City of the Dead Read online

  Copyright © 2009 by Higley Enterprises, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Printed in the United States of America

  978-0-8054-4731-6

  Published by B&H Publishing Group,

  Nashville, Tennessee

  Dewey Decimal Classification: F

  Subject Heading: MYSTERY FICTION EGYPT—FICTION GREAT PYRAMID (EGYPT)—FICTION

  Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  GLOSSARY OF ANCIENT EGYPT

  PROLOGVE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  Shadow of Colossus

  To John Cashman

  Your years of dedication in the classroom have endeared you to thousands of students, of whom I am one.

  When our lives intersected, you challenged me to work harder, to reach further and to think for myself. On behalf of every student whose life you have touched.

  Thank you.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Diving into the culture and history of Ancient Egypt proved to be a delightful task for me. I was aided in no small part by the excellent writings of many, and wish to specifically thank Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, Craig B. Smith, whose fascinating book How the Great Pyramid was Built provided much insight from the perspective of an engineer, and Bob Brier, Ph.D., whose DVD lectures held me spellbound for many hours. I have attempted to stay as close as possible to what these Egyptologists have taught us. Throughout the book, I have chosen to use the Greek words for many terms, simply because these are the more familiar terms for most people.

  Besides these scholars, I want to thank those who helped in a more personal way. Our research trip to Egypt benefited from the generosity of many. Don and Sue Eenigenburg, thank you for your guidance before our great adventure! Michael and Marsha Bowen, thank you for your hospitality in your home outside Cairo, and for teaching us to haggle in the bazaar with the best of them! Kristen and Garrett Clemmer, thank you for watching over our children. Also thank you to our parents, Earl and Marjorie Higley and Joe and Iris Strauss for helping with the children while we were off exploring Egypt.

  Thank you to my agent, Steve Laube, for your encouragement and guidance through another project. David Webb, your excellent editing once again improved the manuscript greatly. Julie Gwinn, your enthusiasm for B&H fiction is always a joy.

  And thank you, once again, to my very special family. Ron, Rachel, Sarah, Jake, and Noah—you are patient, loving, encouraging, and so tolerant of my craziness. I love you.

  GLOSSARY OF ANCIENT EGYPT

  akhet—the Season of the Inundation, or the flooding of the Nile, which marked the beginning of the Egyptian year; roughly mid-July to mid-November

  ankh—the symbol of life, it resembles the Christian cross, with a loop above the transverse bar

  Anubis—god of the underworld who determined the worthiness of the deceased to enter the realm of the dead; usually depicted as a jackal-headed man carrying a a flail, or scourge

  Atum—deity and personification of the setting sun

  canopic jars—funerary vases used to store one’s internal organs alongside the body in a tomb

  cartouche—hieroglyph that represents a royal name

  deben—a unit of measurement equal to about 13.6 grams

  double crown—also known as the Pschent (sh-y?n), it combined the Red Crown of Lower Egypt and the White Crown of Upper Egypt, thus representing Pharaoh’s power over all of Egypt; a rearing cobra and a vulture were fastened to the front of the crown, representing goddesses of Lower and Upper Egypt

  Hathor—cow deity originally created by Ra as a destroyer of those men who disobeyed him; later worshiped as a goddess of love and joy

  Horus—falcon-headed deity who was the face of heaven, with one eye the sun and the other the moon; Pharaoh was supposed to be his earthly embodiment

  Inundation—an annual flooding of the Nile (due to heavy summer rains in the Ethiopian highlands) seen by the Egyptians as the yearly coming of the god Hapi, bringing fertility to the land; crops were planted in the rich, black silt left behind by the receding waters—if the inundation was too low, it would be a year of famine

  ka—the spirit and conscience of the individual; the ka was believed to live within the body of the individual and therefore needed that body after death, which is why the Egyptians mummified their dead

  ma’at—the condition of order and truth in the universe; the opposite of chaos; named for Ma’at, goddess of the physical and moral law of Egypt

  mastaba—a flat-roofed, rectangular building with outward sloping sides that marked the burial site of Egyptian nobility

  natron—a salt mixture harvested from dry lake beds, the mineral was used in Egyptian mummification because it absorbs water and behaves as a drying agent; thought to enhance spiritual safety for both the living and the dead, it was also used as a cleaning product for both the home and body

  nemes—the striped headcloth worn by pharaohs, it covered the crown and back of the head and nape of the neck and had two large flaps which hung down behind the ears and in front of the shoulders; sometimes worn with the double crown.

  Nubian—a native of the Nile kingdom of Nubia to the south of Egypt; depicted in Egyptian art as having very dark skin, often shown with hooped earrings and braided or extended hair

  Ra—sun god and creator in Egyptian mythology

  relief—sculptured artwork in which a modeled form projects out from a flat background

  sistrum—a musical instrument with a frame and small metal disks that rattled when the instrument was shaken by hand, producing a soft jangling sound that resembled a breeze blowing through papyrus reeds

  wadjet eye—also known as the Eye of Horus, it was depicted as a human eye and eyebrow as they would be seen looking at a person full-faced; as an amulet, it was placed in the wrappings of the mummy for protection

  PROLOGVE

  In my dreams, it is often I who kills Amunet. Other nights it is Khufu, in one of his mad rages. And at other times it is a great mystery, destined to remain unknown long after the ka of each of us has crossed to the west.

  Tonight, as I lay abed, my dreams reveal all the truth that I know.

  Merit is there, like a beautiful lotus flower among the papyrus reeds.

  “Hemi,” she whispers, using the shortened form of my name in the familiar way I long for. “We should join the others.”

  The tufts of reeds that spring from the marsh’s edge wave around us, higher than our heads, our private thicket.

  “They are occupied with the hunt,” I say.

  A cloud of birds rises from the marsh in that moment,
squawking their protest at being disturbed. Merit turns her head to the noise and I study the line of her jaw, the long curls that wave across her ear. I pull her close, my arms around her waist.

  Her body is stiff at first, then melts against mine.

  “Hemi, you must let me go.”

  Some nights in my dreams I am a better man.

  “Merit.” I bury my face in her hair, breathe in the spicy scent of her. “I cannot.”

  I pull her into my kiss.

  She resists. She pushes me away and her eyes flash accusation, but something else as well. Sorrow. Longing.

  I reach for her again, wrapping my fingers around her wrist. She twists away from my grasp. I do not know what I might have done, but there is fear in her eyes. By the gods, I wish I could forget that fear.

  She runs. What else could she do?

  She runs along the old river bed, not yet swollen with the year’s Inundation, stagnant and marshy. She disappears among the papyrus. The sky is low and gray, an evil portent.

  My anger roots me to the ground for several moments, but then the whisper of danger propels me to follow.

  “Merit,” I call. “Come back. I am sorry!”

  I weave slowly among the reeds, searching for the white flash of her dress, the bronze of her skin.

  “Merit, it is not safe!”

  Anger dissolves into concern. I cannot find her.

  In the way of dreams, my feet are unnaturally heavy, as though I fight through alluvial mud to reach her. The first weighted drops fall from an unearthly sky.

  And then she is there, at the base of the reeds. White dress dirtied, head turned unnaturally. Face in the water. My heart clutches in my chest. I lurch forward. Drop to my knees in the marsh mud. Push away the reeds. Reach for her.

  It is not Merit.

  It is Amunet.

  “Amunet!” I wipe the mud and water from her face and shake her. Her eyes are open yet unfocused.

  I am less of a man because, in that moment, I feel relief.

  Relief that it is not Merit.

  But what has happened to Amunet? Khufu insisted that our royal hunting party split apart to raise the birds, but we all knew that he wanted to be with Amunet. Now she is alone, and she has crossed to the west.

  As I hold her lifeless body in my arms, I feel the great weight of choice fall upon my shoulders. The rain pours through an evil gash in the clouds.

  Khufu is my friend. He is my cousin. He will soon wear the Double Crown of the Two Lands of Upper and Lower Egypt. And when Khufu is Pharaoh, I will be his grand vizier.

  But it would seem that I hold our future in my hands now, as surely as I hold this girl’s body.

  I lower Amunet to the mud again and awake, panting and sweating, in my bed. I roll from the mat, scramble for a pot, and retch. It is not the first time.

  The sunlight is already burning through the high window in my bedchamber.

  The past is gone. There is only the future.

  And I have a pyramid to build.

  ONE

  In the fifth year of Khufu, the Golden Horus, Great in Victories, Chosen of Ra, as the pyramid rose in the desert like a burning torch to the sun god himself, I realized my mistake and knew that I had brought disorder.

  “Foolishness!” Khons slapped a stone-roughened hand on the papyri unrolled on the basalt-black slab before us, and turned his back on the well-ordered charts to study the workforce on the plateau.

  I refused to follow his gaze. Behind me, I knew, eight thousand men toiled, dragging quarry stones up ramps that snaked around my half-finished pyramid, and levering them into beautiful precision. Below them, intersecting lines of men advanced with the rhythm of drumbeats. They worked quickly but never fast enough.

  My voice took on a hard edge. “Perhaps, Khons, if you spent more time listening and less blustering—”

  “You speak to me of time?” The overseer of quarries whirled to face me, and the muscles in his jaw twitched like a donkey’s flank when a fly irritates. “Do you have any idea what these changes mean?” He waved a hand over my plans. “You were a naked baboon at Neferma’at’s knee when he and I were building the pyramids at Saqqara!”

  This insult was well-worn, and I was sick of it. I stepped up to him, close enough to map every vein in his forehead. The desert air between us stilled with the tension. “You forget yourself, Khons. I may not be your elder, but I am grand vizier.”

  “My good men,” Ded’e interrupted, his voice dripping honey as he smoothed long fingers over the soft papyrus. “Let us not quarrel like harem women over a simple change of design.”

  “Simple!” Khons snorted. “Perhaps for you. Your farmers and bakers care not where Pharaoh’s burial chamber is located. But I will need to rework all the numbers for the Giza quarry. The time line for the Aswan granite will be in chaos.” Khons turned on me. “The plans for the queen’s pyramid are later than grain in a drought year. A project of this magnitude must run like marble over the rollers. A change like this—you’re hurling a chunk of limestone into the Nile, and there will be ripples. Other deadlines will be missed—”

  I held up a hand and waited to respond. I preferred to handle Khons and his fits of metaphor by giving us both time to cool. The sun hammered down on the building site, and I looked away, past the sands of death, toward the life-giving harbor and the fertile plain beyond. This year’s Inundation had not yet crested, but already the Nile’s green waters had swelled to the border of last year’s floodplain. When the waters receded in three months, leaving behind their rich silt deposits, the land would be black and fertile and planting would commence.

  “Three months,” I said. In three months, most of my workforce would return to their farms to plant and till, leaving my pyramid unfinished, dependent on me to make it whole.

  Khons grunted. “Exactly. No time for changes.”

  Ded’e scanned the plateau, his fingers skimming his forehead to block the glare, though he had applied a careful line of kohl beneath his eyes today. “Where is Mentu? Did you not send a message, Hemiunu?”

  I looked toward the workmen’s village, too far to make out anyone approaching by the road. Mentu-hotep also served as one of my chief overseers. These three answered directly to me, and under them commanded fifty supervisors, who in turn organized the twelve-thousand-man force. Nothing of this scale had ever been undertaken in the history of the Two Lands. In the history of man. We were building the Great Pyramid, the Horizon of the Pharaoh Khufu. A thousand years, nay, ten thousand years from now, my pyramid would still stand. And though a tomb for Pharaoh, it would also bear my name. A legacy in stone.

  “Perhaps he thinks he can do as he wishes,” Khons said.

  I ignored his petty implication that I played favorites among my staff. “Perhaps he is slow in getting started today.” I jabbed a finger at the plans again. “Look, Khons, the burial chamber’s relocation will mean that the inner core will require less stone, not more. I’ve redesigned the plans to show the king’s chamber beginning on Course Fifty. Between the corbelled ascending corridor, the burial chamber, five courses high, and the five relieving chambers that will be necessary above it, we will save 8,242 blocks.”

  “Exactly 8,242? Are you certain?” De’de snorted. “I think you must stay up all night solving equations, eh, Hemi?”

  I inclined my head to the pyramid, now one-fourth its finished height. “Look at it, De’de. See the way the sides angle at a setback of exactly 11:14. Look at the platform, level to an error less than the span of your little finger.” I turned on him. “Do you think such beauty happens by chance? No, it requires constant attention from one who would rather lose sleep than see it falter.”

  “It’s blasphemy.” Khons’s voice was low. It was unwise to speak thus of the Favored One.

  I exhaled and we hung over the plans, heads together. Khons smelled of sweat and dust, and sand caked the outer rim of his ear.

  “It is for the best, Khons. You will see.”


  If blasphemy were involved, it was my doing and not Khufu’s. I had engineered the raising of the burial chamber above ground and, along with it, Khufu’s role as the earthly incarnation of the god Ra. It was for the good of Egypt, and now it must be carried forward. Hesitation, indecision—these were for weak men.

  “Let the priests argue about religious matters,” I said. “I am a builder.”

  Ded’e laughed. “Yes, you are like the pyramid, Hemi. All sharp angles and unforgiving measurements.”

  I blinked at the observation, then smiled as though it pleased me.

  Khons opened his mouth, no doubt to argue, but a shout from the work site stopped him. We three turned to the pyramid, and I ground my teeth to see the work gangs falter in their measured march up the ramps. Some disorder near the top drew the attention of all. I squinted against the bright blue sky but saw only the brown figures of the workforce covering the stone.

  “Cursed Mentu. Where is he?” Khons asked the question this time.

  As overseer for operations, Mentu took charge of problems on the line. In his absence, I now stalked toward the site.

  The Green Sea Gang had halted on the east-face ramp, their draglines still braced over their bare shoulders. Even from thirty cubits below I could see the ropy muscles stand out on the backs of a hundred men as they strained to hold the thirty-thousanddeben-weight block attached to the line. Their white skirts of this morning had long since tanned with dust, and their skin shone with afternoon sweat.

  “Sokkwi! Get your men moving forward!” I shouted to the Green Sea Gang supervisor who should have been at the top.

  There was no reply, so I strode up the ramp myself, multiplying in my mind the minutes of delay by the stones not raised. The workday might need extending.

  Halfway up the first rubble ramp, a scream like that of an antelope skewered by a hunter’s arrow ripped the air. I paused only a moment, the men’s eyes on me, then took to the rope-lashed ladder that leaned against the pyramid’s side. I felt the acacia wood strain under the pounding of my feet and slowed only enough for safety. The ladder stretched to the next circuit of the ramp, and I scrambled from it, chest heaving, and sprinted through the double line of laborers that snaked around the final ramp. Here the pyramid came to its end. Still so much to build.