Scroll of Saqqara

by Pauline Gedge

  Khaemwaset bent to the plinth. “So,” he said after a moment. “We have found a princess, and presumably a prince, although I cannot read his name. The stone is scored through where it should be.”

  Hori’s fingers stroked the gash. “This is not the work of vandals,” he said presently. “I think the plinth was damaged when it was being set up in here, and the workmen did not have time to repair it.” He stood straight. “Still, his name will be on his coffin.”

  “I agree,” Khaemwaset affirmed. “She has a haunting name, the princess. Ahura. Very unusual. Now, Hori, can we date this find?”

  Hori laughed. The sound slammed against the walls and the shadows seemed to convulse at its force. One of the servants cried out in fear and Khaemwaset, his momentary absorption forgotten, wanted to clap a hand over his son’s mouth. “Why are you asking me?” Hori chuckled. “I can merely assist you, O wise one. I think the dating will be almost impossible. The furniture is severe and simple, perhaps belonging to the age of the Great Pyramids, but the decorations resemble closely the beautifying that was done during the reign of my great-grandfather Seti. The coffins may give us more clues.”

  Khaemwaset did not want to go into the other room and neither did the servants. They were clustered silently close together. Penbuy was lost in his work. “The statue of the prince has a scroll in its hand,” Khaemwaset said to Hori. “At least it looks like the symbol of pharaonic authority. That is very odd and might even be considered blasphemous, seeing that only kings may be represented with the sign of temporal power.”

  But Hori merely nodded and gestured to the servants to proceed into the burial room. They hung back, their eyes wide, their faces pale under the flaring lights they carried. Khaemwaset, picking his way towards them, wondered if his expression held the same nervous tension. “It’s all right,” he said to them kindly. “Am I not the greatest magician in Egypt? Is my power not mightier than the powers of the dead? Give me a torch.” He swept one out of a shaking hand and with a conscious stiffening of his will strode through into the other room.

  He almost dropped the torch, and had to stifle a cry. Directly before him, huge, as the flame revealed it, was Thoth himself, his ibis beak curved towards Khaemwaset, his wise bird’s eyes twinkling. In his right hand he held a pen and in his left rested a scribe’s palette. The whole life-size statue glowed with the warmth of animation, and as Khaemwaset’s pulse slowed he realized that it was plated over in solid gold. “Thoth,” he whispered, and stepping towards the god he knelt and prostrated himself, kissing the shining feet. Behind him an awed Hori was also performing his obeisance and the servants were standing in the doorway exclaiming, their fear temporarily gone.

  Khaemwaset rose shakily, and it was then that he saw the coffin lids. They were leaning against the plain whitewashed wall to either side of the god, two slabs of solid, palely polished quartzite, and Khaemwaset stared at them stupidly. “But it is not possible!” he blurted. “No robber has been here. Why did the prince choose to lie uncovered?”

  “Perhaps he is not here at all.” Hori’s voice fell flat in the tiny space. With one accord, father and son turned round, and in the turning Khaemwaset felt a rush of the dread that had begun to stalk him ever since he had first seen his workmen’s pile of damp sand and ominous gap beside it. His palms became slick and he gripped the torch more tightly. “No,” he whispered. “He is here. They are both here.”

  The coffins lay side by side on stone bases. Torchlight was playing on them, and the shadows within gathered densely. Hori’s happy mood had fled. Soberly he edged closer to his father. Once more Khaemwaset had to will himself to move. What is the matter with me? he thought angrily. I have gazed on the dead a hundred times and more. I am a sem-priest after all, and a physician. No, it is the malevolent magic I feel in here that is turning my blood so chill. Why in the name of Amun are these coffins open?

  The first bandaged corpse lay with right arm at its side and left bent across its breast. A woman. The Princess Ahura. Khaemwaset stared down at her for a long time. Beneath the dusty windings, now brown from the embalming salts that had sucked the moisture from her body, he could see the shapes of many amulets, and he counted them off in his mind. Some would be placed on the skin itself, but he recognized the Buckle of the Girdle of Isis that protected the dead wearer from any abomination, and also on the neck the Amulet of the Tet, the spine of Osiris that gave the corpse the power to be reconstituted in body and spirit in the next world. Just below these familiar swells lay an enormous Amulet of the Collar, a plate of gold and turquoise that covered the withered breast and sparked tauntingly at Khaemwaset. He shuddered. The Amulet of the Collar gave the wearer the power to free himself from the funeral swathings that held him captive. “It’s beautiful,” Hori breathed beside him. Grim-lipped, Khaemwaset nodded.

  Gingerly he passed to the second coffin, some of his fear evaporating under the mysteries they had found. The prince lay with both arms at his side in the male position. He was as simply bound as his wife. His Amulet of the Collar matched hers, gold and turquoise, and at first Khaemwaset did not see the thing by his right hand. Then he bent closer with an exclamation of surprise.

  “Hori! There’s a scroll in here,” he said. Leaning over the edge of the sarcophagus he touched it gently. It resisted his fingers and was quite dry. He pushed at it a little harder and the hand itself quivered.

  “It is not actually in the prince’s fist,” Hori observed. “He was well bandaged.”

  “No,” Khaemwaset answered. “I do believe that the scroll has been sewn to him. See how the hand moves when I tug on it.” They straightened and stared at each other.

  “A dilemma,” Hori said softly. “To take scrolls from a tomb to copy and then return is one thing, but are you willing to cut it off his hand, Father? We have never lifted anything from a coffin before, only from boxes in ante-rooms.”

  “I know,” Khaemwaset snapped testily. Already the familiar lust was rising in him and he glanced back to the roll of papyrus and the hand that curled around it. “If the coffins had been decorated and inscribed with the proper spells we might have found some explanation, but they are completely bare. Not even the Eyes for the corpses to see out into the room. What could be so important that the prince ordered the thing actually sewn onto him?”

  “This is a serious matter.” Penbuy had come up behind them and was peering into the coffin, his palette under his arm. “The inscriptions tell me nothing, not about baboons, not about the water depicted everywhere, and where, Highness, is the young prince, the son? Did he die elsewhere and was therefore buried elsewhere?” He paused, and when there was no reply he went on. “I humbly submit my doubts to you, Prince. Close up this place and leave the dead in peace. Do not take the scroll. I do not like the air in here.”

  Khaemwaset knew his scribe was not speaking of the musty smell. He did not like the air either, but under his dislike, his disquiet, was the pulse of his eagerness. A precious scroll, so precious that the prince had made sure that it was buried with him. A large mystery in the midst of many small ones. He had found many scrolls in his digging, usually left by robbers because they had no value to any but a scholar. They were the favourite stories or poems of those who had enjoyed them in life and intended to go on enjoying them at the feet of Osiris. Sometimes they were proud lessons mastered in youth and lovingly preserved. Sometimes they were boasts—lists of the valuables some noble had amassed, the gifts he had given to some Pharaoh at the celebration of the New Year, or the number of slaves he had brought back from military campaigns.

  But this … Khaemwaset stroked the scroll thoughtfully. This belonged to the realm of the urgent, the sacred, the vitally important to the prince whose brittle bones and withered skin clutched at it so possessively. I deserve at least a look at it, Khaemwaset thought, with a flash of mutiny against his innate virtue. I honour the dead with my restorations. Let this dead man for once honour me in my search for knowledge.

  “Osi
ris Neuser-Ra’s temple awaits your expert hand,” Penbuy put in hopefully. “You surely do not wish to anger him, Highness.”

  Khaemwaset ignored his scribe’s clumsy plea. “Hori, give me a knife,” he ordered.

  There was an outbreak of whispering from the servants pressed together by the doorway. Hori pulled a short copper blade from his kilt belt and passed it to his father. Khaemwaset bent. For a moment he hesitated, his eyes on the prince’s face, aware of his own amulets—the Eye of Horus for happiness and vigour that swung from his chest and the Amulet of Isis’s Buckle that lay between his shoulder-blades to protect him from demonic attacks from behind. Then, holding his breath, he reached into the coffin and, taking the scroll carefully, pulled it taut so that he could see the stitches attaching it to the hand. The copper blade was very sharp. One by one Khaemwaset slit the threads, marvelling that they were so strong. The hand jerked stiffly. Penbuy had backed away, but Hori was watching his father’s actions intently.

  Khaemwaset gave a sigh of satisfaction and drew up his prize. It was not very thick. He handed it to Penbuy. “Roll it gently in linen,” he said, “and carry it home yourself, Penbuy. Do not give it to one of your assistants. Put it on my desk in the office and tell whoever is guarding the door today not to let anyone near it. I will read it, you can copy it, and then I will replace it.” Unless it is very valuable, his mind ran on silently. Then I will keep it, put it in my own library, or perhaps even donate it to the House of Books at Pi-Ramses. This prince has no need of it now.

  “I do not approve,” Penbuy said forthrightly, holding the scroll with distaste, and Khaemwaset rounded on him.

  “Your approval or disapproval is as nothing to me!” he said coldly. “You are my servant, nothing more. Remember that, Penbuy, or you may lose your position in my household!” Penbuy whitened, bowed and left the room without another word. Hori looked solemn.

  “You were somewhat hard on him, weren’t you, Father?” he protested. Khaemwaset glared at him.

  “That is not your business, Hori,” was all he said.

  It was a shock to emerge into the red drenching of sunset. Khaemwaset and Hori stood at the head of the stairs, breathing the pure desert air in grateful gulps. The evening breeze had sprung up, warm and reassuring, stirring their filthy kilts and drying the cold sweat from their bodies. Hori spoke for both of them when he said, “How fine life is! I am not ready to lie in my tomb yet, Father, in the dark and cold. Egypt is too winsomely lovely!”

  “No one is ever ready,” Khaemwaset answered slowly. He felt light-headed, dislocated, as though an age instead of a mere afternoon had gone by while he was in the tomb. “Let us finish whatever food and beer is left, Hori, while the tents are being struck, and then we will go home and make our peace with your mother and Sheritra.” They walked away from the gathering gloom of the hole behind them. “Ib!” Khaemwaset called to his waiting servant. “Leave the organizing here to the under-steward. Go home and tell Amek I want two soldiers to guard this site. I will remain until they come.”

  Hori looked at him curiously. “Two soldiers, Father?” he said as they reached the table and sank into the chairs beside it. “You usually don’t bother with soldiers at all, only a couple of workmen.”

  “But this tomb is untouched,” Khaemwaset pointed out. “We did not examine the chests and boxes. Who knows what wealth they contain? We will leave them alone, but if word of our find gets out we may have all kinds of rabble trying to force a way in and steal. Better to stand Amek’s men with spears and knives at the entrance.”

  But it was not robbers that he feared. No, not at all. He drank the beer that had been placed before him, watched the shadows of night begin to creep across the desert and wished that Amek’s men would hurry.

  Full night had fallen by the time he and Hori alighted from their litters and walked into the house. Khaemwaset did so with a vast relief. The chatter and pattering feet of his servants, the aroma of the evening meal, the gentle flicker of the lamps being lit, all served to restore to him a sense of security and normality. Hori went off to his quarters, and Khaemwaset was just entering his private dining room where Nubnofret was already seated when Sheritra and Bakmut came in. The servant retired to the wall and waited to serve her mistress. Sheritra gave her father a hug. “You are back in time to tell me a story tonight,” she said. “You will, won’t you? How grubby you are!”

  Khaemwaset good-humouredly returned her embrace, kissed Nubnofret and, going to his low table, called for water to wash his hands. “I have not had time to change my clothes,” he apologized to his wife. “I did not want to hold you up while I did so.”

  She did not appear to be annoyed. “I have had plenty to do while you were gone,” was all she said on the subject. “Did you find anything interesting, Khaemwaset?”

  At that moment Hori entered, Khaemwaset signalled for the meal to be served and a general conversation began. The family’s musicians, a harpist, lute player and drummer, accompanied the desultory to and fro of the talk. Nubnofret had not really wanted an answer to her question, and Khaemwaset was relieved when she did not pursue the matter. He was afraid that Hori might prattle of the thing his father had done, but Hori and Sheritra, their tables touching, were engaged in some private discussion of their own.

  Khaemwaset, though hungry, found that he could not eat. As night deepened and a sweet wind blew through the windows whose flax mats were still raised, his thoughts revolved around the scroll, surely even now resting on his desk, waiting for him. With an effort he tried to concentrate on Nubnofret’s words.

  “Your brother Si-Montu came today while you were out,” she was saying, her ample arms across her table, beringed hands clasped around a wine cup. “He was disappointed to find you gone. I gave him beer and honey cakes and then he left.”

  Khaemwaset suppressed a sigh. He knew that she did not approve of Si-Montu, considering him loud and rude, but her true criticism was that he had married beneath him. “What did he want?” he asked mildly. “I hope you made him welcome, Nubnofret.”

  There was a small silence. Nubnofret removed her rings, considered them, and replaced them with deliberation. Hori signalled for more bread.

  “I am not ill-mannered, Khaemwaset,” she rebuked him. “Your brother wanted an afternoon with you, drinking in the garden. That was all.”

  Khaemwaset felt a rare rebellion flare in him. “He may have married the daughter of a Syrian ship’s captain and thus disqualified himself as a prince in line for the throne,” he said evenly, “but he is a good and honest man and I love him. I would have enjoyed his company.”

  “I like Uncle Si-Montu,” Sheritra’s light voice broke in with uncharacteristic defiance. She was looking directly at her mother, her colour high, her hands working in her linens. “He always brings me something strange when he comes and he talks to me as though I had some intelligence. Ben-Anath is beautiful, and shy like me. I think the story of their meeting and falling in love and marrying against Grandfather’s wishes is wonderful.”

  “Well if you expect to meet someone and have him fall in love with you, my girl, you will have to take yourself in hand!” Nubnofret retorted, cruelly but rightly interpreting the longing in her daughter’s tone. “Men are not attracted to plain women, no matter how clever they are.”

  Sheritra’s flush deepened. Her hand stole into Hori’s and she looked down. Khaemwaset gestured, and the servants began to clear away the debris of the meal.

  “Send Bakmut to me when you retire,” he said to his daughter, “and I will come and talk. Why don’t you and Hori take a walk around the garden?”

  “Thank you, Father,” she replied, and rising, her hand still clutching Hori’s, she turned to Nubnofret. “I apologize for displeasing you yet again, Mother,” she said stiffly. “If you wish I will eat dinner alone in my rooms tomorrow so that I may not interfere with your digestion.” She and Hori were gone before Nubnofret could make a comment.

  Khaemwaset smiled inwardly in s
pite of his sympathy. Sheritra had a streak of stubbornness in her, and had managed the last word. Nevertheless, he reprimanded Nubnofret. “If you cannot accept Sheritra as she is,” he said coldly, “I will consider sending her to our estate at Ninsu for a while. You hurt her more than she will admit. In the Fayum she will be near Pharaoh’s harem, which doubtless contains women with more sympathy than her own mother. Sunero is a good agent. His family would be happy to keep Sheritra for a while.”

  Nubnofret’s shoulders slumped. “I am sorry, my brother,” she said. “There is something about her that raises my ire no matter how I try to conceal it. I want her to be beautiful, to be sought after …” She slapped her palms against the table and stood, drawing her floating yellow linens around her. “I may not like Si-Montu for his uncouth ways but I agree with my daughter. His romance with Ben-Anath set my heart fluttering as well. Why am I never able to admit my agreement?” She hesitated, and Khaemwaset had the feeling that she wished to kneel and put her arms about him, but she only smiled faintly, clicked her fingers at a servant girl who had dropped some scraps, and sailed out of the room,

  Khaemwaset sat on briefly, unaware for a time that the musicians had stopped playing and were waiting to be dismissed. I will not examine the scroll until I have visited Sheritra, he thought. I do not want to begin what will surely be a painstaking investigation only to be interrupted. Perhaps a turn around the fountain would be in order, and then a quick glance at the messages from the Delta. There is no point in bathing now. He got up, and his harpist coughed quietly. Startled, Khaemwaset let them go, then walked through into his public reception room on his way to the garden. But somehow, instead, his feet took him to the side door, the passage that ran behind the main rooms to the sleeping quarters and from there to his own rooms.