“Anubis,” said the boy who’d pointed to the jackal. “The god of embalming.”
“Right. He’s quite important for mummies,” Wyatt said, and then he grinned. “And daddies. What’s next? What are these four pots tied together?”
“The offerings are in them?” a student suggested.
“No, because it’s not an ideogram,” said another girl. “It’s a phonetic hieroglyph. The picture of the pots tied together writes the wordkhenet. It has nothing to do with pots. It’s just a cheat for writing three letters of the alphabet:khn-n-t.”
Wyatt’s eyebrows raised. “Well done.”
The girl’s cheeks flushed crimson. “That means so much coming from you!”
“Oh, dear God,” I said under my breath.
As he launched into another transliteration tutorial, I became transfixed by a model that had been found in Tomb 10A along with the coffins of the Djehutynakhts. Two weavers, carved of wood, were kneeling by a loom. The women in the front were spinning flax. Amazingly, after four thousand years, the threads of the flax and the loom were intact, the way they would have been the day they were set in the burial chamber, with the rest of the models and pottery andshabtistatues.
“Time for a scavenger hunt,” Wyatt said, handing out a list of objects. “Pick a partner, you’ll be working in teams. The answers are somewhere in this exhibit. First pair to come back to me with pictures on their phone gets ten points on their next homework assignment. And…go!” He turned to me as the undergrads dispersed. “Was I that stupid once?”
“Do you really want me to answer that?” I said.
Wyatt wandered toward the coffins of the Djehutynakhts. “No,” he said. “But look at this.”
We both stood, hypnotized by the Book of Two Ways on the inner coffin of Governor Djehutynakht. There was the red rectangular door to the horizon. The blue water and black land routes through the Netherworld. The crimson line between them, a lake of fire. After so many years of studying this through pictures and drawings, I felt like I had reached the Holy Grail, only to find it locked inside a glass exhibit case.
“I wonder who first looked at that and thought it was a map,” Wyatt murmured.
“Well, the coffin wasn’t empty. It’s pretty clear that the deceased was meant to stand up and walk one of the two paths to reach the Field of Offerings.”
“Not to poke holes in your theory,” Wyatt said, “but this Book of Two Ways was on thewallof Djehutynakht’s coffin. So…that sort of disproves your point.”
I stepped away from him, staring at the richly painted cedar panel of the front inside of the exterior coffin. There was a false door through which theba—part of the soul—could pass between the afterlife and this world. Djehutynakht was painted in front of the false door. The text nearby requested offerings from the king and Osiris: incense, wine, oils, fruits, meats, bread, geese.
In the interior coffin, Djenutynakht’s mummy would have been placed lying on his left side, eyes looking east. Spells from the Coffin Texts wrapped around the inside walls, protecting him like another layer of linen.
“The Coffin Text spells surrounded the mummy for a reason,” I said quietly.
“Yes,” Wyatt agreed. “Papyri disintegrate, and cedar doesn’t. Look, I don’t mean to be a jerk—”
“But it comes easily to you?”
He shrugged. “They’re texts, Olive. It’s a stretch to try to squeeze them into your theories about iconography.”
I folded my arms. “My name isDawn. I hate when you call me Olive.”
Wyatt leaned close to the glass, his breath fogging it. “I know,” he said. “That’s why I do it.”
—
AS THEDIGHouse bakes in the late-afternoon sun, so does everything living. The fans can’t keep the air circulating fast enough, and heat shimmers from the mud brick walls. A fly that has been circling my lunch collapses on the scarred table. The alfalfa and corn growing along the Nile drape their lank arms over each other, a line of drunken soldiers staggering home.
This is the time of day when, as a grad student, I trudged back from the dig site with the sun forging a crown on my head. Sometimes we would work in the magazine, but more often, we made up for our early-morning departures by drifting to each of our rooms and taking a nap.
I think back to my old room, with the fan I had to jerry-rig with duct tape in order to work. I would strip down to my underwear on the narrow twin bed and pretend to sleep until I heard the knock on the wall between us. I’d knock back. While the rest of the house was hibernating, he would slip into my room, curl his body around mine, and we would burn each other alive.
Harbi offers to make up a cot for me, but that feels presumptuous. After he goes back to his living quarters, I am left to wait alone.
It is nearly 10:00A.M.at home. Brian will be at work. Meret will be at school.
I should tell them where I am.
