the river in a black ship, and their smell was borne before them on the wind so that people hid in their houses with bowed heads and burned incense in their rooms and recited prayers to Aten. Many also prayed to the old gods and made the holy sign of Amun, for when they smelled the body washers’ smell, Aten seemed far away, and their thoughts turned to the old gods.
The corpse washers and embalmers stepped ashore from the vessel with all their materials, blinking with eyes that were accustomed to the dark and swearing bitterly at the light, which hurt them. They entered swiftly into the new House of Death, taking their smell with them so that the place became a home for them, which they never left again. Amongst them was old Ramose, the expert of the pincers, whose task was to extract the brain. I met him in the House of Death, for the priests of Aten held the House of Death in horror, and Pharaoh had placed it under my charge. When he had gazed at me for some time, he knew me again, and marvelled greatly. I made myself known to him to gain his confidence, for uncertainty gnawed like a worm at my heart, and I desired to know how my revenge had prospered at the House of Death in Thebes. Therefore when we had spoken a little of his profession and duties, I asked from him:
“Ramose my friend, did you ever have under your hands a beautiful woman who was brought to the House of Death during Thebes’s days of terror and whose name I believe was Nefernefernefer?”
He regarded me, bent backed and blinking like a tortoise, and said, “In truth, Sinuhe, you are the first distinguished man who has ever called a corpse washer his friend. My heart is greatly moved by this, and the information you require is doubtless of great importance since you address me as your friend. Surely it was not you who brought her one dark night, swathed in the black robe of death, for if you were that man, you are the friend of no corpse washer, and if they come to hear of it, they will stab you with poisoned knives and so inflict upon you a most hideous death.”
His words caused me to tremble, and I said, “Whoever may have brought her, she deserved her fate. Yet from your words I suspect that she was not dead but came to life under the hands of the corpse washers.”
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Ramose said, “Most certainly that frightful woman was restored to life, though how you know of this, I prefer not to guess. She awoke, for such women never die and if they die, they should be burned in fire so that they can never return, and when we came to know her, we gave her the name of Sethnefer, the devil’s beauty.”
A dreadful suspicion seized me, and I asked from him, “Why do you speak of her as of something that has been? Is she not still in the House of Death since the corpse washers vowed that they would keep her there for seventy times seventy days.”
Ramose rattled his knives and pincers angrily, and I believe he would have struck me if I had not brought him a jar of the best wine in Pharaoh’s cellar. He merely felt its dusty seal with his thumb and said, “We bore you no ill will, Sinuhe, and you were to me as my own son, and I would have kept you all your life in the House of Death and taught you my art. We embalmed the bodies of your parents as only those of the eminent are embalmed and did not spare the finest oils and balsams. Why then did you wish us such ill as to bring that terrible woman to the House of Death alive? Know that before her coming we led a simple, hard-working life, rejoicing our hearts with beer and greatly enriching ourselves by thefts of jewellery from the dead, without regard to sex or standing, and also by selling to sorcerers such organs as they require for their spells. But after the coming of that woman, the House of Death became like an abyss of the underworld, and the men knifed one another and fought together like mad dogs. She stole all our wealth from us and all the gold and silver we had amassed in the course of years and hidden in the House of Death, nor did she scorn even copper, and even our clothes she took from us — for having robbed the others of all they possessed, she set them on to steal from the old ones such as I, whose lust could no longer be kindled. No more than three times thirty days had passed before she had stripped us naked of possessions. Noticing that there was nothing left to get, she laughed at us and despised us greatly, and two corpse washers who admired her hanged themselves with belts when she mocked and dishonoured them. Then she left, taking all our wealth with her, and we could not prevent her, for if one placed himself in her path, he was opposed by another for the sake of a
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