The Golden Falcon

by David C. Clark

  “What you are saying is once a period of greatness is past and only memories in the thoughts of a few, then those burial sites are exposed to the threat of the robber?”

  “Exactly, Sennefer, exactly but it is worse than that. I am a priest and have been since a beardless youth. I have been favoured by my patron God, Ptah, throughout my life. I am well learned and some say, wise. I see, from the lofty platform of the priest, endless examples of man and women who have failed to honour themselves, their kings or their gods during their life. In their last hours, they seek to repent but the records of a person’s life start with the first breath and evil doing is not erased with a quick repentance at the door leading to the Afterlife.”

  Bakenkhons was obviously in a reflective mood. “You and I are lucky men. We sit atop a pyramid of people just under the king at the apex. We have been blessed with education, we live well, give due obedience to our gods, follow the commands of our ruler and lead good lives. However, this is not the case for the multitude lower down the scale. They are simple people who care only for today’s food, the warmth of a body, the joys of children, a house, perhaps some beer and the hope the king continues to bring prosperity to the land. Near the base of the pyramid of life, some chose not to seek this good life for themselves. Many are the reasons men fail and turn to crime, or beat their wives and neglect their children, their business, their cattle and fields. It is amongst those you will find the tomb robbers, the men who seek only the riches buried with a king or queen. They do no not know nor care about their ultimate fate or they naively believe they can deceive Osiris. The Great Devourer is never hungry as he feeds daily from the ungodly souls tossed to him by Osiris.”

  “You must use your wits to defeat those who do not lead a righteous life. You must look at a tomb with new eyes and consider it a structure to break into and despoil. If you can anticipate the evil residing in many hearts, you may be successful in your quest. Rarely do I advise people to think like sinful men but you must now do so to protect our king’s remains from the ultimate desecration. I leave you to contemplate upon evil.” He left the scriptorium. I thought on his remarks deeply, considering how to outwit the evil cunning of my fellow man.

  The river was no longer blue nor the waters clear as the rich, heavy flow flooded the plains, sending tendrils of life giving water far inland. The quays used to unload the colossi submerged, houses and settlements sat marooned on high ground amidst the swirl of water and rural life settled into a period of quiescence.

  Work at the Ramesseum slowed perceptibly as the inundation is the hottest period in the year when Re’s golden barque sailed directly overhead in ever lengthening days. The wall surrounding the temple grounds was finished, the pylons complete, save for the carving of the Qadesh battle saga, courtyards paved and statues all placed. In the chapels and shrine rooms, artisans worked on wall decorations under the guidance of temple priests. Another year would see the building ready for its consecration.

  I frequented the great limestone quarries to the east of Thebes as the works consumed thousands of tonnes of sawn and shaped blocks. The biggest quarry employed a gigantic copper saw with a blade some five metres long that squared roughly hewn blocks. This ingenious device was manned by sawyers who pulled the blade back and forward on ropes suspended from a timber frame. Vast numbers of masons, using copper and bronze chisels, then dressed the stone. An endless stream of broken and dulled chisels went to melting pots in the metal worker’s furnaces to be re-cast, sharpened and sent back to the rock face and forming yards. The Master was responsible for over two hundred tonnes of precious copper and bronze ingots and chisels at that quarry alone. Copper mines, on the Sinai Peninsula and the ore rich fields fringing the Sea of Reeds, were worked by those who transgressed the law and served their sentences as the king’s guests in those desolate places of unbearable heat and great misery.

  When limestone blocks arrived at a work site, they were fine dressed before being positioned. If blocks had to be locked in place, connecting copper plates and rods were set into the stone and cemented with gypsum mortar, which is also used to provide a smooth, firm surface for painted decorations. The gypsum mine, far to the north-west had, for centuries, supplied thousands of tonnes for use in pyramid and monument construction.

  However, for my purpose, I sought a rock that was tough and not easily fractured. I was familiar with the properties of granite, greywacke and quartzite from the Aswan quarries and basalt from the desert west of Memphis, a stone used to pave the areas around the Giza pyramids though I considered diorite ideal. It is a beautiful mottled green stone with hints of a blue iridescence but its value to me was it appeared to be unbreakable. When I showed it to Nebamun, he produced a hammer made of the same stone, a tool he prized greatly. Granite is shaped by pounding its surface to dust section by section and his quarry has thousands of granite hammers which, in time, all broke. Diorite hammers, however, took many years to wear out and nor did they shatter.

  I asked him about the source of this stone. He said he had once journeyed out to the mine, which was only a single reef projecting from the sand and now little worked.

  “Is it possible to expand the quarry?”

  “I see no great problem other than finding men who can work in that god forsaken place. The heat is unrelenting, there is no water, no vegetation survives and it crawls with scorpions and snakes. Why do you ask? Don’t like my granite any more?”

  “I have a particular commission from Ramesses, one that requires the hardest stone available. It is to be worked in a very special fashion.”

  “Come, Sennefer, surely you can trust me? I probably know more about working hard stone than any man alive. What is your purpose?” I swore him to secrecy on the soul of his father and told him of the king’s request.

  “Ah, an interesting matter. I believe I can help you. We have shaped many granite sarcophagi here but they are all of the same style. A lower casing and a lid and it takes no great skill to either prise the lid open or smash the casing. By using a stone harder than granite, a robber may not be able to smash a sarcophagus but he could, with help, still lift the lid off the trough. What you need is a material that cannot be smashed nor breached, once it is sealed. Do you know if you light a fire against granite, wait until it is hot and then throw water onto the heated rock, it will shatter? So my beloved granite is not the solution unless a very thick granite case is carved. Unfortunately, diorite is not available in big enough pieces to sculpt a sarcophagus. As much as I do not like to admit it, you should consider basalt for parts of the tomb. Now there is something I can show you in this cold, lifeless stone.”

  He produced a small rectangular block of a darkish stone which looked to be solid, handed it to me and I examined it closely. On one of the faces, there was an outline of some form of lid. “Tap the box on its side but keep your hand under it.” I knocked the box on the corner of the table and slowly the top slipped open. The lid had been very finely shaped to allow it to slide out on grooves cut into the box’s inner sides.

  “Clever, is it not? I bought this in Abydos some years ago from a stone merchant. He did not know where it was made but the stone is basalt from a quarry west of the Faiyum. To produce work this fine is time consuming, requires great patience to grind the stone down with diorite and then fine polish it with quartz dust until the surfaces were smooth enough to allow the lid to slip into the grooved housing. You will notice you cannot put a blade of grass between the lid and the edge of the box when it is closed. Definitely, there are basalt blocks large enough for a sarcophagus.”

  “This looks interesting but if a robber attacked the fine edge with, say, an iron tool or a diorite mallet, he could break enough material off to prise the lid out of its position.” I thought for a moment. “I have an idea. Can you drill holes in basalt?”

  “Given enough time, you can drill a hole down to the Underworld. We have drilled holes in granite, using a sharpened iron tool lubricated with cedar oil and quartz dus
t.”

  I grabbed some papyrus and drew a simple sketch. “Can you do that?”

  “Of course but it will take great skill and much time.”

  “Good. I want you to send four of your best, unmarried masons to live in Thebes and work for me there within my compound. I will send for some large basalt blocks but the men you select are not to be told on what or for whom they labour. Now, I have a further question. Let me show you another idea.” We spent a few more hours looking at various ideas and I gave him a number of commissions in both basalt and granite.

  Now the production of the stone armour to protect the royal bodies was safely in Nebamun’s trusted hands, my thoughts turned to hiding the tomb and its ultimate protection. The most obvious place to hide something is where nobody expects to find it. Mindful of the layers of flesh within an onion, I had to construct layers of defence. If, by any means, robbers came upon the tomb’s location, they had to be denied a way into the secret chambers, and should they overcome that line of defence, it was essential to ensure they could never successfully attack the sarcophagus and its precious contents.

  Unlike military fortifications which are designed along similar principals, I had no soldiers defending an outer perimeter, no squads of archers mounted on walls and no battle hardened troops in reserve, within an inner citadel, awaiting a final assault. All I had in my arsenal were my wits, Bakenkhons injunction to think like an evil man and the most powerful weapon of all – my deep desire to guard my friend, Ramesses and his beloved spouse, Nefertari, against the forces of darkness.

  There was little of value in the ancient papyrus Bakenkhons found about using sand as a mechanism for moving mass stone but the mention was sufficient to prompt me to order a selection of smooth limestone pieces from a mason’s yard. A number of theories came to mind once the idea was raised by the slender notation in the old document and they had to be tested.

  Sand, like the river, defines Egypt. Once you left the verdant strip of land edging the Nile and travelled but a short distance east or west there was khaset, the desert, forbidding, hostile and endless. Men, who had travelled, spoke of the Sea of Reeds flanking most of our country’s south-eastern border. To the north-east, lay chains of sun-bleached, eroded hills through which a trade route led to the barbarous northern lands. Here stood our strongest garrisons and fortresses. In the deep south, below the Second Cataract, lay Kush, the Nubian homeland. The Great Western Sand Desert affords the kingdom a natural barrier against the infrequent and feeble incursions of the people known to us as Libyans.

  Whilst the desert wastes offer us protection, sand was an insidious invader that never ceases its intrusion. It seeped everywhere, like the tendrils of slowly flowing water. It is recorded that King Thutmosis IV, at the command of the sphinx, excavated the crouching statue as it was almost buried under drift sand. Everywhere, men shovelled and dug it away from houses, shops and monuments in a never ending struggle to blunt its relentless march. I thought sand could be made my ally, entertaining a suspicion many burial sites lay buried under its grainy burden and it was likely some earlier rulers conceived the use of sand to conceal their crypts immediately after their entombment. Sometimes the most obvious things in life lie just under our noses.

  To my initial suggestion I build his new tomb way out in the desert vastness, the king’s response was firm and emphatic. ‘I must rest amongst my ancestors and those who follow me. Banish this thought from your mind.’ Ramesses can be very terse when pushed and intolerant of views different from his perceptions. As there is little sand in the sacred valley, I would have to cart it in if I was to use this material. A minor problem.

  His injunction further bound my hands because the tomb would have to be built in the well visited necropolis. Apart from guards and temple priests making offertories to past rulers, artisans resided with their families less than an hours walk away from the valley. It was impossible to hide a small mountain of sand and stockpiling it for later use, would only draw more attention to my works. One line of defence weakened, so I would have to strengthen the others.

  It was highly unlikely anyone working on the crypt would attempt to break into it soon after the entombment or within the foreseeable future, though it was a risk I could not ignore. Not only must I build to defeat the intent of robbers spawned indeterminate years in the future, my construction would have to be strong enough to vanquish the evil desire of those who could disclose the wealth it contained soon after the king was interred or pass on their knowledge, even innocently, to their descendants by word of mouth. Not an easy task, as the element of secrecy had been denied me through the dynastic scruple of the pharaoh.

  Recalling Bakenkhon’s sage advice, I had to learn how to think like a potential desecrator of graves. What was in the mind of a robber? What separated him from the multitude of goodly men? That night at home, I told Ipi I needed to go away for a few days.

  “You have another woman you wish to meet?” she enquired

  “You have caught me, my darling. How can I deceive you? Am I so transparent, you can see through my guile?”

  “My Precious Heart, you have not a single drop of guile in your body but why do you want to leave the warmth of my body?”

  “I need to lose myself in the waterfronts stews at Abydos. I am taking Imhotep, the waterman, with me as our quest is to find robbers and thieves, men I am unlikely to meet in my normal intercourse.”

  After so many wonderful years of marriage I could confide in my wife, who knew of the King’s assignment. “It is important I get to know what these people are like if I am to deceive them and protect the remains of Ramesses and Nefertari against their actions. Imhotep assures me we shall find such people in riverside taverns. I go as a mute - dirty, dishevelled and unable to talk as Imhotep assures me should I speak my ruse will be discovered instantly. My garb will be that of a deck hand, a mere nobody and we pose as two men with an interest in buying treasures from looted tombs.”

  “Surely this is dangerous, my husband? Can Imhotep be trusted with your safety?” she replied, concern written on her face.

  “He is loyal to me and, together, we are both strong and armed with daggers. The risk is small and I hope to return to you without a scratch. We leave on the morrow as Imhotep has a cargo of leather goods to take to Abydos and it is better I acquire knowledge in a city where my face is unknown. Whilst I am away, think of me as a rascal who wishes to bring a new jewel to his beloved.”

  “Just take care of your virtue. I hear the women who ply their trade in the taverns are not without their charms. It is said those who come from Syria have bodies as sinuous as snakes and eyes so entrancing they could bewitch Amun himself.”

  “You are well informed, my love. Should I enquire from where you secure this knowledge or would such a question incur your displeasure? To think you were such an innocent child when I first saw you.” I teased.

  “Tonight, before you steal from my bed to test your virtue on the river, we will see if I still retain some of my former innocence, shall we not?” she said with an impish grin.

  Well before the solar barque rose in the eastern sky, I joined Imhotep in my courtyard. He brought with him some noisome clothing and I was instructed to soil my skin with mud.

  “Remember, you must not utter one word from the time you board my vessel until we return. I must bind your hands with linen to hide their obvious softness. If asked why they are so bound, I will reply your hands were burnt in a warehouse fire. Your hair is cut in the fashion of the nobility, so a further disguise is necessary. My crew will not ask any questions as they are loyal to me. Pass your time listening or sleeping until we reach Abydos.”

  I donned the garments and wrapped my head in a length of dirty yellowish fabric reeking of the tannery. His vessel had sailed across from Thebes, to collect us on the west quay. We swiftly sailed north as the river was in full spate. The banks were no longer distinguishable and I knew not how Imhotep determined where lay the river under our keel. In
places, the water stretched away to the horizon, in others the high banks still captured the teeming waters between their stony embrace. It did not take many hours before the sun beat down fiercely upon our ship. The smell rising from the cargo of leather goods was horrific. As the baled goods warmed, their rankness increased, so by the time we reached Abydos, I smelt as bad as our cargo. Most of the voyage was passed in silence as his crew were a sullen lot much given to cursing the gods in oaths familiar to me on building sights.

  Abydos was only a short voyage from Thebes, so we arrived late in the afternoon of the following day. After discharging the cargo, we disembarked and strolled along the darkened waterfront. The crew quickly found a tavern in which to slake their thirst and appetites. Imhotep sought a particular tavern which lay off the main concourse in a vile and dark street, ill lit by flaring torches. He knew of The Golden Orb, a squalid drinking house known to be the haunt of low life.

  Just before we arrived at the doorway, hung with greasy curtains, Imhotep again warned me not to speak. During my apprenticeship, I had spent many casual hours in workmen’s beer houses that sprung up near building sites. However, The Golden Orb bore no resemblance to the drinking holes of my youth. The interior was loathsome, the smell overpowering and filth evident in every quarter. When we walked in, many heads turned towards us with suspicions eyes. Imhotep spied the two men he wished to meet and we joined them at a table sticky with stale beer. Coarse pottery beakers, streaming with cheap beer made from bread, were dumped on our table by a harridan who was as far from the voluptuous women of my wife’s imagination as I was from being a latrine cleaner. If this maid was an exemplar of the women of the night in The Orb, then my virtue would remain unsullied.

  Rough greetings were extended and Imhotep briefly explained who I was. Steaming plates of boiled fish and vegetables of unknown origin were placed before us. As we ate, Imhotep whispered.

  “I enquire on behalf of a client who desires an undamaged gilded cedar wood coffin and an alabaster viscera chest. Obviously, I have no need for the contents of the coffin. As a token of my good faith, I give you this.” He produced a leather pouch containing a small rod of pure gold and laid it on the table. “Consider this a down payment, with the balance payable when I take delivery of the goods.”