Crocodile on the Sandbank - Elizabeth Peters [72]
“I was thinking of the royal tomb,” I explained. “Of the relief of the little princess and her grieving parents. Evelyn should copy it. She would do it beautifully.”
“I am surprised at the suggestion,” Lucas exclaimed. “After what happened today—”
“Oh, I don’t mean she should do it now; but one day, when the situation has been cleared up. Since your connection with Evelyn has been so distant, Lucas, you may not know that she is a splendid artist. She has already done a painting of the pavement that was destroyed.”
Lucas insisted on seeing this painting and exclaimed over it quite excessively. The conversation having turned to matters archaeological, he was reminded of the papyrus scroll he had mentioned.
“I had the bearers fetch it,” he said, reaching into the box at his side. “Here you are, Mr. Emerson. I said I would hand it over, and I keep my word.”
The papyrus was enclosed in a carved and colored wooden case, except for a single section—the one Lucas had unrolled.
“I put it between two squares of glass,” he explained. “That seemed the best method of keeping it from crumbling any further.”
“At least you had that much sense,” Emerson grumbled. “Hand it to Walter, if you please, your lordship. I might drop it, having only one good hand.”
Walter took the framed section, as gently as if it had been a baby, on the palms of his two hands. The sun was setting, but there was still ample light. As Walter bent over the sheet of papyrus, a lock of hair tumbled down over his brow. His lips moved as if in silent prayer. He seemed to have forgotten our presence.
I leaned forward to see better. The papyrus seemed to me to be in fairly good condition, compared with others I had seen in antiquities shops. It was brown with age and the edges were crumbling, but the black, inky writing stood out clearly on the whole. An occasional word was written in red, which had not fared so well; it had faded to a rusty brown. Of course I had no notion whatsoever what the writing said. It resembled the hieroglyphic writing; one could distinguish the shape of an occasional bird or squatting figure, each of which represented a letter in the ancient picture alphabet of the Egyptians. But the majority of the letters were abbreviated forms and resembled a written script such as Arabic more than it resembled hieroglyphic writing.
“It is splendid hieratic,” said Emerson, who was leaning over his brother’s shoulder. “Much closer to the hieroglyphs than some I have seen. Can you make it out, Walter?”
“You don’t mean that Master Walter can read that scribble?” Lucas exclaimed.
“Master Walter,” said his brother drily, “is one of the world’s leading experts on the ancient language. I know a bit, but I am primarily an excavator. Walter has specialized in philology. Well, Walter?”
“Your partiality makes you praise me too highly,” Walter said, his eyes greedily devouring the crabbed script. “I must show this to Frank Griffith; he is with Petrie at Naucratis this season, and unless I miss my guess, he is going to be one of our leading scholars. However, I believe I can make out a few lines. You are right, Radcliffe; it is splendid hieratic. That,” he explained to the rest of us, “was the cursive script used on documents and records. The hieroglyphic signs were too ornate and cumbersome for the scribes of a busy kingdom. The hieratic was developed from the hieroglyphic, and if you look closely, you will see how the signs resemble the original pictures.”
“I see!” Evelyn burst out. We were all bending over the papyrus now, except Lucas, who sipped his whiskey and watched us all with his patronizing smile. “Surely that is an owl—the letter ‘m.’ And the following word much resembles the seated man, which is the pronoun ‘I.’”
“Quite right, quite right.” Walter was delighted. “Here is the word for ‘sister.’ In ancient Egyptian that might mean….” His voice faltered. Evelyn, sensitive to the slightest change in his feelings, quietly