The Sacred Scarab

by Gill Harvey

  .

  The troupe was making its way back towards the river. The king was still in his mortuary temple, performing his annual ritual. Much of the crowd had dispersed, as now was the time for the wealthier members of society to make offerings to their ancestors in their own individual tombs. Isis looked back at the foot of the limestone cliffs, where people were meandering up between the tomb-chapels that nestled there. She knew that some people would stay overnight, in the hope that their dead relatives would speak to them in their dreams.

  None of the troupe had relatives buried in such a special place. Isis thought with sadness that her own parents had not been buried anywhere; they had been taken by the crocodile god Sobek into the depths of the Nile. She brushed the thought aside, and thought instead of Hopi, taking the vizier to see the evidence of Abana’s treachery. She could hardly believe that their plan had succeeded – or, at least, it had so far.

  Other people were heading home, too, chatting and laughing about the day’s festivities. Isis noticed that there was an old man walking in the opposite direction, coming towards them with his back stooped and his weight placed heavily on his stick. There was something familiar about him. Then she realised who it was.

  ‘Menna!’ she cried, running up to him. ‘Your idea worked! The king blessed us with his favour!’

  The old man stopped. ‘Well done, Isis. And what has become of Abana?’

  ‘The king was very angry. He sent his vizier to check what Hopi had found,’ Isis told him.

  The old man nodded. ‘I am glad. Now let’s hope that order will be restored to our world.’ He tapped his stick on the ground and began to walk forward.

  ‘Where are you going, Menna?’ asked Isis. ‘You missed the festival.’

  ‘I’m too old for such things,’ said Menna, with a smile. ‘But all the same, this is a day when the family tomb should be visited. And now that I have seen you and heard the news, I can do so with a lighter step, because the embalmers’ troubles should be coming to an end.’

  ‘I hope so.’ Isis thought for a moment. ‘They’ll have to find someone else to bring them their natron, won’t they?’

  ‘They will. But when the king deals with a problem, he has a habit of doing so thoroughly. I am at peace,’ the old man replied.

  .

  Hopi returned home to find Paneb lifting down the boards that had blocked the door to their house.

  ‘Hopi!’ his guardian greeted him. ‘I trust I’m not acting before time. Are we truly out of danger?’

  ‘We are,’ Hopi assured him. ‘Abana has been arrested by the vizier himself.’

  ‘The gods be praised!’ said Paneb. ‘Ma’at does not disappoint us.’ He placed the last board on the ground and pushed open the door. ‘Now, I must go and fetch the rest of the family.’

  Hopi wandered inside while Paneb hurried up the road. He had a lot to think about, and he wanted a few moments of peace before everyone returned. Sitting quietly in the front room, he thought of what the vizier had said when he saw the store of grain: ‘We must restore this grain to its rightful owners. The king does not steal from his people, for they are his children and he is their god.’

  But Hopi wasn’t sure how the vizier was going to go about such a huge task, and he wondered what would become of Sinuhe. He frowned as he mulled over what Isis had told him about the peasant and his broken amulet. His mind drifted to the shiny black scarabs he had seen in the fields . . .

  Voices interrupted his thoughts, and the family piled through the door in high spirits.

  ‘Hopi!’ Isis skipped in with Mut, and the two of them danced around him happily. ‘Paneb told us! We’re safe!’

  They were followed by the women and boys. Hopi grinned and let his sister hug him, while Ramose and Kha clung to his legs. Then, gently, he extricated himself. While Nefert led the way into the courtyard to begin cooking a meal, Hopi stepped quietly upstairs, looking for Paneb and Sinuhe. He found the two men together on the roof, conversing quietly on the mats. Sinuhe seemed subdued but humble.

  ‘I see that you take care of this family,’ Hopi overheard. ‘You’ve learned to take a burden upon your shoulders.’

  ‘I have, cousin,’ Paneb responded. ‘And I regret that it was not always so.’

  Then they fell silent as Hopi approached and sat down next to them.

  ‘I’m sorry to interrupt,’ said Hopi. He looked at Sinuhe. ‘But I believe there’s something that you have not confessed.’

  The peasant looked at him suspiciously. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I speak of the fate of the obsidian scarab,’ said Hopi.

  Paneb drew in his breath. ‘The birthright scarab? What do you know about that?’

  Hopi studied his hands, and spoke carefully. ‘Paneb, you told me yourself that when a single scarab pushes its ball of dung into the ground, new life springs forth. It is not one scarab that emerges from the ball, but several.’ He raised his eyes to Sinuhe’s. ‘The obsidian scarab is in your linen bundle. It is time to show Paneb what has become of it.’

  For a moment, the peasant seemed dumbstruck. Then, slowly, he picked up the bundle that sat by his side and undid the knot. With trembling fingers, he picked out the two halves and held them out in the palm of his hand.

  ‘It’s broken!’ gasped Paneb.

  Sinuhe bowed his head. ‘It’s the symbol of my birthright,’ he whispered. ‘I broke it when all was lost.’

  ‘Don’t think like this,’ said Hopi gently. ‘Think that where there was one scarab, now there are two. Take one half, Paneb. You have made up for the errors of your past.’

  Paneb hesitated. Hopi saw that he was searching Sinuhe’s face, trying to work out if this was what his cousin wanted. Slowly, the peasant nodded.

  ‘Take it,’ he said. ‘It is yours.’

  As Paneb’s hand closed over one half of the scarab, Mut’s voice rang up the stairs: ‘Father! Hopi! There are donkeys outside!’

  Paneb, Hopi and Sinuhe looked at each other.

  ‘Donkeys? Where from?’ Hopi called back.

  ‘The vizier! The king!’

  They all scrambled to their feet and rushed to the rooftop wall. There, down below, were indeed three donkeys. Hopi smiled. They were fully laden with grain.

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Chronicle Characters

  Hopi The thirteen-year-old brother of Isis. Ever since surviving the bite of a crocodile in the attack that killed their parents, Hopi has had a fascination with dangerous creatures, particularly snakes and scorpions. He is training to be a priest of Serqet, which will qualify him to treat bites and stings.

  Isis The eleven-year-old sister of Hopi. She is a talented dancer and performs regularly with Nefert and Paneb’s troupe. Her dance partner is Mut.

  Mut The eleven-year-old daughter of Paneb and Nefert, and dance partner to Isis.

  Paneb Husband of Nefert, father of Mut, Ramose and Kha, and the head of the household where Isis and Hopi live. He organises bookings for the dance and music troupe.

  Nefert Wife of Paneb, mother of Mut, Ramose and Kha, and sister of Sheri and Kia. She plays the lute and is head of the dance and music troupe.

  Sheri One of Nefert’s widowed sisters, and a musician in the troupe. She has a particularly loving nature.

  Kia The second of Nefert’s widowed sisters, also a musician living with the troupe. She is slightly more cold and distant than Sheri, but is hardworking and practical.

  Ramose Eldest son of Nefert and Paneb, aged five. Mut’s brother.

  Kha Younger son of Nefert and Paneb, aged two. Mut’s brother.

  Menna Hopi’s tutor, and a priest of Serqet in the town of Waset. (A priest of Serqet was someone who treated snake bites and scorpion stings.)

  .

  Other Characters in This Story

  Sinuhe (You say ‘Sin-oo-ay’) A peasant farmer who works on a small section of land not far from Waset. He is the cousin of Paneb.

  Abana The new chief tax collector for
the region surrounding Waset. A ruthless and dishonest man who enjoys entertainment and throwing big parties.

  Weni The chief embalmer at the embalmers’ workshops in Waset. His official title is ‘Overseer of the Mysteries’.

  Hetep The lector priest attached to the embalmers’ workshops in Waset.

  Meryt-Amun A trader who lives in Waset, on the same street as Isis and Hopi.

  Yuya One of Meryt-Amun’s daughters.

  .

  FASCINATING FACT FILE ABOUT ANCIENT EGYPT

  The World of Isis and Hopi

  The stories of Isis and Hopi are based in ancient Egypt over 3,000 years ago, during a time known as the New Kingdom. They happen around 1200–1150BC, in the last great period of Egyptian history. This is about a thousand years after the Old Kingdom, when the pyramids were built. Waset, the town in which Isis and Hopi live, had recently been the capital of Egypt, with an enormous temple complex dedicated to the god Amun. By 1200BC, the capital had been moved further north again, but Waset was still very important. Kings were still buried in the Valley of the Kings on the west bank, and the priests of Amun were rich and powerful. Today, Waset is known as Luxor; in books about ancient Egypt, it is often referred to by the Greek name of Thebes.

  .

  A Little Bit about Sacred Scarabs

  Scarabs are also known as ‘dung beetles’ because of what they eat – animal dung. Disgusting? The ancient Egyptians didn’t think so. In fact, they thought that some scarabs were so special they were sacred. They were particularly interested in a type of scarab that rolls dung into balls. Lots of scarabs do this, but one kind was common in ancient Egypt. It’s now known by its scientific name, Scarabaeus sacer, which means ‘sacred scarab’ in Latin.

  The ancient Egyptians believed the sacred scarab was magical because it could create itself out of nothing – well, out of a ball of dung. But they weren’t quite right. They noticed that the sacred scarab makes dung balls and buries them underground; they noticed that new life (baby scarabs) would appear out of the ground later. But what they didn’t realise is that the female scarab lays eggs inside the dung balls, and that this is where the new life comes from.

  The ancient Egyptian scarab god, Khepri, was the god of the rising sun. If you look at a picture of a scarab rolling a ball of dung along, it’s easy to understand why – a dung ball looks perfectly round, just like the sun. The Egyptians imagined that a giant scarab pushed the sun up over the horizon each morning. A new day was another form of rebirth, making the scarab doubly magical.

  Because of the scarab’s links with new life and rebirth, Egyptians believed that scarab amulets had strong protective powers. Many people wore them to ward off evil or sickness. Most scarab amulets were quite small; many were made from the glazed ceramic substance called faience. But some scarabs had a special function – for example, heart scarabs. These were usually larger than the amulets worn every day, and were made of stone. Heart scarabs were supposed to have a gold casing, too, like the one in the story, but most people couldn’t afford that. They were for placing over the heart of a dead person, and they often had a verse from the Book of the Dead written on the flat side underneath. The Book of the Dead said that heart scarabs should be made out of a particular stone called nemehef, which may be green jasper, although no one is totally sure. In practice, a variety of stones were used, including serpentine and obsidian.

  Scarabs, like most beetles, have wings – they can fly. Occasionally, scarabs were shown with their wings outstretched. Winged scarab amulets, like heart scarabs, were usually made to be placed in people’s tombs.

  .

  Making Mummies

  ‘Embalming’ is just another way of saying ‘making a mummy’. Both these terms mean trying to preserve a body so that it doesn’t rot when a person dies. Ancient Egyptians mummified dead people because they believed that they would need their bodies in the Next World. They are famous for their embalming techniques, but actually it was an expensive process; most ordinary people couldn’t afford to have it done. So the majority of the mummies that have survived to this day are the bodies of important people, like kings, queens and wealthy officials.

  The most elaborate embalming method took about seventy days. First, the embalmers washed and shaved the body. Egyptians didn’t think the brain was very useful, so they removed it with a hook pushed up through the nose and threw it away. Next, they made a slit in the side of the body and removed most of the organs – the lungs, liver, stomach and intestines. These were dried out separately and placed in four jars (canopic jars). The heart was thought to be the most vital organ of all, so it was always left inside the body.

  To dry the body out, the embalmers used special salt called natron, which is found in large quantities in the dried-out lakes far to the north of Waset. The body was covered and stuffed with the salt, then left for about 30–40 days. When the natron was removed, the body was ready at last to be anointed with oils and resins, stuffed with more natron and linen, and wrapped tightly in linen bandages. Bandaging the body was a big job. It could take about two weeks to do it properly, and the embalmers inserted amulets in between the strips of linen to protect the body in the Next World. The heart scarab amulet was the most important one.

  Once it was fully wrapped, the body was ready to have a mask fitted over the face. Then it was placed in a coffin for the funeral, which involved many spells and rituals to ensure that the person would make it safely to the Next World. Inside their tombs, the richest people had a stone coffin called a sarcophagus, into which the wooden coffin was placed.

  For poorer people, there were cheaper mummification options. One was quite gruesome: the embalmers injected lots of cedar oil into the body, stopped up all the obvious openings, then waited for the oil to dissolve the internal organs. The stoppers were then removed and the sludge was allowed to flow out. After that, the body could be dried out further with natron. The cheapest option of all was to leave the body intact, but to dry it out as much as possible with natron before preparing it for burial.

  .

  Farming Life

  Farming life in ancient Egypt revolved around the flooding of the River Nile, which happened every year in the season of akhet or flood, beginning in June and ending in October. Everyone waited anxiously for the waters to rise – the higher the better, because then more land could be farmed. For peasant farmers, the flood provided a time of rest – unless they were summoned by the king to work on one of his building projects! Slowly, the waters receded, leaving behind a layer of rich black silt, ideal for growing crops. In October, when the fields were dry enough to plough again, the season of peret began – the season of ‘emergence’, when farmers sowed their seeds and watched the first shoots poke their heads through the rich earth. By the month of February, the crops began to ripen and the third and final season began – the season of shemu, or harvest.

  It was very important for the ancient Egyptians to have a large harvest of grain – bread made from emmer wheat was their staple food, and beer made from barley was their main drink. There was only one grain harvest, so they had to grow enough to last all year. Much of the land was owned by the king, or by wealthy temples and high officials, who all had peasants to work the land for them. It’s thought that these peasants were not allowed to move or find other work, even if the land itself changed hands. But there were some independent farmers, too, who had to pay the king a portion of their crops in taxes. In this story, Sinuhe and Paneb’s family have farmed a small portion of land for generations, so they feel it is ‘theirs’, but the king could no doubt claim it if he wanted to, and they still have to pay the heavy taxes.

  The farming life was hard. Farmers not only had to deal with mice and rats, but also occasional swarms of locusts, which could devour an entire crop in minutes. It was also true that there were dishonest tax collectors who took more of the crop than they were supposed to.

  .

  Famous Festivals

  The ancient Egyptia
ns loved parties and celebrations, and there were festivals all year round, too. Most of them were in honour of a god or goddess, or to mark an important event in the calendar, such as the harvest or the new year. Some festivals happened all over the country, whereas others were based in a particular town.

  In Waset, there were two major festivals every year: the Festival of Opet, and the Beautiful Festival of the Valley, which is the one described in this book. Both festivals revolved around the great temples of Ipet-Isut (now known as Karnak), home to the great god Amun, his consort Mut and her adopted son Khonsu, the moon god.

  The Festival of Opet was a fertility festival that took place during akhet, the season of the flood, when there wasn’t much farming work to do and everyone could join in the fun. By the later part of the New Kingdom, the festivities lasted for weeks. They began with a grand procession of statues of the gods from the temples of Ipet-Isut down to the River Nile, where barques would carry them upstream to another big temple called Ipet-Resyt, in the town of Waset itself (this is now called Luxor Temple). After many secret fertility rituals inside the temple, the gods were carried back to Ipet-Isut again. Of course, they were followed by singers, dancers and musicians, priests and nobles, and throngs of happy people.

  The Beautiful Festival of the Valley celebrated the reunion of the living with the dead. Like the Festival of Opet, it started at the temples of Ipet-Isut, and again the gods were carried out on the shoulders of priests. But this time, they were taken over the River Nile to the mortuary temples on the west bank. While the king and priests observed rituals inside the temples themselves, anybody who had a family tomb in the area would visit it to make offerings to their ancestors. Everyone wore garlands of fresh flowers to encourage the dead to communicate with the living. People brought a feast of food and wine to the little tomb-chapels, and stayed up all night celebrating.