The Egyptian

7

Thus I returned to Akhetaton, but now I was changed and saw the City of the Heavens with other eyes. With its fragile, brilliant sunlit houses beneath the deep blue of the sky the city appeared to me as a bubble or a fleeting mirage. Truth did not dwell here, but outside. Truth was starvation, suffering, misery, and crime.

Merit and Thoth returned to Thebes, taking with them my heart, so that I once more beheld things as they were, with cold eyes, and all that I saw was evil. Before many days had passed, truth came to Akhetaton, and Pharaoh was compelled to meet it face to face on the terrace of the golden house. From Memphis Horemheb sent a group of fugitives from Syria in all their wretchedness to speak with Pharaoh. He paid their passage, and I believe also that he bade them exaggerate their plight. They presented a hideous spectacle in the City of the Heavens. The nobles about the court sickened and shut themselves into their houses at the sight of them, and the guards closed the gates of the golden house. They cried aloud and threw stones at the walls until Pharaoh heard them and had them admitted to the inner court.

They said, “Hear from our bruised mouths the cry of your peoples! In the land of Kem power is but a shadow, and beneath the thunder of battering rams and the roar of flames flows the blood of those who trusted in you and set their hopes on you.”

They raised their arm stumps to Pharaoh’s golden balcony and cried, “Look at our hands, Pharaoh Akhnaton! Where are our hands?”

They pushed forward men whose eyes had been put out and went their way groping, and old men whose tongues had been torn out gaped emptily and howled. They cried to him, saying, “Do not ask us of our wives and daughters, for their fate is more terrible than death at the hands of Aziru’s men and of the Hittites. They put out our eyes and cut off our hands because we trusted you, Pharaoh Akhnaton!”

Pharaoh hid his face in his hands, and he spoke to them of Aton. Then they laughed at him very terribly and reviled him, saying, “We know that you sent the cross of life to our enemies also. They hung it about the necks of their horses, and in Jerusalem they cut off the feet of the priests and bade them leap for joy to the honor of your god.”

Then Pharaoh Akhnaton uttered a dreadful cry; the holy sickness seized him, and he fell senseless on the balcony. The guards would have driven away these homeless ones, but in their desperation they resisted. Their blood flowed between the stones of the inner court, and their bodies were cast into the river. Nefertiti and Meritaton, the ailing Meketaton and little Ankhsenaton saw it all from the balcony and were never to forget it. It was then that they beheld for the first time anguish and death, which are the fruits of war.

I had Pharaoh swathed in wet cloths, and when he came to himself, I gave him sedatives, for this attack had been so severe I feared for his life. He slept, but when he awoke his face was gray and his eyes were red with the pains in his head.

“Sinuhe, my friend, we must put an end to this. Horemheb tells me that you know Aziru. Go to him and buy peace. Buy peace for Egypt though it cost all the gold I have and impoverish the country.”

I protested vigorously.

“Pharaoh Akhnaton, send your gold to Horemheb and he will swiftly buy peace with spears and chariots, and Egypt need suffer no disgrace.”

He clutched his head.

“By Aton, Sinuhe! Can you not see that hate engenders hate, and vengeance sows vengeance, and blood breeds blood until we drown in blood? How are the victims served if their sufferings be avenged by the infliction of suffering on others? This talk of disgrace is but prejudice. I command you: Go to Aziru and buy me peace.”

I was aghast.

“Pharaoh Akhnaton, they will put out my eyes and tear out my tongue before I can approach Aziru to speak with him, and his friendship will avail me nothing for he will assuredly have forgotten it by now. I am unaccustomed to the exertions of war, which I greatly fear. My limbs are stiff, my movements slower than they were, nor can I order my phrases as glibly as others who have been trained to lies since childhood and who serve you at the courts of foreign kings. Send another if you would purchase peace.”

He insisted stubbornly, “Go as I command you. Pharaoh has spoken.”

But I had seen the fugitives in the courtyard of the palace. I had seen their broken mouths, their empty eye sockets, and the stumps of their arms. I felt strongly disinclined for the journey and went home with the intention of taking to my bed and feigning sickness until Pharaoh should have forgotten this fancy of his.

On the way I met my servant, who said to me in some astonishment, “It is well that you have come, my lord Sinuhe, for a ship has just arrived from Thebes bringing a woman whose name is Mehunefer; she says she is your friend. She awaits you in your house, arrayed like a bride, and the house is fragrant with her ointments.”

I turned swiftly about and ran to the golden house.

“Be it as you say, Pharaoh. I will go to Syria, and may my blood be upon your head. But if I am to go, let me depart at once. Let your scribes prepare the necessary tablets, certifying my rank and authority, for Aziru has great respect for tablets.”

While the scribes were busy with these, I hastened to the workshop of my friend Thothmes. I had discovered he was a sculptor in Akhetaton. He was my friend and did not spurn me in my hour of need. He had just completed a statue of Horemheb to be set up in Hetnet- sut, which was the warrior’s birthplace. It was of brown sandstone and fashioned according to the new rules, very lifelike, although to my mind Thothmes had exaggerated the bulk of the arm muscles and the breadth of the chest so that Horemheb appeared more like a wrestler than the commander-in-chief of Pharaoh’s forces. But it was the custom in this new art to exaggerate all things even to ugliness, that truth be not slighted. Thothmes wiped the image with a wet rag to show me how beautiful was the sheen on Horemheb’s muscles and how well the color of the stone matched that of his skin.

He said to me, “I think I will travel with you as far as Hetnetsut and take this figure with me, to insure that it is set up in the temple there in a position befitting Horemheb’s rank and my own. Yes, I will come with you, Sinuhe, and let the river wind blow the wine fumes of Akhetaton from my head. My hands tremble with the weight of hammer and chisel, and fever frets at my heart.”

The scribes brought me the clay tablets, with Pharaoh’s blessing, and when Horemheb’s statue had been carried aboard, we set sail down the river. My servant had orders to tell Mehunefer that I had gone to the war in Syria and there perished. I felt there was but little falsehood in this, for I feared that I should indeed die a hideous death on this journey. I had further bidden my servant convey Mehunefer aboard some vessel bound for Thebes, with all due honor and if need be by force. “For,” said I, “should I, against all expectations, return and find Mehunefer in my house, I will have all my slaves and servants beaten, I will have their ears and noses cut off, and send them to the mines for the rest of their lives.”

My servant looked me in the eye and, seeing that I was in earnest, was duly frightened and promised to obey my orders. So with a mind relieved, I sailed down the river with Thothmes. Being convinced that I was bound for certain death at the hands of Aziru’s men and of the Hittites, we did not spare the wine. Thothmes declared that it was not the custom to be sparing of wine when going to war, and he could speak with authority having been born in barracks.