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 an 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.”
But he did not weep, for we were drinking mixed wine in brightly colored goblets, and each time the landlord of the Syrian Jar refilled them he bowed and stretched forth his hands at knee level. From time to time a slave came to pour water over our hands. My heart grew light as a swallow on the threshold of winter; I could have declaimed verse and taken the whole world into my arms.
“Let us go to a pleasure house,” said Thothmes laughing. “Let us hear music and watch girls dancing and gladden our hearts—let us not ask ‘why’ any more or demand that our cup be full.”
We walked along the streets. The sun had set, and I met for the first time that Thebes where it is never night. In this flaring, noisy quarter torches flamed before the pleasure houses, and lamps burned on columns at the street corners. Slaves ran here and there with carrying chairs, and the shouts of runners mingled with the music from the houses and the roarings of the drunk.
Never in my life had I set foot in a pleasure house,
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 an 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.”
But he did not weep, for we were drinking mixed wine in brightly colored goblets, and each time the landlord of the Syrian Jar refilled them he bowed and stretched forth his hands at knee level. From time to time a slave came to pour water over our hands. My heart grew light as a swallow on the threshold of winter; I could have declaimed verse and taken the whole world into my arms.
“Let us go to a pleasure house,” said Thothmes laughing. “Let us hear music and watch girls dancing and gladden our hearts—let us not ask ‘why’ any more or demand that our cup be full.”
We walked along the streets. The sun had set, and I met for the first time that Thebes where it is never night. In this flaring, noisy quarter torches flamed before the pleasure houses, and lamps burned on columns at the street corners. Slaves ran here and there with carrying chairs, and the shouts of runners mingled with the music from the houses and the roarings of the drunk.
Never in my life had I set foot in a pleasure house,
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