THE SMITING TEXTS

by Roy Lester Pond

  What did Philae tell his father about death and eternity?

  On the way out, Anson noticed another smiting scene on the eastern tower showing a vast figure of Ptolemy XII holding a group of enemies of Egypt by the hair and raising a mace to smite them.

  That scene, endlessly repeated in Egypt throughout the dynasties, was a feature of almost every temple.

  Bloem saw it and gave the figure a scowling glance.

  “Not that again!”

  Chapter 33

  ABUNA DANIEL’S NEXT archaeological dig took place at a centre called ‘The Saint Shenouda the Archimandrite Coptic Society’, a building that housed vast resources including a Coptic Library, the Coptic Microfilm Library and photographic archives of Coptic Monuments.

  His cousin Demetrius, who was a slightly smaller mirror image of Daniel, eagerly took part in the dig as Daniel spread out the clues.

  “I do not know about the potsherd, Danny, but the clue about the pearls is interesting. I see why Marcus sent you here to me. It is something I have discussed with him. Your friend Professor Emory Hunter came here often to study.”

  “Yes, I know. I recommended he come to you.”

  “There was one particular, very rare book that I found for him. Very, very rare. I do mean rare!”

  “Go on, you are intriguing me, cousin.”

  “The Book of Buried Pearls. It is an ancient work by Arab authors, a key to the lost tombs of Egypt, a notorious guide for tomb robbers, locating the sites of tombs and the places to dig.”

  “Yes, I know that the early Arabs and Copts took an interest in the hidden tombs of Egypt, long before the west woke up to them.”

  “Indeed. The Book of Buried Pearls was virtually a Baedecker's Guide for the tomb robbing profession. It went by the full name of The Book of Buried Pearls and of the Precious Mystery, Giving Indications Regarding the Hiding Places of Finds and Treasures. It remained in circulation for centuries. But this is no ordinary volume,” Demetrius said. “This one, translated into Sahidic, contains several chapters missing from other copies. It points to the location of specific tombs, including that of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings and Psusennes at Tanis. Remember, this volume was written hundreds of years before these tombs were discovered. It also gives clues to other undiscovered sites.”

  “You have this volume in your library, cousin?” Daniel said, his head growing light, as if he had just inhaled a draft of pure oxygen.

  “We do.”

  “Then why are you standing there?”

  So that was it. Saint Shenouda’s Pearls of Wisdom referred to a real book, hidden in the library of The Saint Shenouda the Archimandrite Coptic Society. Now he understood the clue. Very obscure, Emory. But what would the book reveal?

  Daniel thought he had mastered impatience in his years of solitude in a cave, but he started drumming his square-tipped fingers on the desk as he waited eagerly to get his hands on the book.

  Chapter 34

  “GOD BLESS you, Saint Shenouda,” Daniel murmured fervently. This indeed was a buried pearl.

  Daniel read the volume with growing awe.

  The vellum book in his hands was exactly the key he had been looking for. His hands trembled as he read, as if he had come upon Holy Scripture lost to the faith. How was it possible that such a book existed? How could all this be known, and then be forgotten?

  It was like holding a Bible of Egyptian archaeology in his hands.

  Cousin Demetrius, the librarian, returned, looking uneasy.

  “Have you seen enough?”

  “Not nearly. Why do you ask? Don’t tell me somebody is waiting for this book,” Daniel said, aghast.

  “No, not for the book. For you. Two men, policemen, are in the reception. They are enquiring about a missing Coptic Monk.”

  Daniel snapped the ancient volume shut with a bang that made cousin Demetrius wince.

  “You have to get me out of here, cousin.”

  “I will show you out.”

  “I can’t just leave via the front door.”

  Cousin Demetrius smiled. “Not that way. We have seen too many examples of Cairo mobs attacking Christians not to plan ahead. There is a secret way out of here that leads into a back road.”

  “Thank you. I will be back, you can be sure of it. I will need to spend a good deal more time in the company of this book. Meanwhile forget your Dewey Decimal System and try to misplace it in your library until my return.”

  Daniel followed him.

  If the visitors at the entrance discovered him and gave chase in the street, they would have to cope with another of his cousins, the taxi driver.

  Chapter 35

  ‘The Other Egypt’ – Anson Hunter’s blog

  I SUSPECT that my group, or the majority of them, believes that visiting Egyptian temples is like visiting old, abandoned churches.

  But temples are more. The sacred spaces within Egyptian temples resonate with ancient, unseen forces for those who are willing to engage with them experientially.

  Temples have been described as great lenses that pulled the universe into focus, but each one is also the universe itself, the mound of creation that first emerged from the waters of Nun, filled with the forces of creation. The budding papyrus columns of its halls represent creation arising out of the primeval swamp.

  These were not churches where the common people came to worship. They were powerhouses of metaphysical force and fortresses of the gods and, in the darkness of their holy-of-holies, the priests struggled each day against the annihilating forces of chaos, using their armaments of ritual power. Did this protective ritual explain how their civilization managed to survive for millennia, while that of other civilizations lasted for a mere century or less?

  Hathor’s Holocaust … part 2

  Were they, three souls in this shrine, the only ones left in the entire nome? What shrine was this? Kha wondered. He had not bothered to check. He saw a painted image on the wall of a lithe woman with a crown of horns on her head and a solar disk in between them.

  Hathor.

  I cannot escape her. Tonight I must sleep with the image of Hathor whom I must kill.

  The lamps went out one by one and moonlight trickled in through apertures high up in the shrine…

  The cat of death ran loping through his dreams.

  She passed by him and ran to the river, going through the reeds, the light and shade of the stems making stripes on her blood-splattered flanks. The cat bent at the water’s edge and lapped.

  Maybe I should shoot her now, he thought, but he could bend neither the bow nor his will to do it.

  She did not know why she had come to the river to drink. Normally the blood was enough to quench her thirst. But something drew her, something bright and glinting in the redness of her vision like a spangle of light on a jewel in the distance.

  She seemed to see that jewel before she slept, but it was gone now and she was back in the reeds, stalking in moonlight. Why don’t I sleep? The bloodlust is not risen in my veins. This is my resting time. Tomorrow, the lust would come again, lapping against rocks and trees like the rising river. She stiffened as her nostrils plucked the air. She caught the dead-fish stink of a crocodile in the reeds. She rumbled warningly in the darkness.

  Sobek?

  She should kill him just for pleasure. In her form of destruction as the Mighty One, not even a god could withstand her, but this was her quiescent phase. She sniffed and went closer. The moonlight showed a pallid length. Why didn’t it stir? She put out a paw and clawed at it. The reptile still did not move. It was dead, lying on its back with the pale belly showing. Or was it pretending? She dug in her claws and rolled it over. It made a slap on the mud like a heavy, wet fish. She noticed a shaft with fletching at its end that grew from the crocodile’s eye. The shaft smelled of man. Man had killed this. Sobek was dead all right. Stinking creature. Not one of Ptah’s finer creations. Crocodiles smelled of rot even when they were alive.

  She heard voices a
nd flattened her ears. Men coming. More men, still alive? They were coming swiftly in a boat on the river.

  There was another brushing sound. A man was coming through the reeds to meet them. She saw the flash of a lamp swinging, a view serried by the stalks of the papyrus.

  Curious as a house cat, she padded through the reeds.

  “Bek? Are you there?” voices called from the water. “Bek?”

  A lone voice on shore spoke like an echo. “Bek, stand by to help these visitors land. Bek, be quick, help them. Grab the end of their boat Bek and secure them,” the one with the lamp instructed himself. “Don't let a messenger of the priest of Ra fall into the water or your Lord in Heliopolis will be angry.”

  “Stop muttering to yourself, Bek, and help us.”

  “Make the bow secure Bek,” the man with the lamp went on, instructing himself. “Catch the rope and tie it to a clump of reeds. Handily now, Bek. It's a long swim back to Heliopolis.” There was a rumble of oars being shipped.

  The Great Cat went closer, parting the reeds with her muzzle to watch with yellow, almond eyes.

  A man jumped ashore. Others stretched and yawned on board.

  The man with the lamp welcomed the one on the bank who had the pale shaven head of a priest.

  “Has the bowman made contact?” the newcomer said tersely.

  “No time for greetings and pleasantries Bek,” the man with the lamp grumbled to himself. “Make your report Bek - and quickly. Don't keep the messenger waiting. Get right down to business Bek. Tell the messenger that the bowman has made contact all right, but not with a cat, but a girl. How he found her in the reeds like a corpse. Tell him how the young hunter forgets his mission and takes to drink and revelry, calling her Egypt and cooing at her and coddling her with a cover and letting her waste costly oil.”

  “Does he still have the necklace?”

  “Yes, just. Tell all you have heard with your long ears, Bek. How this piece of fish he has picked up would dearly wish to take the necklace from him, how her eyes pop out of her head when she glances at it. Mesmerised like a cat by lamplight in the dark.”

  “What of the real cat?”

  “He is more entranced by the kitten.”

  “Tell about this girl.”

  “A priestess of Hathor, Sesheshet, she says, but just a piece of fish to me. All women are so to me. I am forsworn them like all purified ones of Ra.”

  “You are no purified one. Just a servant of one.”

  “Shame, Bek. Know your place, Bek. Don't get grand ideas,” the one with the lamp scolded himself.

  “Is that all you have to tell?”

  “Bek, you have told everything. Except of your thirst and privation and lack of sleep and the soul-burdening stench of death that only beer will wash away and the risk that you may become catfood at any moment!”

  “Give him his beer.”

  The timbers creaked on the boat. There was the cool clink of beer jars knocking. They were swung down into the reeds.

  “We will return for another report. Keep up the work.”

  “Just keep going, Bek. Never mind the comfort and safety of your quarters back in the temple of Ra. Just keep leading a pair of flea ridden donkeys, and taking orders from a boy with a bow and a pretty piece of fish.”

  “Go back.”

  “Go back, Bek. Can't you see these people want to go back to their beds while you have waited up half the night for them?”

  The man with the lamp went back through the reeds, shaking his head and muttering.

  The Great Cat followed the man with the beer jars back to the shrine. The man squatted at the entrance and opened one of the jars. He drank, soaking up beer like desert soaking up water. In a short time he was asleep, breathing like a snuffling whart-hog. The cat crept past him, going inside the shrine, moving silently as a Nile current.

  The One with the Sidelock of Heliopolis felt troubled as he went, head bowed in thought, through the lamplit columns of the temple.

  It was the report he had received from his emissaries that concerned him. Who was the girl, this priestess of Hathor, Sesheshet, that Kha had found in the reeds and taken up with? Kha had gone to find a lioness, not a girl. Was there something happening that he did not know about? A cold hand took hold of his insides and twisted.

  There were things about this enterprise that had bothered him from the start. Why had the god spoken to the king and not to him, especially when, miraculously, the chosen one turned out to his very nephew? And why did the chosen one have to be a beautiful youth? Why not a hard-bitten veteran?

  These thoughts were leading his astute mind in a direction he wanted to resist.

  He took his concerns with him into the shrine of the god late that night. Ra, beak-headed, angry raptor-eyed, held a crook and sceptre and wore the solar disk and uraeus as he sat enthroned in gold and laced in the sweet-smelling mystery of blue smoke.

  Ra-hotep prostrated himself and lay frozen in this position until tranquillity came. It always began with a feeling of warmth as if a sun's ray had reached like a finger out of the gloom of the shrine and fallen on the back of his shaven skull, first an exploring beam, then another and then the full stare of the sun, a brightness that seemed to pervade his brain. It was in this sunlight of revelation, amid mystical darkness, that the god shed his meaning into his prophet's heart.

  “I know what you ask, Prophet. Yes, I have hidden my truth from you.”

  “Who is she -?”

  “She is the human manifestation of Hathor, the Sweet One, drawn irresistibly to the beautiful youth with the necklace.”

  “Hathor? A woman? But has she not reverted to her destructive cycle as the Mighty Cat?”

  “Yes, and back again. She is slipping from one phase to another, one moment The Sweet One, Hathor, goddess of joy, the next Hathor-Sekhmet the Eye of My Destruction, the savage cat of death. She has become truly the Female Soul with Two Faces. She swings from sleeping to waking, but soon perhaps she will swing from moment to moment.”

  “How? Why?”

  “Forces of evil, led by the Serpent of Outer Darkness, Apophis, attack my kingdom," the god told him in a voice that rumbled under the priest's prostrate body like the dragging of a mighty stone. “The flares of our battles and the winds of destruction blowing over my radiance are making her heart spin.”

  “Then Kha's mission -?”

  “To attract, not kill. He is beautiful bait, no more. He cannot kill the lioness.”

  “But the necklace – ?”

  “The Menat will in future be known as the symbol of Hathor. Its potency is drawing her irresistibly.”

  “Then he is in greater danger than I feared.”

  “From the cat?”

  “From the female,” the Prophet said with a shiver. “The cat could only eat his flesh, but Hathor could devour his everlasting soul.”

  “That is why I hid my plan from you at first, Prophet. But now you must know, and make this sacrifice. You must not attempt to stop your kinsman from carrying out his divine mission. Kha must now be persuaded to turn around and come back, for the lioness has found him. He must lead her back into a trap.”

  “What trap?”

  “A tomb trap is being built, nearing completion, even as we speak, in the hills of Iunet, Hathor's sacred nome. The youth must now lead her to the trap where she will be sealed inside for eternity.”

  “Where is this trap exactly?”

  “All will be revealed to you. I will put it into the heart of His Majesty and his vizier Teti to show you.”

  “But what will become of my nephew? I love him, body and soul. Cannot another means be found to calm Hathor-Sekhmet's rage? Should we not make again a lake of bloody beer in seven thousand jars and pour it on the ground? Can you not then transform her when the beer rises to her head?”

  “No, not now that she has two faces. That time has passed. It must be this way.”

  Then the glare of a sun in the darkness went away like a sun dropping beh
ind the western cliffs and the One with the Sidelock of Heliopolis dozed on the floor until morning.

  Teti, the Vizier, squirmed, agitated, in his carrying chair. His plans were still not complete and the king wanted reports and worse, an inspection by another.

  The king demanded to know the progress of two matters from his vizier. First, had the beautiful youth Kha made contact with the quarry? Yes, a spy among the High prophet's followers had made report of it. And next, had the suitable trap been prepared? Yes, it was nearing completion, but its suitability was soon to be judged by another. Teti was going to be visited today by the One with the Sidelock of Heliopolis.

  Teti, feeling closed in by his carrying chair, looked up at crags in an amphitheatre of cliffs beyond Dendera. This region was Hathor’s cult centre. They were hastening to make ready for her and this was the place he had chosen to build the trap. There was no time to arrange a commission to select the Place of Piercing. It had all been left to Teti and now the High Prophet of Ra was coming to inspect his solution.

  My solution... But perhaps the god had inspired it. Teti had prayed for guidance in finding a solution and had consulted scores of tomb and temple architects. He had ruled out a conventional mastaba tomb. Mastabas were elaborate structures modelled on houses with walls and a roof, with many compartments beneath, and a tomb pit, the entire superstructure covered over with rocks and sand, but, like houses, these had been broken into easily by robbers. This cage, once shut, must not be opened again.

  One bold-minded architect had even suggested piling one mastaba pile on top of another like a stone stairway to heaven, creating a tomb so vast and forbidding that it would overawe the most hardened tomb robber. But Teti had rejected that too. Far more promising, if puzzling, was the utterance of an oracle: All tombs with walls will fall. All tombs with entrances will be opened.