The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

When he saw that I had observed him, he spoke. “What is that you hold so tightly in your fist?”

I unclenched it and showed him Pharaoh’s sacred scarab, which I had found in the sand of the forbidden valley, and he said, “Give it to me that it may bring me luck, for I stand in sore need of it, poor wretch that I am.” But I said, “I, too, am poor and own nothing but this scarab. I shall keep it as a talisman to bring me good fortune.” He said, “Though I am poor and wretched, you shall have a piece of silver for it, though that is too much to give for a bit of coloured stone. But I feel compassion for your poverty. Here is the piece of silver.” And indeed he dug a silver piece from his belt. Nevertheless, I became the more firmly resolved to keep the scarab and obsessed with the idea that it would prosper me, and so I told him. Then he said wrathfully:

“You forget I might have slain you where you lay, for I was watching you for a long time as you slept, wondering what you held so tightly in your fist. I waited till you awoke, but I repent now of not having killed you, since you are so ungrateful.”

I replied to him and said, “I see by your ears and nose that you are a criminal escaped from the quarries. You were welcome to kill me as I slept since it would have been a kindly action, for I am alone and have nowhere to go. But take heed and fly from here, for if the guards see you, they will flog you with sticks and hang you head downward on the walls or at the very least take you back to the quarry whence you came.”

He said, “I could still kill you, if I wanted to, because in all my wretchedness I am a strong man. But for the sake of a piece of stone, I do not bother to do it, because we are close to the City of the Dead, and the guards could hear your cries. Therefore keep your luck, for you might need it more than me. I also ask what sort of stranger are you not to know that I need not fear the guards, being a free man and no slave. I could enter the city if I wished, but I do not care to walk the streets, for my face terrifies the children.”

“How can he be free, he who has been condemned to a lifetime of labour in the quarries, for so much I see by your nose and nonexistant ears,” I sneered, thinking he was boasting.

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“Your words do not make me angry, for I am a pious man and fearful of gods,” he said. “Therefore I did not kill you while you were sleeping. Do you not know then that the prince, when he was crowned with the crowns of the Upper and Lower Kingdoms, decreed that all bonds should be loosed and all slaves freed from mines and quarries so that those who work there now are free men and are paid for their toil.” He laughed at length to himself and went on, “Many a stout fellow now dwells among the reeds and lives on the offerings from rich men’s tables in the City of the Dead, for the watchmen fear us, and we fear no one, not even the dead. No man does who has been in the mines, and there is no worse fate than to be sent there as a slave, as you well know. Many of us do not fear even the gods, though I believe that prudence is a virtue, and I am a pious man though I have lived ten years in a quarry, as you can see.”

I heard now for the first time that the heir had come to the throne as Amenhotep IV and he liberated all slaves and prisoners so that the mines and quarries in the east by the coast were deserted, and also the mines of Sinai had emptied. For there was no one in Egypt so mad as to work in the mines by his own free will. The great royal consort was now the princess of Mitanni, who still played with dolls, and Pharaoh was a man who served a new god.

“His god is assuredly a very strange god,” said the former quarry slave, “for he causes Pharaoh to act like a madman. Robbers and murderers now wander freely through the Two Kingdoms, and the mines are deserted, and the wealth of Egypt sees no increase. Though I am innocent of evil-doing and a victim of injustice, but such things have always happened and always will. It is mad to cut the fetters from hundreds and thousands of criminals in order that one innocent man may be freed. But that is Pharaoh’s affair, not mine. Let him do my thinking for me.”

He had been examining me as he spoke, feeling my arms and the scabs upon my back. He was not afraid of the smell that still hung about me from the House of Death, and it was clear he pitied me because of my youth, for he said, “Your skin is burned. I have oil. You must let me rub you.” He rubbed oil into my back and legs and arms, but swore as he did it and said, “By Amun, I know not why I do this, for of what use are you to me, and no one oiled me when I was beaten and wounded; and I reviled the gods because of the injustice done to me.”

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