The Egyptian (70 page)

During these three years I aged more rapidly than in all my earlier years. My hair fell out, my back grew bent, and my face became as wrinkled as a dried fruit. I snapped and spoke harshly to the sick as many physicians do when they grow old, despite their good will. In this respect I was no different from other doctors, although I saw more than most.

In the third year the plague came to Syria, for this follows ever in the wake of war, being engendered in any place where great numbers of rotting corpses are heaped together. The whole of Syria was but one huge, open grave. Whole races died out so that their speech and customs fell into oblivion. Pestilence slew those whom the fighting had spared. Within the armies of both Horemheb and the Hittites it claimed so many victims that warfare ceased and the troops fled into the mountains or the desert, where the scourge could not follow. This plague was no respecter of persons: high and low, rich and poor were its victims, nor was there any known remedy. Those who sickened lay down on their couches, drew a cloth over their heads, and most often died within three days. Such as survived bore terrible scars in armpit and groin, where the pestilent humors were forced out during recovery.

The disease was as capricious in sparing as in slaying. It was not always the strongest and healthiest who survived, but often the weak and starving, as if in these it had found too little to feed on. In tending patients, I came at last to let as much blood from them as I dared and to forbid them food so long as the sickness lasted. I cured many in this way, but a like number died under my hands, and I could not be sure that this treatment was correct. Yet I was compelled to do something for them, that they might retain their faith in my arts. A sick man who loses faith in his recovery and his physician’s skill dies more easily than one who believes in them. My treatment was better than many others since it was at any rate cheap for the patient.

Ships carried the plague to Egypt, but fewer died there. It lost its virulence, and the number of those who survived exceeded that of the dead. It disappeared from the land that same year with the rising of the waters. In the winter it departed from Syria also, enabling Horemheb to muster his troops again and continue the war. The following spring he crossed the mountains into the plain before Megiddo and defeated the Hittites in a great battle. When Burnaburiash of Babylon saw the successes of Horemheb, he took fresh courage and remembered his alliance with Egypt. He sent his troops into what had been the land of Mitanni and drove the Hittites from their grazing grounds in Naharani. When the Hittites perceived that the devastated country of Syria was now beyond their grasp, they offered peace, being wise warriors and thrifty men, unwilling to hazard their chariots for empty glory when they needed them to quiet Babylon.

Horemheb rejoiced at this peace. His forces had dwindled, and the war had impoverished Egypt. He desired to build up Syria and its trade and so draw profit from the land. He agreed to make peace on condition that the Hittites yield Megiddo, which Aziru had made his capital and which he had fortified with impregnable walls and towers. Therefore, the Hittites took Aziru prisoner, and having confiscated the immense wealth he had amassed there from all over Syria, they handed him over with his wife and two sons in chains to Horemheb. They then plundered Megiddo and drove the flocks and herds of Amurru northward out of the country, which by the terms of peace was now under Egypt’s control.

Horemheb did not quibble at this. Having brought the fighting to an end, he held a banquet for the Hittite princes and chiefs and drank wine with them all night, boasting of his prowess. On the following day he was to execute Aziru and his family before the assembled troops, in token of the eternal peace that should thereafter prevail between Egypt and the land of Hatti.

I would not partake of his banquet but made my way in the darkness to the tent where Aziru lay in chains. I went to Aziru because in the whole of Syria he now had no friend. A man who has lost all his possessions and is condemned to an ignominious death never has any friends. I knew that he dearly loved life, and I hoped to persuade him, by all that I had seen of it, that it was not worth living. I desired to assure him as a doctor that death is easy, easier than life’s torments, sorrows, and sufferings. Life is a searing flame, death the dark waters Df oblivion. I desired to say all this to him because he was to die the following morning and would be unable to sleep because he loved life so dearly. If he would not listen to me, I thought to sit silently beside him, that he might not lie alone. A man may live without friends, perhaps, but to die without one friend is hard indeed—hardest of all after a life of kingship.

He and his family had been brought in a shameful manner to Horemheb’s camp, where the soldiers mocked him and cast mud and horse droppings on him. I avoided him then and covered my face with my garment. He was an exceedingly proud man and would not have wished me to see his degradation since I had once beheld him in the days of his majesty and power. I now went in darkness to his tent, and the guards said one to another, “Let us admit him, for he is Sinuhe the physician and his errand must be lawful. If we forbid him, he will revile us or by witchcraft deprive us of our manhood. He is malignant, and his tongue stings more fiercely than a scorpion.”

In the darkness of the tent I said, “Aziru, King of Amurru, will you receive a friend on the eve of your death?”

Aziru sighed deeply, his chains rattled, and he replied, “I am a king no longer and have no friends—but is it indeed you, Sinuhe? I know your voice even in the dark.”

“It is I.”

“By Marduk and all the devils of the underworld! If you are Sinuhe, bring a light. I am weary of lying in the darkness; I shall have enough of that by and by. The accursed Hittites have torn my clothes and crushed my limbs in torture so that I am no pretty sight. Yet as a physician you must be accustomed to worse ones, and I am not ashamed, for in the face of death it is not worth while to blush for one’s wretchedness. Bring a light that I may see your face and put my hand in yours. My liver aches, and water runs from my eyes because of my wife and my boys. If also you can fetch some strong beer to moisten my throat, I will rehearse all your good deeds tomorrow in the kingdom of death. I cannot pay for even a mouthful, for the Hittites have robbed me of my last copper piece.”

I bade the guards bring a suet lamp and light it, for the acrid smoke of torches stung my eyes. They also brought a jar of beer. Aziru rose up groaning to a sitting posture, and I helped him put the reed to his mouth, that he might suck up the Syrian beer, which is muddy with husks and malt. His hair was matted and gray, and his splendid beard had been torn when the Hittites tortured him, and great patches of skin had come away with it. His fingers were crushed, his nails black with blood, and his ribs broken so that he groaned as he breathed, and he spat blood.

When he had drunk and spat sufficiently, he gazed at the flame of the lamp and said, “How clear and gentle is that light to my weary eyes, now that I have lain so long in darkness. The flame flickers and will die—and so also does the life of man flicker and die. I thank you, Sinuhe, for the lamp and the beer, and I would willingly make you a gift in return. You know well enough that I have no more presents to give, for my Hittite friends in their rapacity have broken the very teeth you gilded.”

lt is easy to be wise after the event, and I would not remind him that I had warned him against the Hittites. I took his crushed hand in mine and held it, and he bowed his proud head and wept, so that the tears fell on my hands from his bruised and swollen eyes.

He said, “I rejoiced and laughed before you unashamed in the days of my glory; why then in sorrow should I be ashamed of my tears? Know, Sinuhe, that I do not weep for myself or for my riches and my crowns, although I have ever clung greedily to power and to this world’s goods. I weep for my wife Keftiu—for my big, handsome son—and for my little, little son—because they also must die tomorrow.”

I said to him, “Aziru, King of Amurru! Remember that all Syria is but one open, stinking grave because of your ambition. Numberless are those who have died for you sake, and it is only fitting that you should die tomorrow since you have lost. Perhaps it is right that your family should die with you. Know, however, that I begged Horemheb to spare the lives of your wife and sons. He would not consent, for he means to wipe out your seed and your name and your very memory in Syria. Therefore he will not even concede you a grave, Aziru, and wild beasts will snarl over your remains. He does not wish the men of Syria to gather at your tomb in times to come and swear iniquitous oaths in your name.”

Aziru heard this with dismay and said, “For the sake of my god Baal, make sacrifice of meat and wine before the Baal of Amurru when I am dead, Sinuhe, or I shall be condemned to wander in perpetual hunger and thirst through the dark regions of death. Do this service also for Keftiu, whom you once loved, although because of your friendship you gave her to me—and also for my sons, that I may die with a quiet mind. I do not blame Horemheb for his decision, for no doubt I would have treated him and his family thus had he fallen into my hands. Truth to tell, Sinuhe, though I weep, yet I am glad that my family is to perish with me and that our blood shall mingle in its flow. In the land of death I should forever suffer torment at the thought of Keftiu in the arms of another. She has many admirers, and minstrels have tuned their strings in honor of her luxuriant beauty. Well is it also that my sons perish, for they were born kings and wore their crowns even in the cradle. I would not have them carried into slavery in Egypt.”

He sucked again at the beer, and for all his misery he grew a little tipsy. He picked with broken fingers at the filth the soldiers had cast on him, and said, “Sinuhe, my friend, you accuse me falsely in saying that Syria is an open grave through my doing. I am to blame only for losing the war and allowing the Hittites to deceive me. If I had won, all the evil that has come about would have been laid at Egypt’s door, and my name would be praised. Because I lost, the blame is cast on me, and my name is anathema throughout Syria.”

The strong beer mounted to his head, and tearing his graying hair he cried aloud, saying, “O Syria, Syria! My torment, my hope, my love! I did all for your greatness, and for the sake of your freedom I rose in revolt—but now on the day of my death you cast me out. Fair Byblos, blossoming Smyrna, wily Sidon, Joppa the mighty! All you cities that gleamed like pearls in my crown, why did you forsake me? Yet I love you too dearly to hate you for your desertion. I love Syria because it is Syria: false, brutal, capricious, and ever ready to betray. Races die out; nations rise up only to fall; kingdoms dissolve; fame and glory flee like a shadow—nevertheless endure, endure, my proud cities! Let your white walls sparkle against the red hills of the coast—shine on from age to age—and my dust, borne by the desert winds, shall fly to caress you!”

My heart was filled with sadness to see him yet imprisoned in his dreams, but I would not rebuke him since they brought him comfort on the eve of his death. I held his maimed hands, and he held mine moaning.

We talked throughout the night, recalling our meetings in the time when I dwelt in Smyrna and we were both in the pride of our youth and strength. At dawn my slaves brought us food that they had prepared, and the guards did not forbid them, for they also had their share. The slaves brought us hot fat mutton and rice cooked in fat, and into our cups they poured strong wine from Sidon, spiced with myrrh. I bade them wash Aziru clean of all the filth that had been cast on him and comb and dress his hair and hide his beard in a net fashioned of gold thread. I hid his tattered garments and his chains beneath a royal mantle, for his fetters could not be removed, being of copper and welded on him, so I could not array him in fresh clothes. My slaves did the same service for Keftiu and her two sons, but Horemheb would not allow Aziru to see his wife and children before they met at the place of execution.

When the hour came, and Horemheb, laughing loudly, stepped from his tent with the drunken Hittite princes, I went up to him and said, “Truly, Horemheb, I have done you many services, and it may be that I saved your life when in Tyre I drew the poisoned arrow from your thigh and dressed the wound. Do me this service: Let Aziru die without indignity, for he is the king of Syria and he fought bravely. Your own honor will be enhanced if you accord him this. Your Hittite friends have tortured him enough and crushed his limbs in forcing him to disclose where his wealth was hidden.”

Horemheb looked very black at my words, for he had thought of many ingenious ways to prolong the death agony. All was prepared, and already at dawn the army had gathered at the foot of the hillock on which the executions were to take place. The men were fighting among themselves for the best places, that they might make the most of a diverting day. Horemheb had arranged this not because he took delight in torture but in order to amuse his men and spread terror throughout Syria, that after so terrible a death no one might dare even to dream of revolt. I must say this to Horemheb’s honor, for he was not by nature cruel, as he was reputed to be. He was a warrior, and death to him was no more than a weapon in his hand. He allowed rumor to exaggerate his brutality, that it might strike terror into the hearts of his enemies and gain him the veneration of all. He believed that men had more respect for a cruel ruler than for a mild one and that they regarded gentleness as weakness.

He scowled, and taking his arm from about the neck of Prince Shubattu, he stood before me swaying and striking his leg with his golden whip.

He said to me, “You, Sinuhe, are a perpetual thorn in my side. Unlike any men of sense you are cross grained. You revile all who prosper and raise themselves to honor and affluence; you are tender and ready with consolation to those who fall and are vanquished. You well know with what toil and cost I have brought the most skillful executioners here from every corner of the land on Aziru’s account; even to set up their many racks and cauldrons has cost a great quantity of silver. I cannot at the last moment deprive my marsh rats of their pleasure, for all have suffered hardships and have bled from many wounds on Aziru’s account.”