The Egyptian Read Online Free PDF

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 was 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 and 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 feel asleep.
    Early