Then again, surely the attraction of the spot for Taita was the river.
If it was dry, then it would be just like a thousand other places in
this gorge.
No, I have a feeling that the fact that it was so inaccessible was the
main, if not the only, reason he chose to wo there.'
'I suspect that you are correct,' he agreed.
'So if the river was running, even at itS lowest level as it is now, how
on earth did he manage to carve those niches below the surface? And what
would be the point in having scaffolding under water?'
'Beats me. I have no idea he admitted.
'All right, let's leave that for the moment. Now lets go over your
description of the sink-hole that almost sucked you in. Did you form any
estimate of the size of the opening?'
He shook his head. 'It is almost totally dark down there. I could not
see more than two or three feet in front of me.'
'Was the entrance directly between the two tows of niches?'
'No, not directly,' he said thoughtfully. 'It was slightly to one side.
I hit the bottom of the pool with my feet, and was just about to push
off when it grabbed me.'
'So it must be at the very bottom of the pool, and slightly downstream
from the scaffolding. You say that the entrance seemed to have a square
coping?'
'I am not absolutely sure of that - remember that I could see very
little. But that was the impression I received.'
'It may have been another man-made structure, then perhaps some type of
adit shaft driven into the side of the pool?'
'It's possible,' he agreed reluctantly. 'But on the other hand it could
just as easily be a natural fault in the strata that the river is
draining into.'
She stood up to leave, and he demanded, 'Where are you going?'
'I won't be long. I am going to my hut to fetch my notes, and the
material from the stele. Back in a moment.'
When she returned she sat on the floor beside his bed, with her legs
drawn up under her in that double-jointed feminine fashion. As she
spread her papers around her, he pulled up the edge of the mosquito net
and looked down at what she was doing.
'Yesterday, while you were busy building the gantry, I was able to
decipher most of the rest of the 'spring' face of the stele.' She moved
her notebook so that he was able to overlook the pages she had opened.
'These are my preliminary notes. You will see where I have inserted a
number of question marks - here and here, for instance. That is where I
am uncertain of the translation, or where Taita has used a new and
strange symbol. I will have to give more time and consideration to those
later.'
I follow you,' he said, and she went on.
'These sections that I have highlighted with green are quotations from
the standard version of the Book of the Dead. Take this one here: 'The
universe is drawn in circles, the disc of the sun- god, Ra. The life of
man is a circle that begins in the womb and ends in the tomb. The circle
of the chariot wheel foreshadows the death of the serpent that it
