THE HATHOR HOLOCAUST

by Roy Lester Pond

  Gemma stepped into the chamber and went slowly behind the jamb to arrive at the first coffin.

  “You know what you’re doing, but I don’t see how I can lift stone in a wall.”

  “I don’t disappoint, remember.”

  “Then don’t do it now, Anson.”

  With arm extended and long fingers, she stretched out to the coffin, hesitantly as if she were reaching out to touch a snake. Her fingers slid under the coffin and vanished up to her knuckles. It was deep cut.

  “Now lift.”

  “Here goes.” Her arm flexed as she tried to raise the carving. Nothing happened.

  “Put a bit more muscle into it. Get closer and pull up hard.”

  She did and the black relief of the coffin suddenly rolled up like a cylinder to be replaced by an image of a starry sky.

  She had lifted a weary one up to the heavens.

  “Three more to go,” Anson said, his voice cracking in relief.

  Chapter 44

  “THE NEXT goddess of the hour.” Anson said. “Slicer of

  Souls.”

  “You scare me,” she said.

  Several things caught Anson’s eyes immediately. Scenes of mummies in their shrines. Beings awakened from the dead and re-animated, a lake of fire where the unjust were put to the flame and the first appearance of Apophis, the great serpent of the Egyptian underworld.

  What else?

  Amun-Ra in his barque, now dressed in brilliant new white linen, a symbol of renewal.

  Re-awakened from the dead.

  Renewed.

  The goddess – the Slicer or Souls. Of souls? Why not bodies? How did you slice a soul? Did soul simply mean ‘the dead’?

  Anson had hit a wall.

  “It’s not quite happening with this one, people.”

  “Tell me what you’ve got,” the Intelligence girl said.

  “A soul-slicer, a lake of fire and a bunch of mummies coming back to life.”

  “Re-animation. Transfiguration, perhaps”

  He brightened.

  “Good thought. The dead had to be transformed into a living entity called the Akh, an aspect of the soul. This transfiguration could only occur once proper funeral rites had been performed, as has clearly happened here. And one more thing – the Akh had to be sustained with offerings to stay alive.”

  Offerings.

  “Then we need to make an offering.”

  “Yes, but what can we offer?” Anson said.

  “I can throw in a pack of gum,” Boy Wonder joked from behind.

  “I don’t quite think that’s going to do it. Offerings,” he said thoughtfully. “That can mean food, drink, incense, amulets… votive offerings, even a prayer: ‘wish the soul of so-and-so a thousand loaves of bread, haunches of beef, jars of beer…”

  His beam prowled the walls and then stopped.

  There.

  A seated god who had brought an offering - ‘one who brings the eye of Ra to pacify the gods’ - before a papyrus plant topped with a piece of meat.

  There seemed to be a crack in the stone around the scene. A moveable block that pressed in to clear the danger?

  That was it.

  Anson breathed a sigh of relief. Still, it was a pity they’d never find out what the Slicer of Souls had up her sleeve, he thought, but he could guess, and he saw it happen in a sudden blur of speed in his imagination… a sharp sickle blade jack-knifing out of a wall, followed by a floor collapse and a tumble into a lake of flames to join the damned…

  The Fourth Hour surprised them. As with the previous three chambers, a solitary guardian lady of the night guarded the entrance, but inside, on the walls, stood a gathering of goddesses - all twelve guardians of the hours.

  The goddesses were divided into two files of six, and in between them dropped a pit filled with an endlessly coiling serpent. It represented time and was called ‘ he who must be removed’. Anson’s light also tracked across shrines of mummies of the dead, those who had not yet risen, standing before the barque of Amun-Ra. This whole section was a symbol of the passing of the hours before the mummies became revivified, the process concluding in scenes of the damned condemned to burn in fiery pits.

  “ This goddess is called “Great of Power,” he said. “Great of power?” “Yes.” “You’re vague,” Gemma said. “What sort of power?” Power. He ran though the associations out loud. “ Time… hours… twelve ladies of the hour… ladies of the night…” “What’s going on in here?”

  “ Time is passing.” “We know,” Space Invader said. “Move on.” “So you know her name,” Gemma said, “but not how the name can help us. Great of Power. It could mean anything.” Or something very specific, he thought, her comment triggering an idea. A particular goddess of Egypt. “Great of Power is another way of saying Great of Magic and there was one goddess that name referred to – the uraeus, or cobra, on the brow of the ruler.”

  “Which in this case is Amun-Ra. So we just find the image of the god wearing a spitting cobra and activate it.”

  “You’re getting good at this, Gemma. Maybe you don’t need me. Try the next one on your own. But be a little careful, I notice that other great serpent, Apophis, the arch-enemy of Ra, starting to appear at the end there.”

  Gemma found a serpent on the sun disc of the god and pressed it. They heard the grind of stone underneath the chamber. The way had been cleared. Or had it?

  “Move it.” Kraft shoved Anson through and the others followed quickly.

  Haste may have saved them. The chamber was about time, and the time allowed to cross its floor was regulated by some hidden mechanism, perhaps the pouring of sand, for now it seemed that an earthquake shook the chamber as a pit ground open in the floor.

  Neith lost her balance, toppled but Anson caught her arm and snatched her back. They looked down. A black abyss sucked at them.

  “You saved me,” she said. “I spent a whole cruise trying to do the same for you.” They found themselves in front of the next goddess.

  A goddess in a yellow dress guarded the doorway. “Her name is “She on Her Boat”, he said. “Only she’s not on a boat.” “No, too easy.” The walls in this chamber revealed scenes of gods bearing surveying cords, also of serpents, including the coils of the demon serpent Apophis who was shown struggling in fetters grasped by gods.

  But another scene caught his interest.

  “Here we have a depiction of the four races of humankind, all of them permitted to enter the Egyptian underworld, an Egyptian, an Asiatic, a Nubian and a Libyan. It rather destroys the claims of the Afrocentrists who claim that Egypt was a black civilisation.”

  “You Egyptologists can’t help yourselves can you?” Space Invader said. “Skip the study tour.”

  Anson’s beam also revealed a scene of the Judgement of Souls before Osiris – at the end of the hall.

  “What do you think, Gemma?”

  “The four races of man… Apophis… Judgement... Osiris…” The Intelligence girl shrugged. “My ancient history only gets me so far. Back to you now, Anson. Please!”

  She said that as if her life depended on it.

  Perhaps it did.

  “Okay, but if I’m taking over and you’re all in such a hurry, then let me take over completely. Want to try to stop me?” he said to Kraft. “We can stand here and talk about the rival civilizations of Egypt and Nubia if you like.”

  “Let him go ahead,” Neith said.

  “ Thank you.”

  Anson stepped into the chamber.

  “Yes, this interstitial scene of Osiris judging all of the races of humankind is the key. The guardian was called ‘She on her Boat’. I think it’s a reference in this chamber to the most important goddess guarding and surrounding the god on his Boat of Millions of years – the snake goddess Mehen. Mehen was also a game, called the Snake Game. Look at the floor. See the pattern of a coiled shape? We have to follow the snake, like a maze, to the exit... or face the judgement of Osiris.”

  There it w
as, faint, but the distinct outline of a snake

  “I wasted my time doing ancient history,” the London girl said in a mutter.

  They followed the snake maze, in a line to a doorway that revealed a new goddess wearing a red sheath dress with a diamond mesh pattern over its length.

  “’Proficient Leader’ is the name of the next goddess.”

  The next hall revealed a painted scene depicting the union of the Ba or soul and the corpse of Amun-Ra. Anson noticed the gloominess of the scene, the colours muted, murky.

  This was the deepest part of the sun-god’s journey through the underworld, for after this he would begin to rise towards the dawn. A row of towmen dragged the god’s boat through this windless section of the underworld.

  In another sinister scene, gods used long forked poles to keep the demon reptile Apophis at bay, while below a cobra reared from a lake of fire to spit at enemies.

  “Is Apophis the key, this time?” she said. “ They seem to be trying to fight him off.”

  “You might think so, but not yet. His time will come. Proficient Leader is our clue. There, see that very proficient-looking leader of the towmen? I’ll try pressing him for some answers.”

  Anson went closer to the towman.

  Yes, a separate block.

  He pressed the block.

  The Towman gave him his answer, a block sinking back into the wall to disable some hidden ‘Instrument of Hindering.’

  What horror had they avoided?

  Don’t think about it.

  “Okay, it’s Apophis time,” he said, “and that’s exactly the name of this goddess of the Seventh hour. She’s called Apophis.”

  She was slender and even more snaky-looking than the rest of them.

  “This region is called the Place of Annihilation of Ra’s enemies, designed to remove all hostile elements in order to protect the renewal of the sun-god, and presumably of Herihor. In other words, it’s a place designed to annihilate us.”

  His eyes went to the back of the room.

  Unlike the other chambers, there were two objects rising from the floor. At first he took them to be columns, but now he saw that they were stakes, surmounted by jackals’ heads. Collections of objects were tied to the stakes, hanging down limply, glowing dimly in their lights.

  Bones.

  “Are those what I think they are?” Gemma said. A pair of prisoners, back to back, had been bound to each stake before their torment by demons began.

  “Yes, they’re human remains, tied to the Stakes of Geb.”

  Who were the unfortunates sentenced to death by the parvenu high priest Herihor?

  Prisoners found guilty of committing capital crimes such as tomb robbery?

  Yes, he thought, like Herihor the Hypocrite himself, the greatest of them all.

  The pair of stakes stood in front of the barque of Amun-Ra, who also appeared in another scene, wrapped in the coils of a five-headed serpent.

  This was a crucial hour, where only Osiris could ensure Amun Ra’s resurrection at dawn and avoid his being swallowed by the serpent of outer darkness, Apophis, forever.

  An image of Apophis threw its endless coils around the walls.

  What trap lay in wait for them here?

  Presumably these deeply symbolic tomb traps came with safety switches so that the tomb builders could come and go while constructing and stocking the tomb, provided they knew the safety mechanisms.

  But there seemed to be no apparent safety switch to this chamber.

  As soon as he stepped inside to shine his light around, the walls rumbled and began to constrict.

  He turned, only to see stonework crumbling in a deadly rockfall.

  He was caught in the coils of Apophis. He made a darting run for the far doorway.

  It was crumbling.

  Apophis was closing his coils.

  The walls rumbled forward. Scenes on the walls reared like a 3-D movie… He saw Amun-Ra struggling in the coils of a crushing, five-headed serpent. That’s me, now, the thought flashed through his head. Nothing could stop it. He would end up dead like the poor wretches tied to the stakes. The stakes!

  Chapter 45

  HE RAN to the first stake, flung an arm around it, careless of the hanging bones, and shook hard.

  At first it held, creaked and then like a reluctant molar started to rock in its bed of stone.

  Perhaps some underground moisture had reached the base for suddenly it snapped, breaking free and the pole toppled forward.

  He toppled with it, the pole ending up between the closing walls.

  The moisture had gone further than he guessed as his wildly swinging torchlight revealed when the pole braced itself, end-to-end, between the closing walls and then crumpled limply.

  He scrambled to his feet and ran to the other stake and made a dive.

  This one was firmer.

  Pain exploded in his shoulder as he hit it. He slid down to find himself eye to eye with gaping cavities in a skull. The pole had held, yet it had shifted in its base, splitting the stone surrounds.

  He sprang up and rocked it violently backwards and forwards as the sounds of shieking stone filled his ears.

  The walls were now too close to be braced by the pole.

  He had run out of time.

  A five-headed snake reared on the wall as if it were about to throw a coil over him.

  Anson gritted his teeth and shook the stake. A movement, a wobble, another movement. One big shove and it came loose, crashed over. Too long to span the walls. The one hope was to go corner to corner. He spun the pole across the floor, one end in each corner. The room shuddered as the stake braced. The wood creaked. The walls stopped moving. It held. He had opened the way.

  Hour eight belonged to ‘Mistress of the Night’, a goddess wearing a star-strewn sheath dress. “This chamber is also about time,” he told them. ‘See the gods there spooling out time in an endless rope of hours?”

  Dust from the collapse in the previous chamber made a haze of this region and it seemed as if they were viewing the scene through the mists of time.

  He followed the rope with an exploring torch beam. The rope of time linked up to the tow-rope used to drag the barque of the ram-headed Amun-Ra across the night.

  “Anyone got a rope?” They had come provisioned with tools and ropes. They passed Anson a rope and he took it. With the torch between his knees, lighting up his intent expression, he made a loop on the end and coiled the rest. A row of painted mummies turned over on their biers as if sitting up up to watch him. He handed one end to Kraft. “Give me enough rope.”

  “We’ve given you plenty already.”

  Anson clutched the rope and set off across the floor, placing his feet carefully. The floor convulsed half way across and he fell into night.

  The Mistress of Night.

  He dropped like a hanged man through the trapdoor and came to a jerking, jiggling halt as the rope snapped taut.

  Gemma gave a cry of alarm.

  “I’m okay. Just haul me up.”

  To pass through this chamber they had to go gingerly around the walls.

  The goddess of Hour Nine had wavy lines on a blue sheath dress. This time she was not a painting, but a wooden painted statue.

  “This is a bit different,” Gemma said

  Wavy lines marked the floor and the lower register of wall paintings and lying in the waves were the images of bodies.

  “The Drowned Ones,” he said, “floating in the waters of Nun, the primeval waters before creation. They are guaranteed resurrection since the Egyptians believed that those who drowned in the Nile went straight to heaven. Amun-Ra will be raised out of these waters.”

  In the lowest register appeared the condemned, bound cruelly in a variety of ways. Defenceless, they were exposed to the blast of a massive serpent called ‘Fiery One’.

  “Who’s number nine?” Gemma said.

  “Adorer.”

  “Another innocuous one. What’s supposed to happen here?”
/>
  “Look at her arms. They’re by her side. In adoration, the arms should be raised.”

  “Do you think she moves?”

  He went closer to the statue and examined the arms. Yes, they were hinged on bronze pins.

  He lifted one, but to his alarm, it snapped off in his hand.

  He waited for some terrible consequence. What would happen? Flooding water?

  Was there some ancient cistern set in the roof that would break and gush into the chamber, to turn intruders into drowned ones?

  He circled the statue and gingerly raised the other arm. The limb of the goddess complained with a female squeak of protest that startled him, then moved. Now she was in an attitude of adoration or at least of salutation.

  He had no idea what consequence he had averted and was left wondering as they came to a goddess called “Beheader of Rebels”.

  They were nearing the end. Would they make it now after coming so far?

  They walked into a battle scene, a pitched battle being waged by the gods against the demon serpent Apophis.

  Anson’s light revealed gods armed with magical nets above their heads, paralysing the monster and others threw fetters around its body. A giant fist rose from the ground and held a rope that tethered the vanquished monster.

  The title “Beheader of Rebels” did nothing to reassure Anson.

  Beheader.

  An instinct for self-preservation made him drop to his knees.

  Get down low and crawl.

  Before his body hit the floor, a wind ripped past his head as a great epsilon axe on a long pole swung out of a wall and sliced the air above his head, its semi-circular blade whistling.

  “On your knees,” he said to the others.

  It was a good place to give thanks for a survival instinct, he thought.

  The Eleventh Hour was an interstitial chamber leading into the final twelfth zone and the re-birth of the sun god in a golden dawn.

  So why did the goddess of this penultimate chamber go by the violent name of ‘The Star, Repulser of Rebels’?

  Was it really all over?

  The faience-blue coloured goddess of the hour guarded a Hall of Victory. Apophis lay bound helplessly and hacked up. The battle seemed to be over. Amun Ra rode in his boat, approaching the stars that signalled dawn and accompanying him in his boat, all twelve goddesses of the night hours, rowing their Lord to his final emergence in the eastern horizon.