TRAPPED IN UNDERGROUND CHAMBERS OF EGYPT’S LOST LABYRINTH... an archaeologist must recite the Book of the Dead to survive
(Chapter excerpt... from THE SMITING TEXTS, first in the 9-book
Egyptological adventure series))
Chapter 84
WITHOUT A TORCH, under the fluttering crossbeams of their lights shining
from behind him, Anson continued his approach to the heart of the
structure.
He held on to the rope, keeping it taut. He tracked along it, keeping
within reach of the golden mound at his side.
He slid a foot forward. If it gave under his weight, the rope would save
him. It held. He rolled his weight onto the stone and took another step. On
the third step, the floor roared and the stone slid away. His hands clamped
even tighter on the rope as he braked himself. He teetered on the
edge.
Three more steps and he reached the end of the rope. Now he was on his own.
He chose an inlaid golden ushabti box with a vaulted lid and drew it towards
himself. It screeched on the stone, heavy with its unseen contents -
mummy-shaped servant statues cast in gold, nested inside it, he guessed. He
positioned the box in front of himself and bent to slide it forward. It
squealed on the stone and set his teeth on edge.
One metre, two.
It vanished from his hands. A slab of stone gave a hollow roar and
swallowed it. The box landed below with a muffled crash. He chose a jewel
encrusted box next. A few steps later he pushed it onto a treacherous stone
and it too slipped into a void and crashed in a pit below.
What next? One of those heavy golden chairs with the leopard claw feet? Or
that offering table inlaid with gold? There was also a model boat sitting on
a sled. His stratagem was working. He was edging his way safely to the
shrine. All the others had to do was to follow his footsteps left in the
dust of the floor.
They stood in front of the heart-shaped building.
Two images, painted directly above the doorways to the two chambers, leapt
into the beams. The way ahead split into two. One was the image of a dog or
jackal - Wepwawet or Anubis - sitting on a shrine. Above the other door sat
a beautiful, squatting goddess with a tall white feather in her
headband.
“Maat, goddess of truth,” Daniel said. Dark wedges, entranceways, in the
stone opened under each.
“Look at her, she’s beautiful!” Kalila whispered.
Maat sat as neatly as a cat, a tight sheath dressed pulled over her knees.
“Which way?” Anson said. “Do you know?”
“The way of truth,” I suggest,” Kalila said.
“Then we’d die,” Daniel said. “We will fall into a pit where the Great
Devourer will eat our souls. This is the trial of the balance. It’s the
jackal-dog who must lead us to Osiris and the trial. Psychostasis,” the big
man said. “The weighing of the heart. Our hearts must be weighed against the
feather of truth. If our hearts prove heavier than a feather and we are
found to be guilty, we cannot pass into the Land of the Blessed.”
“As light as a feather? No human being is that innocent,” Anson thought
aloud.
“It suggests the way of Maat to me,” Kalila said.
“No. We must go through the chamber of the jackal-dog,” Daniel
insisted.
The weighing of the heart. Their progress rested in a balance.
“A vote?”
“I’d say follow the pointer dog,” Anson said.
Daniel led the way and they filed through the doorway. Kalila cast a uneasy
glance upwards at the face of the painted jackal, the elongated Egyptian eye
following them with a sly gleam.
The heart scarab and the feather, in perfect balance. It was a key image of
Egyptian judgment. The heart in one pan, so light and free from sin that it
could be counter-balanced by a mere feather in the other pan - the feather
of Maat, goddess of truth.
They found themselves in an oval chamber surrounded by deep-cut bas-reliefs
of gods and goddesses in vivid colour on walls made of blocks of stone.
Apart from these reliefs, the room was empty although the floor appeared to
be coated in reddish dust. They flooded the walls with their lights -
Hathor, Seth, Horus, Nut jumped into view... a pantheon of gods and
goddesses encircling them.
The chamber trembled with a roar like waves hitting them on each side. Then
it convulsed. A grinding plane of stone began to move. The doorway - a great
stone shadow slammed down blocking their exit.
They had made the wrong choice.
When the ground stopped shaking, they shone their torches around the
chamber. They were trapped inside a sealed chamber, with no way back or
forward.
Our hearts have failed the test. We have been found sinful, the thought hit
Anson. We’re stuck in the heart of the tomb.
"I think we've just had a coronary shut down," he informed them. He looked
at Kalila, Daniel and his nephews. “Any ideas?”
"There must be some mechanism that opens it again," Daniel said. "We must
find it! Start looking, I suggest.”
They all joined in a search of the walls and floors, as they hunted for
hidden levers or mechanisms that might open the doors, pressing individual
blocks of stone, running fingers between cracks.
Sound above their heads put a stop to their efforts. Something was
happening in the ceiling. Anson listened. Hissing sounds. Small apertures
had opened in the roof. Red streams ran softly into the chamber.
"Blood!"
"Not blood, after three thousand years." Daniel bent and scooped up a
handful. He sniffed it. "Clay dust," he muttered.
It wasn't blood, but it could kill them just as surely as any liquid.
"It's symbolic blood, dry red clay from Elephantine,” Anson said. “The red
is haematite, iron oxide. In ancient legends red clay often took the place
of blood when mixed with wine or water. I think this dust represents the
blood of Osiris."
"If we don't get out of here soon, it will choke us," Kalila said, giving
voice to their fears.
They redoubled their efforts to find a lever. They ran their hands like
nervous spiders over the walls.
The powder-blood flowing into the heart gathered in piles around their
feet. The streams were running faster.
Kalila coughed. Fine dust filled the air. It would suffocate them long
before it covered their heads.
"Keep looking!" Daniel urged them.
"There’s nothing," Kalila said.
"It is a mechanical trap," he insisted. "There must be something that will
open it again."
Were they going to die, choking in blood? Anson looked up. Was it possible
to climb out of here? He searched for a beam or projection, something they
could use to hang a rope from the ceiling? Nothing.
Anson went on watching the streams of red dust particles falling from the
ceiling. Then the world brightened as an idea floated down to him.
“As light as a feather?” he said. “What human being is so innocent? That’s
it. No human being is that light. We have to change ourselves, take on the
forms of the gods. Before the dead can go on to take their place in the
realm of Osiris, they had to say a spell that would change the parts of
their bodies into the parts of gods.”
His eyes swept around the walls at the carved reliefs of the gods and
goddesses, the torch beam turning the dust into clouds of blood.
Red dust piled up around their ankles. Anson felt the dust tickling his
lungs. Daniel covered his mouth with his shirtsleeve, spluttering.
“What were the parts that must change?” Anson said.
He banged his forehead with the palm of her hand, trying to jolt his
memory.
“Think, brain. Think. The Chapter of Coming forth by Day. The Papyrus of
Ani...”
The red dust turned the air into a blood storm, as if blood had already
filled the chamber to its roof.
“There’s no way to open that door,” Daniel said.
“Then we’ll all die, unless we can think of a way,” Kalila said.
“I’ve got it, I think. We’re going to need a bit of divine help,” Anson
said. The powder blood billowed up into their faces and seeped into their
clothes. He waded through it, sinking up to his ankles.
“Am I right?” he said, with a rasp of dust in his throat.” Is there an
order to this?” He reached the wall. “ The dead must take on the parts of
the gods. Which gods and in which order?”
The powder was in their lungs and it tasted metallic like blood.
Anson recalled the prayer of the papyrus of Ani.
“My eyes must become the eyes of Hathor...”
he said.
Hathor stood with a crown of cow horns and a solar disc between them, her
lithe form rippling in the blocks of stone. He reached up to Hathor’s face
and pressed the eye. A block grated back into the wall.
He twisted, face alight with relief. “I haven’t lost my touch. We’ve got to
choose the parts of the gods and so change ourselves. Each part of a human
body has to become a part of a god... The eyes of the dead must become the
eyes of Hathor, his face the face of Ra, his cheeks the cheeks of Isis, the
backbone that of Seth, the buttocks of Horus, the phallus of Osiris, the
thighs of Nut, the feet of Ptah...”
Each part had to change into a god.
Anson went around the wall, brushing past the others who had covered their
faces and were trying to sift the dust-laden air through their
fingers.
Powder blood rose past their knees to their thighs.
Anson came to the face of Ra, a broad shouldered man with an eagle’s head
and a red solar disc on his head.
“The face of Ra.”
He pressed the beaked face and another block ground back. Isis was next.
“The cheeks of Isis”. The goddess stood erect and slender, wearing a crown
shaped like a throne on her head. With a shaking hand, he pressed a golden
cheek. A black square rumbled into the wall.
A bas-relief of Seth loomed next through the dust, a monster with erect,
square tipped ears and a hooked nose like an anteater. “The backbone of
Seth.” He pressed the spine of the god. A vertical block slid back under his
eager hand.
“Hurry, Anson!” Daniel said. He gasped in the dust filled air.
“The buttocks of Horus!” He pressed the rear of the god and made another
stone grate back into the wall. The figure of Nut arched across the wall.
“The thighs of Nut,” he said, like words of a chant. He waded through powder
to press a smooth curve of a thigh.
The area sank under his hand to reveal an empty square.
The powder continued to rise
Who was next? Ptah. There he was. Anson went to Ptah, the creator god, a
standing figure wearing a tight blue skullcap, his stiff body tightly
wrapped in white winding cloth. “The feet of Ptah.” But the red powder blood
had already covered the god’s legs. He dug with cupped hands, adding more
cloud to the choking air. The legs of the god appeared, a pattern like fish
net on the winding cloth.
The white, pointed feet of Ptah inched into view.
He pressed the foot.
Their ears were filled with the shriek of grating stone...
AMAZON KINDLE and PAPERBACK
UPDATE SERIES RANGE AMAZON KINDLE AND PAPERBACK
