The Mammoth Book of Egyptian Whodunnits

by Mike Ashley

  “This is disappointing,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “It is as well that no activity has been detected among the forces of the north. We are at least satisfied that they had nothing to do with it. But you can take no credit for that.”

  “No,” said Huy.

  “Nevertheless, it is a mess,” continued Neferhotep. “As far as anyone needs to know officially, Sonebi died of a heart attack. His work was hard. The wife and family have been informed of this decision. Pashed will attest to it in the scroll to be placed in the Archives. Sonebi’s successor has already been appointed. He has taken up his post. As far as the world is concerned beyond these walls, there has not been a ripple. Security has not been breached.”

  “I see.”

  “But you have failed, Huy.” Now there was no mistaking the satisfaction in Neferhotep’s voice. “And there is the question of what to do with you.”

  Huy allowed himself a cautious inward smile. Horemheb would not retain him any longer after this. He would be free. To do what, he did not know; but he was tired of the palace and its ways.

  “You must prepare yourself, Huy,” continued the Leader of the Black Medjays. “The king wants to see you himself.”

  “When?”

  “Immediately.” Neferhotep raised his hand and from somewhere behind him two senior Medjays appeared. “Goodbye, Huy. I am not certain that we shall meet again.”

  Huy turned without speaking and followed the officers to the broad lane between high walls that led to Horemheb’s own quarters. Whatever Neferhotep might think or wish, if Horemheb wanted to destroy Huy, he would not waste time in meeting him. But if the Pharaoh had not been deceived: if somehow he knew that Huy had succeeded–

  The scribe could not think of that. But as he stepped into the red sunlight of the First Courtyard of the Palace of the Southern Capital he knew that he had made the right decision.

  CLAWS OF THE WIND

  Suzanne Frank

  With the death of Horemheb in 1295 BC, the eighteenth dynasty came to an end. Horemheb adopted as his heir his vizier. a former soldier, like Horemheb, called Menpehtyra, who came to the throne as Rameses I. He was the first king of the nineteenth dynasty, which is known as the Ramesside period, because most of its kings were called Rameses. The most famous was Rameses II, whose reign of 66 years, from 1279-13 BC, saw one of the most phenomenal building programmes in Egypt. This was the last glow of Egypt’s Golden Age.

  Suzanne Frank is the author of the Chloe and Cheftu series that began with Reflections in the Nile (1997). Chloe Kingsley is a Texan archaeologist who, upon entering an ancient chamber in Egypt, is suddenly whisked back in time to the court of Queen Hatshepsut. Later books in the series are set in other ancient civilizations around the Mediterranean. The following story, however, is not a time romance but a straight historical detective mystery set in the time of Rameses the Eternal.

  The sky was the same shade of dun as the courtyard before me, with the strip of cultivation and the dark green of the Nile laid like a ribbon between them. The grit of sand still clung to my skin and ground between my teeth, but the storm and the evil winds of khamsin were over.

  Praise be, I muttered to Shu, god of the air.

  “Mistress Nofret,” a priest called to me. “The foremen come, from the Village. There has been a murder.”

  I pushed away from the Hathor-headed column and picked up my cat. She had spent the last hour grooming herself, trying to rid her fur of sand. As I rubbed her ears I envied her. Other than ritual ablutions, I would not see a bath until the water runners arrived. The winds had waylaid them.

  The cat deposited in my quarters, I splashed my face and hands in sand-logged water, then changed into my kilt, my jewelled collar and donned my ritual mask, the head of Anubis. Wrapping it in layers and layers of linen had not protected it from the sandstorm. Tiny grains bit into my skin as I adjusted the jackal-head so that I could see out of the slits in the cheeks. An acolyte handed me the symbols of my office, First Prophet of Anubis, the adze and the snake-headed rod. I swept out of the chambers, my heart pounding as it does when I go to meet my god.

  We, the priests of the Place of Purification, stood looking southwards, squinting through the dusty air. Though the winds had stopped, the sky, so far from its normal faience blue, seemed ominous. “I would have omens of this event,” I announced.

  The priests ran to find a rooster. While we waited no one appeared over the ridge that separated the Village from this place, the Most Magnificent. Guide me, I asked Anubis. Sweat slicked my cheeks. The weight of Anubis felt especially heavy today. At my feet, the priest killed the rooster and the omen reader whispered to the scribe, who wrote the interpretation on ostraca.

  “Prophet?” the priest recalled me. I looked into the blood of the rooster.

  What did I see?

  The Nile has been red, but it is due to the start of the Inundation. Pharaoh, may his name be glorious for millions of years! dwells in upper Egypt in good health with a happy heart. Nothing unusual.

  Then a trickle of blood ran to the south, in the direction of the village.

  It split into two channels that ran in opposite directions. I watched their paths, then –

  Paneb, next to me, gasped: the two channels rejoined and formed a puddle.

  “They come!” the lookout called.

  While serfs cleaned the floor, incense was lit and the chants to welcome the body and ka of the deceased swelled. We sang the first of the prayers, pleading for mercy, attesting that the deceased had done nothing, robbed no cow of her milk, deprived no widow of her recompense, taken no life. He was pure.

  The Foremen of both Left and Right were accompanied by the scribe of the Village. Two workmen carried the body on a stretcher between them. I could just make out the slow swing of a travelling chair lagging behind. The seeress.

  Anubis consumed me in ritual. The body was in its place, the ka resting.

  When I came back to myself I was in my chambers, hours later.

  “Have some wine, Mistress,” Paneb said as he pulled the Anubis head off. “The Villagers await you.” I traded my masculine ceremonial robes for the more approachable and human attire of priestess. My gown was white, my wig tipped with gold and my eyes ringed with kohl.

  I greeted the Villagers as the daughter of Anubis, and invited them to take refreshment. After we exchanged condolences and blessings I asked the scribe where the water was. Those of us who live in the Redland west of Thebes are brought water and food as partial payment for our service to Pharaoh (living for millions of years!).

  “The administrator was waiting for the deliverers when he was killed,” the scribe said.

  “Who did this thing?” I asked. “What transpired?”

  “A painter. We have him,” said the Foreman of the Left, Mekhti.

  “His grudge against the administrator is well known,” User, the Foreman of the Right, said. “He had threatened the administrator countless times. Once, he’d beaten him in his own home.”

  “A dangerous man,” the scribe added.

  “We have a witness to the murder,” Mekhti said. “She saw the painter push the administrator out of his window.”

  The seeress Sa’anktet, my sister in both flesh and spirit, said nothing.

  “He died in the fall?” I asked them.

  They nodded solemnly.

  “At what time was this?”

  The foremen looked at each other. “No more than an hour before we started our walk here.” At a carrying pace, it takes two hours to reach Anubis’ temple from the Village. On foot, under an hour; riding, a quarter of an hour.

  “Then it has been three hours?” I asked.

  Again, they all nodded. I rose, bade them enjoy the fruits of the temple kitchens, and followed the painted halls to the washing chamber.

  Anubis’ temple was inside a mortuary temple, built hundreds of years ago by a powerful woman who took the title Pharaoh. Myrrh trees flourish still in t
he courtyards, but only a handful of offerings are made for the benefactor. The temple itself is a wonder, with wide ramps and soaring columns, snuggled against the cliffs, a jewel secure in its setting. It will endure long after Ramessu Eternal goes to Osiris.

  It is a beautiful place for my god to reside. I entered the subchambers.

  The priests bowed to me and lit lamps. It has often amused me that the god of death and final purification requires the most light to complete his tasks. The scribe took up his position in the corner and together we prayed to Anubis.

  “Begin, oh wise one,” the priests intoned, filling me with power. “May your eyes be as sharp as Meretseger, may your ears hear the confession of the ka, and may you discern the motive of the hearts and judge the evil of the men who seek to deceive Anubis, Opener of the Way.”

  I raised my lamp and looked at the deceased.

  The administrator was a short, portly man. His light skin betrayed a Libyan heritage. He had shaved this day, and I could still smell sandalwood on his skin. Earrings hung from his lobes, decorated with carnelian and lapis, which matched his necklaces. His face was cut and pieces of limestone gravel were imbedded in his flesh – he had landed face down when he fell. The wounds had clogged with dark blood, my first note to the scribe. “The deceased’s eyes are cloudy,” I said, my second note. With precise movements the priests washed away the man’s make-up, removed his jewellery and closed his eyes.

  With prayers and holy waters they took the deceased’s linen shirt, stained with sweat and make-up, and his kilt, soiled from his passing. “Turn him over,” I said.

  A bruise covered his buttocks, the backs of his thighs and the soles of his feet. I pressed the flesh once with my finger and watched the skin. The blood stayed. “Note that too. Bring another lamp.” Two more priests lifted lights above me. White creases intersected each other on the deceased’s buttocks. “Did you observe The Stiffening?” I asked.

  “No, Mistress,” Paneb said. “I will watch for it.”

  Next I checked the deceased’s hands and feet for wounds, discolouration, any other signs. Anubis help me.

  Another lukewarm splashing, and I returned to my guests.

  Mekhti was holding forth on some story while User and my sister dozed in their chairs. The scribe was stretched out on the floor, looking half-dead himself. I called for wine and sat.

  “Explain what happened,” I said.

  “Return to the Village with us,” my sister said. “We only know what we were told.”

  “You have the guilty one, the man’s widow and the witness?” I asked. “In one place?”

  “In anticipation,” my sister said. “Come with us.”

  I gathered my red Cloak of Questioning, my Anubis head, and ordered my priests to wait.

  “Mistress,” Paneb said, “the body, already it is fly-spotted.”

  “I know,” I said. “I will bring back the truth. Lay the deceased in the Place of Mummification, so no time will be lost.” I must work quickly, or the deceased would be impaired in the Afterlife.

  * * *

  The Village is a dreary spot, but the whitewashed walls and red wooden doors camouflage the residences of Egypt’s most talented and sought-after artisans and workers. They lived in a wedge, with nothing to see except dusty rock, and no relief offered by either shade or beauty. I grew up there. My nieces and nephews are among those working in the Tomb of Many (which is rumoured to have more chambers and pits of Osiris and storerooms and altars than any other tomb in the Hidden Place).

  Pharaoh, be served in glory forever! had already celebrated his third sed-festival – so new tombs have been started for the fledgling Horus and his courtiers and wives. These many projects have brought workers from as far as the Delta and the third cataract. The walls of the Village were fairly bursting with inhabitants.

  The workers of the Left are given residences on the east side of the main street, the workers on the Right live on the west side. This late afternoon women were sweeping the sand from their doors, gossiping, complaining about the late delivery of pay (it was already the second of the month; payday was the twenty-eighth) and bargaining.

  In truth, the Village is a women’s residence. The men, my father among them, are away except for six days a month, and festivals. In these streets laughter rings out, children play and flowers bloom. Everyone is neighbour and anything is for sale.

  Birhka makes the flakiest pastries; Nefer-hebit weaves linen so fine that a date weighs more than a whole length of cloth; Ummertani works in gold, hammering the faces of the Magnificent into sheets of the shining metal, with tools no longer than one’s finger. They fell silent as I passed.

  To them, the girl I was is lost, and they have never known the woman. Sa’anktet, my sister, is their friend. I am Anubis: a face one fears because it means death has come.

  The sounds of wailing grew louder as we progressed down the street.

  At the gate of the administrator’s ostentatious house, I stepped down, the adze in my sweaty hand, the Feather of Truth, worked in gold, worn on my breast and its image woven into the cloth of my gown. Mourners filled the courtyard of the estate – a property that would have swallowed at least three workmen’s houses – and slaves sat in rows, their kilts blue, dust on their heads.

  “Show me where he fell,” I said to Mekhti.

  The house was an Eastern Thebes mansion, in miniature. The main building, (boasting an unheard-of two storeys) with columned porch, looked out over a gravelled driveway and a verdant courtyard with a lotus pool, now empty. Wings spread from each side of the main house, long one-storey rooms with clerestory windows and columned walkways. A coloured cloth fluttered in and out of the second-storey window.

  The administrator had left little blood on the gravel. “Has this been cleaned?” I asked.

  Mekhti shook his head. “We touched nothing. Your sister said you would want to see it as it was.”

  I left him and walked up to the administrator’s room. Sand had blown in and stood in drifts against scrolls that had fallen off shelves. From here I could see the path coming up from the Nile, hidden, then revealed, by the dancing curtain. The chair was next to the window, close enough to use the sill as a low footstool. A bowl of congealed cucumber salad and a crust of dried bread sat on a tray beside the chair.

  “Bring them,” I called to the scribe, over my shoulder. Then I knelt, and sniffed and examined.

  Downstairs I stood in the doorway. From here I could see the stairwell and foot of the stairs, I could also see into the courtyard.

  Anubis, give me your vision.

  The foremen chose the widow’s threading room for our venue. They seated me then brought the guilty one before me, binding him with oaths.

  He fell on his face at the sight of Anubis.

  “Have mercy!” he sobbed. His kilt was paint-stained, his face unshaven. He was slightly built and underfed, but I could see wiry muscles beneath his skin.

  “Rerari,” the seeress said. “A painter of the Left. Husband and father of four. He was accused of stealing gold leaf from the tombs of the Magnificent Ones –”

  “I didn’t!” he cried.

  “He was removed from his position and expelled from the Village.”

  “Lies,” he said to me. “Lies –”

  “What has this to do with today?” I asked coldly. Anubis listened always but did not believe often. “Tell me what happened.”

  Rerari sat up and wiped his nose on his arm. “I didn’t kill him. I came merely to converse. He sent a message, he invited me.”

  I glanced at my sister; her face was as blank as a mask.

  “I wanted the back wages owed me, then I could leave,” Rerari said. “For months he had put me off, told me the payment was coming, but it never has. It was supposed to be today. I thought he would be in good spirits.”

  “He bade you visit him, and you did,” I said. “What happened then?”

  “Nothing!” the man shouted. “He never even acknowle
dged me. I came during the storm, when the winds were blowing. The slave girl admitted me and I walked up to his quarters.”

  Sweat trickled off the end of my nose, beneath the head of Anubis. I waited.

  “I greeted him, but he ignored me. I spoke, but he didn’t deign to turn around. I wasn’t even worthy of his recognition. But I, I . . . I needed him to listen!”

  “And then?”

  “The slave girl saw you push him, Rerari,” User said.

  “Your protestations are for naught here,” the scribe said.

  I turned Anubis’ head to them, and they were quiet. “Continue.”

  “Suddenly, I was furious. I ran to him, reached for his shoulders – I wanted to shake him, to make him listen . . .” The painter stopped. “I heard a scream, turned and saw the slave girl standing outside the door. The next thing I know, the administrator is lying in the garden. I didn’t even touch him.” The painter looked into Anubis’ face. “The winds did it! Everyone knows they bring madness and –”

  “The khamsin pulled the administrator out his window?”

  The painter looked at his hands. “Why would I kill him? He was my only chance to getting justice, my only way to petition the vizier.” He prostrated himself. “Have mercy. I did not do this thing.”

  “The administrator jumped out the window,” User muttered, “rather than listen to your harping.”

  I waved the painter away. The witness, a young slave girl with a slithering step, entered. She was shaking, her body bruised and sand-whipped, wearing nothing but beads and smeared kohl. She couldn’t have been12; her body had budded but not yet bloomed.

  “What did you see?” I asked.

  “I was in the stairwell, going to attend my master,” she said, avoiding the gaze of Anubis’ obsidian eyes. “I saw this man –” she pointed to the painter “– standing by the window.”