by Mika Waltari
I do not think it can have been easy for my father to humble himself before them. All his life he had been a poor man’s physician in the poor man’s quarter-a stranger to the temple and the House of Life-and now like other penniless fathers he had to wait in line outside the administrative department until it should please some holiness or other to receive him. I can see these poor fathers now, squatting in the temple courtyard in their best robes, dreaming ambitious dreams for their sons, for whom they coveted a better existence than their own. Many of them had come a long way on river boats, carrying their food with them. They spent their substance on bribes to doorkeeper and clerk for the privilege of a word with a gold-embroidered, perfumed, and anointed priest, who wrinkled his nose at the smell of them and gave them harsh words. And yet-Ammon stands in continual need of new servants. The greater his wealth and power, the greater the numbers of scribes he wears out in his service. However, there is not a father who does not regard it as a divine favor for his son to be received into the temple-ay, though in bringing the boy he brings a gift more precious than gold.
My father was fortunate in his visit, for noon had scarcely passed when his old fellow student Ptahor came by. In the course of time Ptahor had become skull opener to Pharaoh’s household. My father ventured to address him, and he promised to honor our house in person and inspect me.
The day being fixed, my father saved up for a goose and the best wine. Kipa baked-and nagged. A luscious odor of goose fat floated out into the street till blind men and beggars gathered there to sing and play for their share of the feast. Kipa, hissing with rage, charged out with a bit of bread dipped in the fat for each of them and sent them packing. Thothmes and I swept the street from our door far into the city. My father had asked Thothmes to be at hand when the guest came, in the hope that he also might be favored with the great man’s attention. Boys though we were, when my father lit the censer and set it to perfume the entrance way, we felt as awestruck as if we had been in a temple. I guarded the can of scented water and kept the flies off the dazzling white linen cloth Kipa had set aside for her own burial, but which was now brought forth as a towel for Ptahor.
We had long to wait. The sun set, and the air grew cooler. The incense in the porch all burned away, and the goose sizzled sorrowfully in the roasting pit. I grew hungry, and Kipa’s face lengthened and stiffened. My father said nothing but would not light the lamps- when darkness fell. We all sat down on stools in the porch and avoided one another’s eyes, and it was then I learned what bitter grief and disappointment the rich and mighty in their thoughtlessness can bring upon the poor.
But at last there came the glow of a torch along the street. My father jumped up and hastened to the kitchen for an ember to light both the lamps. I raised the water pitcher in trembling hands while Thothmes breathed heavily beside me.
Ptahor, the opener of royal skulls, arrived unpretentiously in a chair borne by two Negro slaves and preceded by a fat torchbearer who was evidently drunk. With puffings and cheerful cries of greeting Ptahor stepped from the chair to hail my father, who bowed and stretched forth his hands at knee level. The guest laid his hands on Senmut’s shoulders, either to show him that ceremony was needless or to steady himself. Thus supported he kicked at the torchbearer and told him to sleep it off under the sycamore. The Negroes, without waiting for orders, dumped the chair in the acacia bushes and squatted on the ground.
Still leaning on my father’s shoulder, Ptahor stepped into the porch, where I poured water over his hands despite his protests. When I handed him the linen cloth, he said, that as I had rinsed his hands I might now dry them. When I had done this, he thanked me and said I was a handsome boy. My father led him to the seat of honor-a chair with a back, borrowed from the spice merchant-and he sat down, his inquisitive little eyes peering about him in the light of suet lamps. For a time there was silence. Then, clearing his throat apologetically, he asked for something to drink as the long journey had made him dry. My father, delighted, poured out wine for him.
Ptahor sniffed at it and tasted it suspiciously, then emptied the cup with evident enjoyment and gave a contented sigh.
He was a bowlegged, shaven-headed little man with a breast and belly that sagged beneath the thin robe. His collar, set with precious stones, was now soiled like the rest of his dress, and he smelled of oil, wine, and sweat.
Kipa served him with spice cakes, small fish fried in oil, fruit, and roast goose. He ate politely though it was clear that he had just come from a good meal, and he tasted and praised every dish to Kipa’s great delight. At his desire I took beer and food to the Negroes, but they returned the courtesy by shouting insults and asking whether old swagbelly was ready to go. The servant snored beneath the sycamore, and I had no wish to wake him.
The evening grew extremely confused, as my father, too, drank more than I had ever seen him do, so that at last Kipa, sitting in the kitchen, was overcome with woe and sat rocking back and forth with her head in her hands. When the pitcher was empty, they drank father’s medicinal wine. When that was gone, they started upon ordinary table beer; for Ptahor assured us that he was not particular.
They talked of their student days in the House of Life, swaying and embracing each other as they sat. Ptahor related his experiences as royal skull surgeon, affirming that it was the last branch in which any physician should specialize, being more suited to the House of Death than the House of Life. But there was little work attached to it, and he had always been lazy, as Senmut the Tranquil would certainly remember. The human head-except for the teeth, ears, and throat, which required their own specialists-was in his view the simplest thing to study, and so he had chosen it.
“But,” said he, “if I had had any decency I should have remained what I was: an honest physician bringing life to his patients. As it is,, my lot is to deal out death when kinsfolk grow weary of the old or the incurable. I should be like you, friend Senmut-poorer perhaps, but leading a more honest, a more wholesome life.”
“Never believe him, boys!” said my father-for Thothmes was sitting with us now and held a small wine cup in his hand. “I am proud to call Pharaoh’s skull borer my friend; in his own line he is the most highly skilled in all Egypt. Do I not remember the prodigious trepanning operations by which he saved the lives of mighty and humble alike and astonished the world? He releases evil spirits that drive men to madness and takes their round eggs from men’s brains.
Grateful patients bestow gold and silver upon him, chains and drinking cups.”
“But grateful kinsfolk have done more,” put in Ptahor thickly. “For if by chance I heal one in ten, one in fifteen-no, let us say one in a hundred-so much more certain is the death of the others. Have you heard of a single Pharaoh who lived three days after his skull had been opened? No, the mad and incurable are put under my flint knife and the richer and more illustrious, the quicker they come. My hand releases men from pain, divides inheritances-land, cattle, and gold-my hand raises Pharaohs to the throne. Therefore they fear me, and none dares speak against me, for I know too much. But what increases knowledge increases sorrow, and I am a most unhappy man!”
Ptahor wept a little and blew his nose on Kipa’s shroud.
“You are poor but honest, Senmut,” he sobbed. “Therefore, I love you, for I am rich and rotten-rotten-a lump of ox dung upon the road.”
He took off his jeweled collar and hung it about my father’s neck, and then they began to sing songs whose words I could not understand though Thothmes listened with interest and told me that riper songs were not to be heard even in barracks. Kipa began to weep loudly in the kitchen. One of the Negroes came over from the acacia bushes, lifted Ptahor in his arms and would have carried him to his chair, for it was long after bedtime. But Ptahor struggled and uttered pitiful cries, called upon the watchmen to help him and vowed that the Negro meant murder. As my father Vas of no help, Thothmes and I drove the Negro off with sticks until he flew into a rage and went, swearing violently and taking comrade a
nd chair with him.
Ptahor now emptied the beer jug over himself, asked for oil to rub on his face, and tried to bathe in the pool. Thothmes whispered to me that we ought to get the old men into bed, and so it came about that my father and the royal skull surgeon fell asleep on Kipa’s bed with arms about each other’s necks, slobbering oaths of eternal friendship to the last.
Kipa wept and tore her hair and sprinkled herself with ash from the roasting pit. I was tormented by the thought of what the neighbors would say, for the roaring and racket had sounded far and wide into the still night. Thothmes was placid, however, for he had seen wilder doings in barracks and in his father’s house when the charioteers talked of the old days and of the punitive expeditions into Syria and the land of Kush. He contrived to quiet Kipa, and after we had cleared away the traces of the feast as best we could, we, too, went to bed. The servant snored on beneath the sycamore, and Thothmes lay down beside me in my bed, put his arm about my neck, and talked about girls for he also had drunk wine. But I found this wearisome, being a year or two younger than he, and soon fell asleep.
Early in the morning I was awakened by bumping and sounds of movement in the bedroom, and on entering I saw my father still sound asleep in his clothes with Ptahor’s collar about his neck. Ptahor was sitting on the floor holding his head in his hands and asking in a woeful voice where he was.
I greeted him respectfully and told him that he was still in the harbor quarter, at the house of Senmut the physician. This quieted him, and he asked for beer in the name of Ammon. I pointed out to him that he had emptied the beer jug over himself, as his robe testified. He then rose, drew himself up with a dignified frown, and went out. I poured water over his hands, and he bowed his bald head with a groan, bidding me pour water over that, too. Thothmes, who had also awakened, brought him a can of sour milk and a salt fish. When he had eaten, he grew more cheerful. He went out to the sycamore where the servant lay sleeping and began to beat him with his stick till the fellow woke and stood up, his garment stained from the grass and his face earthy.
“Miserable swine!” cried Ptahor and smote him again. “Is it thus you mind your lord’s affairs and bear the torch before him? Where is my chair? Where is my clean robe? And my medicinal berries? Out of my sight, contemptible thief and swine!”
“I am a thief and my lord’s swine,” said the servant meekly. “What are my lord’s commands?”
Ptahor gave him his orders, and he went off to look for the chair. Ptahor settled himself comfortably under the sycamore, leaned against the trunk, and recited a poem concerning morning, lotus flowers, and a queen bathing in the river, and then related to us many things that boys love to hear. Kipa meanwhile awoke, lit the fire, and went in to my father. We could hear her voice right out in the garden, and when my father emerged later in a clean robe, he looked sorrowful indeed.
“You have a handsome son,” said Ptahor. “He carries himself like a prince, and his eyes are gentle as a gazelle’s.” Young as I was, I understood that he spoke thus to make us forget his behavior of the night before. After a while he went on, “Has your son talent? Are the eyes of his soul as open as those of his body?”
Then Thothmes and I fetched our writing tablets. The royal skull surgeon, gazing abstractedly into the topmost branches of the syca more, dictated a little poem, which I still remember. It ran thus:
Rejoice, young man, in thy youth,
For the throat of age is filled with ashes
And the body embalmed smiles not
In the darkness of the grave.
I did my best, first writing it down in ordinary script and then in pictures. Lastly I wrote the words “age,” “ashes,” “body,” and “grave” in all the ways in which they can be written, both in syllables and letters. I showed him my tablet. He found not one mistake, and I knew that my father was proud of me.
“And the other boy?” said Ptahor, holding out his hand. Thothmes had been sitting apart, drawing pictures on his tablet, and he hesitated before handing it over, though there was mirth in his eyes. When we bent forward to look, we saw that he had drawn Ptahor fastening his collar about father’s neck, then Ptahor pouring beer over himself, while in the third picture he and my father were singing with their arms round each other’s shoulders-such a funny picture that you could see what manner of song it was that they were singing. I wanted to laugh but dared not for fear that Ptahor might be angry. For Thothmes had not flattered him; he had made him just as short and bald and bandy and swagbellied as he really was.
For a long time Ptahor said nothing but looked keenly from the pictures to Thothmes and back again. Thothmes grew a little scared and balanced nervously on tiptoe. At last Ptahor asked, “What do you want for your picture, boy? I will buy it.”
Thothmes, crimson in the face, replied, “My tablet is not for sale. I would give it-to a friend.”
Ptahor laughed.
Good. Let us then be friends, and the tablet is mine.”
He looked at it attentively once more, laughed, and smashed it to pieces against a stone. We all started, and Thothmes begged forgiveness if he had offended.
Am I wroth with water when it reflects my image?” returned Ptahor mildly. “And the eye and the hand of the draftsman are more than water-for I know now how I looked yesterday, and I do not desire that others shall see it. I smashed the tablet but acknowledge you as an artist.”
Thothmes jumped for glee.
Ptahor turned to my father and, pointing to me, solemnly pronounced the ancient oath of the physician: “I will undertake his treatment.”
Pointing then to Thothmes he said, “I will do what I can.” And, having thus come into doctors’ talk again, they both laughed contentedly. My father, laying his hand upon my head, asked, “Sinuhe, my son, will you be a physician like me?”
Tears came into my eyes, and my throat tightened till I could not speak, but I nodded in answer. I looked about me, and the garden was dear to me; the sycamore, the stone-set pool-all were dear to me.
“Sinuhe, my son,” he went on. “Will you be a physician more skilled than I, better than I-lord of life and death and one to whom all, be they high or low, may entrust their lives?”
“Neither like him nor like me!” broke in Ptahor. He straightened himself, and a shrewd glint came into his eye. “A true physician, for that is the mightiest of all. Before him Pharaoh himself stands naked, and the richest is to him one with the beggar.”
“I would like to be a real physician,” I said shyly, for I was still a boy and knew nothing of life nor that age ever seeks to lay its own dreams, its own disappointments, on the shoulders of youth.
But to Thothmes Ptahor showed a gold ring that was about his wrist and said, “Read!”
Thothmes spelled out the characters there inscribed and then read aloud uncertainly, “ ‘A full cup rejoiceth my heart.’“ He could not repress a smile.
“There is nothing to laugh at, you rascal!” said Ptahor gravely. “This has nothing to do with wine. If you are to be an artist you must demand that your cup be full. In the true artist Ptah reveals himself-the creator, the builder. The artist is more than a reflecting pool. Art indeed may often be nothing but flattering water or a lying mirror, yet the artist is more. So let your cup never be less than full, son, and do not rest content with what men tell you. Trust rather to your own clear eyes.”
He promised that I should soon be summoned as a pupil to the House of Life and that he would try to help Thothmes enter the art school in Ptah’s temple, if such a thing were possible.
“But, boys,” he added, “listen carefully to what I say and then forget it at once-or forget at least that it was the royal skull surgeon who said it. You will now fall into the hands of priests; you, Sinuhe, will become one yourself in course of time. Your father and I were both initiated into the lowest grade, and no one may follow the physician’s calling without being so initiated. When you come among them, be wary as jackals and cunning as serpents, that you be not blinde
d and misled. But outwardly be as harmless as doves, for not until the goal js attained may a man appear as he is. Remember!”
We conversed further until Ptahor’s servant appeared with a hired chair and fresh clothes for his master. The slaves had pawned Ptahor’s own chair at a neighboring brothel and were still sleeping there. Ptahor gave his servant authority to redeem both chair and slaves, took leave of us, assuring my father of his friendship, and returned to the fashionable quarter of the city.
But next day he sent a present to Kipa-a sacred scarab carved from a precious stone, to be placed next her heart beneath the shroud at her burial. He could have given my mother no greater joy, and she forgave him everything and ceased lecturing my father Senmut upon the curse of wine.
BOOK 2
The House of Life
1
In Thebes in those days all higher education was in the hands of the priests of Ammon, and it was not possible to study for an important post without a certificate from them. As everyone knows, the Houses of Life and of Death had stood for untold ages within the temple walls, and also the theological schools for priests in the higher grades. That the faculties of mathematics and astronomy should be subordinate to the priesthood can be understood, but when both juridical and mercantile training were taken over, misgivings arose in the minds of the more alert among the educated classes that the priests were meddling with matters that concerned Pharaoh and the taxation department alone. Initiation was not, indeed, indispensable to membership in the merchants’ and lawyers’ guilds, but as Ammon controlled at least a fifth of the land of Egypt, and therefore also of its commerce, those who wished to become merchants on a large scale or enter the administration found it wise to qualify for the lowest grade of priesthood and submit themselves as the faithful servants of Ammon.
Before I might set foot in the House of Life I had to pass the examination for admission to the lowest grade of priesthood in the theological faculty. This took me more than two years, for at the same time I had to accompany my father on his visits to the sick and from his experience gain knowledge that would profit me in my future career. I lived at home as before but had to attend one lecture or another every day.
