, when the House of Death was closed.

Once a man had entered the House of Death and taken service there as a corpse washer, he left the place but seldom because of the abhorrence in which his caste was held, and he lived out his life among the carcasses. For the first few days they all seemed to me to be under the curse of the gods, and their talk as they mocked and defiled the bodies outraged my ears. Those I met during my first days were the raunchiest and meanest, who took joy to command me around and carry out the lowliest of work; but later I found that among the corpse washers and embalmers there were skilled craftsmen who held their trade in high honour, regarding it as the most important of all, and among the best of whom it was hereditary. Each of them specialised in some branch, as did the physicians in the House of Life, so that one dealt with the head, another the belly, a third the heart, a fourth the lungs, until each part of the body had been treated for its eternal preservation.

Among them was an elderly man named Ramose, whose task was the most difficult of all. He had to detach the brain and draw it out through the nose with pincers, and then swill out the skull with purifying oils. He noted the deftness of my hands with astonishment and began to instruct me so that by the time I had completed half my service in the House of Death he made me his assistant, and life for me became more bearable. Even if I regarded all corpse washers as possessed and like animals, so that their thought and speak was no longer the same as those who lived under the sun, it was Ramose who out of them most reminded me of a turtle: living quietly within its shell. I helped him in his work, which was the cleanest and most highly regarded of any in that place, and so great was his influence that others no longer dared frighten me or throw guts and offal upon me. I do not know how it was he had this power, for he never raised his voice.

131

When I observed the thieving and saw how little was done to preserve the bodies of the poor though the fee was large, I resolved to help my parents by myself and steal for them eternal life. For in my mind, my sin against them was already so hideous that it could be made no blacker by a theft. In his goodness, Ramose taught me how and what to steal from each noble corpse, because he only dealt with noble corpses, and I was his assistant. So I was able to pull my parents bodies with a hook from the poor people’s pool and fill their interiors with reeds steeped in resin and wrap them in linen, but no more could I do for them, for also theft has its boundaries, and even Ramose could not cross them.

During his slow and silent work in the burrows of the House of Death, Ramose taught me a lot of wisdom. After some time, I dared to start asking him about this and that, and he was not frightened when I asked why. By then my nose had become accustomed to the reek and bitter smells of the House of Death, because a man adjusts and gets used to everything, and the wisdom of Ramose eased my horror, and many things I asked him whilst we were working in the burrows with our pincers and oil jars.

First, I asked him, why did the corpse washers speak in such a godless manner and fight over womens’ bodies and only think about their lust? One could have thought that spending day-to-day, the years of their lives with death had calmed them down. Ramose said:

“They are lowly people and their minds move in the mud, such as nothing but the body of a man is mud when it is allowed to disintegrate. But there is lust for life in the mud, and that lust has given birth to man and animals, and even the gods, so I believe. The closer a man is to death, the stronger is the mud lust in him, if his mind lives in the mud. Death calms a wise man, but a lowly man it turns into a beast, who spreads his semen in sand even when pierced by an arrow. An arrow has pierced the hearts of these men, for otherwise they never would have entered the House of Death. Don’t wonder their behaviour, but pity them. They cannot bring any harm or damage to bodies, for the bodies are cold and have no feeling, but each time they harm themselves when they return back to the mud.”

Carefully and slowly, he broke the thin inner bones of a noble man’s skull throw the nose with his short pincers and then took the long, flexible pincers and started extracting brains to a jar filled with strong oil.

132