Scroll of Saqqara(36)

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.

The scroll lay alone on the polished sheen of the desk, a safe distance from the alabaster lamp that customarily illuminated Khaemwaset’s night work. Penbuy was thorough and careful. At a word, the guard on the door closed it, and Khaemwaset was alone with his find.

Folding his arms he approached the desk, paused, began to pace around it, his eyes never leaving the delicate thing in its shroud of fresh white linen. Would it unroll easily, or break as he tried to flatten it? His fingers itched, yet a reluctance was on him, a shrinking from whatever the moment when he sat and touched it might bring. The night was quiet. An occasional burst of laughter floated to him very faintly from his neighbour’s garden where, he presumed, they were entertaining guests. A brief impurity in the oil of the larger lamp in its stand by the far corner made the flame spit and crackle before settling to a steady cone once more. If I wait any longer I will still be here at dawn, Khaemwaset told himself irritably. Sit, you fool! But for a few seconds more he hovered, fighting the fear of disappointment if the scroll should prove mundane, fighting the fear of something else, something unnameable. Then he pulled out his chair and removed Penbuy’s protecting linen.

He was struck again by the scroll’s pristine appearance. No mark of age or dust was on it. It had obviously been handled with exemplary care, both by the prince himself and by his embalmers. Khaemwaset touched it with the same reverence. Slowly he eased it open. It moved resiliently, with no sign of a tendency to crack. Indeed, Khaemwaset came to the end of it unexpectedly, let it go, and watched it roll up again with bated breath lest his mistake should cost him the contents. But it simply rustled on the desk then lay still.

So short! Khaemwaset thought, and the writing still so black. He pulled the lamp closer. I need Penbuy and his palette to take down my reading as I go. I will use him tomorrow. Tonight I just want to read it over.

He began to unroll it once more, both hands under the jet black characters, and was soon mystified. The hieroglyphs were like nothing he had ever seen before. They seemed to be the primitive forerunners of the present formal Egyptian script, but so ancient that their vague familiarity was a deception. The wording was in two halves, and when he had perused the first half he returned to the beginning, first getting up to go into his library and bring back a palette, pen and ink. Painstakingly he copied each character, and underneath he placed a possible meaning. The work was laborious and his concentration sharpened until he was unaware of his surroundings, the frown on his face, even the presence of his body. Not for a long time had he been so challenged, and excitement flowed through him like fine wine.

Someone knocked on the door. He did not hear. The knock came again and he shouted “Go away!” without lifting his head. Bakmut opened and bowed.

“Many apologies, Prince,” she said, “but the Princess is now on her couch and begs you to come and say goodnight.”

Surprised, Khaemwaset looked at the waterclock beside his chair. It showed him that two hours had gone by since he had begun work.

“I cannot come immediately, Bakmut,” he replied. “In half an hour I will be there. Tell Sheritra to wait.”

Bakmut bowed again and withdrew. The door clicked shut, but Khaemwaset did not notice. His head was down.

Soon he had several sentences roughed out, even though their meaning still eluded him. A hieroglyphic symbol could represent the syllable of a word or a complete word in itself, or a whole concept encapsulated in the one sign, and the signs themselves, though superficially recognizable, were ambiguous. He played with combinations, covering the papyrus on his palette with his own thin sure script, but when he had exhausted all the possibilities he still had no idea what he was seeing.

He began to whisper the words, pointing with the end of the pen as he went, thinking that they might as well have been ancient Assyrian for all the sense they made. But they did have a familiar cadence that puzzled him. He started again, this time half chanting. There was definitely a rhythm inherent in the sentences. He had done all he could on the first half of the scroll, where there was a break before the fine black lettering began again.