In the time
of the Pharaoh Shoshenq II, shortly after the end of the grandeur of Egypt’s
New Kingdom, a time when the ordinary were ignored and their activities long
since forgotten, lived a resourceful, scribal young man named Anseb;
resourceful because the early death of his father, which had left the family
poor, had forced the development of such traits and scribal because his still
young, well-meaning mother, attractive though talentless, had managed to pay
for her son’s education by way of a very loose and distant connection to
royalty which afforded her the company of wealthy men, one of whom, taking a
passing interest in the son though overwhelmingly in the mother, had agreed to
fund his education to the top scribal school in Memphis as a present to her for
a short lived affair. An intelligent,
though some said, overly imaginative teenager of 18 years, Anseb thrived in his
studies, learning to decipher the hieroglyphs of various texts; his morbid
curiosity, fueled in part by a somewhat darker view of life which the children
of parents who die young often develop, tilted towards the funeral texts, his
young, imaginative and, frankly, bored need for titillation greatly satiated by
the depictions of gods and goddesses aiding powerful figures in their battles
against the monsters of the Underworld in texts like the Amduat and the later Book
of the Dead. He knew both ancient texts thoroughly
and, hopefully, would one day translate such hieroglyphs to artists for painting
and chiseling onto not only the walls of tombs but onto those of temples,
monuments, statues and any number of other surfaces. Such was the much sought after power of the
scribe in an overwhelmingly uneducated world.
That future, however, hung in the balance, for his benefactor, a high
ranking official in the Memphis city government, had recently grown tired of
his aging mother and permanently left the scene on a moment’s notice, not even
bothering to talk with Anseb or show the least concern for the final leg of his
education. The young scribe in training needed
money desperately as his final term at school approached and the situation had
become critical.
Wracking his excellent though financially
inexperienced brain for ideas, he remembered what appeared to be an old tomb
he’d come across after getting lost while hiking outside Memphis alone a few
years before. Lonely after first leaving
home to live at school, he’d wandered into a virtually never travelled area and
gotten lost in one of a large series of cliffs, a huge, rocky section of
supposedly nothing. There, in a winding
series of passageways, he’d observed the outline of what was clearly a large cut
space covered over by rubble. In his
anxious need to find his way back home, he hadn’t entertained any thought of
entering at the time but now it blazoned across the landscape of his
brain.
Why build a tomb there?
Ostensibly to keep it hidden but why in such a forbidden place, far away
from the main cemeteries on the Nile’s West Bank and even the main necropolises
of Memphis? His intellectual curiosity
faded, replaced by normal human nature, when he considered the possible wealth
contained inside. Wealth. Money just lying there in the middle of
nowhere in a forgotten place, probably from a forgotten era. He didn’t need it all. Just enough.
All he wanted out of life was enough.
He’d do the rest; his drive and his work would do the rest. Determined like never before, he committed
himself to finding that tomb again and taking what he needed from it. He didn’t consider it grave robbing. He considered it surviving. His father was dead and his mother was no
help if she couldn’t find the right man for support at the right time and that
time had gone. He was a man now and he’d
do what needed to be done. All great men
who came before would do the same.
He spent the next several days
searching without success. A week later,
just on the verge of quitting, he found what he was looking for, once again essentially
by accident, after walking up a path in one of the dozens of high cliffs in the
target area then winding through the labyrinthine set of passageways which
opened into a small clearing around a hundred feet above ground level. A large overhang covered the clearing like a
stone awning some fifty feet long; at its end, the cliff opened out into the
countryside, providing the clearing’s only light. The burial opening was cut into a deep recess
in one of the walls of rock, still covered over by the same pile of rubble. He noticed footprints, the only footprints,
undisturbed in the thin layer of sand on the flat stone floor and deduced them
as his own, left two years previously. Though the large stone awning eventually
reached out to the open air, because of the footprints he felt sure the area
was insulated completely from the effects of the elements; he also felt
confident that no one had entered the area since and, thanking his good fortune
for both hiking in obscure places and easily getting lost, delighted that only he
and the dead knew the place now. He
still didn’t think himself a tomb robber but he couldn’t shake off a slight sense
of superstitious foreboding. His education
and imaginative nature made him wonder.
So many stories of gods and goddesses and monsters. So many people believed it. Checking himself, he was startled to realize
he’d never even given it much thought, despite the heavy religious education
Egyptian children received. Gods. Goddesses.
Monsters. Protectors of
tombs. Destroyers of corrupters. He shook his head. Just stories.
Anseb returned with a hammer, chisel,
two oil lamps and a flint and went to work over the next few days. After some hard labor with the two former
objects, he knew he was at the last layer of rubble blocking the
entranceway. The last layer contained hieroglyphic writing,
a series of symbols at the top like the header on a roll of papyrus. The symbols included a series of waves, a
lion, an owl, several feathers, two vultures, two hands and two eyes. A wave of fear surged into his heart when he
translated,
“Only the damned are here.”
Nothing else. No other
markings, no incantations, blessings or curses.
Just an epitaph, a single, cryptic line perhaps meant to dissuade anyone
from entering or, perhaps, just a final condemnation for those within. Anseb stared at the symbols for several
seconds, blinked hard twice then began angrily hacking away with his hammer and
chisel, ashamed of his fear and unwilling to let anything stop him, least of
all just words painted on rock. Still,
he waited until his bit of work to cut into the hieroglyphs, cracking several
segments though not breaking clearly through.
Something seemed to be holding him off, preventing him from that last
step. The open air past the stone awning
revealed the setting sun. It was late
and he suddenly wasn’t interested in staying.
Combined with the exhaustion of a long day of labor, the young man
decided not to fully break through the final level until tomorrow. Then he would have plenty of time to enter
and explore. Confidently leaving his objects
there, he left for home, sliding through a crack in the rock wall into the
first passageway, greatly excited for his return, when he expected to explore
and hopefully find the wealth of dreams.
Then he heard it.
“Awwwwwww.”
A low though undeniable moan.
He froze as the haunting noise seemed to creep across the stone around
him in a layer of cold, Nile slime, slime that then creeped up his back and shrouded
him like a cloaked corpse. He felt his
ears stiffen defensively, stretching for any further sound, but only heard
silence. Looking in all directions, as
people do when trying to locate a sound from nowhere, he eyed the crack in the
wall leading back to the tomb and couldn’t resist a shudder. With trepidation and a slight delay, he squeezed
back into the clearing and noticed a small chunk of rock he’d chiseled had
given way and fallen out, creating a small hole into the tomb’s main corridor. Inching towards it, Anseb saw it was from a
section of the painted hieroglyphs. He
picked up the fallen chunk and read it.
A hand, a vulture, an owl and a wave.
He dropped it like it had just fallen from the sun, fast walked then jogged
then ran back into the passageway, not stopping his quickened pace until he’d
exited the cliffs. Painted on the chunk
of rock he’d picked up was one word:
“Damned.”
He failed to return the next night nor over the next several
days as the thought of being greeted with that moan again made a quick attempt
to enter the tomb impossible. All week,
he tried to use his reason to explain the sound. Had to be the wind. The wind came and whistled in the crevice
created by the fallen stone he’d chiseled.
That’s what happened. Yet that
area, completely isolated from the elements, seemingly had no wind. His footprints from two years ago hadn’t been
disturbed in any way. No, it had to
be…some kind of creaking in the rock when the stone gave way? Some sort of phenomenon he didn’t understand which
caused a moaning. Yet how could it? Maybe his ears had played tricks on him. He was tired and he knew he was
impressionable to an extent. Maybe it
was something else. Yes, he’d heard
wrong. He wondered if he should plug the
hole but, overcome by that odd sensation of suddenly not being alone, realized
the last thing he wanted in the world was to approach that opening. All
those stories of gods and goddesses…and monsters. No.
Couldn’t be true. And the chunk of rock that had fallen out with
that word painted on it?
Coincidence. Yet, his reason
couldn’t overcome his emotions, most specifically his sense of dread. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t
force himself to go back to that spot.
As the date for payment for what would
be his final school term approached, he took to conducting long walks in the
area of the cliff, trying to work up enough courage to continue on, knowing
he’d need time to both inspect the tomb and work to extract any treasures inside
but time was almost out. Finally, with only a few days left before he’d
have to have the money, he stiffened his backbone while on one of his walks,
swallowed his apprehension and chose to enter and scout around. His walk had begun in the early afternoon and,
by the time he’d made his choice, the sun had begun to sink. He cursed himself a fool. The fear of a sound which probably came from
the wind or something natural had kept him away until the very end and now here
he stood, in an isolated place possibly only he, as a living person, knew the
location of in a landscape soon to be consumed by night. Whatever fear he’d felt before felt half what
he felt now but he knew he’d never have the nerve to enter again if he left so
he continued. He was educated. He didn’t believe in what he couldn’t
see. Moans couldn’t come out of
nowhere. He hadn’t felt or heard a wind
but there must have been one and that’s all there is to it. Given the circumstances, it had to be.
He walked up the trail and accessed the passageways with the
caution of one expecting a hail of arrows at any moment from an enemy army. He entered the clearing and eyed the hole in
the final layer blocking the burial chamber.
It seemed to widen as he stared, an imagined silent hiss from the visible
mouth of a black viper which pulled him in, ready to consume and digest
him. He inched towards it as if to sneak
up on it, taking it by surprise, fearing any further sound would shatter his will
and send him fleeing back home, never to return. Not willing to take his eyes from the
opening, suspicious of something, nothing or everything, he crouched down to
pick it up one of his oil lamps and inadvertently knocked it over, spilling
large amounts of oil. With an exclamation,
he hurriedly groped for it and set it upright, some of the ooze getting on his
hand, more than half its oil now staining the stone floor.
Now aware that one of his lamps would provide him with little
light if needed, anger at his clumsiness once again replaced fear as he picked
up his hammer and chisel with disgust and began finishing his work on the
rubble, taking care to hammer off each word of painted hieroglyph left in an
act of defiance. He’d soon broken enough away to create enough space to wedge
through, his anxiety to explore dissuading any further labor. He carefully lit his full oil lamp with his
flint, hovered it over the now large hole and recoiled when the flame snuffed
out, as if the invisible black viper had flicked it with its tongue. Clearly there was a breeze of some sort from
within, which also explained the moan he’d heard several days before. What
did it matter if he’d felt none? Wind
was wind, whether he felt it or not. He
lit the lamp again, the light breaking through the weight of the heaviest
darkness he’d ever put his arm through, illuminating a space a few feet in
front of what appeared to be a hallway with a set of steps chiseled into the
concrete, the top few still buried in rubble.
As he made his first move to enter, his eyes couldn’t help scanning for
the chunk of rock marked with the hand, vulture, owl and hand. He exhaled with relief when he couldn’t see
it among the many chips and hunks he’d hacked through and thrown aside. Picking up his second lamp, he set it just
outside the entrance as he squeezed feet first inside, taking care to protect
his light, his right then his left foot finding one of the bottom steps. Dust soiled his tunic as he entered but, otherwise,
he went in without a scratch. He reached
back for his second oil lamp as he tepidly tip toed down the bottom steps
inside, pausing with each footfall before continuing. Once fully inside, he set the unlit oil lamp
down by the final step. The arid place,
devoid of water, smelled of nothing. He
manipulated his oil lamp high and low. The
hallway, seemingly carved into the rock haphazardly, had a short ceiling, only
about six feet high, just enough to walk through but no more. The immediate walls were bare but over the
steps on the ceiling was painted a large representation of the god Geb, portrayed
traditionally as a man holding a staff in one hand and an ankh in the other but
also with a cobra looped around his throat like a necklace, its tail clasped in
its mouth. Geb, father of snakes and the
one who caused earthquakes by his laughter.
His appearance puzzled Anseb for Geb had only scant influence on the
dead and none on their final journey to the afterlife. Why was he portrayed thusly at the tomb’s
entrance? Surely Anubis would be better… Trying to keep his focus, Anseb shook his
head and continued his search.
He walked forward nearly thirty feet with more representations
of Geb on the ceiling every five feet or so, giving the impression of a trail lain
with bits of food. He reached the end of
the hall, only about another twenty feet down, with Geb’s painted eyes watching
him each step. The ceiling progressively
tapered lower than his height, forcing him to stoop slightly, as he reached the
end of the hall and into the burial chamber.
No rooms were cut to the sides, as was usually the case in the tombs of
the most powerful and, by extension, the wealthiest. Was there only one room here? It was an older tomb, possibly a thousand
years old or more. His spirits began to
sink. Hastily carved with no consideration
for proper measurements, possibly only one room and, as he noticed before
crossing the threshold, no steps to descend going in. Perhaps no treasure existed at all here. Maybe they just dumped a body there and
left. Then again, he hadn’t explored
anything yet. Perhaps there were
multiple rooms attached to this main room.
He entered the burial chamber like in a slow-motion trance, making sure
to keep to the near wall to his left for safety, unwilling to wander into the middle
for now. He raised his lamp to get an
idea of the surroundings. His arm fully
extended, the light barely shined on the ceiling so he estimated it to be
around nine feet high, around the height of a regular Egyptian room. The first thing he saw on the wall, which
gave him a start, was an enormous representation of a snarling baboon, painted
dark brown, perhaps twice as large as life size. The baboon represented the “opener of the
gates” for departed souls in texts like the Amduat, the Book of the Hidden
Chamber, popular in older tombs, more recently surpassed in importance by the
Book of the Dead. The baboon began the
process of allowing the spirit to advance through the waters of the Netherworld
on the way to immortality. Painted next
to it where a set of hieroglyphs which, once translated, proved the opposite to
be true.
‘Baboon,’ it read. ‘You
who makes music for those who begin their journey across the waters, instead of
opening your mouth in harmony, close your mouth, withhold the secret language
from the cowards buried here. May they
not learn the words to gain access to that which provides immortality. May they be damned forever for their
treachery.’
The word “damned” made him think of his recent pitfalls and
the meaning of what he read. He’d never studied
any text with this message. It seemed to
be unique, perhaps created specifically for this tomb, but it was a good
sign. The tomb may have been carved
abruptly and without care but the body or bodies there at least warranted a type
of funeral text and those were not just for anybody. But what of this magic invocation for the
baboon? Who was entombed here and why
were their souls damned? The soul could
not attain eternal life with the gates closed.
Whoever lied there, they were certainly condemned.
A few feet down from the baboon and its
writing was the picture of twelve coiled uraeus serpents in three rows of four,
one on top of the other. In classic funeral
texts, the uraeus serpent lit the way for the souls of the dead through the early
stages of the Netherworld’s dark waters with their fiery breath, serving as living
torches. The magic command for these creatures
in their subsequent hieroglyphs kept in the same line as that of the
baboon.
‘Serpents, who light the way of
deserving souls, withhold your fiery breath as a beacon from these traitors. Keep their Bas in darkness but use your
flames to sear their bodies. Keep them
from peace as they burn in agony.’
Traitors? So whoever lay there had incurred the wrath
of powerful people and been condemned for their supposed treachery. What did they do to deserve the punishment of
spiritual non-existence, the worst punishment imaginable?
As he moved along to the next wall, his
foot kicked what felt like a large chunk of rock in the corner, prompting an unavoidable
curse from his lips. A quick scan with
his lamp showed what looked more like brick than stone. Careful not to stub his toe again, he began
looking over the next wall, his lamp lighting a complex set of hieroglyphs in
pictures and characters painted from end to end which told a story of treason and
betrayal, of a plot concocted by the vizier and queen of an unnamed pharaoh to
seize power some eight hundred years earlier, prior even to the creation of the
Theban Necropolis. The painted pictures
showed the two conspirators, lovers behind the king’s back, in bed, with the
words,
‘They met and made love in his own
bed chamber and conspired to take both his throne and his life.’
The next set of pictures showed the Queen
addressing a woman, painted in the slightly smaller manner denoting lower
status, who then addresses a man her size in the dress of a palace guard.
‘They poisoned the mind of the
favorite concubine of Pharaoh against him and she in turn poisoned the mind of
one of his trusted guardsmen.’
The next set showed the concubine and
the guardsman again but with another man in guard’s clothes hiding behind a
pillar. It read,
‘But the traitors were overheard by
another guard, who told their Captain, who informed Pharaoh. Their plan to kill him on his own bed failed
and they were arrested.’
The corresponding set showed the results of
the trap that was set; a man in royal garb, ostensibly the King, in the royal bed
with the concubine. The guard brought
into the conspiracy stood behind another pillar, waiting for his best chance to
attack and kill. The set after that
showed two new guards taking their treasonous comrade by each arm and another
tying the concubine’s hands behind her back.
Pharoah stands at an elevated position to the side, his hieroglyph
towering over the events, holding a Was scepter, the symbol emphasizing the
power he still held.
The next set of pictures chronicled
in gory detail the gruesome torture and deaths of the conspirators, including a
palace scribe outed by the torture of the others, who had been tasked to create
a false record of what was to be the assassination to cover for those involved
and fool the public. The concubine had her ears and nose cut off
before being smothered. The palace
guardsman was disemboweled and his guts, that part of the body seen as the
center of the strength of soldiers to fight for Pharaoh, were ripped out while
he was still alive. The scribe’s hands,
which were to pen the false narrative saying the King had died by drowning in
the Nile, were cut off, leading to his rapid death from blood loss. The Queen, befitting her status, received the
quickest death, a swift one stroke beheading by ax; the Vizier, whose words
were seen as the start of it all, received the worst. Both sides of his mouth were slashed and his
jaw yanked down until it ripped apart; his chest was then cut open and his
heart gouged out. For good measure, he
had also been castrated while alive.
‘Such is the punishment of the
betrayers of Pharaoh, the Sungod on Earth,’ the funeral text laid out as the
final punctuation on all the gruesomeness.
Anseb closed his eyes at the horror
of it all. What vicious
retribution. The heinous plot deserved
punishment, of course, but to that extent?
Such was his naivete of the power politics of his era, when the evil
faced horrible punishments and, sometimes, the good faced even worse.
Laid out in hieroglyphs on the next wall, the one opposite
the entrance, were the condemnations and final judgments for the
conspirators. The scribe, guard and
concubine, considered small fish doing what they were either told or
manipulated to do, escaped damnation, their separate, brutal mutilations punishment
enough. The Vizier and Queen weren’t so
lucky. The hieroglyphs for their fates
contained the following chilling proclamation:
‘For the former Queen and disgraced
Grand Vizier, whose names do not deserve mention, eternal limbo, stuck in their
bodies between Heaven and Hell, bathed in eternal darkness, always close to the
light but unable to reach it. Their
bodies will be covered with broken lapis to prevent their souls from reaching freedom. For them, the gates will be forever closed. If either escapes their body, may Apophis,
dreaded snake of the dark, deadly serpent of chaos, take each in the
unbreakable strength of his muscular coils and burn them in the pitiless Lake
of Fire as Sekhmet, that lion headed goddess and eye of Ra, bites their face
and rips their head to pieces.’
On the wall next to this final
judgment, as a kind of frightening postscript, Anseb’s lamp lit the face of an
enormous snake, presumably Apophis, normally the soul’s enemy in need of
vanquishing in funeral texts, now invoked as an instrument of retribution
should the souls of the Vizier and Queen escape their earthly remains. Apophis’ likeness, coils upon coils stacking him
high until his face reached the eye level of a regular human, glared out into
the room with open mouth and forked tongue, looking ready to strike at an
invisible victim. Anseb thought of his impression
while staring at the hole in the tomb’s opening earlier, giving him the
impression of a deadly snake. Now, here Apophis
of the Amduat sat on layer upon layer of his coils, fangs bared as if looking
for souls to eat. He noted the absence
of Sekhmet on the wall, which struck him as strange. He then slowly shook his head in disbelief. Surely what was thus chronicled could not
have been acted upon.
A few feet down on the next wall proved him wrong as his
light shined on something leathery, something shriveled. A sharp jolt of nausea hit his stomach as he
examined closer. Hanging on the wall by
a rope at its waist like some slaughtered animal was the withered, long dead
body of a woman, completely naked, perhaps as a form of debasement or insult,
the arms angled slightly forward, rigid from where they’d hardened. Anseb’s face pursed with revulsion when he saw
she had no nose, ears or eyes, both former features hacked off and the latter
rotted out with time. No doubt the
concubine of the story. The weathered,
dark brown skin clung to the skeleton like tight clothing and the mouth hung
open in a final shriek of pain. He’d
never seen anything so terrible, never wanted to believe anything that terrible
could exist. A few feet down, his next
discovery rivaled his first for shock for there hung a second body, this one a
man, probably the guard by the looks of him, in a loin cloth. A huge hole yawned in his stomach with bits
of dried skin stiff around the edges and the remnants of snapped bones within,
as if he’d been slit by a large knife and his ribs ripped apart by powerful
hands. An examination of the horribly
contorted face made it obvious this man had died that way, cut open and disemboweled
alive, just as the text said. A few more
few feet down hung the next and last of the trio, the scribe with no hands and
a blank, empty facial expression like his soul had been sucked from his body by
spiders draining him of blood. A woman
hacked to pieces and two men butchered like hogs. Three people killed with savage brutality
left to hang there in timeless shame.
Far from being among the sacred, Anseb had stepped into what was truly a
chamber of horrors, of manmade monstrosities whose reality should only run amok
in the imaginations of the most depraved.
“They are dead,” he reasoned to himself, over and over. “They are dead. They have been dead many years and cannot
hurt anyone. Whatever they did once, it
is unimportant now. Unimportant because
they are dead. They are dead. They are dead.”
He breathed a sigh of relief at the lack of writing or images
on the last bit of wall next to the entrance as he finished his circuit. The worst of this terrible place could only
be over now. Hopefully only treasure and
the continuance of what was a bright future for him remained. He turned towards the middle of the room to
get a look at what he assumed would be the location of two caskets…and stared
straight into the bug eyed, blood spattered, nightmarish face of a freshly dead
man. Anseb shouted loudly enough to wake
the dead there. His lamp flew out of his
hands as he reflexively threw up his arms.
Terrified out of his reason, he ran towards the entrance in the now dark
room, managed to find and get through it then sprinted towards the tomb opening
as fast as he could. One nightmare too
many had revealed itself and he was finished.
He could choose another career.
Anything. But he had to get out
of there. Moving with blind, thoughtless
panic and unable to see anything in the dark hallway, he lost his sense of
awareness and tripped over the tomb entrance’s first step. His head slammed into the rubble burying the
stop steps at the top and he crumbled to the floor, instantly unconscious.
He awoke a half hour later, his opening right eyelid moving a
thin bit of dust from where his head had lain on the stone floor, forcing him back
to attention in order to rub it. His
forced sleep and current headache brought on a sense of reset to his situation,
a sense of renewed sobriety that had been shattered by the terror of seeing…a
dead body? Had he truly seen a dead man,
not one of the cadavers hanging on the wall, but a man like himself, a contemporary
peer? It still scared him to the point
of fleeing but now his reason had returned due to the unplanned rest. The matter of his schooling and the funding
it desperately needed loomed larger and larger in his mind and the pressure wouldn’t
allow him to leave. He also felt a sense
of connection to the place now, as if the death stored in the tomb walls had
penetrated his body and possessed his spirit as he slept. Rising gingerly, he felt the pain above his
right eye, which forced him to concentrate; he realized he must find the second
lamp and the flint he’d brought in to make further search possible. Taking special care of his footfalls, he
reached into the general area by the steps where he’d left it, near where he’d
fallen unconscious, groping for it in the dark.
Spilled earlier, the lamp now had little oil left and one more mishap
would finish it and him. The darkness
began to feel heavy, as it had when he first entered. Exasperated, he timidly reached out and nearly
burst into tears as his fingernails finally scraped against the clay object. He managed to pick up both the lamp and flint
and, moments later, had light again, albeit dim and sparse but he could see, if
only barely.
He creeped back to the chamber with a sense of awe, still
skeptical his discovery of the recently dead body actually happened. He stepped directly into the middle of the
room, rigidly holding his lamp, afraid the slightest movement might make it go
out again, more and more afraid for its precious supply of oil with each step. Once, the light flickered and Anseb held his
breath. The light dimmed, dimmed, then returned
to the previous level. He must find
another light source and fast. Nearly
the moment he thought it, the type of cauldron used to light large rooms appeared
before him as if Renenet, goddess of good fortune, had sent it herself. He very carefully tilted the lamp into what
looked like charcoal with no luck on the first two tries then came up with an
idea. Taking a leap of faith in his own
creativity, he blew out the light, poured the remaining oil on the charcoal and
tried to light it with his flint. After
a few flicks of sparks, the charcoal ignited, the chamber finally illuminated well
enough to see most of the room, save for a few shadowy spots here and there.
His eyes immediately
bored into the sight of what was, indeed, a recently dead man near the cauldron,
the flickering fire producing the eerie dance of light and shadows on the body,
which stood upright next to one of two sarcophagi in the room’s center. A large section of rock from the ceiling had showered
down on the poor man, both trapping his right leg and opening up a huge gash on
his forehead, which poured blood all over his face and down his chest. It smelt only faintly like decomposing flesh,
apparently the process of bodily decay having mostly taken place. A quick look at the upper right leg made Anseb
shiver and take a step back. A gaping
slash nearly five inches long and an inch wide was ripped to the bone. The hideous wound, now crusted with mounds of
scar tissue, had drenched the rest of the leg and the rocks burying it in red. Trapped and desperate, unable to move inside
a remote section of cliff in the desert, the dead man must have taken up a
piece of rock from the pile and tried to cut his own leg off to escape, death
probably occurring from blood loss. As
he bled out, his standing body just kind of leaned on some of the rocks which
had buried him. He couldn’t have been
there longer than two weeks, the corpse still emanating a kind of life as if it
would move, taking up the stone again, to continue frenziedly slicing at its
own leg, the end goal being a one legged man hemorrhaging buckets of blood,
each second crawling with his last strength for the entrance, not noticing or
caring he’d still be too far away from civilization to make it back alive. Anseb tried to close the man’s eyelids, both out
of compassion and to end their hideous glare but couldn’t, the lids unmoving as
if the eyes were fated to bore a hole into his every activity until he left
that horrible place.
As he moved over to the corner where he’d earlier kicked the
chunk of what appeared to be brick, he noticed and counted seven large hieroglyphic
representations of Geb covering every section of ceiling except for two areas; the
one where the dead man had been trapped, which he assumed had also been adorned
with the gods’ likeness before it caved in, the other in the corner he now
moved to. He observed an opening in the
ceiling right above him, about three feet by three feet, two distant stars in
the now night sky visible as tiny specks.
On the floor appeared to be broken clumps of mud mixed with straw, which
could only be bricks. He reasoned the
tomb, possibly built on short notice, had been built too high to the top of the
cliff in that section. The builders had
broken through the top and chose to cover up their masonry mistake with
brick. At some point, the bricks
obviously had given way and collapsed, falling and breaking to pieces. He also now observed a moderately long cord
of rope on the floor. He guessed the dead
man, a rare soul like himself in that area of desert, had hiked to the top of
the cliff and unwittingly stepped onto the bricked-up section, breaking part or
all of it open. The man, perhaps like
he, realizing he’d found a lost tomb, had come back later to see if he could
find anything of value, lowering himself down by the rope, which had given
way. Anseb again looked up over the dead
man at the ceiling. That section must
have a large crag above, providing more than enough rock to bury the man. The rocks had fallen but only from the
underside. How could this happen? He couldn’t repress the idea of the
supernatural once again. Perplexed, his
eyes danced around the hollowed-out section of ceiling. Could the gods…somehow make rocks fall on
people?
But now came the time to conduct his business. He approached the two sarcophagi in the
center, side by side and perpendicular to the room’s entrance, one open and one
closed, the former with what appeared to be an undisturbed mummy lying inside. The removed casket lid lay to its side; he’d
narrowly avoided stepping on it during his first circuit. Just past their feet in between the caskets
and the second stretch of wall, as if reading his mind from earlier, stood a
full-sized statue of Sekhmet, with the body of a woman and the head of a lion. Sekhmet, the violent warrior goddess, avenger
against all that is dark and disorderly.
A heroine of justice. The circle
seemed to be complete, with all interpretations of all the characters of the unique
funeral text represented in some way in the chamber. He passed over the closed casket, the one
closest to the entrance, for the moment so he could focus on the open one. The smaller body size made it likely to be
the Queen. The only thing visible on the
outside of the body was a necklace of a thin, clearly worthless metal with
empty sockets where possibly stones used to be, presumably the lapis lazuli
mentioned in the text. Anseb cursed as
he looked over the open casket. Nothing
visible. Why were the sockets in the
necklace empty? Where had the jewels
gone? The thought they could be hidden in
the recently dead man’s loin cloth, which they in fact were, flashed across his
mind but he hurriedly rejected such a search.
He wanted no part of that corpse.
Maybe after he looked over the body of the Vizier. Maybe.
He lifted the mummy’s left hand
to see if any rings adorned the fingers when the entire thing, every bit of
wrapping and what could be inside, collapsed into dust. Quick swipes of his hands proved there to be
nothing in the wrappings, either. Both agitated
yet strangely tired, Anseb tried to think it through.
“How is there no body?” he thought. “Surely a corpse cannot just turn to dust
with no skin or bones?”
The sense of the supernatural tugged stronger on his tunic
than ever and he resolved to give the body of the Vizier a quick going over
before getting out of there. Whether he
left with any prize or not, he couldn’t wait to put this whole night of fright
behind him. The Vizier’s casket lid was
surprisingly light, made of something like balsa wood, completely free of any
protective markings or representations. It
made only a tiny thump as he pushed it onto the floor, revealing a sloppily
wrapped mummy inside. He couldn’t contain a squeal of delight when
he saw a similar necklace to the Queen’s, only this one with the lapis lazuli jewels
intact; though still in the sockets, the gems were streaked with cleavages, probably
done by a hammer. Broken lapis covering
the body, meant to block the transference of the soul to spiritual
immortality. Anseb felt both the burden
and freedom of education, the burden being the knowledge of such things and the
reservations of action they induced, the freedom being the instilled logical
thought that led to those reservations being overcome. Lapis lazuli, being highly valuable, in this
amount would be more than enough to carry him through the end of his final
semester. He reached around the neck and
felt a small clasp. With this find, he
chose not to search the recently dead man’s loin cloth. He would be out of that place with his booty
in mere seconds, none of it to be spoken of again. He undid
the clasp and took off the necklace, planning on taking the whole thing as the
lapis nearly came apart in his hands as he cradled it. With a smile, he took a step towards the
exit.
“AWWWWW!”
The sound erupted from the mummy, the exact same agonized
moan Anseb had heard the night he first chiseled into the tomb, only several
levels higher. The shock made him drop
the necklace, the compromised lapis breaking into tiny bits on the stone
floor. He backed up until he made
contact with the Queen’s casket and sank to the floor as what can only be
called a ghost, a filmy though distinguishable white, rose from out the mummy’s
body, the first thing noticeable being the jaw ripped free from the upper skull,
hanging all the way down against the neck like loose flab, the wounds of the
slashed mouth visible from where it had been cut, just as the funeral text said
the Vizier’s punishment had been. The
eyes showed the kind of fear experienced at the moment of violent death, as if
the visage rising now existed exactly as he’d died, revealing the experience of
his tortures. The center of the ghostly
white chest showed a hole where the heart had been ripped out. The naked body also revealed its castration
as it rose and floated above its mummy then looked down at the terrified Anseb
as if noting his presence but not understanding it, the disconnected jaw hanging
in a silent, eternal scream.
The mutilated ghost then turned and slowly floated towards
the entrance then made a slight adjustment towards what could only be the start
of the funeral text, as if ready to merge with it on a journey into the
Netherworld. As it approached, the enormous
baboon painted near the front of the text came alive as if its soul had resided
in its painted representation all these years, its filmy white form blocking
the only exit with a vicious, deep throated howl while repeatedly clapping its
hands. The twelve uraeus serpents
followed suit in identical fashion, coming off the wall in murky white, each of
the twelve spewing ethereal flames from their now open mouths. They advanced on the Vizier’s ghost, forcing
him back towards the room’s opposite wall, floating on a higher plane above the
ground. Anseb began shaking as he
watched, unable to move his limbs in any other way. The Vizier reached its translucent hands out
several times, only to snap them back as they touched the fiery flames
apparently only creatures of the spirit world could feel, emitting brief,
pathetic yelps of pain.
As the nightmarish visions floated above him, Anseb finally
managed to move, scurrying away from the Queen’s casket until his back hit the
side of wall containing the first part of the funeral text. He continued watching as the representation
of Apophis, the monstrous snake enlisted as the punisher of souls, next came
off the wall as a giant, smoky white horror, its powerful coils growing larger
and larger as if it breathed, moving up behind the oblivious Vizer. Like lightning, the serpent wrapped itself
around the man’s ghost, squeezing the hapless spirit from feet to chest, the
Vizier’s head oscillating wildly, the ripped jaw grotesquely flopping loosely from
side to side.
But the worst horror was still to come for the statue of
Sekhmet began to take on the same white, translucent quality and, moments
later, the goddess of vengeance, goddess of violence, breather of the desert
fires, the eyes in her lion head blazing red, her fangs bared, manifested in
full, animated, otherworldly life, separating from the stone statue, her razor-sharp
claws seeking ethereal blood. She
floated towards the entrapped Vizier’s ghost and, with one giant exhalation, vomited
out a torrent of flame, the Lake of Fire punishing the unjust, enveloping the Vizier
in fire while unaffected, fireproof Apophis continued his grip, the burning
spirit of the Pharaoh’s traitor emitting an ear splitting, high-pitched wail. The lion goddess then pounced like a giant cat,
digging her claws into the Vizier’s ghostly shoulders as her opened mouth
crunched down onto his head, fangs cracking into his skull, translucent bones
being snapped like twigs. Anseb screamed
uncontrollably as the goddess finally bit off the top of the Vizier’s head, milky
white blood and brains pouring down the front of his blazing body. Apophis slithered his tongue and the baboon
at the entrance hopped up and down with pleasure. Sekhmet let the body loose, which
disappeared, supposedly the end of its existence, the worst fate imaginable,
and turned towards Anseb, who immediately went silent, now too frightened to even
scream, acknowledging his presence for the first time. Offended by a mortal witnessing this spiritual
execution, she snarled then roared at him as he sat petrified, his mouth spasming. Then each representation of Geb on the
ceiling began to laugh, each of their mouths visibly moving, until the laughter
united in one haunting, deafening chortle as if in a state of irresistible insanity. Anseb desperately covered his ears as each
representation glowed red as with heat and exploded one by one, the entire
ceiling, thick with rock above outside of that one bricked section, soon raining
rocks into the room. The falling rocks and dust shook Anseb from
his terror and to his feet as he ran towards the exit, suddenly unconcerned
with the ghostly baboon. He dodged the growing
landslide as small bits of rock and dust peppered his head and shoulders as the
entire chamber began to fill up, one large rock crushing the Vizier’s mummy to
powder, another knocking over the cauldron and putting out its fire. Sekhmet and Apophis, their duties ended,
disappeared, as did the baboon with one last simian squeal. Anseb dove through the opening just ahead of
a series of enormous boulders which covered the chamber entrance forever. He quickly got back on his feet and ran for
the tomb’s main entrance as the laughing Geb hieroglyphs on the hall ceiling glowed
red and detonated, Anseb barely ahead of each concussion and the subsequent deluge
of debris. Minding his earlier knockout,
he timed a leap as best he could, taking flight just as the last representation
of Geb exploded over the tomb entrance, showering him in stone as his hands
groped for the exit…
When the dust had literally settled and all was quiet, a
stunned Anseb checked his situation. The
entire hallway was buried in rock outside his position. He’d been stopped just outside the hole in
which he’d entered the tomb; his left leg and upper body were largely free but his
right leg was buried from foot to upper thigh in rock, like the dead man in the
burial chamber had been. Anseb now
realized the man must have gone through the same horrors as he, first removing
the lapis stones from the Queen’s necklace, whose spirit undoubtedly rose,
followed by the attacks of Apophis and Sekhmet.
The dead man no doubt watched the duo work their horrors as he had,
after which the hieroglyph of Geb on the ceiling over him exploded, trapping
him in that terrible place, that bit of Hell in the home of the dead, which now
trapped him. He tried to push the rubble
which held his battered leg like a vice, jagged edges in spots digging into his
calf and hamstring, drawing unseen blood, but couldn’t budge any of it save for
a few small stones on top. He could poke
his hands and forearms outside the opening and see parts of the roof of the
clearing if he shifted his body. He
began yelling loudly and often for help until his voice gave out, night turning
to day then back to night in that empty place, for him the emptiest place in
the emptiest desert in the world.
Perhaps he would find his voice again soon and someone would come like a
miracle and help him. Perhaps the dead
man’s friends, looking for their lost brother, would find this stranger
alive. Perhaps. Now, his chronic thirst irresistible, he
opted for the last act of desperation, which he’d learned from the dead man in
the burial chamber. With tears and a
sense of determination, he managed to grope for and seize a sharp rock and,
with eyes closed and a prayer to Ra, who is Life, made the first cut into his
upper right thigh.
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