by Mike Ashley
The god’s eyes opened, and regarded him, and a deep voice rumbled from within the wall: “I know your mission, Nubian. You served the murdered northerner, and now you are charged to shepherd his remains on their journey.”
Khnemes had seen oracle-masks used before, but never so effectively as this. A priest was standing on the far side of the wall, his face within the concave inner surface of Masety’s mask. Some trick of indirect lighting – a candle, a mirror – threw a bright glow between the priest and the wall, lighting the oracle-mask from within and making the priest’s eyes seem truly to inhabit the eyeholes of the god-mask. Some trick of acoustics magnified the priest’s voice, and sent it rumbling from the oracle’s mouth. Even Khnemes, who knew this for a priest-trick, felt a shudder of awe as he stood before this artificial god. “Yes, Lord Masety. I was told to offer myself at a uabet in this street.”
“Then hear me, Nubian. You can trust no one in Thebes except a man named Besek. He will help you find the answers you require.” The god-voice spoke in the sibilant accent and broad vowels of southern Egypt: an appropriate choice for an actor depicting the god of the south.
“Are you Besek?” Khnemes asked.
The god’s eyes shifted in their eyeholes. “Do not utter Besek’s name to any man, for he is shunned. He will proclaim himself to you, within the temple.”
The god’s eyes went dark, and the god’s mouth fell silent.
Khnemes presented himself at the temple’s front door, proclaiming his own name in Merytast’s service. The tall doorkeeper did not deign to look at him, but made a rude gesture over one shoulder. Khnemes understood, and went round to the rear entrance.
Behind the main temple was the uabet: the embalming-house of this particular cult. Khnemes spoke his name again to a less imposing doorman, who permitted him to enter. Two shaven police-priests of Amun-Re stood in the vestibule, flanking a statue of the reigning god of Thebes. “Hold, Nubian,” said one police-priest, brandishing the staff of authority which was also his cudgel. “If you soul kindles any spark of rebellion, turn and depart. If you accept the disciplines of Amun-Re, step forth and enter.”
I’ve lost my job, and I have no other prospects, Khnemes thought. I might as well do this, if it offers the chance to find Perabsah’s murderer. He stepped over the threshold.
“You will remove – here and now – all keepsakes of your former life.” The second police-priest pointed to the scabbard Khnemes wore at his belt. “That weapon, to begin with. Your sandals: leather, are they? Animal flesh is unclean, and cannot be purified. And your wig: it is Medchay, I think? Yes, the wig is short-naped: we do not tolerate such military trophies here. Your garments too: come, give them up. When you have surrendered your past life, and been cleansed, you will be given fresh clothes.”
An hour later – scrubbed and shaved – Khnemes stood naked before three teacher-priests, who gave him his indoctrination. The temples of Egypt are closed at all times to everyone except for high royalty and the priests themselves. There is one exception: on the feast-days of any specific god or goddess, worshippers may enter the temples consecrated to that particular deity. “It is only because you come to us during the sun-god’s festival Opet that we will tolerate your presence in this house of Amun-Re,” said one teacher-priest, in a tone suggesting that Khnemes should faint with gratitude.
“You will assist in purifying the temple and the embalming-chamber,” said the second teacher-priest. “You will be given vestments suited to your role, and a place to sleep. You may eat of such foods as are rejected by Lord Amun-Re, and disdained by all the priests above you.”
“Normally,” said the third priest, “applicants to our priesthood must submit to a long period of discipline and education. Yet we know that in seventy days’ time you will return to northern Egypt with the mummy of your sovereign. So, you will undertake only such training as required to fulfil your tasks among us. When your employer’s mummy is ready, we will give you back your possessions, and send you on your way.”
And now it began. Khnemes was required to swear loyalty to Nebwenen’f, the heri uab: the high priest of this mortuary. He was then given a kilt of coarse muslin to wear, and sandals woven from fibres of sedge. Khnemes was assigned to sweeping the floors, scouring the incense-burners, rinsing the toilet-pots of the priests, and other rituals of purification. He was also tasked with expunging the constant flow of messes in the embalming-chamber.
In the embalming-room, Khnemes beheld the dirty underside of Egypt. He learnt, for instance, that most corpses to be mummified were brought to the uabet as swiftly as possible . . . except for the mortal remains of women and girls who died reasonably intact: these are kept in their families’ households, and not brought to the embalming-house until their corpses have begun to moulder. Even the priests of Egypt are known to have profane urges.
Thrice daily, the priests fed the statue of Amun-Re. Banquets of food, supplied by the faithful, were set before the large effigy of the sun-god in the temple’s main hall. The god’s essence inhabited this graven image whenever it suited Amun-Re’s purpose. After the god consumed the essence of the food, the priests were entitled to eat the mortal shell of the food itself. The highest priests ate first, then the acolytes, then lastly the temple’s menials. Khnemes ate whatever remained when all the others had eaten. By day, Khnemes was kept busy scrubbing and scouring: this technically made him a “priest” of the lowermost grade. By night, he slept on a pallet in the priest-barracks.
The gods speak to men while they sleep. At night, Khnemes beheld fitful dreams in which he stood naked in front of a high wall inscribed with hieroglyphics . . . god-texts, which he knew not how to read. Carved figures moved across the wall in profile, mocking him through sidelong mouths: Perabsah, the mummy Teknu, the dead bowman Secheb. A weird figure capered before Khnemes, taunting him: a raven’s head on a man’s body, clutching an emerald. Khnemes awoke, shuddering and perspiring, certain that all the clues to the crime were before him . . . like fragments of papyrus from an incomplete scroll, which could never be rejoined.
Khnemes performed all his tasks in the uabet, and learnt all that he could from his fellow priests. At night, in the priest-barracks, his guild-brothers told him of their own experiences before they entered the priesthood. One acolyte of this temple had formerly laboured in Egypt’s goldfields. A lector-priest knew some facts about ravens. Another acolyte had some knowledge of gemstones. All of these wisdoms, Khnemes hoarded . . . as the many skeins of the mystery began to form a tapestry.
On the third day after Khnemes began his priesthood, there was a commotion in the uabet. Khnemes was cleaning a fouled natron-tub when several embalmer-priests clustered round the table on which was placed a m’at: a cadaver made ready for mummification. Khnemes recognized the dead man. Perabsah’s corpse had been washed and anointed, but there was a stark wound in the centre of his chest: the dark puncture where the murderer’s arrow had struck him.
One priest held a scribe’s reed-brush dipped in black ink. The other priests made room as he approached the mummy-table. An acolyte held a basket filled with stones, and several priests selected some of these. Khnemes noticed one priest, dressed more shabbily than his fellows, who stood aside from the rest. This man skulked past Khnemes, and whispered: “Enuk Besek.”
The scribe-priest approached Perabsah’s corpse. His eyes appraised the dead body while he intoned several ritual prayers, then he extended his brush and painted a black Eye-of-Horus on Perabsah’s lower abdomen, to the left of his navel. This priest swiftly withdrew.
Now the man named Besek approached the corpse, and all the priests made a great show of averting their gaze, hissing, and holding their noses. “The shun-priest!” said one man, in tones of contempt. “The ripper!” cried another.
From the folds of his robe, Besek drew a curved obsidian knife. He raised this high, and then . . . stabbed the corpse, his blade piercing the eye of Horus.
“Faugh! Away!” Shouting curses and insu
lts, the priests flung their stones at Besek, who pulled his robe over his face, then turned and fled. As soon as Besek was gone, the priests gave their full attention to Perabsah’s corpse. Swiftly, Khnemes gathered his scouring-implements and went after Besek.
The shun-priest had run to the temple’s rear portal. “Away with you, ripper! Never return!” said the doorkeeper, aiming a foot at Besek’s backside as he departed. The doorkeeper eyed Khnemes suspiciously, but Khnemes pretended to be scouring the temple’s outer wall. When the doorkeeper’s back was turned, Khnemes hurried down the Street of the Four Sons.
He found Besek outside a chariot-yard, near the Kamur canal. “Each time, they tell me never to return,” said Besek bitterly. “What they mean is, I must never return until the next time they need me.”
“What is your place in all this?” Khnemes asked.
“I am the shun-priest, the ripper,” said Besek. “Nubian, do you not know the taboos of Egypt? To debase a corpse – even for high reasons – is the deepest profanity. When a cadaver is readied for embalming, no priest dares to pierce the corpse’s flesh . . . so I must make the first incision. The embalmers shun me and stone me for this, and call me unclean. After I make the first cut, the mummy-priests can then hack the corpse to their hearts’ content. I have the dirty job that no man wants . . . yet none can fulfil their holy tasks until I first profane the dead.”
“My master died with a hole near his heart,” Khnemes said. “Perabsah’s chest was already penetrated by an arrow; the mummy-priests could have widened that cut without your help.”
Besek shook his head. “Never argue with rituals. The first incision into the m’at is always made to the left of the navel. The scribe-priest is honoured, for he paints the protective symbol of the Horus-eye on the corpse where the first cut must be made. But then I, the ripper, I am cursed and stoned by the priests . . . because I make the necessary cut. Take heed, Khnemes: if you are seen with me, the priests will call you by filth-names, and evict you from their mummy-shop.”
“You know me. How?”
“Your name precedes you, Nubian. It is known that you seek a murderer.”
Khnemes nodded. “Do you know who hired Perabsah’s assassin?”
“I know not, brother.”
“Was it you who spoke to me through the face of the god Masety?”
Besek nodded. “I wanted to warn you: the priest-guild which controls this mummy-house is corrupt. On the same day that a servant of your mistress Merytast arranged for your employment in this uabet, another man came here with a similar mission. For a small bribe, he persuaded the guild’s priests to admit him to their order and apprentice him in the arts of embalming.”
“What did he look like? What is his name?”
“I know not,” said Besek again. “I stood at the threshold of the uabet when I chanced to hear this man conversing with the teacher-priests. I heard his voice, distorted through the wall: he spoke in the accents of northern Egypt, but I would not know his voice if I heard it plainly.”
“Thank you, brother,” said Khnemes. “Why do you help me in this?”
Besek spat angrily. “Do you know what it is to be a shun-priest? No landlord grants me a lodging-place, no taverner lets me drink beneath his roof. I sleep in a filthy barge in the Kamur canal. The high-nosed embalming-priests sneer at my profane task, yet their own sacred deeds would be impossible if I did not precede them in their procession of the dead.”
“Why did you take such a job?” Khnemes asked.
“Someone must always be the shun-priest,” said Besek. “I entered this priest-guild with hopes for myself. I did as I was told: I cursed the man who was shun-priest before me, and I helped to throw stones at him. One day, assisting in the mummification of a highborn lady, I overstepped myself. The other embalmers had cut out her liver and lungs, to be cleaned and then placed within ritual urns. In my zeal to assist, I cut out her heart. That was a mistake. As penance for my error, I was offered a choice: expulsion from the priest-guild, or shameful service ever after as the shun-priest.”
“I know little of Egypt’s mummies,” said Khnemes. “When the entrails are removed for embalming, is not the heart also removed with its brethren?”
“In older centuries this was done, but no longer,” said Besek. “The heart is the dwelling-place of the soul: it must be kept intact within the kha’t of the deceased. If the embalmers damage the mummy’s heart, it must be repaired before the mummy’s chest cavity is closed. The heart of a dead man – or woman, or child – is kept safe within the mummy’s body until the deceased has crossed over into the afterworld and reached the Hall of Judgment . . . where the god Anubis then places it in the Scale of Truth, to be reckoned in the Weighing of the Heart.”
Khnemes said nothing. He had left the farmlands of Kush long ago, yet many of Egypt’s beliefs still seemed alien to him.
“I will help you catch this killer, if I can,” Besek told him. “And I am shunned, so any scraps of friendship – even a few atu of time spent with a despised Nubian – are like a long cool drink for me. But take care that you are not seen with me, or the shunning will consume you as well.”
Besek drew his priest-robe across his face, and hurried away.
Khnemes had many duties in the embalming-chamber: he was the janitor-priest, and this room was the messiest in the uabet. He observed the faces of the mummy-priests, wondering which of them was the false acolyte who had bribed his way into this temple. In the constant god-gabble of chants and prayers in the embalming-room, Khnemes strained to hear one voice which spoke in northern accents.
Perabsah’s corpse had been cleaned and anointed. The shun-cut – the first incision, leftwards of the dead man’s navel – had been widened and enlarged. Khnemes was present when Perabsah’s entrails – his liver, gall bladder, lungs, stomach, intestines and colon – were removed. With appropriate rituals, these organs were washed, preserved in mummy-salts and swathed in linen. For many centuries, Egypt’s embalmers had traditionally stored their subjects’ entrails in four jars, representing the sons of Horus and the four quarters of the earth. Yet in the past three years, because of the schism of Egypt into two separate nations, this custom had changed. Neither half of Egypt comprised both north and south: therefore, it was now deemed dangerous to consign any person’s entrails to four separate quarters. The bundled viscera were placed in a trough of natron to become desiccated and purified: later, they would be returned to Perabsah’s chest cavity along with figurines of the appropriate gods.
Errors were made in the embalming. Perabsah’s gegtui – the two large bean-shaped organs in his lower back, which produced his bladder-water – were supposed to remain in his corpse, undisturbed, as was his heart. Khnemes was present in the early morning when an apprentice embalmer – intending to remove Perabsah’s lungs – accidentally nicked Perabsah’s right kidney with his copper blade. The sliced kidney was stitched shut again with cotton thread, while the priests intoned prayers and god-apologies, and a patch of papyrus was then applied. Late in the forenoon, Khnemes noticed between tasks that similar stitching and patching had now been applied to Perabsah’s injured heart, and the arrow-wound in his chest was now cosmetically repaired. Khnemes watched as linen bags, filled with natron, were packed into Perabsah’s chest cavity to absorb his body fluids.
In early afternoon, Khnemes contrived to leave the temple without arousing attention, and once again he met Besek at the chariot-yard. Pretending not to know each other, the two men walked between two separate rows of chariots, never meeting each other’s eyes while they spoke in hushed tones.
“Are you any closer to catching your criminal?” Besek asked.
“No,” said Khnemes. “He was in the temple, I am certain . . . but now he has probably left Thebes. And gone where?” Khnemes doubled his fists bitterly. “There are as many hiding-places in Egypt as there are sands in the desert.”
“Why do you remain in the uabet, then?” asked Besek.
“I hav
e no other livelihood. Since I have failed to catch Perabsah’s killer, I should at least give my lord sovereign one final dignity: I will stay in Thebes until Perabsah’s mummy is made ready, and then I will convey him northwards to his estate.”
“Ehi. Of course.” Besek’s tone implied that he was nodding in agreement, but Khnemes dared not look towards the shun-priest’s face. “You are taking him home for the Opening of the Mouth.”
“The what?” Khnemes very nearly did look up. “You mean the Weighing of the Heart.”
“No, Nubian. The Weighing of the Heart is a myth, a superstition. It supposedly takes place in the afterworld, under the watchful eyes of Osiris and Anubis in the Hall of Judgment . . . if you believe that sort of thing.” Besek’s voice suggested that the shun-priest did not believe the rituals of his own temple. “The Opening of the Mouth occurs here, in the world of the living. It is a death-ritual, known in Egypt for centuries, but only royalty and wealthy families can arrange it for their deceased. It requires a ritual blade, forged of bi’a nepet: iron that fell from the sky in a meteorite. The Opening of the Mouth is so elaborate a god-charade, I do not wonder that you have never witnessed it.”
“Describe this Opening of the Mouth,” said Khnemes, speaking from the side of his own mouth so that no passing witness might see him conversing with the shun-priest.
“When your master Perabsah has been fully mummified, his mummy must be conveyed to the tomb where his body will rest eternally,” Besek explained. “At the tomb’s entrance, a priest and a scribe will perform certain rituals. The eyes of the mummy will be opened – symbolically, not truly – and his mouth and ears and nostrils will be symbolically opened as well . . . so that the dead man will be able to speak and retain all his senses in the afterlife. Just before the mummy is entombed, the priest with his knife makes a pretend-cut to a cord above the mummy’s navel, as if the dead man were a newborn baby . . . thus betokening his rebirth in the afterworld.”