Scroll of Saqqara

1

Hail all ye gods of the Temple of the Soul,

who weigh heaven and earth in the scales,

who give funerary offerings.


THE COOL AIR was a welcome shock. Khaemwaset stepped gingerly into the tomb, aware as always that his was the first foot to be placed in the grey sand of the floor since the mourners, themselves long dead, had backed up the stairs before the sweepers and turned in relief to the blazing sun and a hot desert wind many centuries before. In this case, Khaemwaset mused as he carefully trod the narrow passage, the sealing was done over fifteen hentis ago. A thousand years. I am the first living being to breathe this air in a thousand years. “Ib!” he called sharply. “Bring the torches. What are you dreaming about up there?” His steward spoke a soft apology. There was a flurry of small stones which bumped sharply against Khaemwaset’s bare and dusty ankles, and Ib slithered to stand respectfully beside him while slaves moved past with obvious reluctance, carrying the smoking flames.

“Are you all right, Father?” Hori’s light tenor voice echoed against the dim walls. “Will we need to shore anything up?”

Khaemwaset cast a swift glance around and shouted back a denial. His initial enthusiasm was quickly turning to a familiar disappointment. His were not, after all, the first feet to tread the sacred floor of this ancient prince’s resting place. As he came out of the short passage and straightened he saw, in the wavering torchlight, the clear and heartbreaking evidences of robbery. Boxes that had contained the dead man’s earthly possessions were strewn about, empty. The jars that had held precious oils and wines of the best vintage of the day were missing, their only vestiges a few pieces of brittle sealing wax and one broken stopper. Furniture lay tumbled almost at Khaemwaset’s feet—a stool of plain design, a carved wooden chair whose legs were strangled ducks, their sightless eyes and flaccid necks holding up a curved seat and a backrest where Hu, the Tongue of Ptah, knelt and smiled, two low dining tables from which the delicate inlay had been stripped, and a bed that had been shoved against one plastered wall in two jagged halves. Only the six shawabtis, motionless and sinister, remained untouched in their niches around the walls. As tall as men, fashioned of black-painted wood, they still waited for the spell that would bring them to life to serve their masters in the next world. All the work had been simple, clean and pleasing in line, elegant yet strong. Khaemwaset thought of his own house, stuffed with the glittering ornate crudeness he so despised but his wife admired as the latest fashion in furniture, and sighed.

“Penbuy,” he said to his scribe, now hovering discreetly at his elbow, palette and pencase in hand, “you may begin to record what is on the walls. Please be as accurate as possible and remember not to fill in any missing hieroglyphs with your own guesses. Where is the slave with the mirrors?” It is always like driving recalcitrant cattle, he thought as he turned to study the massive granite sarcophagus whose lid was askew. The slaves fear the tombs and even my servants, though they dare not grumble, load themselves with amulets and mutter prayers from the time the seals are broken until the moment when the placatory food offering is left. Well, they need not worry today, his thoughts ran on as he bent to read the inscriptions on the coffin while a slave held a torch. Each third of this day is lucky, for them at any rate. A lucky day for me would be the finding of an untouched tomb crammed with scrolls. He smiled to himself and rose. “Ib, bring down the carpenters and have the furniture repaired and set in the correct places. Have the jars of fresh oil and perfume brought in also. There is nothing of interest here, so we should be on our way home by sunset.” His steward bowed, waiting for the prince to precede him along the suffocating passage and back up the short flight of stairs. Khaemwaset emerged, blinking, beside the pile of rubble his diggers had thrown up in their efforts to uncover the tomb door, and waited for his eyes to adjust to the blinding whiteness of the noonday sun. The sky was a dazzling blue, meeting the pure yellow of an undisturbed and endless desert on his left which shimmered as he gazed.

To his right the plain of Saqqara held the naked pillars, crumbled walls and tumbled masonry of a city of the dead, ruined far back in the depths of time and now possessed of a lonely and solemn beauty, the fine-worked stones all a pale beige, their sharp edges and long, running lines reminding Khaemwaset of some strange inorganic desert growth, as stark and comfortless as the sand itself. The stubbed, terraced pyramid of Pharaoh Unas dominated the desolation. Khaemwaset had inspected it some years before. He would have liked to restore it, to smooth its stepped sides into one pleasing whole, to dress its symmetrical face with white limestone, but the project would have taken too much time, too many slaves and conscripted peasant farmers, and a great deal of gold spent to provide bread, beer and vegetables to the workers. Still, even eroded as it was, it had a mighty presence. Khaemwaset, during his minute investigation of the Great Pharaoh’s monument, had been unable to find any name carved upon its surfaces, so he had provided Unas with renewed power and life by the hands of his own master craftsmen and had, of course, added the inscription “His Majesty has ordered it to be proclaimed that the chief of the masters of the artists, the Setem-priest Khaemwaset, has inscribed the name of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Unas, since it was not found on the face of the pyramid, because the Setem-priest Prince Khaemwaset much loved to restore the monuments of the kings of Upper and Lower Egypt.” His Majesty, Khaemwaset reflected as he began to sweat in the heat and his canopy bearer came hurrying to shade him, had not objected to his fourth son’s odd obsession, provided full credit was given to himself, Ramses the Second, User-Ma’at-Ra, Setep-en-Ra, in the matter of permissions and gracious credit to himself, the One Who Caused All to Be. Gratefully Khaemwaset felt the shadow of the canopy settle around him, and together he and his servant walked to the red tents and carpets where the bodyguards were rising to reverence him and his chair was being set in the shade. Beer and a fresh salad were waiting. He collapsed under the tasselled eaves of his tent, took a long drink of the dark, satisfying beer, and watched his son Hori disappear into the dark hole in the ground from which he himself had just come. Presently Hori reappeared and began to supervise the line of servants already carrying tools in their brown arms and clay jars on their shoulders.