12
Thoth and I followed Nakht as he passed imperiously, and at his usual elegant speed, through the security- guard posts at the main pylon of the Karnak Temple. I looked up at the great mud-brick walls that soared high above us. And then we were plunged into the shadows of the ‘Most Select of Places’ a forbidden, secret world within the world, for no one who is not of the elite priest class may enter this vast and ancient stone puzzle of columned halls and gloomy temples, covered in an infinity of inscrutable carvings, surrounding a labyrinth of sunless sanctuaries where, at the very heart of the dark silence, the statues of the Gods are cared for, woken, worshipped, clothed, fed, returned to sleep and guarded through the night.
We came out into an open area. All around me, men of the aristocracy, dressed in purest white linen, went about their esoteric business in a leisurely fashion. This priestly work did not seem very onerous. At set times of the year, and in return for a share of the vast income of the temple, they enter the precincts for periods of service, respecting the ancient rules of ritual purity-bathing in the sacred lake at dawn, shaving their bodies, wearing white linen robes-and observing precisely and without variation the functions and rites of worship according to the Instructions.
But all temples, from the smallest shrine in a parched trading-post town on the southern borders, to the most ancient and divine places in the Two Lands, are vulnerable to the usual range of human activities: corruption, bribery, theft, embezzlement, and everything else, from scandals of shortened services and stolen sacred food and relics, to outright violence and murder. The bigger the temple, the more wealth it controls. Wealth is power. And Karnak is the greatest of the temples. Its wealth and power have long rivalled, and have now succeeded, that of the royal family.
The great space inside the enclosure walls contained what seemed, to my eye, a chaos of ancient and modern: pylons, obelisks, avenues, statues, chapels, and inaccessible temple structures with vast papyrus columns and shadowy halls. Some of it was newly built, some of it under construction, some of it dismantled, and some even in ruins. There were also magazines, offices and housing for the officers and the priests. It was in effect a small city, grand and yet jumbled up. Priests teemed in and out of the portals and pylons, attended by even greater numbers of servants and assistants. Ahead of us was another pylon leading to further pylons, leading ultimately to the ancient sanctuaries at the heart of the temple.
‘Beyond those courtyards lies the sacred lake,’ said Nakht, pointing to the right. ‘Twice a day and twice a night, the priests have to sprinkle themselves with water, and wash their mouths out with a little natron.’
‘It’s a hard life,’ I said.
‘It’s all very well being sarcastic, but sexual intercourse is absolutely forbidden for the period when the priests are performing the offices within the temple territory, and I’m quite sure you, for instance, would find that an impossible imposition,’ he replied with his usual candour on such matters. ‘But of course, the priests are the more transient population here. There are the singers, the officiates at the shrine, the lector priests, the scribes, the hour priests who are responsible for keeping the correct time of the rites…but it’s the management, and the servants, and the weavers, cooks and cleaners, who really sustain the necessities for the correct performance of the rituals. You could say the God Amun employs more people than the King himself.’
‘So it’s a vast government department, in essence…’ I said.
‘Exactly. There are overseers for every aspect of the running of the temple; of the domain, of the accounts, of the military, of personnel, of the fields, of the cloth, and the granaries, and the treasury…’
He stopped in front of the entrance to a collection of impressive buildings.
‘And this is the House of Life, which contains the scriptorium, the libraries and archives, and the offices of the lector priests.’
We entered. Directly ahead of us through double doors was a large, silent room.
‘That’s the scriptorium,’ whispered Nakht, as if to a child, for I could see men of various ages at work, meticulously copying or collating texts from old papyrus scrolls on to new ones. The atmosphere in the library was sleepy, for this was the middle of the afternoon and some of the archives’ more aged users were in fact not working attentively at all, but dozing before the scrolls set out before them. Along the walls, wooden cubicles held an infinite number of papyri, scroll after scroll, as if all knowledge was here, in writing. Sunlight slanted into the chamber from clerestory windows, catching the countless motes that glittered and darkened as they drifted up or down, like tiny fragments of ideas or signs that had crumbled from the scrolls, and were now meaningless without the greater text from which they came.
Nakht continued to whisper. ‘These are the oldest archives in the world. Many of the texts preserved here come from the dawn of our world. Papyrus is remarkably robust, but some are so ancient that they remain in their leather cases, unreadable. And others can be un-scrolled, but one fears even the lightest ray of sunlight might erase the last of the ink, so they may only be consulted by candlelight. In fact some consult them by moonlight, but I think that is just so much superstition. Many are in signs that are now incomprehensible, and so they are nothing but a meaningless jumble of childish marks. It is a terrible thought: whole worlds lost to nonsense. It is a great palace of knowledge, but, alas, much of it is unknowable. Lost knowledge…Lost books…’
He sighed. We moved away down a corridor lined with doors.
‘Here are kept mythical and theological treatises, as well as recitations and the master originals of inscriptions from which all the carvings on the temple walls and obelisks are precisely copied. There are also studios here where Books of the Dead are copied, according to commission. And then there are the rooms for instruction and learning. And the various storage areas for texts upon many subjects, such as writing, engineering, poetry, law, theology, magical studies, medicine…’
‘And astronomy,’ I said.
‘Indeed. And here we are.’
We faced an old man in the white linen dress and sash of a lector priest, standing in front of double doors that were tied with cord and sealed. He gazed at us balefully from under his magnificent white eyebrows.
‘I am Nakht,’ said Nakht.
‘Welcome,’ said the priest, in a tone that implied the opposite.
‘I would like to examine some scrolls within the astronomical section,’ said Nakht.
The priest stared at him, narrowing his eyes as he considered this request.
‘And who is your companion?’ he said suspiciously.
‘This is Rahotep. He is a chief detective within the Thebes Medjay.’
‘Why does a policeman need to examine astronomical charts?’
‘He has an enquiring mind, and I am endeavouring to satisfy it,’ replied Nakht. The priest could not seem to find another reason to forbid entry, so he moved with a heavy sigh, like a hippopotamus from the mud, grumblingly broke the seal and untied the cords. He opened the doors, and with a brief gesture of his hands proposed we enter.
It was a much larger, higher chamber than I had anticipated. Each wall was lined with shelves to the ceiling, and high storage cases also ran in an arrangement like fishbones down the middle of the space. On each shelf were stored many papyrus rolls. I would not have known where to start, but Nakht browsed swiftly among the dockets, searching for something.
‘Astronomy is merely a function of religion, as far as the world is concerned. As long as we know when the significant stars appear, so that the days and feasts and festivals coincide with the lunar charts, everyone is happy. But no one seems to have noticed that the regularity, the returning pattern of the imperishable stars themselves, implies an immense ordered universe beyond our understanding.’
‘Rather than the old stories we’ve been told since time began about Gods and Goddesses and everything coming from the papyrus swamp of creation, and the night world being the place of eternal life…’
‘Indeed,’ whispered Nakht. ‘The stars are eternal life, but perhaps not in the way we have always understood it. Heresy, of course,’ he said, and grinned happily.
He unrolled several scrolls on the low tables set out between the cases, and then showed me the star charts’ columns of signs and figures, written in red and black ink.
‘See: thirty-six columns listing the groups of stars into which the night world is divided. We call these the
