The Egyptian (20 page)

Horemheb returned to Jerusalem, which was thronged with refugees from the border country, and he sold back to them their grain and cooking pots. At this they tore their clothes and cried, “These robbers are worse than the Khabiri!” But they suffered no hardship, for they were able to borrow money from their temples, from the merchants, and from the tax gatherers, who had streamed into Jerusalem from all over Syria. Thus Horemheb converted the spoils into gold and silver, which he distributed among his soldiers. I understood now why most of the wounded had died despite my care. There remained so much more booty for their comrades, who had also stolen the clothes and weapons and treasure of the sick and given them neither water nor food so that they perished. What wonder that unskilled surgeons were ever eager to follow the troops into battle or that, despite their incompetence, they returned so wealthy!

Jerusalem was full of noise and clamor and the din of Syrian instruments. The soldiers squandered the gold and silver on beer and girls till the traders, having thus regained their money, went away. Horemheb levied a tax upon the merchants both when they came and when they left and was thus a rich man though he had abstained from his share of the spoils.

He felt no elation, and when I went to take leave of him before setting forth for Smyrna, he said, “This campaign was over before it began, and in his letter to me Pharaoh upbraids me for shedding blood against his commands. I must go back to Egypt with my rats, to disband them and deliver their standards into the keeping of the temple. But what will be the outcome I know not, for these are the only trained troops in Egypt, and the rest are fit for nothing but dirtying walls and pinching women’s rumps in the market place. By Ammon, it is easy enough in Pharaoh’s golden palace to write songs in honor of one’s god and to believe that all nations may be governed by love! Could he but hear the screams of mutilated men and the wailing of women in the burning villages when the enemy crosses the borders, he might think otherwise.”

“Egypt has no enemies; she is too rich and too powerful,” I said. “Also your fame has gone out over Syria, and the Khabiri will not remove the landmarks a second time. Why then should you not disband the troops, for in truth they rage in their cups like wild beasts, their sleeping dens stink, and they are venminous.”

“You know not what you say,” he retorted, staring before him and scratching at his armpits—for even the commander’s hut was full of lice. “Egypt is self-sufficient and is therein mistaken. The world is large and in the hidden places seed is being sown from which fire and destruction will be harvested. I have heard, for example, that the King of the Amorites is diligently amassing horses and chariots, whereas it would be more becoming in him to pay his tribute to Pharaoh with greater punctuality. At his banquets his high officials talk only of how the Amorites once ruled the whole world—which is in a sense true, as the last of the Hyksos dwell in the land of Amurru.”

“That Aziru is my friend and a vain man, for I gilded his teeth. And I think he has other things on his mind, for I have heard that he has taken a wife who draws the strength from his loins.”

“You know many things,” remarked Horemheb, looking at me attentively. “You are a free man, an independent man; you travel from city to city hearing much that is hidden from others. If I were in your place and free, I should journey into every country seeking knowledge. I should go to the land of Mitanni, and also Babylon, and learn what manner of war chariots the Hittites now use and how they exercise their troops. I should visit the islands in the sea to note how big the ships there are, of which there is so much talk. But my name is known throughout all Syria, and perhaps I should not hear so very much. But you, Sinuhe, are clad in Syrian clothes and speak a language known to the educated of all nations. You are also a physician, and no one would imagine that you understand anything outside your profession. Moreover, your talk is simple and to my ears often childish, and you have a wide-eyed look. Yet I know that your heart is locked and what you carry within you is known to none. Isn’t this true?”

“Perhaps. But what is it you want of me?”

“What would you say if I were to furnish you with a good supply of gold and send you to the lands I spoke of to practice-your craft and spread the fame of both Egyptian medicine and your own healing powers? The rich and influential-even kings, perhaps—would summon you, and you would look into their hearts. While you followed your calling, you would let your eyes be mine and your ears mine so that when you returned to Egypt you might render me account of all you have seen and heard.”

“I do not intend ever to return—and besides there is danger in what you propose. I have no desire to hang head downward from the wall of a foreign city.”

“No one knows what tomorrow may bring. I think you will come back to Egypt, for he who has once drunk of Nile waters cannot quench his thirst elsewhere. Even the swallows and the cranes return each winter. Gold is but dust to me, and I would rather exchange it for knowledge. As for hanging, your talk is like the buzz of flies in my ear. I don’t ask you to do ill or to break the laws of any place. Don’t all great cities lure the traveler to visit their temples—do they not prepare all manner of banquets and diversions to attract him and his gold? You are welcome everywhere if you bring gold.

“Your arts also are welcome in lands where they slay the aged with an ax and expose the sick in the desert to die, as you know is done. Kings are proud and love to parade their soldiers to impress the stranger. You do no evil in noting how the men march and in what manner they are armed, in counting chariots and bearing in mind whether they are large and heavy or small and light and whether they carry two or three men—for I have heard that some employ a shield bearer as well as a charioteer. It is also important to note whether the troops are well fed and gleaming with oil or gaunt and verminous, with diseased eyes, like my own rats. There is a rumor that the Hittites have discovered some new metal and that weapons made of this can chip the edges of the finest copper ax. Whether this is true I don’t know; it is possible that they have discovered some new way of hardening copper. However it may be, I should like to know more. But above all I would learn the hearts of the rulers and of the counselors. Look at me!”

I looked at him, and he appeared to grow before my eyes. He was godlike, and his look was a burning coal so that my heart quailed and I bowed before him.

He said, “Do you believe now that I am a man of authority?”

“My heart tells me that you can command me, but I do not know why this should be,” I faltered, and my tongue was thick in my mouth. “Doubtless it is true that you are destined to hold command over many, as you said. I go, therefore, and my eyes shall be your eyes and my ears your ears. I don’t know whether you will gain by what I see and hear, for in the matters you would learn of I am a dunce. Yet I will do it as well as I may and not for gold but because you are my friend and because plainly the gods have so willed it—if indeed there be any gods.”

He said, “I don’t think you will repent of being my friend. I will give you gold for your journey, nevertheless, for if I know anything of men, you will have need of it. You do not ask why this knowledge is more precious to me than gold, but this I can tell you: The great Pharaohs sent clever men to foreign courts, but the envoys of this Pharaoh are muttonheads who know no more than how to pleat their robes and wear their honors and in what order they must stand on the right or left hand of Pharaoh. So pay no heed to them if you should meet with any, but let their talk be as the buzz of flies in your ear.”

When we parted, he laid aside his dignity, stroked my cheek, and touched my shoulders with his face, saying, “My heart is heavy because of your going, Sinuhe, for if you are alone, why, so am I. No man knows the secrets of my heart.”

I believe that as he said this his thoughts were with the Princess Baketamon whose beauty had bewitched him.

He gave me much gold, more than I could have imagined—I believe he gave me all the gold he had won in the Syrian campaign—and he furnished me with an escort as far as the coast so that I could travel without fear of robbers. As soon as I arrived there, I placed the gold with a large trading company, exchanging it for clay tablets, which were safer to carry, being useless to thieves, after which I boarded a ship for Smyrna.

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.