The Bone House (26 page)

“It is not about death, you see, but about rising to eternal life. For the ancients, death was simply an emergence—a coming forth—from darkness into the glorious light of a new and better day. They were fascinated by immortality—obsessed with it. As a civilisation, they turned vast resources to furthering their understanding of the afterlife in the hope of eradicating death entirely.”

Whole sections of plaster were tumbling to the floor now, raising clouds of thick white dust. Khefri, a damp keffiyeh over his nose and mouth, was given the task of supervising the demolition work; Thomas and Kit retreated outside to wait until the dust-making destruction was finished.

Kit tumbled up the steps and into the bright morning light. He stood blinking up at the sky, clean blue and high above, and it did seem as if he had stumbled from darkness into the all-pervading radiance of a better world. Stepping free of the tomb, he felt compelled to ask, “Why were the ancients so in love with death?”

“Who told you they were in love with death?” wondered Dr. Young, pulling a soft cloth from a rear trouser pocket. He removed his glasses and began wiping off the dust-covered lenses.

“Is that not why they perfected mummification—to preserve the body as long as possible? Isn’t that why they went to such great lengths with all their elaborate tombs and mortuary temples and such?”

“On the contrary, dear fellow. They were in love with
life
!” corrected Thomas, replacing his spectacles. “And such life—life in great abundance, life in all its glorious splendour. Death was anathema to them. Death, though natural and common, was unacceptable. Death was seen as nothing short of tragic disaster—at the very least an unfortunate accident along the happy road of existence, and one which, in time, they hoped to learn to avoid altogether. They were searching for immortality precisely because they wished life to continue forever without end.”

“Don’t we all.”

“We do!” cried the doctor. “Of course we do. We were made for it, after all. I know not what it is like in your time—perhaps your world enjoys a more enlightened view—but in this current mechanistic age such thoughts are increasingly considered backwards and unscientific.” He shook his head sadly. “Too many of my brother scientists are succumbing to a view that holds all religion as outdated nonsense—nursery tales from mankind’s infancy, dogmas to be outgrown and swept aside by scientific progress.”

“I’m familiar with the view,” confirmed Kit.

“But see here,” continued Thomas, brightening once more. “Contrary to what many may think, immortality is not a fairy tale invented to compensate for an unhappy life. Rather, it is the perception shared by nearly all sentient beings that our conscious lives are not bounded by this time and space. We are not merely lumps of animate matter. We are living spirits—we all feel this innately. And in our deepest hearts, we know that we can only find ultimate fulfilment in union with the supreme spiritual reality—a reality that appears, even during this earthly life, to take us beyond the narrow limits of time.”

Kit pondered this. Although somewhat alien to his thoughts, he heard in the words, as from a far country, the distant but undeniable ring of truth. At last, he said, “Do you think we live forever?”

“Oh, I do. I most certainly do. We are all immortal, as I said.”

“That’s right, you did.” Kit savoured the idea for a moment, thinking of Cosimo, Sir Henry, his own parents, and all he had known who had gone before. “It’s a good thought.”

“Yet I perceive you remain unconvinced.” The doctor pursed his lips and regarded Kit doubtfully. “Could it be as I fear? Has the concept fallen out of favour in the age to come?” Before Kit could reply, he rushed on, “I challenge you to clear thinking, Mr. Livingstone. Consider! Consciousness is who we are—we interact with the material world as conscious beings and in no other way. Is that not so?”

“That is so.”

“Consciousness, then, is the most evident brand of existence there is. You might call it self-evident, and it is not necessarily bound to matter at all. That much is easily demonstrated. Can you not bring images to mind of far-off places, friends and relations fondly remembered, or of things that made you happy in the past? Can you not imagine acts of kindness, or cruelty? Do you not recognise the truth of something when you hear it, or know beauty when you see it?” He glanced at Kit for confirmation, then pressed towards his conclusion. “All these, and more, are expressions of consciousness, and they are not bound by matter or space or time in the least. Since this is the case, it will be most natural for our more limited human consciousnesses to recognise and yearn for an affinity with the One Great Consciousness that made us—the spiritual consciousness of the Creator. Sharing in this divine awareness is the most natural form of existence.” He leaned forward and planted a finger on Kit’s chest. “See here, if we can establish an affinity with the eternal, ever-living Creator, then is it not likely that this affinity, this relationship, if you like, will endure beyond the death of the material body?”

The doctor did not wait for an answer. “I tell you it is,” he declared triumphantly. “And it is because we can establish an affinity with the eternal Creator that immortality becomes more than a fairy tale. At the very least, you must allow, it becomes a most reasonable hope.”

Just then they heard raised voices echoing up from the open stairwell behind them, and Khalid’s head and shoulders appeared in the excavation hole. “Come quick, sirs!” he called, waving them towards him. “The doorway is revealed.”

Once inside, Thomas inspected the work and approved it. “Well done, Khalid. Have this rubble cleared away, and then we shall dismantle the sealing blocks.”

The Egyptian overseer bowed his head to show he understood, and then turned to command his crew.
“Yboud!”
he ordered, and the workers began scooping rubble into baskets of woven hemp.

“It is of utmost importance not to rush at this stage,” the doctor explained when they returned to the wadi. “Everyone is always curious to see what lies beyond the door, what treasures may appear. In haste, irreparable harm often results—injury to artefacts and grave furnishings that can easily be avoided allowed sufficient patience and care.”

“That sounds like the voice of experience,” Kit observed.

“Oh, aye,” agreed Thomas ruefully. “It has been my misfortune to have arrived on the scene of several digs too late to prevent the stampede, and I have witnessed what can happen when excavators contract gold fever. In the race to get their hands on the treasure, they will trample valuables still more precious to the scholar and scientist. Some of these items are in an utterly fragile and delicate condition.” Thomas turned to gaze at the dark rectangular hole as the first workman appeared, bearing a heaping basket on his shoulder. “We will be having none of that on my digs!”

“Glad to hear it,” remarked Kit. “I expect the map is especially fragile. It’s just an old piece of skin, after all.”

“And, if you are right, Mr. Livingstone,” added Thomas, “that old piece of skin is one of the most uniquely valuable artefacts the world has ever seen.”

Once the room had been cleared and swept clean, more oil lamps were lit and placed all around the area to be excavated, and under Dr. Young’s eagle eye, the sealed doorway was opened, block by carefully chiselled block. As the hole grew bigger, Kit’s pulse quickened. When the hole was big enough to reach through, Thomas took up a lamp and, standing on some of the blocks, passed the lamp through the breach.

“See anything?” asked Kit, edging forward.

“Objects,” replied Thomas, stepping down once more. “The room is filled with grave goods.” He nodded to Khalid. “Take it down.”

The bricks came thick and fast now, and soon the last of the sealing blocks was removed; Thomas ordered more lamps to be lit. He passed one to Kit, and one each to Khefri and Khalid.

“After you, Dr. Young,” said Kit, indicating the darkened doorway with his lamp.

The archaeologist hesitated.

“Seeing as you’re the leader of this excavation and its benefactor, I insist.”

The doctor gave a nod and stepped to the threshold and, holding his lamp high, peered into the darkened room. He stood motionless—as if frozen in an attitude of searching expectation.

“Doctor?” said Kit. “What do you see?” He glanced at Khefri, who held his hands clasped beneath his chin, his dark eyes aglint in the flickering lamplight.

“Indescribable,” breathed the doctor, edging farther into the doorway. Turning slowly, he beckoned Kit and Khefri to join him. “You had better come and see for yourselves.”

The two stepped through the darkened doorway. In the faint illumination of the single lamp, he saw a confused and jumbled wall of objects and furniture crammed floor to ceiling and jammed into every available space: boxes large and small; chests of cedar, lime wood, and acacia; latticework room screens; collapsed bed frames; stools and footrests and headrests; chairs both simple and ornately carved; bronze-rimmed chariot wheels and disassembled harness trees; innumerable jars of all shapes and sizes; weapons—spears, swords, daggers, throwing sticks—both functional and ceremonial; a collection of painted rods and flails of office; and a host of small clay models of everything from cows and hippos to women making beer and men planting barley, bald-headed scribes, half-naked slaves, kohl-eyed goddesses in form-fitting gowns, and enough servants to populate a village, and more. It was as if the entire contents of an antique dealer’s showroom had been stuffed higgledy-piggledy into a receptacle no larger than the living room in Kit’s old flat, and then locked away for several hundred eons. Moreover, everything was shrouded with a heavy layer of powdery ochre dust.

He did not know what he expected, but the sight left him speechless all the same. Somewhere in the midst of a small museum’s worth of antiquities, awaiting discovery, lay the Skin Map—perhaps in one piece. It was all he could do to keep from tearing into the heap.

Sensing something of the frustrated expectation, Thomas offered, “We will find your treasure, my friend. Never fear. If it is in there, we will soon have it in hand.”

Over the next two days, the contents of the main chamber were cleared piece by piece, and each item was numbered by Thomas and recorded in a book along with a brief description of the item and its condition. In order to speed the process along, Kit set up a relay system and convinced the fastidious doctor to go along with it. He had a canopy erected in front of the elaborately carved doorway across the wadi from the tomb; there, in the great empty chamber Kit called the temple, he established Dr. Young at a table beneath the canopy. Then, with Kit directing the excavation work inside the tomb, each object was carefully pulled from the tomb and either carried or relayed hand to hand by workmen to the table where Thomas first inscribed a small number on it in sepia ink, then recorded the find in his ledger; the artefacts were then conveyed to the empty chamber where Khefri supervised their storage. There they would remain under guard until Thomas could arrange for their transportation to London and, ultimately, the British Museum.

Each box, chest, and jar was personally examined by Kit as it came from the burial chamber. Hands, clothes, hair, and every inch of exposed flesh became pale with dust; he looked like a powdered ghost. With a damp handkerchief tied around the lower half of his face, he doggedly kept at his work, always expecting that the next ancient container he put his hand to must contain the map. In this he trusted to Thomas’ simple dictum that by process of elimination they must, sooner or later, find his treasure. While all this cataloguing and recording might have been a logical and reasonable and properly scientific way to proceed, it did nothing to assuage Kit’s continual urge to just rush in and start prying open the various containers until he found it. And although there was no end of interesting objects issuing from the tomb, they found neither gold—in the form of rings, bracelets, belts, or other items of jewellery—nor the prized roll of human parchment they sought.

This exacting activity continued each of the four days it took to unpack the burial chamber. On the morning of the fifth day, the workmen finally removed the folding room screens of carved acacia wood that had stood along the back wall of the tomb—the wall of painted panels depicting various events in High Priest Anen’s life, all impressively rendered, vivid and lifelike.

“More lamps!” called Kit, and sent Khalid to invite Thomas and Khefri to come and see the masterpieces. “These are the paintings I was telling you about,” said Kit. The three stood together holding their lamps high to admire the exquisite rendering.