An Evil Spirit Out of the West (Ancient Egyptian Mysteries) Read Online Free PDF Page B

whilst the preparations were brought to an end. Father’s corpse was pickled in perfume, his heart covered with a sacred scarab, tongue lined with gold and two precious stones placed in his eye-sockets. He was then bound in bandages. On the day of his burial I joined my aunt and a legion of mourners and singers to accompany Father across the Nile to the House of Eternity. He was placed in his sarcophagus. We had the funeral feast and afterwards on our journey back across the Nile my aunt leaned over. I had studied her well and so had remained totally impassive throughout the entire ceremony. At the end she asked if I was upset.
    ‘Madam,’ I replied, ‘I am not sad.’
    ‘Because your father has gone,’ she gabbled, ‘to the Field of the Blessed?’
    ‘No, dearest Aunt, I am happy because my father’s ghost will now join my mother’s beneath the willow tree in your garden.’
    Isithia’s face went slack. I savoured for the first time how revenge, well prepared and served cold, was sweeter than the richest honeycomb.
    ‘You have seen her there?’ my aunt breathed.
    ‘Often,’ I replied, round-eyed in innocence.
    She moved away. I glanced at the swirling water of the Nile.
    ‘Oh swampland,’ I whispered, reciting a famous curse, ‘I now come to you.’ I glanced quickly at Isithia. ‘I have brought the grey-haired one down to the dust. I have swallowed up her darkness.’ I realised, even then, that my days in Aunt Isithia’s house were closely numbered.
    How fair is that which happened to them.
They have so filled the heart of Khonsou
In Thebes,
That he has permitted them to reach the West.
In peace, in peace, all fair ones proceed westwards
in peace.
    Despite my tender years, these were the verses I sang under the willow tree. I even managed to find gifts to place there: small coffers made out of papyrus, miniature wooden statues which would act as shabtis , servants to help my parents in the Fields of the Blessed. I turned the area around the willow tree into a small shrine. To be perfectly honest, it was not so much out of filial affection, more to taunt Aunt Isithia. Oh yes, I knew I would be going but I just wanted to help her make that decision. I spent more time under that willow tree than anywhere else. Accordingly, I was not surprised when, within a month of my father’s burial, I had joined the Kap, the Royal House of Instruction at the place known as the Nose of the Gazelle in the sprawling, unfinished Palace of the Malkata. The Malkata was a jewel, the House of Rejoicing, the Palace of the dazzling Aten built by the Magnificent One, Amenhotep III, for his own pleasure. It lay just beneath the western hills, so at evening the palace was suffused with the dying rays of the sun. It was an impressive imperial residence, but as a boy of no more than nine summers, I didn’t care about its splendour. Children are strange! I was not aware of the coloured pillars, the flower-filled courtyards or the ornamental lakes. All I cared about was the fact that I was leaving Aunt Isithia! I was to be in a new place, the school attended by Pharaoh’s son, the Crown Prince Tuthmosis, and the chosen offspring of certain highranking officials. My place there was the Magnificent One’s final tribute to my father. Only later did I learn that Aunt Isithia wielded considerable influence, not to mention her rod, over certain of Pharaoh’s ministers.
    The House of Instruction stood at the far side of the palace and, looking back, I smile wryly. I was in the most splendid palace under the sun, being given a foretaste of life in Osiris’s Great House and Territory. However, I was more concerned with my new surroundings and new companions. The House was a one-storey building built four square round a large courtyard which boasted a splendidly built fountain, a small herb garden and a multi-coloured pavilion. The building was mud-bricked, stamped with the name of the Crown Prince; plastered within, whitewashed without,