The Hippopotamus Pool - Elizabeth Peters [34]
‘I was at that time only three years of age,’ said Ramses in his most dignified manner. ‘The manuscript about the hippopotamus pool that Mother is presently translating suggests that war between the Hyksos and the Theban princes was about to be resumed. The wounds that killed Sekenenre and the hasty form of mummification employed support the idea of death on the battlefield.’
Nefret had been sorting through a pile of photographs on Emerson’s desk. ‘This is his mummy?’
It was a hideous face, even as mummified faces go – and few of them would look well framed and set on a mantelpiece. The shrivelled lips were drawn back in a distorted snarl. Heavy blows had smashed the bones of the face; one long symmetrical slit in the skull must have been caused by a sharp-edged weapon, an ax or sword.
Most girls would have shrieked and covered their eyes if confronted with such an image. Nefret’s voice was calm and her countenance unmoved except by remote pity. But then, I reflected, she had known many a mummy in her time. A distinct asset for a would-be archaeologist.
‘Yes, that is his,’ Emerson answered. ‘Hard to imagine from that shrivelled residue, but he was a handsome, well-set-up chap in his day, and barely thirty years of age when he met his death.’
I joined Nefret, who went on looking at the photographs. ‘An unsightly portrait gallery indeed,’ I remarked. ‘It is sobering to reflect that those grisly remains, now so withered and naked and broken, were once divine monarchs and their beautiful queens. Of course we must never forget what our faith teaches us: that the body must return to the dust whence it came, whereas the soul of man . . .’
‘Is immortal?’ In a particularly sardonic tone Emerson finished the sentence I had left incomplete – for I had belatedly realized where it was heading. Concerned as I was about Nefret’s questionable religious beliefs, I had thought to administer a little lesson on Christian dogma. What I had forgotten was that the immortality of the soul was also Egyptian dogma, and that Emerson might not want to be reminded of our strange visitor and his talk of reincarnation.
‘Er – yes,’ I said.
Nefret was too absorbed with her mummies to heed the exchange. ‘All of them look as if they had been in a war,’ she murmured, contemplating an emaciated cadaver whose nose was decidedly askew.
‘He may well have been in a war,’ Emerson said. ‘That is Ahmose, Tetisheri’s grandson, who defeated the Hyksos and reunited Egypt. His injuries are postmortem, however – inflicted by thieves who unwrapped the mummies looking for jewels. The poor corpses had rather a hard time of it, unwrapped and mutilated by thieves, rewrapped by pious priests – some of whom were not pious enough to refrain from removing objects the thieves had overlooked – violated again, moved from one hiding place to another in the futile hope of preserving what little remained of them. Not all of them were lovely and beautiful in their lives, though. This little old lady was practically bald by the time she arrived at the embalmers, and those protruding front teeth did not add to her charm.’
‘Who is she?’ Nefret asked.
Emerson shrugged. ‘The mummies got jumbled up a bit, which is not surprising when you consider that they were moved several times. Some are unidentified, and many, I believe, were mislabelled. It will probably take years to sort them out, if it can be done at all.’
‘The techniques of mummification changed over the course of time,’ Ramses said. ‘One might determine thereby the approximate period in which the individual lived.’
‘Enough of mummies,’ I said in disgust.
‘This is more to your taste, I suppose,’ Emerson said, as Nefret held up a photograph of a massive gold bracelet.
‘I remember seeing these jewels in the Cairo Museum,’ Nefret said admiringly. ‘Is it certain that they belonged to Queen Ahhotep? The cartouche is that of King Ahmose – her son, I believe?’
‘They were found in her coffin,’ Emerson