We walked away from the slums and up the Royal Road heading north, where Thutmosis the sculptor had driven me in his chariot. We continued towards the central city among the evening crowds, past the Small Aten Temple, which was besieged with worshippers clamouring to enter through the first pylon. I caught a quick glimpse of the open sun court packed with people, their hands raised to the many statues of the King and Queen, and to the rays of the late sun. We followed to the right along the long northern wall of the temple, struggling against the current of the crowds, until we passed the House of Life and came to the complex of the Records Office. Now we were in more danger. We were more likely to be recognized here, not least because Mahu’s office in the Medjay barracks was only a few blocks away to the east.
Khety confidently made his way down a narrower avenue between high walls, past offices where all kinds of bureaucratic activity seemed to be taking place. We turned through a formal portal decorated with the insignia of the Aten sun disc, and found ourselves in a small courtyard. Here we encountered our first set of security guards. Khety wafted the permission briefly before their eyes, and I tried to look haughty. They glanced at us suspiciously, but nodded. We were about to move on through the courtyard when a commanding voice called us to halt. Khety looked at me. Another guard approached us.
‘This office is not open for public attendance.’ He scanned our permission. ‘Who authorized this?’
I was about to start speaking, to try to improvise a way past this danger, when a high, clear voice cried out, ‘I did.’ The thin young man who had spoken had the serious, pale face of those who avoid the sun. He stood at the threshold to one of the offices. ‘They have a meeting arranged with me. I’ve been assigned to offer them assistance. It is a great honour. Don’t you know this is one of the finest writers of our time?’ He nodded respectfully in my direction. I bowed almost imperceptibly to acknowledge the compliment, in a way I copied from a public reading I had once attended, on Tanefert’s insistence, given by a writer much admired for his supposed wit and brilliance. I had spent the endless time marvelling at his pomposity, his bad but costly dress, and his affected speech. The young man gestured respectfully for me to lead the way, and as we passed beyond the jurisdiction of the guards he whispered to me, with a quaver of fear in his voice, ‘Fortunately none of them can read.’ And with that we passed through the immediate danger and into the building.
Khety’s younger brother was as unlike him as was possible, as if he had only been able to define himself in opposition to his sibling’s character.
‘You might as well know I’d rather be reading about this kind of thing in a cheap story than actually
Khety raised his eyes at me. ‘Sorry, sir. He’s led a sheltered life.’
A group of Medjay officers passed us in the corridor, and we all fell silent. I felt sure I recognized one of them from the hunting party. His eyes met my glance curiously. I looked away, and kept walking. I dared not look back. Their footfalls paused for a moment-would he call after me? — but then continued until they died away behind us. We walked on.
Khety’s brother introduced himself as Intef-‘it is a name I share with the Great Herald of the City, although unlike me he is also known as “Great in Love”, “Lord of the Entire Oasis Region” and “Count of Thinis”, which, as I’m sure you will know, is Abydos’-as he pushed open a door with a flourish. We followed him into a large chamber lined with high wooden shelves and furnished with many desks at which men studied scrolls and papyrus documents in the last of the light from the clerestory windows. Few looked up from their scrutinizing; some were now packing away their materials, notes and documents to leave. I saw that many corridors and passageways led off from this central reading room. Fortunately there were no guards here.
‘This is the main library,’ Intef said. ‘Here we keep all the documents and publications relating to the current works of the city. We have separate sections for Foreign Affairs and Correspondence, Domestic Internal Information, Criminal Acts and Judgements, Cultural Documentation including poetry and fables, Sacred Texts heretical and orthodox, Historical Records public and not, and so on. Sometimes it’s quite difficult to know under which heading some kinds of information fall.’
‘So what do you do then?’ I asked.
‘We send it to be classified. And if that fails it is passed on again to a room in the library which privately we call Miscellaneous, Mysterious and Missing. Sometimes we know we ought to have a certain document, certain kinds of evidence in writing, but for whatever reason it is not in the library. So we may also make a record of its absence, so to speak, and again we send this to the Missing Room. In some cases we may make notes towards the definition of what is missing in terms of secret information-what we know we don’t know, in a way.’ He smiled.
‘I think I follow you. Those must be quite extensive records. Do you include missing persons in this Missing Room?’
He looked at me suspiciously, then at his brother. ‘What exactly are you looking for?’
‘Not what, who. I do not think the information we are seeking lies in this room.’
Intef glanced at the men preparing to leave the main room. He nodded quickly and anxiously, and we followed him out. He hurried down one of the passageways, and we entered into a great labyrinth of papyrus. The corridors were lined, floor to ceiling, with shelves on which were piled a dusty infinity of documents and writings: unbound papyrus sheets, bound collections, some cased in leather, others in scrolls, wooden boxes containing millions of clay tablets in many scripts.
‘What language is this?’ I asked, picking up one covered in a series of complex slanted marks.
‘It is Babylonian, the language of international diplomacy,’ Intef said, taking it off me quickly with a click of his tongue and fastidiously replacing it.
‘No wonder everything’s so confused. How many people can read it?’ ‘Those that need to,’ he replied piously.
Then, with a quick glance up and down the corridor, he pulled us aside into a small, barely lit antechamber lined with shelves. Like a bad actor playing a conspirator he addressed me too loudly: ‘It is indeed a great honour to help you in your project. What can I do for you?’ As he did this he gestured with his thumb at the walls and winked over and over.
I played along. ‘We are researching the glorious acts of our Lord…’
He made a kind of
‘And we ask you to honour us with access to the archives on the subject of his early life.’
At the same time, Khety handed him a tiny scroll of papyrus on which he had written the names of those we really wished to research. Intef secreted the scroll in his robe.
‘Please follow me,’ he said, almost comically bellowing now. ‘I am sure we have many treasures pertaining to our Lord’s Great Works.’
We walked faster now through the passageways. Intef whispered more urgently and silently this time: ‘I cannot afford to get into any kind of trouble. I’m only doing this because my brother insisted. I should have known…’
‘I asked Khety to ask you. Why don’t you read the list of names?’
He did so, and I watched as his complexion achieved an even weaker shade of pallor. He held the papyrus like a poisoned thing.
‘Do you have the slightest idea of the danger in which you are placing me, yourselves, our…lives?’ he hissed.
‘Yes,’ I said.
He was speechless. He made the old gesture of blessing over himself and led us on to another chamber, long, dark and narrow, deeper inside the building. He checked carefully for guards, then crept up a staircase into a vast, dusty and low chamber, like a tomb, barely lit, which, he explained in another low whisper, contained the classified stacks of the collection.
‘Guards patrol at all hours of the day and night,’ he warned.
The many stacks of shelves, each marked at its entrance with a different hieroglyph, disappeared into shadows. So many words and signs, information and stories were gathered here. A torch brushing casually against a shelf, a forgotten taper falling over on a pile of papyrus, a mistaken spark ascending, caught by a draught and delivered like a firefly onto the yellow corner of an ancient tome, and this hidden library of secrets would be ablaze in moments. It was tempting.
First we searched for Mahu’s file. The information was stored with bureaucratic precision. There were already
