Imhotep Read online

  He looked west, into the desert, into the land the ancient Egyptians called Deshret, the red land. He pictured the thousands of miles that stretched out before him from this spot, out across the rest of Africa, across the Atlantic Ocean to his home, to the dark street where he had lost Addy. But all he saw was endless sand and air shimmering above it as it gave up its heat.

  The emptiness of the space between this place and his home, the incomprehensible length of time between this now and the now when he had held Addy overwhelmed him with sadness. In all this space and time, there would be only a few years when she would live. Those years were far in the future from this moment, and, for Addy, they had already ended.

  He realized that it didn’t matter to him where or when he lived in the long sweep of time if it couldn’t be with Addy, and she had been taken from him.

  Standing alone, five thousand years from his life and from Addy, he realized that until now he never had really understood that he would never see her again. Their time together had come and gone. It had ended. Forever.

  He shouted her name, a long, strangled cry of pain and loss.

  Over and over again he cried out her name.

  The atmosphere is a closed environment. He had read that with every deep breath, a person inhales molecules of air that had been breathed out by Julius Caesar as he lay dying on the steps of the Roman Capitol.

  And so Tim filled the air with Addy’s name. Ages from now when she would be born and they would meet and love, their every breath would be filled with his love for her and with his pain at his loss.

  He shouted and screamed and cried until he sank to the barren desert floor, drawing ragged sobbing breaths.

  “What should we do, father?” Ahmes said.

  From the wadi they could hear the god screaming over and over again, the sounds filled with pain and rage.

  Paneb was almost thirty years old. He had stood close enough to touch King Djoser. He had seen the beautiful priestess Hetephernebti. He had watched the river flood and wash into the streets of Ineb-Hedj.

  He had seen the priestess of Isis re-enact the goddess’ grief and tears when her husband Osiris was torn apart by the evil god Set. He had heard songs about her great lamentations when she found that her child, the great god Horus, had been poisoned by his evil uncle.

  Her grief must have sounded like the cries that came now from the plateau above them.

  He stood with Ahmes and rested his hand on his son’s shoulder, feeling the small muscles and bones and fragile life beneath his hand.

  “The netjrew have greater lives, Ahmes. They see the dawning of a thousand years, they know joys we cannot imagine. When you rise so high above, then, Ahmes, when you fall your pain must be so much greater.

  “I don’t know why this netjer is in such pain. I don’t know how we can help him. But if he asks us, we must do whatever we can.”

  “Do you think someone has died?”

  “We all enter Khert-Neter, Ahmes. It is passing to a better world. No, I think this netjer has lost something that is now beyond his reach.”

  “Isn’t there anything we can do?”

  Paneb nodded. “Yes, Ahmes. I have an idea.”

  Feeling a presence, he turned to see Paneb standing by the path that led from the wadi to the edge of the plateau.

  His pain remained a sore knot in his heart, but his anger was exhausted, emptied into desert sky. He felt immensely lost and isolated but at the same time immensely free and unburdened. Addy was gone, but she was gone from the other time. As long as he was here he could think of Addy as a dream that was yet to happen.

  Tim got to his feet. He knew his face was streaked with tears, but he didn’t want to run his sand-covered hands against his skin. He walked to Paneb, who watched him with undisguised friendliness and compassion.

  Tim wanted to try to smile, but knew it would seem false.

  He sighed deeply, collecting himself.

  Brian and Diane. They were the reason he had come here, wherever and when-ever ‘here’ was. He would find them and help them return to their world. Their world. Part of his mind wondered if he even wanted it to be his world anymore.

  “Paneb,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Brian and Diane?”

  Paneb pointed away from the river, off to the southwest and said “Brian, Diane, To-She.”

  They returned to the wadi. His backpack was where he had left it, the map on the ground beside it, four small piles of sand holding down its corners.

  If he was in ancient Egypt, Tim realized, then there would be no interpreters for his English, his smatterings of Arabic would not be understood. He knew some of the ancient names of people and places, but nothing of the every day words.

  He crossed his arms, studied the map for a minute and then looked off into the distance.

  He had no idea if this was a hostile place, who he could go to for help, how he would travel. Were Brian and Diane in danger? Did they even understand where they were?

  He saw that Paneb and Ahmes were waiting for his attention. Ahmes was standing near the shelter, almost bouncing from one foot to the other, a hopeful smile on his face. Tim saw that the sand by the boy was filled with drawings.

  The hair on Tim’s arms stood up as he looked at the drawings. They were drawn exactly in the style of the tomb murals. Using symbols, they told a story.

  Welcoming a god

  The sand drawings reminded Tim of the symbols engraved on the Pioneer 10 probe launched into space in the 1960s.

  The spacecraft passed by Mars, swung beyond it to Jupiter and then slipped past the giant planet into the dark void. It was the first man-made object to leave the solar system, so scientists mounted a plaque on the craft in case aliens corralled the tiny ship as it hurtled past them.

  The plaque showed a line etching of a naked man and woman standing in front of a silhouette of the spacecraft. The man’s right hand was raised in greeting. A diagram of a hydrogen atom, its wavelength meant to establish scale, and a series of converging lines were designed to help the aliens figure out where our sun is located. A schematic drawing of the solar system’s planets, with a binary code showing their relative distances, pinpointed the origin of the space probe.

  The idea had been to find a way to communicate basic information to an alien life form.

  Paneb had taken the same approach.

  Brian and Diane, drawn in profile, were holding hands. He had a baseball cap on his head and a short spear in his free hand. A small cat was at her feet. Tim puzzled over that for a minute until he remembered the Sylvester the Cat shirt she had been wearing.

  They were facing a fat man who welcomed them with two hands turned palm up and extended. A crocodile-headed man stood behind the fat man. At his feet stood two small men, each armed with a short spear. Beside them was a long, thin four-legged animal with a curved snout like an aardvark.

  A vertical line separated the first group from the next drawings.

  In the next series of drawings, the baseball cap, the cat and a spear were drawn above a camel standing in profile. A boat with a curved prow and stern held a crocodile and spear. Three circles followed and then the baseball cap, spear and cat were drawn beside a palm tree. Two more circles separated them from the boat at a palm tree.

  A lake was drawn beside the palm tree. A man with a crocodile head stood beside the tree.

  As Tim looked at the last drawing, the feeling of sandy grittiness on his hands and face grew too annoying. He turned and walked to his backpack where he dug around until he found a pack of wet wipes. He pulled one out and carefully cleaned around his eyes and then his mouth. Conserving the small wipe, he folded it carefully and then cleaned between his fingers and in small crevices of skin under the joints of his fingers.

  Finished, he looked at the neatly folded square, incrusted with sand, and wondered if he could somehow clean it and re-moisten it. If he was interpreting the drawing correctly, then Brian and Diane were three days away by camel. That put a lot o
f sand between them and him.

  He shook the tissue and tucked it in a corner pocket of the backpack.

  When he returned to the drawings, Ahmes and Paneb were standing in different spots.

  “OK,” Tim said. “Let’s give those nouns a workout.” He smiled at Ahmes, who smiled shyly and then looked away.

  Returning to the first drawings, Tim pointed at Brian and Diane and said their names.

  Paneb nodded.

  Pointing at the fat man, Tim said “To-She.”

  Paneb shook his head and ran lightly to the last set of drawings. He motioned in a circle that included the lake, palm tree and the god Sobek. “To-She,” he said. Then he returned to the fat man and said, “Djefi.”

  “Got it,” Tim said. “To-She is the place, Djefi is the fat man. Djefi greets Brian and Diane and then they go off on a camel. The little guys must be soldiers.” Tim remembered that in tomb paintings, secondary characters, no matter how large in life, were drawn at a smaller scale to signify their relative insignificance.

  “Wait a minute, the dog thing is gone. Where’s the dog thing?” he asked, pointing at a smooth spot by Djefi where the strange creature with the curved snout had been sketched in the sand.

  Paneb ignored his question. Instead he walked over to the first set of drawings and began to explain in Egyptian. “The two netjrew were greeted by Djefi, first prophet of Sobek, and his bodyguards. A guard took Brian and Diane by camel. Djefi left by boat. It will take Brian and Diane three days to travel by camel to To-She. Djefi will get there two days later on his boat.”

  Picking out the names in Paneb’s speech, Tim found that the sound of the language was becoming less grating. Although it was tempting to try to teach Ahmes and Paneb English, he realized that unless one of them was with him constantly to serve as an interpreter, he would need to learn ancient Egyptian.

  He wasn’t sure what had happened with the dog figure, perhaps it had been a mistake they had corrected, but Ahmes had seemed embarrassed about something. Either they had decided not to tell him something or else they were trying to hint at something.

  He was in a foreign land and a foreign time. He needed friends.

  Tim clapped his hands softly and looked at Paneb with a smile.

  “Thank you, Paneb,” he said, giving a slight bow.

  Turning to his backpack, Tim pulled out a bag with a large sweet cinnamon roll he had taken from the restaurant after breakfast. He carried it to Paneb and Ahmes. He tore off part of it and offered it to Ahmes, who started to reach for it and then stopped himself, looking to Paneb to get his father’s permission.

  Paneb nodded and Ahmes took the piece of roll. Tim tore away another piece and offer it to Paneb, who took it gravely as if receiving a communion wafer. Tim said, “To friends,” and bit into the sweet pastry.

  When Addy’s friends were setting Tim up on the blind date where he met her, they had described her as intelligent, driven, analytical and organized. They had meant it as a compliment. Her personality was so forceful that they had forgotten to mention how beautiful she was. Tim had assumed that she would fall into the “nice personality” category of the other blind dates his friends had arranged.

  They had met for an afternoon walk in a park, a cup of coffee afterward. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail. A few delicate wisps of hair had escaped and floated at the nape of her neck. When Tim first saw her, the sun was behind her and she seemed to glow with its energy and light.

  They said hello and his eyes kept drifting to her neck where those wisps of hair and the smooth curve of her neck looked so exposed and innocent. He had to consciously keep himself from reaching out and touching her.

  Later over coffee, as he looked at her green eyes, so alive and full of interest, he blurted out that he thought she was beautiful.

  “I know,” she answered, smiling into her coffee cup.

  He was taken aback by her confidence and smugness.

  His face showed it and she laughed, a series of light musical notes that he wanted to hear over and over again.

  “No, no, I don’t know that I’m beautiful. Well, maybe,” she grinned at him. “But I know you think so.”

  She sipped her coffee, her eyes on him, deciding how open she should be.

  “Tim,” she said, setting down her cup and reaching over to place her hand over his. Her touch thrilled him and he wanted to turn over her hand and trace its contours with his fingertips.

  “Tim, you should never, ever play poker. Your face doesn’t hide anything. When we were in the park, I would have run away from you if my friends hadn’t told me, over and over, that you’re not really a pervert.”

  She laughed again at his confused expression.

  “Oh my God. You are going to be so much fun.”

  He knew he was blushing now. Her words suggested that they would see each other again.

  “Here,” she tugged at his hand and placed it on her neck; at the very spot he had stared at earlier.

  He felt the tender thickness of the hair as it emerged from her skin and then how it grew softer and willowy until it seemed to merge with the air. He brushed her skin gently, realizing how thin the boundary was between her body and his, how the surfaces of their skins, sliding softly along each other, were really no boundary at all.

  “My god, that’s electric,” she said turning her neck into his hand.

  Reluctantly he slid his hand away. “They told you I’m not a pervert?” he asked. “How did that come up?”

  She laughed again. “They we’re telling me that you’re an artist and then, Jeanne, I think it was, said, ‘Oh yeah, don’t worry if he really, really looks at you. He’s not a pervert.’ ”

  “Thanks, Jeanne,” Tim said.

  “They all really like you, Tim. And they were right.”

  “I’m not a pervert?”

  “I don’t know, yet,” she said, grinning. “I mean you do really study things. You know you felt the texture of the napkin when we sat down, don’t you? And when we got our coffee, you held the cup up to your face, closed your eyes and took a long, slow breath of its aroma. When people come in, you don’t just glance at them, you really look at them as if you're trying to memorize them.

  “And, to be honest, I kind of like the way you look at me. It’s not exactly naked hunger, but it’s certainly intense. You seem able to control yourself in public, although I’m not sure I will be able to the way you just touched me.”

  “Will be able?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I think you’re about to ask me out on a real date.”

  Tim realized as he chewed the cinnamon roll that it was a little easier to think of her now. The love he would always feel for her seemed to be pushing at the pain that had overwhelmed him earlier up on the plateau. For the first time, he thought it might be possible one day to remember her without pain.

  The sweet taste of the roll was something Ahmes had never imagined. What other things did the gods have that he had never imagined?

  This god seemed very different from the two who had arrived earlier. But then people were different, he thought, the gods would be different, too. He had always pictured them in a vague way as being strong, powerful, fearless; as hard as the stone in the tombs.

  But this god looked and felt like any other person. He did seem different when he looked at things because he seemed to drink them in and to see past them. And at other times, like now, he seemed to have left his body. Perhaps his body was here in Kemet and at the same time his ka was in Khert-Neter.

  It must be very strange to be a god, Ahmes thought. He took the last bite of the sweet roll. Strange and very nice.

  Paneb kept stealing glances at Tim.

  He had seen Hetephernebti, priestess of Re, several times. She was happy and smiling, often stopping to talk with people as she walked through the streets of Iunu where the great temple of Re stood. He had seen the stern-looking Waja-Hur, priest of Thoth several times here at the tomb when he came to draw hier
oglyphics from the Book of the Dead. He was ancient, and although unbent by the years he carried, he had seemed weary and almost angry.

  This god was as different from Brian and Diane as Hetephernebti was from Waja-Hur, or from Djefi.

  The male gods surprised Paneb with their energy. But then gods must be so full of life, it would be hard to contain it in a body, he thought. Although Brian had been larger and stronger, this god, with his intensity and quietness seemed more powerful. There was something about his face, an openness and honesty, that made Paneb want to help and protect him.

  As if he could help and protect a god.

  Ahh, what would Taki think?

  She was so attentive to the things that their family needed to survive from day to day - cooking, fetching water, making linen to barter at the market for food, shaving their heads, caring for them every day.

  She had little time for the gods, except, of course for Ptah and Bes. But all the woman wore amulets of Bes to help with childbirth and to keep snakes out of the home.

  He felt sad some times, worried that Taki was so involved in living this life, that she never got a glimpse of what their eternal life would be like.

  When he took priests to see his tomb paintings of the gods, Paneb would watch their reactions. Sometimes as they studied the drawings, Paneb would see their eyes focus beyond the tomb walls, and he knew that his art had opened a window for the priests to see into Khert-Neter. They would stand a little straighter, their voices would grow softer, even their movements would become more graceful.

  Paneb was inspired by those moments, by the proof that his work was pleasing to the priests and so, perhaps, to the gods. He wished he could share that feeling with Taki, so she could understand his love of the tombs and his eagerness to stand in the dimly lit underground chambers painting and communing with the gods, especially Ptah, the god who guided his hand.