Page 2 of Ra
“You’ve done so once already, haven’t you?” Azi asked with a wry grin and one brow raised.
“Yes! But then I closed it right up!”
“You peeked inside. You already said as much.”
Abasi grinned sheepishly at her. “I had to be sure it was safe for you to enter, Dr. Clement.”
Azi laughed. “Show me,” she said, gesturing at the opening he’d found.
Abasi gripped the edge of the opening that was at the moment only a few inches wide, and pulled, revealing the stone door, only three feet by one and a half feet, that he’d found and looked up at her. “Would you like to go first?”
“Second, you mean?”
“I only went far enough down the staircase to see what we faced. Then I came right back up, I touched nothing.”
Azi knelt down beside him and stretched her upper body through the opening far enough to see into it. The space was filled with cobwebs and thousands of years worth of dust and dirt. The thrill that went through her body was a feeling unlike any she could have ever imagined. She paused only long enough to smile back at him and replace the mask over her mouth and nose, then crawled on her hands and knees through the small hinged door Abasi was so proud of, in what was once believed to be a solid stone wall. Hearing the scraping of stone-on-stone behind her, she looked back to see Abasi wedging several large pieces of rock from the original excavation into the opening, presumably to keep them from being trapped inside. “Where’d those come from?”
“I brought them down before I went to call you. We don’t want the door to close behind us.”
“Smart,” she said.
Abasi grinned at her, just before she disappeared into the opening.
Two feet from the secret door, the tight opening widened and Azi was able to stand. Looking down she noticed a carved stone staircase before her. Azi reached into the fanny pack she wore and took out a flashlight.
“You won’t need it, Dr. Clement,” Abasi said from behind her as he stood up.
She looked back at Abasi and he gestured to the mirror on the stone floor just ahead, held in place by an ornately carved falcon. It shone with sunshine from the small door they’d entered through, but its light was directed down the stairs.
“The small mirror piece that was accidentally left behind, wasn’t an accident after all,” he said. The originally excavated burial chamber had only one uneven broken piece of mirror mounted on its wall and they'd surmised that the builders must have used others to light the interior as they worked inside, accidentally forgetting the last small piece when they removed the others. “It was waiting to light the real chamber hidden below,” Abasi said.
Dr. Clement smiled as she set her foot on the first step down, then another, another, and another, counting as she went until she arrived on a landing with yet another mirror, this one sitting on a ram’s head balancing on its horns to catch and then reflect the sunlight down the rest of the stone staircase. She started down the second staircase, stopping when she reached the bottom. She stood perfectly still, her eyes wide, her heart thundering as her mind swirled with a thousand thoughts as she took in the sight before her perfectly illuminated by anexceptional display of perfectly cut square mirrors lining the seam of the walls and ceiling.
Twelve gilded columns, six on each side of the huge room seemed to support this chamber and the plainer one above it. The ceiling was painted with scenes from the ancient stories of the sun god Ra’s daily journey through the sky to bring light to the twelve kingdoms of the world. While the walls were painted with scenes of the underworld and the twelve regions and battles he fought to defeat the serpent god Apep. The floor was as impressive if not even more so, painted as a sunrise, with a multitude of golden scarab beetles supporting a magnificent gilded sarcophagus in the center of the room. Against the far wall was what appeared to be a solid gold throne, twelve one-inch-thick steps on its left side led up to its raised dais, and twelve one-inch-thick steps on its right side led back down to the floor. On the wall behind the throne was a carved relief of a pedestal, upon which stood each of the other Egyptian gods and goddesses at just the right height to look out over the shoulder of Ra, or his priest, as they sat upon the throne of Ra.
Abasi joined her just beside the stone stairway they’d just descended and stood just behind and beside her. “Twenty-four steps, separated into two sections of twelve. Twelve hours of the day — the way lighted by a falcon holding the mirror to bring the light. Twelve hours of night, lighted by a mirror held by the ram’s horns to deliver the light. Twenty-four gilded columns one for each hour of the day and night. On the ceiling is Ra’s journey through the twelve hours of the day, on the walls is his journey through the twelve hours of night as he journeys into the underworld, the floor is his rebirth as the sun rises again. A golden sarcophagus supported by Khepri the sacred scarab beetle, and a golden throne to sit upon. If this is not Ra, then who is it?” he asked in an awed whisper.
“A priest of Ra, perhaps,” Azi answered, her own voice lowered in respect for whomever it was that rested here.
“There are no canopic jars to hold the organs,” Abasi pointed out.
Azi’s gaze swept the tomb. “If there is a mummy, we’ll find the canopic jars.”
“One wouldn’t mummify Ra. They’d simply lay him to rest, replete as he is, and allow him to rejuvenate at will.”
Azi turned her head to glance over her shoulder at Abasi. “You’re a little too convinced this is the tomb of a god.”
“I cannot see what else it might be,” he said, lifting both his hands to shrug slightly as he smiled at her, inviting her to see the symbolic features that pointed to the obvious answers that he saw.
“It’s certainly built to mimic a temple of Ra. If there is a mummy, surely it will turn out to be one of his high-priests. Since Ra is no more than mythology of the period, I’m fairly certain this is not Ra.”
Abasi smiled knowingly at Azi. “I’m sure we’ll all see the truth in time.”
Azi nodded as she moved forward slowly, her eyes wide with wonder. Her head trying to take in everything she could as she looked everywhere at once. “This is beyond all imagining.”
“It is. Yet, you, Dr. Clement, have been chosen to discover its secrets.”
She turned her head to look at Abasi. “And you, Abasi. Without you I wouldn’t have been given the privilege of witnessing this.”
