Steven Saylor - The Seven Wonders

In Ephesus I had known my first woman; in Rhodes, my first man. In Halicarnassus, Bitto had instructed me in the arts of love, and in Babylon I had coupled with a priestess of Ishtar. But I had never been with a goddess before.

No words could describe the bliss of that union; nor shall I attempt to do so. There is a phrase used by Herodotus when he skirts a sacred matter about which his informants require his silence: I know a thing, but it would not be seemly for me to tell.

I shall say this much and no more: in a place and a moment outside of time and space, Isis and I became one. Perhaps it never happened. Perhaps it is happening still.

* * *

Little by little, I returned to this earthly realm, until at last I felt again the hard granite beneath me and felt its coldness around me. I heard the beating of my heart. I blinked and opened my eyes and saw darkness-not the darkness of dreams or the netherworld, but a common, earthly darkness, the mere absence of light, which was nothing to fear.

I sat up. If I had left my body at some point, there was no doubt that I had returned to it. My legs were sore from climbing, my shoulders and neck were stiff from lying on hard stone, and my backside ached from riding a camel.

How much time had passed? An hour, a day, a month? I had no way of knowing. For all I knew, I had died and come back to life.

Blindly, I navigated the chamber, feeling my way along the walls until I found the opening of the shaft. Steadying myself by the rope, proceeding cautiously so as not to bump my head, I slowly made my way up.

When I pushed open the stone panel, I was puzzled, for it seemed to me that the soft light was just the same as when I descended. Had I been inside the pyramid for mere minutes?

But then, from the glow that lit the Libyan mountains, I realized that the hour was dawn, not dusk. Far below I saw the camels sitting with their limbs tucked under them, their heads nodding in sleep. Huddled under blankets, also fast asleep, were Antipater and the others, including the priest of Isis, whose shaved head shone by the first ruddy light of the rising sun.

I made no sound to wake them. Instead I turned around and ascended as quickly as I could to the top of the pyramid. How many men can say they have witnessed a sunrise from the summit of the Great Pyramid? That moment, experienced alone-although in some way I felt that Isis was still with me-I will remember all my life.

But I had another, more practical reason for the climb. I wanted to look down again at the large sand dune among the temples, to be sure that the shape was as I remembered it. It was. I could almost see the thing hidden inside it, as if the breath of a god had blown away the masses of sand. Its back was turned to the pyramids and it faced the Nile, just as the riddle said. It was seen by all who passed-who could fail to notice a sand dune big enough to block one’s view of the pyramid? And yet it was unseen-for no one realized what was hidden under the sand. Its riddle was known to all, for everyone knows the riddle of the sphinx. And yet this sphinx was known to no one.

For how many generations had this monument, surely larger than any other sphinx in Egypt, been buried beneath the sand? Long enough that no one living even knew that it existed. The people of Egypt had forgotten that among the temples and shrines on the plateau, set there like a sentinel to guard the pyramids, crouched a giant sphinx, now entirely covered by sand. And yet some memory of this marvel had persisted in the form of a riddle that no one could answer.

Now that I had solved the riddle, the shape of the sphinx within the dune was unmistakable, and surely would be so to anyone gazing down on it from the Great Pyramid. There I could see the outline of the haunches, and there the protruding forepaws, and there, at the highest point, the proud head, which no doubt was covered by a nemes headdress. As Antipater had remarked, the solution to a riddle invariably seems obvious once you know the answer.

From far below, I heard a faint cry. I looked down to see that my companions were stirring. Djal had risen to his feet and was staring up at me. Even from such a great distance, I could see the plaintive expression on his face.

I took in the view one final time, then made my way down to give him the good news.

* * *

Later that day, while the plateau was still deserted due to the festival in Memphis, the priest of Isis summoned a team of laborers to excavate the highest point of the sand dune concealing the sphinx.

All day they dug. At last their wooden shovels struck something made of stone. They kept digging until very late in the afternoon, by which time the very top of the sphinx’s head had been uncovered. The gigantic nemes headdress appeared to have once been surmounted by some ceremonial object, long since broken off or worn away by time; to the priest of Isis, the stone remnant suggested a rearing cobra, such as is often seen on the headdresses of sphinxes.

As the sun began to graze the jagged crest of the Libyan mountains, the priest ordered the workers to begin covering what they had uncovered. “Work all night if you must,” he told them, “but don’t stop until not a trace of your day’s labor remains.”

“But surely these men should keep digging!” I protested. “Why must they undo their work? Don’t you want to see the whole thing? Granted, a full excavation will require many, many days-”

“What the gods have seen fit to conceal, I would not presume to uncover without first consulting my fellow priests and seeking to know the will of Isis in this matter. I allowed just enough digging to be sure that the second riddle of the sphinx had indeed been solved. All who have seen must be sworn to secrecy. That includes you .” He cast a sidelong glance at our guide. “And you as well, young Roman.”

“But surely the will of Isis is already known in this matter,” I said. “Was it not by her guidance that I found the solution? She even-” I bit my tongue and said no more. They had pressed me for details of my experience inside the pyramid, and I had revealed all I could put into words-except any mention of the intimacy I had shared with the goddess. That experience was too special to share, and beyond words-and it seemed to me that any mortal who dallies with a deity had best be discreet.

The priest would not be swayed. He invited us all to spend the night in comfort at his quarters in the Temple of Isis, and we left the workers to their labor. For now, the sphinx among the pyramids would remain a secret.

“Tomorrow I shall go to Memphis,” said the priest. “I will convince Mhotep that the riddle was solved and command him to return the mummy.”

“How will you persuade him?”

“Leave that to me. Your satisfaction in this matter, Gordianus, must be the role you played in the salvation of Djal.”

“I have already received my satisfaction,” I said, thinking of my wondrous experience with the goddess.

“How so?” asked the priest. The others pricked up their ears.

“That must be a riddle to which none of you will ever know the answer.”

* * *

“An upstairs room! Why were we given an upstairs room?” wailed Antipater, clutching the railing and descending one step at a time. For days after our trip to see the pyramids he had been so stiff and sore he could hardly move, and had languished in his bed at the inn. On this day he had at last consented to stir, for we had received a very special invitation.

As we crossed the city, the exercise seemed to do him good, despite his moaning and groaning. The exotic sights and sounds stimulated us both. Our route took us past the roadway to the Temple of Serapis, and we paused to look at the long rows of sphinxes.