for small stakes only, and he mourned and bewailed his losses. When Horemheb laid siege to Joppa, Kaptah made the guard raise his stakes, and when a messenger brought news that Horemheb had breached the walls, Kaptah beggared his opponent so thoroughly in a few throws as to reverse the debt to the tune of some hundred thousand deben of gold. Kaptah was magnanimous, however, and forgave it. He bestowed new clothes on him and a handful or so of silver so that the old man wept for joy and blessed him as his benefactor.
I do not know whether or not Kaptah cheated and played with loaded dice. I know only that he played with great skill and unbelievable good fortune. The tale of this gamble for a stake of millions-a gamble that continued for many weeks-spread throughout Syria, and the old man, whose blindness soon returned to him, lived for the rest of his days in a little hut by the walls of Gaza. Travelers even from other cities would visit him, and he would tell them of the play. After the passage of years he could repeat the score at each throw, for the blind have good memories. But he was proudest when he spoke of the last throw of all by which he lost one hundred and fifty thousand deben of gold, for never had such high stakes been played for with dice. People brought him gifts to persuade him to tell his story, so that he suffered no want but lived in greater comfort than if Kaptah had pensioned him for life.
When Joppa fell, Kaptah went there in haste, and I with him. We saw for the first time that wealthy city in the hands of the conquerors. And though the boldest of its citizens had risen in revolt against Aziru and the Hittites when Horemheb stormed in, yet he would not spare it. For two weeks he allowed his men to plunder and despoil it. Kaptah amassed a huge fortune in this city, for the soldiers bartered priceless carpets and furniture and statues, and such things as they could not carry away, for silver and wine. A handsome, shapely Syrian woman could be had in Joppa for two copper rings.
It was here that I realized fully the brutality of man to fellow man. During this time of drunkenness, robbing, and burning, every kind of abomination was committed. The soldiers set fire to houses for their own. amusement, so that at night they could see to loot, to rape, and to torture merchants and force them to disclose where their treasure lay hid. There were those who diverted themselves by standing at a street corner and, with club or spear, taking the life of every Syrian who came by, whether men or women, children or the aged. My heart was hardened at the sight of man’s iniquity. All that had happened in Thebes on Aton’s account was trivial beside what was done in Joppa because of Horemheb. He gave his soldiers a free hand, to bind them more closely to himself. To avoid sharing the fate of Joppa, many of the cities along the coast drove out the Hittites from their midst.
I will speak no more of those days, for in recalling them my heart turns to stone in my breast and my hands grow cold. I say only that at the time of Horemheb’s attack there were in the city, besides Aziru’s garrison and the Hittite soldiery, nearly twenty thousand inhabitants. When he departed there were not three hundred left alive.
Thus did Horemheb wage war in Syria, and I went with him, dressing his men’s wounds and witnessing all the evil that one human being can do another. The war continued for three years, during which Horemheb defeated the Hittites and Aziru’s troops in many battles. Twice his own forces were surprised by Hittite chariot squadrons, which wrought great destruction and forced him to withdraw behind the walls of captured cities. He contrived to maintain sea communications with Egypt, and the Syrian fleet was never able to get the better of his own, which was now seasoned in war. He could always call up reinforcements from Egypt after his defeats, and gather strength for renewed thrusts. The cities of Syria were laid in ruins, and men hid themselves like wild beasts in the recesses of the hills. The whole region was laid waste, and ravaging hordes trampled the crops and broke down the fruit trees, that the enemy might not live off the land he claimed. Thus the wealth and man power of Egypt drained away, and Egypt was like a mother rending her garments and strewing ashes in her hair as she sees her children die. All along the river, from the Lower Kingdom to the Upper, there was no town, no village, no hovel that had not lost husbands and sons in Syria for the sake of Egypt’s greatness.
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 of 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
