head! Because he fancies that Pharaoh listens to him, he ignores what others have to say.”
Yet when I thought of Thebes and Kaptah and the Crocodile’s Tail, I was filled with melancholy, and my heart was hungry with a hunger I could not assuage. I was growing bald beneath my wig and there were days when, forgetting my duties, I dreamed daydreams and walked the Babylonian roads again with my nostrils full of the smell of dried grain on earthen threshing floors. I noticed that I had put on weight and that my sleep was heavy and that I needed a carrying chair because even a short walk left me breathless, although formerly the longest distances could never so affect me.
But when autumn came again and the river rose and the swallows emerged from the slime of the river bed to dart restlessly in the air above, the health of Pharaoh’s daughter mended. She smiled and no longer felt the pains in her chest. My heart followed the swallows in their flight, and with Pharaoh’s leave I boarded a ship for Thebes. He bade me greet on his behalf all the river-side settlers among whom he had divided the land of the false god, and he sent greetings also to the schools he had founded and hoped to hear good tidings of them on my return.
I touched at many villages and summoned the elders to talk with me. The journey was more comfortable than I had hoped, for Pharaoh’s pennant fluttered at the masthead, my bed was soft, and there were no flies on the river. My cook followed me in the kitchen boat, and gifts were brought to him from all the villages so that I had no lack of fresh food. But when the settlers visited me, I saw that they were mere skeletons, their wives stared about them with terrified eyes, afraid of every sound, and the children were sickly and bowlegged. These people showed me their corn bins, which were less than half full, and the grain in them was speckled red as if it had been exposed to a shower of blood.
They said to me, “At first we thought that our failures were the result of ignorance since we had never tilled the soil before. We know now that the land Pharaoh divided among us is accursed, and he who cultivates it is accursed also. At night, unseen feet trample down our crops; unseen hands break the fruit trees we have planted. Our cattle perish without cause, our irrigation ditches are stopped up, and we find carrion in our wells so that even drinking water is lacking. Many have abandoned their land and returned to the towns poorer than they were before, reviling the name of Pharaoh and his god. But we have persevered, trusting to the magic cross and the letters Pharaoh has sent us. We hang these out on stakes in our fields as a protection against locusts. But Ammon’s magic is more powerful than the magic of Pharaoh. Our faith is failing us, and we mean to leave this noisome land before we all die as the wives and children of many have already done.”
I also visited their schools, and when the teachers saw the cross of Aton on my clothes, they hid their canes and made the sign of Aton, while the children sat cross legged on the threshing floors staring at me so fixedly that they neglected to wipe their noses.
The teachers said, “We know that there is no greater madness than the notion that every child should learn to read and write, but what would we not do for Pharaoh, whom we love and who is our father and our mother and whom we venerate as the son of his god? But we are learned men and it ill befits our dignity to sit on threshing floors, to wipe the noses of grimy children and draw ugly signs in the sand-for we have no tablets or reed pens- moreover these new characters can never reproduce all the wisdom and knowledge that, with great trouble and cost, we have acquired. Our salaries are irregularly paid, and the parents reward us very meagerly; their beer is weak and sour, and the oil in our jars is rancid. Yet we persist, to demonstrate to Pharaoh that it is impossible to teach all children to read and write, for only the best pupils whose heads are soft and receptive can learn.”
I tested their proficiency, with which I was far from satisfied. Still less pleased was I by their swollen faces and unsteady gaze, for these teachers were broken-down scribes to whom no one would give employment. They had accepted the cross of Aton for the sake of their livelihood.
The settlers and elders of the villages swore bitterly in the name of Aton and said, “Lord Sinuhe, speak for us to Pharaoh, and beg him at least to lift from us the burden of these schools, or we cannot long survive. Our boys come home black and blue from the beatings, and with torn locks, and these terrible teachers are insatiable as crocodiles. They eat us out of house and home, they extort our last coppers from us and the hides of our cattle to buy themselves wine. When we are out in the fields, they enter our houses and take pleasure with our wives, saying that this is the will of Aton in whose sight there is no difference between man and man or between woman and woman. Truly we desired no change in our lives, for if indeed we were poor in the cities, yet we were happy also. Here we see nothing but muddy ditches and lowing cattle. They were right who warned us, saying, ‘Beware of change: among the poor it must always be for the worse. Whatever changes are made in the world, be assured that with them the grain measure of the poor must dwindle and the oil sink in their jars.’“
My heart told me that they were right in what they said, and I would not dispute it but continued on my journey. I was filled with sadness on Pharaoh’s account and I marveled that all he touched he blighted so that the diligent grew lazy because of his gifts and only the worthless clustered about Aton like flies on a carcass. Then my heart was seized with a terrible suspicion: What if Pharaoh and the noble idlers about his court-even I myself during the past few years-were no more than parasites, vermin, fleas in a dog’s coat? The flea may fancy that the dog exists solely for the benefit of fleas and for their nourishment. Pharaoh and his god might be such fleas, giving much vexation and doing no good whatever since dogs are all the better for being free of vermin.
Thus my heart awoke after its long sleep, and it spurned the city of Akhetaton. I looked about me with fresh eyes, and nothing that I saw was good. But in this my eyes may have been distorted by the magic of Ammon, who in hidden ways governed the whole of Egypt, the City of the Heavens being the only place in the land over which he had no control. Where truth lay I cannot say, for although there are those who think always in the same manner and draw in their heads like tortoises at the hint of any new thing, yet my thoughts have ever been modified by what I have seen and heard. Many things have therefore influenced my thinking even when I have not understood them well.
I saw once more the three hills on the horizon, the eternal guardians of Thebes. The roof of the temple and its walls rose before my eyes, but the tips of the obelisks no longer blazed in the sunshine, for their gilding had never been renewed. Yet the sight of them was refreshment to my heart, and I poured wine into the waters of the Nile as seamen do who return after a long voyage-though their libation is of beer since they prefer to keep their wine, if any, for themselves. I saw again the great stone wharves of Thebes and caught the harbor smell: the smell of rotting grain and foul water, of spices and herbs and pitch.
When in the poor quarter I beheld the house that had been the copperfounder’s, it appeared to me exceedingly cramped and narrow, and the alley before it filthy, full of flies and stench. Nor did the sycamore in the court delight me although I had planted it myself and it had grown tall in my absence, so spoiled was I by the wealth and abundance of Akhetaton. I was sorrowful and ashamed because I could not rejoice over my home.
Kaptah was not there, but only my cook Muti, who exclaimed bitterly, “Blessed be the day that brings my lord home, but the rooms are not cleaned and the linen is in the wash and your arrival causes me much trouble and vexation, although I expect but little happiness from life in general. Yet I am not at all astonished at your sudden coming, for that is the way of men from whom nothing good is to be expected.”
I pacified her, telling her that I would sleep on board that night. Having asked for Kaptah I left her and was carried to the Crocodile’s Tail. Merit met me at the door and did not recognize me because of my fine clothes and my chair.
She said, “Have you reserved your place here for this evening? For if not I cannot allow you to enter.”
She had grown somewhat plumper, and her cheekbones were less sharp, but her eyes were the same save for a few lines about them.
My heart was warmed and laying my hand on her loins I said, “I can understand that you have forgotten me, for many must be the lonely, sorrowful men you have warmed on your mat-nevertheless I fancied I might find a seat in your house and a cup of chilled wine, even if I do not presume to think of that same mat.”
She cried out in astonishment, “Sinuhe, is it you? Blessed be the day that brings my lord home!”
She laid her strong, lovely hands on my shoulders and, scanning my face narrowly, went on, “Sinuhe, what have you been doing? If your solitude was once that of a lion, it is now that of a lapdog, and you are on a leash.” She took off my wig, stroked my bald head kindly, and went on. “Sit then, Sinuhe, and I will bring you chilled wine, for you are sweating and out of breath from your wearisome journey.”
I said anxiously, “On no account bring me a crocodile’s tail, for my stomach is no longer equal to that-to say nothing of my head.”
Stroking my knee, she mocked me, saying, “Am I already so old and fat and ugly that when you meet me for the first time for years you think only of your stomach? And you were never wont to fear headaches in my company-indeed, so eager were you for those crocodiles’ tails that I had to restrain you.”
