their own cities, and he could not prevent them, for his authority was as yet insufficiently established.
One night two assassins entered his tent and wounded him with their knives but not mortally. He slew one, while his small son awoke and thrust his little sword into the back of the other so that he also died. On the following day Aziru called me to his tent and in terrible words accused me so that I was exceedingly frightened. Afterward we came to a final settlement. In Pharaoh’s name I made peace with him and with all the cities of Syria. Egypt was to retain Gaza, the routing of the free forces was to be left to Aziru, and Pharaoh reserved the right to buy the freedom of Egyptian prisoners and slaves. On these conditions we drew up a treaty of eternal friendship between Egypt and Syria. It was recorded on clay tablets and confirmed in the names of the thousand gods of Syria and the thousand gods of Egypt and also in the name of Aton. Aziru cursed in a hideous manner as he rolled his seal upon the clay, and I also tore my clothes and wept as I pressed my Egyptian seal on it. In our hearts we were well pleased. Aziru gave me many presents, and I promised to send many also, to him and to his wife and son, by the first ship to sail from Egypt under terms of peace.
We were in agreement when we parted; Aziru even embraced me and called me his friend. I lifted up his handsome boy, praised his valor and touched his rosy cheeks with my lips. Yet both Aziru and I knew that the treaty we had made in perpetuity was not worth the clay it was written on. He made peace because he was forced to, and Egypt because it was Pharaoh’s wish. Our peace hung in the air, a prey to every wind, since all depended on which way the Hittites would turn from Mitanni, on Babylon’s fortitude, and on the Cretan warships that protected the maritime trade.
Aziru at any rate began to dismiss his forces, and he furnished me with an escort to Gaza, issuing at the same time an order to the troops there to raise the profitless siege of that city. Yet I came near to death before ever I reached Gaza. When we drew near to its gates and my escort waved palm branches and shouted that peace had been made, the Egyptian defenders began to let fly their arrows at us and cast their spears, and I thought my last hour had come. The unarmed soldier who held his shield before me received an arrow in this throat and fell bleeding while his comrades fled. Terror paralyzed my legs, and I crouched beneath the shield like a tortoise, weeping and crying out most pitifully. When because of the shield the Egyptians could not get at me with their arrows, they poured down boiling pitch from huge jars, and the pitch ran seething and hissing along the ground toward me. By good fortune I was protected by some large stones so that I received only slight burns on my hands and knees.
At this spectacle Aziru’s men laughed until they fell down and then lay writhing on the ground with laughter. At last their commander ordered the horns to sound, and the Egyptians consented to let me into the city. They would open no gates but lowered a reed basket at the end of a rope, into which I must creep with my clay tablets and my palm branch, and so they hauled me up the wall.
I sharply rebuked the garrison commander for this, but he was a rough, obstinate man. He told me he had met with so much treachery among the Syrians that he did not intend to open the gates of the city without express orders from Horemheb. He would not believe that peace had been signed, although I showed him all my clay tablets and spoke to him in the name of Pharaoh; he was a simple, stubborn fellow. Yet but for his simplicity and stubbornness Egypt would assuredly have lost Gaza long before; therefore I have no right to reproach him too severely.
From Gaza I sailed back to Egypt. In case we should sight enemy ships I ordered Pharaoh’s pennant run up at the masthead, with all the signals of peace. At this the seamen were filled with contempt for me and said that a vessel so prinked and painted looked more like a whore than a ship. When we reached the river, the people gathered along the banks waving palm branches and praising me because I was Pharaoh’s envoy and the bringer of peace. Even the seamen began to respect me at last and forgot that I had been hauled up the walls of Gaza in a basket.
When I was once again in Memphis and Horemheb had read my clay tablets, he warmly commended my skill as a negotiator, to my great astonishment since he was by no means given to applauding any deeds of mine. I could not understand it until I learned that the warships of Crete had been ordered home. Gaza would soon have fallen into Aziru’s hands had war continued, for without sea communications the city was lost. Therefore Horemheb gave me high praise and made speed to send many ships to Gaza, laden with troops, arms, and provisions.
During my stay with King Aziru, King Burnaburiash of Babylon had sent an envoy to Memphis with his suite, bringing many gifts. I received him on board Pharaoh’s ship, which was there awaiting me, and we journeyed up the river together. The voyage was pleasant, for he was a venerable old man of profound learning, with a white, silky beard that hung to his breast. We conversed together of stars and sheeps’ livers and so lacked no topic for discussions, for one may talk all one’s life through of stars and livers without ever exhausting the theme.
We discussed affairs of state also, and I noted that he was deeply disturbed by the growing power of the Hittites. The priests of Marduk foretold that their power was to be limited and would endure less than a hundred years; they would then be annihilated by a savage white race from the West. This was little comfort to me since I was born to live during the period of their supremacy. I wondered how any people could come from the West, where there was no land save the islands in the sea. Nevertheless since the stars had spoken it I was persuaded of its truth, having met with so many marvels in Babylon that I more readily believed the stars than my own knowledge.
He had with him some of the finest mountain wine. As we rejoiced our hearts with it, he told me that signs and omens in ever increasing numbers presaged the end of an era. He and I were both aware that we were living in the sunset of the world and that night was before us. Many upheavals must occur, many people be swept from the face of the earth as the Mitannians had already been swept, and old gods die before the new gods are born and a new cycle begun. He inquired very eagerly about Aton, and he wagged his head and stroked his white beard when I spoke of him. He acknowledged that no other such god had ever revealed himself on earth and thought that this appearance now might well signify the beginning of the end; so dangerous a teaching as his had never been spoken before.
After a pleasant journey, we came to Akhetaton, and I seemed to myself to have grown in wisdom since leaving it.
3
During my absence Pharaoh’s headaches had returned, and anxiety gnawed at his heart because he was aware that everything he touched miscarried. His body glowed and burned in the fire of his visions and was wasting away. To hearten him, Eie the priest had decided to arrange a thirty-years festival for him that autumn, after the harvest when the waters had begun to rise. It mattered not at all that Pharaoh Akhnaton had reigned for very much less than thirty years since it had long been the custom for Pharaohs to celebrate that anniversary whenever they wished.
Great numbers of people had arrived at Akhetaton for the feast, and one morning when Akhnaton was walking beside the sacred lake, two assassins fell on him with knives. A young pupil of Thothmes was sitting on the bank making drawings of the ducks, for Thothmes made his pupils draw from life and not from patterns. This boy warded off the ruffians’ knives with his stylus until the guards had rushed up and overpowered them, and Pharaoh suffered no more than a wound in the shoulder. But the boy died, and his blood flowed over Pharaoh’s hands. Thus did death appear to Akhnaton. Amid the autumn glory of his garden he saw blood running over his hands. He watched death darken the eyes and slacken the jaw of the young boy, for Pharaoh’s sake.
I was summoned in haste to bind up Akhnaton’s wound, which was slight, and in this way I chanced to see the two assassins. One was shaven headed, and his face gleamed with sacred oil, and the ears of the other had been cut off for some shameful offense. As the guards bound them, they tore at their bonds, shouting hideous imprecations in the name of Ammon. They would not cease even when the guards struck them on the mouth until the blood flowed. Doubtless the priests had bewitched them so that they could feel no pain.
This was an alarming incident, for never yet had anyone dared to raise his hand openly against Pharaoh. Pharaohs may have died unnaturally before that time, but such deaths were not openly contrived. What was done was done secretly, by poison perhaps, or a thin cord, or by suffocation beneath a mat so as to leave no trace. Now and again also the skull of some Pharaoh had been opened against his will. But this was the first open assault, and it could not be hushed up.
