“Corpses are cold and do not move,” said Ramose. “Stay here, because the company of the dead surpasses the company of the living. A corpse cannot hurt or wound anyone and does not cause suffering, like during the days of life. Also your heart is pierced by an arrow, for otherwise you would not be here. Why return back to people, where poisonous arrows hurtle and pierce your eyes and cut your arms and wound your heart, until it is so old and scarred that nothing hurts it any more.”
“Why did you enter the House of Death, Ramose?” I asked. “You are a wise and skilful man, and you could certainly make a living in some other profession. Why did you come here?”
But Ramose waved his head violently like a turtle, crouching his neck and avoiding my eyes. “You know that nobody enters the House of Death if he does not have to,” he said. “May that be your answer.” Then he opened his mouth and giggled and drank some cold beer from his beer jar. “Life is good for me here,” he said, “and I long for nothing, since all is vanity. But I tell you he who once enters the House of Death, he stays in the House of Death. Now the House of Death is in you and you cannot avoid it.”
I did not yet understand what he meant, but thought he was foolish. Having washed and purified myself most thoroughly, I stepped out of the House of Death, while the corpse washers shouted curses after me and jeered. They meant no ill by this; it was their way of talking to one another, and the only way they knew. They helped me to carry out the oxhide. Although I had washed, the passers-by gave me a wide berth, holding their noses and making insulting gestures, so steeped was I in the stench of the House of Death. No one would ferry me across the river. I waited until nightfall when, heedless of the watchman, I stole a reed boat and rowed my parents’ bodies over to the City of the Dead.
5
The City of the Dead was strictly guarded by night and day, and I could
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not find one unwatched tomb in which to hide my parents’ bodies so that they might live forever and enjoy the offerings that were brought for the rich and illustrious dead. So I bore the oxhide out into the desert, where the sun burned my back and drew the strength from my limbs till I cried out in the belief that I was dying. But I carried my burden up into the hills along dangerous tracks that only grave robbers dared to use and into the forbidden valley where Pharaohs lie entombed. Jackals howled in the night, venomous snakes of the desert hissed at me, and scorpions crawled over the hot rocks. I felt no fear, for my heart was hardened against all danger. Young though I was, I would have greeted death gladly if death had had a mind for me. My return to sunlight and the world of men had again made me feel the bitterness of my shame, and that life had nothing to offer me.
I had not learned then that death avoids a man who desires it, to snatch at him whose heart holds fast to life. Serpents darted from my path, scorpions did me no harm, and the heat of the desert sun did not stifle me. The watchmen of the forbidden valley were blind and deaf and never heard the rattle of stones as I climbed down. If they had seen me, they would have killed me instantly and left my body to the jackals. But I came at night, and perhaps the watchmen feared the valley that they guarded, for the priests had enchanted all royal tombs with their most powerful magic. If they saw me in the valley, carrying an oxhide on my back in the moonlight, or head stones rolling down a hillside, maybe they just turned they faces away and covered their heads, thinking the dead walk through the valley. I did not evade anything, and not even if I wanted to, since I did not know where the watchmen kept guard, and I did not hide myself. So the forbidden valley opened out before me, deathly still and silent and to me more majestic in its desolation than all the enthroned Pharaohs in their lifetime had ever been.
I walked about that valley all night, seeking a walled door closed by priests’ seals leading to the tomb of the Great Pharaoh. Having come so far, I felt that only the best was good enough for my parents. I also sought a tomb whose Pharaoh had not long stepped aboard Amun’s boat, that the offerings might be fresh and the ceremonies in his death temple on the river shore faultlessly performed, for only the best was good enough for my parents, when I could not give them their own tomb.
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