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...
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