entities, the mingled blood of Royan's forefathers in her veins
acknowledging both Isis and Mary, heresy and truth mingling inextricably
in her heart, so that she felt at once both guilt and religious elation.
In the next shrine was a golden figure of Horus, the falcon-headed, the
last of the holy trinity. In his right hand he held the war-bow and in
his left the ankh, for life and death were his to dispense. His eyes
were red carrielians.
Portraits of his other entities surrounded the statue: Horus the infant,
suckling at the breast of Isis, Horus as the divine youth Harpocrates,
proud and lithe and beautiful, one finger touching his chin in the
ritual gesture, striding out on sandalled feet under his short, stiff
kilt.
Then Horus the falcon-headed, sometimes with the body of a lion and then
with the body of a young warrior, wearing the great crown of the south
and the north united.
Beneath him was the inscription: "Great God and Lord of Heaven, of
nunifest power, Mighty one anwngst all the gods, whose strength has
vanqUished the foes of his divine father, Osiris."
the fourth shrine stood Seth, the arch-fiend, the god of violence and
discord. His body was gold, but his head was the head of a black hyena.
In the fifth shrine stood the god of the dead and of the cemeteries,
Anubis the jackal-headed. It was he who officiated at the embalming, and
whose duty it was to examine the tongue of the great balance when the
heart of the eceased was weighed. If the beam of the scales were
exactly horizontal, then the dead man was declared worthy, but if the
balance tipped against him Anubis threw the heart to the crocodile
monster and it was devoured.
The sixth shrine was dedicated to the god of writing, Thoth. He had the
head of a sacred this and his stylus was in his hand. In the seventh
shrine the sacred cow Had stood squarely on all four hooves, her piebald
body spotted black and white, her face benignly human but with huge,
trumpet-shaped ears, The eighth shrine was the largest and most splendid
of all, for it belonged to Amon-Ra, father of all creation. He was the
sun, an enormous golden disc from which the slanting golden rays
emanated, Nicholas paused here and looked back down the long gallery.
Those eight -sacred statues comprised a treasure that matched anything
that Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon had discovered in the tomb of
Tutankhamen.
He felt in his heart that it was crass even to consider their monetary
value. However, the simple truth was that even one of these
extraordinary works of art would be sufficient to pay off all his debts
many times over. But he thrust the thought aside and turned once more to
face the commodious chamber at the far end of the gallery.
"The burial chamber," Royan murmured with awe. "The tomb."
As they walked towards it the shadows retreated before A them, like the
ghost of the long-dead pharaoh scurrying back to its final resting
place. Now they could see into the tomb, Its walls were aflame with
still more magnificent murals. Though they had gazed upon so many of
these already, their eyes and their senses were not yet jaded or wearied
by such profusion.
A single elongated figure rose up the far wall, and then stooped across
the ceiling. It was the supple, sinuous body the goddess Nut, giving
birth to the sun. The gold
en rays poured forth from her open womb, suffusing the sarcophagus of
the pharaoh and endowing the dead king with new life.
The royal sarcophagus stood in the centre of the chamber, a massive
coffin hewn from a solid granite block.
How many slaves must have laboured to bring this mass of stone along the
subterranean passages, Nicholas wondered.
He could imagine their sweating bodies gleaming in the lamplight, and
hear the grating squeal of the wooden rollers under the immense weight
of the coffin.
, Then Nicholas looked down into the coffin, and felt the plunge of his
spirits as he realized that the sarcophagus was empty. The massive
granite lid had been lifted from its seat, and flung aside with such
violence that it had cracked across its width and now lay in two pieces
on the floor beside the coffin.
They moved forward slowly, the bitter taste of disappointment mingling
with the dust upon their tongues, until they could look down into the
open sarcophagus. It contained only the shattered fragments of the four
canopic jars. These vessels had been carved from alabaster to contain
the entrails, liver and other internal organs of the king. The broken
lids were decorated with the heads of gods and fabulous creatures from
beyond the grave.
"Empty!" whispered Royan. "The body of the king has gone."
Over the following days, while they photographed the murals and packed
the statues of the eight gods and goddesses from the funeral gallery,
Royan and Nicholas discussed and argued the disappearance of the royal
mummy from its sarcophagus.
"The seals on the gate of the tomb were intact," Royan pointed out
repeatedly.
"There is probably an explanation for that," Nicholas told her. "Taita
himself might have removed the treasure and the body. Many times in the
writing of the seventh scroll he laments the waste of such treasure. He
points out that it could have been much better spent in protecting and
nurturing the nation and its people."
"No, it does not make sense," Royan argued, "to go to such length as to
dam the river and tunnel under the pool, to build this elaborate tomb,
and then to remove and destroy the king's mummy. Taita was always a
logical person. In his own way he revered the gods of Egypt. It shows in
all his writings. He would never have flouted the religious traditions
in which he believed so strongly. Some thing about this tomb does not
ring true for me - the mysterious and almost offhanded disappearance of
the body, even the paintings and the inscriptions up on the walls."
"I agree with you about the missing corpse, but what do you find
illogical about the decorations?" Nicholas wanted to know.
"Well, the paintings first." She indicated the image of Isis with a wave
of her hand. "They are lovely, and they are the work of a competent
classical artist, but they are hackneyed and stylized in form and choice
of colour. The figures are stiff and wooden - they do not move and
dance.
They lack that spark of genius that we were shown in the tomb of Queen
Lostris where the original scrolls in their alabaster jars were hidden."
Nicholas considered the murals thoughtfully. I see what you mean. Even
the murals in the tomb of Tanus at the monastery are in a different
class from these."
"Exactly! she said forcefully. "Those were the paintings of Taita
himself These are not. They were done by one of his hacks." , "What
else is there about the inscriptions that you don't like?"
"Have you ever heard of another tomb that did not have the text of the
Book of the Dead inscribed upon its walls, or that did not depict the
dead person's journey through the seven pylons to reach the paradise
beyond?"
Nicholas looked startled; he had never considered that it fact. Without
replying he left her and went back down the long gallery, ostensibly to