Ramose and the Tomb Robbers (11 page)

As the boat glided effortlessly past, the breeze lifted a piece of reed matting that was protecting a cabin in the centre of the boat. An old man was sitting inside on a throne. Ramose gasped. The face was thinner than when he’d seen it last and the lines of age were deeper, but he knew the face well. It was his father. A young man made his way from the stern of the boat with a papyrus scroll under one arm and a palette and brush box in his other hand. He stopped next to the princess and bowed.

“Keneben!” Ramose called out the name aloud. The villagers were all falling to their knees and calling out blessings to their pharaoh. Ramose ran out into the river. “Hatshepsut! Keneben!” he called, but the breeze carried his words away and neither his sister nor his tutor heard him. Ramose kept wading out into the river, vainly trying to reach the barge. It was as if his whole life was slipping past in front of him. He should have been on the royal barge eating grapes, drinking wine. Instead he was struggling against the river, thin and exhausted, accused of being a thief even though he had nothing but the dirty, torn kilt that he was wearing.

“Wait,” he called out, wading deeper. He lost his footing and the current of the river carried him away from the barge. He tried to swim towards it, but the barge was too fast, the river too strong. His family disappeared around the next bend in the river. Tears ran down Ramose’s face and mingled with the waters of the Nile.

A cry from the shore brought Ramose back to his current situation. He remembered his friends. Karoya and Hapu were still on the riverbank. Now that the barge had passed, the villagers were getting to their feet.

“Karoya, Hapu, jump in the river,” he called. “We have to swim to the other side.”’

“I can’t swim,” Karoya called out.

“Yes, you can. I’ll help you.”

Hapu could see the villagers turning on them again. He grabbed Karoya by the hand and dragged her into the river. Ramose swam towards them. The villagers were following. Hapu threw himself into the water, pulling Karoya with him. He splashed around inexpertly, but managed to stay afloat. Karoya struggled and screamed and lost hold of Hapu’s hand. She disappeared under the water.

Ramose swam to them and dived under the water. He could see Karoya, her eyes closed, her mouth open, struggling helplessly against the force of the water. He grabbed her under the arms and carried her to the surface. She was still trying to fight the water. She choked in air and water at the same time.

“Listen to me, Karoya,” Ramose gasped. “We have to get to the other side of the river.”

Karoya stared wildly at the wide expanse of water between them and the other bank. She shook her head furiously.

“Look,” he said. “Mery’s doing it.”

The cat was swimming towards them in wide-eyed terror. “I’ll help you. Just relax and you’ll float, trust me.”

People were clambering onto one of the reed boats. Ramose started to swim to the middle of the river. He held Karoya under her arms. She started to struggle again.

“Lie on your back,” Ramose said. “Imagine you’re lying on a soft straw mattress.”

Ramose kicked out with his feet and felt the current carry them.

“Close your eyes so that you can’t see the water,” he said.

Karoya closed her eyes, her body relaxed a bit.

“Now kick gently.”

Karoya kicked her legs. Ramose felt her body become more buoyant.

“See. You’re not sinking. I have hold of you. It’s safer here in the water than on the shore.”

Mery swam over to Ramose and was trying to clamber up onto him. Karoya’s cooking pot floated into view. Ramose lifted the cat up and put her inside the pot. Mery yowled miserably. Ramose pushed the pot in front of him with one hand while with the other he supported Karoya. He looked around for Hapu who was swimming across the river, splashing and gasping, but making progress. The river was wide. Ramose kept kicking his legs and reassuring Karoya. Eventually they reached the other side. All three crawled ashore, and collapsed on the wet sand. Mery jumped out of the pot and stalked onto the sand and shook herself indignantly.

Ramose lay on the wet sand, his breath rasping. “My father still lives,” he said.

“May he have long life and happiness,” gasped Hapu.

“I saw your sister,” said Karoya. “She is more beautiful than ever.”

“Did you see the young man on the barge?”

His friends nodded.

“That is Keneben, my tutor. It was he who saved my life when the queen tried to poison me. He’s returned from Punt.”

Ramose looked across the river. Some villagers were rowing towards them in a reed boat.

“We have to keep moving,” he said.

“Where will we go?” asked Hapu, struggling to his feet.

“To the desert. They won’t follow us there.”

There was no farming on that side of the river. Papyrus reeds grew densely on the river’s edge, beyond that there were wild grasses and acacias. The friends got to their feet and hurried into the undergrowth. They ran as fast as their fading strength would allow. They kept going until it was almost dark. With no irrigation canals to carry the river water inland, the vegetation thinned out quickly and they were soon in the sparsely vegetated land on the edge of the desert.

Ramose peered back into the dimming light.

“I don’t think they’ve followed us,” he said. “Egyptians don’t like venturing into the desert.”

They made a camp. Ramose collected fallen dates. Karoya gathered wild grain. Hapu managed to snare an ibis. Karoya made a fire and they were able to have a small but welcome meal.

They took stock of their situation. In the rush to get away they had lost most of their things.

“All we have is the cooking pot, a few deben of copper and a cat,” said Hapu miserably. “Oh, and this.” He pulled something from the belt of his kilt. It was Ramose’s heart scarab. “The priest dropped it when he saw the royal barge.” Hapu examined the jewel. “There’s a chip out of it, but I thought you might still want it.”

Ramose took the lapis lazuli scarab from his friend with a grateful smile. He fingered the hieroglyphs that spelt out his name.

“At least I still know who I am,” he said.

“What are you going to do now, Ramose?” asked Karoya quietly.

Ramose had been thinking about that as they’d walked. He knew what he had to do.

“I’m going to follow my father back to Thebes. To tell him that his true heir lives and that he’s ready to take the throne of Egypt.”

Hapu shifted uncomfortably. “I sometimes forget that you’re who you are,” he said.

“You seem eager to tell everybody that we meet,” grumbled Ramose.

“Yes, but seeing the royal barge and your sister again made me realise you might really be pharaoh one day.”

“That’s my plan. I’d started to think that it was impossible. Now that I know Father is still alive and that I have friends in the palace, I know it isn’t.”

Karoya smiled, looking at her ragged friend. “You don’t look much like a pharaoh.”

“I will one day.”

“Do we have to go back to Thebes?” groaned Hapu. “We’ve just spent three weeks and risked our lives getting away from Thebes.”

“That’s where I’m going,” said Ramose. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

“Of course I’ll come. But how will we get there? They took your gold.”

“We can walk,” said Karoya.

“Walk?” Hapu looked at her as if she was suffering from sunstroke.

“It’ll take a while, but we’ll get there. My people think nothing of walking such distances.”

“What will we eat? Where will we sleep?”

“We’ll sleep under the stars as before.”

“If we keep to the edge of the desert like this, no one will bother us.”

“We can go back to the river every so often to fish,” said Karoya. “There are dates and wild grains. We won’t go hungry.”

Ramose smiled at his friends. He’d come a long way since he’d been the spoilt prince in the palace. He could walk to Thebes. He had friends to help him. He also knew that his sister and tutor were waiting for him at the palace. He felt sure he could face whatever his future held.

“The gods will provide,” said Ramose.

It might seem to us that the ancient Egyptians were a strange lot. They spent a lot of their time thinking about death. They weren’t a solemn or unhappy people though. They believed that when they died they would live on in an afterlife. During their lives they prepared their own tomb, making sure it contained everything they would need in the afterlife.

Thanks to these beliefs and the fact that many of the tombs were underground, a lot have survived. Even though tombs are all about death, they provide us with a lot of knowledge about the way ancient Egyptians lived.

The ancient Egyptians lived around three thousand years ago. I find it fascinating that we know so much detail about life so long ago.

Ramose was a real person. His father, Pharaoh Tuthmosis I, lived from 1504–1492
BCE
. Some historians believe that his “chief” wife bore him three sons who all died before the pharaoh. A son of a lesser wife therefore became the next pharaoh. No one knows what happened to Ramose and his brothers. I thought it would be interesting to imagine the reasons for the early deaths of the princes. That is how the Ramose stories came about.

amulet

Good luck charms worn by ancient Egyptians to protect them against disease and evil. Amulets were also wrapped inside a mummy’s bandages to give good luck to the dead person as they travelled through the underworld.

Canopic chest

When the ancient Egyptians mummified bodies, they removed most of the insides (except for the heart). They put the insides in jars and they were in turn put in a chest. This chest, called a Canopic chest after a town called Canopus, was placed in the tomb with the coffin.

carnelian

A red stone used in jewellery.

cowry shell

An oval-shaped sea shell. The ancient Egyptians used them as good luck charms.

cubit

The cubit was the main measurement of distance in ancient Egypt. It was the average length of a man’s arm from his elbow to the tips of his fingers, 52.5 cm.

deben

A unit of weight somewhere between 90 and 100 grams.

Horus eye

Horus was the hawk-god of ancient Egypt. Horus lost an eye in a battle, but the goddess Hathor restored it. His eye became a symbol of healing and is used in many paintings and sculptures.

lapis lazuli

A dark blue semi-precious stone which the Egyptians considered to be more valuable than any other stone because it was the same colour as the heavens.

niche

A space or recess cut back into a wall, usually made to store something or to display a statue or a vase.

palm-width

The average width of the palm of an Egyptian man’s hand, 7.5 cm.

papyrus

A plant with tall, triangular-shaped stems that grows in marshy ground. Ancient Egyptians made a kind of paper from the dried stems of this plant.

sarcophagus

A large stone container, usually rectangular, made to house a coffin.

senet

A board game played by ancient Egyptians. It involved two players each with seven pieces and was played on a rectangular board divided into thirty squares. Archaeologists have found many senet boards in tombs, but haven’t been able to work out what the rules of the game were.

underworld, afterlife

The ancient Egyptians believed that the earth was a flat disc. Beneath the earth was the underworld, a dangerous place. Egyptians believed that after they died they had to first pass through the underworld before they could live forever in the afterlife.

vizier

A very important person. He was the pharaoh’s chief minister. He made sure that Egypt was run exactly the way the pharaoh wanted it.