The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

everywhere the same. For this reason, I have come to your city to study maladies and to cure them and to profit by your learning and wisdom. I do not mean in any way to encroach upon your practice, for who am I to compete with you. Also gold is nothing but dust under my feet, and I propose, therefore, that you send to me such patients as are under your gods’ displeasure so that you cannot cure them and especially those requiring treatment with the knife — for the knife you do not use — that I may see whether my god will bring them healing. And should such a patient be cured, I will give you half of what he gives me, for I have not come here for gold but for knowledge. Should I fail to cure him, I will take nothing from him at all, but send him back to you with his gift.”

The physicians of Zemar whom I met in the streets and market places visiting their patients and to whom I spoke swung their cloaks and fingered their beards and said to me, “You are young, but truly your god has blessed you with wisdom, for your words are agreeable to our ears. What you say of gold and of presents, is wisely said. Also your allusion to the knife is agreeable to us for we never use knives to heal the sick, a man who comes under the knife being more certain of death than he who does not. One thing only we desire of you, and that is that you will effect no cures by sorcery, for our own witchcraft is very powerful, and in that branch there is too much competition both in Zemar and in the other cities along the coast.”

What they said about sorcery was true, for there were many illiterate men haunting the streets who undertook to heal the sick by means of magic and who lived fatly in the homes of the credulous until their patients either recovered or died. Also in this they were different from the Egyptians since everyone knows sorcery can only be practised in the temple by the priests of highest grade, and everyone else has to practise it in secret and fearing for the punishment.

In this way, sick people with whom others had failed came to me, and I treated them, but those I could not cure I sent back to the physicians of Zemar. From Amun’s temple I brought sacred fire to my house that I might carry out the prescribed purification and so venture to use the knife and to perform operations at which the physicians fingered their beards and marvelled greatly. I was fortunate enough to give a blind man back his sight, although both physicians and sorcerers had

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smeared clay mixed with spittle upon his eyelids to no effect. I treated him with the needle, as the Egyptian manner is, thereby greatly enhancing my reputation. However, after some time the man lost his sight again, for the needle cure is but temporary.

The merchants and wealthy men of Zemar led an idle and luxurious life, and they were fatter than the Egyptians and suffered from breathlessness and stomach troubles. I used the knife on them till they bled like pigs. When my medical stores were exhausted, I found good use for my knowledge in the matter of gathering herbs upon the right days and under favourable aspects of moon and stars; for in this the men of Zemar had little science, and I dared not trust their remedies. To the obese I gave relief from their abdominal pains and saved them from suffocation by means of medicines I sold to them at prices graded according to their means. I quarrelled with none but gave presents to the doctors and city authorities, while Kaptah spread a good report of me and gave food to beggars and storytellers that they might cry my praises in streets and markets and preserve my name from oblivion.

I earned a great quantity of gold, and all that I didn’t spend or give away I invested with the merchants of Zemar, who sent ships to Egypt and to the islands in the sea and to the land of Hatti, so that I had a share in many vessels — a hundredth or a five-hundredth or according to my means at the time. Some ships were never seen again, but most of them returned, and my gold in them — now doubled or tripled — was entered in the trading books. This was the custom in Zemar, though unknown in Egypt, and even the poor speculated in this way and either increased their funds or became still more impoverished, for ten or twenty of them would pool their copper pieces to buy a thousandth share in a vessel and her cargo. Thus I never had to keep gold in my house as a lure for robbers, but all my gold was marked in the books of the trading house, and when I was obliged to travel to other cities, such as Byblos and Sidon, to cure the sick, I did not need to carry gold with me for then the trading house gave me a clay tablet to be presented at the trading houses of those cities by which I could obtain gold from them whenever I required it or wanted to buy something special. But mostly I did not need to do this, because I got gold from the sick whom I cured and from those who had lost their faith in their own doctors and had sent for me from Zemar.

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