In the third year the plague came to Syria, for this follows ever in the wake of war, being engendered in any place where great numbers of rotting corpses are heaped together. The whole of Syria was but one huge, open grave. Whole races died out so that their speech and customs fell into oblivion. Pestilence slew those whom the fighting had spared. Within the armies of both Horemheb and the Hittites it claimed so many victims that warfare ceased and the troops fled into the mountains or the desert, where the scourge could not follow. This plague was no respecter of persons: high and low, rich and poor were its victims, nor was there any known remedy. Those who sickened lay down on their couches, drew a cloth over their heads, and most often died within three days. Such as survived bore terrible scars in armpit and groin, where the pestilent humors were forced out during recovery.
The disease was as capricious in sparing as in slaying. It was not always the strongest and healthiest who survived, but often the weak and starving, as if in these it had found too little to feed on. In tending patients, I came at last to let as much blood from them as I dared and to forbid them food so long as the sickness lasted. I cured many in this way, but a like number died under my hands, and I could not be sure that this treatment was correct. Yet I was compelled to do something for them, that they might retain their faith in my arts. A sick man who loses faith in his recovery and his physician’s skill dies more easily than one who believes in them. My treatment was better than many others since it was at any rate cheap for the patient.
Ships carried the plague to Egypt, but fewer died there. It lost its virulence, and the number of those who survived exceeded that of the dead. It disappeared from the land that same year with the rising of the waters. In the winter it departed from Syria also, enabling Horemheb to muster his troops again and continue the war. The following spring he crossed the mountains into the plain before Megiddo and defeated the Hittites in a great battle. When Burnaburiash of Babylon saw the successes of Horemheb, he took fresh courage and remembered his alliance with Egypt. He sent his troops into what had been the land of Mitanni and drove the Hittites from their grazing grounds in Naharani. When the Hittites perceived that the devastated country of Syria was now beyond their grasp, they offered peace, being wise warriors and thrifty men, unwilling to hazard their chariots for empty glory when they needed them to quiet Babylon.
Horemheb rejoiced at this peace. His forces had dwindled, and the war had impoverished Egypt. He desired to build up Syria and its trade and so draw profit from the land. He agreed to make peace on condition that the Hittites yield Megiddo, which Aziru had made his capital and which he had fortified with impregnable walls and towers. Therefore, the Hittites took Aziru prisoner, and having confiscated the immense wealth he had amassed there from all over Syria, they handed him over with his wife and two sons in chains to Horemheb. They then plundered Megiddo and drove the flocks and herds of Amurru northward out of the country, which by the terms of peace was now under Egypt’s control.
Horemheb did not quibble at this. Having brought the fighting to an end, he held a banquet for the Hittite princes and chiefs and drank wine with them all night, boasting of his prowess. On the following day he was to execute Aziru and his family before the assembled troops, in token of the eternal peace that should thereafter prevail between Egypt and the land of Hatti.
I would not partake of his banquet but made my way in the darkness to the tent where Aziru lay in chains. I went to Aziru because in the whole of Syria he now had no friend. A man who has lost all his possessions and is condemned to an ignominious death never has any friends. I knew that he dearly loved life, and I hoped to persuade him, by all that I had seen of it, that it was not worth living. I desired to assure him as a doctor that death is easy, easier than life’s torments, sorrows, and sufferings. Life is a searing flame, death the dark waters of oblivion. I desired to say all this to him because he was to die the following morning and would be unable to sleep because he loved life so dearly. If he would not listen to me, I thought to sit silently beside him, that he might not lie alone. A man may live without friends, perhaps, but to die without one friend is hard indeed-hardest of all after a life of kingship.
He and his family had been brought in a shameful manner to Horemheb’s camp, where the soldiers mocked him and cast mud and horse droppings on him. I avoided him then and covered my face with my garment. He was an exceedingly proud man and would not have wished me to see his degradation since I had once beheld him in the days of his majesty and power. I now went in darkness to his tent, and the guards said one to another, “Let us admit him, for he is Sinuhe the physician and his errand must be lawful. If we forbid him, he will revile us or by witchcraft deprive us of our manhood. He is malignant, and his tongue stings more fiercely than a scorpion.”
In the darkness of the tent I said, “Aziru, King of Amurru, will you receive a friend on the eve of your death?”
Aziru sighed deeply, his chains rattled, and he replied, “I am a king no longer and have no friends-but is it indeed you, Sinuhe? I know your voice even in the dark.”
“It is I.”
“By Marduk and all the devils of the underworld! If you are Sinuhe, bring a light. I am weary of lying in the darkness; I shall have enough of that by and by. The accursed Hittites have torn my clothes and crushed my limbs in torture so that I am no pretty sight. Yet as a physician you must be accustomed to worse ones, and I am not ashamed, for in the face of death it is not worth while to blush for one’s wretchedness. Bring a light that I may see your face and put my hand in yours. My liver aches, and water runs from my eyes because of my wife and my boys. If also you can fetch some strong beer to moisten my throat, I will rehearse all your good deeds tomorrow in the kingdom of death. I cannot pay for even a mouthful, for the Hittites have robbed me of my last copper piece.”
I bade the guards bring a suet lamp and light it, for the acrid smoke of torches stung my eyes. They also brought a jar of beer. Aziru rose up groaning to a sitting posture, and I helped him put the reed to his mouth, that he might suck up the Syrian beer, which is muddy with husks and malt. His hair was matted and gray, and his splendid beard had been torn when the Hittites tortured him, and great patches of skin had come away with it. His fingers were crushed, his nails black with blood, and his ribs broken so that he groaned as he breathed, and he spat blood.
When he had drunk and spat sufficiently, he gazed at the flame of the lamp and said, “How clear and gentle is that light to my weary eyes, now that I have lain so long in darkness. The flame flickers and will die-and so also does the life of man flicker and die. I thank you, Sinuhe, for the lamp and the beer, and I would willingly make you a gift in return. You know well enough that I have no more presents to give, for my Hittite friends in their rapacity have broken the very teeth you gilded.”
It is easy to be wise after the event, and I would not remind him that I had warned him against the Hittites. I took his crushed hand in mine and held it, and he bowed his proud head and wept, so that the tears fell on my hands from his bruised and swollen eyes.
He said, “I rejoiced and laughed before you unashamed in the days of my glory; why then in sorrow should I be ashamed of my tears? Know, Sinuhe, that I do not weep for myself or for my riches and my crowns, although I have ever clung greedily to power and to this world’s goods. I weep for my wife Keftiu-for my big, handsome son-and for my little, little son-because they also must die tomorrow.”