Scroll of Saqqara(201)
At its familiar, comforting smell Khaemwaset felt his stomach loosen and relax. I am a priest, he thought. No matter what I have done, I am still able to be purified and to stand with the gods. “Now take the oil and pour it over my head,” he commanded. The sweet, thick liquid trickled past his ears, and finding the slight hollow of his breastbone, ran down his body. The words were coming more easily now in Khaemwaset’s mind, and he was able to remain in the present and not think about what was to come. “Open the unguent,” he said, and when Kasa had done so he anointed himself on the forehead, breast, stomach, hands and feet. “Natron,” he snapped, and it appeared before him, sifted into a little cup from the kitchen. Pinching it between his fingers, Khaemwaset placed it behind his ears and on his tongue. “Now, Kasa, drape me in the linen.” As the dazzling, voluminous square was settled around him, Khaemwaset breathed a sigh. He was completely purified. He was safe. “The sandals,” he said, and Kasa bent to slip them onto his feet. “Now, open the pot of green paint I have set out on the desk, take the brush, and trace the symbol of Ma’at on my tongue.” Kasa’s hand was trembling as he applied the brush. “I am now in the chamber of the two Ma’ats, the two truths of cosmic and human order,” Khaemwaset recited in his head. “I am in balance.”
It was time to begin. Facing the east he began his identification with the gods. “I am a Great One,” he intoned. “I am a seed which is born of a god. I am a great magician, son of a great magician. I have many names and many forms, and my form is in each god..” He went on in the same hypnotic, sing-song chant, aware that he had captured the attention of the gods. They were watching him carefully, curiously, and if his tongue slipped or he forgot a word they would turn away and his growing power over them would be lost.
He had already decided that he would not appeal to Thoth. Thoth had deserted him. He had not been given the slightest chance to rectify his sin. No, it would be Set whom he would bend to his will. Set, who had been as nothing to him, a reminder only of the savage, ancient days when Egypt’s kings were ritually sacrificed under the knives of Set’s priests to impregnate the earth with their blood. Khaemwaset had always abhorred his aloofness, his unpredictable, untameable independence. He knew very well that such an act would place him in Set’s power forever, that he would be beholden to the god he had always despised as a destructive lover of chaos for the rest of his life, would have to sacrifice to him and serve him without reservation. But of the gods, Set alone would have no qualms about the physical and spiritual destruction Khaemwaset had planned for the three he now knew were his enemies.
The process of identification was complete. The gods were held, and he stood with them. He could go on. Taking a deep breath, he shouted, “It is to you I speak, Set the turbulent, Set the bringer of storms, Set of the red hair and wolf’s face! Hear me and pay heed, for I know your secret name!” He paused, and was aware that the room had gone suddenly very still. The flame in the lamp rose absolutely straight and the tiny eddies of air that had played about him were absent. Sweat began to pour down his face and trickle cold along his spine. The god was listening. Khaemwaset chanted the precaution every magician must use before attempting to threaten a god. “It is not I who speaks thus,” he sang, “nor I who repeats that, but the magic force which has come to attack the three with whom I am concerned.”
The silence deepened. It had a disturbing, sentient quality. Khaemwaset could hear Kasa’s rapid, harsh breaths behind him. “If you do not listen to my words,” Khaemwaset went on, fighting to keep his voice rich and strong, “I will decapitate a hippopotamus on the forecourt of your temple, I will make you sit wrapped in a crocodile’s skin, for I know your secret name.” He paused then shouted four times, “Your name is ‘The-day-when-a-woman-gavebirth-to-a-son’!” He was rigidly under control, the linen already sticking to him. He had never used these spells before to do anything but good, and he was almost as afraid as poor Kasa. “I am Set, I am Set, I am Set, I am Set!” he shouted with triumph. “I am he who has divided that which was reunited. I am he who is full of vigour and great in power, Set Set Set!”
The incense, previously hanging against the ceiling in a dim grey cloud, suddenly swirled agitatedly about. The lamp flickered convulsively and a wind with a voice came blowing through the window. It was time to free himself. “Kasa,” he said. “Take the wax from the box on my desk and fashion three figures. They do not have be good likenesses, just give them each a head, a trunk, and limbs. Give two of them male genitals.” Kasa stumbled to obey, his eyes, as he crossed into the light, wide and white-rimmed. Khaemwaset drew forward a leaf of papyrus that had been newly pressed and, taking up a pen, began to write the names Nenefer-ka-Ptah, Ahura, Merhu in green ink. He also wrote the name of Nenefer’s ancestor. He was supposed to have traced Nenefer’s mother and father as well, but he did not know who they were. By the time he had finished, Kasa had the three small wax figurines made. They were crude but recognizably human.