She had never realised how beautiful the crystal was. It had six perfect facets at each end, and fitted her hand as though it had been designed for it. Within it she could see what looked like a phantom crystal, and within that another, smaller one. The exquisite object was actually three crystals in one.
She stroked its cool sides, gazing and gazing into its depths—and as she did so, her breathing became deep and regular and her whole body relaxed.
It seemed to her the crystal was showing her that her life on this earth at this time contained within it the life of a different place and time, which in its turn contained the life of yet another place and time. The memories of all were preserved, but seen only phantom-like within the outer one.
And then it seemed to her it was showing her other things as well. She had the feeling that the longer she gazed at the crystal the more messages it would bring her. She saw it now as the symbol of the ka, the astral or ethereal body, containing within it the ba, the long-lived personal soul, which, in its turn, contained the akh or khu, the eternal spirit, which was the seed or germ from which the others had grown—its essential nature giving shape and meaning to the others.
She felt confident now that she had so entered into the mood engendered by the crystal that she would be able to reach out and see whatever she wanted to see. She thought about the night she had received the message by moonlight. She knew now she had not been wrong to tell Senmut. She had been given the message because she was psychically sensitive enough to receive it—but she was not knowledgeable enough about the ancient scripts to be able to interpret it.Senmut's long, hard training had given him the skill to translate the ancient ciphers. She needed his skills, and he needed hers.
“But if he is going to commit sacrilege with the knowledge,” Anhai asked the crystal, “why was he trusted with it?"
“You are given knowledge. You are given opportunity. What you do with them is your responsibility. We do not judge you to see if you are capable of handling what we give you, for more often than not someone who seems completely unsuitable suddenly finds the strength in themselves to do great deeds, and someone who had seemed the perfect choice fails to meet the challenge."
Senmut had told her about trying to raise Imhotep's soul-figure with drumming on that expedition to Punt, and how disastrously wrong it had gone. Now the miraculous had happened and he had been given the location of Imhotep's tomb, she could not blame him for wanting to use the information.
She began to feel strange, as though she were floating off from herself. A twinge of fear almost brought her down again, but she managed to master it, and the sensation continued.
If anyone had come into the room at that moment, they would have seen a young woman holding a crystal out before her and gazing into it with extraordinary intensity. But as far as Anhai was concerned, she had left the room and was floating above the great complex of buildings associated with King Djoser's funerary enclosure in the desert.
And then somehow she was beneath the earth, travelling along a corridor, an underground tunnel. She knew there was no light, and yet she could see as though there were. Without passing through any door, she found herself in a tomb chamber, the walls glowing with symbolic pictures of the afterlife, the colours as vivid as though they had been painted yesterday.
Resting on the heavy stone lid of the sarcophagus was a package wrapped and rewrapped in dry and brittle persea leaves. She knew this was the book they were seeking, and the excitement she felt at that moment almost broke her concentration on the crystal and lost her the experience.
She understood she must not touch it or unwrap it, but try to probe it with the eyes of her ka. She almost despaired. How could she do that? Having come this far, had she the skill to do what had to be done?
She directed the tip of the crystal in her hand towards the package. At that moment it seemed to her filaments of light crackled around the package, enveloping it completely.
She began to understand Imhotep's teaching and she knew she would be able to do justice to his trust in her. She had finally shed the skin of her irresponsible youth, and knew what she had to do and how to do it.
At that moment the scene before her faded and she was back in her chamber. She sat down on the edge of her bed, exhausted and shaken. The crystal in her hand had become burning hot and she dropped it onto the surface of the alabaster table beside her. There was a terrible sound and, horrified, she saw that the tabletop had split in two and gone crashing to the floor. Trembling with anxiety, she scrabbled among the jumble of cosmetic jars, mirrors, flowers and vases, desperately looking for the crystal.
She found it at last—intact. It was cool again, and not even chipped.
Thankfully and very, very nervously, she wrapped itin the moss and returned it to the box of yew wood.
* * * *
Meanwhile Senmut had, as she suspected, gone to search out Imhotep's tomb.
When he first read the instructions he thought he had misunderstood that Imhotep's tomb was in the royal funerary complex of King Djoser. So he, Senmut, was not the first commoner to aspire to being buried with his king.
The fact that he was the Pharaoh's close associate and a very high official in the Two Lands gave Senmut access to Djoser's closely guarded enclosure. He claimed to have Pharaoh's instructions to inspect the area thoroughly in order to make a report on possible repairs and restorations.
He walked round the complex with the High Priest, commenting on various things that needed attention, and then announced that he was going to inspect the underground shafts and tunnels. He could see this made the High Priest uneasy, but with the Pharaoh's seal presented to him he could not refuse. He excused himself for a few moments while he went to find a rope ladder, a torch and some tools.
Senmut wandered over to the towering stepped pyramid Imhotep had built for his king, the first mound, the sacred ground which had emerged from the primeval ocean of consciousness. What a concept! What a mighty innovation! Senmut's heart raced to think how this must have looked to Imhotep's contemporaries. Nothing like it had ever been done before. Nothing like it had ever been seen before. For a moment Senmut felt the same thrill he must have felt that day centuries before, when he had stood beside his master and seen the work of years come to magnificent fruition.
He noticed he was standing beside the serdab, the chamber in which the statue of the king looked out upon the world. He stepped forward to look in through the two small holes. There was the statue of Djoser, as he expected: strong, fierce, powerful, gazing out from the world of the dead.[21]
[21—This statue of King Djoser, taken from the serdab chamber, is in Cairo Museum.]
His eyes looked directly into those of Senmut, and Senmut felt his gaze like a bolt of lightning pass through his body. He reeled back.
He knew magical ceremonies were always performed on such statues to make them capable of housing the ka of the king whenever it chose to return to earth, but Senmut had never experienced so directly and so terrifyingly the reality of such magic.
He felt he had been warned—he must not enter Imhotep's tomb; he must not remove the book.
At that moment the High Priest returned and Senmut, still half dazed, followed him to the area where the entrance to the underground labyrinth of corridors lay. It had been carefully disguised, the secret of its location passed by word of mouth from high priest to high priest since the earliest times.
They worked together to prise the heavy slabs of stone up, and when the shaft was finally opened, Senmut told his companion to leave him alone to inspect the tunnels, and to make sure that everyone else was kept well away from the site. The man was not at all sorry to be spared further involvement in what he considered to be a dubious and dangerous activity, and retreated at once.
As Senmut climbed down into the shaft on the papyrus-rope ladder provided for him, his heart was pounding unnaturally fast. He believed King Djoser himself had forbidden him to do what he was about to do, and yet his des
ire was so strong he could not bring himself to stop. He tried to persuade himself that it had been his own imagination and his own feelings of doubt and guilt that had given him that experience at the serdab. He knew that priests and superstitious people believed that statues of cold stone could see and speak—but he did not. No, not he! He repeated this to himself several times.
At the bottom of the shaft, he stood in a corridor with walls shimmering like turquoise-coloured water in the light of the torch he held above his head. The rock was lined with thousands upon thousands of little faience tiles.
Carefully he checked the inscriptions and the reliefs. He passed the striding figure of King Djoser, depicted at the time of his jubilee marking the boundaries of his kingdom. He passed the guardian cobras and the procession of the gods. He followed all the signs Anhai had been given until he came at last to the place, after many twists and turns, he knew to be the one he was looking for.
He found that someone had been there before him. This part of the corridor had suffered heavy damage. Many of the facing tiles had fallen or been pulled off and several blocks of stone removed from the walls. Dust and debris almost blocked the passage. Shaking with anxiety that the precious book was already gone he scrambled over the rubble and raised his torch to peer into the darkness beyond the hole in the wall. Dimly he could see a small chamber with several broken statues lying scattered on the floor. He tugged at a block of stone feverishly until the cavity was wide enough for him to climb through. He was sweating profusely and his hands and arms were scratched and bleeding.
Once inside he could see that the chamber was no more than an antechamber to the main tomb. He stumbled through the door cavity in the opposite side, stooping low to avoid the lintel. Why had he been given the secret ciphers that would lead him to this place if he were not meant to have the book? He began to whisper prayers to Djehuti and to his hero Imhotep himself. He had been led step by step. He was linked closely to Imhotep. His finding of the book must have been intended. It must have been planned.
He stood at last in the burial chamber itself. The coffin had been broken into and the quartzite lid lay fragmented on the floor. All the grave goods of the great sage that had not been stolen lay scattered about. Muttering to himself like a madman Senmut searched the chamber, turning over pieces of broken furniture, empty chests, shattered oil and wine jars—in his agitation not remembering that he was handling objects that Imhotep himself had handled, and that at any other time he would have been in ecstasy enough just to have found what he had found. Occasionally the flickering light of his torch illuminated the paintings on the walls and gave him a moment's pause. If only—if only he had time to study them—but he dare not be too long. The atmosphere was oppressive, the air stale, and his torch would not last forever. Above ground no doubt the High Priest was waiting for his return.
He was almost turning to leave in despair when he noticed a dark object lying in the corner that he had not examined. He had no hope—but he lowered the torch to see itmore clearly.
He gasped. It was what he was looking for! The thieves who had picked the tomb clean of all its gold and jewels, its valuable unguents and talismans, had thrown aside with scorn the most precious object of all—the Wisdom Book of Imhotep, wrapped in persea leaves.
With trembling hands Senmut lifted it up and hurried from the chamber.
All the way back, stumbling along the dim corridors, his torch almost burned out, his mind was racing, trying to imagine what was written on the scrolls, trying to imagine the fuss that would be made of him for having found the book of Imhotep. He would be its sole guardian. It was more than likely he would be the only person who could read it because of his knowledge of ancient scripts. The finding of it was the turning point of his life, and whatever had happened to him before was nothing to what was to happen to him in the future.
He clambered up the last ladder, his breath coming in gasps. He dreaded that someone would be waiting at the top, but there was no one.
The last few rungs of the ladder seemed impossibly difficult. He had a horrible feeling that he might fall back down the shaft to his death, losing the book to whoever came to haul his body out.
With a tremendous effort, he reached the top of the ladder safely, ascertained that no one was waiting for him there and placed the precious package ahead of him on the ground so that he would have both hands for the last heave.
He was out of the shaft at last and lay for a moment, panting, face down on the ground.
At last he was recovered enough to rise and look at what he had brought up from the tomb.
He stretched out his bruised and bleeding hand to take it up once more—and found to his horror that his hand passed right through it.
He stared, appalled. Whether it was from the contact with the cold, crisp night air, or whether it was from some ancient spell, the package had turned to dust!
Shaking uncontrollably, Senmut searched through the dust with his fingers, hoping against hope that it was only the wrapping that had disintegrated.
But there was nothing there but fine, ash-like grey dust. Not a single figure, not a single hieroglyph of the greatest book in the world was preserved.
* * *
Chapter 13
The inundation came, but tardily. The great river rose and swelled at last and overflowed its banks. The life-giving black silt was on the move.
Hatshepsut thanked her father Amun-Ra by giving vast donations of land to his temples, land that supported crops and people and villages, goats and cattle and geese. The priests of Amun-Ra could draw on more resources of manpower and produce than any other in the Two Lands, with the exception of the Pharaoh herself.
Until the waters came, Hatshepsut had been morose and tetchy. Every day she went from Amun's temple on the east bank to her own, rapidly growing, personal mortuary temple on the west bank. Supplicants to the throne were barely listened to. Most of them were dealt with by Hapuseneb.
He did not know what was bothering her, but suspected that it was something more than annoyance with her daughter. That the inundation was delayed seemed the obvious answer, but he caught a look of fear in her eyes sometimes that made him think it was more even than this. Her women told him that she was sleeping badly. Even if they had not, he could see it in her face. She took to using cosmetics heavily, a thing she had never done before except on state occasions when it was important her face should become an impassive pharaonic mask.
At a time when Neferure most needed someone to talk to and comfort her, to advise her and gentle her out of her heartbreak, she had no one. Senmut was away in the north at Men-nefer. Hatshepsut was preoccupied with some grim problem of her own. Her women and her old nurse had been told that she must not be allowed to leave the palace, and that her movements were to be watched at all times.
Her nurse would have listened, but Neferure chose not to confide in her. “What would such an old woman know about our kind of loving!” she thought. She forgot, as most young people forget, and most old people too, that in order to be old one must also once have been young.
She barely left her room, and when food was brought to her she scarcely touched it. Every day she asked if a letter had come for her. But no letter came.
In the east, Amenemheb had little idea of the situation at Waset. He had been suddenly summoned and sent urgently to Kepel to put down an insurrection. But when he and his men arrived after the long sea journey from the delta, they found the great market city full of merchants as usual and no sign of any trouble. Keftiu from the Island of the Bulls in the Great Green Ocean were trading their rhytons containing sacred oils. Silver and cypress wood and wine were exchanged for turquoise-coloured faience, ivory and gold and ostrich eggs ... From the distant and mysterious mountains of the far east, the traders in precious lapis lazuli were driving hard bargains with the representatives of the kings of neighbouring states. Every succeeding pharaoh demanded rare lapis lazuli for the holy statues, and every vassal ruler wanted as
much of the valuable stone as he could get, to use in bribing and bargaining and sweetening relations with the mighty overlord and neighbour. Horses from the eastern and northern plains stamped up the dust impatiently in their stables; cattle lowed in their pens; donkeys brayed on every street. Amenemheb walked through the market and heard the shouting and the laughing and the busy hum of barter trade and began to realise that he had been sent away from Men-nefer—not to Kepel.
He and Neferure had spent several warm and secret nights. She had been a virgin when he first took her in his arms and her wide-eyed trust and adoration had almost made him hesitate. But he had put aside his scruples for the pleasure of the moment.
Afterwards, as she lay crying, overwrought by all that had happened, his thoughts were already far away on the consequences this liaison might have for his career.
Now, as he sat in the fort overlooking the city, he could see the tall columns of the huge Temple of Hathor erected here to protect the Egyptians against the spells of foreigners, and wondered if any god or goddess would be able to protect him against the wrath of Hatshepsut and Men-kheper-Ra now that his affair with the princess was probably common knowledge. He spent a long time dictating a letter through a scribe to Men-kheper-Ra.
It was a masterpiece of diplomacy, mentioning Neferure nowhere, but hinting that scandalous rumours were abroad about him, spread by their “mutual enemy” (no name) and that he, the prince, his lord, his friend, was not to believe them. He remained the true Pharaoh's loyal and devoted subject. He knew the ambiguity of the last line would be appreciated by Men-kheper-Ra.
The messenger left at top speed, spurred on by offers of great wealth on his return with a reply from the prince—and terror of the punishments that would be inflicted if he brought no such reply.
Neferure waited in vain for some word, some sign. She was sure he would find a way of communicating with her, though she knew a straight letter was out of the question. All her communications were being intercepted, and no letters of hers left the palace without first being read.
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