A man had followed him to the British
Museum.
Who was he?
Anson went up the steps and between the
Ionic-style columns into the building. He passed through a crowded reception
hall to arrive in the Great Court beyond.
Above the court, a tessellated glass and
steel roof spread out overhead like a vast, glowing net, catching clouds, blue
sky and a spirit of illumination, while the round, central building swelled
like an ivory tower of learning. He crossed the clean bright space before
heading left to the door of the Egyptian section.
Inside the dimmer light of the hall, a group
of school children crowded around the Rosetta Stone in its glass display case.
Two little black girls peered inside, their heads close together as they
examined the stone, their hair braided in cornrows. An African look, he
thought. It linked his thoughts to Africa’s greatest river, the Nile, and to
Egypt’s irrigated fields that bounded it and made Egypt the breadbasket of the
ancient world.
He made for the sculpture gallery.
Egypt, both divinely monumental and
naturalistic, surrounded him. Two statues of Pharaoh Amenhotep III, powerfully
formed in dark granodiorite, flanked the entranceway to a hall, granting
admittance, and inside, as stone slid by, other familiar sights came into view,
a red granite lion with charmingly crossed forepaws, and further on, the statue
of the Chief Steward Senenmut tenderly holding the daughter of Queen Hatshepsut,
the little princess Neferure, on his lap - the child wrapped within his cloak
and her face peeping out - then a soaring, crowned head of Pharaoh Amenhotep in
the background. And people everywhere, creating a sound of buzzing like voices
in a cathedral at prayer time.
But he barely saw or heard them. He paused
at a figure standing on a pedestal near a wall on the right hand side, almost
overshadowed by a colossal granite torso of Rameses the Great in the centre of
the hall.
Khaemwaset, the priest-prince and magician.
Anson confronted the figure. The sculpture
depicted the prince in a pleated kilt, stepping forward while holding a pair of
emblematic staves at his sides. The conglomerate stone must have presented a
technical challenge to the sculptor as it was shot through with multi-coloured
pebbles. It made Khaemwaset look as if galaxies were exploding out of his
chest.
A museum label said:
Red breccia standing figure... one of the
favourite sons of Rameses II, the legendary Khaemwese…
The label used a variant spelling of the
name Khaemwaset.
He looked up at the face. Intelligent,
sensitive features, faintly saddened. An air as haunted as the face of the
sphinx.
Anson silently interrogated the statue.
Open up, Khaemwaset. As one renegade to another, what do you
really know?
(The Ibis Apocalypse - Paperback and Kindle, Amazon)
