Scroll of Saqqara

by Pauline Gedge

  He got onto the litter, and with Antef and his two guards walking alongside was soon being borne past the porter’s hut and through the small garden of the mayor’s estate. The mayor was waiting in the shade of his front entrance, a tall man with the peaceful air of the totally contented. But his reverence was harried and his brow furrowed as Hori walked up and greeted him.

  “Highness, this is most unexpected!” he said. “If you had given me some warning I could have welcomed you correctly. How many are in your train? The accommodations …”

  “I have no train,” Hori explained, “just my servant Antef and two guards. I am here to do a work of investigation for my father.”

  “But I do not understand,” the mayor said. “I believed from your father’s new scribe that the Prince had changed his mind and did not require the information anymore. So sad about the young man’s father.”

  “Yes, it was,” Hori agreed. “And the Prince has changed his mind again, Noble One. Do not be distressed. I shall not trouble you for long.”

  He was not able to be alone for some time. He was shown his quarters—a small room with an open entrance to the garden—and here he stationed one guard. Then he was obliged to take refreshments with the mayor and his family. After the conventions of polite conversation he asked the mayor if he was acquainted with all the noble families in the surrounding area.

  The mayor nodded. “The Osiris One Penbuy asked me the same question,” he replied. “Koptos is a small town and our nobility, though all minor, does not travel much nor many too far afield. Their lineages vary in length from four generations to ancestors in direct line lost in the depths of time past, but I know them all.” He gave Hori an oblique look. “I have never heard of the three people whose history you seek, Highness. Nor is there an estate run by a steward whose master has moved to Memphis. I can only suggest that you consult the librarian in the Koptos House of Life.”

  “You are sure that all estates are occupied by their owners?”

  “Yes. The desert encroaches very quickly here, Prince, and the inhabited places are close together along the riverbank. Only one estate is unoccupied, but it has been so for many hentis. The house is little more than crumbling outlines of walls in the sand, and apart from some pieces of a stone fountain, the garden is nothing but desert. I believe that the line died out and the property. reverted to Pharaoh. I suppose he has no personal interest in it at all and hesitates to award so poor a property to any deserving minister.” He smiled, and Hori found himself warming to the man. “Koptos is hardly the paradise of the blessed!”

  “All the same, a man might find peace of mind here,” Hori said slowly. “I wish to examine this derelict estate. Where is it?”

  “To the north, beyond the last irrigation canal,” the mayor said. “But I humbly suggest to your Highness that you wait until the cool of the evening to inspect it.”

  Hori rose and the whole family rose also and bowed. “I shall do so,” Hori said gravely. “Now I must rest.”

  He and Antef escaped, Hori to the couch and Antef to a mat on the floor of the little room. Antef soon fell asleep, but Hori lay listening to that intriguing silence. Its quality seemed familiar. He heard footsteps in the garden outside, and then voices, and he recognized the lilt of the daughter of the house.

  “… He is very handsome and not at all arrogant,” she was saying to some unknown friend. “Of course one may not touch him because he is Pharaoh’s grandson, but I long to do so…”

  Hori smiled, turned over and fell asleep.

  Several hours later, with Ra already a semicircle of shimmering red on the horizon, he and Antef stood above what had once been a set of watersteps, looking away from the river towards the eastern desert. Between them and the flat, beige plain that ended in a purple sky were the remains of what had once been a nobleman’s home.

  Of the house, built originally of mud bricks, nothing was left but a few vague outlines in the sand. The watersteps had been irregular chunks of yellowed stone, warped and then pushed upward into jagged teeth through which the two of them had picked their way carefully.

  From the top of the stair they felt rather than saw the short, buried path leading to what would have been the entrance hall. Their feet, as they moved tentatively forward, found the firmness of the stone, and Antef knelt briefly to brush away the encroaching granules, finding smooth sandstone lying beneath. Hori had halted and Antef came up beside him “The entrance hall, a rear passage and at least two bedchambers,” Hori said, pointing. “The compound with the storage huts and the kitchens and servants’ quarters has been entirely taken over by the desert. Now where is the fountain the mayor spoke of?”

  They picked their way gingerly around the faint hills and tunnels that delineated what had once been sturdy walls, probably painted a dazzling white; now they made an intricate pattern of small shadows as the sun sank lower beyond the river.

  Not far to the north they came across the thing they sought. The fountain lay in four grey pieces, the basin cracked and sifted with sand, the spout, once a pleasing likeness of the many-breasted Hapi, god of the Nile, broken and littered on the ground. Five or six stunted sycamores struggled to suck an existence out of the soil where the edge of the garden obviously used to be, and a few sorry palms raised rusty arms beyond them. Antef shuddered. “What a sad, desolate place!” he exclaimed. “This estate has not been scoured of its ghosts, Highness. I would not dare to try and rebuild on this spot!”

  Hori hushed him with a wave of his hand and stood concentrating, all his senses alert. It seemed to him that he had been here before, although he knew such a thing was impossible. The layout of the ancient rooms, now simply lumps in the earth, the placement of the garden with its sycamores that once must have been spreading green glories, the palm forest beyond …

  But no, he thought, allowing the melancholy of the hour to enter him. It is not a matter of the physical, this sense of familiarity. It is in the atmosphere of the ruins, challenging and yet quiet, dreamless and yet demanding something … something …

  Then he knew. Tbubui’s house in Memphis, compact, slightly derelict, isolated, had this same quality of plumbless silence and watchful invitation. O Thoth have mercy, he thought. Is this it? Is this, was this, her home? Hapi’s disfigured face smiled up at him blankly, idiotically, from the churned sand at his feet. The gnarled sycamores were casting twisted shadows that snaked towards him as Ra quivered, pulsed, and slipped below the western horizon in his journey to the underworld. “Antef!” he called, a quiver of hysteria in his voice. “I have seen enough. Let us go.”

  They made their way carefully back to the broken water-steps and Hori took the oars of the mayor’s skiff himself, pulling frenetically away from the sad and broken site almost before Antef had been seated.

  “This cannot be right, Highness,” Antef said. “We must explore further.”

  “That will be your job,” Hori replied. “I want you to visit every noble family in Koptos and discuss their histories. I will be in the library.” But he knew in his heart that it was right, that this lonely place had belonged to Tbubui and no other.

  He and Antef spent a pleasant few hours at dinner with the mayor. The man was proud of his position and took a delight in recounting the town’s history, from the days when the great Queen Hatshepsut had rediscovered the ancient trade routes with Punt that had revitalized the town to the present, when the caravan routes were well established and decidedly mundane.

  “What family has the monopoly on the taxes gathered from the caravans?” Hori asked. “Or do they belong to the town as a whole?”

  The mayor smiled, pleased to find an interested listener. “In the days of the great Queen, when the route was first re-opened,” he explained, “the concession was given to one Nenefer-ka-Ptah for some service now lost to antiquity. The mighty Queen, an admirer of enterprise, made him a prince. Under his hand the caravans prospered and she was well pleased with him. It is said that he acquired great wealth and
became a famous wizard and magician, as well as an astute businessman, but that is not for me to judge. His line did not last. The monopoly on the trade with Punt reverted to the Horus Throne and so it is to this day!” He sipped his wine with relish. His daughter and his wife watched him, smiling, obviously used to his hobby. “Pharaoh, your grandfather, always allows the town a generous reduction in its taxes to the crown,” he went on, “and of course we live in hope that the monopoly will not eventually go to one individual family. Koptos is peaceful and prosperous as it is.”

  “Why did Nenefer-ka-Ptah’s line not last?” Hori asked. “Did the Prince’s offspring fall out of favour with the Divine One?”

  “Oh no,” the mayor assured him. “The line died out literally. Nenefer-ka-Ptah and his wife drowned, I believe, and so did their only son Merhu.” He shrugged. “Such is the will of the gods.”

  Her husband drowned, Hori thought, then mentally shook himself. “Such misfortune could be regarded as a punishment from the gods,” he commented. “Their will for a family that had transgressed the laws of Ma’at.”

  The mayor shrugged. “Who knows?” he said. “It was many hentis ago and has little to do with the reason you are here in Koptos, Highness. I wish I could help you more.”

  “Your hospitality is enough,” Hori reassured him. “Tomorrow I will begin my investigations in the House of Life. I will not impose on you for long, Noble One.”

  Amid mutual protestations of respect Hori presently withdrew. He and Antef spent a little time talking together in their quarters as the night deepened, but Hori could not keep his mind on what was being said, and before long their conversations died away. Antef stretched out on his mat and was soon breathing softly and evenly in sleep.

  Hori reached to the small leather pouch he had taken to wearing tied to his belt, and opening it, he withdrew the earring he had found in the tomb tunnel. She loved it, he thought sadly. She put it on and laughed and it swung against her tall neck. What is she doing now? Is she crouched in the darkness with cruel pins in her hands, intent on the incantation of my destruction? What did she steal that was mine? Tbubui, Tbubui, I would have nurtured you and kept you safe no matter who you are. He did not want to cry but the tears slid soundlessly down his cheeks. He felt very young, and very helpless.

  Early the next day Antef set off with a scroll of introduction bearing Hori’s seal to politely interrogate Koptos’s ruling families, and Hori made his way to the House of Life, attached to the temple of Amun. The library proved to be a pleasant four rooms, one opening into another, with the far walls pillared so that any breeze might funnel right through. Each room was honeycombed with tiny cubicles crammed with scrolls of every size and description, and before he began his work Hori was escorted through the building by the priest-librarian.

  “I was on duty here when your father’s scribe died on the steps, Highness,” he remarked to Hori as they sat in an alcove. “He had been a regular visitor for four days prior to being struck down. Indeed, that very morning he had told me that he was about to dictate his findings to his assistant.”

  “How did he seem?” Hori asked, and the librarian frowned.

  “He seemed afraid. A curious word to choose, but that was the impression he gave me. He was obviously ill, but as well as his physical discomfort there appeared to be some grave matter on his mind. He was a good scholar.”

  “Yes, he was,” Hori agreed, a wave of fear washing over him too, as though in sympathy with the dead Penbuy. “I would like you to bring me all the scrolls he examined, but first, tell me about the man who was given the caravan monopoly during the reign of Queen Hatshepsut.”

  The librarian’s face lightened. “Ah, Highness! How good to speak to someone who even knows the name of that Osiris One! We have her very seal here, in this library, affixed to a document giving the monopoly personally to the man you mentioned. Osiris Penbuy wanted to see it also.”

  “Did he indeed?” Hori said thoughtfully. “And what of that man’s lineage? Where do his descendants live?”

  The librarian shook his head. “There were no descendants. The inhabitants of Koptos believed that the man was cursed. I do not know what for. Remember, Highness, that we are talking of events that took place many hentis ago. But he, his wife and his son drowned, the Prince and his wife in the river at Memphis, and the son a few days later, here at Koptos. It is in the records. The son, Merhu, was buried here.”

  “And the parents?” Hori could feel his muscles tensing. I do not want to hear this, he thought in dread. The mayor knew a little, but this man knows it all. Amun, I do not want to know it all!

  “They inhabit a tomb on the Saqqara plain at Memphis,” the librarian said cheerfully. “The remains of their estate are just north of Koptos and in total ruin. No one in this town will go there. They say the site is haunted.”

  Hori’s chest felt as though a band had been tightened around it. “I saw it yesterday,” he managed. “Their names?”

  “The Prince Nenefer-ka-Ptah, the Princess Ahura and his Highness Merhu.” The librarian, seeing Hori’s face, quickly poured him water. Hori forced it to his lips and drank. “Highness, what is wrong?” the man inquired.

  “I have been in their tomb,” Hori whispered. “The Princess Ahura. That is the only surviving identification in the place. My father excavated there.”

  “The mighty Khaemwaset has done much restoring of ancient monuments,” the librarian commented. “But how interesting! The selfsame tomb! And by accident?”

  By accident? Hori thought with a shudder. Who knows? O gods, who knows?

  “Yes,” he answered. “But before you ask, my friend, we did not find anything to enhance your knowledge of the period. Where is the son buried?”

  “In the Koptos necropolis,” the librarian replied promptly. “The tomb was rifled hentis ago and nothing of value remains in it, but his Highness is still there. At least, he was the last time I conducted an inspection of noble tombs for the Mighty Bull. The lid had been wrenched from the coffin and was standing against a wall, but the young man’s corpse had been correctly beautified and was lying within.”

  “Young man?” Hori had needed several tries to get the words out.

  “Yes. Merhu was only eighteen years old when he drowned,” the librarian said, adding anxiously. “Highness, are you sure you are quite well?”

  Hori barely heard the question. “I would like to visit this tomb,” he said. “It is imperative that I see the body.”

  The librarian looked at him curiously. “Your exalted position frees you from seeking the required permission, Highness,” he said. “The tomb is sealed and the entrance filled with rubble, but a day’s digging would free it.”

  “Did Penbuy ask to have the tomb opened?”

  “Yes he did,” the librarian said reluctantly. “On the morning he died. Highness, do not be offended if I ask, what is it that you seek?”

  I seek the truth, and I am finding something more horrible than I could possibly have imagined, Hori thought. Aloud he said, “I am not offended, but I cannot tell you. Think carefully. There was no issue? No descendants?”

  “None,” the librarian said firmly.

  “Very well.” Hori rose, then settled himself behind the table. “Bring me the scrolls, and while I am reading, send to whatever workmen’s village exists in Koptos. I want that tomb exposed by tonight. Will you accompany me, and re-seal it when I am done? You see …” He paused, suddenly aware of the earring nestling in its pouch against his thigh. “A certain lady claims to be the descendant of this Nenefer, and thus of noble blood.”

  The librarian was already shaking his head vigorously. “Impossible, Highness. Completely impossible. She is a charlatan. The ancient records exist here unbroken. Nenefer-ka-Ptah’s line died out with his son Merhu.”

  Hori dismissed him and waited. Presently the librarian returned with an armful of scrolls, which he laid before the Prince. “My records show that Penbuy consulted all these,” he said. “The
y cover the period ten years before and fifty after the lives of the people you are researching. Would your Highness like refreshment?” Hori nodded absently and began to unroll the first scroll. When the librarian returned with a slave bearing water, wine and pastries, he did not hear, although some time later he ate and drank unconsciously.

  He read quickly but carefully, and as he did so his apprehension grew. The Prince Nenefer-ka-Ptah’s grandfather had come to Koptos during the reign of Osiris Thothmes the First, Queen Hatshepsut’s father, as an Inspector of Monuments. His father had continued in the position and then Nenefer-ka-Ptah himself, upon his father’s untimely death, had been confirmed in it. The dates and brief, factual entries reeled slowly under Hori’s baffled gaze. Nenefer-ka-Ptah had been somehow involved in the great Queen’s audacious expedition to Punt, a land whose whereabouts had been lost until that time, and his service had been rewarded with an hereditary title and the caravan monopoly when regular trade began with Punt for myrrh and other exotic necessities. Five years later all three of them had died. The dates of their deaths were meticulously recorded. Also the date their holdings reverted to the Horus Throne. The symbol for “ending” had been placed after the entry recording the drownings, signifying that the line had died out with them.

  More rapidly now, Hori scanned the other scrolls. No off-spring, no heirs, not even any claims on their property by close relatives. They had appeared out of nowhere and vanished back into oblivion. Penbuy had also consulted several scrolls to do with local folklore, and with a sigh Hori sipped more wine and pulled them towards him. The afternoon was advancing and the heat had intensified, but with it had come a hot breeze that ruffled his hair and stirred his kilt and he was not too uncomfortable. He began to read.

  He had not gone far into the second scroll when he found the reason why the people of Koptos believed the ancient Prince to have been under a curse and his property haunted. “It was rumoured,” he read, “that this Prince had in his possession the magic Scroll of Thoth. How he came by it is not told, but he was already a cunning wizard when he found it, and through its power he became invincible. But Thoth, angered by his arrogance, decreed that he should be cursed and should die by drowning, and his ka should not rest.”