Tom Knox: The Babylon rite

Turning back to the huacas, the prospect hardly improved: it seemed impossible that such ugly, if sizeable, heaps of mud, stretching almost to the horizon, could be so archaeologically important. Yet they were. These were the Moche pyramids, great sacred sites brutally eroded by fifteen hundred years of desert wind and El Nino rain. Once they would have been lofty, painted ziggurats dominating the flats and cornfields, full of warriors, priests and bloodthirsty nobles. Now they were muddy lumps, fabulously unexcavated muddy lumps, the precious knolls that had persuaded Toronto University Archaeology to locate its Moche Project in Zana.

In just two seasons of digging, Dan and the guys had opened only three of the many huacas, and already they’d found two senior Moche tombs, both undisturbed, one of which had provided the damaged neck vertebrae which had afforded Jessica her insight.

So it was exciting to wonder what else lay out here in the endless heaps of dry soil and potsherds.

At last, Dan lifted his eyes from his kit. ‘Sorry, Jess? Did you say something?’

Jessica smiled. ‘I said: how we do know the haqueros haven’t been here? The graverobbers.’

‘Well, we don’t, not absolutely,’ he confessed, his long grey hair falling over his dark brown eyes, ‘But we’re extremely optimistic. We’re guessing the reputation of Zana, as a bruja town, a town of sorcerers, has protected these huacas. Most of the people here are emancipated African slaves, thought to possess magical powers — that’s probably why the other tombs were untouched, in which case, why not this one also? And the doors are also intact. Anyway, we can talk later. Shall we do it?’

‘Yes!’

‘Turn on your headtorch.’

Dan was already buckling the chins strap of his helmet, with its halogen headtorch. Jess followed him.

The path around the southwest incline of Huaca D led to a low, excavated entrance. The smell emanating from the dark mudbrick tunnel beyond was earthy, and homely, and yet tanged with something else: something warm and maybe fetid. Something alien.

Stooping, they entered. Nina felt the brush of the mud roof on her helmet, and it was a distinctly satisfying sensation. At last she was inside a huaca: a real-life Moche adobe pyramid! Fifteen hundred years old!

Their uncomfortable crawl through the narrow adobe passage took several minutes: this was one of the biggest huacas in Zana. As they inched their way along, the mudbrick walls narrowed, tapering on either side, and above. A few minutes later, she and Dan were virtually crawling, abject and animal-like, on hands and feet. The darkness was intense.

Jessica hated the dark. It always reminded her of her father, and his last days. Specifically it reminded her of being in his hospital room at night, with the lights low, near to his death, as his cancer conquered him. She had been just seven years old and hadn’t understood what was happening. But she had nonetheless imbibed some emotional association: darkness equals death, equals a terrible nothingness, an inexplicable nullity. Yes, she hated the dark.

The darkness in the huaca was made worse by the claustrophobic conditions. The air was clammy and over-warm, lacking oxygen. Jess sweated. How could Dan be sure the pyramid wouldn’t simply collapse on top of them, smothering them in ancient mud, their mouths filling with suffocating soil, an avalanche of crumbling adobe? And then more darkness.

They moved on. Two more minutes of crawling became three. The passageway zigzagged, perhaps as a deterrent to graverobbers. The darkness was now pure and solid, cut through only by the beam of her headtorch: it illuminated Dan’s white T-shirt, as he led the way, crawling and crouching. The white of the T-shirt was turned a dirty orange: grimed with fifteen-hundred-year-old mud.

‘Here.’

Panting with relief, Jess saw they were entering a taller antechamber. She could stand; though Dan, with his lanky six feet four, still needed to hunch over.

Two other team members were waiting for them, kneeling in the dust. Jay Brennan and Larry Fielding. They said hello, and made poor jokes about the loveliness of their surroundings. Jess smiled as best she could, but she was too distracted by the floor of the antechamber.

‘My God.’

Here were the disarticulated skeletons, half-excavated. These were the sacrificed concubines or servants of the lords buried further within. From her research, she knew what these signified. The Moche believed their aristocrats required servants in the afterlife just as they did in the present life: so when the slaves were sacrificed to accompany their master their feet were chopped off. So that they couldn’t run away in the hereafter.

The idea was absurd, yet also appalling. Jess stared at one long skeleton, probably male, judging by the narrowness of the pelvis. It certainly had no feet. It looked like a pretty tall skeleton for a slave.

Recalling her thorough lessons in forensic anthropology from Steve Venturi at UCLA, she knelt and examined the ankle bone where it had been severed. Something was not quite right about it. Jess steadied her torchlight over the bone, examining the angle of the blow, as a voice echoed above her.

‘Right. This way.’

It seemed she didn’t have time to linger. She was a guest on this trip, conspicuously the anthropologist amongst proper archaeologists, so she was lucky to be here at all, and in no position to ask for a delay.

They moved down the last length of darkened passage to the sealed tomb. The air grew hotter, the coarse mud walls even rougher: they had only recently been excavated. The weight of the great adobe pyramid above them was palpable, and oppressive.

‘There.’

Dan pointed. A slab of rock blocked the passage, illuminated by their collective headtorches; the slab was the height of the passage itself — maybe one and a half metres wide and tall.

Jess asked the obvious and probably stupid question. ‘How do we move that?’

‘Brute force,’ said Dan. ‘The mud is ancient, it gives way. It’s surprisingly simple, you can dislodge the portals by hand. The rocks aren’t thick, they’re more like large slates.’

‘But — the roof?’

‘These adobe pyramids are secure, they won’t collapse. They erode in the sun and rain, but they’ve lasted fifteen hundred years: they don’t collapse from the inside.’

Jess felt her excitement surging. What was beyond this ancient portal? Already they had found a trove of mutilated skeletons. This was an important tomb, from the mysterious end of the Moche Empire, the desperate time of the Muchika. They were headed for the dark heart, the airless core of the pyramid.

Jay was muttering behind, in the depths of the gloom. His colleague joined in, giving voice to his concerns. ‘You know. The air is, ah, pretty bad down here, Dan.’

‘But what can we do? We haven’t got any oxygen tanks at the lab, have we?’

‘Nope. We finished the last on Monday.’

The frustrating debate continued, then Dan lifted a hand. ‘So, either we call a halt and wait a week for a new delivery, or we advance. Guys?’ His headtorch illuminated their white faces one by one.

In turn, everyone nodded. The decision was made.

‘Then let’s do it!’

Reaching up, Dan began tugging at the door. There was just room for his fingers to grasp an edge, and pull. He pulled once. Nothing. He pulled again. No movement.

Jess came up beside him, kneeling in the dust, to help. Still nothing.

‘Another go, come on.’

As one they tugged, and then the door seemed to shift, a few millimetres; then decisively, with a cloud of soil and choking dust. But something was wrong. This dust was red It was pouring from somewhere, from some hidden channel, some broken vessel above; draining like a tipped-up load of vermillion sand over Jessica’s face and hair and mouth. She was being smothered in thick red dust with a weird smell. She screamed out loud, in terror.