The Egyptian

by Mika Waltari

  I reflected that I still had much to learn in Babylon since my studies relating to the livers of sheep were not yet completed, and I still could not pour oil into water as proficiently as the priests. Moreover, Burnaburiash was much in my debt both for my professional skill and for my friendship, and I knew that by remaining his friend I should receive lavish presents at my departure. Yet the more I pondered over this, the more persistently was I haunted by Minea’s face. I thought also of Kaptah, who was to die that evening for a stupid whim of the King’s, altogether without my consent, although he was my servant.

  The upshot of it was that I hardened my heart against the King, who, by offending me thus, convinced me of my right to offend against him-though my heart told me that the mere thought was a breach of all the laws of friendship. But I was a solitary foreigner, unbound by local custom. That afternoon, therefore, I went down to the river bank and hired a ten-oared boat, and I told the oarsmen:

  “Today is the Day of the False King, and I know that you are drunk with joy and beer and will not willingly go rowing. But I will give you double the customary reward, for my wealthy uncle has died, and I must take his body to lay it among his forefathers-and do it swiftly before his children or my brother begin to dispute the inheritance and leave me penniless. Therefore, I will pay you lavishly, if you row with speed despite the length of the journey-for my forefathers are gathered at our old home on the borders of Mitanni.”

  The boatmen grumbled, but I bought them two jars of beer and told them they might drink till sundown as long as they held themselves in readiness to start as soon as it was dark. At this they made violent protest.

  “In no circumstances will we set forth after dark, for the night is full of many devils both large and small, also evil spirits that utter ghastly cries and will perhaps capsize our boat or slay us.”

  But I answered, “I go to make offering in the temple that no harm may come to us in the course of our journey, and the jingling of all the silver I will give you when we arrive will drown the howls of devils.”

  I went to the tower and sacrificed a sheep in the forecourt; not many people were about, for most of the citizens had assembled at the palace to celebrate the feast of the False King. I contemplated the liver of the sheep, but my thoughts were in such a turmoil that it told me little enough. I noticed merely that it was darker than usual and had an evil smell so that I was filled with misgivings. I collected the blood of the sheep in a leather bag, which I carried under my arm to the palace. When I stepped into the women’s house, a swallow flew past my head, which warmed my heart and made my body valiant, for it was a bird from my homeland, and I took it as a good omen.

  In the women’s house I said to the eunuchs, “Leave me alone with this mad woman that I may drive the devil out of her.”

  They obeyed and took me to a small room where I explained to Minea what she was to do, and I gave her the knife and the bag of blood. She promised to follow my directions and I left her, shutting the door after me and telling the eunuchs that no one must disturb her, as I had given her a medicine to drive the devil out of her-a devil who might take possession of the first one who opened the door without my permission. They needed no further admonition.

  By now the setting sun was filling the palace rooms with ruddy light. Kaptah was eating and drinking again while Burnaburiash waited upon him, laughing and tittering like a girl. All over the floor drink-sodden men were slumbering in pools of wine. I said to Burnaburiash, “I wish to convince myself that Kaptah will have a painless death, for he is my servant, and I owe it to him to be so assured.”

  “Hurry, then,” he said, “for the old man is already mixing the poison with the wine and your servant must die at sunset as custom demands.”

  I found the old man, the King’s physician. When I told him that the King had sent me, he believed me and said, “Mix the poison yourself, for my hands are shaky with wine drinking, and my eyes are so blurred that I can see nothing, so heartily have I laughed today at your servant’s frolics.”

  I threw away his mixture and poured poppy juice into the wine, though not enough to cause death. Then, carrying the goblet to Kaptah, I said, “Kaptah, it may be that we shall never meet again, for your dignities have gone to your head and by tomorrow you will not deign to know me. Drink, therefore, from the cup I now offer you, so that upon my return to Egypt I shall be able to say that the lord of the four quarters of the world was my friend. When you have drunk, you will know that I mean you nothing but good, whatever may befall. Remember also our scarab!”

  Kaptah said, “The talk of this Egyptian would be like the buzz of flies in my ears if my ears were not already so full of the buzz of wine that I cannot hear what he says. But the cup I have never spurned as all here know and as I have striven to prove today to all my subjects, with whom I am greatly pleased. Therefore, I will drain the cup you offer me though I know that I shall feel wild asses kicking in my head tomorrow.”

  He emptied the goblet, and at that moment the sun went down. Torches were brought in and lamps lighted. All rose and stood in silence so that quietness reigned throughout the palace. Kaptah put off the Babylonian diadem, saying, “This accursed crown weighs down my head, and I am weary of it. Also my legs are numb and my eyelids like lead. I had better go to bed.”

  So saying he dragged a heavy tablecloth over himself and lay down to sleep upon the floor. With the cloth, jars and wine cups came tumbling down on him so that he bathed in wine to his neck, even as he had promised to do in the morning. The King’s servants undressed him and put the wine-drenched robe on Burnaburiash, set the royal diadem on his head and the symbols of majesty in his hands, and led him to take his place upon the throne.

  “This has been a tiring day,” he said. “Yet in the course of it I have not failed to note one and another of you who have shown me insufficient respect during the revels, no doubt in the hope that I should choke myself and never regain my throne. Drive those sleepers out with whips, chase the rabble from the courtyards, and put this fool into the jar of eternity if he is dead, for I am weary of him.”

  Kaptah was rolled on to his back, and the physician, having examined him with shaking hands and dim eyes, declared, “He is as dead as a dung beetle.”

  Servants bore in a great earthenware urn such as Babylonians use for the entombing of their dead, and into this Kaptah was put, the top being then sealed with clay. The King gave orders that the jar was to be carried down to the vaults beneath the palace and placed among those of previous false kings.

  At this point I intervened, saying, “This man is an Egyptian and circumcised like myself. Therefore, I must embalm his body after the Egyptian custom, and for his journey to the Western Land I must furnish him with all necessary things so that he may eat and drink and take his pleasure after death without the necessity of toil. This may take thirty days or it may take seventy days, according to the rank the dead man has held during his lifetime. With Kaptah I think it will take but thirty days, as he was my servant. After that time I will bring him back to his place among his predecessors, the other false kings, in the vaults beneath your house.”

  Burnaburiash listened curiously and said, “So be it. Do with him as you will since it is the custom of your land; I shall not quarrel over customs, for I also pray to gods I do not know to propitiate them for sins I may unknowingly have committed. Prudence is a virtue.”

  I bade the servants carry Kaptah out in his jar and put him in a carrying chair that stood waiting by the palace wall. Before leaving I said to the King, “For thirty days you will not see me, for during the period of embalming I cannot show myself among men, lest I transmit to them the devils that swarm about the corpse.”

  On reaching the carrying chair I pierced a hole in the clay that sealed the jar, to give Kaptah air to breathe, and then returned secretly to the palace and the women’s house. The eunuchs rejoiced to see me, for they feared that at any moment the King might come.

  But when I had opened the
door of the room in which I had left Minea, I returned at once, tearing my hair and lamenting. “Come and see what has happened, for there she lies dead in her blood with the bloodstained knife beside her, and her hair also is bloody!”

  The eunuchs came and were aghast-for eunuchs have a great horror of blood-and they dared not touch her but began weeping and crying out in terror of the King’s wrath.

  I said to them, “We are involved in the same misfortune, you and I. Quickly bring a mat in which I may roll the body; then wash the blood from the floor, that none may know what has occurred. For the King anticipated much pleasure from this girl, and his wrath will be terrible if he learns that you and I in our blundering have let her die as her god required. Make speed, therefore, to put another girl in her place-one from a foreign land for choice, who does not speak your tongue. Dress her and adorn her for the King, and if she resists, beat her with sticks before his eyes, for this is especially pleasing to the King, and he will reward you richly.”

  The eunuchs perceived the wisdom of my words, and after bargaining with them for a while, I gave them half the silver they declared to be the price of a new girl. They brought me a mat in which I rolled Minea, and they helped me to carry her across the dark courtyards to the chair already occupied by Kaptah in his jar.

  When we reached the river bank, I bade the porters lift the jar down into the boat, but the mat I carried myself and hid below the deck. Then I said to the porters, “Slaves and sons of dogs! This night you have heard and seen nothing, should anyone ask you. To remind you of this I give each one of you a silver piece.”

  Prancing with delight they shouted, “Truly we have served an illustrious lord, but our ears are deaf, and our eyes are blind, and we have seen and heard nothing this night.”

  I let them go, well knowing that they would get drunk without delay, as has been the way of porters in all ages, and that in their cups they would babble of all they had seen. As there were eight of them and they were burly men, I could not kill them and throw them into the river as I might have wished.

  As soon as they were gone, I woke the boatmen. In the light of the rising moon, they unshipped their oars and pulled away from the city, yawning and cursing their fate, for their heads were dizzy with all the beer they had drunk.

  Thus I took flight from Babylon, though for what reason I did all this I cannot say; doubtless it was written in the stars before the day of my birth, and was inevitable.

  BOOK 7

  Minea

  1

  We succeeded in getting clear of the city unchallenged by the watch, for there was free access to the river at night, and I crept beneath the deck to lay my weary head to rest. But still there was no peace, for Minea had unrolled herself from the mat and was washing herself clean of blood, scooping up the river water in her hands while the moonlight sparkled in the drops that fell between her fingers.

  She looked at me unsmilingly and said in reproach, “By your advice I have made myself filthy, and I smell of blood and shall surely never again be clean, and it’s all your fault. What’s more, when you carried me, you squeezed me much harder than was necessary so that I could not breathe.”

  Her talk annoyed me, and I was very tired, so I snapped at her, “Hold your tongue, accursed woman! When I think of all you have made me do, I feel like throwing you into the river, where you could wash to your heart’s content. Had it not been for you, I should now be sitting on the right hand of the King of Babylon, and the priests of the tower would impart to me all their wisdom, concealing nothing, and I should be the wisest physician in the world. For your sake I have forfeited the presents I might have earned by the practice of my calling. My gold is dwindling, and I dare not present the tablets that entitle me to draw money in the temple counting houses. All this is on your account, and I curse the day I saw you; every year on this day I shall wear sackcloth and ashes.”

  She trailed her hand in the moonlit river, the water cleaving before it like molten silver, as she said in a low voice and with her face averted, “If this is so, let me jump into the river as you desire. Then you will be rid of me.”

  She rose and would have leaped in, but I seized and held her, saying, “Have done with this folly! If you jump in, all my contriving will have been in vain. In the name of all the gods let me sleep in peace, Minea, and do not bother me with these whims, for I am very tired.”

  With this I crawled under the mat and drew it closely about me, for the night was chilly although spring had come and storks were crying among the reeds. She crept in beside me, murmuring, “If I can do nothing else, I can at least keep you warm.”

  I was too weary for further argument but fell asleep and slept soundly in her warmth, for she was young and her body like a little stove beside me.

  When I awoke, we had come far upstream, and the boatmen were grumbling. “Our shoulders are like wood, and our backs ache. Do you seek our death? Is your house afire that we must race to quench it?”

  I hardened my heart and said, “Whoever slackens will feel my stick; you will take your first rest at noon. Then you may eat and drink, and to each of you I shall give a mouthful of date wine to revive you, and you will feel as airy as birds. But if there is any murmuring, I shall invoke all the devils against you; for you must know that I am a priest and a magician.”

  I said this to frighten them, but the sun was shining brightly and they did not believe me. They said only, “He is alone and we are ten!” and the nearest of them tried to smite me with his oar.

  At that moment a thunderous noise came from the bow: it was Kaptah beating on the inside of the jar, cursing and yelling. The rowers turned gray in the face and one after another leaped overboard into the river and swam away out of sight. The boat swung across the stream, but I dropped the anchor stone. Minea came up from the cabin combing her hair, and at that instant all my fear left me, for she was fair, and the sun was shining, and the storks were crying among the reeds. I ran forward to the funeral urn and said loudly as I broke the clay seal, “Stand up, you man within there!”

  Kaptah stuck his tousled head out of the jar, and I have never seen a more bewildered man. He moaned, “What is this foolery? Where am I? Where is my royal diadem, and where are the symbols of my majesty? I am naked and chilled-also my head is full of wasps, and my limbs are like lead as if I had been bitten by a venomous serpent. Beware how you make sport of me, Sinuhe, for it is dangerous to jest with kings!”

  I wanted to punish him for his arrogance of the day before, so I looked blank and said, “I don’t know what you are saying, Kaptah; you must still be in a fog of wine. You will remember that when we left Babylon you drank too much and became so violent in the boat and talked so wildly that the boatmen had to shut you up in that jar lest you should do them some harm. You were babbling of kings and judges and much else.”

  Kaptah shut his eyes and strove to recollect himself, and at last he replied, “Lord, never again will I drink wine, for wine and dreams have led me into a terrible adventure-an adventure so altogether ghastly that I cannot relate it to you. But this I can say: It seemed to me that by the grace of the scarab I was a king, dispensing justice from my throne, also that I entered the women’s house and took exceedingly great pleasure there with a beautiful girl. Many other things happened, also, but I don’t dare think of them now.”

  Just then he saw Minea. Ducking hastily down into the jar again, he said in a pitiful voice, “Lord, I am not yet quite recovered-or else I am still dreaming-for there in the stern of the boat I seem to see the girl whom I met in the women’s house.”

  He touched his black eye and swollen nose and mourned aloud. Minea went up to the jar, pulled out his head by the hair and said, “Look at me! Am I the woman with whom you took pleasure last night?”

  Kaptah gazed at her in terror, shut his one eye, and moaned, “All ye gods of Egypt have mercy on me and pardon me for having worshiped strange gods and made sacrifice to them-but you are she! Forgive me, for it was but a dream.”<
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  I helped him out of the jar and gave him a bitter stomach-cleansing potion, then tying a rope about his waist I dipped him in the river despite his protests, and held him floating in the water to clear his head of the poppy juice and wine. But when I had hauled him aboard again, I relented, saying, “May this be a lesson to you for your rebelliousness toward me, your master. Everything that happened to you is true and had it not been for my help you would now be lying lifeless in a jar among all the other false kings.”

  I then told him all that had taken place, and I had to tell it many times before he grasped it all and believed me. Finally I told him, “Our lives are in danger, and what has passed no longer seems funny, for as surely as we sit here in this boat, we shall hang head downward from the wall if the King finds us-and he may do even worse. Good planning is now essential, and you must hit on some way for us to escape with our lives into the land of Mitanni.”

  Kaptah scratched his head and mused. At length he said, “If I have understood you rightly, all that has happened is true and no wine- born delusion. This being so, I will praise this day as a good day, for

  I can now drink wine without misgivings for my head’s sake though I thought that never again in my life should I dare to taste it.”

  He crept into the cabin, broke the seal of a wine jar, and took a deep draught, for which he praised all the gods of Egypt and of Babylon by name, and he also praised many other gods whose names he did not know. For each divinity he named he bowed forward over the wine jar till at last he sank down on the mat in slumber, snoring like a hippopotamus.

  I was so enraged at his behavior that I would have rolled him into the water and drowned him, but Minea said, “Kaptah is right: to each day its own vexations. Therefore, why shouldn’t we drink wine and be happy in the place the river has brought us to? For it is a beautiful place, and we are hidden by the reeds. Storks are crying among them, and I see others flying with outstretched necks to build their nests; the waters gleam green and gold in the sunlight, and my heart is as arrowy as a bird now that I am freed from slavery.”