The Egyptian Read Online Free PDF Page B

in the morning I was awakened by bumping and sounds of movement in the bedroom, and on entering I saw my father still sound asleep in his clothes with Ptahor’s collar about his neck. Ptahor was sitting on the floor holding his head in his hands and asking in a woeful voice where he was.
    I greeted him respectfully and told him that he was still in the harbor quarter, at the house of Senmut the physician. This quieted him, and he asked for beer in the name of Ammon. I pointed out to him that he had emptied the beer jug over himself, as his robe testified. He then rose, drew himself up with a dignified frown, and went out. I poured water over his hands, and he bowed his bald head with a groan, bidding me pour water over that, too. Thothmes, who had also awakened, brought him a can of sour milk and a salt fish. When he had eaten, he grew more cheerful. He went out to the sycamore where the servant lay sleeping and began to beat him with his stick till the fellow woke and stood up, his garment stained from the grass and his face earthy.
    “Miserable swine!” cried Ptahor and smote him again. “Is it thus you mind your lord’s affairs and bear the torch before him? Where is my chair? Where is my clean robe? And my medicinal berries? Out of my sight, contemptible thief and swine!”
    “I am a thief and my lord’s swine,” said the servant meekly. “What are my lord’s commands?”
    Ptahor gave him his orders, and he went off to look for the chair. Ptahor settled himself comfortably under the sycamore, leaned against the trunk, and recited a poem concerning morning, lotus flowers, and a queen bathing in the river, and then related to us many things that boys love to hear. Kipa meanwhile awoke, lit the fire, and went in to my father. We could hear her voice right out in the garden, and when my father emerged later in a clean robe, he looked sorrowful indeed.
    “You have a handsome son,” said Ptahor. “He carries himself like a prince, and his eyes are gentle as a gazelle’s.” Young as I was, I understood that he spoke thus to make us forget his behavior of the night before. After a while he went on, “Has your son talent? Are the eyes of his soul as open as those of his body?”
    Then Thothmes and I fetched our writing tablets. The royal skull surgeon, gazing abstractedly into the topmost branches of the sycamore, dictated a little poem, which I still remember. It ran thus:
Rejoice, young man, in thy youth,
For the throat of age is filled with ashes
And the body embalmed smiles not
In the darkness of the grave.
    I did my best, first writing it down in ordinary script and then in pictures. Lastly I wrote the words “age,” “ashes,” “body,” and “grave” in all the ways in which they can be written, both in syllables and letters. I showed him my tablet. He found not one mistake, and I knew that my father was proud of me.
    “And the other boy?” said Ptahor, holding out his hand. Thothmes had been sitting apart, drawing pictures on his tablet, and he hesitated before handing it over, though there was mirth in his eyes. When we bent forward to look, we saw that he had drawn Ptahor fastening his collar about father’s neck, then Ptahor pouring beer over himself, while in the third picture he and my father were singing with their arms round each other’s shoulders—such a funny picture that you could see what manner of song it was that they were singing. I wanted to laugh but dared not for fear that Ptahor might be angry. For Thothmes had not flattered him; he had made him just as short and bald and bandy and swagbellied as he really was.
    For a long time Ptahor said nothing but looked keenly from the pictures to Thothmes and back again. Thothmes grew a little scared and balanced nervously on tiptoe. At last Ptahor asked, “What do you want for your picture, boy? I will buy it.”
    Thothmes, crimson in the face, replied, “My tablet is not for sale. I would give it—to a friend.”
    Ptahor