Chapter 80
THEY MOVED carefully through the next section.
The passage abruptly widened into a cavern filled with water. They saw two lakes, like large swimming pools, one shaped like a stomach, the other like the liver. The water, stale and brackish, looked as dark as oil slicks. They went around them.
Scatterings of yellowed bones encrusted the edges of the lakes.
“Crocodiles,” Anson said. “The reptiles lived down here once. Perhaps the priests fed them, drawing them here along a secret channel that once linked up with ancient Lake Moeris.”
They circled the lakes.
Did something still live there? What would it be? He pictured saurian eyes, slivered like moons, breaking the surface of the water to watch them, then a crocodile head emerging, and then a body, but not the body of a reptile, but a slab-chested man, streaming water. Half man, half crocodile. Sobek.
They reached another passage that opened up around them into a vestibule and then passed into a vast porticoed hall.
It was a hall that represented the chest cavity of the god. It was also a treasure chest of staggering proportions.
“Dear God of our Fathers!” Daniel said in a gasp.
“Out of the magic of its gold, heaven was born,” Anson said.
They were looking at the amassed hoard of the Neteru.
“Truly this is the Mother of all Treasures,” the veiled woman whispered.
Chapter 81
IT STRUCK HIS EYES with the impact of an eruption.
It was as if a mountain of gold had exploded and disgorged rivers of golden magma into the hall.
Gold choked the place like a glittering slag heap, spewed from chests in chains and necklaces, crusted in heaps of gorgets, amulets, cups, urns and crowns, pooled in dishes and plates, twisted and writhed in a tangle of statues thrown together like corpses. The excrescence solidified in thrones and tables and chairs and erupted in great shrines jammed together like a golden shantytown. Gold winked, flashed, lusted and glowered sullenly in darker corners. A fleet of golden boats lay in a tangle of masts and oars like the aftermath of a naval battle among the gods. More boats lay foundered among jeweled caskets.
In the Book of Revelation, God sat with the firmament beneath Him, and the brilliance of gemstones sparkling in His presence. Heaven was blinding in its beauty! There was no heaven after death. Instead, the traditions of a material heaven, handed down by untold generations, were true. This was it and his father had found it, stealing the hopes of all mankind.
A feeling came over Anson that he was about to vomit.
A sorrow washed over him with the force of a wave and when the shock receded, an undercurrent ripped him back to long ago.
My father left me as a child to chase after this glory. A man-made heaven.
Seek first the kingdom of heaven, Jesus said.
But my father had sought it on earth. Dig into your father’s ideas too deeply and you risk undermining your own foundations, his mother had said. Am I doomed to follow his trajectory? There seemed to be an inevitability about finding this, astounding as it was, a pattern that had to be made, like the changing of the seasons and the wheeling of the stars through the sky.
Fortune had turned like a grinding stone and now it was the son who stood in front of the terror of this golden realm.
When his Egyptologist father had left him as a child, Anson had tried to keep a piece of him by interiorizing him, creating a kind of inner shrine for him where he imagined his father sat alone in darkness like a god carved in stone. But his father was not a god and, if there were no heaven, was there even a god at all?
A clearing like an avenue ran through the glittering mountains. Did the imagery of streets of gold in the Biblical Revelation spring from here? A clearing like an avenue ran through the glittering mountains. Did the imagery of streets of gold in the biblical Revelation spring from here? The golden path ended in a chamber, a curious organically shaped structure at the end of the hall. It looked like a giant cartouche, of a heart. A heart with twin chambers? he wondered.
The heart of the Labyrinth.
“Continue,” the woman said.
Anson hesitated.
“You go with him,” she ordered one of her men. The man gave a mutter but obeyed her and went ahead. That was when a slab of stone gave a quiver and, like a trapdoor, vanished in a roar from under his feet. He fell soundlessly in surprise. But his brief scream that followed ended abruptly. Anson looked into the hole and shuddered.
“What?” the woman said.
“A wooden stake. It’s gone right through him.” He could see a rotting spear tip protruding from the back of the hapless man.
This was the fate of tomb robbers and the favourite punishment meted out by the god-kings since time immemorial. Death on a sharpened stake.
The others met this information in shocked silence.
“Come back, Anson,” Kalila told him. “But be careful - tread only where you’ve been.”
“No, continue,” said the woman. “We cannot stop now!” One of her men raised his rifle to underscore her command. “We must see if there is an even greater prize.”
“Aren’t the treasures of paradise enough for you?”
“Keep going.”
What more could lie beyond?
Chapter 82
PATTERNS.
What was the pattern of the stones? What scheme lay in the mind of Amenemhat’s builders when they set these traps? Was there a principle that governed the setting of the traps, or were they set randomly?
“Hurry!” the woman ordered him. “Or we will hurry your steps with a bullet!” Anson shone a torch on the stone floor directly ahead. Must the pattern be made? Had we no control over our lives? What pattern? What key? What clue?
God. King. God-king. Osiris. Sobek?
He turned to the glittering mountains of gold that bordered the avenue. What if he chose something from the pile, that heavy gold chest, perhaps, and slid it along the floor in front of himself? That way, if it triggered another trapdoor, only a box would fall.
But two paces still separated him from the chest.
A single step could trigger disaster. Should he take the risk? Chance it and step to the pile? Or keep going straight ahead? The heart of the Labyrinth lay twenty yards away. Yet the heap of gold lay tantalizingly close.
He hesitated, weighing up the odds. Two paces instead of twenty. The odds were clear. It was better to try to reach the pile. Anson prepared to slide to one side, lightly, not putting all of his weight on the stone. If he made a mistake, if he slipped, a hidden spike would find his body when he plunged.
He added more weight to the stone beside him. It held, and he held his breath. If he could gain more purchase, he could spring-load his muscles for a leap to the safety of the pile. He shifted more weight onto the stone, sliding gingerly. It was safe.
He bent his knee, coiled, leaning to spring and was about to launch himself when the stone convulsed. Blackness sucked him down, his wildly swinging beam revealing a drop below.
That did it for Kalila.
She screamed.
Her scream felt as sharp as the pointed tip of wood rushing towards his body. And feeling her fear gave him a grisly flash of a tomb robber’s last thoughts on earth. Must he meet the same fate?
Square on, it seemed.
There came a crunching sound and a thud. Then silence.
Chapter 83
“THROW ME A ROPE, somebody,” Anson called.
“Are you -?”
“Shaken that’s all,” his voice floated up from the pit. “The wood was rotten. I hit the point square on with the heel of a shoe. The thing went down like a tower block - collapsed into powder.”
He lay on the floor at the bottom of the pit, looking up at the hazy glow of their torchlight. The fall had jarred his legs, but nothing was broken.
It had felt, as he descended, that he had fallen into the pit of eternal nothingness, yet he had survived.
He was alive. But the nearness of the disaster made his stomach shrink.
What if the heel of his shoe had missed the sharpened point that raced up to meet him? What if the wood had held firm and his shoe had skidded? The spike might have caused horrendous internal injuries as it drove through his body. He was still trembling in aftershock. So close.
He would have died ‘on the wood’, just as ancient tomb robbers had died, punished by execution, their bodies transfixed on a pole next to the place of their crime.
“Get me out of here!”
He heard the woman’s voice. “Throw out a rope to him!”
He felt along the floor of the pit for his torch. There it was. He flicked the switch. Dead.
Chapter 84
WITHOUT A TORCH, under the fluttering crossbeams of their lights shining from behind him, Anson continued his approach to the heart of the structure.
He held on to the rope, keeping it taut. He tracked along it, keeping within reach of the golden mound at his side.
He slid a foot forward. If it gave under his weight, the rope would save him. It held. He rolled his weight onto the stone and took another step. On the third step, the floor roared and the stone slid away. His hands clamped even tighter on the rope as he braked himself. He teetered on the edge.
Three more steps and he reached the end of the rope. Now he was on his own. He chose an inlaid golden ushabti box with a vaulted lid and drew it towards himself. It screeched on the stone, heavy with its unseen contents - mummy-shaped servant statues cast in gold, nested inside it, he guessed. He positioned the box in front of himself and bent to slide it forward. It squealed on the stone and set his teeth on edge.
One metre, two.
It vanished from his hands. A slab of stone gave a hollow roar and swallowed it. The box landed below with a muffled crash. He chose a jewel encrusted box next. A few steps later he pushed it onto a treacherous stone and it too slipped into a void and crashed in a pit below.
What next? One of those heavy golden chairs with the leopard claw feet? Or that offering table inlaid with gold? There was also a model boat sitting on a sled. His stratagem was working. He was edging his way safely to the shrine. All the others had to do was to follow his footsteps left in the dust of the floor.
They stood in front of the heart-shaped building.
Two images, painted directly above the doorways to the two chambers, leapt into the beams. The way ahead split into two. One was the image of a dog or jackal - Wepwawet or Anubis - sitting on a shrine. Above the other door sat a beautiful, squatting goddess with a tall white feather in her headband.
“Maat, goddess of truth,” Daniel said. Dark wedges, entranceways, in the stone opened under each.
“Look at her, she’s beautiful!” Kalila whispered.
Maat sat as neatly as a cat, a tight sheath dressed pulled over her knees.
“Which way?” Anson said. “Do you know?”
“The way of truth,” I suggest,” Kalila said.
“Then we’d die,” Daniel said. “We will fall into a pit where the Great Devourer will eat our souls. This is the trial of the balance. It’s the jackal-dog who must lead us to Osiris and the trial. Psychostasis,” the big man said. “The weighing of the heart. Our hearts must be weighed against the feather of truth. If our hearts prove heavier than a feather and we are found to be guilty, we cannot pass into the Land of the Blessed.”
“As light as a feather? No human being is that innocent,” Anson thought aloud.
“It suggests the way of Maat to me,” Kalila said.
“No. We must go through the chamber of the jackal-dog,” Daniel insisted.
The weighing of the heart. Their progress rested in a balance.
“A vote?”
“I’d say follow the pointer dog,” Anson said.
Daniel led the way and they filed through the doorway. Kalila cast a uneasy glance upwards at the face of the painted jackal, the elongated Egyptian eye following them with a sly gleam.
The heart scarab and the feather, in perfect balance. It was a key image of Egyptian judgment. The heart in one pan, so light and free from sin that it could be counter-balanced by a mere feather in the other pan - the feather of Maat, goddess of truth.
They found themselves in an oval chamber surrounded by deep-cut bas-reliefs of gods and goddesses in vivid colour on walls made of blocks of stone. Apart from these reliefs, the room was empty although the floor appeared to be coated in reddish dust. They flooded the walls with their lights - Hathor, Seth, Horus, Nut jumped into view... a pantheon of gods and goddesses encircling them.
The chamber trembled with a roar like waves hitting them on each side. Then it convulsed. A grinding plane of stone began to move. The doorway - a great stone shadow slammed down blocking their exit.
They had made the wrong choice.
When the ground stopped shaking, they shone their torches around the chamber. They were trapped inside a sealed chamber, with no way back or forward.
Our hearts have failed the test. We have been found sinful, the thought hit Anson. We’re stuck in the heart of the tomb.
"I think we've just had a coronary shut down," he informed them. He looked at Kalila, Daniel and his nephews. “Any ideas?”
"There must be some mechanism that opens it again," Daniel said. "We must find it! Start looking, I suggest.”
They all joined in a search of the walls and floors, as they hunted for hidden levers or mechanisms that might open the doors, pressing individual blocks of stone, running fingers between cracks.
Sound above their heads put a stop to their efforts. Something was happening in the ceiling. Anson listened. Hissing sounds. Small apertures had opened in the roof. Red streams ran softly into the chamber.
"Blood!"
"Not blood, after three thousand years." Daniel bent and scooped up a handful. He sniffed it. "Clay dust," he muttered.
It wasn't blood, but it could kill them just as surely as any liquid.
"It's symbolic blood, dry red clay from Elephantine,” Anson said. “The red is haematite, iron oxide. In ancient legends red clay often took the place of blood when mixed with wine or water. I think this dust represents the blood of Osiris."
"If we don't get out of here soon, it will choke us," Kalila said, giving voice to their fears.
They redoubled their efforts to find a lever. They ran their hands like nervous spiders over the walls.
The powder-blood flowing into the heart gathered in piles around their feet. The streams were running faster.
Kalila coughed. Fine dust filled the air. It would suffocate them long before it covered their heads.
"Keep looking!" Daniel urged them.
"There’s nothing," Kalila said.
"It is a mechanical trap," he insisted. "There must be something that will open it again."
Were they going to die, choking in blood? Anson looked up. Was it possible to climb out of here? He searched for a beam or projection, something they could use to hang a rope from the ceiling? Nothing.
Anson went on watching the streams of red dust particles falling from the ceiling. Then the world brightened as an idea floated down to him.
“As light as a feather?” he said. “What human being is so innocent? That’s it. No human being is that light. We have to change ourselves, take on the forms of the gods. Before the dead can go on to take their place in the realm of Osiris, they had to say a spell that would change the parts of their bodies into the parts of gods.”
His eyes swept around the walls at the carved reliefs of the gods and goddesses, the torch beam turning the dust into clouds of blood.
Red dust piled up around their ankles. Anson felt the dust tickling his lungs. Daniel covered his mouth with his shirtsleeve, spluttering.
“What were the parts that must change?” Anson said.
He banged his forehead with the palm of her hand, trying to jolt his memory.
“Think, brain. Think. The Chapter of Coming forth by Day.
The Papyrus of Ani...”
The red dust turned the air into a blood storm, as if blood had already filled the chamber to its roof.
“There’s no way to open that door,” Daniel said.
“Then we’ll all die, unless we can think of a way,” Kalila said.
“I’ve got it, I think. We’re going to need a bit of divine help,” Anson said. The powder blood billowed up into their faces and seeped into their clothes. He waded through it, sinking up to his ankles.
“Am I right?” he said, with a rasp of dust in his throat.” Is there an order to this?” He reached the wall. “ The dead must take on the parts of the gods. Which gods and in which order?”
The powder was in their lungs and it tasted metallic like blood.
Anson recalled the prayer of the papyrus of Ani.
“My eyes must become the eyes of Hathor...” he said.
Hathor stood with a crown of cow horns and a solar disc between them, her lithe form rippling in the blocks of stone. He reached up to Hathor’s face and pressed the eye. A block grated back into the wall.
He twisted, face alight with relief. “I haven’t lost my touch. We’ve got to choose the parts of the gods and so change ourselves. Each part of a human body has to become a part of a god... The eyes of the dead must become the eyes of Hathor, his face the face of Ra, his cheeks the cheeks of Isis, the backbone that of Seth, the buttocks of Horus, the phallus of Osiris, the thighs of Nut, the feet of Ptah...”
Each part had to change into a god.
Anson went around the wall, brushing past the others who had covered their faces and were trying to sift the dust-laden air through their fingers.
Powder blood rose past their knees to their thighs.
Anson came to the face of Ra, a broad shouldered man with an eagle’s head and a red solar disc on his head.
“The face of Ra.”
He pressed the beaked face and another block ground back. Isis was next. “The cheeks of Isis”. The goddess stood erect and slender, wearing a crown shaped like a throne on her head. With a shaking hand, he pressed a golden cheek. A black square rumbled into the wall.
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