The Egyptian (17 page)

I lived in Smyrna for two years during which I learned the Babylonian language, both spoken and written; for I was told that a man with this knowledge could make himself understood among educated people throughout the known world. The written characters, as is well known, are imprinted on clay with a sharp stylus, and all correspondence between kings is so conducted. Why this is so I cannot tell unless it be that paper will burn but a clay tablet endures forever as a testimony to the speed with which rulers forget their pacts and treaties.

Syria differs from Egypt also in that the physician must seek out his patients, who, instead of coming to him, trust to their gods to send him to them. Moreover, they give their presents before and not after they have been cured. This profits the doctor, for patients tend to be forgetful once they are well again.

It was my intention to follow my calling here quite unpretentiously, but Kaptah was of another mind. He wished me to lay out all I had in fine clothes and to hire criers who would make known my fame in every public place. These were to announce also that I did not visit patients but that they must come to me, and Kaptah forbade me to receive any who did not bring at least one gold piece with them as a present. I told him this was folly in a city where no one knew me and where the customs differed from those of the Black Land, but Kaptah stood his ground. I could do nothing with him, for when once he got an idea into his head, he was as stubborn as a donkey.

He persuaded me also to visit those doctors who were held in highest repute and to say to them:

“I am Sinuhe, an Egyptian physician to whom the new Pharaoh gave the name of He Who Is Alone, and I am a man of renown in my own country. I restore the dead to life and bring back sight to the blind if my god wills it—for I have a small but powerful god whom I carry with me in my traveling chest. Knowledge differs from one place to another, however, nor are diseases everywhere the same. For this reason I have come to your city to study maladies and to cure them and to profit by your learning and wisdom.

“I do not mean in any way to encroach upon your practice, for who am I to compete with you? I propose, therefore, that you send to me such patients as are under your god’s displeasure so that you cannot cure them, and especially those requiring treatment with the knife—for the knife you do not use—that I may see whether my god will bring them healing. And should such a patient be cured I will give you half of what he gives me, for I have not come here for gold but for knowledge. Should I fail to cure him, I will take nothing from him at all but send him back to you with his gift.”

The physicians whom I met in the streets and market places visiting their patients and to whom I spoke swung their cloaks and fingered their beards and said:

“You are young, but truly your god has blessed you with wisdom, for your words are agreeable to our ears. What you say of gold and of presents is wise as is also your allusion to the knife. For we never use knives to heal the sick, a man who comes under the knife being more certain of death than he who does not. One thing only we desire of you, and that is that you will effect no cures by sorcery, for our own witchcraft is very powerful, and in that branch there is too much competition both in Smyrna and in the other cities along the coast.”

This was true, for there were many illiterate men hauhting the streets who undertook to heal the sick by means of magic and lived fatly in the homes of the credulous until their patients either recovered or died.

In this way sick people with whom others had failed came to me, and I treated them, but those I could not cure I sent back to the physicians of Smyrna. From Ammon’s temple I brought sacred fire to my house that I might carry out the prescribed purification and so venture to use the knife and to perform operations at which the physicians fingered their beards and marveled greatly. I was fortunate enough to give a blind man back his sight, although both physicians and sorcerers had smeared clay mixed with spittle upon his eyelids to no effect. I treated him with the needle, as the Egyptian manner is, thereby greatly enhancing my reputation. However, after some time the man lost his sight again, for the needle cure is but temporary.

The merchants and wealthy men of Smyrna led an idle and luxurious life; they were fatter than the Egyptians and suffered from breathlessness and stomach troubles. I used the knife on them till they bled like pigs. When my medical stores were exhausted, I found good use for my knowledge in the matter of gathering herbs upon the right days and under favorable aspects of moon and stars, for in this the men of Smyrna had little science, and I dared not trust to their remedies. To the obese I gave relief from their abdominal pains and saved them from suffocation by means of medicines I sold to them at prices graded according to their means. I quarreled with none but gave presents to the doctors and city authorities, while Kaptah spread a good report of me and gave food to beggars and storytellers that they might cry my praises in street and market and preserve my name from oblivion.

I earned a quantity of gold. All that I didn’t spend or give away I invested with the merchants of Smyrna, who sent ships to Egypt, to the islands in the sea, and to the land of Hatti, so that I had a share in many vessels—a hundredth or a five-hundredth, according to my means at the time. Some ships were never seen again, but most of them returned, and my stakes in them—now doubled or tripled—were entered in the trading books. This was the custom in Smyrna, though unknown in Egypt. Even the poor speculated in this way and either increased their funds or became still more impoverished; ten or twenty of them would pool their copper pieces to buy a thousandth share in a vessel or her cargo. Thus I never had to keep gold in my house as a lure for robbers. Neither was I obliged to carry it with me when I traveled to other cities, such as Byblos and Sidon, in the course of my work, for then the merchant gave me a clay tablet to be presented at the business houses of those cities, by which I could obtain money from them whenever I required it.

Thus all went well with me. I prospered, and Kaptah grew fat in his expensive new clothes and anointed himself with fine oils. Indeed he became insolent, and I was compelled to thrash him. But why everything favored me so I cannot say.

Nevertheless, I continued in loneliness, and life gave me no delight. I even wearied of wine, for it never cheered me but turned my face as black as soot so that when I had drunk I desired only to die. Therefore, I sought ever to increase my knowledge that no moment of the day should find me idle-for in idleness I fretted over myself and my deeds—and at night I slept like the dead.

I acquainted myself with the gods of Smyrna to learn whether they might hold some hidden truth for me. Like all else, these gods differ from those of Egypt. Their great god was Baal, a cruel god who exacted human blood in return for his favor and whose priests were made eunuchs. He also required children. Moreover, the sea was greedy for sacrifice so that merchants and those in authority must be forever seeking new victims. No crippled slave was ever to be seen. and the poor were threatened with savage punishment for the least offense. Thus a poor man who stole a fish to feed his family was dis membered as a sacrifice on the altar of Baal.

Their female divinity was Astarte, also called Ishtar, like the Ishtar of Nineveh. She had many breasts and was robed every day afresh in jewels and thin garments, being served by women who for some reason were known as the virgins of the temple, though that they were not. On the contrary, they were there to be enjoyed—a mission regarded with favor by the goddess—and the more exquisite the enjoyment, the more gold and silver was offered to the temple by the client.

But the merchants of Smyrna guarded their own women with great strictness, shutting them up at home and clothing them from head to foot in thick garments lest they tempt the stranger. The men, however, visited the temple for the sake of variety and to win divine approval. Thus in Smyrna there were no pleasure houses like those of Egypt. If the temple girls were not to a man’s liking, he had to take a wife or buy himself a slave girl. Slave girls were for sale every day, for ships were continually coming into port with women and children on board of every size and color, both plump and thin, to suit all tastes. But the crippled and unfit were purchased cheaply for sacrifice to Baal on behalf of the city council, who would then laugh and slap their chests and commend themselves for their cunning in thus deceiving their god.

I, too, made sacrifice to Baal since he was the god of the city and it was prudent to seek his favor. Being an Egyptian, I bought no human sacrifices for him; I gave him gold. Sometimes I visited Astarte’s temple, which opened in the evenings, to listen to music and watch the temple women—whom I will not call maidens—dancing voluptuous dances to the glory of their goddess. Since it was the custom I lay with them, and I marveled at the practices they taught me of which I had known nothing. But I was not cheered and did all from curiosity. When they had taught me what they had to impart, I wearied of them and no longer visited their temple. To my mind there were no accomplishments so monotonous as theirs.

But Kaptah shook his head in concern for me, for my face was aging, the furrows between my brows were deepening, and my heart was sealed. His wish was that I should have a slave girl to beguile my leisure moments. Since he kept house and handled my money, he bought a girl for me who was to his own taste. He washed, dressed, and anointed her, and presented her to me one evening when, tired after the day’s work, I desired only to go to bed in peace.

This girl was from the islands in the sea; she was plump, her skin white, her teeth faultless, and her eyes were round and gentle like the eyes of a heifer. She gazed at me in veneration and showed fear of the strange city to which she had been brought. Kaptah extolled her charms with the greatest earnestness, and to please him I took her. Yet, though I did my best to escape from my loneliness, my heart was not gladdened, and I could not bring myself to call her my sister.

In showing her kindness I erred, for it made her arrogant, and she disturbed me in my interviews with patients. She ate a great deal and grew fat and was forever demanding jewels and new clothes. Also she dogged my footsteps in a continual desire to take pleasure with me. It was to no purpose that I made journeys inland and to the cities along the coast. On my return she was the first to greet me, with tears and persecution. I beat her, but in vain; then she grew hotter than before, and life in my house became intolerable.

But the scarab brought me good fortune, for one day King Aziru, the ruler of the inland province of Amurru, came to me. I doctored his teeth, making him one tooth of ivory to replace one that had been knocked out in battle and coating other damaged ones with gold. While he remained in the city, conferring with the authorities on administrative business, he visited me every day. He met my slave girl, whom I called Keftiu after the islands in the sea, being unable to pronounce her heathenish name, and he found delight in her. This Aziru was white skinned and as strong as a bull. His beard was blue black and glossy, and his eyes held a bold gleam so that Keftiu began to look upon him with desire—for women are ever captivated by what is new. He admired her plumpness above all, and her garments, which she wore in the Greek manner, greatly inflamed him. Though they covered her throat, they left her breast bare, and he was accustomed to seeing women veiled from head to foot.

At length he was unable to restrain his desire, and sighing deeply, he said to me, “Truly you are my friend, Sinuhe the Egyptian, and you have mended my teeth and caused my mouth to glisten with gold whenever I open it, which will greatly enhance my dignity in the land of Amurru. For this I will make you such gifts as shall cause you to raise your hands in wonder. Nevertheless, I am forced to pain you against my will.

“Ever since I laid eyes upon the woman in your house, she has pleased me, and I can no longer withstand my desire for her; it tears at me like a wildcat and not all your arts can heal that sickness. I have never seen her like and can well fancy your fondness for her when she warms your bed at night.

“Yet I desire her of you, that I may make her my wife among my other wives and release her from slavery. I tell you this openly, for you are a just man, and I will pay you whatever you ask. But I tell you openly also that if you will not give her up of your free will, I will come and take her by force and carry her off to my country, where you could never find her even if you dared to seek.”

At these words of his I raised my hands in delight, but Kaptah who had overheard tore his hair and lamented, “Evil is the day, and better were it that my master had never been born than that you should now take from him the only woman in whom he has found pleasure. Nor can her loss be made good, for to my lord she is dearer than all the gold in the world—all the jewels, all the incense-and she is fairer than the full moon, and her belly is round and white as a heap of wheat—though you have not yet seen it—and her breasts are like melons, which your own eyes can tell you.”

Thus he babbled on, for since coming to Smyrna, he had learned the ways of merchants and hoped for a good price though both he and I desired nothing so much as to be rid of the girl. When Keftiu heard him, she wept also, saying that she would never forsake me—but as she wept she peeped admiringly between her fingers at the prince and his curly beard.

I raised my hands, and having quieted them, I assumed a grave expression.

“Aziru, King of Amurru and my friend! Truly this woman is dear to my heart, and I call her my sister, but your friendship is dearer to me than anything else. In token of this friendship I will give her to you without payment, and I beg you to accept of her and do with her all that the wildcat within you desires—for if I do not deceive myself, her heart is inclined toward you, and she will be content, for in her body also lurk many wildcats.”

Aziru cried aloud for joy.

“Ah, Sinuhe, Egyptian though you be—and all evil comes out of Egypt—from this day you are my brother and my friend; throughout the land of Amurru your name shall be blessed; as my guest you shall sit at my right hand above all othets, though they be kings. This I swear!”