The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

Before Aziru returned to the land of Amurru, he came to me and bowing all the way to the ground said, “I offer you nothing, Sinuhe, for you have given me that which cannot be requited with gifts. The girl is even more entrancing than I could have believed, her eyes are like bottomless wells, and I do not weary of her though she has pressed out my seed as oil is pressed from olives. To be frank with you, my country is not a wealthy one, and I can acquire gold in no other way than by taxing the merchants who travel through it or by making war on my neighbours, but then the Egyptians are over me like horseflies and often I lose more than I gain. So I cannot make you such gifts as your action merits, and Egypt has made me bitter by taking the ancient freedom of my land, so that I am no longer free to wage war and rob merchants, like my forefathers used to do. But I promise that whenever you come to me and whatever you ask of me I will give it to you if it be in my power to do so as long as you do not ask me either for this woman or for horses, for I have few of them and need them for my chariots. But for whatever else you ask, I will give it to you. And if any man offend you, send word to me and my men shall slay him, wherever he may be, for I have men here in Zemar, even if many do not know it, and in other Syrian cities, too, but I wish you keep this a secret. Yet I will tell you that whoever you want I will have him slain — and no one shall come to hear of it, and your name will not be mentioned in the affair. So great is my friendship for you.”

Then he embraced me in the Syrian manner. I saw that he greatly honoured and admired me, for he took the gold chain from his neck and hung it about mine, though his deep sigh as he did so told me how great a sacrifice this was to him. Therefore, I took from my own neck a gold chain I had been given by the richest shipowner in Zemar for saving his wife’s life during a difficult labour and hung it about his neck. He lost nothing by the exchange, and this greatly pleased him. And so we parted.

Now that I was free of that woman, my heart was as light as a bird. My eyes longed to see new things, and I was filled with restlessness and a

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desire to be out of Zemar. Spring had come again, and ships were being fitted out for long voyages in the harbour, and as the ground became green, the priests left the city to dig up their god Tammuz, having buried him in autumn with great wailing and cutting their bodies so that they bled.

Restless as I was, I followed the priests along with the crowd; and the earth was fresh and green, leaves budded on the trees, and there was a cooing of doves and frogs croaked in the pools. The priests rolled the stone away from the tomb and dug up their god and started shouting he was alive and resurrected. And all the crowd shouted and screamed and made noises and cut branches from the trees and drank beer and wine from market booths that merchants had quickly assembled around the tomb. Shouting, there were women pulling a wagon with a large wooden phallus on it, and as the night fell, they undressed and ran about the meadows, and it did not matter who was married and who was not, and everyone took whom they got, and there was lot of simmering on the hills. In all this they were different from the Egyptians. As I was watching them, I was filled with envy, and I thought I was born old, like the Black Land was older than all other lands, and these were young people and served their gods accordingly.

With the spring also came word that the Habirus had swarmed in from the desert and were ravaging the Syrian borders from the south to the north, burning villages and besieging cities. But Pharaoh’s armies came too, through the desert of Sinai from Tanis, and were giving battle to the Habirus. They captured the chiefs and drove the enemy back into the desert. It happened every spring and had always happened. This time, however, the citizens of Zemar were uneasy, for the city of Qatna, garrisoned by Egyptian troops, had been plundered, the King slain, and all the Egyptians put to the sword without mercy shown to women or children and without any prisoners being taken and held for ransom. Such a thing had not been known within living memory, for the Habirus wanted to avoid the fortified towns.

Thus war had broken out in Syria, and I had never seen war. I set forth to join Pharaoh’s forces and see whether it held some hidden truth for me and also to study the wounds inflicted by war clubs and other weapons. But above all, I went because the commander of the troops

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