Mystery of the Temple

by Nathaniel Burns

  “It’s a tomb” Shabaka said, disbelievingly, “Both the pharaoh and queen are buried here.”

  “No, I mean recently,” Neti quickly countered.

  “How do you know?”

  “I can smell it,” Neti flatly stated.

  “You mean you can smell it over all of the other musty smells filling the air?”

  Neti nodded, only belatedly realizing that Shabaka could not see her. “It’s there, but it must have been some time ago, since it does not smell as bad as newer bodies.”

  “Had I not known what you do in Thebes, I would have been concerned with the term ‘newer bodies’.”

  “But it doesn’t,” Neti said, then tapped on his back. “Just be on the lookout for it.”

  Shabaka continued along the corridor that some time later suddenly widened. He moved the lamp about and then held it off to the side. “Well there is your body.”

  Neti moved to look at the heap of bones, draped in a makeshift caftan. She shook her head as she spoke, “This one has been dead for some time already.”

  Jokingly Shabaka chirped, “Think you can estimate a cause of death?”

  Neti looked at the body and shook her head, “I’m not even going to try.”

  “Where are we?” Shabaka asked as he lifted the lamp again. “It is not much bigger than the passage.”

  “It is the hall of truth.”

  “Such a small area?” Shabaka asked, confused.

  “This is the queen’s chamber. She would not need to justify her actions. That is for the pharaoh. See?” Neti said, pointing to a series of pictures. “She was the mother of his children, loyal to her husband, and fair on her servants.”

  Neti looked towards the tomb doors, and said as she stepped closer, “They have damaged them.”

  Shabaka followed. “We will need to report it to Ramesses. He can then decide what is to be done.” Shabaka stopped for a moment and looked at the doors, his heart racing when Neti started an almost familiar chant. He knew some of the words, but as with many of the chants she used, he could never remember the exact order of the phrases.

  He waited at the doorway and watched as she set about lighting the torches in the room. What remained of its contents was scattered about. Very cautiously, Neti picked up everything and rearranged it, reaching into her satchel and extracting the cloth covered flatbread, placing some on the table, along with a small measure of oil. She walked towards what appeared to be another passage and released a heavy sigh. “Even this they tried to damage, thinking there might be a room beyond.”

  “And is there?” Shabaka asked.

  “I do not think the pharaoh would be as foolish as to place a treasure chamber at such a location,” Neti said, stepping back. “But whatever of worth was here, it has since been taken.”

  Neti looked at the walls, and then up at the roof for a moment, frowning.

  Shabaka, who was well attuned to her, asked, “What is it?”

  Neti shook her head again but said, “I think I am starting to see things.”

  “What?” Shabaka asked, concerned.

  “No, I don’t mean strange things. I mean I’m starting to see connections, which I doubt I would have before.”

  “Like?”

  “Well you see that symbol there?” she said, pointing up at the roof.

  “Yes, what about it?”

  “It’s different, as if it does not belong there.”

  “You mean the artists back then could not spell?”

  “No,” Neti quickly countered. “It is as if they made it different on purpose.”

  “But it looks the same to me,” Shabaka said.

  Neti shook her head. “In the lamp light its outlines almost seem to reflect.”

  “Well, then you see something that I do not.”

  Neti continued to look around and found several more, ticking them off her fingers.

  “Do you think they man anything?”

  Neti nodded. “They do,” she said and hurriedly moved towards what appeared to be a shaft in the wall.

  “Don’t tell me you are going to put your hand in there as well?” Shabaka said, cringing when Neti did just that. “You know that one day you are going to be bitten or stung doing that?”

  “Got it,” Neti said, pulling her hand back.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a scroll,” Neti said, carefully unrolling it.

  “What does it say?” Shabaka asked, a mere moment before Neti went entirely rigid.

  “It’s the curse scroll.”

  “What!” Shabaka exclaimed, shocked. “What does it say?”

  “All people who enter to make evil against this tomb or destroy it, may the crocodile be against you in water and snakes against you on land. May the hippopotamus be against you in water and the scorpion against you on land.”

  Shabaka looked at her, shocked. “That means us as well.”

  Neti shook her head. “We did not enter to make evil.” Although her heart raced as she said it.

  “It does not say anything about diseases or strange deaths.”

  Neti re-rolled the sheet of papyrus and placed it back where she had found it, before turning to Shabaka. “We should check the lamp before returning through the narrow passage.”

  “What are you not telling me?” Shabaka asked, watching as she moved to the other shaft.

  “That is only part of the curse.”

  “How do you know?” Shabaka asked.

  “Because I did not read all of it to you, only the curse placed on people who enter this chamber.”

  “What did it say?”

  “It started with, ‘In addition to the curse cast for the pharaoh…’”

  Neti reached into the other shaft in the wall. Her hand knocked a stone of some sort and it started to roll deeper into the shaft.

  Neti jerked out her hand and in a low tone said, “That cannot be good.”

  “What?”

  “I knocked a stone of some sort.”

  “I thought you said there were no traps in pyramids.”

  “That does not mean that there are not any hidden doorways.”

  The ground beneath them shook.

  Neti bolted for the door and through the hall of truth on the other side. She halted at the end of the passage and listened. “There is a scraping sound like stone on stone in the distance.”

  Shabaka came to stand next to her and asked, concerned, “What do you think it is?”

  “It is most possibly a doorway having opened a room or closed off a passage.”

  “Which are you hoping for?”

  “A hidden room.” Neti said, moving back into the burial chamber to collect up her satchel. “If it is a passage, I fear we may be caught here.” Neti’s shoulders drooped as she turned towards the narrow passageway.

  Shabaka remained silent, for there was little he could say.

  They slowly made their way back towards the gallery. Neti carefully stepped from the passage and stood back to allow Shabaka to exit as well.

  “You know there wasn’t another body,” Shabaka said as he settled on the ledge aside the passage. “I’ve been thinking about it.”

  “It is not entirely strange,” Neti said as she too sat down, looking around her for a moment while speaking. “The others would have left him.”

  “It is not the body so much that concerns me, but its condition.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well the two bodies in Thebes, they stank badly before the flesh literally became nothing before our eyes.”

  “Yes,” Neti said, looking as him but not too keen on the conversation.

  “The smell remained for some time thereafter, even in rooms with air moving through them,” Shabaka said. “But if you could still smell a body, that means that he might have died in the same manner as the others. Only the smell has not escaped because there is not a great deal of air moving through here.”

  Neti only lifted her brow. “Well if that were so and
we also become sick…at least it would be fast,” Neti said and looked the other way.

  Shabaka reached out and placed his hand on her shoulder. “We’ll get out of this. We always do – somehow.”

  Neti released a heavy sigh before nodding and then reached for her water skin. It was almost empty but she had some water anyway. Pushing the stopper back in place she said, “Come, we might as well discover what the pharaoh’s tomb holds.”

  With that Shabaka rose from the step and followed her, the impressive images on either side of the gallery having seemingly lost their charm.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Neti entered the narrow passage at the end of the gallery. It was shorter but slightly wider than the queen’s had been. This passage also opened up into a hall of truth, which was larger is size in comparison to the queen’s. Neti stopped to look at the images on the wall while waiting for Shabaka to join her.

  No matter how much she tried not to think about it, the idea that they may be trapped there kept swirling around in her head.

  Shabaka somehow sensed that she needed some time to reflect and refrained from asking her any questions.

  Neti approached the large doors, which had also seen similar treatment as the outer walls of the pyramid. One lay askew and the stone of the other, cracked. She carefully navigated them and entered the burial chamber.

  Moving the lamp about she suddenly let out a bloodcurdling scream, dropping the lamp at the same time.

  “Neti!” Shabaka called, haphazardly navigating the damaged doors, just as the lamp hit the ground.

  The oil spilt from it and caught alight. The radiance of the small blaze temporarily lit the room, where he saw Neti, frozen in position, looking at a mummy propped up against the wall.

  “Neti!” he called again, even more concerned.

  He watched as she lifted her hands to her face, taking a deep breath, before slowly pulling her hands down, hoarsely saying. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Whom are you apologizing to?”

  Neti gave a nervous laugh, “I don’t really know.” She then turned to look at him and the small blaze. “It’s just,” she shook her head, “he was the last thing I was expecting to run into.”

  “You think that is him?” Shabaka asked.

  Neti nodded and then moved to one of the walls. “We should get the torches lit, there is not a lot of oil left.”

  Shabaka moved to help her, for a moment holding one of the torches close to the wall. He lifted his hand to stroke the stone. “A little bit of Aswan.”

  “What?” Neti asked, turning towards him.

  “This stone comes from my home,” Shabaka said before placing the torch back in its holder.

  Once all the torches were lit, Neti turned back to the chamber to peruse its contents. Just as with the queen’s, everything of value had been taken, with only a few objects scattered around the chamber.

  Neti shook her head as she made her way to the sarcophagus. “I would not blame the gods’ for their wrath,” she said as she approached the granite coffin. She knelt beside it and felt her soul fill with anger. In all of her life, she had never seen such desecration. While looted tombs were of common occurrence, she had never encountered looters who’d exhibited such disrespect for the dead, not only robbing the chamber of all its treasures, but by disturbing the rest of the pharaoh within.

  Out of sheer shock, her hands raised to cover her nose and mouth as a nauseous sensation started in the pit of her stomach.

  Shabaka came to stand beside her, placing his hand on her shoulder. “The gods had no reason to be merciful to them.”

  Neti simply nodded, her mind still trying to process the horror laid bare before them.

  The one corner of the sarcophagus lay beside it. Although the sarcophagus itself was not polished or completed, with the stone still roughly hewn, the severity of the looters’ actions was no less diluted. She stood and looked beside it for its cover. A tight sensation enveloped her heart on discovering that it too had been broken, cracked right through.

  Neti took a deep breath before she spoke. “They were so greedy, they even checked the sarcophagus, even removed him from it.” She stressed the last, unable to comprehend why someone would do such a thing.

  She turned to look at the mummified pharaoh. “We had best return him and set right what is left of the room.”

  Shabaka’s hand only closed on her shoulder, the pressure of the action confirming his agreement and support.

  Neti rose and lowered both her satchel and water skin, then moved towards the coffin. In a soft, soothing voice she started a chant. It was the one thing that Shabaka recognized as missing, without having realized it, especially since Neti never entered a tomb without reciting one. At times she had even recited one while approaching a dead body. Her tone conveyed not only her remorse but also her respect for the dead.

  She unbound her sash and used it to clear away any dust, before asking Shabaka to help her with the body.

  They carefully lifted it. It was much lighter that Shabaka had anticipated, and far stiffer than he would have thought. They placed it back in its resting place and carefully lifted the one half of the broken cover. It was heavy but they managed to slip it back in place before carefully lifting the other to move it into place, slowly pushing them together until they lined up correctly.

  Neti set about arranging the room, and as with the queen’s, placed flatbread and a measure of oil aside for the pharaoh.

  “Neti!” Shabaka called softly, but urgently, holding out a small scroll towards her.

  Hesitantly she took it from him and unrolled it.

  “Is it what I think it is?” Shabaka asked.

  Neti nodded. “‘To all people who enter and disturb my rest in order to take or to damage that which is not yours, the gods will be merciless in their judgment. You will be struck down by an illness that no healer could cure and for which there is no treatment, only death. Your body will rot and the meat will fall from the bones. You will not know the afterlife, for your Ka will be condemned when your body is cast to fire. Your children will also succumb to this disease and your linage will perish.’”

  Neti looked up at Shabaka, for a moment holding up the scroll as she said, “That is what happened to them.” Then, with a note of panic in her voice, “What happened to the body in the queen’s tomb?”

  Shabaka came towards her and gently took both her wrists. “Calm down, Neti. You, we, did not enter here to disturb. Surely the gods know that.”

  Neti took a deep breath before finally nodding.

  Shabaka let go of her hands and watched as Neti carefully rolled up the scroll. Once done, she moved to the one end of the chamber and carefully placed it within the shaft there.

  “You never told me what those are for,” Shabaka said as she turned back towards him.

  Neti looked at the shaft for a moment before answering, “They are passages to the outside that allow the Ka to ascend to the heavens, but also to return to the body for rest.”

  “So where are the shafts for air?” Shabaka asked.

  “Those will be in the passages and in the gallery. Air will only pass through the passages if an entrance to the tomb is open.” Neti said as she moved to the wall opposite the sarcophagus and pressed her back to it, looking at the granite coffin. She slowly sank to the floor, an action that caused Shabaka concern.

  “Neti, are you well?”

  Neti nodded her head, “Just tired suddenly.”

  Shabaka moved to sit next to her, also releasing a pent up sigh. “It has been a busy day. Maybe we should rest a bit before we start back.”

  Shabaka felt Neti nod, but when he looked towards her, she was already asleep.

  “Neti!” He called urgently, but garnered no response. He shifted and pulled her towards him, but still she did not respond, her entire body lax as he gathered her up in his arms. “By the gods! What’s wrong?” Shabaka asked, his hand going to her chest, feeling for her heart. Fear gripped at him
when he could not feel anything. He had no idea what to do, or even how far the day had progressed. It had felt long enough that it could be bedtime for her. But he’d never known anyone to fall asleep as quickly or as soundly as she had. He pulled her closer, breathing a sigh of relief on feeling her warm breath against his hand.

  Neti was oblivious of the concern her lack of response caused. Her body felt light, carefree even, as if it were floating. Very soon the darkness that surrounded her cleared. She found herself surrounded by a group of unknown people. One of them was dressed like a pharaoh and turned to look at her. Their surroundings became clearer…a river. She was on a bark with others, yet there was nothing to be seen in the distance.

  There were many voices speaking simultaneously and she could not make out anything in particular and no one responded to her questions. It was as if she was there but not there. The bark stopped, but when she made to get off she entered a dark passage. Someone held a light at the end, but she could not make out whom.

  She felt a presence beside her, both foreign yet not threatening. She turned and saw the man she had earlier identified as a pharaoh. He calmly stood beside her. He made to speak and although his mouth moved she heard no words. He led the way along the passage, gesturing to images on the wall. They seemed familiar, but at the same time new. She watched as he moved along the corridor, still speaking but not making a sound. He gestured to several of the images and then to a specific point along the wall. There he placed his hand on the image, a few moments later several stones appeared. Things blurred again and there were red symbols painted on a wall. They too seemed familiar, as did the stone doors with brass handles, yet she knew she had never seen them before.

  The man gestured for her to look around her. When she did, she found herself in a large room, like a storage room, only this one was in a mess. There were half-filled sacks scattered across the floor and things haphazardly thrown about. In the distance, a man sat. He was disfigured. Patches of raw skin covered his body as he cowered from her. He was screaming, shouting at her, but she could not make out what he was saying.