Scroll of Saqqara(31)

“It is unusual to find a door and not just a hole plugged with rubble,” Penbuy remarked, but Khaemwaset did not answer. He was now fighting his own sense of dread.

When the mason and his assistants arrived, the others retired under their canopies. From where he was sitting, half bemused by the mid-afternoon heat, Khaemwaset could see the dark line made by the chisels grow into the outline of a door. In another hour the mason came and knelt before him, his slick, naked chest and legs and blunt hands filmed in white dust.

“Highness, the door is ready to be forced,” he said. “Do you wish me to open it?” Khaemwaset nodded. The man went away, and soon the grind of crowbars on stone could be heard.

Hori came and squatted before his father. Silently they watched the huge square inch outwards, revealing a widening gulf of blackness. Presently Hori stirred.

“Here it comes,” he said quietly, and Khaemwaset tensed.

A thin plume of air began to pour from the aperture and billow upward into the limpid sky. It was very faintly grey. Khaemwaset, watching the horizon shake through it, fancied that its odour reached him, dank, unbearably stale, with an almost indiscernible hint of the charnel-house. The smell was familiar to him, having assaulted his nostrils on numerous similar occasions, but he thought that this time the steady stream had a particularly virulent edge.

“Look!” Hori said, pointing. “It seems to be spiralling!” Indeed, as the gush reached its zenith it was forming odd shapes. Khaemwaset thought he might have made pictures of them if they had not dissipated so quickly. Then the moment was over. The column of foetid air blew away and he got out of his chair, Hori at his heels.

“Be careful of traps, Father,” he reminded Khaemwaset, who nodded brusquely. Sometimes the tombs held cunningly concealed shafts that dropped straight into bedrock, or false doors to lure the unwary into dark pits.

Khaemwaset came to the stairs, hesitated, took a deep breath, and plunged down and through the crack the masons had managed to force. Servants with lit torches hurried behind, and Khaemwaset paused just inside the short passage to allow them time to illuminate the interior. They were obviously reluctant to do so. But then, he thought in the few seconds while they fanned out, they always are. So am I, this time. The orange flames wavered, sending streamers of shadow racing for the corners. Penbuy rattled his palette as he extracted a pen. Hori was panting lightly. Khaemwaset took his son’s arm without realizing that he did so, and together they moved into the tomb.

Although the ancient air was gone, the smell of damp and decay was very strong. Penbuy began to cough, and Hori wrinkled his nose. Khaemwaset ignored it. The anteroom, though very small, was exquisitely decorated and scrupulously tidy. It was also undisturbed. With a thrill of sheer excitement Khaemwaset saw the tiring boxes neatly stacked, the furniture in place and without so much as a scratch, the sturdy clay jars with their precious contents of oil, wine and perfume still sealed. Six stern-faced shawabtis stood motionless in their niches, waiting for the summons of their master to work in the fields or at the loom, and around them the walls gleamed with life. Vivid scenes were laid upon the white plaster.

Walking slowly, Khaemwaset marvelled at the delicacy and vibrancy the dead artists had achieved. Here the dead man and his wife sat at meal, pink lotus blooms in one hand and wine cups in the other, leaning towards each other and smiling. A young man, obviously a son, in short white kilt and with many necklaces entwined over his red chest, was offering a piece of fruit to the baboon perched at his feet. Baboons were depicted everywhere— gambolling in the painted garden where the little family reclined at their ease by the fish-pond, running behind the man as he held his spear and chased a lion across the desert, sitting with tails curled around their furry hips as the three humans had their skiff poled through a riotous green marsh in search of ducks. There was even a baboon sprawled asleep at the foot of the couch where a bilious sun was sending its early rays to wake the two who slept. Interspersed with the friezes and unfolding delights of the family’s earthly existence were black hieroglyphs exhorting the gods to welcome their worshippers into paradise, to grant them every blessing and reward in the next life, and to watch over their tomb. Hori, who had been talking to Penbuy as the Scribe began the work of copying what inscriptions he could, came over to Khaemwaset. “Have you noticed something strange about all these pictures?” he remarked.

Khaemwaset glanced at him. “The baboons?”

Hori shook his head. “No, not the baboons, although they are indeed extraordinary. The man who lies in the other chamber must have been a great devotee of Thoth. No, I mean the water. Look closely.”