“My father left no message?”
“He left no message, lord.”
Though my heart was a stone in my breast, my thoughts were serene as birds in cool air. Having reflected for a while, I said to Kaptah, “Give me all the copper and silver you have-give it to me quickly-and it may be that Ammon or some other god will reward you if I cannot. I must carry my parents to the House of Death, and I no longer have any means of paying for the embalming of their bodies.”
Kaptah began to weep and lament, but at last he went to a corner of the garden, looking this way and that as a dog does that has buried a bone. Lifting up a stone, he drew forth a rag in which he had knotted his silver and copper, less than two deben, though it was the savings of a lifetime. He gave me all of it, though with many tears; blessed be he, therefore, to all eternity.
I hastened to my father’s house, where I found the doors smashed and seals placed upon all that was within. Neighbors were standing in the garden; they raised their hands and shrank from me in horror, uttering no word. In the inner room Senmut and Kipa lay on their bed, their faces as rosy as when they were alive, and on the floor stood a still smoldering brazier in whose fumes they had perished, having tightly closed the shutters and the doors. I swathed their bodies in the shroud, heedless of the seals on it, and sought out a donkey driver, who agreed to carry away the bodies.
With his help I lifted them on to the ass’s back and brought them to the House of Death. But at the House of Death they would not take them, for I had not sufficient silver to pay for even the cheapest form of embalming.
Then said I to the corpse washers, “I am Sinuhe, the son of Senmut, and my name is inscribed in the Book of Life, though a hard destiny has deprived me of silver enough to pay for my parents’ burial. Therefore, I beseech you in the name of Ammon and of all the gods of Egypt; embalm the bodies of my parents, and I will serve you to the best of my skill for as long as it takes to complete their preservation.”
They swore at my stubbornness and cursed me, but at last the pox- eaten foreman accepted Kaptah’s money, hitched a hook under my father’s chin and slung him into the great bath. He did the same to my mother, throwing her into the same bath. There were thirty of these baths. Every day one of them was filled and one emptied so that the bodies of the poor lay for thirty days steeped in salt and lye to preserve them against death. Nothing more than this was done for them though I did not know it at the time.
I had to return to my father’s house with the shroud, which bore upon it the seal of the law. The foreman washer mocked me, saying, “Come back before tomorrow, or we will drag out the bodies of your parents and throw them to the dogs.”
By this I saw that he fancied me a liar and no doctor.
I returned stony hearted to my father’s house, though the crumbling mud bricks of its walls cried out to me, as did the sycamore in the garden and the pool of my childhood. Therefore, I turned swiftly away when I had put the covering back in its place, but in the doorway I met a scribe who plied his trade at a street corner by the spice dealer’s. He said, “Sinuhe, son of Senmut the Just-is it you?”
“It is L”
“Do not run from me, for I have a message to you from your father. He did not find you at your house.”
I sank to the ground and covered my head with my hands while the scribe brought out a paper from which he read aloud:
“I Senmut, whose name is inscribed in the Book of Life, and his wife Kipa send this greeting to our son Sinuhe, who in Pharaoh’s house was given the name He Who Is Alone. The gods sent you to us; throughout your life you have brought us only joy, and great has been our pride in you. We are grieved for your sake because you have met with reverses, and we have not been able to help you as we should have wished. And we believe that in all you did you were justified and could not help yourself. Do not grieve for us though you must sell our tomb, for assuredly you would not have done this without good reason. But the servants of the law are in haste, and we have no leisure to await our death. Death is as welcome to us now as sleep to the weary-as home to the fugitive. Our life has been long and its joys many, but the greatest joy of all we had of you, Sinuhe-you who came to us from the river when we were already old and solitary.
“Therefore, we bless you. Do not grieve because we have no tomb, for all existence is but vanity, and it is perhaps best that we should vanish into nothingness, without seeking to encounter further perils and hardships on that difficult journey to the Western Land. Remember always that our death was easy and that we blessed you before we went. May all the gods of Egypt protect you from danger, may your heart be shielded from sorrow, and may you find as much joy in your children as we have found in you. Such is the desire of your father Senmut and your mother Kipa.”
The stone of my heart was melted and flowed out in tears upon, the dust. The scribe said, “Here is the letter. It does not bear your father’s seal, nor could he see to write his name, but you will surely believe me when I tell you that I wrote it down word for word at his dictation; moreover, your mother’s tears have blurred the characters here and there.”
He showed me the paper, but my eyes were blinded by tears and saw nothing. Rolling it up he put it into my hand, and continued, “Your father Senmut was a just man and your mother Kipa a good woman-if rough-tongued at times, as is the way of women. So I wrote this for your father though he had not the smallest present to give me, and I will give the paper to you though it is good paper and could be cleaned and used again.”
I reflected for a little and then said, “Nor have I any present for you, most excellent man. Take my shoulder cloth, for it is of good stuff though now dirty and creased. May all the gods of Egypt bless you, and may your body be preserved forever, for even you do not know the merit of the deed you have done.”
He took the shoulder cloth and went, waving it above his head and laughing for joy. But I went to the House of Death clad only in a loincloth, like a slave or an ox driver, to serve the corpse washers for thirty days and nights.
4
As a physician I fancied I had seen all there was to see of death and suffering and had hardened myself to foul smells and the handling of boils and festering wounds. On beginning my service in the House of Death, I found I was a child and knew nothing. The poor, indeed, gave us but little trouble. They lay peacefully in their baths in the sharp smell of salt and lye, and I soon learned to handle the hook with which they were moved. But the bodies of those of the better class required more elaborate treatment, and to rinse out the entrails and put them in jars called for a hardened mind. Still more hardened must it be to witness Ammon’s plundering of the dead, exceeding that of the living. The price of embalming varied according to means, and the embalmers lied to the kindred of the dead, charging for many costly oils, salves, and preservatives that they vowed they used, though all was but one and the same sesame oil. Only the bodies of the illustrious were prepared with the full measure of skill. The others were filled with a corrosive oil that consumed the viscera, the cavity being then stuffed with reeds steeped in resin. For the poor not even this was done; after their removal from the basin on the thirtieth day they were allowed to dry and were then handed over to their relatives.