The Buried Pyramid Read Online Free PDF Page A

thinking about human vipers, not natural ones.
    Neville easily located the spring welling up along the eastern edge of the canyon. He was beginning to hack away the shrubs that crowded around it when Alphonse cried out.
    “I have found it!” he said, executing an impromptu dance of victory.
    “Ye gods, man!” Neville exclaimed. “I thought you’d been bitten by a cobra.”
    “It is here,” Alphonse said, pointing to the southern wall of the canyon. “Incised into the side of a rock.”
    He knelt and started brushing at something with his sleeve. Despite his own responsibilities, Neville crossed to examine the German’s find.
    “It looks like an obelisk,” Neville offered a moment later, “fallen on its side. I bet it was erected where the taller rocks would protect it from the weather.”
    “I agree,” Alphonse said, bending closer to inspect the writing. “Hieratic, rather than hieroglyphic, I would guess New Kingdom period.”
    “That’s a good deal later than I imagined your Neferankhotep,” Neville said, frowning.
    “True.”
    Undaunted, Alphonse rummaged in his pack until he came up with a rolled sheet of paper and a chunk of drawing charcoal.
    “I will make a rubbing,” he announced, “so that I may make my translation in the camp. Derek will assist me.”
    Neville wasn’t surprised to learn that Alphonse’s servant possessed the training to assist his master with this task. He was coming to respect Derek’s competence as a matter of course.
    “Very well,” Neville replied. “I will finish freeing up the spring. Judging from the steepness of the path, I rather hope we can lower water directly to the camp rather than carrying it down the trail.”
    By that evening, Alphonse and Derek had worked out a rough translation of the inscription. As Alphonse read it to the assembled company, his measured cadence was accented with theatrical flourishes of his eyebrows:
Remember that Anubis will bring you before Osiris.
Remember that your heart and your soul will be weighed against Maat.
Remember that the monster Ammit waits to devour the wicked.
The son and the self flies as the Nile and the boat.
The mother and the wife follow as the Nile and the boat.
Under the watching Eye of the Hawk, the homecoming is joyous.
    “Nice,” Eddie said judicially when Alphonse concluded, “but what does it mean?”
    Alphonse replied happily, “The first three lines are traditional warnings or cautions, but the latter portion is not so clear.”
    Neville tilted the page Alphonse had handed around for inspection so he could read it more clearly in the firelight.
    “I wonder,” he said slowly, “if the boat mentioned here isn’t an actual boat. Didn’t the ancient Egyptians envision the sun as a boat? A boat on which a bunch of gods sailed?”
    “Sometimes,” Alphonse replied. “Another common image was of a flaming ball being rolled by a dung beetle—this is one reason the scarab beetle was sacred and used for amulets.”
    “Slow down,” Neville insisted. “Sometimes too much knowledge is counterproductive. What’s caught my eye is the way these people go ‘as’ the Nile and the boat. If the boat was a usual type of vessel, why ‘fly’? I assume you didn’t employ poetic license in your choice of words?”
    “I did not,” Alphonse said stiffly.
    “I didn’t think you would,” Neville replied soothingly. “Now, here we have an inscription dating from a lot later than the legend you’re tracking down, right?”
    Alphonse nodded, still frowning.
    “What if it offers some sort of directions?” Neville continued, excited by the picture that was building in his mind. “Directions written down later, for those who might have forgotten the way to the Valley of Dust but who might need to go there to make offerings? If the boat is the boat of the sun, then it travels from east to west. The Nile travels south to north—contrary to just about every river I know. It’s stretching some, but what if