Inside the pyramid a narrow passage sloped downwards. The walls were lined with plain limestone, not decorated with carvings as his father’s tomb had been. He sighed. He should be on his way to his father now, not stumbling around inside a pyramid. He could see Intef ahead, with a coil of rope over one shoulder and the stone hammer swinging from his waist. The ceiling was low and the big man had to stoop. So this is what it feels like to be a tomb robber, Ramose thought to himself. He had always found it hard to believe such people really existed. People who were so greedy for gold that they were willing to risk severe punishments. He’d heard of tomb robbers having their ears and lips cut off. More often than not they were executed. And that was only in this world. In the afterlife, tomb robbers faced eternal oblivion. No growing wheat in the Fields of Reeds for them. He wondered how Osiris, the god of the underworld, would judge an unwilling tomb robber.
Ramose had been expecting to feel his usual fear of enclosed spaces, but he didn’t. Perhaps it was because it was night, and the darkness inside the pyramid seemed like a continuation of the darkness outside. Perhaps it was because he was tired and hungry. He hadn’t seen any daylight for two days. He felt as if everything that was happening wasn’t real, as if it was a dream and therefore nothing to be afraid of. As he descended into the depths of the pyramid he felt a strange calmness, as if he was watching himself from somewhere else—somewhere where it was safe.
At the bottom of the sloping shaft there was a high-ceilinged chamber. Intef straightened up with a groan. He looked around, squinting in the dim light of his lamp. The chamber had been carefully lined with smooth limestone, but it was completely empty.
“Where’s the sarcophagus?” he said.
Ramose smiled at the man’s stupidity. “If it was that easy to find the actual burial chamber it would have been robbed ages ago.”
Intef’s brow creased.
“The architect who built this didn’t want the tomb to be found. He probably designed it with hidden passages and dead-end tunnels. There could be traps.”
“But you know all about it from the writing, don’t you?”
“It’s written in a sort of riddle.”
Intef walked around the chamber feeling the solid limestone walls. “But there’s no other way out of this room.”
“Yes there is,” said Ramose who was beginning to enjoy making Intef look foolish, which wasn’t hard. He read from the papyrus.
“Allow thy soul to be raised up towards heaven.
This is the best and shortest road towards knowledge.
The way of knowledge is narrow.
You must become a low and creeping thing.”
Intef stood with his head cocked on one side like a large and stupid dog.
Ramose held his lamp above his head. The roof of the chamber was made of stepped slabs of stone so that it narrowed to a point.
“The entrance to the next tunnel must be up there somewhere.”
Intef held his lamp up and looked up. With the light from both lamps they could just make out a small dark square. It was at least the height of four men above them.
“How will we get up there?” asked Intef.
Ramose shrugged. “Don’t ask me, I’m just a scribe.”
They went back up the entrance shaft and pulled up the ladder. Even with the ladder in place underneath the upper tunnel entrance, it was still well short. Intef roughly carved handholds in the stone as far as he could reach from the top of the ladder. Greed had made him fearless. He climbed up, gripping the holes he had gouged in the limestone wall. Ramose was expecting him to slip and fall at every moment. He didn’t. The big man clambered up the sheer wall like an enormous spider. He reached a ledge and crawled onto it.
“Okay, Scribe,” he said. “Your turn.”
“But I’m shorter than you, I won’t be able to reach the handholds you’ve made.”
Ramose felt the end of a coil of rope drop on his head.
“Tie that around you,” said Intef.
Ramose tied the rope securely around his waist and then climbed the ladder. When he reached the top, he felt himself being lifted into the air. Intef hauled him up as if he was a sack of grain, not worrying about how he banged against the stone. Ramose grabbed hold of the ledge and clambered up onto it. A new passage sloped up from the ledge they were standing on in the direction of the centre of the pyramid. It had a low ceiling, nothing more than a tunnel roughly carved through solid stone.
“You go first,” said Intef.
Ramose knew it was pointless to argue. He got down on his hands and knees and started to crawl up the tunnel, like a creeping thing, just as the papyrus had foretold. He held his oil lamp in one hand; it was no easy task. Ramose could hear Intef complaining as he crawled along behind.
Ramose’s calm began to fade. He suspected his lack of fear had only been the effect of the beer on an empty stomach. He was now starting to imagine the hundreds of mud bricks just above his head. The narrowness of the tomb was making him feel stifled. He kept crawling. He thought about his friends. He wondered what they had done when they woke up and found him gone. They had no gold or copper to exchange for food. He began to think that he’d misread the papyrus, that this was a blind tunnel leading nowhere. He wanted to turn around and crawl back out again, but he knew the tunnel would be blocked by Intef’s sweaty body. Even if the robber wanted to, he couldn’t turn around in the narrow tunnel.
Just when Ramose was starting to really panic, the tunnel came to an end. He emerged in a passage which ran at right angles to the tunnel. This passage was wider, higher and properly faced with smooth limestone. Ramose stood up and straightened his aching back with relief. Intef came crawling out of the tunnel, cursing the workmen who made it so narrow. He stood up and peered down the new passage.
“The burial chamber must be this way,” he said walking eagerly down the passage.
“Wait,” said Ramose. “Don’t be in such a hurry.” He studied the papyrus and read aloud.
“Woe unto the impatient man. The goddess of the celestial ocean draws you down to her waters.”
“Oh, that’s just flowery writing,” said Intef as he hurried on down the passage. “Don’t take…”
Intef stopped suddenly. He stood frozen. Ramose came up behind him and held out his lamp. Intef was standing on the edge of a vertical shaft. The toes of his sandals were hanging over the edge. The shaft was only two cubits across, but it was too wide to jump safely to the other side. Ramose could not see how deep it was. He picked up a small stone and dropped it. He waited. After what seemed like minutes, he heard a faint splash. He looked at Intef. The big man had a terrified look on his face, realising that he had very nearly plunged to his death.
“Don’t bother to thank me,” Ramose said.
Intef found his voice. “How do we get across?” he asked shakily.
Ramose walked back along the passage looking for something that would span the gap. He found a recess in the limestone wall and a plank of wood that a lazy tomb maker had left there centuries earlier. He looked at it doubtfully. He didn’t know whether he was prepared to trust his weight to a four hundred-year-old plank. He didn’t have any choice.
“Hurry up,” Intef prodded Ramose in the back. “We must be close to the burial chamber now.”
Ramose lowered the plank over the gap. Intef loaded him up with the coil of rope and the bag of tools. He put his foot on the plank. He was glad he couldn’t see the drop. He took one tentative step. The plank creaked. He took another step and it sagged in the middle. Ramose took two more steps, his heart racing, and he was over. Intef looked across at him.
“I don’t know if it’ll hold your weight,” Ramose said. “Why don’t I go on ahead and see if it’s worth the risk?”
“Oh, no you don’t.” Intef didn’t trust Ramose. “You could pocket half the gold.”
“Okay. Come across then.”
The big man took a breath and ran towards the gaping shaft. His full weight hit the middle of the plank. It cracked. He lunged forward as the ancient wood broke. He grasped hold of the rock ledge on the other side, his legs dangling down into the shaft. His feet scrabbled on the rock face but couldn’t find anything that would support him. His hands clawed at the ledge. He started to slip.
“Help me,” shouted Intef, his voice high-pitched with fear.
Ramose heard the broken pieces of plank hit the water far below with a faint splash. It seemed like they’d been falling for hours. He watched Intef’s big, ugly hands grasping at the rock. For a split second, he thought about pushing the robber into the shaft, but instead he reached out and grabbed Intef under the arms. The man found a rock protrusion with his foot and levered himself up. Ramose hauled him onto the ledge.
“You knew that wouldn’t hold my weight,” grumbled Intef as he got to his feet.
Ramose was looking down into the shaft and wondering how they would get back over it again.
Intef’s lamp bowl had broken when he fell, so they now had only one lamp between them. They walked along the passage which was sloping down slightly until it suddenly divided into two. Ramose held the lamp up to the papyrus scroll.
“The next bit is torn,” he said. “I don’t know which is the right passage.”
“We’ll take this one,” said Intef. “You go first.”
Ramose entered the right-hand passage. It twisted and turned. Up until then, Ramose had been able to keep a picture in his head of the way they had come. He’d still had a sense of which way north lay and where the burial chamber should be. After the passage had made six or more turns, he had no idea which way he was facing. The oil in the lamp was running low. Intef topped it up from a jar in his bag. They followed the passage for another three turns. Then it ended abruptly.
“You did that on purpose, didn’t you?” said Intef. “You knew this was the wrong passage.”
Ramose wasn’t listening. He was sniffing.
“Can you smell something?”
He felt a burning in his throat. He looked down at his feet. They were almost buried in a fine yellow powder which covered the floor. Clouds of the powder had been kicked up as they’d walked around.
Ramose put his hand over his mouth and ran back along the passage. Intef followed him. Ramose felt dizzy. When he reached the fork in the passage he vomited. Intef was looking ill.
“What was that?” said Intef, taking a swig of his water. The big man’s face had a greenish colour in the dim light.
Ramose retched again. “It must have been some sort of poison.”
Intef reluctantly handed his water container to Ramose.
They retraced their steps and took the other passage, which sloped down at a greater angle. Ramose thought they must now be down below ground level. He was still feeling sick and dizzy, but he hoped the poison had lost its potency over the centuries. The passage twisted and turned just as the other one had. Suddenly it opened into a chamber. It was exactly the same as the first chamber they had entered, high-ceilinged, lined with limestone—and completely empty.
Intef threw the coil of rope onto the floor. “You’ve led me astray again!”
Ramose sat down groggily. “Why would I do that? My father is dying in Memphis. I just want to get out of here.”
Intef took another swig of water.
“This looks like the burial chamber,” Ramose said looking around in the dim light. “Look at how smooth the limestone on the walls is. And see that niche?” He held the lamp over to one side lighting a recess cut into the wall. “That’s where the Canopic chest would fit.”
“So what are you saying?” said Intef chewing on a piece of dried meat. “They went to all the trouble of building this pyramid and then didn’t use it?”
“That’s a possibility. It might be nothing more than a giant hoax to lure tomb robbers away from the real tomb which is hidden somewhere else.”
“What a dirty trick!” said Intef, spitting out bits of dried ox flesh.
Ramose didn’t really believe that was the case at all. He didn’t want the robbers to get the old pharaoh’s gold and jewels. He thought about trying to convince Intef that the pyramid was empty, but he knew Hori wouldn’t let him go until they found some treasure. If the tomb robbers didn’t find it in the pyramid, they would have him digging holes all around it, looking for secret tombs. He had to get this over and done with so that he could get to Memphis and see his father. Ramose stood up again and walked around the chamber, looking closely at the walls and the ceiling in the dim light of the oil lamp. He studied the papyrus again. There had to be a clue.
The nut doesn’t reveal the tree it contains.
The ignorant man doesn’t see the truth
Though he treads upon it with his sandals.
Ramose dropped down onto his hands and knees and set the lamp on the stone floor. He ran his hands over it as if he was looking for something small that he’d lost. Intef looked as confused as ever.
“Here,” said Ramose. He’d found what he was looking for. “Bring the lever over here.”
For once, Intef didn’t argue. He took a lever made of hardwood from his bag.
“There’s a gap here. See?” Ramose brushed the dust away and ran his fingers around in a square. “It’s a trapdoor.”