I soon noticed that I was asking too many questions, for people began to look at me askance, and those who had come after me were set in authority over me. Then I took off my white robe, cleaned myself. * A deben weighs approximately 314 ounces. and left the House of Life, taking with me two silver rings that together weighed four deben.
5
When I left the temple-a thing I had not done for years-I saw that while I had been working and studying Thebes had changed. I noted it as I walked along the Avenue of Rams and through the markets. There was restlessness everywhere; people’s dress had become more elaborate and costly so that one could no longer distinguish men from women by their wigs and pleated skirts. From wine shops and pleasure houses came shrill Syrian music; foreign speech was heard in the streets, where Syrians and wealthy Negroes rubbed shoulders with Egyptians unabashed. The wealth and power of Egypt were immeasurable; for centuries past no enemy had entered its cities, and men who had never known war had reached middle age. But I cannot tell whether the people were any happier on this account, for their eyes were restless, their movements hurried, and they seemed always to be waiting impatiently for some new thing and could not be content with the day that was passing.
I walked alone along the streets of Thebes with a heavy and rebellious heart. On coming home, I found that my father Senmut had aged; his back was bent, and he could no longer distinguish written characters. My mother Kipa was old also; she panted as she moved and talked of nothing but her grave. For with his savings my father had bought a tomb in the City of the Dead on the west bank of the river. I had seen it: it was a handsome tomb built of mud bricks with the usual inscriptions and pictures on the walls, and all about it were hundreds and thousands of similar graves that the priests of Ammon sold to honest, thrifty folk at a high price-a price they paid to obtain immortality. I had written out a death book to be laid in their tomb so that they should not go astray on the long journey: a fine, fairly written book, though not adorned with colored pictures like those sold in the book court of Ammon’s temple.
My mother gave me food, and my father asked about my studies, but beyond this we found nothing to say to each other; the house was strange to me, as were the street and the people in the street. My heart grew heavier still until I remembered the temple of Ptah and Thothmes who had been my friend and was to become an artist. I thought: I have four deben of silver in my pocket. I will seek out my friend
Thothmes, that we may rejoice together and make merry with wine, for I shall find no answer to my questions.
So I took leave of my parents, saying that I must return to the House of Life, and shortly before sunset I found the temple of Ptah. Having learned from the porter where the art school lay, I entered and inquired for the student Thothmes; only then did I hear that he had been expelled long ago. The students spat upon the ground before me when they spoke his name, because the teacher was present; when he turned his back, they counseled me to go to a tavern called the Syrian Jar.
I found this place; it lay between the poor quarter and the rich and had an inscription over the door praising the wine from Amnion’s vineyard and also that from the harbor. Inside there were artists squatting on the floor drawing pictures while an old man sat in sad contemplation of the empty wine bowl before him.
“Sinuhe, by all the potters’ wheels!” cried someone, rising to greet me with his hands lifted in wonder. I recognized Thothmes, though his shoulder cloth was dirty and tattered and his eyes were bloodshot and there was a big bump on his forehead. He had grown older and thinner, and there were lines at the corners of his mouth, but his eyes still held that cheerful, impudent, irresistible glint, and he bent forward till our cheeks touched. I knew then that we were still friends.
“My heart is heavy,” I said to him. “All is vanity, and I have sought you out so that we may rejoice our hearts with wine-for no one answers when I ask why.”
Thothmes lifted his apron to show that he lacked the means to buy wine.
“I carry four deben of silver on my wrists,” said I with pride. Thothmes then pointed at my head, which was still shaven because I wanted men to know that I was a priest of the first grade: it was all I had to be proud of. But now I was vexed that I had not let my hair grow and said impatiently, “I am a physician, not a priest. I think I read over the door that wine from the harbor can be had here; let us see if it is good.”
Thothmes ordered mixed wine, and a slave came to pour water over our hands and set roasted lotus seeds on a low table before us. The landlord himself brought the brightly colored goblets. Thothmes raised his, spilled a drop on the ground, and said, “For the divine Potter! May the plague consume the art school and its teachers!” And he recited the names of those he hated most.
I also raised my goblet and let a drop fall on the ground.
“In the name of Ammon! May his boat leak to all eternity, may the bellies of his priests rupture, and may the pestilence destroy the ignorant teachers in the House of Life!” But I said this in a low voice and looked about me lest a stranger should overhear my words.
“Have no fear,” said Thothmes. “So many of Ammon’s ears have been boxed in this tavern that they have had enough of listening-and all of us here are lost already. I could not find even bread and beer if I had not hit upon the idea of making picture books for rich men’s children.”
He showed me the scroll he had been working on when I came. I could not help laughing, for there he had drawn a fortress defended by a quaking, terrified cat against the onslaught of mice, also a hippopotamus singing in a treetop while a dove climbed painfully up the tree by means of a ladder.
There was a smile in Thothmes’ brown eyes, but it faded as he unrolled the papyrus further and disclosed the picture of a bald little priest leading a big Pharaoh on a rope to the temple, like a beast of sacrifice. Next he showed me a little Pharaoh bowing before a massive statue of Ammon. He nodded at my questioning look.
“You see? Grown people laugh at the pictures, too, because they’re so crazy. It is ridiculous for a mouse to attack a cat or a priest to lead a Pharaoh-but those who know begin to reflect upon a number of things. Therefore, I shall not lack for bread and beer-until the priests have me clubbed to death in the street. Such things have happened.”
“Let us drink,” I said, and drink we did, but my heart was not gladdened. Presently I put my question to him. “Is it wrong to ask why?”
“Of course it is wrong, for a man who presumes to ask ‘why’ has no home nor resting place in the land of Kem. All must be as it has been-and you know it. I trembled with joy when I entered the art school-I was like a thirsty man who has found a spring, a hungry man clutching at bread. And I learned many fine things…, Oh, yes. I learned how to hold a pen and handle a chisel, how to model in wax what will be hewn from stone, how stone is polished, how colored stones are fitted together, and how to paint on alabaster. But when I longed to get to work and make such things as I had dreamed of, I was set to treading clay for others to handle. For high above everything stands the convention. Art has its convention no less than writing, and he who breaks with it is damned.
“From the beginning of time it has been laid down how one should represent a standing figure and how a sitting one, how a horse lifts his hooves, how an ox draws a sled. From the beginning the technique has been fixed; whoever departs from it is unfit for the temple, and stone and chisel are denied him. O Sinuhe, my friend, I, too, have asked why-and only too often. That is why I sit here with bumps on my head.”
We drank and grew merry, and my heart lightened as if a boil in it had been lanced, for I was no longer alone.
“Sinuhe, my friend, we have been born into strange times. Everything is melting-changing its shape-like clay on a potter’s wheel. Dress is changing, words, customs are changing, and people no longer believe in the gods-though they may fear them. Sinuhe, my friend, perhaps we were born to see the sunset of the world, for the world is already old, and twelve hundred years have passed since the building of the pyramids. When I think of this, I want to bury my head in my hands and cry like a child.”