by Mika Waltari
Aziru said to me as he stroked the child’s hair, “Have you ever seen a finer boy? I have won many crowns for him, and he shall be a great ruler. So far shall his sovereignty extend that I hardly dare think of it. Already with his own sword he has slit the belly of a slave who insulted him; he can read and write and has no fear of battle-for I have taken him into battle also though only when quelling rebellion in the villages where his young life was not in danger.”
Keftiu remained in Amurru while Aziru was at the wars, and Aziru longed for her sorely and told me that he had tried in vain to still his longing with women prisoners and with the temple virgins who followed the army; whoever had once tasted Keftiu’s love could never forget her. And she had bloomed yet more luxuriantly with the years, he told me, so that were I to see her now I should not believe my eyes. But he carried his son with him, not daring to leave him in Amurru because one day the boy would bear the united crowns of Syria.
During our conversation there came to our ears the sound of shrieks. Aziru became exceedingly angry and said, “The Hittite officers are torturing their women again. I can do nothing to stop them, for I depend on their prowess in the field; nevertheless, I am unwilling that they should teach my men these evil practices.”
I knew the Hittites; I knew what one might expect of them. Grasping the opportunity, I said, “Aziru, king of kings, break with these Hittites in time, before they crush the crowns on your head-and your head likewise! There is no trusting them. Make peace with Pharaoh while the Hittites are yet bound by the campaign in Mitanni. Babylon is arming against them as you know and will send no more grain if you remain their friend. When winter comes, famine will prowl the land like a ravening wolf unless you make peace with Pharaoh so that he may send corn to your cities as before.”
He replied, “You talk foolishly, for the Hittites are good to their friends, but to their foes they are terrible. Yet I am not bound to them by any treaty-although they send me beautiful gifts and shining breastplates-and I am free to make a separate peace. I love peace better than war and fight only to gain a peace that will be honorable. I will be reconciled with Pharaoh if he will restore Gaza, which he took from me by treachery, and if he will disarm the robber horde amp; of the desert and make reparation with grain and oil and gold for all the devastation the Syrian cities have suffered during the conflict. Egypt alone is to blame for this war, as you know.”
He stared at me impudently and smiled behind his hand, but I answered him with heat.
“Aziru, you bandit, you cattle thief, you butcher of the innocent! Don’t you know that in every smithy throughout the Lower Kingdom spearheads are being forged, and the number of Horemheb’s chariots is already greater than that of the fleas in your bed? And these fleas will bite you sorely once the harvest has ripened. This Horemheb, whose fame is known to you, spat on my feet when I spoke to him of peace. For the sake of his god, Pharaoh desires peace rather than the shedding of blood. I give you one last chance, Aziru. Egypt will keep Gaza, and you must scatter the desert hordes yourself, for Egypt is in no way answerable for their deeds. Your own cruelty has forced these Syrians to flee into the desert, there to take arms against you. Furthermore, you shall release all Egyptian prisoners and pay compensation for the losses Egyptian traders have sustained in Syrian cities and restore to them their property.”
Aziru tore his clothes and his beard and cried aloud in his resentment, “Have you been bitten by a mad dog, Sinuhe, that you rave thus? Gaza must be ceded to Syria, the Egyptian traders shall answer for their own losses, and the prisoners shall be sold as slaves as custom requires. Nothing prevents Pharaoh from buying their freedom if he has gold enough for the purpose.”
I said to him, “If you make peace you can build massive, lofty towers for your cities so that you need no longer fear the Hittites, and Egypt will support you. The merchants of those cities will grow rich when they can trade with Egypt free of tribute, and the Hittites, having no warships, cannot hinder your commerce. All the advantages will be on your side, Aziru, if you make peace. Pharaoh’s terms are moderate, and I can make no concessions.”
Day after day we debated, and many times Aziru tore his clothes, and poured ash on his hair, and called me a shameless robber, and wept over the fate of his son, who would certainly die in a ditch, beggared by Egypt. Once I even left his tent and called for chair and escort to Gaza. I had stepped up into the chair before Aziru called me back. Yet I think he delighted in this haggling, being a Syrian, and fancied he had got the better of me when I yielded certain points. He can never have suspected my mandate from Pharaoh to buy peace at any price, even to the ruination of Egypt.
Thus I maintained my self-assurance and through my negotiating won terms that were very advantageous to Pharaoh. Time was on my side, for conflict within Aziru’s camp was intensifying. Every day more men departed for their own cities, and he could not prevent them, for his authority was as yet insufficiently established.
One night two assassins entered his tent and wounded him with their knives but not mortally. He slew one, while his small son awoke and thrust his little sword into the back of the other so that he also died. On the following day Aziru called me to his tent and in terrible words accused me so that I was exceedingly frightened. Afterward we came to a final settlement. In Pharaoh’s name I made peace with him and with all the cities of Syria. Egypt was to retain Gaza, the routing of the free forces was to be left to Aziru, and Pharaoh reserved the right to buy the freedom of Egyptian prisoners and slaves. On these conditions we drew up a treaty of eternal friendship between Egypt and Syria. It was recorded on clay tablets and confirmed in the names of the thousand gods of Syria and the thousand gods of Egypt and also in the name of Aton. Aziru cursed in a hideous manner as he rolled his seal upon the clay, and I also tore my clothes and wept as I pressed my Egyptian seal on it. In our hearts we were well pleased. Aziru gave me many presents, and I promised to send many also, to him and to his wife and son, by the first ship to sail from Egypt under terms of peace.
We were in agreement when we parted; Aziru even embraced me and called me his friend. I lifted up his handsome boy, praised his valor and touched his rosy cheeks with my lips. Yet both Aziru and I knew that the treaty we had made in perpetuity was not worth the clay it was written on. He made peace because he was forced to, and Egypt because it was Pharaoh’s wish. Our peace hung in the air, a prey to every wind, since all depended on which way the Hittites would turn from Mitanni, on Babylon’s fortitude, and on the Cretan warships that protected the maritime trade.
Aziru at any rate began to dismiss his forces, and he furnished me with an escort to Gaza, issuing at the same time an order to the troops there to raise the profitless siege of that city. Yet I came near to death before ever I reached Gaza. When we drew near to its gates and my escort waved palm branches and shouted that peace had been made, the Egyptian defenders began to let fly their arrows at us and cast their spears, and I thought my last hour had come. The unarmed soldier who held his shield before me received an arrow in this throat and fell bleeding while his comrades fled. Terror paralyzed my legs, and I crouched beneath the shield like a tortoise, weeping and crying out most pitifully. When because of the shield the Egyptians could not get at me with their arrows, they poured down boiling pitch from huge jars, and the pitch ran seething and hissing along the ground toward me. By good fortune I was protected by some large stones so that I received only slight burns on my hands and knees.
At this spectacle Aziru’s men laughed until they fell down and then lay writhing on the ground with laughter. At last their commander ordered the horns to sound, and the Egyptians consented to let me into the city. They would open no gates but lowered a reed basket at the end of a rope, into which I must creep with my clay tablets and my palm branch, and so they hauled me up the wall.
I sharply rebuked the garrison commander for this, but he was a rough, obstinate man. He told me he had met with so much treachery among the Syrians that he did not int
end to open the gates of the city without express orders from Horemheb. He would not believe that peace had been signed, although I showed him all my clay tablets and spoke to him in the name of Pharaoh; he was a simple, stubborn fellow. Yet but for his simplicity and stubbornness Egypt would assuredly have lost Gaza long before; therefore I have no right to reproach him too severely.
From Gaza I sailed back to Egypt. In case we should sight enemy ships I ordered Pharaoh’s pennant run up at the masthead, with all the signals of peace. At this the seamen were filled with contempt for me and said that a vessel so prinked and painted looked more like a whore than a ship. When we reached the river, the people gathered along the banks waving palm branches and praising me because I was Pharaoh’s envoy and the bringer of peace. Even the seamen began to respect me at last and forgot that I had been hauled up the walls of Gaza in a basket.
When I was once again in Memphis and Horemheb had read my clay tablets, he warmly commended my skill as a negotiator, to my great astonishment since he was by no means given to applauding any deeds of mine. I could not understand it until I learned that the warships of Crete had been ordered home. Gaza would soon have fallen into Aziru’s hands had war continued, for without sea communications the city was lost. Therefore Horemheb gave me high praise and made speed to send many ships to Gaza, laden with troops, arms, and provisions.
During my stay with King Aziru, King Burnaburiash of Babylon had sent an envoy to Memphis with his suite, bringing many gifts. I received him on board Pharaoh’s ship, which was there awaiting me, and we journeyed up the river together. The voyage was pleasant, for he was a venerable old man of profound learning, with a white, silky beard that hung to his breast. We conversed together of stars and sheeps’ livers and so lacked no topic for discussions, for one may talk all one’s life through of stars and livers without ever exhausting the theme.
We discussed affairs of state also, and I noted that he was deeply disturbed by the growing power of the Hittites. The priests of Marduk foretold that their power was to be limited and would endure less than a hundred years; they would then be annihilated by a savage white race from the West. This was little comfort to me since I was born to live during the period of their supremacy. I wondered how any people could come from the West, where there was no land save the islands in the sea. Nevertheless since the stars had spoken it I was persuaded of its truth, having met with so many marvels in Babylon that I more readily believed the stars than my own knowledge.
He had with him some of the finest mountain wine. As we rejoiced our hearts with it, he told me that signs and omens in ever increasing numbers presaged the end of an era. He and I were both aware that we were living in the sunset of the world and that night was before us. Many upheavals must occur, many people be swept from the face of the earth as the Mitannians had already been swept, and old gods die before the new gods are born and a new cycle begun. He inquired very eagerly about Aton, and he wagged his head and stroked his white beard when I spoke of him. He acknowledged that no other such god had ever revealed himself on earth and thought that this appearance now might well signify the beginning of the end; so dangerous a teaching as his had never been spoken before.
After a pleasant journey, we came to Akhetaton, and I seemed to myself to have grown in wisdom since leaving it.
3
During my absence Pharaoh’s headaches had returned, and anxiety gnawed at his heart because he was aware that everything he touched miscarried. His body glowed and burned in the fire of his visions and was wasting away. To hearten him, Eie the priest had decided to arrange a thirty-years festival for him that autumn, after the harvest when the waters had begun to rise. It mattered not at all that Pharaoh Akhnaton had reigned for very much less than thirty years since it had long been the custom for Pharaohs to celebrate that anniversary whenever they wished.
Great numbers of people had arrived at Akhetaton for the feast, and one morning when Akhnaton was walking beside the sacred lake, two assassins fell on him with knives. A young pupil of Thothmes was sitting on the bank making drawings of the ducks, for Thothmes made his pupils draw from life and not from patterns. This boy warded off the ruffians’ knives with his stylus until the guards had rushed up and overpowered them, and Pharaoh suffered no more than a wound in the shoulder. But the boy died, and his blood flowed over Pharaoh’s hands. Thus did death appear to Akhnaton. Amid the autumn glory of his garden he saw blood running over his hands. He watched death darken the eyes and slacken the jaw of the young boy, for Pharaoh’s sake.
I was summoned in haste to bind up Akhnaton’s wound, which was slight, and in this way I chanced to see the two assassins. One was shaven headed, and his face gleamed with sacred oil, and the ears of the other had been cut off for some shameful offense. As the guards bound them, they tore at their bonds, shouting hideous imprecations in the name of Ammon. They would not cease even when the guards struck them on the mouth until the blood flowed. Doubtless the priests had bewitched them so that they could feel no pain.
This was an alarming incident, for never yet had anyone dared to raise his hand openly against Pharaoh. Pharaohs may have died unnaturally before that time, but such deaths were not openly contrived. What was done was done secretly, by poison perhaps, or a thin cord, or by suffocation beneath a mat so as to leave no trace. Now and again also the skull of some Pharaoh had been opened against his will. But this was the first open assault, and it could not be hushed up.
The prisoners were questioned in the presence of Pharaoh but refused to speak. When they opened their mouths, it was to invoke Ammon’s aid and curse Pharaoh although the guards smote them on the mouth with their spear shafts. And at the sound of that god’s name even Pharaoh grew so enraged that he allowed the guards to go on striking until the men’s faces were battered and bloody and the teeth flew from their mouths. The prisoners still called on Ammon to help them, and Pharaoh at length forbade further violence.
Then they cried out in their defiance, “Let them torture us, false Pharaoh! Let them crush our limbs, gash our flesh, burn our skins, for we feel no pain!”
So hardened were they that Pharaoh turned aside to wrestle with himself. Regaining control, he was bitterly ashamed because he had allowed the guards to strike the men in the face. He said, “Release them! They know not what they do.”
When the guards had unbound the ropes of “rushes, the captives swore worse than before. They foamed at the mouth and shouted in unison, “Kill us, accursed Pharaoh! In the name of Ammon give us death, false Pharaoh, that we may win eternal life!”
When they perceived that Pharaoh meant to free them unpunished, they wrenched themselves from the hands of the guards and dashed head first against the courtyard wall so that their skulls were fractured and they died soon afterward.
Everyone in the golden house knew that Pharaoh’s life must henceforth be in danger. His adherents doubled the guard and would not let him long out of their sight, although in his sorrow he desired always to wander alone in his garden and by the shore. Those who believed in Aton roused themselves to more ardent devotion, while those who professed the faith for the sake of wealth and position began to fear for their places and increased their zeal in Pharaoh’s service. Thus in both kingdoms fanaticism increased, and the people were stirred up as much on Aton’s account as on Ammon’s.
In Thebes, also, ceremonies and processions were arranged in celebration of the thirtieth anniversary. Baskets of gold dust were conveyed thither; ostrich feathers, panthers in cages, giraffes, little monkeys, and parrots with brilliant plumage were brought along the river, that the people might behold the wealth and majesty of Pharaoh and praise his name. But the people of Thebes surveyed the festival procession in silence. There was street fighting, and the cross of Aton was ripped from men’s clothing. Two of Aton’s priests were clubbed to death when they ventured forth among the crowds unguarded.
Worst of all, the foreign envoys were witnesses to these things, and learned also of the atta
ck on Pharaoh’s life. Aziru’s ambassador had many agreeable tales to tell his master on his return to Syria. He took with him many costly presents from Pharaoh to Aziru, and I also sent. presents to Aziru and his family by the hand of his envoy. I sent his son a whole little army carved in wood, with gaily painted spearmen and archers, horses and chariots; I had ordered half to be made like Hittites and half like Syrians, in the hope that he would let them fight each other when he played. These figures were fashioned by the highly skilled woodcarvers of Ammon, who had been out of work since the temples and the temple workshops closed. I paid more for them than I did for all my presents to Aziru.
Pharaoh Akhnaton suffered greatly at this time and wrestled with doubt; his faith was so much shaken that he would sometimes cry out bitterly because his visions had faded and Aton had foresaken him. At last, however, he turned the attempted assassination to account, deriving from it new strength and the conviction that his mission was yet loftier than before and his works of more vital importance since there was still so much darkness and fear in the land of Egypt. He tasted the bitter bread and salt water of hatred, and that bread could not satisfy his hunger nor that water quench his thirst. Yet he believed he acted in loving kindness when he redoubled the persecution of Ammon’s priests and sent to the mines those who spoke the name of Ammon aloud. The greatest sufferers were of course the simplehearted and the poor, for the secret power of Ammon’s priests was formidable, and Pharaoh’s guards dared not interfere with them. Thus hatred bred hatred, and unrest continued to increase.
Having no son, Pharaoh sought to secure his throne by marrying his two elder daughters, Meritaton and Ankhsenaton, to the sons of trusted followers at his court. Meritaton broke the jar with a boy named Sekenre, who held the rank of Pharaoh’s cup bearer and believed in Aton. He was an excitable boy of fifteen, much given to daydreaming, and was pleasing to Pharaoh Akhnaton. Pharaoh allowed him to assume the royal headdress and chose him for his successor since he no longer expected to have a son of his own.