The Egyptian (45 page)

“Would it not be simpler to sell the chariots to Aziru or the Hittites? They pay well for chariots and horses,” sneered Horemheb. “I can see that it would not pay you to keep a regular army when you bury all the wealth of Egypt in a swamp or make bricks of it.”

They disputed thus day after day until by sheer tenacity Horemheb gained the position of commander-in-chief of the frontier troops and of all the garrisons. It was Pharaoh who decided how they should be armed, namely with wooden spears. Their numbers were left for Horemheb to determine. Horemheb then summoned all district commanders to Memphis because it lay in the middle of the country and on the borders of the Two Kingdoms. He was on the point of embarking for that city when a river courier arrived, with a stack of letters and clay tablets from Syria, full of alarming news. His hopes were rekindled. These communications showed beyond dispute that King Aziru, having learned of the disturbances in Thebes, considered the moment favorable for the annexation of certain cities beyond his borders. Megiddo, the key to Syria, was also in revolt, and Aziru’s forces were besieging the fortress to which the Egyptian garrison had retired and from which they were now appealing to Pharaoh for speedy help.

But Pharaoh Akhnaton said, “I fancy King Aziru has good reason for his actions. He is a fiery man, and it may be that my envoys have offended him. I will not judge him until he has opportunity to defend himself. But one thing I can do, and it was wrong of me not to think of it before. Now that a city of Aton is rising in the Black Land I must build another in the Red Land—in Syria—and in Kush. Megiddo is a junction for the caravan routes and therefore the most suitable place, but I suspect that just now it is too disturbed to permit building.

“But you have spoken to me of Jerusalem, where you built a temple to Aton during your campaign against the Khabiri—a campaign for which I can never forgive myself. It is not so central as Megiddo, being farther south; nevertheless I shall take immediate steps for the building of a city of Aton in Jerusalem so that in future that shall be the center of Syria, though now it is only a tumbledown village.”

When Horemheb heard this, he broke his whip, threw it at Pharaoh’s feet, and went aboard his ship. And so he sailed to Memphis to reorganize the garrison troops throughout the country. Yet his stay in Akhetaton had had this advantage: I had been able to tell him quietly and at leisure all that I had seen and heard in Babylon, Mitanni, the land of Hatti, and in Crete. He listened in silence, nodding now and again as if what I told him were not altogether news, and he fingered the knife I had been given by the harbormaster. All that I recounted to him of roads, bridges, and rivers he caused to be set down in writing, also any names I mentioned. Finally I told him to consult Kaptah in the matter, for Kaptah was as childish as himself in his memory for all manner of useless things.

He departed from Akhetaton in anger, and Pharaoh rejoiced to see him go. The conversations with Horemheb had greatly plagued him so that even the sight of the man gave him a headache.

To me he said musingly, “It may be the will of Aton that we lose Syria, and if so, who am I to oppose it since it must be for the good of Egypt? For the wealth of Syria has eaten at Egypt’s heart. All superfluity, all softness, vices, and evil practices have come from there. Were we to lose Syria, Egypt would return to simpler ways—to ways of truth—and that is the best thing that can befall it. The new life must start here and spread among all nations.”

My heart rose up against his talk and I said, “The commander of the Smyrna garrison has a son named Rameses—a lively boy with big brown eyes who loves to play with pretty stones. I treated him once for chickenpox. And in Megiddo there dwells an Egyptian woman who, having heard of my skill, once visited me in Smyrna. Her belly was swollen; I opened it with my knife and she lived. Her skin was soft as wool, and she walked beautifully like all Egyptian women, even though her belly was swollen and here eyes were bright with fever.”

“I do not understand why you tell me of these things,” said Akhnaton, and he began to make a sketch of a temple he beheld in his mind’s eye. He constantly vexed his architects and master builders with drawings and explanations though they understood their business better than he.

“I mean that I can see that little Rameses with his mouth cut and bruised and the locks at his temple clotted with blood. I see the woman from Megiddo lying naked and bleeding in the courtyard of the fortress while men from Amurru violate her. Yet I acknowledge that my thoughts are trivial compared with yours and that a ruler cannot remember every Rameses and every soft-skinned woman among his subjects.”

Pharaoh clenched his fists, and his eyes darkened as he cried, “Sinuhe, can you not understand that if I must choose death rather than life, then I will choose the death of a hundred Egyptians rather than that of a thousand Syrians? Were I to give battle in Syria so as to liberate every Egyptian there, then many—both Syrians and Egyptians—would lose their lives in the war. Were I to meet evil with evil, only evil could result. But if I meet evil with good, the resulting evil is less. I will not choose death rather than life, and so I stop my ears to your talk. Speak to me no more of Syria if you love me and if my life is dear to you. When I think of that, my heart feels all the suffering those who die for my will’s sake must undergo—and a man cannot long endure the sufferings of many. Give me peace for the sake of Aton and of my truth.”

He bowed his head, and his eyes were swollen and bloodshot in his grief, and his thick lips trembled. I left him in peace, but in my own ears I heard the thunder of battering rams against the Megiddo walls and the cries of outraged women in the woolen tents of the Amorites. I hardened my heart against these sounds for I loved him, for all his madness, and perhaps I loved him the more because of it, for his madness was more beautiful than the wisdom of other men.

The founding of the new city brought division into the royal family. for the Queen Mother refused to follow her son into the desert. Thebes was her city, and the golden house of Pharaoh, glowing hazy blue and russet among its walls and gardens by the river, had been built by Pharaoh Amenhotep for his beloved. Taia, the Queen Mother, had be gun life as a poor fowler girl in the reed swamps of the Lower Kingdom. She would not leave Thebes, and Princess Baketamon stayed with her. Eie the priest, bearer of the crook on the right hand of the King, ruled and sat in judgment there on the King’s throne with the leather scrolls before him. Life in Thebes went on as before; only the false Pharaoh was absent—and unregretted.

Queen Nefertiti returned to Thebes for the birth of her next child, for she dared not be brought to bed without the help of the physicians and the Negro sorcerers of Thebes. Here she bore her third daughter, whose name was Ankhsenaton and who would in time be queen. To ease the birth, the sorcerers narrowed and lengthened the child’s head as they had done with the other princesses. When the girl grew up, all the court ladies, and others who wished to be in the fashion and to imitate the styles of the court, took to wearing false backs to their heads. But the princesses themselves kept their heads close shaven to show off the fine shape of their skulls. Artists also admired it, and they carved and drew and painted numerous portraits of them without suspecting that this distinctive feature was but a result of the magicians’ arts.

When Nefertiti had born her child she returned to Akhetaton and took up her residence in the palace, which in the meantime had been set in habitable order. She left the other women behind in Thebes, being vexed at having given birth to three daughters and unwilling to let Pharaoh waste his virility on the couches of others. Akhnaton was content to have it so, for he was weary of fulfilling his duty in the women’s house and wanted no one but Nefertiti, as all who beheld her beauty could well understand. Not even her third confinement had dimmed her loveliness. She seemed younger and more radiant than before, but whether this change in her was due to the city of Akhetaton or to the black men’s witchcraft I cannot say.

Thus Akhetaton rose from the wilderness in a single year; palm trees waved proudly along its splendid streets, pomegranates ripened and reddened in the gardens, and in the fish pools floated the rosy flowers of the lotus. The whole city was a blossoming garden, for the houses were of wood, airy and fragile as pavilions, and their columns of palm and reed were light and brightly colored. The gardens entered the very houses, for the paintings on the walls were of palms and sycamores swayed by the breezes of eternal spring. On the floors were beds of reeds and multicolored swimming fish, and ducks with brilliant wings rose in flight. In this city nothing was lacking to rejoice the heart of man. Tame gazelles wandered in the gardens, while in the streets the lightest of carriages were drawn by fiery horses adorned with ostrich plumes. The kitchens were fragrant with keen spices brought from every part of the world.

Thus the City of the Heavens was completed, and when autumn returned and swallows emerged from the mud to dart in restless flocks above the rising waters, Pharaoh Akhnaton consecrated the city and the land to Aton. He consecrated the boundary stones north, south, east, and west, and on each of these stones was the representation of Aton shedding the benediction of his rays on Pharaoh and the house of Pharaoh. Inscriptions on the stones recorded Pharaoh’s vows never again to set foot beyond these boundaries. For this ceremony the workmen laid stone-paved roads to the four quarters of the land so that Pharaoh might drive to the borders in his golden carriage attended by his family in their carriages and chairs and by the members of his court, who strewed flowers as they went, while flutes and stringed instruments sounded in praise of Aton.

Not even in death did Pharaoh intend to leave the city of Aton. When the building of it was finished, he sent his workmen to the eastern hills within the consecrated land, to hew out eternal resting places. They found work enough to last their whole lives through and were never able to return to their birthplace. They did not greatly desire to do so but accustomed themselves to dwelling in their own town and in Pharaoh’s shadow, for grain was measured to them abundantly, their oil jars were never empty, and their wives bore them healthy children.

When Pharaoh had decided to build tombs for himself and his nobles and to present one to each of his distinguished followers who would live in the City of the Heavens with him and who believed in Aton, he built also a House of Death outside the city so that the bodies of those who died in Akhetaton should be preserved forever. To this end he summoned from Thebes those embalmers and washers who held the foremost place in their craft. They came down the river in a black ship, and their smell was borne before them on the wind so that the people hid in their houses with bowed heads, reciting prayers to Aton. Many also prayed to the old gods and made the holy sign of Ammon, for when they smelled the body washers’ smell Aton seemed far away and their thoughts turned to their earlier dieties.

The embalmers stepped ashore from the vessel with all their materials, blinking with eyes that were accustomed to the dark and swearing bitterly at the light, which hurt them. They entered swiftly into the new House of Death, taking their smell with them so that the place became a home for them, which they never left again. Among them was old Ramose, the expert of the pincers, whose task was to extract the brain. I met him in the House of Death, for the priests of Aton held the House of Death in horror, and Pharaoh had placed it under my charge. When he had gazed at me for some time he knew me again, and marveled. I made myself known to him to gain his confidence, for uncertainty gnawed like a worm at my heart and I desired to know how my revenge had prospered at the House of Death in Thebes.

When we had spoken a little of his work, I asked, “Ramose my friend, did you ever have under your hands a beautiful woman who was brought to the House of Death during the Terror and whose name I believe was Nefernefernefer?”

He regarded me, bent backed and blinking like a tortoise, and said, “In truth, Sinuhe, you are the first distinguished man who has ever called a corpse washer his friend. My heart is greatly moved, and the information you require is doubtless of great import since you so address me. Surely it was not you who brought her one dark night, swathed in the black robe of death? For if you were that man you are the friend of no corpse washer, and if they come to hear of it, they will stab you with poisoned knives and so inflict upon you a most hideous death.”

His words caused me to tremble, and I said, “Whoever may have brought her, she deserved her fate. Yet from your words I suspect that she was not dead but came to life under the hands of the washers.”

Ramose answered, “Most certainly that frightful woman was restored to life, though how you know of this I prefer not to guess. She awoke, for such women never die—and if they die, they should be burned so that they can never return. When we came to know her we gave her the name of Setnefer: the devil’s beauty.”

A dreadful suspicion seized me and I asked, “Why do you speak of her as of something that has been? Is she not still in the House of Death? The washers vowed that they would keep her there for seventy times seventy days.”

Ramose rattled his knives and pincers angrily, and I believe he would have struck me if I had not brought him a jar of the best wine in Pharaoh’s cellar. He merely felt its dusty seal with his thumb and said, “We bore you no ill will, Sinuhe; you were to me as my own son, and I would have kept you all your life in the House of Death and taught you my art. We embalmed the bodies of your parents as only those of the eminent are embalmed and did not spare the finest oils and balsams. Why then did you wish us so ill as to bring that terrible woman to us alive? Know that before her coming we led a simple, hard-working life, rejoicing our hearts with beer and greatly enriching ourselves by thefts of jewelry from the dead, without regard to sex or standing, and also by selling to sorcerers such organs as they require for their spells. But after the coming of that woman the House of Death became like some abyss of the underworld. The men knifed one another and fought together like mad dogs. She stole all our wealth from us—all the gold and silver we had amassed in the course of years and hidden in the House of Death—nor did she scorn copper. Even our clothes she took from us, for having robbed the young men of all they possessed she set them on to steal from the old ones such as I, whose lust could no longer be kindled. No more than thirty times thirty days had passed before she had stripped us naked of possessions. Then she left, taking all her wealth with her, and we could not prevent her, for if one placed himself in her path he was opposed by another—for the sake of a smile or a touch of her fingers. Thus she took from us our property and our peace. She had by then no less than three hundred
deben
of gold, to say nothing of silver, copper, linen bands, and salves that for years we had stolen from the dead, as the custom is. She vowed to return to us in a year to see how much we had been able to save by then. There is more theft in the House of Life than there has ever been before; moreover the washers have learned to pilfer from each other and not only from the bodies, so that our peace has altogether departed. By this you may understand why we gave her the name of Setnefer, for she is exceedingly fair though her beauty is of Set.”