The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

I yet want to tell that before I left Jerusalem I opened the skull of a soldier who had been hit in his head with a club while scuffling drunk at the temple of Aten, so that the bone of his skull had broken and he lied dying and could not speak or move his limbs. But he was not cured, and his body became hot and he was flailing with his hands and died the following day.

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Book 6: The Day of the False King

Before starting on a new book, I must give glory to the days gone by when I journeyed unmolested through many lands acquiring wisdom, for such a time will hardly come again. I travelled through a world that for forty years had known no war. The guards of kings everywhere protected caravan routes and the traders who used them, while their ships and Pharaoh’s protected the river and the seas against the pirates. Frontiers were open; merchants and travellers who brought gold were welcome in every city, and there was neither bitterness nor dissension between men; they bowed to one another, stretching forth their hands at knee level, and learned each other’s ways. Many of the educated spoke several languages and wrote two kinds of script. Fields were watered and bore abundant crops, and in the Red Lands the river of the heavens did duty for our Nile and refreshed the earth. While I journeyed, the cattle roved in safety over the grazing grounds, and the herdsmen carried no spears but played on pipes and sang merry songs. Vineyards prospered, and fruit trees bowed beneath their burdens; the priests were fat and shiny with oil and balms, and the smoke from countless sacrifices rose from the forecourts of temples in every country. The gods throve also and were gracious and grew fat upon burnt offerings. The rich became richer, the mighty yet mightier, and the poor poorer, as the gods did decree, so that all were content and there was no murmuring. Such is the vision I have of this bygone time, which probably will never return, when in my young manhood my limbs were unwearied by long journeys, when my eyes were anxious and eager for new things, and when my heart, thirsting for knowledge, drank its fill.

As an example how orderly and similar were the affairs everywhere, I can describe how the trading house in Babylon did not hesitate to give me gold in return for my clay tablet, given to me by my trading house in Zemar; and it was possible to buy harbour and mountain wine in every big city, delivered from afar, so that cities in Syria considered mountain wine the best, and gold was paid for Syrian

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