The Seven Wonders: A Novel of the Ancient World (Novels of Ancient Rome)

by Steven Saylor

  Dominating the sanctuary was a statue of the goddess. On her head she wore a crown made of two curving horns that held between them a golden solar disk. Between her breasts, suspended from a necklace, was the sacred object called the Isis Knot, shaped like an ankh but with the arms turned down; as I would later learn, it was a symbol of her monthly flow, which in some divine way was connected with the annual inundation of the Nile. One hand was raised to touch one breast; the other held a breast-shaped vessel for the collection of her sacred milk. Her broad face was beautiful and serene, radiating wisdom.

  “The goddess will tell me what must be done,” declared the priest. “Then you will do as Isis prescribes, and the answer to the riddle will come to you. I am sure of it.” He turned to the statue and raised his arms. “O Isis, universal mother, mistress of the elements, primordial child of time, sovereign of all things divine, queen of the living, queen of the dead, queen of the immortals, singular and utmost manifestation of all gods and goddesses, known by many names in many places, we call upon you!”

  I shivered and felt slightly faint. What sort of test or labor might Isis demand of me?

  I had a feeling I was not going to like the answer.

  * * *

  “Gordianus of Rome, you fool!” I whispered. “How did you ever get yourself into such a predicament?”

  There was no one but myself to hear the words. Lit by the last flickering light of my torch, the granite walls surrounding me made no answer.

  As the sun had begun to set behind the Libyan mountains, I had climbed once again to the hidden doorway of the Great Pyramid, accompanied only by the priest of Isis. Antipater, Djal, and Kemsa watched from below as the priest lifted the stone panel and lit a torch for me. Then, holding the torch in one hand and clutching the rope in the other, for the second time that day I descended into the heart of the pyramid. Above me, the priest let the panel fall shut.

  Alone, I reached the burial chamber.

  For as long as the torch burned strongly, I simply stood there, staring at the sarcophagus. Then the torch began to sputter, and I thought to myself: if I am to lie in the empty sarcophagus of Kheops, as Isis prescribed, now is the time to do it. Once the torch went out, I would surely become disoriented and lose all sense of direction. I might also lose my nerve completely, and go scrambling back up the narrow passage, desperate to escape from the bowels of the pyramid.

  Isis had directed Djal to seek a solution to his problem by lying in the sarcophagus. According to her priest, she had directed me to do the same thing, promising that an answer to the riddle would come to me. It seemed to me that this Egyptian goddess was singularly lacking in imagination, to prescribe the same ordeal to two suppliants in a row.

  When the priest made this announcement, I immediately protested—the very idea was madness—and looked to Antipater to back me up. But my old tutor had done the opposite. He seemed convinced that everything the priest said must be true, and that I was indeed the emissary promised by Isis.

  “Everything that’s happened since we left Rome has been leading to this moment,” he declared. “You must do this, Gordianus. It is your destiny.”

  Antipater’s certainty left me speechless. The priest nodded gravely. Djal fell to his knees and looked up at me imploringly. I looked to Kemsa, hoping he might tell me that Djal deserved his fate, but instead he embraced me, as one might a valiant warrior about to leave on a perilous mission, and wiped tears from his eyes.

  “And to think, it was I, humble Kemsa, who led you to your destiny!”

  They were all determined that I should do as the goddess desired. In truth, some part of me was flattered by their confidence, and intrigued by the challenge. But once inside the pyramid, that part of me began to dwindle and fade, rather like the flame of the dying torch.

  “Madness!” I whispered as I climbed inside the sarcophagus and stretched out full-length. The rough-hewn granite felt cold to the touch. I clutched the stump of the torch and stared at the last dying embers until the orange glow faded to utter blackness. I cast the stump away and folded my hands over my chest.

  “Now what?” I said aloud.

  No answer came, only silence.

  I shut my eyes, then opened them. It made no difference. I was surrounded by infinite blackness. I blinked and suddenly found myself confused: were my eyes open or shut? I had to reach up to touch my eyelids to be sure.

  As complete as the darkness was the silence. I found myself making small noises, snapping my fingers or clicking my teeth, simply to reassure myself that I had not gone deaf.

  Eventually the utter lack of sight and sound, unnerving at first, began to have a sedative effect. I closed my eyes and lay perfectly still. It had been a long, hot, tiring day. Did I doze, or only imagine that I did so? I seemed to enter a state of consciousness I had never experienced before, neither asleep nor awake.

  A succession of images and ideas passed through my mind. As one thought faded, leaving only a dim impression, another took its place. Where was I? What time was it? I reminded myself that it was night, and I was inside the Great Pyramid, but these demarcations lost all meaning. I sensed that I had arrived at a place and a moment that were at the very center of time and space, outside the ordinary realm of mortal experience.

  The second riddle of the Sphinx resounded in my thoughts: I am seen by all who pass, but no one sees me. I posed a riddle that everyone knows, but no one knows me. I look toward the Nile, but I turn my back upon the pyramids.

  I found myself thinking of the rows of sphinxes we had seen on the approach to the Temple of Serapis, some of them nearly buried by wind-blown sand. As if I were a bird with wings, I seemed to rise in the air and look down upon the young Roman and his old Greek tutor as they talked about Oedipus and the riddle he had solved, and then I flew northward, following the course of the Nile until I came to the plateau and landed atop the Great Pyramid, and looked down on the temples and roadways—and the large, incongruous sand dune among them.

  This vision faded and I sat upright in the sarcophagus. There were no longer any walls around me. I was surrounded by a sort of membrane, smooth and featureless and faintly glowing, rather as I imagine the inside of an egg might look to an unborn chick, if an egg could be made of twilight.

  Suddenly I sensed I was no longer alone, and turned my head to see a dog-headed figure that stood upright on two legs. Slowly he walked toward me. His face was black on one side, golden on the other. In one hand he carried a herald’s wand, and in the other, a green palm branch.

  “Anubis?” I whispered.

  “You know me better as Mercury.” His long snout never moved, yet somehow he spoke.

  “You’ve come!” I said, hardly able to believe it. “The priest said such a thing would happen, and here you are! Will you help me solve the riddle?”

  “You do not need my help, Gordianus. You already know the answer.”

  He was right. I did know the answer. “You have no message for me, then?”

  “I visit you not as a messenger, but as a herald, to announce her coming.”

  “Who? Who is coming?”

  Anubis fell silent, and then began to fade, as thoughts fade. Traces of his presence lingered on my eyes, even when I shut them. When I opened my eyes again, Isis stood before me.

  I knew it was Isis by the crown she wore, with its curving horns and the golden disk between them, and by the Isis Knot between her breasts. Her linen gown was the color of blood. Her skin was golden brown, the color of honey. Her eyes glittered like sparks of sunlight on the Nile. She was unspeakably beautiful.

  I had seen many images of gods and goddesses in the nineteen years I had been on earth, but never had I beheld a goddess face-to-face. I felt many things at once. I was fearful yet calm, awestruck yet strangely sure of myself. The unearthly allure of the goddess inspired in me a passion that was equally unearthly, unlike anything I had felt before.

  The cold granite sarcophagus melted away. In its place I rested upon
an infinite expanse of something soft and warm and pliant, almost like the pelt of a living, breathing animal, if such a pelt could cover the whole earth. Isis removed her crown and hitched it to a star in the twilight sky above her. Her red gown rippled as it fell to her ankles. She reclined beside me.

  In Ephesus I had known my first woman; in Rhodes, my first man. In Halicarnassus, Bitto had instructed me in the arts of love, and in Babylon I had coupled with a priestess of Ishtar. But I had never been with a goddess before.

  No words could describe the bliss of that union; nor shall I attempt to do so. There is a phrase used by Herodotus when he skirts a sacred matter about which his informants require his silence: I know a thing, but it would not be seemly for me to tell.

  I shall say this much and no more: in a place and a moment outside of time and space, Isis and I became one. Perhaps it never happened. Perhaps it is happening still.

  * * *

  Little by little, I returned to this earthly realm, until at last I felt again the hard granite beneath me and felt its coldness around me. I heard the beating of my heart. I blinked and opened my eyes and saw darkness—not the darkness of dreams or the netherworld, but a common, earthly darkness, the mere absence of light, which was nothing to fear.

  I sat up. If I had left my body at some point, there was no doubt that I had returned to it. My legs were sore from climbing, my shoulders and neck were stiff from lying on hard stone, and my backside ached from riding a camel.

  How much time had passed? An hour, a day, a month? I had no way of knowing. For all I knew, I had died and come back to life.

  Blindly, I navigated the chamber, feeling my way along the walls until I found the opening of the shaft. Steadying myself by the rope, proceeding cautiously so as not to bump my head, I slowly made my way up.

  When I pushed open the stone panel, I was puzzled, for it seemed to me that the soft light was just the same as when I descended. Had I been inside the pyramid for mere minutes?

  But then, from the glow that lit the Libyan mountains, I realized that the hour was dawn, not dusk. Far below I saw the camels sitting with their limbs tucked under them, their heads nodding in sleep. Huddled under blankets, also fast asleep, were Antipater and the others, including the priest of Isis, whose shaved head shone by the first ruddy light of the rising sun.

  I made no sound to wake them. Instead I turned around and ascended as quickly as I could to the top of the pyramid. How many men can say they have witnessed a sunrise from the summit of the Great Pyramid? That moment, experienced alone—although in some way I felt that Isis was still with me—I will remember all my life.

  But I had another, more practical reason for the climb. I wanted to look down again at the large sand dune among the temples, to be sure that the shape was as I remembered it. It was. I could almost see the thing hidden inside it, as if the breath of a god had blown away the masses of sand. Its back was turned to the pyramids and it faced the Nile, just as the riddle said. It was seen by all who passed—who could fail to notice a sand dune big enough to block one’s view of the pyramid? And yet it was unseen—for no one realized what was hidden under the sand. Its riddle was known to all, for everyone knows the riddle of the sphinx. And yet this sphinx was known to no one.

  For how many generations had this monument, surely larger than any other sphinx in Egypt, been buried beneath the sand? Long enough that no one living even knew that it existed. The people of Egypt had forgotten that among the temples and shrines on the plateau, set there like a sentinel to guard the pyramids, crouched a giant sphinx, now entirely covered by sand. And yet some memory of this marvel had persisted in the form of a riddle that no one could answer.

  Now that I had solved the riddle, the shape of the sphinx within the dune was unmistakable, and surely would be so to anyone gazing down on it from the Great Pyramid. There I could see the outline of the haunches, and there the protruding forepaws, and there, at the highest point, the proud head, which no doubt was covered by a nemes headdress. As Antipater had remarked, the solution to a riddle invariably seems obvious once you know the answer.

  From far below, I heard a faint cry. I looked down to see that my companions were stirring. Djal had risen to his feet and was staring up at me. Even from such a great distance, I could see the plaintive expression on his face.

  I took in the view one final time, then made my way down to give him the good news.

  * * *

  Later that day, while the plateau was still deserted due to the festival in Memphis, the priest of Isis summoned a team of laborers to excavate the highest point of the sand dune concealing the sphinx.

  All day they dug. At last their wooden shovels struck something made of stone. They kept digging until very late in the afternoon, by which time the very top of the sphinx’s head had been uncovered. The gigantic nemes headdress appeared to have once been surmounted by some ceremonial object, long since broken off or worn away by time; to the priest of Isis, the stone remnant suggested a rearing cobra, such as is often seen on the headdresses of sphinxes.

  As the sun began to graze the jagged crest of the Libyan mountains, the priest ordered the workers to begin covering what they had uncovered. “Work all night if you must,” he told them, “but don’t stop until not a trace of your day’s labor remains.”

  “But surely these men should keep digging!” I protested. “Why must they undo their work? Don’t you want to see the whole thing? Granted, a full excavation will require many, many days—”

  “What the gods have seen fit to conceal, I would not presume to uncover without first consulting my fellow priests and seeking to know the will of Isis in this matter. I allowed just enough digging to be sure that the second riddle of the sphinx had indeed been solved. All who have seen must be sworn to secrecy. That includes you.” He cast a sidelong glance at our guide. “And you as well, young Roman.”

  “But surely the will of Isis is already known in this matter,” I said. “Was it not by her guidance that I found the solution? She even—” I bit my tongue and said no more. They had pressed me for details of my experience inside the pyramid, and I had revealed all I could put into words—except any mention of the intimacy I had shared with the goddess. That experience was too special to share, and beyond words—and it seemed to me that any mortal who dallies with a deity had best be discreet.

  The priest would not be swayed. He invited us all to spend the night in comfort at his quarters in the Temple of Isis, and we left the workers to their labor. For now, the sphinx among the pyramids would remain a secret.

  “Tomorrow I shall go to Memphis,” said the priest. “I will convince Mhotep that the riddle was solved and command him to return the mummy.”

  “How will you persuade him?”

  “Leave that to me. Your satisfaction in this matter, Gordianus, must be the role you played in the salvation of Djal.”

  “I have already received my satisfaction,” I said, thinking of my wondrous experience with the goddess.

  “How so?” asked the priest. The others pricked up their ears.

  “That must be a riddle to which none of you will ever know the answer.”

  * * *

  “An upstairs room! Why were we given an upstairs room?” wailed Antipater, clutching the railing and descending one step at a time. For days after our trip to see the pyramids he had been so stiff and sore he could hardly move, and had languished in his bed at the inn. On this day he had at last consented to stir, for we had received a very special invitation.

  As we crossed the city, the exercise seemed to do him good, despite his moaning and groaning. The exotic sights and sounds stimulated us both. Our route took us past the roadway to the Temple of Serapis, and we paused to look at the long rows of sphinxes.

  “Teacher,” I said, “can you imagine such a sphinx expanded to the enormous scale of the monument that remains hidden on the plateau? If it were uncovered, men would call it the Great Sphinx, and would come from all over the world
to marvel at the size of it. And if it were as beautiful as these smaller sphinxes, it would surely deserve a place among the Seven Wonders of the World. Why is it not on the list already?”

  “Because, even very long ago, when the list of Seven Wonders was made, no one knew it existed. It must have been covered by that sand since at least the time of Herodotus, who makes no mention of it, and surely would have, had he seen it. But I suspect, Gordianus, that within your lifetime the Great Sphinx, as you call it, will be rediscovered. That priest of Isis will do his best to keep word from getting out, but one of those workers will talk, the news will spread, and sooner or later curiosity will get the better of even the most reactionary priests. Perhaps King Ptolemy himself will order the Great Sphinx to be excavated.”

  “More likely it will be some ambitious Roman governor, after we’ve conquered Egypt,” I muttered.

  “What’s that?”

  “Never mind.”

  With the happy thought that someday I might return to Egypt and behold the Great Sphinx, we resumed our journey to the house of Djal.

  The dwelling itself was modest, but it had a marvelous location, built on a bit of high ground beside the Nile. A little girl—the daughter of Djal—greeted us at the door and led us to a terraced garden with a view of fishing boats on the river and farmlands on the opposite bank. Djal sat watching the river. When he saw us he jumped up and hugged us both. Antipater groaned at being squeezed so hard.

  “What is that wonderful smell?” I said.

  “The meal of thanksgiving that my wife has cooked for us.”

  “Your wife? I thought—”

  “She was ill, yes, but now she is much better. We are all better, since the return of the mummy. Come and see!”

  He led us to the room where the meal would be served. At the head of the table, leaning upright against a wall, was a tall wooden case with a mummy inside.