Rakyon the Pauper Talked His Way to the Throne of Egypt

Have-Naught Arrives in Egypt

His name meant what it said. Rakyon had nothing. He was wise and he was handsome and he had come from the land of Shinar with the plan that beautiful and clever men make when they have no other resources: find the most powerful person in the region and convince him you are indispensable. He had heard about King Ashwerosh of Egypt, and he had calculated that a court full of wealthy people with too little to think about would value novelty.

Egypt had a problem with kings. The current one appeared in public exactly once a year. He came out of his palace on that one day to hear petitions and then withdrew again for the remaining three hundred and sixty-four days, leaving his officials to manage everything in his name. For a man with no money and no connections trying to get noticed, that annual window was not enough.

Sleeping in the Marketplace

Rakyon ran out of resources before he ran out of ambition. He ended up sleeping in the marketplace, which in Egypt at the time meant sleeping in the place where the dead were brought to be prepared for burial. The burial trade in Egypt was a heavily taxed operation, controlled by the crown, and the revenues from it flowed directly to the king. Rakyon watched the dead arrive night after night and in that watching had a thought.

He took over. He did not have authority, but he had presence, and presence in a marketplace at night among people who are grieving and confused is sometimes sufficient. He positioned himself as an unofficial administrator and began charging a fee for the right to bury in the city. He was not authorized to collect this fee. He collected it anyway, and the people paid because they were in grief and the alternative was to argue with a man who had stationed himself very confidently at the point where their dead relative lay waiting.

Four Hundred Silver Pieces

It took him four hundred days. By the end of the four hundredth day he had accumulated four hundred pieces of silver, and with four hundred pieces of silver in Egypt, you could buy servants and horses and clothing and the visible markers of wealth that opened doors money alone could not open. He bought everything he needed. He hired servants. He dressed himself. He assembled the appearance of a man who had always had resources and simply chose to present himself at court now.

When the king's annual appearance came, Rakyon was ready in the crowd. He made himself visible. The king's eye found him. The gifts Rakyon had prepared were specific to the king's known interests, which he had spent months learning. He was admitted. He was seated. He talked for a long time.

The Deal That Made the Title

The king made him a prince. And when the king died, the people who now knew Rakyon chose him as successor. He took the throne. He took a new name as part of taking the throne, and the name he took was Pharaoh.

Every ruler who sat on that throne after him carried the same title. Not because of blood, not because of conquest, not because of divine right in any traditional sense, but because a penniless man from Shinar had once been clever and patient and willing to sleep in a marketplace for four hundred nights, and the title he took when his patience finally paid off stuck to the seat of power and outlasted everyone who had laughed at him when he arrived.