Robin Cook - Sphinx

As she walked through the inner chambers, where the roofing slabs were still in place, she used her flashlight to view the hieroglyphics.

Silently Erica repeated an abbreviated translation of the phrase on the Seti I statue: “Eternal rest granted to Seti I, who rules after Tutankhamen.” She admitted the phrase did not make any more sense to her standing in Seti I’s temple than it did on the balcony of the room in the Hilton. Rummaging in her bag, Erica pulled out the photo of the hieroglyphic inscription on the statue. She looked about the temple for any similar combination of signs. It was a slow process and ultimately unrewarding. At first she couldn’t even find Seti’s name written in the same way as it was on the statue, linked to the god Osiris. In the temple it usually identified him with the god Horus.

Morning melted happily into afternoon, leaving Erica oblivious of the heat and of her appetite. It was after three when she passed through the chapel of Osiris into the god’s inner sanctuary. It had once been a splendid hall whose roof had been supported by ten columns. Now sun drenched the room with light, illuminating the magnificent reliefs associated with the cult of Osiris, the god of the dead.

There were no other tourists in the ruined hall, and Erica moved slowly, undisturbed in her appreciation of the craftsmanship of the sculptured murals. At the far end of the empty hall she came to a low doorway. Inside it was dark. Consulting her Baedeker, she found the room beyond was described simply as a chamber with four columns.

Scoffing at her own misgivings, Erica took out her flashlight and ducked under the low door. Slowly she let the beam of light play upon the walls, columns, and ceiling of the deathly silent room. With great care she picked her way over the irregular floor and moved around the heavy columns. Against the far wall were the openings to the three chapels of Isis, Seti I, and Horus. Eagerly Erica entered the chapel of Seti I; its location within the sanctuary of Osiris was encouraging.

No daylight penetrated the small chapel. Erica’s flashlight illuminated only a small area. The rest of the room was lost in darkness. She started to run the light around the room, but almost immediately glimpsed amid the hieroglyphics a cartouche of Seti I exactly as it had been written on the statue. It was Seti identified with Osiris.

Erica scanned the hieroglyphics in the neighborhood of the cartouche, guessing the text ran vertically from left to right. Without translating word for word, she quickly understood that the small chapel had been completed after Seti’s death and had been used in the Osiris ritual. Then she came to something strange. It appeared to be a proper name. Incredible. Proper names did not appear on pharaonic monuments. Erica pieced together the sounds. Ne-neph-ta.

Erica moved the beam of light to the floor, preparing to put her bag down. She wanted a photo of the curious name. She started to bend over, but then froze. Within the circle of light was a cobra, its head raised and body arched, its forked tongue lashing out like a miniature whip, its yellow eyes with black slitlike pupils staring at her with deadly concentration. Erica was paralyzed with fear. It wasn’t until the snake moved by lowering its head and sliding off its perch that Erica was able to look behind her toward the low door of the chapel. After another glance at the retiring snake, she fled out into the sunlight and returned to the ticket booth on shaky legs.

The guard thanked Erica for the information and told her that they’d been trying to kill that cobra for many years. The sanctuary of Osiris was then closed temporarily.

Despite the episode with the snake, it was with reluctance that she left the site for the drive back to Balianeh. It had been a wonderful day. Her only disappointment was that she’d have to wait for a photograph of the name Nenephta. Erica intended to cross-reference that name and wondered if it was one of Seti I’s viziers.

The train for Luxor departed only five minutes late. Erica settled into her seat with the Tutankhamen books, but her attention was drawn to the scenery outside. The Nile valley began to narrow so that in places it was easy to see from one side of the area of cultivated fields to the other. As the sun neared the western horizon, Erica began to notice the people returning to their homes. Children riding on water buffalo. Men leading donkeys straining beneath their burdens. Erica could see into courtyards and wondered if the people in their mud-brick houses felt security and love like in the pastoral myths-or were they continuously aware of their precarious hold on life? In a sense, their lives were timeless, a borrowed moment of time.

At Nag Hammadi the train crossed the Nile from the West Bank to the East Bank and entered a long stretch of sugarcane that blocked any view of the countryside. Erica returned to her books, picking up The Discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamen, by Howard Carter and A. C. Mace. She began reading, and despite her familiarity with the book, was immediately entranced. It was a recurrent surprise that the dry and meticulous Carter wrote with a genuine flair. The excitement of the discovery was communicated from every page, and Erica found herself reading faster and faster, as if it were a thriller.

As they occurred in the book, Erica studied the superb collection of photos taken by Harry Burton. She found the plate showing two life-size bituminized statues of Tutankhamen that guarded the sealed entrance to the burial chamber particularly interesting. Comparing them to the Seti statue, she comprehended for the first time that she was one of the few people who knew the Seti statues were a matched pair. That was very significant, because the probability of finding two such statues was very small, while the chance of other artifacts now being unearthed in the same location was very great. Suddenly Erica recognized that the site where the Seti statues had been found could be as important archaeologically as the statues themselves. Perhaps locating the site was a more reasonable goal than finding the statue. Erica looked out the window at the blur of the sugarcane, thinking.

Probably the best way of learning where the statues had been discovered was for her to pose as a serious antiquities buyer for the Museum of Fine Arts. If she could convince people she was willing to pay top dollar, she might be shown some valuable pieces. If more Seti material appeared, perhaps she could learn the source. There were a lot of ifs. But it was a plan, particularly if Abdul Hamdi’s son could not provide further information.

The conductor came through the train announcing Luxor. Erica felt a thrill of anticipation. She knew that Luxor is to Egypt what Florence is to Italy: the jewel. Outside the station, there was another surprise. The only taxis left were horsedrawn carriages. Smiling with pleasure, Erica already loved Luxor.

When she arrived at the Winter Palace Hotel she discovered why it had been so easy to get a reservation despite the number of tourists. The hotel was being renovated, and to get to her room she had to walk down a carpetless hall on the second floor covered with piles of building blocks, sand, and plaster. Only a few of the rooms were being used. But the renovation did not dampen her spirits. She loved the hotel. It had an elegant Victorian charm. Across the formal garden was the New Winter Palace Hotel. In contrast to the building she was in, it was a modern high-rise structure with little character. She was pleased to be where she was. Instead of air conditioning, Erica’s room had an extraordinarily high ceiling complete with a slow-moving large-bladed fan. A pair of French doors opened onto a graceful wrought-iron balcony that looked over the Nile.

There was no shower; the tiled bathroom was dominated by a huge porcelain bathtub that Erica immediately filled to the top. She had just managed to step into the refreshing water when the antique phone jangled in the other room. For a moment she debated not answering it. Then curiosity overcame inconvenience, and grabbing a towel from the rack, she walked into the bedroom and picked up the receiver.