When the officers heard this they looked at one another and spat on the ground. Then, since there was nothing more they could do, they returned to our men.
While these high councils were in progress, the people pressed forward on the retreating Negroes, wrenching up stones from the street and hurling them, swinging their pestles and broken boughs and shouting. The crowd was very great, and men exhorted one another with yells. Many Negroes felled by stones lay on the ground in their own blood. The horses went wild with the outcry ot the people and reared and shied so that the charioteers had much ado to hold them. When the commander of the chariots returned to his troop, he found that the best and most costly animal of all had had an eye knocked out and was lame in one leg, having been struck by a stone.
This made the man so savage that he began to howl with rage and cried, “My arrow of gold, my roebuck, my sunbeam! They have put out your eye and broken your leg-but in truth you are dearer to my heart than all these people and the gods put together. Therefore I will be revenged-but let us not shed blood, for that Pharaoh has expressly forbidden!”
At the head of his chariots he tore into the mob, and every charioteer snatched up the noisiest of the rebels into his chariot, while the horses trampled the aged and the children and the shouts were turned to groaning. But those whom the soldiers caught up they strangled in the reins so that no blood flowed; then they wheeled and drove back with the corpses trailing behind them to strike terror into the hearts of the people. The Nubians unstrung their bows, charged in, and strangled their victims with the bowstrings. They also strangled children, and defended themselves against stones and blows with their shields. But every painted Negro who became separated from his fellows was trampled underfoot by the rabble and torn to pieces. They succeeded in dragging down the driver from one chariot, and they smashed his head against the paving stones amid howls of frenzy.
The royal commander-in-chief Pepitaton grew uneasy as time passed, and the water clock beside him gurgled away, and the roar of the people met his ear like the rushing of a torrent. He summoned his officers and rebuked them for the delay, and he said, “My Sudanese cat Mimo is to kitten today; I am anxious about her because I am not there to help her. In the name of Aton go in and overturn that accursed statue that we may all go home, or by Set and all devils I will snatch the chains from your necks and break your whips; I swear it!”
When the officers heard this, they knew that they were betrayed, whatever the outcome, and they resolved at least to save their honor as soldiers. They re-formed their men and charged, hurling the people aside like chaff before a flood; the spears of the Negroes were reddened, blood flowed over the square, and a hundred times a hundred men, women, and children perished that morning in the name of Aton. For when the priests saw that the soldiers were attacking in earnest, they closed the pylon gates, and the people fled this way and that like stampeded sheep. Negroes drunk with blood pursued them and slew them with arrows, while the charioteers stormed though the streets transfixing every fugitive with their spears. But in their flight the people forced their way into the temple of Aton, overturned the altars, and slew such priests as they caught, and the pursuing chariots thundered in after them. Thus the stone pavement of Aton’s temple was soon running with blood and strewn with the dying.
But the walls of Ammon’s temple blocked the way for Pepitaton’s black troops, who were not accustomed to storming such defenses, nor did their battering rams avail to force the copper gates. The soldiers could do no more than encircle the temple, and from the walls the priests yelled imprecations upon them, and the temple guards let fly at them with their arrows and hurled their spears, so that many a painted Negro fell, and to no purpose. From the open place before the temple rose the thick reek of blood, and flies from all over the city gathered there in the billowing dust. Pepitaton came in his golden chair and turned gray in the face at the hideous stench; he bade slaves burn incense about him, and he wept and rent his clothes at the sight of the countless dead.
Yet his heart was full of uneasiness on account of Mimo the Sudanese cat, so he said to his officers, “I fear that Pharaoh’s wrath will be most terrible, for you have not overturned the image of Ammon, but instead the blood flows in streams along the gutters. I must hasten to Pharaoh to report on what has passed, and I shall try to speak on your behalf. At the same time I shall be able to call at my house, to see my cat, and change my clothes, for the smell here is fearful and soaks into the very skin. We cannot storm the temple walls today. Pharaoh himself must decide what is to be done now.”
Nothing further occurred that day. The officers withdrew their men from the walls and from among the dead, and they caused the supply wagons to be driven up that the Nubians might eat.
During the nights that followed, fires raged in the city, houses were rifled, painted Negroes drank wine from golden cups, and Shardanas lay in soft, canopied beds. All the dregs of the city slunk forth: thieves, tomb robbers, and footpads who had no fear of the gods, not even of Ammon. Piously they blessed the name of Aton and entered his temple, which had been hastily cleansed, receiving the cross of life at the hands of such priests as survived. They hung this about their necks as a protecting talisman which would enable them to steal, murder, and pillage at their ease under cover of night. Many years were to pass before Thebes reverted to what it had once been, for during these days power and wealth drained away from it like blood from a plethoric body.
3
Horemheb stayed at my house, sleepless and haggard. His eyes grew more somber every day, and he had no stomach for the food Muti repeatedly set before him. Muti, like many other women, was greatly taken with Horemheb and had more respect for him than for myself, who, learning or no learning, was nothing but a flabby- muscled man.
Horemheb said, “What do I care for either Ammon or Aton? But they have let my men run wild so that many backs must come under my lash and heads must fall before I can bring them to their senses. And this is a great pity, for they are good fighting men when disciplined.”
Kaptah grew richer every day, and his face shone with grease. He now spent his nights at the Crocodile’s Tail, for the officers and sergeants of the Shardanas paid for their drams with gold, and in the back rooms of the tavern lay ever growing heaps of stolen treasure, jewels and coffers and mats, which the customers gave in exchange for wine without asking about the price. No one attacked the house, and thieves walked wide of it, for it was guarded by Horemheb’s men.
By the third day my stock of medicines was exhausted, and it was impossible to buy more, even for gold. My arts were vain in the face of the disease that spread through the poor quarter from the corpses and foul water. I was tired, and my heart was like a wound in my breast, and my eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep. I was sickened with everything-with the poor, with wounds, with Aton-and I went to the Crocodile’s Tail where I drank mixed wine until I fell alseep.
In the morning Merit roused me; I was lying on her mat with her beside me. Deeply ashamed I said to her, “Life is like a cold night, but truly it is sweet when two lonely mortals keep one another warm, though their hands and eyes tell lies for the sake of their friendship.”
She yawned sleepily.
“How do you know that my hands and eyes are lying? I am weary of smiting soldiers over the fingers and kicking their shins; here by your side, Sinuhe, is the only safe place in the city-a place where no one will lay a hand on me. Why this should be I cannot tell, and I am a little offended, for I am said to be beautiful nor is there anything amiss with my belly, though you have not deigned to look at it.”
I drank the beer she offered me, to clear my aching head, and found nothing to say. She looked into my eyes with a smile, though in the depths of her brown ones sorrow lay still, like the dark waters at the bottom of a well.
She said, “Sinuhe, I would help you if I could, and I know that in this city there is a woman who owes you an immeasurable debt. In these days roofs are floors, and doors open outward, and payment for many old debts is demanded in the streets. Perhaps it would do you good also to go adunning and so lose the belief that every woman is a wilderness.”
I said that I had never believed this of her, but I went and her words remained with me, for I was but human. My heart was swollen with the sight of carnage, and I had tasted the frenzy of hatred so that I was afraid for myself. I remembered the temple of the cat and the house beside it though time had drifted like sand over these memories. But during the days of terror the dead rose from their graves and I remembered my father Senmut in his tenderness and my good mother Kipa; there was a taste of blood in my mouth as I thought of them. At this time no
