The Egyptian

BOOK 6
The Day of the False King
1

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 traveled through a world that for forty years had known no war. Kings everywhere protected caravan routes and the traders who used them, while their ships and Pharaoh’s swept the seas of pirates. Frontiers were open; merchants and travelers 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 one another’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. In those days 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; priests were fat and shiny with oil; 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 have decreed, so that all were content and there was no murmuring. Such is the vision I have of this bygone time-a time never to return-when in my young manhood my limbs were unwearied by long journeys, when my eyes were eager for new things, and when my heart, thirsting for knowledge, drank its fill.

And now having praised the past when even the sun shone more brightly and the winds were gentler than in these evil days, I will tell of my journeys and of all I saw and heard. But first I must speak of my return to Smyrna.

When I came home, Kaptah ran to meet me, shouting and weeping for joy, and threw himself at my feet.

“Blessed be the day that brings my lord home!” he cried. “You have returned though I believed you dead in battle-I believed positively that you had been slit open with a spear because you were heedless of my warnings and went forth to see what war is like. Truly our scarab is a powerful god and has protected you, and blessed is the day. My heart is full of gladness at the sight of you, and the gladness flows from my eyes in tears-for I cannot restrain them though I fancied myself your heir and expected to take possession of all the gold you placed with the Smyrna merchants. Yet I do not grieve over this lost wealth, for without you I am like a kid that has lost its dam, and my days are dark. Nor have I stolen more from you than formerly but have guarded your house and property and all your interests so that you return richer than you went.”

He washed my feet and poured water over my hands and tended me in every way with uninterrupted outcry till I ordered him to be silent.

“Make speedy preparation, for we are to set forth upon a journey that may take many years and that will be full of hardships; we go to the land of Mitanni and to Babylon and to the islands in the sea.”

Then Kaptah cried, “Now truly I wish that I had never been born into this world and also that I had never grown fat and prosperous, for the more fortunate a man is the harder is it for him to renounce his ease. Were you to set forth for a month or two, as you have done before, I should say nothing but remain peacefully here in Smyrna. But if your journey is to last for years, you may never return and I never see you again. Therefore, I must come with you, taking our sacred scarab. Against such hazards you will need all possible good fortune, and without the scarab you would tumble into crevasses on your way and be transfixed by the spears of robbers. But it would be better to remain at our house in Smyrna.”

For Kaptah had grown more impudent with every passing year and already spoke of our house and our scarab and when paying for something said our gold.

But I wearied of this, and of his lamentation, and said, “My heart tells me that one fine day you will hang by the heels from the wall for your insolence. Resolve, therefore, whether you will come with me or stay here-and above all cease this continual caterwauling when I would make ready for a long journey.”

At this Kaptah fell silent and became resigned to his fate, and we made ready to depart. Since he had sworn never again to set foot aboard a ship, we joined a caravan that was on its way to northern Syria, for I desired to see the cedars of Lebanon, whence came the timber for the palaces and for the sacred boat of Ammon. Of the journey there was little to say; it was uneventful and no robbers attacked us. The inns were good, and we ate and drank well; at one or two of the stopping places sick people came to us, whom I tended. I journeyed in a chair, for I had had enough of donkeys. Though the dry wind parched my face so that I must be forever rubbing in oil and though the dust choked me and the sand fleas tormented me, yet these seemed but petty trials, and my eyes rejoiced at all they saw.

I saw forests of cedar and trees that were so huge that no Egyptian would believe me if I were to describe them. The fragrance of these woods was most marvelous, and the streams were clear, and it seemed to me that no one who lived in so beautiful a country could be altogether unhappy. But that was before I saw the slaves who felled and stripped the timber to send it down the hillside to the seashore. The misery of these slaves was terrible to witness; their arms and legs were covered with festering sores torn by the bark and by their tools, and on their backs the weals cut by the scourge were alive with flies.

At last we came to the city of Kadesh, where there was a fortress and a large Egyptian garrison. But the walls of the fortress were unguarded, the defenses had crumbled, and both officers and men lived in the city with their families, remembering that they were warriors only on the days when grain and onions and beer were distributed from Pharaoh’s stores. We lingered in the city long enough for the riding sores on Kaptah’s backside to heal. I cured many sick people, for the Egyptian physicians in this place were incompetent, and their names must long have been erased from the Book of Life-if indeed they had ever been inscribed there.

In this city I had a seal cut for me in a rare stone, as befitted my dignity; for seals also differ from those in Egypt, being worn not in a ring but hung about the neck in the form of cylinders that, when rolled over the tablet, leave their impression in the clay. The poor and illiterate merely press their thumbs upon it-if they ever have occasion to make their mark.

We continued our journey and crossed the border into Naharani, none hindering, where we came to a river flowing upward instead of down as the Nile does. We were told that we were in the land of Mitanni, and we paid the travelers’ tax into the royal revenues. But because we were Egyptians, the people greeted us with respect, coming up to us in the street and saying:

“We bid you welcome; our hearts rejoice at the sight of Egyptians, for it is long since we beheld them. Our hearts also are uneasy, for your Pharaoh has sent us no soldiers, no arms, and no gold; and the rumor runs that he has offered to our king some new god of whom we know nothing, though we have already Ishtar of Nineveh and a number of others who have hitherto protected us.”

They invited me to their houses and gave me food and drink, and they also served Kaptah because he was an Egyptian, though only my servant, so that he said to me, “This is a good land. Let us remain here, lord, and practice medicine, for it appears that these people are ignorant and credulous and would be easy to deceive.”

The King of Mitanni and his court had gone up into the mountains for the hot season. I had no desire to follow them there, being impatient to see the wonders of Babylon, of which I had heard so much. But I did as Horemheb had commanded me and spoke with the great ones and with the humble; all told the same tale; all were uneasy. The land of Mitanni had formerly been powerful, but now it seemed a land floating in the air, walled in by Babylon in the east, by savage tribes in the north, and in the west by the Hittites, the name of whose country was Hatti. The more I heard of the Hittites, who were greatly feared, the firmer became my resolve to journey to the land of Hatti also, but first I desired to visit Babylon.

The inhabitants of the land of Mitanni were small of stature, their women were beautiful, and their children like dolls. It may be that they had been a mighty people in their time, for they said that they had once ruled over the peoples of the north and the south, the east and the west-but that is what every nation says. Ever since the time of the great Pharaohs this country had been dependent upon Egypt, and for two generations the daughters of its king had dwelt as wives in Pharaoh’s golden house. By listening to the talk and the complaint of the Mitannians, I came to understand that their country had been designed as a shield for Syria and Egypt against the might of Babylon and of the savage peoples, to receive in its body the spears aimed at Pharaoh’s sovereignty. For this reason, and this reason alone, the Pharaohs propped up the king’s tottering throne and sent him gold, arms, and mercenaries. But the people did not understand this, and they were exceedingly proud of their country and its power.

I saw that it was a weary and declining nation with the shadow of death on its temples. The people were unaware of this, and they paid more attention to their food, preparing it in many remarkable ways; they also squandered their time in trying on new clothes-their pointed shoes and tall hats-and they were particular in the choosing of jewelry. Their limbs were slender like those of the Egyptians, and the women’s complexions were so transparent that one might see the blood flowing blue in their veins. They spoke and behaved with delicacy and were taught in their childhood to walk gracefully, men as well as women. To live here was pleasant; even in the pleasure houses there was no brawling: all was silence and discretion so that I felt clumsy when I frequented them and drank my wine there. Yet my heart was heavy, for I had seen war and knew that if all that was said of the land of Hatti was true, then Mitanni was doomed.

Their medicine also was of a high standard, and their physicians skillful men who knew their trade and also a great deal that I did not know. I obtained from them a potion for expelling worms that was far less troublesome and unpleasant than any I had met with before. They could also cure blindness with the needle, and in this also I became more proficient. But they knew nothing of skull opening and said that only the gods could cure head injuries-and that even then the patients were never the same again so that it was better for them to die.

Nevertheless, the people were curious; they came to see me and brought their sick, being attracted by anything strange. Just as they loved to wear foreign clothes and jewelry and eat exotic dishes and drink imported wine, so they desired to be treated by an alien physician. Women came also and smiled upon me and told me of their maladies and complained that their men were lazy and tired and without virility. I understood well enough what they were after but was careful not to give way to them, for I did not wish to offend against the laws of a foreign land. Instead I gave them drugs to mix with their husbands’ wine. I had obtained such drugs as would set even a dead man rutting from the doctors in Smyrna, the Syrians being the cleverest in the world in this matter and their medicines more powerful than those of Egypt. But whether the women gave these drugs to their husbands or to quite other men I do not know, though I fancy they preferred strangers, for they were free in their ways. Few of them had children, which again was a sign to me that the shadow of death hung over their land.

I must mention that these people no longer knew the boundaries of their own kingdom since the boundary stones were constantly being moved. The Hittites bore them away in their chariots and set them up where they pleased. If the Mitannians protested, the Hittites laughed and challenged them to put them back again if that was their desire. But that was not their desire, for if what was told of the Hittites was true, there had never on this earth been seen so cruel, so formidable a people. Legend had it that their keenest pleasure was to hear the cries of the mutilated and to watch blood flow from open wounds. They cut off the hands of the Mitannian border folk who complained that the Hittite cattle trampled their fields and devoured their crops and then mocked them and told them to lift the boundary stones back into their places. They would cut off these peasants’ feet also and tell them to run and complain to their king or slit their scalps and pull the skin down over their eyes so they could not see whither the landmarks had been carried. I cannot recount all the evil that the Hittites had done, all their cruelties and hideous practices. It was said that they were worse than locusts, for after locusts the earth brings forth again, but where the chariots of the Hittites had passed, no grass ever grew.

I did not wish to tarry any longer in the land of Mitanni, for I felt that I had learned all I desired to know, but my doctor’s pride was hurt by the doubts of the Mitannian faculty, who did not believe what I had told them of skull opening. Now there came to my inn a distinguished man who complained that he had the roar of the sea continually in his ears, that he was given to swooning, and that he suffered from such excruciating pains in his head that if no one could cure him he desired to die. The physicians of Mitanni would not treat him.

I said to this man, “It is possible that if you let me open your skull you will be cured but more possible that you will die. From this operation only one in a hundred recovers.”

He answered, “I should be mad not to agree to this, for then at least I have one chance in a hundred of survival. I do not trust to your curing me, but in dying by your hand there is no transgression in the sight of the gods as there would be in putting an end to my own life. If on the other hand you do cure me, I will gladly give you half of all I possess-and that is no mean sum-nor will you repent if I die, for then also my gifts will be liberal.”

I examined him with great thoroughness, feeling every part of his head with my hand, but my touch gave him no pain, and no place on his head was more tender than any other.

Then Kaptah said, “Tap him on the head with a hammer; you have nothing to lose.”

I tapped him with the hammer at different points, and he made no sign until suddenly he cried out and fell to the ground senseless. I concluded from this that I had found the spot where it would be best to open his skull.

Summoning the skeptical physicians, I said, “You may believe or you may not believe, but I mean to open the skull of this man to heal him though his death is the more probable result.”

The doctors sneered, “This indeed should be worth seeing!”

I borrowed fire from the temple of Ammon, then purified myself and my distinguished patient and all that was in the room. When the noon light was brightest, I began my work. Slitting up the scalp, I stanched the copious bleeding with red-hot irons, though I was uneasy at the agony this caused him. But he told me that the pain was nothing to that he suffered every day. I had given him plentiful draughts of wine in which narcotics were dissolved so that his eyes protruded like those of a dead fish and he was cheerfully disposed. Next I opened the bone as carefully as I could with the instruments I had at my disposal, and he never even fainted but drew a deep breath and told me it already eased him when I removed the piece of bone. Now my heart rejoiced, for just where I had opened his head either the devil or the spirit of disease had laid its egg, as Ptahor had taught me. It was red and hideous and the size of a swallow’s egg. With the utmost care I removed it, burning away all that held it to the brain, and showed it to the doctors, who laughed no longer. I closed the skull with a silver plate and stitched the scalp over it, and the patient never lost consciousness at any time. When I had finished, he rose and walked about and thanked me with all his heart, for he no longer heard the terrible roar in his ears, and the pains also had ceased.

This achievement brought me fame in the land of Mitanni, and my fame went before me into Babylon. Although my patient began to drink wine and enjoy himself, his body grew hot and he raved. On the third day he left his bed in his delirium, fell from the wall, and broke his neck. But all declared the fault was not mine and praised my science greatly.

Kaptah and I then hired a boat with oarsmen and journeyed down the river to Babylon.