Lion in the Valley - Elizabeth Peters [28]
It is a waste of time to talk to Emerson when he has made up his mind about Egyptological matters; but I privately vowed he would experience the phenomenon himself—if I had to hold him prisoner inside until it happened.
His main concern that season was to identify the owner of the Bent Pyramid. The burial chambers of the Sixth Dynasty pyramids are covered with texts identifying their owners, but, strange as it may seem, none of the earlier tombs has a single inscription inside or on it. The only way of ascertaining the names of the kings to whom they belonged is from the associated structures—temples and subsidiary tombs, enclosure walls and causeways.
(In revising these journals for eventual publication I have added a few paragraphs for the edification of readers who do not share my expert knowledge. Edification, not entertainment, is my aim, as it should be the aim of any intelligent reader. I have no intention of succumbing to the numerous requests I have already received to permit my personal diaries to be published in my lifetime, but my high regard for science demands that the interesting and useful information contained in these pages be one day disclosed to the world. Wishing to spare my heirs the painful labor of revision—and also wishing to do myself justice, which no one else can do as well—I have undertaken a few modest changes.)
Our path led past the village, whose small flat-roofed houses and minareted mosque we could see among the palms and tamarisk trees. I wondered what sort of home Abdullah had found for us. My expectations were low. When I first met Emerson, he had set up housekeeping in a tomb, and experience has taught me that members of the male sex have very peculiar standards of comfort and cleanliness. I wished we could have returned to our headquarters of the previous season. The abandoned monastery had proved a commodious and comfortable residence, once I had it remodeled to suit my requirements. But though Mazghunah was only a few miles to the south, it would have been a waste of valuable time to transport ourselves and our gear that distance daily.
Modest though my hopes were, I felt a distinct sense of depression when we reached our destination. It was on the outskirts of the village, on the west side, nearest the desert. A mudbrick wall enclosed a courtyard of beaten earth. Within the compound were several structures, some no more than one-room huts or sheds. One was a house, to use that word loosely. It was built of the ubiquitous unbaked brick coated with mud plaster, and was only one story high; on the flat roof were some miscellaneous shapes that might have been rotted screens. Some hasty efforts at repairing the crumbling walls had been made, and that recently; the rough plaster patches were still damp.
Abdullah had drawn ahead of me. When I dismounted he was deep in conversation with Emerson, and he pretended not to see me until I tapped him on the shoulder.
“Ah, sitt, you are here,” he exclaimed, as if he had expected I would be lost on the way. “It is a fine house, you see. I have had all the rooms swept.”
I did not reproach him. He had done his best, according to his lights; Emerson would have done no better.
I had come prepared. Rolling up my sleeves, literally, I put everyone to work. Water was fetched from the well—its proximity was, I admit, a point in favor of the location—and some of the men began mixing more plaster, while others sprinkled the interior of the house with disinfectant. (Keating’s powder, I have discovered, is one of the most effective.) The house had four small rooms. After one look at the high, narrow windows and floors of dirt, I decided Emerson and I would sleep on the roof. The debris I had observed there was the