Scroll of Saqqara

by Pauline Gedge

  Khaemwaset, impatient as always to see the calm forest of palms set against their backdrop of pyramids and desert that heralded his city, sat under a canopy on the deck of Amun-is-Lord, his thoughts already on his next project. Nubnofret dozed, lay in the seclusion of the cabin with nourishing creams on her face to help ease her skin’s transition back to the dry desert air, or played board games with Wernuro. Hori and Antef strewed the sun-baked planks with the puzzles and toys they had picked up in the markets for dissection. Surely, Khaemwaset thought, as the oars splashed and the canopy slapped in the wind, we are the most blessed, harmonious and fortunate family in Egypt.

  4

  Death calls every one to him,

  they come to him with quaking heart,

  and are terrified through fear of him.

  THEY DOCKED at the watersteps of Khaemwaset’s estate shortly after breakfast, the servants scattering immediately to their duties. Sheritra, hearing the confusion, came running to greet them, and there were hugs and reassurances before they retired to the garden. Already the boats were being unloaded, and Khaemwaset knew that later they would be dragged from the water and inspected for repairs. He sank onto the grass in the shade of his sycamores, Sheritra beside him, with a gust of pure pleasure. His fountain still tinkled crystal into its stone basin. His monkeys watched the arrival with lofty boredom and went back to lolling beside the path. His comfortable old house still welcomed him with sun-drenched walls and orderly flowers. He heard the bustle of brisk activity begin inside. In a while Ib would ask him if he wanted the noon meal in the garden or in the cool of his small dining room, and Penbuy, freshly washed, would be waiting for him in his office. He watched his daughter exclaim over her gifts, her plain face flushed with excitement, and for once Nubnofret did not keep up a steady barrage of admonition and advice as the girl hunched over the bright jewels and cascading linens and knick-knacks in her lap.

  Presently Ib could be seen, approaching with his dignified, unhurried walk from the back of the house. Penbuy was with him, and even at this distance Khaemwaset sensed that the man was barely containing some violent emotion. Nubnofret, usually indifferent to such things, also looked up, and Hori scrambled to his feet.

  “Highness, will the family be eating here or in the dining mom?” Ib asked. Khaemwaset did not answer, indeed, he barely heard the question. All his attention was fixed on his scribe. Penbuy was trembling, his eyes glowing.

  “Speak!” Khaemwaset said. Penbuy needed no further invitation.

  “Highness, a new tomb has been found on the Saqqara plain!” he blurted “The workmen had begun to clear the site of Osiris Neuser-Ra’s sun temple in preparation for your orders on its restoration, and behold! a rock of large size emerged. It took the Overseer three days to remove it and lo! beneath it was a flight of steps.”

  Khaemwaset, in spite of his quickening pulse, smiled at Penbuy’s uncharacteristic loss of aplomb. “Have the steps been cleared?” he snapped.

  “Yes. And at their foot …” He paused for effect and Hori exclaimed, “Well get on with it, Penbuy! You already have our attention. We are your captives!”

  “At their foot is a sealed door!” Penbuy finished triumphantly.

  “It is too much to hope that the seals are original,” Hori observed, but with a question in his voice. He looked at Khaemwaset, who rose.

  “What do you think?” he asked his scribe. Penbuy shrugged, already settling back into his customary controlled decorum.

  “The seals appear to be originals,” he answered, “but we have encountered clever fakes before, Prince. The thrill of the moment engulfed me. I am sorry. Your Overseer of Works is of the opinion that we have indeed found an untouched tomb.”

  Nubnofret sighed ostentatiously. “You had better pack up the Prince’s meal and give it to the servants who will accompany him, Ib,” she said, and Khaemwaset shot her a grateful, humorous glance.

  “I’m sorry, dear sister,” he apologized. “I must at least inspect this find today. Ib, have the litters brought round. Hori, will you come?” The young man nodded.

  “But I beg you, no break-ins today please, Father! I have not even had time to be washed!”

  “That depends on what we find.” Khaemwaset was already preoccupied, his words spoken absently. A new tomb, new inscriptions, new knowledge, new scrolls, new scrolls … Do not expect anything, he told himself sternly. The chances for something fresh are slim. My horoscope for the last third of this day is very bad. So, for that matter, is the rest of my family’s, so I doubt if this find will yield anything worthwhile. All at once he was seized with a desire to tell Penbuy, “Have the earth and sand shovelled back over the entrance. My most pressing project is the work for Osiris Neuser-Ra and he shall have his restoration,” but his curiosity and mounting excitement won out. Neuser-Ra could wait. He had been waiting for hundreds of hentis and would surely be patient for another day or two. Amek was approaching, the litter-bearers with their folded burdens behind.

  “Is there any urgent business on my desk?” Khaemwaset asked. Penbuy shook his head. “Good. I will make this up to you somehow, Sheritra,” he went on, turning to her, but she grinned up at him and held the gossamer blue linen he had given her to her face. “I am used to it,” she laughed. “Enjoy yourself, Father. Find something wonderful.”

  Something wonderful. Suddenly Khaemwaset was filled with boyish anticipation. Gesturing to Hori and kissing Nubnofret’s cool cheek, he got onto his litter and was soon swaying towards the temple of Neith and the Ankh-tawy district. His stomach growled its hunger, and the linens he had donned on the boat that morning were limp and itchy with sweat, but he did not care. The hunt was on once more.

  By the time he alighted from his litter with the churned plain of Saqqara baking in the afternoon sun all around him, he was thirsty as well. His servants were hurrying behind, some pitching the small tent he always used, some lighting a cooking fire, and the long-suffering Ib was already directing the laying of Khaemwaset’s camp table for his belated noon meal. Hori came scrambling through the sand to join his father.

  “Phew!” he said. “No matter what time of the year it is, Saqqara is always sweltering! Please control your lust for an hour, Father, and take pity on me! I simply must eat, but I also want to stand with you when you examine the seals. I suppose that is the entrance, there.” He pointed across the hot expanse of waste to where Osiris Neuser-Ra’s mined temple lay. Beside it, just outside the jagged, truncated outer wall, was a gigantic boulder and an untidy heap of dark sand and gravel. Khaemwaset reluctantly turned back towards the tent and the table, now shaded by a flapping canopy and laden with food, where Ib stood behind his chair, arms folded.

  Khaemwaset and Hori set to with relish, talking easily as they ate and drank, but presently the conversation died away. Hori fell into an abstracted mood. Chin in hand and eyes downcast, he traced the folds in the tablecloth with a knife. Khaemwaset’s mood of elation gradually faded to be replaced by a growing uneasiness. He sat back, eyes drawn to the temporarily deserted hole in the desert floor, and it seemed to him to be both beckoning and warning. Mentally shaking himself he turned away, draining the last of his beer and rinsing his fingers, but soon his gaze returned to that ominous gash in the sunny reality of the desert and in spite of himself he imagined it as a portal to the underworld, out of which a cold wind blew.

  He had sometimes been superstitiously anxious at tomb openings. The dead did not like to be disturbed. But he always made sure that proper offerings for the kas of the deceased were laid beside the coffins, broken belongings mended, and endowments reactivated, and he had seen earth replaced over the resting places with a feeling of satisfaction, knowing the gratitude of the Osiris ones.

  This was different. Fear seeped towards him, sliding invisibly over the shimmering yellow sand like the demonic serpent Epap himself, and once more he was tempted to order the tomb covered over. Instead he rose, tapped Hori on the shoulder and left the pleasant shade of the canopy. />
  With Hori beside him and Ib and Penbuy behind he soon reached the steps. They were hot under his sandals, though in places the stone was still thickly dark and stained with the damp of centuries. There were five of them. Khaemwaset halted before a small, square rock door, smooth and once plastered white. On its left, rotting brown rope was intricately knotted around metal hooks embedded deep in both door and surrounding stone.

  Encrusted over the massive knot was a dry and crumbling ball of mud and wax. Khaemwaset bent closer, aware of Hori’s light breath on his neck. The young man whistled. “The jackal and nine captives!” he exclaimed. “Father, if the tomb had been desecrated and re-sealed the imprint would be a crude imitation of the sign of the House of the Dead, or even simply a chunk of mud. And look at the rope. So ancient that a touch would crumble it away!”

  Khaemwaset nodded, his gaze intently travelling the door. There was no sign of a forced entry, although the plaster had flaked away in several areas and was a noxious brown in others. Of course an untouched door did not mean an unrobbed tomb. Thieves had always been ingenious in their efforts to reach the treasures that were buried with the nobility. Suddenly Khaemwaset found himself hoping that the interior was not intact, that more dishonest, foolhardy men than he had drawn the sting of wrath within, had leached the old spells that protected whoever lay waiting in the darkness beyond this mysterious door.

  “Prince, I am afraid,” Ib said. “I do not like this place. We have never seen a seal unbroken before. We should not be guilty of the first sin.”

  Khaemwaset replied, still studying the rough surface before him. “We are not thieves and desecrators,” he said. “I have never yet committed sacrilege against the dead whom I study. You know that we will re-seal the door, leave many offerings for the ka, pay priests to pray for the owner. We always do.” Now he swung to face his steward. Ib’s eyes were shadowed, his expression grim. “I have never seen you like this before, Ib. What is the matter?” It was not just Ib, Khaemwaset saw. Penbuy was clutching his palette to his naked chest and chewing his lip.

  “This time is not like the others, Highness,” Ib blurted. “Last night, in the boat on the way home, I dreamed that I was drinking warm beer. It is a terrible omen. Suffering is going to come upon us.” Khaemwaset wanted to snap at him not to be a fool, but such a dream was indeed a thing to be taken seriously. Ib’s words had unleashed the fear in him again and he tried not to let it show on his face.

  “Forgive me, Prince,” Penbuy broke in, “but I also have doubts about this tomb. Today, when I wanted to perform my morning devotions to Thoth, my patron, the incense would not light. I replaced it with fresh grains, thinking that the old ones might be tainted, but nothing I did caused it to heat. Then I was overtaken by a fit of shivering and I could not move for some time.” He came forward, his expression strained. “Pass over this tomb, I beg you! There will be others!”

  Khaemwaset’s mood of unease intensified. “Hori?” he said.

  Hori smiled. “I slept well and said my prayers in peace,” he answered. “I do not mean to belittle these omens, my friends, but the day is only half over and they could have nothing to do with this tomb at all. Will you turn from a find such as this?” he pressed his father. “Don’t tell me that you also have received warnings.”

  Khaemwaset’s mind filled slowly with a vision of the old man, the scroll in his trembling fingers, the torch fire blackening … crisping … Not warnings, he thought. But a premonition, a tremor of apprehension in my ka. “No,” he said slowly, “and of course I will not refuse this gift of the gods. I am an honest man. I do good in Egypt. I will offer the ka of the inhabitant here many precious things in exchange for what we may glean.” He straightened and touched the rope, feeling tiny pieces of it fall into his fingers like fine grit. “Ib, call my master mason and have this door chiselled out.” He pulled hard on the rope and it parted. The seal cracked in two with a tiny sound and fell into the dust at his feet. He stepped back, startled. Ib was bowing silently and retreating up the steps and Hori had his nose to the hot stone, examining the crack between the door and rock. Khaemwaset and Penbuy sat together on a step and waited for the mason and his apprentices.

  “It is unusual to find a door and not just a hole plugged with rubble,” Penbuy remarked, but Khaemwaset did not answer. He was now fighting his own sense of dread.

  When the mason and his assistants arrived, the others retired under their canopies. From where he was sitting, half bemused by the mid-afternoon heat, Khaemwaset could see the dark line made by the chisels grow into the outline of a door. In another hour the mason came and knelt before him, his slick, naked chest and legs and blunt hands filmed in white dust.

  “Highness, the door is ready to be forced,” he said. “Do you wish me to open it?” Khaemwaset nodded. The man went away, and soon the grind of crowbars on stone could be heard.

  Hori came and squatted before his father. Silently they watched the huge square inch outwards, revealing a widening gulf of blackness. Presently Hori stirred.

  “Here it comes,” he said quietly, and Khaemwaset tensed.

  A thin plume of air began to pour from the aperture and billow upward into the limpid sky. It was very faintly grey. Khaemwaset, watching the horizon shake through it, fancied that its odour reached him, dank, unbearably stale, with an almost indiscernible hint of the charnel-house. The smell was familiar to him, having assaulted his nostrils on numerous similar occasions, but he thought that this time the steady stream had a particularly virulent edge.

  “Look!” Hori said, pointing. “It seems to be spiralling!” Indeed, as the gush reached its zenith it was forming odd shapes. Khaemwaset thought he might have made pictures of them if they had not dissipated so quickly. Then the moment was over. The column of foetid air blew away and he got out of his chair, Hori at his heels.

  “Be careful of traps, Father,” he reminded Khaemwaset, who nodded brusquely. Sometimes the tombs held cunningly concealed shafts that dropped straight into bedrock, or false doors to lure the unwary into dark pits.

  Khaemwaset came to the stairs, hesitated, took a deep breath, and plunged down and through the crack the masons had managed to force. Servants with lit torches hurried behind, and Khaemwaset paused just inside the short passage to allow them time to illuminate the interior. They were obviously reluctant to do so. But then, he thought in the few seconds while they fanned out, they always are. So am I, this time. The orange flames wavered, sending streamers of shadow racing for the corners. Penbuy rattled his palette as he extracted a pen. Hori was panting lightly. Khaemwaset took his son’s arm without realizing that he did so, and together they moved into the tomb.

  Although the ancient air was gone, the smell of damp and decay was very strong. Penbuy began to cough, and Hori wrinkled his nose. Khaemwaset ignored it. The anteroom, though very small, was exquisitely decorated and scrupulously tidy. It was also undisturbed. With a thrill of sheer excitement Khaemwaset saw the tiring boxes neatly stacked, the furniture in place and without so much as a scratch, the sturdy clay jars with their precious contents of oil, wine and perfume still sealed. Six stern-faced shawabtis stood motionless in their niches, waiting for the summons of their master to work in the fields or at the loom, and around them the walls gleamed with life. Vivid scenes were laid upon the white plaster.

  Walking slowly, Khaemwaset marvelled at the delicacy and vibrancy the dead artists had achieved. Here the dead man and his wife sat at meal, pink lotus blooms in one hand and wine cups in the other, leaning towards each other and smiling. A young man, obviously a son, in short white kilt and with many necklaces entwined over his red chest, was offering a piece of fruit to the baboon perched at his feet. Baboons were depicted everywhere— gambolling in the painted garden where the little family reclined at their ease by the fish-pond, running behind the man as he held his spear and chased a lion across the desert, sitting with tails curled around their furry hips as the three humans had their skiff poled through a riotous gre
en marsh in search of ducks. There was even a baboon sprawled asleep at the foot of the couch where a bilious sun was sending its early rays to wake the two who slept. Interspersed with the friezes and unfolding delights of the family’s earthly existence were black hieroglyphs exhorting the gods to welcome their worshippers into paradise, to grant them every blessing and reward in the next life, and to watch over their tomb. Hori, who had been talking to Penbuy as the Scribe began the work of copying what inscriptions he could, came over to Khaemwaset. “Have you noticed something strange about all these pictures?” he remarked.

  Khaemwaset glanced at him. “The baboons?”

  Hori shook his head. “No, not the baboons, although they are indeed extraordinary. The man who lies in the other chamber must have been a great devotee of Thoth. No, I mean the water. Look closely.”

  Khaemwaset did so, and was soon intrigued. Wherever the man, his wife and their son appeared, their feet were in water. Sometimes it rippled in little white wavelets. Sometimes it flowed over several different kinds of fish, and once it was contained in bowls around the figures’ ankles, but whatever they were doing they did in water. “These people must have loved the Nile passionately to have decorated their tomb with so much of its blessing,” Khaemwaset whispered, the sibilance rushing in a small echo around the room. “And there is something else, Hori. This man was, I think, a physician like myself. Look.” He pointed to where several surgical instruments were shown beside a long panel of hieroglyphs. “The script is a prescription for the unconquerable AAA scourge, and beside it is a catalogue of spells for the subduing of disease demons.”

  Together they wandered around the walls while Penbuy followed more slowly, his pen busy. Then Khaemwaset paused with a cry of satisfaction. In a tall recess, just before the gaping door that led to the burial chamber, stood two statues. The woman was tall and graceful, her eyes smiling out into Khaemwaset’s own under her short, old-fashioned granite wig and blue-painted headband. One arm was at her side. The other embraced the waist of her husband, a lean, also smiling man with a square face and mild expression, dressed only in a short kilt and sandals. One leg was outstretched in a stride, and in one hand he held a stone scroll. As in the rest of the tomb, the artistic work was of a fineness Khaemwaset had rarely seen. The eyes of the statues glowed darkly. The jewels around the woman’s neck were picked out in blue and red and the tassels of her sheath glinted with gold paint.