The Seventh Scroll - Smith Wilbur - Страница 129

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love him.

Further along they came to the first of eight shrines set into the walls

of the long funeral gallery. This one was the shrine of Osiris. It was a

circular chamber, the curved wall decorated with texts in praise of the

god, and in its niche a small statue of Osiris in his tall feathered

head-dress, with eyes of onyx and rock crystal which stared at them so

lacably that Royan shivered. Nicholas reached out and gently touched the

foot of the god.

He said one word, "Gold!'

Then he looked up at the towering mural that covered the wall and half

the domed ceiling above and around the shrine. It was another gigantic

figure of the father Osiris, god of the Underworld, with his green face

and false beard, his arms crossed upon his chest, holding the flail and

the crook, wearing his tall feathered head-dress and with the erect

cobra on his brow. They gazed up at him with a sense of awe. As the

lamplight wavered in the shifting dust cloud LEI  the god seemed to

become imbued with life, and to move and sway before their eyes.

They did not linger at the first shrine, for beyond it the gallery ran

on, straight as the flight of an arrow to its target. They followed it.

The next shrine set into the wall was dedicated to the goddess. The

golden figure of Isis sat in her niche, upon the throne that was her

symbol. The infant Horus suckled at her breast. Her eyes were ivory and

blue lapis lazuli.

Her murals covered the walls around her niche. There she was, the mother

with great kohl-lined eyes as black as night, wearing the sun disc and

the horns of the sacred cow  pon her head. All around her, hieroglyphic

symbols covered the wall, so bright that they glowed like a cloud of

fireflies; for she possessed a hundred diverse names.

Amongst these were Ast and Net and Bast. She was also Ptah and Seker and

Mersekert and Rennut. Each of these names was a word of power, for her

sanctity and her benevolent aura had lived on where most of the old gods

had withered away for lack of worshippers to repeat and keep alive these

mystic names.

In ancient Byzantium and later in Christian Egypt they had bestowed the

old goddess's virtues and attributes upon the Virgin Mary. The image of

her suckling the infant Horus had been perpetuated in the icons of the

Madonna and child. Thus Royan responded to the goddess in all her

entities, the mingled blood of Royan's forefathers in her veins

acknowledging both Isis and Mary, heresy and truth mingling inextricably

in her heart, so that she felt at once both guilt and religious elation.

In the next shrine was a golden figure of Horus, the falcon-headed, the

last of the holy trinity. In his right hand he held the war-bow and in

his left the ankh, for life and death were his to dispense. His eyes

were red carrielians.

Portraits of his other entities surrounded the statue: Horus the infant,

suckling at the breast of Isis, Horus as the divine youth Harpocrates,

proud and lithe and beautiful, one finger touching his chin in the

ritual gesture, striding out on sandalled feet under his short, stiff

kilt.

Then Horus the falcon-headed, sometimes with the body of a lion and then

with the body of a young warrior, wearing the great crown of the south

and the north united.

Beneath him was the inscription: "Great God and Lord of Heaven, of

nunifest power, Mighty one anwngst all the gods, whose strength has

vanqUished the foes of his divine father, Osiris."

 the fourth shrine stood Seth, the arch-fiend, the god of violence and

discord. His body was gold, but his head was the head of a black hyena.

In the fifth shrine stood the god of the dead and of the cemeteries,

Anubis the jackal-headed. It was he who officiated at the embalming, and

whose duty it was to examine the tongue of the great balance when the

heart of the  eceased was weighed. If the beam of the scales were

exactly horizontal, then the dead man was declared worthy, but if the

balance tipped against him Anubis threw the heart to the crocodile

monster and it was devoured.

The sixth shrine was dedicated to the god of writing, Thoth. He had the

head of a sacred this and his stylus was in his hand. In the seventh

shrine the sacred cow Had stood squarely on all four hooves, her piebald

body spotted black and white, her face benignly human but with huge,

trumpet-shaped ears, The eighth shrine was the largest and most splendid

of all, for it belonged to Amon-Ra, father of all creation. He was the

sun, an enormous golden disc from which the slanting golden rays

emanated, Nicholas paused here and looked back down the long gallery.

Those eight -sacred statues comprised a treasure that matched anything

that Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon had discovered in the tomb of

Tutankhamen.

He felt in his heart that it was crass even to consider their monetary

value. However, the simple truth was that even one of these

extraordinary works of art would be sufficient to pay off all his debts

many times over. But he thrust the thought aside and turned once more to

face the commodious chamber at the far end of the gallery.

"The burial chamber," Royan murmured with awe. "The tomb."

As they walked towards it the shadows retreated before A them, like the

ghost of the long-dead pharaoh scurrying back to its final resting

place. Now they could see into the tomb, Its walls were aflame with

still more magnificent murals. Though they had gazed upon so many of

these already, their eyes and their senses were not yet jaded or wearied

by such profusion.

A single elongated figure rose up the far wall, and then stooped across

the ceiling. It was the supple, sinuous body  the goddess Nut, giving

birth to the sun. The gold

en rays poured forth from her open womb, suffusing the sarcophagus of

the pharaoh and endowing the dead king with new life.

The royal sarcophagus stood in the centre of the chamber, a massive

coffin hewn from a solid granite block.

How many slaves must have laboured to bring this mass of stone along the

subterranean passages, Nicholas wondered.

He could imagine their sweating bodies gleaming in the lamplight, and

hear the grating squeal of the wooden rollers under the immense weight

of the coffin.

, Then Nicholas looked down into the coffin, and felt the plunge of his

spirits as he realized that the sarcophagus was empty. The massive

granite lid had been lifted from its seat, and flung aside with such

violence that it had cracked across its width and now lay in two pieces

on the floor beside the coffin.

They moved forward slowly, the bitter taste of disappointment mingling

with the dust upon their tongues, until they could look down into the

open sarcophagus. It contained only the shattered fragments of the four

canopic jars. These vessels had been carved from alabaster to contain

the entrails, liver and other internal organs of the king. The broken

lids were decorated with the heads of gods and fabulous creatures from

beyond the grave.

"Empty!" whispered Royan. "The body of the king has gone."

Over the following days, while they photographed the murals and packed

the statues of the eight gods and goddesses from the funeral gallery,

Royan and Nicholas discussed and argued the disappearance of the royal

mummy from its sarcophagus.

"The seals on the gate of the tomb were intact," Royan pointed out

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