Suti and the Broken Staff

by Jerry Dubs

  The hole was deep enough now that I had to step into it to continue digging.

  I raised the shovel.

  I drove the blade into the ground, eager to push it deep but concerned about the damage I might do to what lay beneath my feet.

  I lifted the loosened dirt and tossed it.

  When the hole was deep enough that my waist was below the surrounding ground, my shovel struck something solid.

  I gasped and dropped the shovel as if it had turned into a snake. Then I fell to my knees and, with shaking hands, began to move the earth with my hands.

  I uncovered a foot.

  The toes were callused with black hairs growing from the joints. I scraped dirt from the leg and found it to be heavy and muscled. Clearing the hips, I confirmed that I had unearthed a man. I was sure, because of the strength shown in the leg, that I had found the lost charioteer and not aged Lord Imhotep.

  I crawled beyond the charioteer’s still buried leg and began to scrape at the earth there with my fingers.

  The next foot I uncovered was thin with a fine gold chain encircling the ankle.

  Queen Menwi.

  I sat back on my haunches and shook with sadness. I cried for the dead queen and I cried for her sister, whose heart would rend when she learned of her sister’s death. And then I wept harder as I realized that I could never tell Queen Merti that I had found her sister buried in an unmarked grave in a foreign land. Pharaoh Thutmose had sealed my lips, but more importantly, Queen Merti believed that her sister had painlessly entered Khert-Neter at the side of the god Ptah.

  I could not destroy the peace that thought gave her.

  I cupped a handful of dirt prepared to begin reburying the dead queen, but curiosity stopped my hand.

  And so, I crawled along the bottom of the grave and carefully clear the dirt from the queen’s face. Her eyes were shut, but her mouth was open, her neck arched back as if twisting away from pain. I closed her mouth and patted earth beneath her head, giving her a pillow.

  Then I uncovered her torso.

  ***

  I have heard that our imaginations are more powerful that reality.

  They say that the fear of torture is greater than the pain of torture, that the anxiety before battle is sharper than the bewilderment felt during the fight, that nightmares of strange beasts and leering faces are more horrifying than facing wild beasts.

  I tell you: This is not true.

  There are sights and sensations that pierce your ka and that change you forever.

  There are true terrors that cling to you as tight as skin over a swollen stomach, as closely as sweat raised by fear, as sharply as the pangs of hunger that shrink your belly.

  This is a horror that does not diminish: The sight of a woman’s torn body and the understanding of the agony she must have endured.

  Crouching in the grave, my eyes refused to leave the sight of the young queen’s cut stomach and the wet dirt that clung to her intestines and stomach and which filled the void where a child had once grown.

  I still see it at night, and the paralyzing ache that crept over me that day in the grave revisits me in my dreams so that I wake with sweat on my face and a scream in my mouth.

  ***

  When strength returned to my limbs, I covered the queen’s violated body, sprinkling the dirt over her as a priest offers sacred oils to the gods.

  Then I moved to the third shape that waited for me in that grave.

  I loosened the dirt with my fingers and scraped it away from the unspeaking form with the edge of my hand.

  This body was shrouded.

  I cleaned the earth from the linen-covered face, from the narrow, tightly wrapped shoulders, from the chest and stomach, the shape distorted by the presence of half a broken staff. Then, my breath stilled, I leaned over the corpse’s face and tugged at the linen until I uncovered the face of Lord Imhotep.

  As I lifted the last layer of linen, I heard a loud rustling sound above me.

  Looking up I saw a flock of birds, but not just a single type, not the split-tailed swallow or the small lapwings or the royal-winged falcons or the heavy-winged vulture, but all of them. They each cried their own song as they lifted from the trees of the small copse and then swirled around the grove.

  And then the light began to fail.

  It was not the gathered shadows of the bird. It was a greater darkness.

  Kneeling by the body of the man-god I arched my back and stared at Re.

  His fiery barque was being eaten!

  A scream of terror rose in my chest, as I watched the blackness devour the god.

  The shadows around me grew bolder and the sky turned from blue to purple to black and Re disappeared.

  The bird ceased their screeching.

  I bowed my head in prayer and looked upon Lord Imhotep. His face was serene, and I swear that behind his closed eyelids, there was movement. I swear that his lips opened and from that deathly void came a whisper.

  I thought: This is not death. Wepwawet is not opening the way for my ka. No! This is the death of the world. The river will stop. The beasts will fall upon their sides. The stone pyramids will turn to dust. The million stars of night will fall upon us and the Two Lands will end.

  ***

  I am a scribe.

  I record. I measure. I remember.

  Kneeling in the grave as the world ended, I began to count.

  I reached one hundred and still the darkness lay upon me.

  I reached two hundred. The birds remained silenced, but hope began to burn in my heart. I was counting. I was still alive.

  I reached three hundred … four hundred … five hundred.

  I thought: This is how the earth will be forever more.

  I wondered: Am I the only living soul?

  And the Re began to free himself.

  ***

  When life and light returned, I climbed from the grave and walked to the chariot.

  The horses were still standing. The chariot had not turned to ashes or stone.

  I picked up the water skin and let the water flow over my face.

  I lived.

  And I realized that I had just witnessed the Darkness by Day that Nakht had predicted.

  I thought: It was Re’s salute to the passing of a fellow god.

  I sat on the edge of the chariot bed and considered what I should do.

  I could not reveal what I had discovered; it contradicted the truth Pharaoh Thutmose had embraced.

  To preserve ma’at, I needed to rebury Queen Menwi in this hidden copse, and never tell anyone what I had discovered.

  But I could honor Lord Imhotep. If Re could shield his face to honor Lord Imhotep’s ka, I could honor the body Lord Imhotep had left behind.

  ***

  And so, I returned to the grave and raised Lord Imhotep from the ground. I laid his body on the chariot floor and then I filled the grave once more and covered it with palm leaves and branches.

  I would take the man-god’s body to Gaza. I would have it cleaned and washed with oils. I would instruct the priests of Thoth to preserve the body and to wrap it with linen inscribed with the symbols of Thoth — for I would tell them that he was an ancient scribe, whom I wished to honor.

  I would have him properly interred in a tomb painted with the enchantments and spells that would allow his ka to find its way to Khert-Neter.

  (Even though I believed that his ka was living now in the infant Akila had taken from the Two Lands.)

  And so, as Re-reborn moved toward the western sea, I gripped the leather reins and, with Lord Imhotep’s linen shrouded body curled in my chariot, the broken staff lying beside him, I led the horses toward Gaza.

 

 

 
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