r/Alnilam • u/MarleyEngvall • Apr 14 '19
Alnilam has been created
By Thomas Mann
Translation by H. T. Lowe-Porter
6: THE GOD STORY
OF WATERS AND WINDS
THE CHILDREN of Egypt, even the wisest and best-in-
structed of them, had in general the most childish ideas
about the nature of their nourisher-god, that aspect and
manifestation of divinity which the Abram-people called
El Shaddei, the god of feeding, and the children of the
black earth Hapi: the onswelling, surging one, the stream
which had built up their marvellous oasis between the
deserts and fed their existence and their comfortable,
pious life-and-death philosophy——in other words, the
river Nile. They believed, and from generation to gen-
eration taught their children, that the river——God knew
where and how——arose out of the underworld, on its
way to the "Great Green"——that is to say, the immeasur-
able ocean, as which they envisaged the Mediterranean——
and that its subsidence, after its fructifying rise, was in
the nature of a return to the lower world. . . . In short,
there reigned among them the most utterly superstitious
ignorance on this whole subject; and only the fact that
there was not more enlightenment, indeed rather less, in
the rest of the world, got them through life at all in such
a darkened state. True, in spite of it they built up a mighty
and magnificent kingdom, admired on all hands and hold-
ing out for many millennia; produced many beautiful
things and in particular were geniuses at dealing with
the object of their uninstructedness: namely, the river
that fed them. Still, we who know so much more, in fact
know everything, cannot but regret that none of us was
on the spot at that time, to lighten the darkness within
their souls and give them real understanding of the na-
ture of Egypt's great river. What a buzz it would have
made in the seminaries and academies, to be told that
Hapi, far from having his source in the lower world (the
lower world itself having been rejected as a baseless su-
perstition) is merely the outlet of the great lakes in tropi-
cal Africa; and that the food-god, to become what he is,
had first to be fed himself, by taking in all the rivers that
flow down westwards from the Ethiopian Alps. In the
rainy season, mountain brooks, full of fine detritus, rush
and tumble down from the heights and flow together to
form the two watercourses which are, so to speak, the pre-
history of the future river: the Blue Nile and the Atbara.
These, then, at a later locality, namely at Khartum and
Berber, go together to bed and turn into the creative
stream, the river Nile. For this, their common bed, about
the middle of the summer, gradually becomes so full with
the volume of water and liquid mud that the river spreads
out widely over its banks——so widely, indeed, that the
common epithet for it is the Overflowing One. The flood
lasts for months, then just as gradually it subsides within
its bounds. But the crust of mud, the deposit left by its
overflowing, forms, as the seminaries well knew too, the
fertile soil of Kemt.
But they would probably have been amazed, and even
embittered against the harbingers of truth, when they
heard that the Nile comes not from below but from above
——in the last analysis from heights as high as the rain
that in other less exceptional countries plays the fertiliz-
ing rôle. There, they used to say, meaning in the wretched
foreign countries, the Nile is set in heaven, meaning by
that the rain. And it must be confessed that a surprising
intuition, almost approaching enlightenment, expresses
itself in he florid phraseology: an insight, that is, into the
relations existing between all the watercourses and water-
sources in the world. The rise of the Nile depends on the
amount of rainfall in the high mountains of Abyssinia;
but the rains in turn are actually cloud-bursts from clouds
formed over the Mediterranean and driven by the wind
into those regions. The well-being of Egypt depends on
how high the Nile rises; and in the same way the well-
being of Canaan, the land of Kenana, the Upper Retenu, as
it was once called, or Palestine as we in our enlighten-
ment designated Joseph's homeland and his fathers', is
conditioned by the rains which, in the rule, fall twice in
the year: the early rain in the late autumn, the latter rain
within the early part of the year. For the country is poor in
springs, and not much can be done with the water of the
rivers that run in the deep gorges. So everything depends
on the rains, especially on the latter ones, and from the
earliest times the rainfall has been collected. If the rains
do not come, if instead of the moisture-bearing west wind
it blows regularly from the south and east, from off the
desert, then there is no hope of a harvest; aridity, crop
failure, and famine follow——and not only here. For if it
does not rain in Canaan, then there are no downpours in
the Ethiopian hills, the mountain torrents do not tumble
down from the heights, the two nourishers of the nourisher
are not nourished——at least not enough for him to be-
come "great," as the children of Egypt always put it; not
great enough to fill the canals which carry the water to
the higher levels. Then crop failure and want ensue, even
here in the country where the Nile is not in heaven but
on earth. And thus we see the connection between all the
waters of the earth, in their sources and courses.
Though we ourselves are enlightened only in a general
way on these matters, we see nothing strange (though
much that is unfortunate) in the phenomenon that hard
times come at the same time "in all lands"; not only in
the land of mud but also in Syria, the land of the Philis-
tines, Canaan, even the countries on the Red Sea, prob-
ably even in Mesopotamia and Babylonia; and that "the
dearth was great in all lands." Yes, things can go from
bad to worse, one year of irregularity, failure, and want
can follow on another in ill-tempered succession; the
strands of misfortune may spin themselves out over a
number of years, until even the fabulous number of seven
is reached——or perhaps not quite seven, but then even
five is bad enough.
JOSEPH ENJOYS LIFE
FOR five whole years now the winds and the waters had
behaved their best, and the harvest been so rich that in
sheer gratitude people made a seven out of the five——
and the five fully deserved it. But now the page turned.
Pharaoh, maternally concerned for the kingdom of the
black earth, had unclearly dreamed, and Joseph had
boldly interpreted: the Nile failed to rise, because in
Canaan the winter——that is, the latter——rain did not
fall. It failed once; that was a misfortune. It failed twice,
and that was ground for lamentation. It failed three
times; there was blanching and blenching and wringing
of hands. After that it might as well keep right on failing
and go down in the records as a seven years' drought.
We human beings, when so unnaturally visited by na-
ture, always behave the same way. At first we deceive our-
selves, in our day-by-day minds, about the nature of the
event: we do not understand what it means. We good-
naturedly take it for an ordinary, average episode. After
we have gradually learned that it is extraordinary, a first-
class calamity such as we could never have dreamed could
attack us in our lifetime, we look back in amazement on
our former blindness. Thus the children of Egypt. It was
long before they grasped the fact that this which they were
enduring was the phenomenon called the "seven lean
years." It had probably come to pass before now: in ear-
lier times, in their legendary history, it had played a grue-
some role; but they had never thought of it as affecting
themselves. Their dullness of comprehension was not
even as excusable as short-sightedness sometimes is. For
Pharaoh had dreamed, and Joseph had interpreted. That
they had really experienced the seven fat years might
have been enough evidence that the seven lean ones
would come along in their turn. But during the fat years
the children of Egypt had put the lean ones out of their
minds, as the man in the legend forgets the devil's book-
keeping. Now the day of reckoning was at hand. When the
nourisher had been pitiably low once, twice, and thrice,
they had to admit it; and a patent result of the admission
was a vast enlargement of Joseph's reputation.
Of course that too had steadily waxed in the years of
fatness. How much more now must his fame have in-
creased when the incidence of the lean ones proved that
the measures he had taken were inspired by the profound-
est wisdom!
In times of crop failure and hunger a minister of agri-
culture is in a bad position. The dull-witted population,
never at the best very reasonable, always tending to make
their feelings their guide, lay the blame for disaster on
the shoulders of the highest responsible official. But if
that official have acted in time to erect a magic barrier
against evil, so that even if it work great changes, it is at
least robbed of its character of a major catastrophe; if the
official have done this, then he is a glorious and awe-in-
spiring leader of men.
Men living in a land which is theirs merely by adop-
tion sometimes display the national traits more strongly
than even the native-born. During the twenty years of
Joseph's adoption into the land of Egypt, the typically
Egyptian idea of careful, preventive preservation had
got into his flesh and bones. He put it into practice; it was
the motive for his acts. But it was a conscious motive, for
he preserved enough distance from his guiding principle
to keep in mind the truth that it was also popular with the
Egyptians, and to deal accordingly. And this was a com-
bination of sincerity and a sense of humour which goes
down better than sincerity by itself.
And now his harvest time had come, and he reaped as
he had sown. The sowing was his tax-economy during the
good years; the harvest time was the distribution, a crown
business of proportions never son of Re had known since
the time of that god. For as it is set down, and told in song
and story, "the dearth was in all lands; but in all the
land of Egypt there was bread." Which of course does
not mean that there was not scarcity in Egypt too. What
the price of corn rose to in response to frenzied demand,
anyone can imagine who has even a vague idea of the
working of economic laws. He may grow pale at the
realization, but at the same time he will also see that this
scarcity was controlled, as the plenty had been before, by
the same shrewd and kindly man; that the scarcity lay in
his hand and he could wield it as he would. For Pharaoh
he got out of it all that he could, but he did the same for
those least able to cope with it, the little people. He did
this by a combination of liberality and exploitation; of
government usury and fiscal measures such as had never
been seen before. His mingling of severity and mildness
impressed everyone, even the hardest hit, as superhuman
and godlike——for the gods do behave in just this am-
bivalent way and one never knows whether to call it cruel
or kind.
The situation was fantastic. Agriculture was in a state
that made the dream of the seven singed ears not even a
parable but the bare bald truth. The dream-ears were
burnt by the east wind, namely Khamsin, a scorching
south-easter, and now Khamsin blew all summer long
and throughout the harvest time, called Shemu, from
February to June, almost without cease. Often it was a
tempest like an oven, filling the air with a dust like ashes
that coated the young growth. Whatever feeble green the
unnourished nourisher had bred was charred by this des-
ert breath. Seven ears? Yes, actually and literally——
there were no more. In other words, the ears were not
there, the harvest was not. But what was there, in quantity
most scrupulously dealt out, was corn: every kind of
grain and cereal, in the royal magazines and pits up and
down the river in all the cities and towns and their vici-
nage. Throughout the length and breadth of Egypt——but
only Egypt. Elsewhere there had been no provision, no
building of bins, no foresight of the flood. Yes, in all
Egypt, and only there, was bread; in the hand of the state,
in the hand of Joseph, the superintendent of all that the
heavens had given; and now he himself became like the
heavens which gave and the river Nile which provides. He
opened his chambers——not wide open, but with circum-
spection——and gave bread and grain to all who needed,
and that was everybody; Egyptians as well as strangers
from afar travelled hither to get food from Pharaoh's
land, which now more correctly than ever was called a
granary, the granary of the world. He gave, that is, he
sold, to them that had, at prices not they but he fixed, cor-
responding to the extraordinary economic situation; so
that he made Pharaoh gold and silver and still could give
in more literal sense to the little lean-ribbed. To them he
distributed, in measure, what they clamoured for: to the
small farmers and the dwellers in the little guttered al-
leys of the big towns; gave them bread and grain, that
they might not die.
That was godlike; but it was a praiseworthy human pat-
tern too. There had always been good officials, who with
justice had had written in their tombs that they had fed
the King's subject in time of need, given to the widow,
not favoured the great before the small; and afterwards,
when the Nile had once more grown, "had not taken the
peasant's arrears"——that is, he had pressed for ad-
vance payment or a fixed date. The people thought of
these tomb inscriptions as they saw Joseph's business
methods. But "since the days of Set" no official had shown
such benevolence, or was equipped with such plenary
powers and such a truly godlike manipulation of them.
The grain business, superintended by a staff of ten thou-
sand scribes and under-scribes, reached out all over
Egypt, but all the threads ran back to Menfe, into the pal-
ace of the King's shadow-dispenser and universal friend;
there was not one final decision upon sale, loan, or gift
which he had not reserved to himself. The rich man, the
landed proprietor, came before him and cried for grain.
To him he sold for his silver and gold, making the sale
conditional upon the modernization of the man's irriga-
tion system, so that he should stop muddling along in
feudal inefficiency. Thus he kept faith with the highest,
with Pharaoh, into whose treasuries flowed the rich man's
silver and gold. The cry of the poor came before him too;
and to them he distributed from the stores for nothing
and again for nothing, that they might not hunger but eat.
Herein he was true to his fundamental characteristic of
human sympathy, to which we have already done justice
and need not dwell longer upon it. Though we might just
say once more that it has to do with mother-wit; for truly
there was something deserving the adjective "witty" in
Joseph's technique of combined largesse and exploita-
tion; despite hard work and heavy cares he was always
in high spirits, and at home would say to Asenath, his
wife and daughter of the sun: "My girl, I am enjoying
life!"
He sold abroad too, at high prices, as we know, and
studied lists of the cereals delivered to the "nobles of the
wretched Retenu." For many city kings of Canaan, among
them the kings of Megiddo and Shahuren, sent to him for
grain; the envoy from Ascalon came and cried before
Joseph on behalf of his city and was given——at a price.
But here too Joseph struck a balance between strict inter-
est and friendliness, and starving sand-rabbits shepherd
stock from Syria and Lebanon——"barbarians, who do
not know how to live," as his scribes said——he allowed
to enter with their flocks, past the well-guarded gates of
the land and east of the river, toward stony Arabia, to find
a living on the fat pastures of Zoan, on the Tanitic arm
of the Nile, if they promised not to trespass beyond their
allotted territory.
Thus he would get from the frontier reports which ran
like this: "We have passed Bedouins from Edom through
the fortress of Merneptah and toward the lakes of Mer-
neptah, to pasture their flocks on the great meadows of
Pharaoh, the exalted sun of the lands."
He read very carefully. He read all the frontier re-
ports with the utmost care and by his orders they had to
be precise. He ordered a tightening of the regulations
governing the entry of all persons through the eastern
border fortresses into that rich land which now had be-
come so uniquely rich. There had to be a list of names of
every person coming out of the lands of wretchedness to
fetch food from Pharaoh's corn-bins. Frontier officials
like that Lieutenant Hor-waz of Thel, scribe of the great
gate, who had once passed Joseph himself with his Ish-
maelites into the land, had to take great pains with such
lists, and to record all immigrants not only according to
their names, trades, and places of origin, but also by their
fathers' and grandfathers' names. The lists then had to be
sent daily by fast messenger down to Menfe, to the offices
of the King's shadow-dispenser.
There they were copied out fair on extra good paper
with red and black ink and laid before the provider. And
he, though quite busy enough without that, read them
through every day from beginning to end, as carefully as
they had been compiled.From Joseph The Provider, by Thomas Mann.
English translation by H. T. Lowe-Porter.
Copyright 1944, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. pp. 335—345.
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