by Jerry Dubs
“No!” he said.
Stunned by the sight of Meryt’s injury, he hesitated. Then he heard Paneb grunt and the slow scrape of stone. He ran back to the doorway and added his weight to Paneb’s, pushing against the door.
“I will kill you. I will cut your precious wife to pieces,” Merneith hissed from the far side of the portal, her last words muffled as the stone squeezed shut.
Quickly Imhotep dipped his hand in the paint and smeared it across the hieroglyphs. Breathing heavily as he frantically covered the symbols, he heard his own grunts, Paneb’s heavy groans and a soft whimper from Meryt.
Keeping his weight against the stone, Imhotep stretched high to cover all of the hieroglyphs, not sure if covering one would destroy the time portal or if they all needed to be covered.
“She isn’t pushing anymore,” Paneb said after another long moment.
Remembering how Merneith had ruthlessly ordered Tjau killed and how she had ordered him buried alive, Imhotep bent to the paint jar, dipped his hand again and smeared more paint over the hieroglyphs.
“Imhotep,” Paneb said, pulling on Imhotep’s kilt. “Where is Meryt?”
The mention of his wife’s name brought Imhotep back from his fears. Still leaning against the wall, he straightened slightly, testing to see if the stone would move. Then he moved, one hand still resting on the stone, straining to feel through the rock, through the millennia.
Satisfied that Merneith was trapped in the dark tomb, he turned away from the wall.
He felt himself shaking; he had never killed before, never sought to end another’s life.
The stone wall felt warm to his fingers as he slowly withdrew his hand from the false door. It seemed to speak to him, reassuring him that he had completed an inescapable circle. Its solid, unyielding surface was now a barrier between his pain, his losses, and the fury of Merneith.
“Imhotep?” Meryt whispered.
He turned from the stone wall, picked up the torch and knelt beside Meryt. Her eyes were open but even in the near darkness he could see the blood shadow spread across the tomb floor.
***
Meryt woke in her bed.
She felt too weak to open her eyes, too weak to even breathe. She wondered for a moment if she was waking in Khert-Neter, if her new life was just beginning.
Then she heard the murmur of whispers and recognized Imhotep’s voice and, in the soft answer, the voice of Paneb’s daughter, Hapu, who was training in medicine.
“In your world, you could give her blood?” Hapu said.
Imhotep nodded in response.
“But we cannot? There is no way?”
“No, Hapu, we can’t. And even if we could, there are different kinds of blood.”
“Male and female?”
“No, different types. One type can mix with others, other types fight others. If we gave her the wrong type it would kill her. So we must keep her warm, keep her clean and give her broth. And fish, I think fish will help her make new blood. I’ve given her what drugs I had to keep the wound from becoming infected. All we can do now is wait.”
Meryt tried to speak, but the effort was too great.
She felt Imhotep’s lips on her forehead.
“Stay with us, my love.”
***
She dreamed of floating. In her bed, then in the river, then in a cloud.
She dreamed of a lamp, of a torch and of an open fire, the flames licking at her wounded stomach.
She dreamed of being washed, of being held.
She woke in her bed again. She opened her eyes and saw Imhotep sitting on the floor beside her, his head down as he slept. Beside him on the floor was a piece of papyrus. On it was a single line of hieroglyphs.
She closed her eyes, opened them again and it was daylight. Imhotep was still there, awake now, the papyrus no longer by his side.
He saw her eyes open and leaned close to her.
“Akila,” she said.
He shook his head, not understanding.
“Send for her,” Meryt said.
Imhotep brought his face closer, his lips brushing against her face. “I don’t know what she could do for you that I haven’t already done.” He kissed her gently. “I could try to take you to her. There are temples there where we could get help.”
“No,” she said. “I am of the Two Lands.”
“I know,” he leaned his head against her, fighting tears.
“Send for her,” Meryt repeated. “Not for me, for you.”
2027
Helwan, Egypt
Gone
“We should get a car,” Brianna said to Ahmes.
“We should get a donkey or a horse,” Ahmes answered as they walked down the street toward Akila’s apartment.
“No, a jetpack.”
“I don’t know what that is,” Ahmes said as he paused to feel the fibrous strands of peeling palm tree bark.
“Yeah, you do,” she said, “James Bond had a jetpack, remember?”
“Are they real?” Ahmes asked. He was addicted to movies, but viewed them all as fantasy. What else could they be, these magical images that floated through the air?
Brianna paused. Smiling, she nodded her head. “Absolutely. Jetpacks are real and they are awesome. We definitely need a jetpack.” As she spoke, she slowed her walk and then darted behind Ahmes and jumped on his back.
“I’ll be your jetpack,” she shouted as she wrapped her legs around his waist.
Ahmes straightened his arms as if flying and began to run.
A block later, as they entered the small courtyard that opened to Akila’s apartment, he slowed and pretended to be out of breath. He tried to shake Brianna from his back, but she leaned forward and wrapped her arms tight around him.
“I don’t think this is how jetpacks work,” he said
Nibbling his ear, Brianna whispered, “You rode me this morning, now it’s your turn to take me for a ride.”
Ahmes started to laugh, then he turned his head and kissed the underside of her forearm.
“Here in Akila’s courtyard?” he asked eagerly.
Brianna slid off his back.
“You really have no sense of propriety, do you?” she said laughing.
Smiling, Ahmes shook his head. Then growing sober, he said, “Your world is so different.” He waved a hand to take in all of Helwan, all of Egypt, all of the twenty-first century. “Everyone is ashamed about their bodies and about having sex. But they have no remorse about their countries killing other people or about babies starving or about women being abused. But one exposed nipple and everyone gets, what do you say – their panties in a bunk?”
“Panties in a bunch,” she said. “You sound like Imhotep when you talk like that.”
He nodded his head, his eyes suddenly sad.
He is so transparent, Brianna thought.
She looked at him lovingly. His transparency showed a soul that was honest and caring, a heart that was open to her, and she cherished him for it.
“He might come back,” she said, not really meaning it.
Ahmes gave her a smile, but he shook his head. Imhotep had gone, following the invitation he had found in the chambers beneath the Buried Pyramid.
Then, as predicted, the younger Imhotep had arrived with Maya. Brianna had called Ahmes to arrange a surprise party, but the younger Imhotep and Maya had disappeared overnight.
Now, Ahmes knew, his friend was gone. Truly gone.
“He is of the Two Lands, Brianna, and he would never willingly leave Meryt.” He shrugged, accepting the loss of his friend. “But he is happy and he is where he wants to be. So.”
He took Brianna’s hand and turned toward Akila’s apartment.
“You haven’t seen her for a week?” he said as they reached the door.
“Yeah,” Brianna said. “I stopped by the clinic Tuesday, but they said she was out. I thought they meant she was at lunch. Then today I stopped and they were worried because she hadn’t been in all week and she hadn�
��t called. So I said I’d stop by.”
Ahmes looked concerned.
“She has family in Alexandria, her mother and some aunts. She probably went to see them,” Brianna said. She knocked on the door.
“Akila?” she called.
Ahmes looked beside the door at a window. It was closed. He stepped to it and tried to lift it. Satisfied that it was locked, he stepped back to the front door.
“Akila,” Brianna called louder. She knocked again and turned to Ahmes, a worried look on her face. Digging in her purse, she retrieved her smartphone and tapped on it.
Ahmes went back to the window and pressed his ear against the glass.
He heard Akila’s telephone ring. After six rings it stopped and Brianna said, “it went to voice mail.”
Returning to the door, Ahmes tried the door knob. When it turned easily, he pushed and the door swung open.
“Akila!” they called together.
When there was no answer, Brianna started walking toward the kitchen.
“It’s stuffy in here,” Ahmes said, closing the door and looking for the thermostat.
“The refrigerator has food in it,” Brianna called from the kitchen.
“The air conditioning is turned off,” Ahmes answered from the living room.
He looked around the room. The furniture sat where it always sat, the pillows were angled in the corner of the sofa, the lamp stood upright on the end table.
“Ahmes!” Brianna called.
He ran to the dining area where he found Brianna holding a fragile papyrus.
Looking over her shoulder he saw the familiar brush strokes of Imhotep. But instead of hieroglyphs, the dark lines traced English words.
Akila.
Door from Betrest to Nemathap when Khonsu full.
I wait.
Imhotep
Things that are true
Muhammed Zakaria Goneim discovered the Buried Pyramid in the fall of 1952.
The Egyptian archaeologist had noticed an odd rectangular shape in the Saqqara desert while excavating the nearby pyramid of Unas. Excavating the burial chamber thirty meters beneath the unfinished pyramid he found a coffin cut from a single piece of highly polished alabaster, its opening formed with a sliding stone panel.
The panel was sealed with plaster and inscriptions on nearby vessels identified the sarcophagus as the coffin of King Sekhemkhet.
On June 26, 1954, with state officials, journalists, and a film crew in place to celebrate and document the incredible find, the alabaster sarcophagus was opened. It was empty.
“They dig for three years and find nothing,” one Egyptian newspaper scoffed. The newspaper didn't mention one other, mysterious find: a single stone inscribed with Imhotep's name.
Although the site did house other items of importance, Goneim was remembered for the highly publicized unveiling of an empty sarcophagus. Later he was falsely accused of smuggling an historic artifact out of the country.
Repeatedly questioned by police, Goneim was devastated by the rumors and harassment.
While Goneim fought the accusations, one of his friends, Jean-Philippe Lauer, a French archaeologist, helped him search for the missing artifact.
Lauer eventually found the artifact tucked away in a corner of the Egyptian Museum, but it was too late for Goneim. The Egyptian archaeologist’s body was found in the Nile River in January of 1959. Authorities never determined if he was the victim of murder or if he had committed suicide.
While the tragic history of Goneim is clear, if mysterious, it is much less confusing than even the most basic facts of the Third Dynasty of ancient Egypt. For example, there are several lists of kings, each of them differing in the sequence and length of time the various kings ruled.
The succession of rulers described in both “Imhotep” and in “The Buried Pyramid” follows the list from the British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt by Ian Shaw. However, other reputable lists give different lines of succession and different lengths of rule.
It was five thousand years ago, so the confusion is understandable.
Although “The Buried Pyramid” and “Imhotep” are works of fiction, I used the uncertain facts of the era as a skeleton on which to construct the stories.
Djoser was the son of King Kha-Sekhemwy, yet he was kept from the throne for nineteen years after his father’s death. The alabaster sarcophagus found in the tomb of King Sekhemkhet was discovered sealed, yet mysteriously empty. Zau was the center of the cult of Neith, goddess of war. Ta-Seti, to the south of ancient Egypt, was known as the land of the bow. Turquoise was mined in the mountains of Sinai.
The Blue Lotus Guesthouse, Helwan University and the Condetti Restaurant and Cafe are real. I modified some aspects of them to suit the needs of my story.
All the characters in the novels are products of my imagination, or, if historical, they are used fictitiously.
The Forest of Myrrh
Following is an excerpt from “The Forest of Myrrh,” the third novel of the Imhotep tetralogy.
The Forest of Myrrh
A novel by Jerry Dubs
Run Away!
A brief, frantic cry woke Hetephernebti.
Raising her head from the wooden head block on her bed she wondered if the sound was from a nightmare. Then it came again, dampened by the stone corridors, yet still urgent.
The sound reminded her of a night, more than fifty years ago, when she had been roused from sleep by her mother’s screams. A feeling of dread swept over Hetephernebti; her mother’s cries so long ago had heralded a time of darkness.
She shut her eyes to close off the past, opened them again, and pushed herself to a seated position.
I’m getting old, she thought as her shoulders and knees moved stiffly and her hip bone seemed to grind against the wooden bed.
A scuffling sound and another cry, muffled and more forlorn.
Leaning forward and pushing with her hands, she stood, her bare feet feeling the chill of the stone floor of her chambers in the Temple of Re. Khonsu’s light slid through the windows, the god’s silver fingers draining color from the wall hangings, but Hetephernebti didn’t notice; her eyes, like her predecessor’s, had grown dim and unfocused with age. She moved now through her rooms with the assurance of years of practice, seeing her surroundings more with her memory than with her eyes.
Through her chamber doorway, across the anteroom, past the opening that led to the room where her daughter Inetkawes had once slept, and out into the hallway. She paused and listened. She looked to her left, smelled incense lingering in the air from earlier in the evening and beneath it the sharper, angrier scent of a recently extinguished torch.
Following the smell, she walked a narrow corridor. Soon she heard rapid breathing and over it the urgent whispering of a man’s voice.
She paused. Was it nothing more than the coupling of lovers?
Then another cry, sharp and pained and quickly smothered.
She hurried now, her blood growing hot from another memory of her anguished childhood: King Nebka, drunk and angry, tearing her gown from her and violently taking her.
She stopped at the doorway of a storage room and saw shadows within slow to a stop.
One of them stood.
“Voice of Re, help me,” a girl cried from the floor.
Hetephernebti recognized Tarset’s strong delta accent.
“Who are you?” she demanded of the standing shadow, a man, his dark form silhouetted by the moon’s cold light seeping through a narrow window.
She moved toward him, one arm out, her palm turned toward him.
Tarset got on her hands and knees. As she started to speak the man kicked at her, his foot striking her head, silencing her.
“No!” Hetephernebti shouted and stepped closer to the man.
As she grabbed at the intruder, he twisted away and then suddenly spun back toward her, his right arm outstretched, the back of his fisted hand smashing against Hetephernebti’s face. She felt a sharp pain as he
r teeth cut into her bottom lip and then a curious, descending peace.
Her eyes rolled upward and, unconscious, she fell gracelessly. Her head slapped against the stone wall, her small chest bounced against the stones and she crumpled to the ground knocking over pots of oil and shattering the thick pottery.
The man stood over her, his chest rising and falling from the rush of violence. He didn’t think that she had recognized him, but he couldn’t be sure. To attack a priestess was an unimaginable crime. To attack Hetephernebti, sister to dead King Djoser and high priestess to the god Re, would shatter ma’at beyond repair.
As he squatted closer to Hetephernebti he saw thick castor oil spreading from the broken jars. Amid the oil were swirling, darker rivulets. Leaning closer to the priestess, he cupped her jaw and gently raised her head. Blood pulsed from a gash in the side of her neck.
He heard movement behind him as Tarset got to her feet.
Standing quickly, he blocked her view of Hetephernebti. Then he changed his mind and roughly grabbed her arm. He pulled her close and pushed her toward Hetephernebti’s body.
“Look what you’ve done!” he whispered in her ear. “You’ve killed Hetephernebti.”
“No,” Tarset cried.
“Yes,” he said. “When they find her, I’ll tell them that you brought me here and tried to seduce me. When Hetephernebti discovered us you fought and you knocked her down.”
Tarset shook her head and tried to pull away.
“Are they going to believe me or a servant?” he said.
She shook now, crying over the death of Hetephernebti, crying over the shame that would fall on her family, crying over the understanding that he was right. She was a servant and no one would take her word over his.
“Run away,” he said, squeezing her arm tightly. “Run away and disappear.”
Blood Mingled