Crocodile on the Sandbank - Elizabeth Peters [34]
Evelyn’s sensitive face was pensive as we went on. “How strange and pitiful,” she said musingly. “To reflect that that horrid object was perhaps once clasped ardently by a husband or lover! It was very small, was it not, Amelia—a woman’s hand?”
“Don’t think about it,” I said firmly.
“I wish I could stop thinking about it. My reflections should dwell on the frailty of the flesh, on human vanity, and the other precepts of Christian faith.… Instead I shudder at the horror of what is, after all, only a bit of cast-off flesh—the discarded garment of the soul. Amelia, if it had touched me I should have died!”
We went up to the tombs. You may rest assured, dear reader, that I had not wasted my time during the voyage. I had with me the Reverend Samuel Birch’s little books on the study of Egyptian hieroglyphs; and my hours of poring over these sources were repaid in full when I was able to point out to Evelyn the group of hieroglyphic signs which spells the name of the chief of this district during the Twelfth Dynasty. There is no thrill equal to seeing the actual signs, painted on crumbling rock walls instead of printed on a page; finding in them meaning and sense… .
But I fear I am being carried away by my scholarly enthusiasm. The tombs had considerable interest even for casual tourists, the painted scenes on the wall are gay and pretty, showing the activities in which the dead man loved to indulge during his lifetime, as well as the industries pursued on his estates. His serfs blow glass and work gold into jewelry; they tend the flocks, fashion pottery, and work in the fields.
Some years later these same splendid tombs were savagely mutilated by native Egyptians extracting fragments of the paintings for sale to antiquities dealers. But even when we saw them I was aware of some of the abuses Emerson had talked about. Fragments of paint and plaster were constantly flaking off the walls, which were dulled by the smoke from the candles carried by the guides. Visiting travelers were no more careful than the uninformed Egyptians; as we stood in one tomb I watched an American gentleman calmly walk away with a fallen bit of stone that bore a pretty picture of a young calf. I shouted at him, but Evelyn prevented me when I would have pursued him to retrieve the fragment. As she pointed out, someone else would have taken it anyway.
The name of Emerson has now returned to the narrative; but the reader must not suppose that it was absent from our thoughts during the halcyon days of sailing. Evelyn did not refer to Walter, but when I introduced his name the eager light in her eye, the unguarded way in which she turned toward me told me that, though absent from her tongue, the name was not far from her thoughts.
As for myself, I thought often of Emerson, though not, of course, in the same way Evelyn regarded his young brother. No; the thought of Emerson was a stinging mosquito, which produced an itching spot that constantly demanded to be rubbed. (The Critic comments upon the inelegance of this comparison. I insist upon leaving it in.) Emerson’s criticisms kept recurring to me; I saw evidence of neglect and vandalism to the monuments wherever we went, and I itched (you see the appropriateness of my analogy), I positively itched to be in charge of the entire antiquities department. I would have settled things properly!
We got to know some of our crew quite well. The cook was an elderly, toothless black gentleman from Assuan, who produced the most delicious meals upon two small charcoal burners. The waiters, Habib and Abdul, were handsome boys who might have stepped straight out of an ancient Egyptian painting, with their broad shoulders and long, slim bodies. We got to be very fond of them, especially Habib, who laughed in the most infectious manner whenever I spoke to him in