1.
NEFERA was quite enjoying the
fuss.
It was a big occasion and the royal
procession through the mud brick city to the desert hills was a spectacle not
to be missed.
Especially this one. It was all for her.
She stood mingling with bystanders who lined
the way of the procession as it made its way through the shimmering city before
crossing the river, yet nobody in the crowd seemed able to see her among them.
“She was just a girl,” a woman in the crowd
said, wiping her nose as she sobbed.
‘Am I a ghost?’ Nefera wondered, recalling
the Egyptians’ belief in an invisible double known as the Ka. ‘It does not seem so. I feel as alive as ever.’
At the front of the procession walked a
number of solemn men carrying flowers and trays of offerings of oil, perfumes,
cakes, bread, haunches of beef, ducks and vegetables and more. Others carried
clothes, tables, chairs, jewellery, cosmetic boxes and other tomb goods.
‘I see my golden lion couch coming,’ Nefera
thought. ‘And my golden sandals and caskets of jewellery and, most important of
all, the mummy of my darling cat, Miu.’
Next, four oxen dragged Princess Nefera’s
own golden mummy case along on a sled, led by a chief priest dressed in whites
robes with a leopard skin wrapped around his shoulders. He held a bronze
incense burner in one hand and with the other he sprinkled water on the ground
from a vase. More priests came, shaven-headed and chanting.
Princess Nefera nodded approvingly, but
still nobody in the procession, or among the citizens who bowed their heads,
saw her. Nor did they hear her when she burst out giggling at the next arrival.
A troupe of women and girls came shrieking
and wailing, waving arms and beating chests, others tearing at their dresses
and throwing dust from the ground in their hair in a show of grief. They were professional wailers,
accompanying her golden mummy case on its journey through city streets, across
the River Nile by boat and onwards to lonely cliffs in the Western desert. They
raised sorrow to the heavens, making a wail like hawks keening in the sky.
Her father, Pharaoh, and her mother, The
Great Royal Wife, came into view at the rear of the procession, seated under a
canopy in a carrying chair borne on the shoulders of four Nubians. Pharaoh
normally went in front at processions, leading the land in all things, but not
at funerals.
Her father appeared solemn, yet proud of the
rich offerings he was providing for his daughter and confident of her survival
in the Land of the Blessed. Her mother, on the other hand, was awash with
grief. Tears had melted her painted eyes, leaving black streaks down her
cheeks.
‘Mother always puts on too much eye-liner,’
Nefera thought. ‘I must advise her.” And then she felt a pang of sadness. “But no, I cannot speak to her or any
living person, ever again!”
Nefera followed behind the procession, drawn
by some invisible bond that tied her to this event.
Nefera was not the only child secretly
watching the procession...
THE PRINCESS WHO LOST HER SCROLL OF THE DEAD
Egypt fantasy adventure for young readers (Roy Pond)
Egypt fantasy adventure for young readers (Roy Pond)
