and the north united.
Beneath him was the inscription: 'Great God and Lord of Heaven, of
nunifest power, Mighty one anwngst all the gods, whose strength has
vanqUished the foes of his divine father, Osiris.'
the fourth shrine stood Seth, the arch-fiend, the god of violence and
discord. His body was gold, but his head was the head of a black hyena.
In the fifth shrine stood the god of the dead and of the cemeteries,
Anubis the jackal-headed. It was he who officiated at the embalming, and
whose duty it was to examine the tongue of the great balance when the
heart of the eceased was weighed. If the beam of the scales were
exactly horizontal, then the dead man was declared worthy, but if the
balance tipped against him Anubis threw the heart to the crocodile
monster and it was devoured.
The sixth shrine was dedicated to the god of writing, Thoth. He had the
head of a sacred this and his stylus was in his hand. In the seventh
shrine the sacred cow Had stood squarely on all four hooves, her piebald
body spotted black and white, her face benignly human but with huge,
trumpet-shaped ears, The eighth shrine was the largest and most splendid
of all, for it belonged to Amon-Ra, father of all creation. He was the
sun, an enormous golden disc from which the slanting golden rays
emanated, Nicholas paused here and looked back down the long gallery.
Those eight -sacred statues comprised a treasure that matched anything
that Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon had discovered in the tomb of
Tutankhamen.
He felt in his heart that it was crass even to consider their monetary
value. However, the simple truth was that even one of these
extraordinary works of art would be sufficient to pay off all his debts
many times over. But he thrust the thought aside and turned once more to
face the commodious chamber at the far end of the gallery.
'The burial chamber,' Royan murmured with awe. 'The tomb.'
As they walked towards it the shadows retreated before A them, like the
ghost of the long-dead pharaoh scurrying back to its final resting
place. Now they could see into the tomb, Its walls were aflame with
still more magnificent murals. Though they had gazed upon so many of
these already, their eyes and their senses were not yet jaded or wearied
by such profusion.
A single elongated figure rose up the far wall, and then stooped across
the ceiling. It was the supple, sinuous body the goddess Nut, giving
birth to the sun. The gold
en rays poured forth from her open womb, suffusing the sarcophagus of
the pharaoh and endowing the dead king with new life.
The royal sarcophagus stood in the centre of the chamber, a massive
coffin hewn from a solid granite block.
How many slaves must have laboured to bring this mass of stone along the
subterranean passages, Nicholas wondered.
He could imagine their sweating bodies gleaming in the lamplight, and
hear the grating squeal of the wooden rollers under the immense weight
of the coffin.
, Then Nicholas looked down into the coffin, and felt the plunge of his
