by Nick Drake
I nodded.
‘Just about…’
‘Now, it gets subtler. Listen and concentrate. The most significant, and indeed mysterious, of those perils is the union of the Sun with the body of Osiris at the darkest point of the night. “The Sun at rest in Osiris, Osiris at rest in the Sun” as the saying goes. This is the most secret moment when the Sun descends back into the original waters and their powers of chaos. But it is precisely at this dark moment when he receives new powers of life, and Osiris is reborn. Again we the living can never witness such an event, for it is hidden from human sight in the remotest part of the Unknown. But once again we can imagine it, although with great mental effort. Then, at dawn, the Sun returns, apparent and reborn, for Ra is the self-creator and the creator of everything that exists. And we call that returning form of the God the Scarab, khepri, the evolving one, pushing himself into being from non-being. And so begins the new day! And so all things follow ever onwards, day by day, year by year, life by life, death by death, rebirth by rebirth, perpetually and eternally.’
I knew he loved talking like this. My problem was it sounded too much like a good story. And like all the stories that we tell ourselves, and our children, about how things happen, and why things are as they are, it could never be proved.
‘But what has all that to do with my question?’ I asked.
‘Because there is one time when we the living can witness this divine union.’
‘During an eclipse?’
‘Precisely. Of course, there are different explanations of such an event, depending upon which authority you consult or accept. One is that the Goddess Hathor of the West covers the God with her body. A divine union of light and dark, as it were. Another, opposite one is that some dark power whose name we do not know, and therefore cannot speak, conquers–but light recovers and triumphs in the sky’s divine battle.’
‘Luckily for us.’
‘Indeed. For without light, there can be no life. The Kingdom of Darkness is the land of shadows and death. But there are things, even now, we do not understand. However, I truly believe our knowledge will some day be able to explain all things that exist.’
He stopped at a pomegranate bush, and fiddled with its pink flowers–the latest fashion–and plucked a few fading blooms as if to demonstrate his own godlike powers over his creation.
‘Like a Book of Everything…’ I suggested.
‘Exactly. But words are imperfect, and our system of writing, for all its great glories, has its limitations in terms of its ability to describe creation in all its manifest and hidden glories…So we would have to invent another way of describing things.’
‘Such as?’
‘Ah well, that is the question, but perhaps the answer lies not in words, but in signs; in fact, in numbers…’
At this point my thoughts began to collapse, as they often do when I talk with Nakht. He has an appetite for speculation that sometimes makes me want to do something meaninglessly practical, like sweep the yard.
He smiled as he saw the baffled expression on my face.
I steered the conversation back to my subject.
‘Speaking of which, using the star calendars, I know you can predict the arrival of the inundation, and the beginning of the festivals. But do eclipses appear in the charts?’
He considered the question before replying.
‘I believe not. I have been compiling my own calendars from observation, but I have not yet been lucky enough to witness an eclipse of the Sun, for they are rare events indeed. However, from my roof terrace I have observed an eclipse of the moon. I am intrigued and puzzled by the consistent element of circularity, both in the returning nature of the cosmic events, and also in the implication of the curves of the shadows as they are cast against the face of the moon, for they imply a whole circle–such as we see of the moon and the sun, and such as we might witness in a total eclipse. It suggests the circle is the perfect shape of the heavens, both as idea–for the circle implies infinite return–and in actual fact.’
Grateful for a pause in this torrent of rapid speculation, I asked quickly:
‘But how could we find out more? Could you take me to the astronomical archives?’
‘In the Karnak Temple precinct? To which I have access?’ he smiled.
‘How fortunate I am to count as a close friend a man of such elevated status.’
‘Your sarcasm is so…middle class,’ he replied, cheerfully.
12
Thoth and I followed Nakht as he passed imperiously, and at his usual elegant speed, through the security-guard posts at the main pylon of the Karnak Temple. I looked up at the great mud-brick walls that soared high above us. And then we were plunged into the shadows of the ‘Most Select of Places’ a forbidden, secret world within the world, for no one who is not of the elite priest class may enter this vast and ancient stone puzzle of columned halls and gloomy temples, covered in an infinity of inscrutable carvings, surrounding a labyrinth of sunless sanctuaries where, at the very heart of the dark silence, the statues of the Gods are cared for, woken, worshipped, clothed, fed, returned to sleep and guarded through the night.
We came out into an open area. All around me, men of the aristocracy, dressed in purest white linen, went about their esoteric business in a leisurely fashion. This priestly work did not seem very onerous. At set times of the year, and in return for a share of the vast income of the temple, they enter the precincts for periods of service, respecting the ancient rules of ritual purity–bathing in the sacred lake at dawn, shaving their bodies, wearing white linen robes–and observing precisely and without variation the functions and rites of worship according to the Instructions.
But all temples, from the smallest shrine in a parched trading-post town on the southern borders, to the most ancient and divine places in the Two Lands, are vulnerable to the usual range of human activities: corruption, bribery, theft, embezzlement, and everything else, from scandals of shortened services and stolen sacred food and relics, to outright violence and murder. The bigger the temple, the more wealth it controls. Wealth is power. And Karnak is the greatest of the temples. Its wealth and power have long rivalled, and have now succeeded, that of the royal family.
The great space inside the enclosure walls contained what seemed, to my eye, a chaos of ancient and modern: pylons, obelisks, avenues, statues, chapels, and inaccessible temple structures with vast papyrus columns and shadowy halls. Some of it was newly built, some of it under construction, some of it dismantled, and some even in ruins. There were also magazines, offices and housing for the officers and the priests. It was in effect a small city, grand and yet jumbled up. Priests teemed in and out of the portals and pylons, attended by even greater numbers of servants and assistants. Ahead of us was another pylon leading to further pylons, leading ultimately to the ancient sanctuaries at the heart of the temple.
‘Beyond those courtyards lies the sacred lake,’ said Nakht, pointing to the right. ‘Twice a day and twice a night, the priests have to sprinkle themselves with water, and wash their mouths out with a little natron.’
‘It’s a hard life,’ I said.
‘It’s all very well being sarcastic, but sexual intercourse is absolutely forbidden for the period when the priests are performing the offices within the temple territory, and I’m quite sure you, for instance, would find that an impossible imposition,’ he replied with his usual candour on such matters. ‘But of course, the priests are the more transient population here. There are the singers, the officiates at the shrine, the lector priests, the scribes, the hour priests who are responsible for keeping the correct time of the rites…but it’s the management, and the servants, and the weavers, cooks and cleaners, who really sustain the necessities for the correct performance of the rituals. You could say the God Amun employs more people than the King himself.’
‘So it’s a vast government department, in essence…’ I said.
‘Exactly. There are overseers for every aspect of the r
unning of the temple; of the domain, of the accounts, of the military, of personnel, of the fields, of the cloth, and the granaries, and the treasury…’
He stopped in front of the entrance to a collection of impressive buildings.
‘And this is the House of Life, which contains the scriptorium, the libraries and archives, and the offices of the lector priests.’
We entered. Directly ahead of us through double doors was a large, silent room.
‘That’s the scriptorium,’ whispered Nakht, as if to a child, for I could see men of various ages at work, meticulously copying or collating texts from old papyrus scrolls on to new ones. The atmosphere in the library was sleepy, for this was the middle of the afternoon and some of the archives’ more aged users were in fact not working attentively at all, but dozing before the scrolls set out before them. Along the walls, wooden cubicles held an infinite number of papyri, scroll after scroll, as if all knowledge was here, in writing. Sunlight slanted into the chamber from clerestory windows, catching the countless motes that glittered and darkened as they drifted up or down, like tiny fragments of ideas or signs that had crumbled from the scrolls, and were now meaningless without the greater text from which they came.
Nakht continued to whisper. ‘These are the oldest archives in the world. Many of the texts preserved here come from the dawn of our world. Papyrus is remarkably robust, but some are so ancient that they remain in their leather cases, unreadable. And others can be un-scrolled, but one fears even the lightest ray of sunlight might erase the last of the ink, so they may only be consulted by candlelight. In fact some consult them by moonlight, but I think that is just so much superstition. Many are in signs that are now incomprehensible, and so they are nothing but a meaningless jumble of childish marks. It is a terrible thought: whole worlds lost to nonsense. It is a great palace of knowledge, but, alas, much of it is unknowable. Lost knowledge…Lost books…’
He sighed. We moved away down a corridor lined with doors.
‘Here are kept mythical and theological treatises, as well as recitations and the master originals of inscriptions from which all the carvings on the temple walls and obelisks are precisely copied. There are also studios here where Books of the Dead are copied, according to commission. And then there are the rooms for instruction and learning. And the various storage areas for texts upon many subjects, such as writing, engineering, poetry, law, theology, magical studies, medicine…’
‘And astronomy,’ I said.
‘Indeed. And here we are.’
We faced an old man in the white linen dress and sash of a lector priest, standing in front of double doors that were tied with cord and sealed. He gazed at us balefully from under his magnificent white eyebrows.
‘I am Nakht,’ said Nakht.
‘Welcome,’ said the priest, in a tone that implied the opposite.
‘I would like to examine some scrolls within the astronomical section,’ said Nakht.
The priest stared at him, narrowing his eyes as he considered this request.
‘And who is your companion?’ he said suspiciously.
‘This is Rahotep. He is a chief detective within the Thebes Medjay.’
‘Why does a policeman need to examine astronomical charts?’
‘He has an enquiring mind, and I am endeavouring to satisfy it,’ replied Nakht. The priest could not seem to find another reason to forbid entry, so he moved with a heavy sigh, like a hippopotamus from the mud, grumblingly broke the seal and untied the cords. He opened the doors, and with a brief gesture of his hands proposed we enter.
It was a much larger, higher chamber than I had anticipated. Each wall was lined with shelves to the ceiling, and high storage cases also ran in an arrangement like fishbones down the middle of the space. On each shelf were stored many papyrus rolls. I would not have known where to start, but Nakht browsed swiftly among the dockets, searching for something.
‘Astronomy is merely a function of religion, as far as the world is concerned. As long as we know when the significant stars appear, so that the days and feasts and festivals coincide with the lunar charts, everyone is happy. But no one seems to have noticed that the regularity, the returning pattern of the imperishable stars themselves, implies an immense ordered universe beyond our understanding.’
‘Rather than the old stories we’ve been told since time began about Gods and Goddesses and everything coming from the papyrus swamp of creation, and the night world being the place of eternal life…’
‘Indeed,’ whispered Nakht. ‘The stars are eternal life, but perhaps not in the way we have always understood it. Heresy, of course,’ he said, and grinned happily.
He unrolled several scrolls on the low tables set out between the cases, and then showed me the star charts’ columns of signs and figures, written in red and black ink.
‘See: thirty-six columns listing the groups of stars into which the night world is divided. We call these the decans.’
I let my eye run down the symbols in their columns, opening the old scroll further and further. The signs seemed to go on endlessly. Nakht tutted.
‘Be careful. These have to be handled delicately. With respect.’
‘And why is the information noted like this?’
‘Each column shows the stars that rise before dawn above the horizon for every ten-day period of the year. See, here is the Dog Star, which rises exactly at the time of the inundation, at the start of the solar year. And here is Sah, Glorious Soul of Osiris, the bright star which rises at the start of peret, the time of spring…you know the saying, of course: “I am the star who treads the Two Lands, who navigates in front of the stars of the sky on the belly of my Mother Nut”?’
I shook my head.
‘I sometimes think you know absolutely nothing,’ he said.
‘This is not exactly my usual territory. But what about the eclipse?’ I reminded him.
For the next few minutes he assessed many more charts, unrolling and rolling as he went, each chart seeming more ancient and fragile than the last.
Finally, he shook his head in resignation.
‘There is nothing recorded. I thought not.’
‘A dead end.’
‘It was an interesting thought, and at least now you know something of the subject,’ he said, in his most scholarly manner.
We left the archive room, and the priest bent down stiffly to retie and reseal the cords. As we walked away, I wondered aloud: ‘Where are the secret books kept?’
Nakht failed to disguise his alarm at the question.
‘What are you talking about? Which secret books?’
‘The Books of Thoth, for example.’
‘Come now, they’re a legend rather than a reality. Like many supposed secret books.’
‘But it’s true, isn’t it, that there are a number of sacred texts which are only ever revealed to initiates?’ I asked.
‘“Initiates” of what? And texts about which secret subjects?’
‘Oh, such matters as divine geometry,’ I replied casually.
‘I have never heard of such a thing,’ he said stiffly, glancing around to make sure no one could hear us.
‘Of course you have, my friend,’ I said quietly.
He stared at me angrily.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You knew there would be nothing in those scrolls of interest to me. And I appreciate your taking the time to demonstrate that there was nothing. But I know you very well, and you are definitely not telling me something.’
He had the grace to flush.
‘Sometimes important matters are not to be discussed casually.’
‘What matters?’
‘I really despise you when you turn your interrogation techniques on to me. I am just trying to help,’ he said, not even half joking.
‘Then I will tell you what I think. I think there are secret books, on astronomy, among other things, and I think you have been initiated, and you have seen some of them, and you know whe
re they are.’
He stared right at me, with as cold a look as I have ever seen on his face.
‘What a vivid imagination you have…’
And then he walked away.
I followed him back out into the light and heat of the late afternoon, and we walked on together in silence. Then suddenly he stopped and drew me into an area of shade beside an old temple.
‘I cannot lie to you, my friend. But I cannot reveal the contents of the books. I have taken a solemn vow.’
‘But all I asked was whether they existed or not.’
‘Even that is too much knowledge. Their existence or otherwise is a necessary concealment. The secret books are banned in these dark times. Secret knowledge has become dangerous again. As you well know, anyone found possessing them, or even copies of sections of them, could be punished by death.’
‘But they exist, they are shared within an inner circle, and therefore they must be kept somewhere clandestine. So where are they?’ I asked directly.
‘I cannot say.’
I gazed around at the buildings that filled the temple enclosures. Suddenly I realized there might be another city within this secret city, too. For every secret contains another secret at its heart.
He glared at me, frankly angry now.
‘You presume too much upon our friendship.’
We stood facing each other in this strange moment. To release the tension, I bowed.
‘I apologize. Professional matters should never come between old friends.’
He nodded, almost satisfied. I knew I would learn little more from him in this moment of emotional heat.
‘It is Sekhmet’s birthday, or have you forgotten that fact, amongst these ideas of eclipses and secret books? I am dining with you and the family tonight,’ he reminded me. I struck my forehead with my palm. I had not failed to remember, for Tanefert had reminded me before I left, but I still had a sacred family duty to perform.
‘And I am responsible for the feast, so I had better go and buy the secret ingredients–which I must never reveal, on pain of death–before the holy and esoteric merchants of the market shut their stalls.’
