The Buried Pyramid (48 page)

“What could they fear?” Eddie said at last, his irritable tone not for Neville, but for the mystery. “Certainly they don’t fear the ghosts of dead pharaohs or the wrath of ancient gods. The Egyptians themselves are the longest running crew of tomb robbers in the land.”

Stephen nodded, taking refuge in pedantry. “Belzoni wrote of the primitive natives of Kurneh—or was it Karnak—who lived in the outer chambers of cliff tombs with the bones of the dead scattered about their feet. Certainly, they preserve no wholesome, Christian fear of the dead.”

“So what keeps them away?” Eddie persisted. “The journey wasn’t easy for us, but it would be nothing to a Bedouin. What keeps them from profiting from this valley?”

No one had an answer. The setting sun cast shadows that seemed to make the statues of the gods move, but they retained their silence. In the rocky canyon below, a jackal found the entrails of the sheep. Its bark carried through the still air, chilling the souls of those who heard it with its note of triumph.

17

Better and Verse

By the middle of the next day, they had fallen into a working routine. Neville balked when he learned that Stephen planned to copy all of the inscriptions before making a serious effort to translate any of them.

“But if something interrupts us,” Stephen said, startled at his employer’s protest, “then we will have the texts. We can work on them anywhere.”

Neville had to agree that this reasoning was scholarly and sound, but he wanted to know what the writing said. The bits and pieces he could read only whetted his interest, hinting as they did at a more complex meaning.

“Jenny and I will take over the copying,” Neville said. “You start translating the Horus text we finished this morning. Eddie, can you handle camp chores?”

“Easily,” the other answered. “I’d like to go down into the canyons below and cut some extra fodder for the camels, but I’ll let you know before I leave.”

Neville hardly heard him.

“Jenny, I know you don’t have much knowledge of hieroglyphs, but your sketching is excellent. Can I trust you to make a perfect copy of one of the panels? Don’t omit a line or a dot. Sometimes that’s enough to change the meaning.”

“Like leaving out a single line would transform a ‘q’ into an ‘o,’ ” Jenny said. “If I’m in doubt whether some mark is intentional or just a flaw in the stone, I’ll sketch it in lightly.”

“I’ll do the same,” Neville said. “The Anubis text is closest to camp, so I’ll hobble over there.”

“And I’ll take Isis,” Jenny said. “Can’t have you gentlemen consorting with a woman in such a state of undress—especially when she’s another man’s wife.”

Favoring them all with a deliberately saucy smile, she scooped up Mozelle and her sketchbook, then trotted across to where Isis held her unspeaking court.

“That girl,” Eddie said, “is going to be trouble for some man someday.”

“She’s trouble for one now,” Neville said. “I don’t know whether I should try to marry her off or tuck her in a nunnery.”

“She wouldn’t thank you for either,” Eddie prophesied.

Stephen remained unnaturally intent on his notes during this conversation, and Neville found himself wondering if the linguist was smitten with his niece. Jenny was certainly lovely enough to turn a man’s head, but there didn’t seem to be any sparks flying between the two.

Crutch firmly anchored in his armpit, Neville thumped across the sand. He distracted himself from the pain attendant on this slow progress by thinking of Audrey Cheshire. There was loveliness and more, no doubt about it.

That evening, Stephen announced he had translated two portions of the inscription near Horus.

“There is more than one text,” he explained, “as can be seen by the varied directions in which the hieroglyphs are oriented. I started with the one from the upper section of the panel.”

“Stop playing professor,” Neville said, irritably. His eyes hurt from the glare, and his copying had been less than swift. He’d kept stopping to try and make sense of what he was working with, and succeeded only in frustrating himself.

Stephen cleared his throat. “I went for speed, and accuracy, not artistry. Forgive any awkwardness.”

“We do,” Jenny said, “in advance.”

Stephen cleared his throat once more, and Neville was just feeling guilty about pressing someone who had just a day or so before been nearly killed by heat stroke, when the young man began:

From the East comes he, Horus the Hawk, Horus the Avenger.

With the Sun comes he, Horus the King, Horus the Son.

Born of living mother, murdered father, comes he who causes the wicked to flee in terror.

He thrashes them with his flail, herds them with the wind rising from the beating of his strong wings.

He tramples them, as the Pharaoh tramples all who threaten the Black Land.

He is terrible in his wrath, yet tender in his protection of those who dwell beneath the shelter of his wings.

From the East comes Horus, and with him comes the wind.

Stephen’s recital was met with respectful silence, and he commented rather shyly, “That’s all of the first bit.”

“It was lovely,” Jenny said, “but frightening, too.”

Stephen looked pleased. “I remind you that my interpretation may not be exactly what the writer intended. I had to guess where hieroglyphs had been partially effaced. The tone is not precisely traditional, at least from what I know . . .”

“Is there more?” Neville interrupted. “I realize that piece is quite long, but if you have any others, we would enjoy hearing them.”

More relaxed now, Stephen did only a minimal clearing of throat and shuffling of papers before beginning.

“This one seems to be cautionary in nature, perhaps a curse against impious behavior. Quite the thing for a place like this.”

Forget not that the Eye of Horus is the Eye of the Hawk,

The keen Eye that sees the evildoer and the just man alike.

Horus shreds the evildoer with cruel curving beak and punishing claws.

The wind from the wings of Harakhtes, the wind from the east, buries the evildoer beyond the sound of prayer or the gifts of his kin.

In the afterlife the evildoer will be a slave and no wine will ease his hours.

He will dine upon excrement and the leavings of monsters.

When he comes before Osiris, he will have no gifts for the father of his slayer.

Osiris will condemn him.

Anubis will refuse the opening of his mouth.

The evildoer will long for nothingness and be denied.

He will slave forever in filthy darkness and rank starvation.

“The other was frightening,” Jenny said. “This one is plain horrid.”

“Ironic, too,” Stephen commented, “since the tomb robber would probably be illiterate and not understand the warning.”

“I wonder,” Neville said, “if that’s correct in this case. The legend of Neferankhotep says that priests, jealous of the pharaoh’s favor in the eyes of the gods, were the ones who attempted to rob him. They would have understood this well enough.”

“You sound,” Eddie said with a thin smile, “as if you believe all that nonsense about the gods.”

“I don’t,” Neville said quickly—perhaps a touch too quickly, for Eddie’s smile only broadened. “However, the people who reburied Neferankhotep here would have known the story.”

Eddie let the matter drop.

“What fascinates me,” he said, “are the references to the wind from the wings of Horus. As I recall—and I don’t claim to be an expert, but I have lived here over ten years—the prevailing wind in Egypt blows from the north, the opposite direction from the Nile current, which is why it is such a friendly river for navigation. This ‘wind from the east’ seems to be something other than natural.”

Jenny cut in before anyone could respond to Eddie’s challenge. “By the way, who was Harakhtes? He’s the one with the wind in this verse.”

“It’s another name for Horus,” Stephen said. “Horus of the Horizon. I think later periods merged him with the sun god, Ra. It’s an appropriate title for Horus in his role as all-seeing god, just as Hor Nubti, Horus of Gold, was the common name for Horus in his role as avenger of his father. I took a few liberties there . . .”

Neville interrupted. “Eddie has an interesting point. I hadn’t thought about the wind from the east being a supernatural wind. I guess I thought it was a reference to the
khamseen
.”

“The
khamseen
?” Jenny asked.

“It’s a wind that comes from the southwest, usually in early summer,” Neville explained. “It’s quite terrible. It can last for up to fifty days without much of a break. Dust clouds blot out the sun, temperatures rise, sometimes destroying the crops. As if that wasn’t enough, the
khamseen
seems to encourage flying insects. I can’t think of a more vivid curse.”

“But you said this
khamseen
comes from the southwest,” Stephen protested. “I took no liberties with the direction mentioned in the text. This Horus wind definitely comes from the east.”

Neville shrugged. “I am sure you translated accurately. After all, this is a ritual inscription, not a guide to advise travelers. As I see it, Horus is usually associated with the east. Here he is also associated with the sun god, Ra. The sun comes from the east, and so would Horus, and so would any wind he brings to punish the wicked. I think we are unwise to imagine more.”

Jenny looked as if she wanted to agree, but stubbornness wouldn’t let her.

“But shouldn’t we take the legend seriously, Uncle Neville? You didn’t believe Alphonse Liebermann was onto anything, but here we are. And it wasn’t that long ago that that German . . .”

“Schliemann,” Stephen interrupted.

“That German,” Jenny persisted, “found Troy by following descriptions in Homer. I’m not saying there’s any truth to the story about gods burying the original mortuary complex, but I’m saying that Eddie’s right. We should take notice of any oddities. If you and Eddie are right, a wind from the east might stand out to an ancient Egyptian like someone putting the Rockies running wrong way along North America would stand out to us.”

“We’ll see what the other texts tell us,” Neville promised. “In the meantime, the light is growing too poor for us to continue, and I’d like to preserve our lamp oil for if we find something underground. Shall we entertain ourselves with something other than archeological speculation for the evening?”

“Papa Antonio taught me how to play
senet
,” Jenny suggested. “That doesn’t take much light.”

The evening passed quickly, all the more so in that everyone was tired enough to go to sleep early. Eddie insisted that they continue to post watches, though Stephen was omitted from the rotation until he was recovered from his heatstroke.

In the morning, they continued copying and translating. Eddie went out and shot a goat. Once the meat they couldn’t hope to eat before it spoiled was curing, he occupied himself poking around the bases of the statues and looking for other areas that might hold inscriptions. He found a few, but Stephen judged them hieratic texts, much later than the elegant inscriptions on the panels near the statues.