He’s a volatile old guy, though, and he cheered up after we got inside. There are those who consider the Abydos temples the most beautiful in Egypt, and I wouldn’t argue with them. Some of the other tourist favourites – Dendera, El Kab, Philae – are better preserved, but they date from the Greek or Ptolemaic period, a thousand years later. Abydos is Nineteenth Dynasty, one of the high points of Egyptian art.
Schmidt hauled out his camera and took pictures of everything. Then he forced it on me and made me take pictures of him in front of everything. Then he forced it on Bright, who happened to be nearby, and made Bright take pictures of both of us in front of . . . well, practically everything. By the time we reached the inner courtyard he’d used up the first roll of film and retired behind a pillar to reload.
I took advantage of his absence to escape, not only from Schmidt’s obsession with snapshots, but from the others. Feisal was lecturing. I didn’t want to hear a lecture, I just wanted to look.
Some of the others had wandered off too. I saw Alice going up the steps that led into the Hypostyle Hall and John and Mary, hand in hand, following her. Bright and Sweet were nowhere around.
Perched on a low foundation wall of cut stone, I sat soaking it all in and trying not to think about what Alice might be doing. I sincerely hoped she was doing it, but I didn’t want to think about it. After a while Feisal led the group into the pillared hall. I went on sitting. It was hot, but not unbearably so. The square pillars of the vestibule opposite were decorated with the mighty form of pharaoh being greeted by various gods. Exposed as these were, they had lost most of the paint that had once covered them. I tipped my hat so it shaded my eyes and relaxed. Gradually the voices of guides lecturing in six different languages faded into an agreeable background hum, and somehow I wasn’t at all surprised to see that the reliefs were now bright with fresh paint, the king’s body and limbs red-brown, his crown a soft blue, his collar and bracelets picked out with turquoise and gold.
One of the painted figures stepped out of the pillar. He wasn’t wearing a crown, and his hair was pale gold, not black. Raising one eyebrow at me in distant acknowledgment, he turned and began removing objects from the wall. They solidified and took on dimension in his hands: jewelled and beaded collars, heavy bracelets, golden cups, bowls and containers . . .
‘There you are.’
I shook the sleep from my eyes and looked up. The figure standing over me wasn’t wearing a white kilt and beaded collar but dust-coloured pants and shirt. Larry gave me a tentative smile. ‘Sorry to disturb you.’
‘It’s a good thing you did. I was about to fall over.’
‘Some of us are going to have a look at the Old Kingdom tombs,’ Larry explained. ‘Anton thought you might want to come along.’
‘The First Dynasty royal tombs? I thought nothing remained of them.’
‘Nothing worth visiting, no. But there are tombs of all periods here; this was one of the holiest places in Egypt, the legendary site of the tomb of Osiris. Last year an expedition from Boston located a new cemetery of Fourth Dynasty burials. Normally tourists aren’t allowed, but I happen to know the chap in charge and . . . He broke off, eyeing me doubtfully. ‘But perhaps only an enthusiast like myself would be interested.’
He looked like a little boy whose mum has rejected his offering of a toad or a garter snake. Close your eyes and think of the National Museum, I told myself. The tombs must be mastabas, like the ones at Sakkara. The superstructures were all above ground. If anybody invited me to visit the sunken burial chamber I would politely decline.
‘I’d love to,’ I said.
We were a select group, as it turned out. Ed Whitbread was present, of course; he trailed Larry and me at a discreet distance. Sweet and Bright had also joined us.
‘Where’s Schmidt?’ I asked, turning to look back as we started off across the sandy wasteland.
‘Feeding cats, I expect,’ Larry said. ‘Shall we go back for him? He may have changed his mind.’
‘He’s easily distracted,’ I admitted. ‘Wait a minute, here comes . . . No, it’s Feisal.’
The sun was in my eyes or I wouldn’t have made that mistake. Feisal soon caught up with us. He was frowning.
‘Sir, the bus will be leaving in an hour. Where . . .’
Larry explained. ‘I’d have asked you to join us, Feisal, but I thought you had to stay with the group.’
Feisal’s scowl changed to a look of bright-eyed interest. It wasn’t directed at me. I kept forgetting he was a trained Egyptologist. ‘They are now buying souvenirs and cold drinks. I haven’t had a chance to see the excavations, so I will join you if you don’t mind.’
He fell tactfully behind, leaving me to Larry, who proceeded to tell me all about the Old Kingdom tombs. I must say it made a pleasant change to have a man flex his mind instead of his muscles to impress me.
It was also a pleasant change to leave the crowds behind. An ambitious ‘guide’ trotted along with us until Larry dismissed him with a curt Arabic phrase. We had been walking for ten minutes when he gestured. ‘There it is.’
I looked around for walls and cut stone. All I could see was a low mound up ahead. A sinking feeling came over me as I realized I had made a slight error. Anything that had been above ground in two thousand-plus B.C. would be under it now, buried by encroaching sand. I followed Larry up the slope of the mound, and cheered up when I saw below me, not a dark sinister hole in the ground, but a large pit open to the sky. It was paved with stone and there were a few stretches of wall, none of them over a metre high. In front of one such stretch squatted a tan bundle, which unfolded into a man.
‘Sorry, folks, nobody is allowed . . .’ he began. Then his narrow face relaxed. ‘Mr Blenkiron! I heard you were in Egypt, but I didn’t expect you’d honour us with a visit.’
‘Hope we’re not interrupting anything.’ Larry offered me his hand and we scrambled down into the excavation.
Having lots of money makes one welcome in all social circles. The excavator would have kicked Cleopatra out of his bed to welcome the rich patron of archaeological excavations. He greeted Feisal by name, invited the rest of us to call him Ralph, and apologized feverishly for the fact that nothing particularly interesting was going on.
‘The men are off today,’ he explained. ‘It’s Friday. Pat will be sorry to have missed you; he’s gone to Luxor to work at the library at Chicago House.’
He showed us some of the reliefs. They were fragmentary but very beautiful, delicate low reliefs like the ones at Sakkara. He and Larry went off into a spate of technical discussion, and before long Sweet said he thought he and Bright would go back. Larry looked at his watch. ‘Yes, go ahead. Tell them we’ll be along shortly. I’d like to have a quick look at the burial chamber.’
He produced a huge flashlight from his pocket. ‘No need for that, sir,’ Ralph said proudly. ‘We’ve run a wire and stuck up a few lightbulbs. I’ll turn them on, shall I?’
From the northwest corner of the pit, a gently sloping ramp led down. It was low-ceilinged but fairly well lit by a series of bare bulbs. I followed Larry and Ralph until we got to the dreaded, anticipated hole in the ground. The top of a rough wooden ladder showed at the edge of the shaft.
Somebody called from up above, and Ralph said, ‘Damn. I’d better go see – ’ He scrambled back up the ramp. Larry, already on the ladder, looked up at me and for once in my life I decided to be sensible instead of foolhardy.