The Egyptian Read Free Page A

heed to them and chatted freely to one another of their own affairs throughout the ceremony. I gazed at the warlike pictures on the temple walls and marveled at the gigantic columns, failing altogether to understand my mother’s emotion when with tear-filled eyes she led me home. There she took off my baby shoes and gave me new sandals that were uncomfortable and chafed my feet until I grew used to them.
    After the meal my father, with a grave look upon his face, laid his big, clever hand on my head and stroked with shy tenderness the soft locks at my temple.
    “Now you are seven years old, Sinuhe, and must decide what you want to be.”
    “A warrior!” I said at once, and was puzzled by the disappointed look on his good face. For the best games the street boys played were war games, and I had watched soldiers wrestle and perfect themselves in the use of arms in front of the barracks and had seen plumed war chariots race forth on thundering wheels to maneuvers outside the city. There could be nothing nobler or grander than a warrior’s career. Moreover, a soldier need not be able to write, and this was what weighed most with me, for older boys told terrible tales of how diflicult the art of writing was and of how mercilessly the teachers pulled the pupils’ hair if they chanced to smash a clay tablet or break a reed pen between their unskilled fingers.
    It is likely that my father was never a notably gifted man, or he would surely have become something more than a poor man’s doctor. But he was conscientious in his work and never harmed his patients and in the course of years had become wise through experience. He knew already how touchy and self-willed I was and made no comment on my resolve.
    Presently, however, he asked my mother for a bowl, and going to his workroom, he filled the vessel with cheap wine from a jar.
    “Come, Sinuhe,” he said, and he led me out of the house and down to the river bank. By the quay we stopped to look at a barge from which stunted porters were unloading wares sewn up in matting. The sun was setting among the western hills beyond the City of the Dead, but these serfs toiled on, panting and dripping with sweat. The overseer stung them with his whip while the clerk sat placidly beneath his awning, checking off each bale on his list.
    “Would you like to be one of those?” asked my father.
    I thought this a stupid question and gaped at him without answering. No one wanted to be like the porters.
    “They labor from early morning till late at night,” said Senmut. “Their skins have coarsened like a crocodile’s; their fists are gross as crocodile’s feet. Only when darkness falls can they crawl to their miserable huts, and their food is a scrap of bread, an onion, and a mouthful of thin, bitter beer. That is the porter’s life, the ploughman’s life, the life of all who labor with their hands. Do you think they are to be envied?”
    I shook my head, still looking at him in wonder. It was a soldier I desired to be, not a porter, a scratcher of the soil, a waterer of the fields, or a dung-caked shepherd.
    “Father,” I said as we went on, “soldiers have a fine time. They live in barracks and eat good food; in the evening they drink wine in the pleasure houses, and women smile at them. The leaders among them wear golden chains about their necks although they cannot write. When they return from battle, they bring with them booty and slaves who toil and follow trades to serve them. Why shouldn’t I strive to become a warrior, too?”
    My father made no answer but hastened his step. Near the big rubbish dump where flies buzzed in a cloud about us he bent down and peered into a low mud hovel.
    “Inteb, my friend, are you there?”
    Out crawled a verminous old man leaning on a stick. His right arm had been lopped off below the shoulder, and his loincloth was stiff with dirt. His face was dried and wizened with age, and he had no teeth.
    “Is—is that Inteb?” I gasped, looking at