>A stray dog leads to a shattering archaeological discovery
I had to say goodbye to a beloved pet,
our dog Seti, not so long ago. Thinking about Seti again, reminded me of
a scene from my novel The Smiting Texts.
An Egyptologist Emory Hunter, father of the hero,
Anson Hunter, makes a shattering discovery in the desert, all thanks to a stray dog…
A
dog came limping out of the haze. It flopped down in the shadow of a stone.
“Too
hot for you, Wep?” the Egyptologist said.
Wep
was a nickname, short for Wepwawet, the dog-god Opener of Ways. He was a stray
black mongrel that Emory had started feeding. Stray dogs were as much a part of
archaeology in Egypt as flies, sun and boredom, but they came in handy. Give
them a feed and their powerful territorial instinct kicked in. They turned into
instant watchdogs, barking at any strangers who approached the camp.
The
heat was having an effect on Wep today. He whined, gave a dry, rattling cough
and then lay still. Just like that. Wep died in front of Emory’s eyes. Why had
he chosen to end this life right near him and in this place of all places...?
Emory
tipped a shovelful of sand over a growing pile beside a hole.
The
load of silicate spilling from the blade turned the heap into a pyramid with
shifting sides that glistened in the afternoon sun. It was just a dog, an
abandoned creature that nobody in the world cared about except me, he told
himself.
Dogs,
old bones and death were a part of this desert landscape and it had been that
way since the age of the dog gods Wepwawet and Anubis. He reminded himself that
in modern Egypt, around thirty-five dogs were slaughtered every day of the year.
Cairo’s dog culling was a national scandal. They had recently shot or poisoned
4,000 dogs in just one five month period. Mostly they shot dogs. Official
policy allowed just one bullet per dog. But Cairo dog shooters were haphazard.
Their first shot often maimed the animal, instead of killing it, and they
simply tossed the animal onto the back of a truck along with the dead ones.
The
shovel handle slipped. Emory paused and wiped sweaty fingers on his sleeves.
‘I
guess these drops of sweat are the only tears you’ll get from me, Wep,’ he
thought.
He
wanted the dog back, so that he could run with it again and drum the dog’s
strong ribs with his open palms and see the almond shaped eyes spark and the
tongue loll from his snout.
Emory
gripped the wood more tightly. Keep digging, old man. You don’t want jackals or
wild dogs to find him. You owe him that.
Just
keep thinking of all the dogs that ever died in Egypt. Millions of them and
millions mummified, many of them ending up in museum display cases.
But
this wasn’t about dogs, was it? It was about one dog, Wep, who had somehow
chosen to end his days with him. Things just came into your life like that,
unasked for, and for no reason. And things went out of your life in the same
way. Like his son, Anson, even though he was to blame in the boy’s case. Sorrow
came up in a wave that scalded the base of his throat and burnt across his
shoulders and went deep into his chest and with it came anger.
The
dogs of Egypt didn’t ask for their predicament. Neglected and abandoned.
Allowed to breed on rubbish dumps, the only place where they could scavenge a scrap to eat. Wep didn’t
deserve to die either. Emory paused and did a slow turn on his heel to take in
the landscape. The sandy, rock strewn plain vibrated in the
heat. He saw glints like an ancient army with weapons out there. Just
reflections on sun glazed stone. The landscape was empty.
He
lifted the dog, the body wrapped in a blanket. The animal felt lighter already
as if something had left him. He put the stiffened form in the hole. The wavy
stripes on the blanket dazzled his eyes like the desert. He spent a moment to
fix this last image in his mind. Then, following some primal instinct, he
dropped a chipped clay bowl into the hole. It was a bowl he had used for feeding
the dog. A blue, heka frieze pattern ran around the rim.
Tomb goods – and I don’t even believe in an afterlife! he
thought, shaking his head. He began to fill the hole. A pile of sand left his
spade.
In
mid air, another shovelful crossed his and two streams
coalesced and showered down together.
“Thanks.”
“It
has to be the most awful job in the world burying a favourite dog,” Kalila
said.
She
had come, even though he had asked to be left alone.
“If
you’re too upset you feel you’re being sentimental. And if you don’t
feel sad, you feel guilty.” She set to work beside him, putting her back into
it. She was a strong girl. When they’d finished, she said. “You’re
allowed to say a prayer for him.”
“You
can’t pray to an empty universe. Just leave me here for a bit.”
“Okay.
I’ll try to rustle up some coffee.”
Wep
was gone, covered. Only the freshly turned sand memorialized his life.
He
deserved better than that, Emory thought. In the creation beliefs of the
Egyptians, the earth rose from the primordial waters of Nun to form the first
primeval mound, and the idea of a mound or a tumulus continued into the erection of mastaba tombs and pyramids.
Wep
needed a mound. He set to work again with his shovel, building up a small
pyramid of sand. That’s when his shovel blade hit something hard, jarring his
arms and shoulders. Stone.
Curious.
He knelt, tossing the spade aside. Just a rock? On all fours, he clawed away
sand like a dog, showering grains behind himself.
More
stone appeared under his scratching fingers. Smooth, dressed stone!
He
kept going.
A
bit more digging revealed the curved tails of two crocodiles on a broken stela.
It was like finding an ancient road sign.
Crocodiles
were revered in the Fayoum and were particularly associated with the Labyrinth
of Amenemhat, where the sacred crocodiles were said to lie.
A
sign of the Labyrinth, here?
It’s
a good thing I’m on my knees,’ he thought. His entire body trembled.
But
it wasn’t only his bodily reaction that surprised him. His behaviour surprised
him too. He decided in that moment to check his excitement, resisting the urge
to call out for Kalila or for his Head Man.
Could
he have shouted out even if he had tried? It was as if sand had choked up his
throat.
The
words of the Greek historian Herodotus rang in his brain as if announced by a
herald amid a fanfare of trumpets. A glittering procession of possibilities now
streamed through his mind and with it the greatest dream of all, the prospect
of a find greater than the pyramids. ‘They
decided to leave to posterity a memorial and caused to be built a Labyrinth a
little above Lake Moeris…'This Labyrinth I actually saw, a work greater than
all power to describe... Inside are two groups of chambers, one group
underground, the other group above on top of them, three thousand in number,
fifteen hundred of each type... where lay the tombs of the sacred crocodiles.’
Could
this be the most astounding discovery in the long long history of Egypt? A
history-making, history-exploding discovery that would dazzle the world?
Slow
down.
Cold
reality halted his imaginary cavalcade.
Two
things would happen if he was right. First the Supreme Council of Antiquities
would swoop. Then Egyptian bureaucratic delay would fall like a dead hand over
the dig.
This
was his discovery – his and Wep’s and he took the further step of deciding to
keep it that way, at least for now, until he could savour it, reflect on it and
think through the implications.
Would
this site prove what he had always thought, that the Lost Labyrinth had never
been found. It was never so much lost as misplaced. Egyptologists believed that
the Labyrinth was attached to Amenemhat’s pyramid at Hawara, but how could such
a vast structures, with sepulchers beneath, have vanished without trace?
Emory
glanced almost fearfully over his shoulder. Relief swept him. Nobody was
watching.
The secret was still his. He
went on digging like a dog, but this time a starving dog that had smelt the
whiff of carrion bone.
“Speak
to me, stones! Say what I want to hear.”
Text,
on a pale fragment of stone appeared. Carved hieroglyphic characters. With each
scoop of sand removed, living words swarmed up like insects to reveal
themselves.
‘Oh
god.’ He recognized the name in a cartouche as easily as he would recognize his
own signature.
Maat-en-Ra, son of the sun, Amen-em-hat.
The
name resonated like a mallet blow on stone.
Emory
covered it over impulsively like a greedy dog burying a bone to be certain of
keeping it from others.
Gone.
Hidden again.
How
long could he keep this from the world and fit it together with all the other
clues he had found?
The Prince and the doom-dog - a dog tale that leaves us hanging
 |
| The prince and the doom dog? |
There's a tantalising ancient Egyptian tale called The Doomed Prince. At the
birth of the prince, oracular goddesses known as the Seven Hathors pronounced
three alternative fates for the child.
Death by a dog. A crocodile. Or a snake.
One day, from the rooftop of a fortress
built by his father to shield him from harm, the prince spied a man and his pet
dog below. “What creature is that?” he asked a servant. “A dog, Your
Highness.”
With the fateful turn of folk tales,
the prince became obsessed with the idea of owning his own dog. The king
relented, giving in to the youth’s pleading. “Let the boy have a
coursing hound.”
“I cannot avoid my fate forever,” he
told the king when he came of age.
He set off into the world to face his future,
the faithful dog at his heels. After various adventures he duly came up against
a snake and a crocodile – yet survived the encounters. What happened next?
Maddeningly, the only surviving record of the prince’s story had suffered
damage, leaving the prince’s fate and the reader of the story hanging by a
papyrus thread.
Did the snake or the crocodile come
back into the story to kill the prince? Or did the pet dog finally kill his
master?
If you are into dogs and ancient Egypt - here are two of my novels that strongly feature dogs
An archaeologist with a dog and a bow shoots an arrowflight of adventure across the boundaries of time.
(The archaeologist's dog is a Rhodesian Ridgeback named Snakeback because of the line of fur along its spine.)
And for young readers:
Featuring a resourceful 'pharaoh-hound' by the name of dogstar.
