IV. THE FIGHT FOR FREEDOM
The stones, heated by the blazing sun, burned the arms and shoulders of the slaves. The gentle breeze brought no coolness to them, but instead aggravated their plight by covering them in the fine dust from the stones that ate into their eyes.
Thirty slaves, already at the end of their strength, were pulling on stiff ropes to raise on to the wall a heavy stone slab bearing a bas-relief of some sort. The slab had to be placed in a prepared nest at a height of some eight cubits from the ground. Four experienced and nimble slaves were steadying the slab from below. Among them was Pandion who stood next to an Egyptian, the only inhabitant of Aigyptos amongst the many nations in their slave compound. This Egyptian, condemned to eternal slavery for some unknown, awful crime he had committed, occupied the end cell in the privileged south-eastern corner of the shehne. Two purple brands in the shape of a wide cross covered his chest and back while on his cheek a red snake was branded. Morose, never smiling, he did not talk to anybody and, despite the horror of his own position, despised the foreign slaves in the same way as his free fellow-countrymen did.
At the present moment he was not paying any attention to anybody and, with his shaven head lowered, was pressing with his hands against the heavy stone to prevent it from swaying.
Suddenly Pandion noticed that the strands of a rope holding the stone were beginning to snap, and shouted to warn the others. Two of the slaves jumped to one side but the Egyptian paid no attention to Pandion and could not see what was going on above his head — he remained standing under the heavy stone.
With a wide sweep of his right arm, Pandion gave the Egyptian a shove in the chest that sent him flying clear of the danger spot. At that very moment the rope snapped and the stone crashed down, grazing Pandion’s hand as it fell. A yellowish pallor spread over the Egyptian’s face. The stone struck against the foot of the wall and a big piece was broken off the corner of the bas-relief.
The overseer came running towards Pandion with a shout of rage and lashed at him with his whip. The square hippopotamus-hide lash, two fingers thick, cut deeply into the small of Pandion’s back. The pain was so great that everything went misty before his eyes.
“You wastrel, why did you save that carrion?” howled the overseer, slashing at Pandion a second time. “The stone would have remained whole if it had fallen on a soft body. That carving is worth more than the lives of hundreds of creatures like you,” he added as the second blow struck home.
Pandion would have rushed at the overseer but he was seized by the soldiers who hurried to the scene and brutally thrashed him.
That night Pandion lay face downwards in his cell. He was in a high fever, the deep whip cuts on his back, shoulders and legs were inflamed. Kidogo came crawling to him and brought him water to drink, from time to time pouring water over his aching head.
A slight rustling sound came from outside the door, followed by a whisper:
“Ekwesha, are you there?”
Pandion answered and felt somebody’s hands laid on him in the darkness.
It was the Egyptian. He took a tiny jar out of his belt and spent a long time rubbing something into the palms of his hands. Then he began to pass his hands carefully over Pandion’s wales, spreading some liquid unguent with a pungent, unpleasant smell. The pain made the Hellene shudder but the confident hands of the Egyptian continued their work. By the time the Egyptian began to massage the legs, the pain in Pandion’s back had died away; a few minutes later Pandion dropped quietly off to sleep.
“What did you do to him?” whispered Kidogo who was quite invisible in his corner.
After a short pause the Egyptian answered him:
“This is kiphi, it’s the finest ointment, and the secret is known only to our priesthood. My mother brought it here by paying a big bribe to a soldier.”
“You’re a good fellow. Excuse me if I thought you were trash!” exclaimed the Negro.
The Egyptian muttered something between his teeth and disappeared silently into the darkness.
— From that day onwards the Egyptian made friends with the young Hellene although he still ignored his companions. After that Pandion often heard a rustling sound near his cell and if he was alone the lean, bony body of the Egyptian would come crawling in. The lonely, embittered son of Tha-Quem was outspoken and talkative when he was alone with the sympathetic Pandion, who soon learned the Egyptian’s story.
Yakhmos, the son of the moon, came from an old family of nedshes, faithful servants of former Pharaohs who had lost their position and their wealth with a change of dynasty. Yakhmos had had a good schooling and had been employed as scribe by the Governor of the Province of the Hare. He chanced to fall in love with the daughter of a builder who demanded that his son-in-law be a man of means. Yakhmos lost his head for love of the girl, determined to get the money, come what may, and turned to robbery of the royal tombs as a means to speedy enrichment. His knowledge of the hieroglyphs was a great advantage to him in the commission of a horrible crime that was always cruelly punished. Yakhmos soon had large quantities of gold in his hands but in the meantime the girl had been given in marriage to an official in the far south.
Yakhmos tried to drown his sorrows in merry feasting and the purchase of concubines, and the money soon melted away. The dark road to wealth was already known to him and he again set out to do nefarious deeds, was eventually caught, and brutally tortured and his companions were either executed or died under torture. Yakhmos was sentenced to exile in the gold mines. Every year a new party was sent there at the time of the floods and to await his dispatch Yakhmos was put into a shehne since there was a shortage of labour for the building of the new wall of the Temple of Ptah.
As Pandion listened with interest to Yakhmos’ story he was amazed at the valour of a man who in appearance was far from brave.
Yakhmos told of his adventures in the fearful underground labyrinths, where death awaited the intruder at every step from traps cunningly designed by the builders.
In the oldest tombs that lay deep below the huge pyramids the treasures and the royal sarcophagi were protected by huge, thick slabs of stone that closed the gangways. The later tombs were in a labyrinth of false corridors that ended in deep wells with smooth walls. Huge blocks of stone fell from above when the intruders tried to move the stones that protected the tombs, heaps of sand shot down through wells from above and barred their way forward. If the bold intruders tried to pass the sand and penetrated deeper into the tombs, more earth showered down on them from the wells and buried the robbers in a narrow passage between the sand-heaps and the newly fallen earth. In the newer tombs stone jaws closed noiselessly in the darkness of the narrow tunnels or a frame studded with sharp spears crashed down from the columns immediately the intruder set his foot on a certain fatal stone in the floor. Yakhmos knew the many horrors that had lain buried for thousands of years, awaiting in silence their victim. He gained his experience at the expense of many others who had perished in the performance of their horrible profession. On many occasions the Egyptian had come across the decaying remains of unknown people who had perished in the traps in the distant past.
Yakhmos and his companions had spent many nights on the verge of the Western Desert where the Cities of the Dead stretched for thousands of cubits. Hiding in the darkness, not daring to speak or strike a light, feeling their way to the howl of the jackals, the laughing of the hyenas and the menacing roar of the lions, the plunderers dug their way through stifling passages or cut through whole cliffs in an effort to find the direction in which the deeply hidden tomb lay.