The Mummy Smugglers of Crumblin Castle

by Pamela Rushby

  All the brothers smiled. “We have our ways,” replied Omar Shaydi. “Our family also operates a carpet business in Cairo and London. A crate of carpets, sent to our London shop, arouses little suspicion. It is a trade that has been going on for years.”

  “I see,” said Edgar Raven. “And rolled inside the carpets is –”

  “Quite,” said Omar Shaydi. “An innocent consignment of carpets. Nothing more.” He glanced at Great-aunt Iphigenia and Great-uncle Sisyphus. “So, may we assume you are interested? That we can discuss an ongoing arrangement, profitable to both parties?”

  Great-aunt Iphigenia displayed no hesitation at all. “Most certainly,” she said. “So, if I make a selection from the mummy cases here now, they can be transported to the Hetepheres and travel back to England with us? And arrangements can be made for others to follow in the future?”

  The Shaydi brothers appeared to be delighted. “Then,” said Great-aunt Iphigenia, “I will make a selection now of, six, did you say? How exciting! I seldom have such an opportunity!”

  She passed along the rows of mummy cases, lingering and inspecting closely. “This one, I think. And this. And this. These two. And what’s this?” She bent down to look closely at a very small mummy case, half-hidden by larger ones. “Oh, I must certainly have this! The mummy of quite a small child, I suspect. Don’t you think so, Sisyphus?”

  Great-uncle Sisyphus inspected the small mummy case through his spectacles. It was covered in colourful hieroglyphs, and the small face had been painted a glowing gold, with black hair surrounding it. “I would definitely think so. An interesting example. The name on the case appears to be – let me see – ah, Tayasetimu. A girl child, then.”

  A girl child. Hattie felt a tremor, thinking of the mummy of the child Tamut that Great-aunt Iphigenia had unwrapped at the Countess of Carlisle’s party in London. That had not ended well.

  “Then, if you have decided, perhaps you would like to return to our living area for more tea,” said Omar Shaydi. “Terms can be discussed there. Meanwhile, my brothers will arrange to have the mummies prepared for transport to the Hetepheres.”

  “Terms?” said Great-aunt Iphigenia vaguely. “Oh, Edgar and Edwina will arrange all that. My assistants, you know. I would prefer to remain here and watch as the mummy cases are prepared for travel.”

  Omar Shaydi bowed. “Very well.”

  Hattie chose to follow the Ravens up to the living area, remembering the papers she had uncovered in the Ravens’ office at Crumblin Castle. She wanted to be there when the terms were discussed.

  But, of course, there was no way the Ravens intended her to be a party to their discussions. As soon as they reached the ground level, Edgar Raven said very firmly, “Hattie, you will be bored. I’m sure you’d like to see where the women and children live. Amal will no doubt be there. Could that be arranged?” he asked Omar Shaydi.

  “But of course.” Omar Shaydi clearly did not want Hattie listening in, either. He called through a doorway. “Laila! Would you entertain Miss Hattie for a while, please?”

  And Laila, shrouded in black, came out and took Hattie firmly by the hand. As she was led away, Hattie looked back. The Shaydi brothers and the Ravens were already in an intent group, as Edgar produced papers from his attache case.

  If Hattie had not been so desperately trying to hear what was going on in the large chamber, she would have been fascinated by her visit to the Shaydi women. As soon as they arrived in a chamber that obviously belonged only to females, Laila pulled off her black robe. Her dress underneath was loose and colourful, as were the dresses of all the other women and girls in the room. They wore bright jewellery, beads alternating with shining coins, around their necks, dangling from their ears, in bracelets on their arms. Amal was in the middle of them: cousins, aunts, grandmothers. They had already dressed Amal in a bright dress like their own. Suddenly, Amal looked totally unlike a schoolgirl, and instead, like something colourful and exotic, something that belonged in this strange place.

  The Shaydi women were as interested in Hattie’s clothing as she was in theirs. They wanted to see what she had under her dress. Hattie displayed her petticoats. They were fascinated by her stockings – they seemed to think they were a kind of second skin. The buttons on her boots also aroused particular interest. They compared her brown hair with the deep black of their own. Then, they found jewellery for Hattie to try on.

  It was a pleasant way to spend an evening, but Hattie so wished she had been able to hear the negotiations between the Ravens and the Shaydis. She trusted none of them.

  The mummy cases, having been transformed into what appeared to be innocent rolls of carpet, were soon being carried up from their resting place deep in the tomb. Extra donkeys appeared to transport the carpet rolls back to the river, and Amal reappeared in her own clothes again. With much waving and farewell wishes of goodwill, the party rode back to the Hetepheres through the dark, their way lit by small boys carrying lanterns.

  If the crew of the Hetepheres was surprised that an excursion to view the sunset from the temple of Philae had been transformed into a carpet-buying extravaganza, they did not show it. The Shaydi brothers supervised the rolls of carpet being carried onto the Hetepheres and stored, with the trunks and suitcases, in the spare cabin devoted to luggage. And the door of the cabin was securely locked.

  The party spent one more day in Philae.

  “We must, for appearance’s sake, visit the temple,” said Omar Shaydi, which pleased Great-uncle Sisyphus greatly. Though he would, he said quietly to Hattie, have preferred several days.

  Amal, Hattie thought, had been unusually quiet since their visit to the Shaydi family.

  “Is something wrong?” Hattie asked as they walked around the small, lovely temple.

  Amal sat down on a nearby stone. She looked as if she might cry. “My father has been listening to my aunts and grandmother,” she said. “He has asked me if I want to bother returning to school when we get back to Cairo. Bother with school! He says my family think I would learn more suitable things at home. Things suitable for girls.”

  “Oh,” Hattie said. “What did you say?”

  “I said I wanted to go to school. That I could not learn to be a teacher, or a doctor, or a lawyer, at home.”

  “And?”

  “He said my family think that being a teacher, or a doctor, or a lawyer is not a suitable thing for a girl to be. He said I should think about it. That perhaps they are right.”

  “Do you think they are right?” Hattie asked.

  “Not for a moment! I thought my father felt so, too, when he let me go to school. But then he took me out, just to be your companion. So perhaps he does not value learning as I do at all.” She brushed the back of her hand across her eyes. “He tells me now to think. I do not know what to do.”

  Hattie had little advice to offer. “Would it be of any use if I talked to him?” she suggested, even though she felt it would be very presumptuous of her to do so.

  “You? A girl who doesn’t want to go to school?” Amal was scornful.

  She was probably right, Hattie thought.

  The Hetepheres turned, and they began to retrace their journey. It would take several weeks to reach Cairo, Hattie knew, even if they did not linger overlong at the tombs and temples and excavation sites they had still to visit. The Ravens, and even Great-aunt Iphigenia, were anxious now to push on, though Great-uncle Sisyphus sighed as the lovely temple of Philae disappeared behind them. However, he found something else to occupy him. “The mummy cases,” he said. “I may as well make a start on translating the hieroglyphs, don’t you think, Iphigenia?”

  “Of course,” Great-aunt Iphigenia replied. “Just as you like. But won’t you find it rather oppressive, working in that little cabin? After all, you can hardly bring the mummy cases out on deck.”

  “Oh, I think it will be all right,” said Great-uncle Sisyphus. “Hattie, perhaps you would care to assist me? Your education, I fear, has been rather
neglected of late.”

  Hattie thought of all the temples, tombs and excavation sites she had seen, and of how much Great-uncle Sisyphus and Great-aunt Iphigenia had told her about them, and felt that her education had hardly been neglected at all. She had, however, no objection to translating hieroglyphs with Great-uncle Sisyphus.

  They began that afternoon, slipping away quietly after lunch, trying to look as if they intended to take a short repose in their cabins. But once out of view of the crew, it was not their own cabins they went to. They slid into the luggage cabin, locked the door behind them, and surveyed the six rolls of carpet.

  Amal had decided she preferred to work on her mathematics. “Even if it is all a waste of time. If I will not go back to school.” Hattie watched her walk away, shoulders slumped.

  “Now, where to begin?” wondered Great-uncle Sisyphus. Hattie knew where she wanted to start. “The little one?” she suggested. “The one you said was the mummy of a small girl? You read out her name.”

  “So I did. Tayasetimu. Well, that’s as good a place to start as any. And at least it will be easier to unroll that carpet than the larger ones.”

  Even though the carpet roll around Tayasetimu’s mummy case was smaller, it was still awkward to unroll in the cramped space in the cabin. Both Hattie and Great-uncle Sisyphus were hot, and covered with carpet fibres when at last the mummy case stood before them.

  “Let us make a start, then,” puffed Great-uncle Sisyphus, sitting down on a trunk. “Hattie, perhaps you could make notes as we translate?”

  It was generous of Great-uncle Sisyphus to say “we”, Hattie thought. Her knowledge of hieroglyphs was still quite rudimentary, though she suspected it would probably improve greatly as she worked with Great-uncle Sisyphus.

  “Now, let me see,” said Great-uncle Sisyphus, running his fingers gently over the mummy case. “Interesting. Interesting. This mummy case is not made of wood, but from layers of linen, soaked in glue and then left to harden. It would have been moulded around a shape made, probably, of mud and straw. Once the glue had dried, the case would have been formed and the inner shape could be disposed of. The glue-and-linen mummy case would have been coated with plaster, left to set, and then decorated.”

  “Not wood?” said Hattie, touching the mummy case gently. It felt quite hard to her. “Was that usual?”

  “In its time, yes. The method was common between around 940 and 680 BC. So this young girl would have lived, and died, around – oh, say, 800 BC.”

  Hattie gazed at the golden face painted on the case. “If it is a girl,” she reminded Great-uncle Sisyphus. “Sometimes when Great-aunt Iphigenia opens a case, what is inside is not at all what was expected.”

  “You are quite right,” said Great-uncle Sisyphus. He paused and leaned forward towards the mummy case. “But, do you know, somehow I have a feeling that it is a girl. And that it is Tayasetimu herself.” He smiled and shrugged. “Not a scientific conclusion at all, I know.”

  Hattie nodded reluctantly. She felt the same way. And she really did not want Great-aunt Iphigenia to unwrap the small mummy of Tayasetimu.

  “What else can you read?” she asked. Great-uncle Sisyphus drew a large magnifying glass from his pocket.

  They were interrupted by shouts from the deck. “The Cataract!”

  “The Cataract is in sight!”

  That was the end of translation for the day. Great-uncle Sisyphus and Hattie hastily bundled the mummy case back into its roll of carpet, locked the cabin door, and went up to see what was happening.

  The Cataract, a cloud of spray and mist above it, was directly in front of them. The Sheikh of the Cataract had been contacted well ahead, and now came alongside in his small boat. There were several men with him, but no sign of the great crowd of workers that had been present when they had ascended the Cataract.

  “Where are all the men?” Hattie wondered. “All the ropes?”

  “We do not need them,” Amal told her. “We are not being pulled up the rapids now. We are going down. Now, we will ride them down.”

  “Ride them?”

  “Yes. It will be very exciting. You will see. And much, much faster than going up.”

  And it was. The Hetepheres ploughed bravely up to the edge of what seemed a great plunge of boiling water, teetered on its brink, tilted stomach-churningly forward – and entered the wild water. The Sheikh shouted and gestured. His steersman clung grimly to the wheel. Men wielded long poles, fending the Hetepheres away from boulders. Waves dashed and spray flew. Everyone on deck was soaked, but within minutes they were safely down the first series of rapids. The Hetepheres proceeded gracefully through the calmer water to the next series of rapids. Then they descended crazily again. And again. And by sunset, the wild waters of the Cataract were behind them.

  As the Hetepheres took her course down the river towards Cairo, Hattie and Great-uncle Sisyphus spent the days that were not occupied in stopping to visit temples and tombs deciphering the hieroglyphs on the mummy case. It took a long time. Great-uncle Sisyphus was painstaking and thorough in his work. Hattie’s notes grew slowly. But, by the time they were only a day or so out of Cairo, she had assembled a list of information about Tayasetimu.

  They had begun with the meaning of Tayasetimu’s name. “It translates as ‘May Isis seize them’,” observed Great-uncle Sisyphus, peering at a row of hieroglyphs through his magnifying glass. “An unusual name. Its purpose appears to be invoking the power of the goddess Isis, and imploring her to act against enemies.”

  “What sort of enemies?” Hattie asked.

  “We can’t be sure of that,” said Great-uncle Sisyphus. “Perhaps anyone who might seek to hurt the child? Or her family? Or even enemies of their city, or Egypt itself? Here is something you can make a note of. The child’s father was named Pakharu, which means ‘the Syrian’. So the family originally came from Syria. And I suspect, from the quality of the mummy case, that they would have been a family of wealth and high status.”

  Great-uncle Sisyphus’ suspicions were confirmed by another set of hieroglyphs.

  “Tayasetimu had a title,” he said. “She was a Singer of the Interior of Amun. Yes, as I thought. Only high-ranking girls and women would hold that title.”

  “What does it mean?” Hattie looked up from her notebook.

  “Of the Interior means that she would have had access to the inner, most sacred, parts of the temple of Amun,” explained Great-uncle Sisyphus. “Ordinary people would not be admitted there. And as the main temple of Amun is in Karnak – you will recall we visited it, Hattie – I would imagine the family lived in Thebes. Luxor, as it is known now.”

  Hattie imagined a small girl, walking among the giant forest of columns in the temple of Karnak. Hattie had felt as insignificant as an ant there. Would Tayasetimu have felt the same way?

  “What would a Singer do?” she asked. “Did she have special duties?”

  “Yes indeed. Many high-ranking families took part in the daily rituals of the temple. She may have been present when the priests offered food and drink and fresh clothing to the god. There would have been hymns and prayers recited to music, as part of the rituals. We know that the Egyptians had harps, flutes, percussion instruments, drums and something like a lute.” Great-uncle Sisyphus sighed. “A great pity we don’t know what their music sounded like. But –” he pointed to a series of hieroglyphs. “You see that? That means Tayasetimu had the title Hesyt. So she probably played some sort of instrument, as well as being a Singer.”

  “How old do you think she was?” Hattie asked.

  “We can’t really tell without unwrapping her, and that is for dear Iphigenia to do. I’m sure she’s greatly looking forward to it. But judging from the size of the mummy case –” Great-uncle Sisyphus cast a critical eye over it. “Not very old. Seven years, perhaps? Maybe as old as ten?”

  Hattie lowered her eyes and swallowed. Great-aunt Iphigenia might well be looking forward to unwrapping Tayasetimu’s mummy, but Hattie wa
s not. She was not looking forward to it at all.

  When the Hetepheres reached Cairo, Great-aunt Iphigenia hovered anxiously on deck as their luggage was unloaded. She clasped her hands to her chest and bit her lip as the rolls of carpet were carried off.

  “No, no, you must not watch too closely,” Omar Shaydi said. “There are officials from the antiquities department on the dock. They are looking out for artefacts that travellers may be attempting to smuggle out of Egypt, and are authorised to inspect any suspicious baggage. You do not want to appear too anxious about ordinary rolls of carpet.”

  With an effort, Great-aunt Iphigenia turned away. “You are quite right,” she said. She fumbled in her handbag, produced a fan and fluttered it in agitation. She lowered her voice. “Are the officials showing any interest in the carpets, do you think?”

  Omar Shaydi glanced towards the dock. “None at all,” he assured her. “They are more concerned with the box containing canopic jars and statuettes and pieces of papyrus that we have unloaded.”

  Great-aunt Iphigenia stared at him. “But we did not acquire any canopic jars or statuettes or papyrus,” she said.

  Omar Shaydi smiled. “No, madam, you did not. But I did. I was sure the inspectors would be interested in looking closely at them. As they are. But,” he heaved a sigh, “it appears I have no judgement. All the pieces I acquired are, apparently, fakes. This is amusing the inspectors greatly.” He smiled again. “Amusing them so much, in fact, that six rolls of carpet have passed by them, and are now being loaded onto a cart to take them to my shop, where they will be packaged for the journey to England.”

  Great-uncle Sisyphus laughed out loud. “You crafty devil, Omar!”

  Omar Shaydi bowed. “I aim to please, Sir Sisyphus,” he said.

  It was here that Amal was to leave them. She stood waiting with her luggage, her arms full of books and her face strained and anxious. “Our journey is over,” she said to Hattie. “It is time I should go back to school. But my father has not mentioned my returning. I know my aunts and grandmothers spoke to him, most urgently, about how important it is that he finds me a husband and how I have, surely, had enough of this learning. I am afraid, Hattie.”