Hadrian stood beside Sabina's chair in silence. He did not look well. He was gray with mourning, and his eyes had lost their usual spark. At a weary wave, he signaled to Geta the Dacian to step forward to proclaim an announcement. Geta raised his hands to the night to make a public announcement into the skies.
"People of Rome, senators, equites, officers of the military, staff, and friends of the Household on this dawn of the third day of the Festival of Isis, greetings on behalf of the Princeps and Pontifex Maximus!" Geta declaimed loudly. "We are here to honor the life and death of Antinous of Bithynia!"
The assembly shuffled momentarily in uncertainty at this declaration about a foreigner of no substance or status. Geta continued.
"The Household will progress behind Caesar to the Temple of Amun beyond this enclave. The mortal remains of Antinous of Bithynia will precede the procession, led by the High Priest, Pachrates of Memphis. All in attendance, proceed!"
Pachrates struck his scepter to the earth with three rousing blows. His pall-bearers heaved their palanquin high onto their shoulders ready for procession. With a swinging rhythmic gait led by the two hierarchs, the bier carriers stepped forward in unison. In a stately march accompanied by priestly voices intoning a somber liturgical chant, they ushered the cavalcade through the lanes of the Encampment. The mass of courtiers began to surge into a processional formation behind them.
The funereal throb of tambours with the scintillant rattle of sistra pulsed each phrase of the priests' chant. Caesar's party followed behind the bier as the entire assembly channeled into a streaming cortege. It filed methodically through the lanes of the camp towards the hulking, fluted, lotus columns of the Temple of Amun brooding beyond the encampment amid the palm trees. The temple too was bathed by its own braziers of firelight.
This squat, fat-pillared Temple wore its hoary antiquity without shame. It was a stained pile of eroded stones, faded paints, and surfaces covered with massed carvings of hieroglyphs. It spoke of an edifice which had been weathering tiredly at this site for untold generations.
As Caesar's cortege progressed towards the temple compound, great gates swung open to reveal a further line of priests streaming from its interior yard bearing night lamps high.
They too were draped in veils of mourning promenading beneath guttering braziers. A deeply booming gong repeatedly sounded a throaty resonance from some place deep within the bowels of the structure as the cavalcade came to rest before its columned porch.
Priests surrounded the palanquin to bear Antinous into the interior of the shrine. The entire procession followed behind as the priests maintained their sonorous chant and rhythmic march.
The interiors of these Egyptian temples can be scary by night, Suetonius mused to himself. Their halls and chambers are spectral with shadowy spaces sporadically illumed by torches or tripods. Lurking demons, ghouls, or specters must assuredly be their hidden inhabitants, he wondered?
Upon entering this cavernous structure the cortege's nostrils were assaulted by an intense charge of cloying incense. Indecipherable inscriptions danced across the pillars in the shifting light, while the upper reaches fading into shadow were stained by centuries of incense and torchlight smoke, suggesting the sheer burden of time itself.
The procession trailed in repeated zigzag directions along pillared corridors and down sloping ramps until they reached a final goal. The narrow corridors of honeyed stone eventually opened into a capacious sacramental chamber. This voluminous expanse was sealed on three sides by lofty cedar doors secured between columns rising into the heights above.
Three towering statues in the Greco-Roman realistic sculptural style, not the stolid style of Egypt, stood looming upon pedestals in the central well of the chamber. Suetonius felt decidedly uncomfortable beneath their stony gazes.
One statue was of the Holy Mother Isis herself, swaddled in her mantle holding a systrum aloft and carrying an urn symbolically containing pieces of her dismembered husband Osiris.
A second statue was of Osiris in the guise of Serapis, the most revered deity of the former Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt. It was beloved of the Alexandrians of the Greek quarter.
The third was of Amun, the chief divinity of the old Egyptian pantheon, but here in the guise of Ammon, a Greek adaptation of Amun into Zeus Ammon, the highest god.
Between these three icons, Suetonius estimated, the entire mythology of Egypt's archaic religion was encompassed and dressed with an acceptably Roman face. Their divinity was expressed in human figuration, not the fantastic menagerie of grotesque animals Egyptians revere. Had these priests, he wondered, decided it was time to update their imagery for wider consumption? He sensed there was more to this occasion than met the eye.
A fourth pediment lay bare, its platform naked of any deity. Suetonius wondered at its implication.
The priests lowered the bier to the flagstones beside a low podium paved in glazed faience tiles. Antinous's pallid, unearthly hue now became the focus of the shrine. Torch light was reflected off polished mirrors to stream a shower of beams onto the bier, highlighting its occupant.
As the assembly silently filed into the chapel and arranged itself around the tiled podium, the two senior priests Pachrates and Kenamun intoned melodious incantations and wafted incense censers towards the bier. Meanwhile Horse Guards and Praetorians took defensive positions around the chamber as the assembly rambled to a halt.
Two grandiose thrones of ivory and precious stones worthy of Pharaohs were standing to one side. They were accorded to the Imperial couple as Pachrates performed fluid oriental genuflections of obeisance. Hadrian and Sabina took their seats while Geta, Arrian, Macedo, Commodus, Balbilla, and other notables arranged themselves close by.
A gigantic platter of beaten gold embossed with arcane symbols was carried by two priests and placed onto the faience-tiled podium. Suetonius did not think he had ever before witnessed so large a single object in pure mellow gold even among the lavish trove abducted from the Temple at Jerusalem generations ago and still displayed at Rome. The sheer weight of the platter required two men to carry it to the platform. This gleaming treasure must have been worth a nation's ransom.
A hush fell across the throng as it awaited the Pontifex Maximus to make his presence and purposes known. The corpse of the Bithynian youth lay in calm ceremonial repose.
The Special Inspector was impressed how, in such a parched climate, the cadaver appeared to retain its normal shape, textures, and color. Neither bloating, mottling, nor corruption was discernable, and only the pungent odor of blue lotuses and wafting incense exuded across the space. Mortician Kenamun was certainly a master of his craft.
Pachrates, ever the showman, took his staff of office and brandished it majestically before the bier. He wafted the wand across Antinous while chanting mysterious formulae towards Ammon as he tossed handfuls of grasses of wheat and barley into the air. His gestures implied some ancient holy harvest rite of truly awesome sanctity, which none of those attending either understood or heeded.
Two of his assistants removed from the bier two of the clay canopic jars which lay alongside the body. Unplugging the stopper of the first, one assistant carefully poured the contents into a shallow indent at the rim of the golden platter. A visceral internal organ the size of a pomegranate, glistening with emollient, plopped into the platter with an audible slurp.
On unplugging the larger jar and tipping its contents onto the basin proper, a bundle of well-oiled variegated tissues slid and tumbled into the centre of the dish with an unctuous slush. Everyone in the chamber immediately realized their origin. The first was a human heart and its connective veins; the second was the intestinal complex of gut, stomach, and associated tubes.