The Egyptian (10 page)

Meanwhile Eie spoke to me. “Did he meet his god, Sinuhe?”

“He met his god, and I watched over him that no evil might befalL How do you know my name?”

He smiled. “It is for me to know all that goes on within the palace walls. I know your name and that you are a physician and that I might therefore entrust him to your care. You are also one of Ammon’s priests and have sworn him your oath.”

There was a hint of menace in his tone as he said this. Throwing out my hands, I exclaimed, “What signifies an oath to Ammon?”

“You are right and have nothing to repent of. And this spearman?”

He pointed to Horemheb, who was standing apart, testing the spear point on his hand, with the falcon perched upon his shoulder.

“It were better perhaps that he should die,” he added, “for Pharaoh’s secrets are shared by few.”

“He covered Pharaoh with his cloak when it was cold and is ready to wield his spear against Pharaoh’s enemies. I believe he will be more useful to you alive than dead, priest Eie.”

Eie threw a gold ring from his arm toward him, saying carelessly, “You may call upon me some time at the golden house, spearman.”

But Horemheb let the gold ring fall in the sand at his feet and looked defiantly at Eie.

“I take my orders from Pharaoh, and if I am not mistaken, Pharaoh is he who bears the royal headdress. The falcon led me to him, and that is sign enough.”

Eie remained unruffled.

“Gold is costly and is always of use,” he remarked. He picked up the gold ring and put it back upon his arm. “Make your obeisance to Pharaoh, but you must lay aside your spear in his presence.”

The prince stepped forward. His face was pale and drawn but lighted still by a secret ecstasy that warmed my heart.

“Follow me,” he said, “follow me, all of you, upon the new way, for the truth has been revealed to me.”

We walked with him to the chair, though Horemheb mumbled to himself, “Truth lies in my spear.” The porters set off at a trot to where the boat awaited us alongside the landing stage. We returned as we had come, unobserved, though the people stood packed outside the palace walls.

We were allowed to enter the prince’s room, and he showed us big Cretan jars upon which were painted fish and other creatures. Word came that the Queen Mother was on her way to make her obeisance to him, so he gave us leave to go, promising to remember us both. When we had left him, Horemheb said to me in perplexity, “I am at a loss. I have nowhere to go.”

“Stay here with an easy mind,” I counseled him. “He promised to remember you, and it is as well to be at hand when he does. The gods are capricious and quickly forget.”

“Stay here and buzz around with these flies?” he demanded, pointing to the courtiers who were swarming at the prince’s door. “No, I have good reason to be uneasy,” he went on somberly. “What is to become of an Egypt whose ruler is afraid of blood and believes that all nations and languages and colors are of equal merit? I was born a warrior, and my warrior sense tells me that such notions bode ill for such a man as I.”

We parted, and I bade him ask for me at the House of Life if ever he needed a friend.

Ptahor was waiting for me in our room, red eyed and irritable.

“You were absent when Pharaoh drew his last breath at dawn,” he growled. “You were absent, and I slept; and neither of us was there to see Pharaoh’s soul fly from his nostrils straight into the sun, like a bird.”

I told him what had happened that night, and he raised his hands in great astonishment.

“Ammon keep us! Then the new Pharaoh is mad.”

“I think not,” said I doubtfully. “I think he has knowledge of a new god. When his head has cleared, we may see wonders in the land of Kem.”

“Ammon forbid! Pour me out some wine, for my throat is as dry as roadside dust.”

Shortly after this we were conveyed under guard to a pavilion in the House of Justice, where the Keeper of the Seal read the law to us from a leather scroll and told us that we must die since Pharaoh did not recover after his skull had been opened. I looked at Ptahor, but he only smiled when the executioner stepped forward with his sword.

“Let the stancher of blood go first,” he said. “He is in a greater hurry than we are, for his mother is already preparing pease pottage for him in the Western Land.”

The stancher of blood took a warm farewell of us, made the holy sign of Ammon, and knelt meekly on the floor before the leather scrolls. The executioner swung his sword in a great arc above the head of the condemned man, till it sang in the air, but stopped short as the edge just touched the back of his neck. But the blood stancher fell to the floor, and we thought he had swooned from terror, for there was not the smallest scratch upon him. When my turn came, I knelt without fear; the executioner laughed and touched my neck with his blade without troubling to frighten me more. Ptahor considered he was too short to be required to kneel, and the executioner swung his sword over his neck, too. So we died, the law was accomplished, and we were given new names engraved in heavy gold rings. In Ptahor’s ring was written “He Who Is Like a Baboon” and in mine “He Who Is Alone.” Then Ptahor’s present was weighed out to him in gold and mine also, and we were clad in new robes. For the first time I wore a pleated robe of royal linen and a collar heavy with silver and precious stones. When the servants tried to lift the blood stancher and revive him, they found him stone dead. I saw this with my own eyes and can vouch for its truth. But why he died I do not know, unless from the mere expectation. Simple though he may be, a man who can arrest the flow of blood is not like other men.

Henceforth, being officially dead, I could not sign my name as Sinuhe without adding He Who Is Alone, and at court I could be known by no other name.

When I went back to the House of Life in my new clothes and with the gold ring on my arm, my teachers bowed before me. Yet I was still a pupil and had to write a detailed account of Pharaoh’s operation and death, attesting it with my name. I spent much time over this and ended with a description of the soul of Pharaoh flying from his nostrils in the shape of a bird and passing straight into the sun. Later I had the satisfaction of hearing my report read to the people on each of the seventy days during which Pharaoh’s body was being prepared for immortality. During the whole of this period of mourning all pleasure houses, wine shops, and taverns in Thebes were closed so that to buy wine or hear music one had to enter by the back door.

But when these seventy days had passed, I learned that I was now a qualified physician and might start to practice in whatever quarter of the city I chose. If on the other hand I preferred to pursue my studies in one or other of the special branches—among the dentists or ear doctors, for instance, or the obstetricians, layers-on-of-hands, surgeons, or in any other of the fourteen different subjects in which instruction was given at the House of Life—I need only choose my branch. This was a special mark of favor, testifying how amply Ammon rewarded his servants.

I was young, and the learning in the House of Life no longer absorbed me. I had been seized with the fever of Thebes; I desired wealth and fame; I desired to profit by the period of my fame among the people. With the gold I had received I purchased a small house on the outskirts of the fashionable quarter, furnished it according to my means, and bought a slave-a scraggy fellow with one eye, but good enough for me. His name was Kaptah. He assured me that his one eye was my good fortune, for now he could tell my would-be patients in the waiting room that he had been stone blind when I had bought him and that I had given him back partial sight. I had pictures painted on the walls of the waiting room. In one of these Imhotep the Wise, the god of doctors, was shown giving me instruction. I was painted small before him, as the custom is, but below the picture was an inscription that ran thus:

Wisest and most skillful of thy disciples
is Sinuhe, Son of Senmut, He Who Is Alone.

Another picture showed me making sacrifice to Ammon, that I might be seen to do him honor and win the confidence of my patients. But in a third, great Pharaoh looked down upon me from the heavens in the shape of a bird, while his servants weighed out gold for me and clothed me in new robes.

I commissioned Thothmes to do these paintings for me although he was not an authorized artist and his name did not appear in the book in the temple of Ptah. But he was my friend, and because of his work those who looked upon the pictures for the first time raised their hands in astonishment, saying, “In truth he inspires faith, this Sinuhe, son of Senmut, He Who Is Alone, and will surely cure all his patients by his skill.”

When all was ready, I sat down to await the sick. I sat for a long time, but none came. In the evening I went to a wine shop, having still a little gold and silver left from Pharaoh’s gifts. I was young and fancied myself a clever doctor; I had no misgivings about the future and together with Thothmes made good cheer over my wine. In loud voices we discussed the affairs of the Two Kingdoms, for everywhere—in the market, before the merchants’ houses, in the taverns and pleasure houses—such matters were vigorously debated by all at this time.

It had come to pass as the old Keeper of the Seal had foretold. When the body of great Pharaoh had been made proof against death and attended to its resting place in the Valley of the Kings, where the doors of the tomb had been sealed with the royal seal, the Queen Mother ascended the throne bearing in her hands the scourge and the crook. Upon her chin was the beard of sovereignty and the lion’s tail was about her waist. The heir was not yet crowned Pharaoh, and it was said that he desired to purify himself and perform his devotions to the gods before he assumed power. But when the Queen Mother dismissed the old Keeper of the Seal and raised Eie, the unknown priest, to honor at her right hand so that he surpassed in rank all the illustrious men of Egypt—then the temple of Ammon hummed like a beehive, there were ill omens, and misfortune attended the royal sacrifices. The priests interpreted many strange dreams that men had had. Winds veered from their usual quarter against all the laws of nature, and there was rain for two days running in the land of Egypt. Merchandise standing at the wharves suffered damage, and grain rotted. Certain pools on the outskirts of Thebes were turned to blood, and many went to see them. But the people were not yet afraid, for such things had happened in every age when the priests were angered. Though there was unrest and much empty talk, the mercenaries at the barracks—Egyptians, Syrians, Negroes, and Shardanas—were given lavish presents by the Queen Mother, and good order was maintained. The might of Egypt was undisputed; in Syria it was upheld by the garrisons, and the princes of Byblos, Smyrna, Sidon, and Gaza—who in their childhood had dwelt at Pharaoh’s feet and grown up in the golden house—mourned his death as if he had been their father, and wrote letters to the Queen in which they declared themselves dust beneath her feet.

The King of the land of Mitanni, in Naharani, sent his daughter as a bride to the new Pharaoh as his father had done before him and as had been agreed with the celestial Pharaoh before his death. Tadukhipa, for such was her name, arrived in Thebes with servants and slaves and asses laden with merchandise of great value. She was a child just six years old, and the prince took her to wife, for the kingdom of Mitanni was a wall between the wealth of Syria and the lands of the north, and guarded the caravan routes all the way from the land of the twin rivers to the sea. Rejoicing ceased among the priests of Sekhmet, the celestial daughter of Ammon, and the hinges of her temple gates were rusted fast.

It was of this we spoke, Thothmes and I; we rejoiced our hearts with wine as we listened to Syrian music and watched the dancing girls. The fever of the city was in my blood; yet each morning my one-eyed servant came to my bedside deferentially and brought me bread and a salt fish and filled my beaker with ale. Then I would wash myself and sit down to await my patients, to listen to their woes and to heal them.

It was floodtime. The waters had risen as high as to the temple walls, and when they sank again, the land sprouted forth in tender green, birds built their nests, and lotus flowers blossomed in the pools amid the perfume of acacias. One day Horemheb came to my house and greeted me. He was dressed in royal linen with a gold chain about his neck. In his hand he carried a whip denoting that he was an officer in Pharaoh’s household. But now he held no spear.

“I come for counsel, Sinuhe the Lonely,” said he.

“What can you mean? You are as strong as a bull and as bold as a lion. There is nothing a doctor can do for you.”

“I ask you as a friend not as a physician,” he said sitting down. Kaptah poured water over his hands, and I offered him cakes my mother Kipa had sent me and wine from the harbor, for my heart rejoiced at the sight of him.

“You have been promoted then. You are now an officer of the household and no doubt the light of all women’s eyes.”

His face darkened. “And what filth it all is! The palace is full of flies that blow on me. The Theban streets are hard and hurt my feet, and my sandals chafe them sore.”

He kicked off the sandals and rubbed his toes. “I am an officer in the bodyguard, yes—but some of the officers are ten-year-olds whose side locks are still unshorn, and because of their high birth they laugh at me and mock me. Their arms have not strength to draw the bowstring, and their swords are gold and silver toys; they might cut meat with them but never strike down an enemy. The soldiers drink and lie with the household slave girls and are without discipline. In the military school they read outdated treatises—they have never seen war or known hunger and thirst or fear of the enemy.”

He rattled the chain about his neck impatiently and went on. “What are chains and honors when they are won not in battle but in prostrations before Pharaoh? The Queen Mother has tied a beard to her chin and girded herself with the tail of a lion, but how can a warrior look up to a woman as his chief? In the days of the great Pharaohs the warrior was a man not altogether despised, but now the Thebans look upon his profession as the most contemptible of all and shut their doors to him. I waste my time. The days of my youth and strength trickle away while I study the arts of war under those who would turn and fly at the mere sound of a Negro war cry. By my falcon! Soldiers are made upon the field of battle and nowhere else, and they are tried in the clash of arms. I will stay here no longer!”