Minea went about the palace as if it were her own, leading me from room to room, crying out in pleasure at the sight of some object familiar to her, and greeting the servants, who returned her salutation as if she had never been away. I learned that any eminent Cretan could visit his country estates or set forth on a journey whenever the fancy took him, and though he forgot to mention it to his friends, no one would wonder at his absence. On his return he would join the rest again as if he had never been away. This habit must have softened the fact of death for them, for when anyone disappeared, no one inquired for him and he was forgotten. His absence from an appointment or a meeting or a reception caused no remark since he might have taken it into his head to do something else instead.
At length Minea took me to a room that was perched on a rock above the rest of the building. Its wide windows commanded a view over smiling fields and plowland, olive groves and plantations beyond the city. She told me that this was her room; all her possessions were there as if she had left it but yesterday, though the clothes and jewelry were now out of date and could no longer be worn. Only now did I learn that she was a kinswoman of Minos, though I should have guessed this from her name. Gold and silver and costly presents were meaningless to her since she had been accustomed from childhood to have whatever she desired. From childhood also she had been dedicated to the god and had been brought up in the house of the gods, where she lived when she was not staying at the palace, or with her old patron, or with friends. They are as casual in their dwelling places as in every other particular.
Next Minea took me to the house of the bulls, which was a city in itself, with stalls and arenas, meadows and paddocks, school buildings and priests’ houses. We went from stall to stall, breathing the rank smell of these beasts. Minea wearied not of calling them by pet names and enticing them, though they tried to gore her between the posts of the partitions, bellowing and pawing the sand with their sharp hoofs.
She met there boys and girls whom she knew, although these dancers were in general not friendly, being jealous of their skill and unwilling to impart their tricks to one another. But the priests who trained both bulls and dancers received us warmly, and when they heard that I was a physician, they asked me many questions concerning the digestion of bulls and their diet and the gloss of their coats, although they must have known more of these matters than I. Minea stood high in their favor and was at once allotted a beast and a place in the program for the following day; she was eager to display to me her proficiency with the very best beasts.
Finally Minea took me to a little building where the high priest of the Cretan god lived alone. Just as Minos was always named Minos, so was the chief priest always Minotauros, and for some reason he was the most venerated and dreaded man in Crete. His name was not willingly mentioned and he was referred to as “the man in the little bull house.” Even Minea feared to visit him though she would not confess this to me; I saw it from her eyes, whose every shade I had learned to know.
When we had been announced, he received us in a dim room. At first I fancied that we beheld the god himself and believed all the tales I had been told, for I saw a man with the golden head of a bull. When we had bowed before him, he removed this head and revealed his own face; nevertheless despite his courteous smile I did not like him, for there was in his expressionless face something of sternness and cruelty. I could not define what it was, for he was a handsome man, very dark and born to command. Minea had no need to tell him anything; he already knew of her shipwreck and her travels. He asked no unnecessary questions but thanked me for my good will to Minea and through her to Crete and its god. He told me that rich presents awaited me at my inn with which he fancied I should be well content.
“I am indifferent to presents,” I said. “Knowledge is of more value to me than gold, and to increase it I have journeyed in many countries so that I am now familiar with the gods of Babylon and of the Hittites. I hope to acquaint myself with the god of Crete, of whom I have heard much that is marvelous, and who loves virgins and pure boys in contrast to the gods of Syria, whose temples are pleasure houses and who are served by castrated priests.”
“We have a great number of gods whom the people worship,” he replied. “In the harbor there are temples to the glory of foreign gods, where you may make sacrifice to Ammon or the Baal of the port if you so desire. But I would not mislead you, and acknowledge that the might of Crete depends upon that god who has been worshiped in secret from as far back in time as our knowledge goes. The initiates alone may know him, and that only when they meet him face to face. No one has returned to tell us of his shape.”
“The gods of the Hittites are the heavens and the rain that falls from the heavens and fructifies the earth. The god of Crete I understand to be the god of the sea since the wealth and power of Crete derive from the sea.”
“Perhaps you are right, Sinuhe,” he said with a strange smile. “Know, however, that we Cretans worship a living god, differing herein from the people of the mainland who worship dead gods and images of wood. Our god is no image although bulls are accounted as his symbols, and as long as our god lives, so long endures the Cretan sovereignty of the seas. Thus it has been foretold, and we are assured of it though we also put great trust in our warships, with which no other seafaring nation can compete.”
“I have heard that your god dwells in the mazes of a dark mansion,” I persisted. “I would gladly see this labyrinth, of which I have heard much. But I do not understand why the initiates never return from it, though they have permission to do so when they have been there for the space of one moon.”
“The highest honor, the profoundest bliss, that can fall to the lot of an initiate is to enter the mansion of the god,” said Minotauros, repeating words I had heard countless times before. “Therefore the islands in the sea vie with one another in sending their fairest maidens and the flower of their young men to dance before the bulls so that they may take part in the drawing of lots. I do not know whether you have heard stories of the sea god’s mansions; life there is altogether different from that which we know so that no one who has entered it desires to return to the torment and sorrow of the world. How say you, Minea? Do you fear to enter?”
Minea made no reply and I said, “I have seen the bodies of seamen washed up on the beach at Smyrna; their faces and bellies were swollen, and no joy was reflected in their features. That is all I know of the mansions of the sea god, but I do not doubt your word, and I wish all good to Minea.”
Minotauros said coldly, “You shall see the labyrinth for the night of the full moon, is near, and upon that night Minea will enter the house of the god.”
“And if she refuse?” I demanded fiercely, for his words angered me and froze my heart with despair.
“Such a thing has never happened. Be easy, Sinuhe the Egyptian. When Minea has danced before the bulls she will enter the god’s house of her own free will.”
He donned the golden bull’s head once more as a signal that we might retire, and his face was hidden from us. Minea took my hand and led me away; she was no longer happy.
3
Kaptah was at the inn when I returned and had drunk copiously in the wine shops of the harbor. He said to me, “Lord, for servants this land is the Western Land; no one beats them or remembers how much gold was in his purse or what jewels he had. If a master be wroth with his servant and order him to leave his house, the servant has but to hide himself and return the following day when his master has forgotten the whole matter.”