Intef held his breath, testing the quiet. It had begun only moments ago, when the voices had faded and the sound of stacking bricks had ceased. Bless the gods for the peace. The woman’s grief-stricken ravings had been almost too piteous to bear—and so very loud.
‘I am to be freed from service,’ she had cried, betraying her advanced age. It seemed that the old woman had served Pharaoh all her life, for her freedom had become so precious to her that she was threatening to remain in the burial chamber if she did not receive it. She had even offered to lead the priests to gold in exchange for it.
She had obviously been overwhelmed by grief and in the end they had had to bind her limbs with rope just to extract her from the chamber.
That had been at least an hour ago, but Intef knew he could not yet emerge from the stuffy chest in which he huddled. The tomb was not yet empty. A whole gang of servants were currently filling its long entrance corridor with earth. He thought he could hear the faint spilling of their buckets. If he could hear them, then they would be able to hear him.
Another hour, he decided.
He exhaled, forcing his breath through the layers of linen surrounding him and reminded himself to stay calm. He had nine days, after all. That was how long the tomb workers had assured him that one man could survive inside a tomb before the spirits of the Underworld claimed him.
Intef turned away from the morbid thought. He had more immediate concerns, such as how to adjust the angle of his throbbing neck. He was not sure he could wait much longer. He was wretched with hunger and thirst and both his legs had gone numb.
How many hours had it been since the priest Hepu had stuffed him inside this wooden prison? Twenty at least, for it had been late the previous night when Intef had met the priest outside Tausret’s mortuary temple. He thought back to the strange encounter.
‘You are Setnakht’s beetle?’ Hepu asked. Like Intef, the priest had been working in secret for the rebel Generals—first Amenmesse, then Setnakht—for most of his life.
‘I am indeed, Holy Brother,’ Intef replied. ‘It is nice to finally meet you.’
Hepu looked disappointed. ‘You are too tall for the chest I had planned.’
‘Do you have another? Something with a rooftop bed and a view to the river?’ Intef jested.
‘You are nervous,’ said Hepu.
‘On the contrary, I am delighted to begin my adventure.’
The priest shook his head. ‘You should be nervous. I know not of a single living man who would do what you are about to do.’
‘How difficult could it be?’ asked Intef. ‘I will relax inside a chest for the next few hours, then get carried by royal chest bearers into the dusty hills. After another short rest, I will emerge from the chest into a lovely tomb, then chisel my way out through a bit of stone.’
‘When you realise what you have done, you must not panic,’ said the priest. He gazed at the hammer and chisel Intef carried. ‘You think those are your greatest tools, but they are not.’
Intef sighed. How priests loved to give advice. ‘What, I beg, is my greatest tool?’
‘Calm,’ said Hepu. ‘Come, we must hurry.’
Hepu sneaked Intef into the pillared staging hall and they stumbled amid the deceased Pharaoh’s sacred grave goods. ‘I have replaced the beer with water in a dozen amphorae bound for the tomb,’ he whispered. ‘They will be on the second shelf in the northeast storage room.’
‘Remind me again, Hepu, where is that particular room?’
Hepu expelled a heavy sigh. ‘Nobody has instructed you in the layout of the tomb?’
‘The men in the tomb workers’ village said it was very long, with two large chambers.’
‘By Horus,’ Hepu held out his arm. ‘Imagine this is the tomb,’ he said. He ran his hand down his forearm. ‘This part is simply a long corridor leading down to the chambers. After Pharaoh—and you—are entombed, it will be filled in with earth.’
‘I knew that much,’ Intef said.
Hepu arched a greying brow, then opened his palms and held them slightly apart. ‘This is what you will be left with—two large chambers connected by another corridor.’ He raised his left hand. ‘Your journey will end when you reach the second or main chamber. It is the deepest part of the tomb.’ He touched each corner of his hand. ‘There are four storage rooms adjoining the main chamber. Your chest will be placed inside one. In one of the other storage rooms you will find the water containers I mentioned, along with beer and bread.’
‘Olive bread?’ asked Intef.
Hepu ignored Intef’s attempt at levity. ‘To reach the first chamber, the false chamber, you must break through the main chamber’s security seal and go up this corridor.’ Hepu pointed to the space between his palms to indicate the corridor that joined them. ‘Just before you reach the false chamber, you will notice two entryways on either side of the corridor. Those are the unfinished chambers.’
‘Where Pharaoh Tausret’s greatest treasures lie?’ asked Intef.
‘For the sake of the rebellion, let us hope,’ said the priest. He raised his right hand. ‘You will have to break through another brick seal to reach the false chamber. It is slightly smaller than the main chamber but is similarly flanked by four storage rooms. It is also where you will carve your tunnel,’ said Hepu. ‘Ah, here we are.’
They had arrived at Intef’s unlikely ferry—a large ebony chest. Hepu opened the lid to reveal a cache of the late Pharaoh’s undergarments. ‘Get in,’ he said.
‘You must be jesting,’ said Intef.
But Hepu was a man who did not jest and Intef held his breath as Hepu covered him with layers of lavender-smelling loincloths.
‘You could not have chosen a chest full of salted beef?’ mumbled Intef.
If their mission succeeded, Hepu would be raised to the priesthood of one of the larger temples of Thebes. If it failed, he would likely lose his head.
Hepu arranged the last layer of garments atop Intef and sighed. ‘Forgive us, oh, mighty gods,’ he said. ‘We labour for the good of Egypt.’ Then he closed the chest and locked it shut.
Intef thought back to Hepu’s strange advice: ‘When you realise what you have done, you must not panic.’
Who was panicking? If there was any cause for panic, it was because he would be smelling like a woman for the next nine days.
It was an ignominious mission to be sure. Instead of marching alongside General Setnakht on his way to seize the empty throne of Egypt, Intef had agreed to be buried inside a tomb surrounded by a woman’s delicates.
And that had not even been the worst of his debasement. The processional journey from Pharaoh Tausret’s House of Millions of Years to her House of Eternity the following morning had been something akin to being baked slowly in an oven. At one point he had caught himself moaning.
Thankfully, none of the chest-bearers seemed to notice. Nor did the onlookers, whose oohs and ahhs only added to the cacophony. Who could detect a small moan above the jangling sistrums of the priestesses and the shrieks of the professional mourning women?
Then there was the distraction of Pharaoh herself, who had been transfigured into the god of resurrection via a solid gold coffin made in the shape of Osiris. A troupe of milk-bearers purified the ground before her as she floated towards her tomb on a sled borne by six white bulls.
The onlookers obviously revered her: she was the last direct descendant of Rameses the Great Ancestor, the last person in Egypt to carry that divine blood.
Though to be fair, she no longer carried any blood at all. Just seventy days ago, it had been drained by the embalmers and her cranial matter had been removed through her nose. Four of her organs had been preserved in sacred canopic jars, leaving her heart in its place, and her entire royal body had been smothered in Natron Valley salt.
After thirty-five days in salt, her royal corpse was then cleaned and wrapped in linen strips cut from her own robes. Precious amulets were placed beneath those linens, which were then sealed in place by unguent-scented resins.
Every preparation had been made to preserve Pharaoh Tausret in a journey that—it occurred to Intef—had begun only moments ago, just after sunset.
It was the first of the twelve hours of night and Tausret’s soul was journeying through the Underworld while Intef waited inside the chest that contained her undergarments.
Intef might have laughed. It was a humorous situation to be sure. He would retell it to his fellow soldiers one day to riotous applause.
‘And it was dark inside the tomb, you see,’ he would say, ‘and hot as the mines of Hammamat. There was not a single breeze. The air stood as still as death. But I took comfort among Pharaoh’s loincloths, for they smelled of lavender and felt like soft clouds...’
He could hear their laughter already. ‘Ha-ha-ha!’ they roared. ‘Ho-ho-ho!’
Not really, though. He was fooling himself. It was not his friends’ imagined laughter he heard, it was the pounding of his own heart inside his ears.