Counterpoint

by John Day

  “We will need ropes and torches, with small hand tools, like pry bars, hammer, and chisels,” said Max.

  “All laid on,” replied Peter.

  “Actually, we need to be much more delicate” cautioned Professor Rubin “and I have all my equipment with me. We need to completely hide this entrance if it is a tomb and should it be discovered later, and it all goes public, we do not want to be accused of desecrating it!” They all agreed, and calmed down.

  Half an hour later they were all back at the tunnel, and Peter eased up the first roof slab and moved it to one side with the bucket of the excavator. The opening revealed the tunnel was 2.5 metres deep below the slab, and entry was easily possible through the gap.

  The bright sunlight made it difficult to see into the darkness below, even with torches, so a descent into the unknown was the only way to find out more.

  With a rope ladder fixed to the hydraulic arm of the excavator, Max went first, followed by the Professor and Carla. No way was she missing out! Peter followed last.

  The tunnel had been cut from the sandstone. There was a reasonably flat floor, and vertical sides with the stone slabs for the roof, supported on them.

  With everyone gathered together, they set off down the 20-degree slope, torches piercing the blackness ahead of them. Their eyes still had not adjusted to the dark yet, so they inched forward, feeling with hands and feet as they went. Much to the Professor’s surprise, there were no paintings or carvings on the walls.

  The roof had changed from stone slabs to sandstone at the entrance and ahead in the torch light, some 20 metres away, they could see a wall blocking the tunnel.

  Up close, they could see it was plastered and had carved hieroglyphs. Rubin pulled out his brush and dusted off the surface as he read them. Beads of sweat were running down his face, his intense expression conveyed his immense excitement. “What does it say?” Urged Carla, saying what others thought. They were scared and speechless in the suffocating musty darkness, imagining all sorts of possibilities, beyond the wall.

  Eventually, Rubin answered, speaking his thoughts aloud. “The writing is from the early period of Egypt, the Old Kingdom, possibly the third dynasty. The text looks authentic, though I need to study it, but the content is clear. What we have uncovered may rewrite Egyptian history. “

  “What does this say?” Asked Carla pointing to a section with a sweep of her hand. “Well, it does not read in that direction for a start, but this way.”

  He pointed to the characters, listing the interpretations of each and recapping as to the likely result.

  It says, in your lingo, “Hetephemebti, Queen of the third dynasty of ancient Egypt, wife of Djoser was blessed with a son called Nahep, born after her daughter Inetkaes. The god Thoth was the father, it claims here! The priests took the son, to become one of them. That in its self is odd because the son should have been the next Pharaoh. That is all it says here,” concluded Rubin.

  The other three looked at each other in amazement, not knowing what to say or think.

  "Well," said Max, “There is going to be hell to pay over this. My boss and the shareholders will not want the new building relocated because of this unheard of tomb. I have to go back to my boss with the full facts and get instructions.”

  Rubin clearly understood the problem, but the ethical and historical issues were overwhelming in importance. If nothing else, he had to know more about the tomb and any contents.

  “Don’t you all want to know what lies behind this wall?” He asked. “Max, you cannot make a report until we know much more. I suggest we open the tomb now and see what is inside and then decide what needs to be done.”

  Everyone agreed!

  Rubin chipped away at the left hand, bottom corner, well away from the hieroglyphics. The plaster fell away, revealing the stone backing. “Well the slab you have just uncovered looks interesting,” said Carla, hopefully. Max looked at it closely in the torchlight. “It is not so much a piece of the wall, but a cover slab over a hole in the wall. Quick, hand me the chisel and the hammer!”

  The fit of the slab was poor, not at all like the other stonework, probably because it was plastered over.

  The chisel loosened the slab and it fell through raising a choking cloud of dust. Max turned and crawled through the hole, followed eagerly by the others.

  The chamber was a large 10metre square area; the floor, walls and domed ceiling were sandstone, rubbed smooth.

  “Looks like the ceiling fell away, and they shaped it to look better,” commented Rubin, to no one in particular.

  All eyes were on the long stone base with a simply carved, alabaster sarcophagus, in the centre of the room. At the back and sides of the room were arrangements of carved wooden, stone and alabaster statues of gods, in particular, Anubis. There were stone blocks forming low tables for numerous sealed pottery jars. Max assumed the four prominent calcite jars on the left, perfectly smooth and with plain lids were the Canopic jars, holding the viscera. “When you come back from the dead, you want your essential organs handy,” he muttered. Carla chuckled nervously.

  Rubin shone his light over the objects, quickly assimilating the information. “This is most unusual,” he muttered. “Priceless, though these artefacts are in historical terms, they have no intrinsic value. No gold or precious stones to be seen!”

  “What’s in the coffin, then?” Questioned Peter Gibson.

  As they all moved around it, Max and Peter tried to slide one end of the cover slab.

  “You need to lift it. Max and Carla, you take one end; Peter and I will take the other.”

  With a grating noise and an almost imperceptible, shush of air, the lid lifted off its seating and was placed on edge, on the floor.

  They all peered in at the inner coffin of carved wood. Rubin pried loose the coffin lid, and helped by the others, lifted it away.

  The mummified remains of a slim figure, the size of a modern fifteen year old lay within. The body was clothed, not wrapped in bandages and unlike any mummified body Rubin had ever seen, showed no signs of desiccation. It looked like a thirty-five year old Egyptian male, fast asleep.

  Hardly daring to breath, Peter touched the cheek of the corpse; it was hard and unyielding like plaster. He brushed the cheek lightly with his fingers, wiping a slight dusty bloom from the surface and then he tapped his fingertips on the hard surface. It sounded hollow like a clothes manikin.

  “I have never seen anything like this,” said Rubin. “This must have been an experimental mummification process; perhaps they removed the organs in the usual way and then pickled the body resulting in the hard, self-supporting skin.”

  “Creepy!” Murmured Carla.

  “This was obviously a highly successful process; I wonder why it has not been done since? If I am right, this poor bastard, Nahep was entombed about 2500BC, obviously not fathered by a god, so was expunged from history,” explained Rubin.

  “I suppose once entombed, they were not able to check from time to time, to see how he was doing,” added Max.

  Rubin searched the inscriptions on the walls intently; he muttered and wrote notes in a notebook as he progressed. He then examined the various jars and tested some of the lids, one was loose, and he cautiously sniffed the contents. “All dried up, ” he muttered, “We have to document all this and remove the contents for safe keeping, and we have to keep this secret. There are things here that need to be examined and explained.”

  "I will call my boss right away," said Max, “and see what he wants to do.” Then he headed out of the chamber, up the tunnel and out into the blistering heat and dazzling sunlight.

  While Max was away, the others replaced the lid to the coffin and sarcophagus to prevent deterioration of the mummy.

  In the shade of the Land Cruiser, Max called Sam on the satellite phone and told him all they had seen. “This is without doubt a unique historical monument, there is no way you can build anywhere near here if the Egyptian authorities find out about it. Rubin want
s to strip the tomb and study everything in secret. I don’t know how we can do that or even where the stuff can be stored?”

  Sam was quick to reply. “Work out the type of vehicles you need to move it from there out into the desert. In addition, how quick you can do it. I will sort out some suitable storage and get back to you. No one must know about any of this.”

  “Just a thought, assuming we can get away with this, there is no way Rubin, or anyone else for that matter, can use the information from this tomb publicly, without explaining where it all came from. Then where will we all be? The Egyptians will not only cut off our hands, but feet, legs, arms and nuts and then throw us in jail!” Cautioned Max.

  “I hope you are not getting cold feet?” Retorted Sam.

  “I’m standing in hot sand at the moment, so they are fine for now, thanks for asking!” Max closed the call, a bit irked at Sam’s cavalier attitude.

  Max went back to the others and discussed what Sam said. Rubin thought one large refrigeration truck would be enough to hold the contents and that he could make a mosaic cast of the wall carvings after he had photographed everything. Then fill in the tunnel for eternity. He needed the other three to help him, and on Monday morning, work would start as usual on the construction site, and no one would ever know.

  “The site security patrol will be a problem, they are due to pass by here, at 5pm today and again at 8am and 5pm Sunday, so we had better get organised, immediately,” Peter warned.

  Rubin confirmed he would photograph the tomb and using Clingfilm as a release agent for the plaster, take moulds of the carvings. With help, he could be finished by tomorrow morning.

  Peter would have to seal up the tunnel entrance before the security patrol came by, while the other three worked inside, and moved everything into the mouth of the tunnel.

  “Don’t drop dead or anything Peter, or we will never get out and end up like Nahep,” cautioned Max.

  Rubin commented, “If the truck could be here Sunday night, everything could be loaded and away, before early Monday morning.”

  Peter suggested, “The only problem I can see is noise from the vehicles, specially the excavator, and lights. Sometimes there is a mist at night, and whilst we are screened by the 15meter high walls of the excavation, stray light might illuminate the mist above ground level.”

  “I’ll think about that,” said Max, “there will be fireworks if we get caught!”

  “And perhaps a laser light display,” added Carla grinning “problem solved already.”

  “Well done Carla, good idea, I will get Sam to organise that when I speak to him in a minute,” said Max.

  Max made out a detailed list of things each member of the team had to do.

  The key issues were food and water.

  They would be working underground for a long time, so fresh air had to be circulated, through the chamber.

  Sam had to get a suitable lorry to them, and a place to store the artefacts. In addition, he had to arrange some sort of sound and light distraction in the desert, during Sunday night.

  They needed lots of Clingfilm, at least 50 square meters and about ten bags of plaster. To mix the plaster they would need over 100 litres of water. After much discussion, the plaster idea was scrapped.

  They needed cardboard as protective packaging and several rolls of polyethylene waste bin liners to put the jars in, in case of breakage and spillage. Heaven only knew what diseases they might contain.

  Max asked Peter if there were long lengths of plastic drainpipe on the site. With their light weight and push fit joints, they could easily form an air extraction system. If he could also get hold of a length or two of thin wall metal pipe like ducting and a large gas bottle with regulator and delivery tube, he could get the system running almost silently.

  Peter warned them, they had 30 minutes to close up the tunnel and go before the security men came by. “They are certain to stop here because of the excavator; there is no time to drive it several kilometres back to the main compound.”

  Max, Carla, and Peter left to put the stone slab back over the tunnel entrance and cover it with sand, leaving Rubin behind in the tomb to do his survey. Routinely he had brought his kit with him.

  The three were glad to be out in the blinding sunlight and searing afternoon heat, rather than the eerie and suffocating tomb, though no one admitted it. Rubin, on the other hand, was delighted to be there, as only a veteran Egyptologist might!

  The land cruiser drove flat out across the smooth, hard bottom of the excavation to the exit ramp. The straight diagonal course across the massive square excavation, from the tunnel to ramp, added about a third of a kilometre to the journey, but they managed to get to the storage compound and away from the security patrol in good time. On the way, Carla spoke to Sam and told him what he must organise and why. They dared not consider the outcome if Sam let them down!

  Rubin made his detailed notes, relating them to sketch drawings of the tomb layout. The enormity of discovery and countless questions flooding his mind, made him tired and dizzy, his handwriting started off neat and legible, but was quickly becoming more distorted and peppered with crossed out words.

  He now set up the torches to light the first wall. He fumbled with the tripod and camera, as he focused the first shot. The euphoria that had been gripping him was subsiding, and he realised that he was drenched in sweat, breathing hard and his upper body ached. The cramp in his left arm, through holding the clipboard, had spread to his chest and back. The room seemed to darken noticeably; the torch batteries are failing, he thought, and stood upright to ease his pain with a stretch. As he stood over the camera and pressed the shutter button, he shut his eyes so he would not be blinded by the flash. His torch moved on the smooth floor, at that moment, and rolled around in an arc, lighting the back wall. The shadow of both the sarcophagus and Rubin, was projected on the wall in front of the camera, from the backlighting.

  The click of the shutter was loud in the silence of the tomb, but there was no flash, and that startled Rubin as he opened his eyes. When he moved, the shadow on the wall in front of him, moved.

  He saw the shadow of Nahep, sitting on the edge of his sarcophagus, behind him. The shadow of the head and body moved, its arms slightly away from its body, gripping the edge of the stone.

  Rubin spun round, but there was nothing there. Petrified with fear he stood staring at the sarcophagus in the smothering cold silence. There was a sudden noise, stone grating against stone coming from the lid. It was a sound like the lid being raised, a micron at a time, a secretive, creeping up on you, sound.

  No longer breathing and with his eyes fixed on the sarcophagus, Rubin, slowly, imperceptibly, reached down for the torch on the floor. He swung the beam at the lid, making a sharp shadow leap up the wall. Blackness closed in on him, and the crushing pain in his chest added to his mounting terror. The lid dropped 5mm onto its seating with a terrifying thud.

  Driven by blind terror, Rubin turned and dived towards the small hole in the wall leading out of the tomb, into the tunnel. The coarse sandstone floor, tore open the flesh on his hands and knees, but he felt nothing. Halfway through the hole, the decorative belt of his jacket snagged, holding him back like someone had grabbed it. With the superhuman strength of terror, he scrabbled free and ran headlong up the tunnel. The torchlight formed chasing, grabbing shadows, coming after him. Still running, he looked behind and drove the shadows back, with the waving beam.

  In an instant, a wall of agony, blinding light, then black, flashed through him, followed by oblivion…

  Chapter - Return to the tomb.

  It was 6pm when the others returned to the tomb, to unload and help Rubin. The sun was setting, and the sweltering heat was rapidly disappearing. After sweeping the sand away, the stone slab was lifted from the tunnel entrance. The rope ladder was lowered, and Max climbed down first. As he carefully felt his way to the bottom, the stench in the tunnel was awful. It smelled like defecation rather than foul air or putrefa
ction.

  He stepped on something hard, but squishy, like the body of a very large snake. The darkness, recent snake encounter in the jungle and the unnerving surroundings, played with his imagination.

  Max screamed and scrambled frantically back up the ladder. The others were now spooked and wanted to know what had happened. “I don’t know exactly, I think I stepped on an enormous snake. I’m never going down there again,” he said, vehemently!

  They all shone their torches down into the tunnel, and Carla gave a stifled scream when the beam picked out the remains of Rubin’s head laid in, and surrounded by, a large pool of congealing blood.

  There was another head sized patch of blood, half way up the centre of the vertical stone slab, which closed the tunnel entrance. Rivulets of blood had run down from it to the floor. Rubin was laid out on his back, feet towards the stone slab, arms outstretched. A large dark stain had formed at the crotch of his faun coloured trousers; he had shit and pissed himself.

  Rubin’s head was misshapen like a cheap plastic football that had been stamped on, and burst. The top part of Rubin’s head was pushed in, with large flaps of skin, and white edged skull bone sticking out the splits. From eyebrows to jaw, the head was intact, but the terror in the still open eyes, agony contorted face with its open mouth in a silent tortured scream, was devastating.

  “What the hell has happened to him?” Said Max. “I must have stepped down on his arm.”

  “He is well past caring, but what should we do now?” Queried Peter.

  “I’ll tell Sam,” said Max and he made the call.

  Sam was stunned and wanted to know how it happened.

  “We don’t know! Rubin was on his own down there, sealed in with a two-ton stone slab over the entrance. I suppose someone might have used the excavator to lift the stone and get in, but whom and why, no one else knows we are here?”

  Have you all been together, could one of you have gone back and done this?” Questioned Sam.