Imhotep Read online

  IMHOTEP

  A novel by Jerry Dubs

  IMHOTEP is self-published by Jerry Dubs.

  [email protected]

  This book is a work of fiction. Although based on historical events and figures, the names, characters, places and incidents described in the novel are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright 2010 by Gerald B. Dubs

  All rights reserved.

  Copy editing by Karen Merkel

  Cover design by Kyle Mohler

  [email protected]

  Cover photograph by Jerry Dubs.

  ISBN 978-0-9846717-2-4

  For Deb

  Thanks for taking this adventure with me.

  In the Two Lands

  Prologue

  Disappearance at Saqqara

  Into the Tomb of Kanakht

  Empty Room at the Mena House

  A Secret Entrance

  Djefi, First Prophet of Sobek

  Lost City of Ineb-Hedj

  Welcoming a god

  Measuring the Balance of Kemet

  The Temple of Sobek at To-She

  Journey to Iunu

  The Feast of Re in his Barge

  Tim and Diane

  Abandoned

  Gathering at To-She

  Cutting Out of Sobek's Tongue

  King Djoser in the Garden of Ma'at

  The Embalmers of Thoth

  The Truth finds Brian

  Prince Teti

  Imhotep arrives

  An offering to Khnum

  Ambush in Tahta

  On the Road to Waset

  Ma'at Disturbed

  At Abu

  Imhotep and Djoser

  At the Temple of Sobek

  The Training of Sobek

  Thoth Unbalanced

  The Eye of Re

  Heralds of the Flood

  Brian Reborn

  Djefi at Kom Ombo

  Gathering at Kom Ombo

  Preparation

  The Hunger of Sobek

  Banishment of Djefi

  Thoth departs

  Flight from To-She

  Siamun in Pursuit

  Return to Ineb-Hedj

  At the Tomb of Kanakht

  Into the Tomb of Ipy

  Epilogue

  It's history

  Preview KALEIDOSCOPE,

  KALEIDOSCOPE

  Launch

  Preview THE EARTH IS MY WITNESS,

  the first case of Existential Buddhist detective David Lamb

  THE EARTH IS MY WITNESS

  Saturday, September 5

  In the Two Lands

  KING DJOSER - Ruler of The Two Lands (also called Kemet)

  Hesire - King Djoser’s personal physician

  Imhotep - Royal architect, adviser and physician

  Inetkawes - King Djoser’s wife

  Kanakht - Vizier to King Djoser and to his father, King Kha-Sekhemmwy

  Sekhmire - Commander of the palace guard

  Sati - His wife

  Siptah - His son

  Prince Teti - Son of King Djoser, Prince of The Two Lands

  His personal guards:

  Bata, Meryptah (brother of Meryt at Iunu), Nesi (brother of Makare at Khmunu), and Rensi

  AT IUNU, TEMPLE OF RE

  Hetephernebti - Sister of King Djoser, and High Priestess to the sun god Re

  Meryt - Wbt-priestess in Temple of Re

  AT KHMUNU

  Makare - Commander of guards at Khmunu, brother of Nesi

  Nimaasted - Priest of Thoth at Khmunu

  Tama - “Voice of Truth” for the goddess Ma’at

  Samut - Messenger in service of Tama

  Waja-Hur - High Priest of Thoth, scribe of the company of gods

  AT SAQQARA and INEB-HEDJ

  Paneb - Chief artist at the necropolis of Saqqara

  Ahmes - His adopted son

  Dedi - His oldest daughter

  Hapu - His youngest daughter

  Jarha - A friend of Paneb

  Takhaaenbbastet - Paneb's wife

  AT TO-SHE and KOM OMBO, TEMPLES OF SOBEK

  Djefi - First Prophet of the crocodile god Sobek

  Bakr - a guard at the Temple of Sobek

  Dagi - A boatman for High Priest Djefi

  Karem - A boatman for Djefi

  Kem - Karem's wife

  Kiya - Karem's daughter

  Neswy - Yunet’s uncle

  Pahket - Servant girl

  Sesostris - Priest of Sobek and stepfather to Djefi

  Siamun - Commander of the guards at the Temple of Sobek

  Yunet - Chantress at the Temple of Sobek, sister of Djefi, former wife of Siamun

  AT ABU, TEMPLE OF KHNUM

  Rudamon - Physician at the Temple of Khnum

  Sennufer - Priest of Khnum at Abu, father of Sekhmire

  Prologue

  Waja-Hur, Reckoner of Times and Seasons, was confused.

  Holding a charcoal drawing stick in his hand, he stood halfway down the tomb’s unfinished hallway. He wiped his hand against his white linen kilt leaving behind a black smudge.

  His frail body quivered slightly as he stretched himself to examine the hieroglyphics drawn along the top edge of the wall. His own hand had drawn them, he was sure. He was, after all, Scribe of the Company of Gods, high priest for the god Thoth. He had been drawing hieroglyphics all his life. He recognized his work.

  But the hieroglyphics were wrong.

  Where he had meant to draw the symbol for eternity he had instead drawn the hieroglyphics for a hundred lifetimes.

  Waja-Hur shook his head.

  A hundred lifetimes was a long time, a very long time. One lifetime was proving to be too long and wearisome for him. There was no one left alive from his youth. His children had grown old and passed on. Their children were growing old now, and still he lingered in The Two Lands, a tired old man ready to make the final journey to Khert-Neter.

  He sighed.

  A hundred more lifetimes would be enough for him, but the Book of the Dead called for eternity, and Kanakht, vizier to King Djoser, ruler of The Two Lands, deserved nothing less.

  The inscription over the false door must invite Kanakht to pass through it to The Fields of Reeds for eternity, not for a hundred lifetimes. As they were drawn now, the symbols created a doorway that would open after the passage of five thousand years.

  What had he been thinking?

  He picked up a rag to wipe away the incorrect symbols.

  Down the long hallway, at the entrance to the tomb, the boy who was holding the reflecting disk sneezed. The polished brass plate the boy was holding jiggled making the sunlight that angled into the tomb swirl.

  Waja-Hur gave a small gasp at the illusion of motion. Putting his hand on the wall to steady himself, he dropped the rag. As he bent to pick up the dirty cloth, he felt a wave of dizziness, as if he were spinning like a dancer at one of Re's festivals.

  Squatting, he leaned against the wall and waited for the feeling to pass. These moments of unease had started several floods ago. At first he had thought they were harbingers of his own passage to The Fields of Reeds, like ibises flying before the great flood, but they had proven to be merely another annoyance, another burden added to the weight of his long life.

  Breathing slowly and deeply, he waited for the world to stop spinning around him. Then he stood, charcoal-smudged cloth in hand, and tried to remember what he had been doing. It had seemed important, but now it was gone.

  Shaking his head in frustration, he turned to walk toward light.

  Disappearance at Saqqara

  Tim Hope abandoned his fight against the sand.

  It coated his sandals and feet; it had worked its way into his backpack. It was in his hair and in the webs between
his fingers. Sitting with his back propped against the remains of a wall that once had formed the southern border of King Djoser’s funerary complex, Tim was surrounded by Egypt's desert sand.

  He put his pencil down and rubbed his hands together, trying to brush away the gritty sand.

  A series of shadows crossed over him as a khaki-dressed guide led a ragged line of tourists past him. Their legs moved awkwardly as they took exaggerated high steps to keep sand from trickling into their shoes.

  Tim watched them pass and then turned his attention back to the notebook propped against his knees. He added finishing lines to a pencil sketch of his bare feet, crossed at the ankles, sandals dangling loose. In the background of his drawing, desert dunes stretched off to a cloudless western horizon. Off to the east, behind his feet, the rough, pitted blocks of the Step Pyramid rose, angling off the edge of his paper.

  In the top left corner of the drawing he wrote, “Addy, There’s sand between my toes, under my fingernails and in my hair. I hate it. I hate the way it finds its way into every piece of clothing. I hate how dirty it is. I hate how gritty it feels.”

  He reread the words he had written to his fiancée. He thought about erasing the angry words and replacing them with something more upbeat, but it was hot, he was tired and he missed her terribly. The sand was annoying, but he knew that his anger was really aimed at Addy’s absence.

  “That’s Djoser’s Step Pyramid off to my right. It’s less impressive than it should be because there’s nothing here to compare it to. I know it’s huge, but not compared to the sky and the endless desert. And all this . . .” he paused, searching for the right adjective, then gave up and wrote simply “sand.”

  He closed the journal and held it off his lap so he could stretch one leg and then the other. The tourists had gathered around the base of the pyramid. The interior of the ancient tomb was no longer open to the public, so they listened to a description of passageways, chambers and shafts that lay beneath King Djoser’s burial monument. When he finished his memorized recitation, the guide directed them around to the north side of the pyramid to see a statue of the long-dead king.

  As the tourists shuffled away, three of them hesitated, then turned and walked quickly in Tim’s direction. The shortest of them, an Arab wearing a blue-and-white-striped galabaya, led the way. The other two appeared to be an American couple.

  She wore blue jeans and a white tee shirt with a picture of Sylvester the Cat. Instead of the leather sandals most natives wore, she wore hiking shoes. Thin, with red hair beneath a straw hat, she had a complexion that the Egyptian sun, even now, at the end of winter, could burn through in an hour. Tim hoped she was wearing a heavy sun block.

  The man wore sunglasses and a Boston Red Sox baseball cap, a loud Hawaiian shirt with large flowers, khaki shorts and black and red high-top sneakers. Tall and powerfully built, he walked with the loose, graceful gait of an athlete.

  As they passed by him, Tim saw that the woman was frowning. Her eyes darted from the guide to her friend and then to the uneven sand. The man was smiling around a large wad of gum, which he chewed energetically. He paused every few steps to scan the tomb site. During one pause, he raised his sunglasses and, looking straight at Tim, winked and then, with long easy strides, he caught up with the guide and the woman.

  They seemed an unlikely couple.

  Addy and I probably seemed like an odd couple, Tim thought.

  Addy was tall and slender with blonde hair, usually pulled back in a tight pony tail. Her eyes were bright and questioning. Tim was short and dark skinned with curly black hair. He had a sleepy look that made people think he was too relaxed, perhaps even a little slow. We probably look like strangers, he thought, thrown together by chance.

  The guide led the Americans past Tim to a small mud-brick guardhouse that stood over the entrance to the Tomb of Kanakht. Tim knew that, like the Step Pyramid, the tomb was closed to the public; he had tried to talk his way past the guard just an hour ago.

  As they got closer to the tomb, the guide called out a greeting in Arabic. He and the tourists waited by the gate. The guard, who had been resting in the shade behind the building, walked slowly around the corner, wiping sand from his hands on his uniform pants.

  The guard and the guide spoke quietly. American dollars changed hands. The guard opened the iron gate, and the guide and the couple disappeared inside the dark doorway.

  As soon as they were out of sight, the guard shut the gate and returned to the shady side of the building.

  Tim had heard that you could gain entrance to a 'closed' tomb with the right bribe. His problem was that he didn’t know how large the bribe had to be to work. Addy just would have confronted the guard and demanded to know how much money he wanted. Tim thought that such a direct approach wouldn’t work here in Egypt where train schedules were viewed as gentle suggestions and prices were hints written in chalk.

  When he had talked with the guard earlier Tim hadn’t raised the subject of a bribe. He thought there had to be an etiquette about it, but it wasn’t covered in any of the guidebooks he’d read. At least now he knew that American dollars, not Egyptian pounds were the correct currency.

  Tim opened his journal and pulled out a sketch he had made of the layout of Saqqara complex.

  The small pyramid of Unis, not much more than a crumbling mound of limestone blocks, lay behind him and off to his left, just beyond the southern wall. He had passed it on his way in to the courtyard of the Step Pyramid. To the north was the Serdab, a small chamber in which the only known statue of Djoser had been found. That’s where the rest of the tourists probably were, he thought. They would be taking turns peering through a small spy-hole in the enclosure to look at the statue. The real statue was in Cairo; the face that stared back at the tourists was a reproduction.

  He had seen the Serdab earlier that day when he was making his sketch of the grounds. Now he was waiting until the tourist buses departed so he could spend uninterrupted time sketching the long-dead king. He had dismissed the cab that had brought him the fourteen miles from Cairo to Saqqara. If he couldn’t catch a ride with a late-arriving tourist, he would walk the short distance into Memphis and find a ride there.

  Tim got to his feet and stretched. Opening his backpack, he put his notebook map away, took a drink from one of the water bottles in his pack and then swung the pack onto his shoulder. Just then the guard reappeared from behind the building and shouted through the iron gate at the entrance of Kanakht’s tomb.

  Pulling the gate open, the guard leaned into the doorway as if listening to someone. He jerked back as the guide rushed out of the tomb.

  Outside the doorway, the guide stopped and looked around. His eyes swept the area, resting for a moment on Tim. Turning back to the guard, he waved his arms as he talked. He pointed at the open doorway and moved closer to the guard, talking and shaking his head in disbelief at the guard’s shrugs of denial.

  When he shook an accusing finger too close to the guard’s face, the guard pushed him away.

  Surprised, the guide staggered backward, swinging his arms to keep his balance. He caught himself and then leaned forward to rush angrily back at the guard, but stopped when he saw that the guard had drawn a billy club from his belt and was waiting with it cocked in his hand.

  Drawing himself up to the little height that he had, the guide extended his arms toward the guard, his hands unclenched, apologizing. The guard shook his head and waved the billy club, shooing him away.

  He walked off, glaring back over his shoulder at the guard. After a few steps he stopped and, changing direction, approached Tim, who was still standing by the wall.

  “Excuse me, ’cusez-moi. English, Francais?” he said

  “English,” Tim said. Although he knew some Arabic, he thought the guide’s English would probably be better.

  “A mistake,” he said, indicating the guard with a slight tilt of his head.

  Tim waited.

  “You saw us into the tomb, yes?
”

  Tim nodded. “Yes.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “The man, the woman. The tall man, the woman with the hair red. You saw them. Where they went? Which way?”

  “I didn’t see them come out.”

  The guide looked ready to lose his temper, but he forced a smile. “You didn’t see? No? You are playing funny with the policeman?” He nodded again at the guard.

  Tim shook his head. He hadn’t been watching the tomb, but he was sure he would have seen the couple leave.

  “No,” he said. “No joke, no funny. I’m sorry, I didn’t see them come up. I think they are still in there.”

  “No, no, not there.” The guide dismissed the idea. “You are a mistake. They came up.”