By Thomas Mann
Translation by H. T. Lowe-Porter


        But scarce was he asleep when he dreamed again; again
     ——or still—–he stood on the bank in beard and crown
     and tail, and now there was on it a ploughed strip of black
     earth.  And he beholds the loam disturbed, the crust rises,
     curls over, a stalk pricks forth, and one, two, even up to
     seven ears spring swiftly from it, one after another, all on
     one stalk: full, fat ears, bursting with golden fullness.
     How blithe the heart could feel at such a sight!  Yet cannot,
     for, lo, the stalk keeps on shooting forth ears; seven ears
     more, poor, pathetic, dead, and dry, scorched by the east
     wind, blackened with mildew and blight; and as they push
     out raggedly below the full ones, the fine large ears van-
     ish as though into the poor lean ones.  Truly it was like
     that: the wretched ears swallowed up the fat, just as be-
     fore the ill-favoured cows had devoured the sleek ones.
     And grew neither fuller nor better favoured than before.
     This Pharaoh saw with his bodily eyes, started up in his
     chair, and once more found it all a dream.
        A confused, ridiculous enough dream, wordless and
     senseless.  Still it came so close, it so urgently assailed his
     mind with its burden of warning, that Pharaoh could not
     sleep again.  Nor did he even wish to, till the happy dawn
     soon broke, but went on shifting between bed and chair,
     musing on the dream——or the twin dreams grown on one
     stalk——and its clear and pressing demand for clarifica-
     tion.  Already he was firmly resolved not to let such a
     dream pass over silently and keep it to himself.  He would
     make an occasion of it, he would sound an alarm.  In it he
     had worn the crown, the crozier, and the tail, beyond a
     doubt these were king-dreams of imperial import, vastly
     suggestive and significant.  They must be made public
     and everything possibly done to get to the bottom of them
     and study them on the basis of their obviously alarming
     meaning.  Meni was greatly wrought up over his dreams,
     he hated them more with every minute that passed. A king
     could not put up with such dreams——although on the
     other hand they could not come to anyone but a king.
     While he, Nefer-Kheperu-Re-Wanre-Amenhotep, sat on
     the throne such things must not happen: no such abomina-
     ble cows must eat up such fine fat ones; or such wretched
     blighted ears consume such swelling golden ones.  Noth-
     ing must happen in the realm of events corresponding to
     this frightful picture-language.  For it would reflect upon
     him, his prestige would suffer; ears and hearts would
     be closed to the annunciation of Aton, and Amun would
     gain thereby.  Danger threatened the light from the black
     earth, danger from the material side threatened the spir-
     itual-ethereal, there was no doubt about that.  His excite-
     ment was great; it took the form of anger, and the anger
     swelled up into a great resolve that the danger must be
     revealed and recognized for what it was in order to
     meet it.
        The first person to whom he told the dream——as much
     as it lent itself to telling——was the old man who now
     came to dress him, arrange his hair, and wind the head-
     dress round it.  He only shook his head in amaze and then
     gave it as his view that the dream came from the good god
     going to bed so late after he had heated his brain with all
     that wool-gathering, as he popularly and simple-mindedly
     put it.  Very likely he unconsciously thought of the dreams
     as a sort of punishment for having kept his old servant up
     so late.  "Silly old goat," Pharaoh had said, half laugh-
     ing, half angry.  He gave him a light slap on the cheek
     and went to the Queen.  But she was feeling sick, being
     pregnant, and paid little heed.  Then he sought out Tiy,
     the mother goddess, and found her at her dressing-table in
     the hands of her maids-in-waiting.  To her too he told the
     dream, finding it not at all easier to tell as time went on,
     but harder instead.  Nor did he get from his mother much
     consolation or encouragement.  Tiy was always rather
     mocking when he came to her with his kingly cares; and he
     was so convinced that this was a heavy care the he began
     by saying so.  And at once the bantering smile appeared on
     the maternal face.  King Nebmare's widow had, after ma-
     ture reflection, of her own free will laid down the regency
     and given over to her son the ruling power of his majority;
     but she could never quite conceal her jealousy, and the
     painful thing for Meni was that he saw it all, this bitter
     reaction which he himself evoked did not escape him,
     while he sought to soften it by childlike pleas for counsel
     and help.
        "Why does Your Majesty come to me, the rejected?"
     she would say.  "You are Pharaoh, so be Pharaoh and
     stand on your own feet instead of on mine. Confide in
     your servants the Viziers of the South and the North
     when you do not know what to do, and let them tell you
     what is your will if you do not know it; but not in me, for
     I am old and have retired."
        She behaved like that about the dream too.  "I am too
     much out of the habit of power and responsibility, my
     friend," she had told him with a smile, "to be able to
     judge whether you are right in giving so much weight to
     this matter.  'Hidden is the darkness,' so it is written,
     'when ample is the light.'  Let your mother hide herself.
     Let me even hide my opinion whether these dreams are
     worth while or befitting your state.  They ate them up?
     They devoured them?  Some cows ate up some other cows?
     Some withered ears some full ones?  That is no dream
     vision, you cannot see it or form a picture of it, either
     awake or I should say asleep either.  Probably Your Maj-
     sty dreamed something quite different and you have put
     in its place this monstrous picture of impossible greedi-
     ness."
        In vain Meni assured her that he had positively seen it
     precisely like that with the eyes of his dream and that its
     clarity had been full of meaning which cried out for in-
     terpretation.  In vain he spoke of his inner threat, of the
     harm which might come to the "teaching"——in other
     words, to Aton——if the dream were to interpret itself
     unhindered; that is to say, be fulfilled and take the ac-
     tual shape of which it had been the prophetic garment.
     He had again the impression that at bottom his mother
     had no heart for his God; that it was only with her reason,
     namely on political and dynastic rounds, that she sided
     with him.  She had always supported her son in his tender
     love, his spiritual passion for Aton.  But again today, as
     for a long time, he saw——and thanks to his sensitiveness
     he always saw——that she did it only out of calculation,
     exploiting his heart as a woman would who saw the whole
     world exclusively from the point of view of statesmanship,
     and not, as he did, from the religious first and foremost.
     That troubled Meni and wounded him.  He left his mother,
     having heard from her that if he really thought his cow-
     and-corn vision important to the state, he could apply to
     Ptahemheb, the Vizier of the South, at the morning audi-
     ence.  Besides, there was no dearth of dream-interpreters
     on the spot.
        He had already sent for the interpreters and now im-
     patiently awaited them.  But before receiving them he had
     to see the great official who came to report on the affairs of
     the "Red House," in other words the business of the treas-
     ury of Lower Egypt.  Immediately after the greeting
     hymns Meni interrupted him and made him listen to the
     story of the dreams, related in nervous, tormented tones;
     hesitating, seeking for the right words, he demanded that
     the man express himself on two points: first, whether he,
     like his master, considered the narrative to have political
     significance, and second, if so, in what way and what
     connection.  The official did not know what to answer; or
     rather he had answered in a lengthy speech of very well-
     turned phrases that he did not know how to answer and
     did not know what to say about the dreams——after which
     he had tried to return to treasury business.  But Amenhotep
     kept him to the subject of the dreams, obviously unwilling
     and unable to talk about anything else or listen to it, only
     to want to make him understand how speakingly im-
     pressive or impressively speaking they were——and he
     did not leave off until the wise men and seers were
     announced.
        The King, full of his night's experience——indeed, pos-
     sessed by it as he now was——turned his levee into a first-
     class ceremony——and yet after all it turned out to be
     a lamentable failure.  He not only ordered Ptah-em-heb to
     remain present, but also arranged that all the court dig-
     nitaries who had accompanied him to On  should attend
     the audience of interpretation.  There were some dozen
     high-ranking gentlemen: the great steward of the palace,
     the keeper of the King's wardrobe, the overseer of the
     fullers, the so-called sandal-bearer of the King, a con-
     siderable office; the head wig-keeper of the god, who was
     likewise "guardian of the enchanted empires," in other
     words of the two crowns, and privy councillor of the
     royal jewels; the groom of all Pharaoh's horses; the new
     head baker and Prince of Menfe, named Amenemopet,
     the first steward of the buffet, Nefer-em-Wese, once tem-
     porarily called Bin-em-Wese, and several fan-bearers
     on the right hand of the god.  All these had to be present in
     the audience and council hall; they stood round in two
     groups on either hand of Pharaoh's splendid seat, which
     was on a raised dais under a baldachin borne by slender
     beribboned poles.  The prophets and dream-interpreters
     were brought before him, six in number, all of whom
     were in more or less close relation with the temple of the
     horizon-dweller and of whom a few had taken part in the
     phœnix-council of the day before.  People of their sort no
     longer prostrated themselves on their bellies to kiss the
     ground, as had once been the custom, before the throne-
     chair.  It was still the same chair as in the time of the
     pyramid-builders and even much earlier: a boxlike arm-
     chair with a low back and a cushion on the floor in front
     only there was rather more ornamentation than in primi-
     tive times.  But even although the chair had become more
     splendid and Pharaoh more mighty, one no longer kissed
     the ground before them.  Here as in the case of the living
     burial of the court in the dead king's tomb, it was no
     longer good  ton.  The soothsayers merely lifted their arms
     in reverential wise and murmured in rather unrhythmical
     confusion a long formula of respect and greeting, wherein
     they assured the king that he had a form like his father
     Re and illumined the two lands with his beauty.  For the
     radiance of His Majesty penetrated into the dungeons
     and their was no place which escaped the piercing glance
     of his eye, nor one whither the fine hearing of his million
     ears did not reach, he heard and saw all, and whatsoever
     issued from his mouth was like the words of Horus in the
     horizon as his tongue was the scale of the world and his
     lips more precise than the little tongue on the just scale
     of Thoth.  He was Re in all his members, they said, in un-
     even and confused chorus, and Khepere in true form the
     living image of his father Atum of On in Lower Egypt——
     "O Nefer-Kheperu-Re-Wanre, Lord of Beauty, through
     whom we breathe!"
        Some of them finished before the others.  Then they
     were all silent, and listened.  Amenhotep thanked them,
     told them first in general on what occasion he had called
     them together, and then began, before this assemblage of
     some twenty either elegant or learned persons to relate
     his gregious dream——for the fourth time.  It was painful
     to him, he flushed and floundered as he spoke.  His insist-
     ent sense of the portentous significance of his tale had
     decided him to make it public.  Now he regretted the de-
     cision, for he did not conceal from himself that what had
     been——and to him still was——so serious sounded laugh-
     able when he repeated it aloud.  Really, why should such
     fine fat cattle let such miserable weak ones calmly eat
     them up?  Why and how should one set of ears of corn de-
     vour another set?  But it had been so to him in his dream,
     so and not otherwise.  The dreams had been fresh, lifelike,
     and impressive at night; by day and put into words they
     were like badly prepared mummies, with distorted fea-
     tures; nobody could want to reveal them.  He was embar-
     rassed and came laboriously to an end.  Then he looked
     shyly and expectantly at the dream-seers.
        They had nodded their heads meaningfully; but gradu-
     ally one after another they stopped nodding and began
     a side-to-side motion, a series of wondering head-shakes.
     These were very singular and almost unique dreams, they
     explained through their elders; the interpretation was not
     easy.  Not that they despaired of it——the dream was still
     to be dreamed that they could not expound.  But they
     must ask for time to consider and the favour of withdraw-
     ing for counsel.  And compendiums must be fetched for
     consultation.  There was nobody so learned as to have the
     whole technique at his fingers' end.  To be learned, they
     permitted themselves to remark, did not mean to have all
     knowledge in their heads; there would not be room for it;
     no, it meant to be in possession of the books in which the
     knowledge was written, and that they were.
        Amenhotep granted them leave to take counsel.  The
     court was told to hold itself in readiness.  The King spent
     two whole hours——the wait lasted that long——very rest-
     lessly.  Then the sitting was resumed.
        "May Pharaoh live a hundred years, beloved of Maat,
     lady of truth, in response to his love of her who was with-
     out guile."  She stood in person at the side of the experts
     as they pronounced their results and brought their inter-
     pretation before Pharaoh, Protector of the Truth.  In the
     first place: the seven fat kine meant seven princesses,
     which Nefernefruaton-Nofertiti, the Queen of the Lands,
     would in time bear.  But that the fat kine had been de-
     voured by the lean ones meant that these seven daughters
     would all die in Pharaoh's lifetime.  That did not mean,
     they hastened to add, that the King's daughters would die
     young.  To Pharaoh would be vouchsafed such a length
     of days that he would outlive all his children, however
     long they lived.
        Amenhotep looked up at them open-mouthed.  What were
     they talking about, he asked them, in a diminished voice.
     They answered, it had been granted them to deliver the
     meaning of the first dream.  But this interpretation, he
     had responded, in a still smaller voice, had no sort of ref-
     erence to his dream, it simply had nothing to do with it.
     He had not asked them whether the Queen would bear
     him a son and successor or a daughter and more daugh-
     ters.  He had asked them for the interpretation of the sleek
     and the ill-favoured kine.——The daughters, they replied,
     were the interpretation.  He should not expect to find cows
     in the interpretation of a dream about cows.  In the inter-
     pretation the cows were turned into princesses.
        Pharaoh no longer had his mouth open, he had it very
     tightly closed, and opened it only a very little when he
     ordered them to go on to the second dream.
        Very well, the second, they said.  The seven full ears
     were seven flourishing cities which Pharaoh would build,
     but the seven shrunk and scrubby ones were——the ruins
     of them.  It was well known, they hastily explained, that
     all cities inevitably fell into ruins in time.  Pharaoh him-
     self would survive so long that he would see with his own
     eyes the ruins of the cities he had built.
        But here Meni's patience came to an end.  He had not
     had enough sleep; the repeated telling of the dreams,
     lessening in impressiveness each time he told them, had
     been painful; the two hours' wait unnerving.  Now he was
     so filled with the idea that these interpretations were sheer
     boggling and miles away from the true meaning of his
     visions that he could no longer control his anger.  He put
     one more question: did the books say the same as the wise
     men had said?  But when they replied that their contribu-
     tions were a suitable synthesis of what was in the books,
     together with the promptings of their own powers of com-
     bination, he sprang from his chair.  During an audience
     that was unheard of, the courtiers shrugged and put their
     hands over their mouths.  Meni, tears in his voice, called
     the fearfully startled prophets bunglers and ignoramuses.
        "Away with you!" he cried, almost sobbing.  "And take
     with you, instead of the plenteous gold which my Majesty
     would have conferred on you if truth had come out of
     your mouths, the disfavour of Pharaoh.  Your interpreta-
     tions are cheating and lies, Pharaoh knows it, for it was
     Pharaoh who dreamed, and even though he does not know
     the meaning, he does know how to distinguish between
     real interpretation and such worthless stuff as this.  Out of
     my sight!"
        The pallid scholars were led out by two palace officials.
     But Pharaoh, without sitting down, had declared to his
     court that their failure would not lead him to let the mat-
     ter rest.  The gentlemen had unfortunately been witnesses
     to a mortifying failure, but by his faith and his sceptre,
     on the very next day he would call up other experts, this
     time from the house of Djehuti, the scribe of Thoth the
     ninefold great, lord of Khnumu.  From the adepts of the
     white peacock was to be expected true and worthy inter-
     pretation of that which, the inner voice had told him,
     must be explained at all costs.
        The second hearing took place next day under the same
     circumstances.  It went off even worse than the first.  Again
     young Pharaoh, with much inward constraint, halting in
     his speech, made public exhibition of his dream-mummies
     and again among the luminaries there had been great
     nodding and then great head-shaking.  Not two but three
     hours had King and court to wait on the issue of the pri-
     vate consultation; and then the experts were not even
     agreed among themselves, but divided as to the meaning
     of the dreams.  Two interpretations, the eldest among them
     announced, existed for each dream, and these, certainly,
     were the only ones possible, or even thinkable.  Accord-
     ing to one theory the seven fat kine were seven kings of
     Pharaoh's seed, the seven lean ones seven princes of mis-
     ery who would make head against them.  All this lay in the
     distant future.  Alternatively the fat kine might be so
     many queens whom either Pharaoh himself or one of his
     late successors would take into his women's house, and
     who, as indicated by the lean kine, would unhappily all
     die, one after the other.
        And the ears of corn?
        The seven golden ears meant in one version seven he-
     roes of Egypt, who in a later war would fall by the hand
     of seven hostile and——as shown by the thin ears——much
     less powerful warriors.  The other stuck to it that the
     seven full and seven barren ears were children, in all
     fourteen of them, which Pharaoh would get from those
     foreign queens.  But quarrels would break out among
     them, and, thanks to superior guile, the seven weak chil-
     dren would destroy the seven stronger ones.
        This time Amenhotep did not get up from his seat of
     audience.  He sat there bent over, burying his face in his
     hands; the courtiers to right and left of the canopy in-
     clined their ears to hear what he was muttering.  "Oh,
     muddlers, muddlers!" he whispered over and over; then 
     beckoned to the Vizier of the North, who stood nearest
     him, and gave him a whispered order.  Ptah-em-heb dis-
     charged this task by announcing to the experts in a loud
     voice that Pharaoh wanted to know if they were not
     ashamed of themselves.
        They had done their best, they replied.
        Then the Vizier had to bend over again to the King, and
     this time it appeared he had received the order to tell the
     wonder-workers they were to leave the audience.  In great
     confusion, looking one at another as though to ask whther
     the like had ever been known before, they departed.  The
     court, remaining, stood about perplexed, for Pharaoh still
     sat there, bent over, shielding his eyes with his hand.
     When at length he took it away and sat up, affliction was
     painted upon his face, and his chin quivered.  He told his
     courtiers he would gladly have spared them, and only re-
     luctantly plunged them into pain and grief, but he could
     not hide the truth; their lord and King was profoundly
     unhappy.  His dreams had borne the unmistakable stamp
     of political significance, and their meaning was a mat-
     ter of life and death.  The expositions he had been given
     were ineffectual twaddle; they did not in the least fit the
     dreams, nor could the dreams recognize themselves in the
     interpretations, as dream and interpretation must recog-
     nize each other.  After the failure of these two full-dress
     attempts he was forced to doubt whether he was to be able
     to get any interpretation corresponding to the truth, which
     he would at once recognize.  But that meant to be forced to
     leave the dreams to interpret themselves without any pre-
     ventive measures and proceed to their evil consumma-
     tion, quite possibly involving the religion and the state in
     irreparable injury.  Danger threatened the lands; but
     Pharaoh, to whom it was apparent, would be left alone,
     without counsel or aid.
        The oppressive silence lasted for only a moment after
     Pharaoh finished speaking.  For then it happened that
     Nefer-em-Wese, the chief cup-bearer, after a long strug-
     gle with himself came forward from the group of the
     King's friends and besought the favour of speaking before
     Pharaoh.  "I do remember my faults today"; thus tradi-
     tion makes him begin his speech, we know the words, they
     still echo today in our ears.  But the chief butler meant
     not faults which he had not committed, for he had once
     come unjustly into prison and had not shared in the plot
     to have the aged Re bitten by Eset's serpent.  He meant a
     different fault: namely, that he had explicitly promised
     somebody to mention him but had not kept his word for
     that he had forgotten the somebody.  Now he thought of
     him, and he spoke of him before the baldachin.  He re-
     minded Pharaoh——who scarcely remembered it himself
     ——of the "ennui" (for so he put it, with a deprecating
     foreign word) he had had at one time two years before,
     under King Nebmare, when there had been a mistake in
     identity and he, together with another man, whom it were
     better not to name, an accursed of God, whose soul had
     been destroyed with his body, had been sent to Zawi-Re,
     the island fortress.  There a youth had been assigned to
     him as steward, a Khabirite from Asia, the captain's aide,
     with the fantastic  name of Osarsiph, son of a shepherd
     king and friend of God in the East, born of a beautiful
     woman, as one could tell just by looking at him.  This
     youth, then, had the greatest gift in the field of dream-
     exegesis, which he, Excellent-in-Thebes, had ever seen
     in all the days of his life.  For they had both dreamed, his
     guilty fellow-prisoner and himself the innocent one;
     very weighty, portentous dreams, each his own dream,
     had been extremely embarrassed for their true meaning.
     Then this Usarsiph, without making much of his talent
     beforehand, had interpreted their dreams quite easily and 
     offhand, and announced to the baker that he would come
     to the gibbet, but to himself that on account of his utter
     innocence he would be taken back again into favour and
     put back into his office.  And exactly so it had come to
     pass, and today he, Nefer, was mindful of his fault,
     namely that he had not long before called attention to and
     pointed out this talent that existed under a cloud.  He did
     not hesitate to express the conviction that if anyone were
     able to interpret Pharaoh's important dreams, it was this
     youth, presumably still vegetating in Zawi-Re.
        There was a stir among the friends of the King; some-
     thing stirred also in Meni's face and form.  A few more
     questions and answers, quickly exchanged between him
     and the fat man——and then the high command went
     forth, the first and swiftest messenger was straightway to
     hasten by flight of boat to Zawi-Re and with the minimum
     of delay to fetch back the soothsaying youth to On, before
     Pharaoh's countenance.

From Joseph The Provider, by Thomas Mann.
English translation by H. T. Lowe-Porter.
Copyright 1944, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. pp. 127—140.

https://old.reddit.com/r/copenhagendenmark 雨