The Seventh Scroll - Smith Wilbur - Страница 8
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the tongues of Babel.
Those rooms on the second floor that contained the treasures of
Tutankhamen were so crowded that she spent little time there. She
managed to reach the display cabinet that contained the great golden
death'mask of the child pharaoh. As always, the splendour and the
romance of it quickened her breathing and made her heart beat faster.
Yet as she stood before it, jostled by a pair of big-busted and sweaty
middle-aged female tourists, she pondered, as she had so often before,
that if an insignificant weakling king could have gone to his tomb with
such a miraculous creation covering his mummified features, in what
state must the great Ramessids have lain in their funeral temples.
Ramesses II, the greatest of them all, had reigned sixty-seven years and
had spent those decades accumulating his funerary treasure from all the
vast territories that he had conquered.
Royan went next to pay her respects to the old king.
After thirty centuries Ramesses II slept on with a rapt and serene
expression on his gaunt features. His skin had a light, marble-like
sheen to it. The sparse strands of his hair were blond and dyed with
henna. His hands, dyed with the same stuff, were long and thin and
elegant. However, he was clad only in a rag of linen. The grave robbers
had even unwrapped his mummy to reach the amulets and scarabs beneath
the linen bandages, so that his body was almost naked. When these
remains had been discovered in 1881 in the cache of royal mummies in the
cliff cave at Deir El Bahari, only a scrap of papyrus parchment attached
to his breast had proclaimed his lineage.
There was a moral in that, she supposed, but as she stood before these
pathetic remains she wondered again, as she and Duraid had done so often
before, whether Taita the scribe had told the truth, whether somewhere
in the far-off, savage mountains of Africa another great pharaoh slept
on undisturbed with all his treasures intact about him.
The very thought of it made her shiver with excitement, and goose
pimples prickled her skin and raised the fine dark hair at the nape of
her neck.
"I have given you my promise, my husband," she whispered in Arabic.
"This will be for you and your memory, for it was you who led the way."
She glanced at her "Wrist-watch as she went down the main staircase. She
had fifteen minutes before she must leave for her appointment with the
minister, and she knew, exactly how she would spend that time. What she
was going to visit was in one of the less-frequented side halls.
The tour guides very seldom led their charges this way, except as a
short-cut to see the statue of Amenhotep.
Royan stopped in front of the glass-fronted display case that reached
from floor to ceiling of the narrow room. It was packed with small
artefacts, tools and weapons, amulets and vessels and utensils, the
latest of them dating from the twentieth dynasty of the New Kingdom,
1100 BC, whilst the oldest survived from the dim ages of the Old Kingdom
almost five thousand years ago. The cataloguing of this accumulation was
only rudimentary. Many of the items were not described.
At the furthest end, on the bottom shelf, was a display of jewellery and
finger rings and seals. Beside each of the seals was a wax impression
made from it.
Royan went down on her knees to examine one of these artefacts more
closely. The tiny blue seal of lapis lazuli in the centre of the display
was beautifully carved.
Lapis was a rare and precious material for the ancients, as it had not
occurred naturally in the Egyptian Empire. The wax imprint cut from it
depicted a hawk with a broken wing, and the simple legend beneath it was
clear for Royan to read: "TAITA, THE SCRIBE OF THE GREAT QUEEN'.
She knew it was the same man, for he had used the maimed hawk as his
autograph in the scrolls. She wondered who had found this trifle and
where. Perhaps some peasant had plundered it from the lost tomb of the
old slave and scribe, but she would never know.
"Are you teasing me, Taita? Is it all some elaborate hoax? Are you
laughing at me even now from your tomb, wherever it may be?" She leaned
even closer, until her forehead touched the cool glass. "Are you my
friend, Taita, or are you my implacable adversary?" She stood up and
dusted off the front of her skirt. "We shall see. I will-play the game
with you, and we shall see who outwits whom," she promised.
The minister kept her waiting only a few minutes before his male
secretary ushered her into his presence. Atalan Abou Sin wore a dark,
shiny silk suit and sat at his desk, although Royan knew that he
preferred a more comfortable robe and a cushion on the rugs of the
floor. He noticed her glance and smiled deprecatingly. "I have a meeting
with some Americans this afternoon." .. She liked him. He had always
been kind to her, and she owed him her job at the museum. Most other men
in his position would have refused. Duraid's request for a female
assistant, especially his own wife.
He asked after her health and she showed him her bandaged arm. "The
stitches will come out in ten days."
They chatted for a while in a polite manner. Only Westerners would have
the gaucherie to come -directly to the main business to be discussed.
However, to save him embarrassment Royan took the first opportunity he
gave her to tell him, "I feel that I need some time to myself. I need to
recover from my loss and to decide what I am to do with the rest of my
life, now that I am a widow. I would be grateful if you would consider
my request for at least six months' unpaid leave of absence. I want to
go to stay with my mother in England."
Atalan showed real concern and urged her, "Please do not leave us for
too long. The work you have done has been invaluable. We need you to
help carry on from where Duraid left off." But he could not entirely
conceal his relief She knew that he had expected her to put before him
her application for the directorship. He must have discussed it with his
nephew. However, he was too kind a man to relish having to tell her that
she would not be selected for the job. Things in Egypt were changing,
women were emerging from their traditional roles, but not that much or
that swiftly. They both knew that the directorship must go to Nahoot
Ouddabi.
Atalan walked with her to the door of his office and shook her hand in
parting, and as she rode down in the lift she felt a sense of release
and freedom.
She had left the Renault standing in the sun in the Ministry car park.
When she opened the door the interior was hot enough to bake bread. She
opened all the windows and fanned the driver's door to force out the
heated air, but still the surface of the driver's seat burned the backs
of her thighs when she slid in behind the wheel.
As soon as she drove through the gates she was engulfed in the swarm of
Cairo traffic. She crawled along behind an overloaded bus that belched a
steady blue cloud of diesel fumes over the Renault. The traffic problem
was one that seemed to have no solution. There was so little parking
available that vehicles lined the verge of the road three and four
deep," choking the flow in the centre to a trickle.
As the bus in front of her braked and forced her to a halt, Royan smiled
as she recalled the old joke that some drivers who had parked at the
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