by Paula Guran
The fellah named Ali leaned closer, exhaling foul breath from a mouth full of blackened teeth that he framed by a grin. Wordsley wished there were a little more space in this rented room; it was a potter’s storeroom where he and his makeshift desk and cot and boxes competed with bowls and jugs and heaps of little cups—and now an Arab—for the floor. “You see, effendi? Is it not what I promised?”
In reply, Wordsley pulled out a magnifying glass from his desk drawer to better examine the text. These hieroglyphs were timeworn, difficult to read, but this spoke in favor of the papyrus’s authenticity. Forgery was an industry with these beggars; you could never quite trust them, but papyri were beyond their clever skill. The industry had been lost, the script forgotten.
Out of habit, he picked up a pen and began to draw a facsimile of the papyrus. There was nothing here of any great interest, just another chapter from the Book of the Dead looted from the grave of some artisan or minor bureaucrat, a man of no known importance but wealthy enough at least to afford a proper burial and a scroll containing the spells necessary to ensure him prosperity in the afterlife to come.
“Where did you get it? The little pyramid that the American tore down and shipped downriver—from there, eh?”
“No, no, effendi. By decree of the pasha, what the American digs up belongs to the American. And he pays besides. This is from—it is from elsewhere.”
Wordsley looked up sharply at the thief. “Was there anything else with this? Pottery, for example? Even ostraca, broken pottery? With writing or pictures upon it?” He had found interesting things written on potsherds, names, faces of kings. These might just date the papyrus.
The Arab grinned in false apology. “No, effendi, pardon me, but there was nothing else at all, just this piece of writing. Very old, very genuine anteekah. Very valuable.”
Wordsley snorted. “I’ll give you a shilling.” Payment enough for this beggar, and all Wordsley could afford, given the present state of his finances.
The would-be seller howled in offended outrage. Only a shilling for such a valuable antiquity? A genuine manuscript from the tomb of the kings? The Englishman insulted him with such an offer. He would take his find instead to the American, who would be sure to pay what it was truly worth.
But Wordsley was unmoved. A shilling was two piasters, enough to feed the thief and his family for a day. And he was sure that if the beggar was offering the papyrus to him now, doubtless the American had turned it down already. Phineas Bigham had no interest in common funeral texts, not the man who bought the head of the Sphinx itself and shipped it back to America as a museum exhibit.
In the end Ali accepted the shilling and left, assuring Wordsley that the starvation of his children was imminent. Wordsley poured himself a glass of claret to wash the taste of the transaction out of his mouth, as well as the dust. Every corner of the room not taken up by the potter’s stores held boxes of ostraca, potsherds and scrolls, most untranscribed and untranslated, most likely as worthless as this one, but he did not dare risk the loss of any manuscript of potential significance. Too much had been lost already, too much was being lost even yet, thanks to the activities of tomb-robbers and plunderers and in particular the greatest plunderer of them all, this American mountebank Bigham.
“Bigham!” The name was a curse on Wordsley’s lips. Destroying everything in his quest for antiquities, forever obliterating the historical record of millennia, Phineas Bigham was hardly the first of the tomb-robbers, but his dollars had inflicted more damage on the remains of ancient Egypt than centuries of conquering armies. His lavish bribery had purchased the pasha’s license to carry off whatever he pleased, and his devastating methods of excavation left irreplaceable papyri torn and rotting amid the ruins he left in the wake of his search for the monumental statues and gold coffins of ancient pharaohs.
Wordsley had had hopes when he set out for Tukh, devoid of the great temples such as those at Luxor or Philae or Abu Simbel. Nothing, he thought, would attract the American here. But something had, nevertheless. The tumbledown pyramid was gone when he arrived two days ago, removed stone by stone; in fact, he had seen but not recognized it sitting on a wharf in Cairo, awaiting steamers to take it seaward as ballast to America, where it would be resurrected again. The graves, most ancient graves, that edged the farmers’ fields had been stripped of their occupants and the gold and stone and ivory that had accompanied them in death. More than two thousand looted in a fortnight. Whatever else had stood in the vicinity of Tukh was gone too.
What could he do but salvage here? He felt like a gleaner following an army through fields of devastation. And there was something to glean, for the American had his own desires to satisfy. Only the finest manuscripts, with crisply drawn vignettes painted in delicate green, red, white, and gold, merited Bigham’s interest. Wordsley had let it be known that he would pay for whatever the American had thrown aside, at least for as long as his funds held out.
Lighting a second lamp, he applied his attention now to the papyrus fragment on his desk. He copied it out, sign for sign, word for word, column for column, translating in his head. He knew the words before he even saw them: ordinary, ordinary, ordinary! Yet he did not consider his shilling entirely wasted, for perhaps the next manuscript Ali brought in would contain the name of some previously unknown king or god or spell.
There was the piece on which he had been working before the thief’s arrival, for example: a new hymn to the sun god Ra-Horakhety triumphant over his enemies at dawn. So much remained unknown and unexplained about the ancient Egyptian gods, so much they might never know, despite all that was left behind. It was now smashed by the chisel for the heads of pretty goddesses, torn up for amulets of gold and lapis lazuli.
Wordsley poured another glass of claret and dipped his pen again into the ink. So much to do.
In the next few days his labors were interrupted so often, by so many natives bearing artifacts for sale—papyri, scarabs, shabtis, pottery jars, bits of mummified animals and birds—that he soon realized something was amiss. The vendors were sly; they said nothing, but it was not only in their silent smiles that Wordsley knew something out of the ordinary was happening.
The two thousand and more graves and tombs near Tukh had been of utmost antiquity: Wordsley had ascertained from interviews of the workmen that there were no scrolls among them, but rather ivory combs, fine stone vases, gold jewelry, and other things for which the American had paid handsomely. Although the fellahin were reluctant to admit it, the scrolls and ostraca he had been purchasing from them came from less ancient ruins south of the stolen pyramid. What they brought him now, however, came in such quantity and diversity that he knew they had discovered a new source.
So, having paid six piasters for an ostracon with the cartouches of a king he did not know—Neb-Khepru-Ra Tut-Ankh-Amun—Wordsley pushed himself away from his desk, called his servant Ahmed to bring his hat, and ventured out into the marketplace to investigate the situation.
Heat and sun-glare and dust, with the overpowering scents of dung from camels, asses and the native Arabs, met him. The skirling whine of flies was his greeting. Few people were abroad today, and all of those were women and girls and very small children. Virtually every man and every boy older than eight or ten seemed absent.
“Where is everyone?” he asked of the potter from whom he had rented the room. He wondered how many of his own pots the man had thrown to the ground, buried in dirt, and dug up again for some wide-eyed tourist sailing by in his dahabeeyah.
“With the American,” was the reply.
“With the American? I thought Bigham had gone.”
“He is gone, gone into the desert. He has hired most any man with a pair of legs, see?” The man displayed his crippled feet. “From here, from el-Ballas, from Naqada. They’re all in the desert now, far up the wadi. Another Biban el-Molouk they have there, yes, it is said. Another Valley of the Kings. Oh, but your face, effendi, it is flushed. Come inside, come inside. It is too hot
here. Beer, yes? Come inside. The sun has made you ill.”
Wordsley brushed away the old man’s offer.
What had Phineas Bigham found? The objects the Arabs were bringing to Wordsley lately were undoubtedly more typical of Thebes than of this region. No one had ever reported such tombs or temples here before. Terra incognita! Overlooked by Napoleon’s savants, missed by that Italian king of grave-robbers Belzoni, could it be? The place would be destroyed, utterly and totally, and carted off to America before it was ever known in Egypt.
“He must be stopped—” Wordsley choked the words back as the potter regarded him coldly. The villagers would not treat kindly anyone apt to thwart their benefactor. Regardless, Phineas Bigham had to be stopped before he raped another tomb, plundered another temple.
Wordsley strode rapidly back to his rented storeroom and shouted for Ahmed, who dutifully appeared and listened to instructions. He must prepare, at once, for an expedition into the hills. Donkeys, flour, water, whatever would be needed. There was no other way. Appeals to the local authorities would be futile. Bribes had placed the pasha squarely in the American’s pocket. The British consul, to whom Wordsley would naturally appeal, was interested only in the matter as far as it came to getting a share of the loot; the British Museum was Bigham’s greatest rival in the antiquities trade.
So with great difficulty and expense a tent and supplies were obtained, and donkeys to carry them, and an animal for Wordsley to ride. He was, alas, no great explorer, no doughty digger-of-tombs. He was ordinarily content to let others bring their manuscripts and scarabs and ostraca to him for deciphering. But he now had to press beyond that. His mission, if ever he had one, was clear and neither discomfort nor inconvenience would deter him. Bigham had gone into the desert and so Wordsley must follow. The gleaner would glean no longer: time had come for the harvest to end.
It was an army. She had no other word to describe the host now encamped in the wadi east of the tomb. The scent of smoke and cooking food rose from hundreds of campfires, mingling with the odors of dung from a thousand pack animals. There was a large tent which certainly belonged to king or general. She saw no swords or bows, not even the explosive firearms of recent invaders, but it was an army of many hundreds advancing toward her, toward the hidden tomb where her lord was chained.
Dismayed, she realized why they must have come: the bait by which she lured robbers into her hands had now succeeded beyond her purpose, bringing appalling numbers of them. If they should happen by some evil chance to discover the location of her lord’s tomb, to expose it, even for an instant, to the sun . . .
But they could not possibly remain in this region for long, she tried to reassure herself. Not such a great number of men. There was not enough water, they would drink the wells dry—what few wells there were.
And these were only fellahin, superstitious and ignorant. She knew how to prey upon their fears. Had not she and her brothers and sisters once inspired their forefathers to prayer and to sacrifice, to raise tombs high into the sky? To dig them deep into the earth? She knew these people. Once, she had owned them.
Now she descended to the camp and took one of the lives that were hers. When the others woke in the morning they would remember whose land this was, whose land this had always been.
Napoleon’s army had not made such tracks through the Egyptian desert, of that Wordsley was sure. These parched desert hills had never before seen such a traffic, at least of the living. Once the dead in their thousands had come this way but one by one, dragged on sledges and laid to rest in shallow graves or mud-brick mastabas. Not in such a multitude as this! He followed the trail as it wound into the high hills, pausing for one last glimpse of the green fields. His donkey-boys trudged forward, urging their animals, sparing no such glance, as if it were ill luck to covet the gift of the river being left behind.
Already Wordsley’s lips felt parched. Never had he traveled this far into the desert. Its vastness, even cut up by the hills, surprised him. Along the river, there was a feeling of closeness, of definition, brought about by the demarcation between Black Land and Red, but here there was no definition save that between earth and sky. It was entirely the Red Land below and the heavens above. Pharaohs had once hunted lion and ostrich here, praised the setting sun here, buried their dead here. The beasts were gone now, but the sun and the dead remained, always. The brown hills seemed capable of swallowing a man, of sucking him dry.
For an interminable time they followed the tracks. Wordsley began to wonder if the desert might have evaporated Bigham and his work gangs. It was the heat, worrying at his head, that gave rise to such fanciful notions.
“How much farther?” he asked of Ahmed.
Ahmed shrugged and said, “Nearby. Nearby.”
Nearby! Nothing could be near here, Wordsley despaired. He thought of going back, of abandoning the past to the depredations of the American, but just at that moment his donkey, as if offended by this notion, stumbled, pitching him off head first into the sand. His hand, breaking his fall, closed on an object.
The fellahin swarmed upon him, eager to assist him back to his feet, but Wordsley beat them off with his riding crop so fiercely that one might have thought that these poor bedraggled sons of Adam had pulled him off the beast to rob him. Freed of them, his attention was wholly for what his hand had found.
It was a shallow grave in a hollow in the rocks filled by drifting sand. Something Bigham had already plundered, surely, Wordsley thought. Nonetheless his fall had exposed—he fell back to his knees and scooped sand away with his bare hands—a black, mummified foot, miraculously not reduced to bleached white bone as so many other remains had been. He began to dig the grave out with his hands, then thought of Ahmed and the donkey-boys who were standing about, providing him shade but no other assistance.
“Dig,” he ordered.
“La, la,” they replied.
“What? Why ‘no’? You dig them up every night you can. Why not now?”
“The ferengi will see,” Ahmed said, “turn us over to the authorities.”
“There’s a ferengi leading scores of your uncles and brothers out in the desert at this very moment, doing just such a thing. Why not for me?”
“The pasha. The American has his firman. For anyone else, it is forbidden.”
With an exasperated rattle in his throat, Wordsley continued digging with his own bare hands. In little time he had revealed a dried husk of a corpse, its skin nearly black, marvelously intact and preserved. He considered it sheer luck that Bigham had not himself stumbled upon this poor wretch, in the course of his trek through this place. Not so much as a stitch of linen clothed his limbs. He began to dig a wider hole, and when it occurred to the Arabs that there might be anteekahs to be found, they abandoned their reservations and joined in the search. But there was nothing. Not a potsherd, not a scrap of leather, not a stone knife. Wordsley was disappointed. The only thing of value here was the body itself.
Nevertheless, the men seemed to have found something of interest. Wordsley approached unnoticed, so engrossed were they upon their find. They were passing something small amongst themselves, and did not at first notice that a ferengi hand had interposed itself to join in the sharing. Wordsley found himself holding a jasper scarab, neatly incised on its belly with hieroglyphic writing. It did not belong in this wretched grave, of that he was certain.
“Effendi! Effendi, we did not know! We thought it nothing, a trifle, a bauble of modern manufacture for the other ferengi, not a learned scholar such as yourself. Abdullah makes them just so—”
“Never mind. Bigham would pay you nothing for this; he must have a hundred thousand already. Here.” He handed one of them a shilling. This satisfied their business with him, but now they had to settle the coin out amongst themselves. They would be at it for generations, Wordsley reflected, knowing their ways.
He fingered the stone beetle, making out the sense of the glyphs. It was a small heart scarab, inscribed with a formula from th
e Book of the Dead for a man named Nakht.
Was this naked mummy, then, this Nakht? Had the scarab been overlooked by whomever first plundered this pathetic burial place? Wordsley glanced at the hills. Or had it washed down, perhaps years ago? Assuredly it had come from the same unrecorded place as had the other trinkets the Arabs had been bringing him.
This find settled his resolve. Abandon the past to the likes of the American? Never, inshallah.
He had not lied to his Egyptian companions; Bigham would not pay one American cent for the scarab. For so fine a mummy, so perfectly preserved, however—ah! Might he not trade papyri, pottery bowls, flakes of limestone? Items Bigham and his American public considered worthless, but oh! so valuable to the true scholar. The British Museum would display them proudly.
Wordsley called the donkey-boys, who under his direction obediently placed the dried corpse in a linen sheet, and then in two more. Ahmed rearranged his packs, having to leave behind only a sack of flour to accommodate their new traveling companion. He swore them to silence. The mummy was Wordsley’s coin, and he would lay it upon the American’s counter in due time.
The trail led to a broad encampment in a state of pandemonium. Nearly the entire town was here, and every man who could be hired from el-Ballas and Naqada, excavating the sands of the wadi, scouring it like industrious ants. They probed the rocks, they dug, they shifted the sand by the basket-load, a vast effort mobilized, all to earn the American’s gold.
Bigham strode among them like a king. His striped waistcoat of French silk stretched across an ample expanse of belly and sported a brave festoon of watch-chain, fobs and seals. A floppy-brimmed hat covered his face, and a parasol rested over his left shoulder. His right hand, encumbered by the dwindling remains of a cheroot, gestured exuberantly as he spoke to the foremen who came and left his presence like bees at a hive. He was possessed of a booming voice, but above the cacophony Wordsley could not make it out. Did Bigham even speak Arabic? Wordsley doubted it. There were enough men in the villages who spoke enough English for Bigham to get by. And they all understood his desire, in any case: anteekahs.