THE HATHOR HOLOCAUST Read online

  “You’re amusing. I mean sharing your wisdom with our group on a pilgrimage to the spiritual Egypt, stopping in Cairo for a few days, then cruising down the Nile from Aswan to Dendera.”

  “All expenses?”

  “All. My organization is not short of a dollar.”

  “The young man, who stood rubbing his chin, leaned forward to get Anson’s attention.

  “I wonder if you can tell me something?” he said in a mumble. “This fiery holocaust period you talk about. Don’t you think it’s possible we’re talking about some kind of interstellar attack on the earth? Some kind of alien radiation or something that came down in Egypt and brought about an apocalypse? I’ve been talking this idea over with a UFO archaeologist who thinks I’m on to something.”

  On something, Anson thought.

  “I’m Scott. I want to believe what you’ve been saying tonight, I really do.”

  Scott was a believer.

  He reminded Anson of someone else. Himself at that age.

  Just a little.

  He’d always kept an open mind, but had he ever been quite this gullible?

  A cruise with these two would be an education.

  “Who else is coming?” he said to the woman in the business suit.

  “A small group. Twelve of us, including you. All eager to hear your views. Some have theories of their own. Think about it and get back to me. But I’ll leave you with a question, as well as with our invitation,” she said. “If you are truthful, Anson, why do you think you are so obsessed with ancient Egypt? Think back. What is it, or was it, that first called to you? Wasn’t it the mysterious divinity of ancient Egypt?

  Chapter 9

  Anson Hunter’s blog – The Other Egypt

  A NEW AGE female who calls herself Lady Neith has really set me thinking…

  Where did it all begin, this obsession with ancient Egypt and its death-laden mysteries?

  Yes, she is right about my obsession with divinity, especially the feminine divine of Egypt, which I put down to some erotic appeal rather then a streak of paganism, but what if I dig down further?

  Something about Egypt hit me as a child, as it does many thoughtful children; in my obsessive case, a broken family possibly accelerated an inward turn.

  The look of ancient Egypt is not only remote and eerie to a child, but also, paradoxically, second nature. Take a look at any child’s sketches and paintings. They’re eerily Egypyptian, capturing the visible essence of things. The human body is often shown side on in the Egyptian way, just as it appears in tomb paintings and carved on temple walls, the shoulders turned to the front so that both arms are revealed and one foot placed ahead of the other.

  Objects –tables, piles of food and fruit, animals, trees – float mysteriously in the air with disregard for scale. Young people understand ancient Egyptian art and design instinctively. They get it. It’s how they see the world – eternal, free of time and perspective.

  y view of Egypt is precious, I’ve come to believe. It almost seems that only as a child can you truly enter the Kingdom of Phaaoh. A child loves Egypt’s tombs, underworlds filled with glowing mages, temples that shiver in the heat of the sun, pyramids terrifying in their size, smooth statues of pharaohs and queens in dark stone, goddesses with long tresses, gods with animal heads.

  Young people also have a sunny love of life, just as the Egyptians did, and yet both share a dark, hidden world of mystery and magic where animals can speak and where powerful unseen forces outside of ther control influence events.

  Children know a place that older people forget, a shadowy underworld of animal-headed monsters and fearsome creatures. Young people love a secret, and what civilisation was so steeped in secrets and mystery as ancient Egypt, from its hieroglyphs and hidden tombs to its mummies and spells for the afterlife? When small children go to bed, to the little death-sleep at night, don’t they take their treasured possessions with them on their journey, their toys and dolls to accompany them into an afterlife of dreams?

  And what of Egypt itself, pyramids and stone pharaohs carved out of mountains, and soaring temples? A place built, as if from a child’s imagination, for giants.

  With the average age at death of Egyptians being in the twenties, a case can be made for saying that it was young people who built the wonders of Egypt.

  Put a child in a sandpit and what will it soon start to build? A pyramid of sand.

  And think of the scenes in Egyptian tombs, those walls and painted passages that fling their lengths hundreds of metres into a cliff. The decorated walls show feasting, families fishing on boats on the river, flowers, fields and animals. They are not places of gloom like a modern graveyard. They are filled with scenes as bright and colourful as any child’s nursery.

  Ancient Egypt is a place of wonders where anything seems possible. Little wonder that so many young people fall in love with it for a lifetime.

  A child’s Egypt has never quite let go of me either…

  On the subject of the young, who, as a child, has not been charmed by those eerily lifelike models that populate the Daily Life in ancient Egypt cases of museum galleries around the world, little wooden men and women frozen in their labours, eyes wide in their whites - especially when viewed on a flashlight tour by night? This story is about a squad of acacia spearmen buried in a Middle Kingdom tomb and now housed in a museum far from home.

  (Click to read – or move on)

  “Soldiers of an Endless Night”

  IN THE DARKNESS of a museum case, a troop of painted Egyptian spearmen, carved in wood from an acacia tree, froze inside their display case.

  "A night intruder approaches! Lights coming!"

  A line of children came shuffling into the Egyptian gallery. They were here on a special visit called 'A flashlight tour of Ancient Egypt'. Beams from their flashlights flitted like trapped birds around the Egyptian gallery, swooping over statues of pharaohs, gods and spell-covered mummy cases. The miniature tomb models had been busily marching to and fro in their nightly drill practice, spears and ox-hide covered shields in their hands and kilts around their hips, when lights swept over them.

  Except for a neon strip above a far-off wall case and a green illuminated 'exit' sign nearby, the gallery lay in darkness. The sign flickered as if it might die at any moment, leaving the visitors stranded forever in these halls of the ancient past.

  "Back to your positions!" said the chief spearman, whose name was Karoy. At his command, the soldiers leapt back on to their wooden base and shuffled into ranks, their spears held beside their sun-stained chests and shoulders, their dark eyes wide in their whites as if startled by the sudden invasion of light.

  Who, or what, was coming?

  The night invader drew closer. The model spearman Karoy swivelled his eyes.

  "It is a long-bodied creature with many legs and numerous flashing eyes." As a good soldier, Karoy noted its state of readiness to attack. "Yet it approaches with caution."

  "We are now in the Daily Life in Ancient Egypt section," said the tour guide to the group, who now came into view, "and inside these display cases you will see tomb models engaged in various occupations." She was assistant keeper at the museum. She had thrown herself into the spirit of the night by wearing archaeologist's field clothes and hat as if she were going on a dig for a lost tomb.

  The visitor’s exploring beams played over the glass cases, revealing groups of little model people who seemed to be busily at work, yet were eerily silent and locked in arrested movement.

  The guide told the line of visitors:

  "There - you can see a bakery, a butcher's shop, a weavers' workshop, servants, musicians playing harps, fishermen in little boats, children's toys, even soldiers on the march. These tiny figures were servants for eternity and they were left in the darkness of the grave so that magically they could work for the dead in the afterlife."

  The tour guide reached Karoy's case and turned a wobbly sun of her torch beam on the soldiers, suddenly blinding
them.

  "Look - a troop of miniature soldiers marching smartly on parade," she said. "You can almost see them moving and hear the tramp of their marching feet."

  "Wow! I like their spears,” said a boy. "They look sharp."

  "That's because they're tipped with bronze, just like the real ones."

  "Look at their eyes," said a girl. "They seem to be alive."

  "How many soldiers are there?"

  "I've never counted them myself, but there are supposed to be forty of them, unless a few have deserted," the guide said.

  "What does deserted mean?" a child said.

  "Running away from the army."

  "You mean they can get out?"

  The guide laughed and shook her head.

  "I hardly think so. Even if they came to life and wanted to escape. Their case is locked and airtight."

  "Why did dead mummies have soldiers in their tombs?" said another child.

  "To fight battles for them in the next life," said the guide. "Through magic these models were expected to become life-size and protect their owner. The Egyptian underworld was thought to be a scary place..."

  "Scarier than this place?" said a girl.

  "I'm not scared," said a boy.

  "No?" said the girl. "Then why do you walk so close behind me? You keep stepping on the back of my shoe."

  Visitors disturbing the night?' the spearman Karoy thought in wonder, since flashlight tours were new to this museum. 'Do they never sleep?'

  "And look, standing nearby is a lovely wooden lady," said the guide, swinging her torch. "Isn't she beautiful? We can actually read her name here, carved on the wooden base - the Lady Tiy."

  The visitors’ torch beams came together on a carving made from the wood of a sycamore tree, showing a girl with a slim waist and curving hips and a shape-revealing gown that reached to her ankles. She gazed forward out of a tower of hair that dropped below her shoulders, one of her arms held at her side and the other folded across her waist, holding a necklace in her hand.

  Was it the glare of many suns or the beauty of Tiy's form in the torchlight that dazzled Karoy now? She seemed to float in the lights and so did his acacia heart for he had long admired the Lady Tiy - for over three thousand years.

  One day he was going to tell her how he felt about her, but it seemed that in order to do so he would have to cross a chasm greater than time itself. About once every thousand years, he tried, opening his lips to blurt it out, but at the glance of her eyes, his mouth dried up like sawdust. Afterwards, a great sorrow pierced his heart like a splinter. He would console himself by thinking, 'there's no rush. After all, what's another thousand years? We've been built for eternity, haven't we? I'll wait for just the right moment.'

  The group moved on, but one member, a small girl who had come here on her own, stayed behind, muffling the brightness of her torch beam with her fingers.

  The girl put her face near the glass case and grinned at the Lady Tiy. Light reflected back from the case showed glints of dental braces in the visitor's smile. To Karoy the steel braces looked like metal shields linked together by soldiers in battle formation, a sign of a trained enemy.

  "Hello pretty lady," said the girl to Tiy. "Would you like to come out and play dolls with me tonight?"

  What did she mean?

  Karoy had seen this same child staring at Tiy before, on quite a few occasions, her head turned to one side and a smile of girlish admiration playing on her face. But this time the girl was different. Something had changed her.

  There was a fixed intent in her eyes and her tongue flicked out between her lips like a hungry snake’s when its heat-sensors detect a meal.

  This child in front of the display case was the museum keeper's daughter, a girl called Mish. Mish had joined this flashlight tour to her father's museum and come on her own. But Mish had a secret purpose behind the visit.

  The grinning face vanished. The girl went around to the back of the case. The rattle of a key in a lock and a squeak of hinges startled Karoy.

  The child had a key. Where did she get it? Had she stolen it from her father?

  A draught of air rushed inside the airtight world. It made Karoy gasp as it hit his skin, but not as sharply as he did when the girl's hand shot inside the case. Her fingers wrapped around the waist of the Lady Tiy and her hand withdrew, whisking Tiy away.

  "What evil night is this?" said Karoy.

  The Lady Tiy vanished so suddenly that Karoy had no time to strike with his spear in her defence. Now another light raked the case. A member of the tour group was returning.

  Alarmed, the girl stuffed the wooden figurine upside down in her pants.

  'What a shameful act! That is no way to treat an Egyptian lady from a nobleman's house of eternity,' thought Karoy.

  The little girl hurriedly closed the glass case and tried to relock it. Karoy heard squeaks of metal on glass as she scrabbled to find the lock, before she ducked down.

  "Is someone there?" said a woman. It was the assistant museum keeper and guide. "Please come out."

  The girl came out of hiding. She emerged from around the display case.

  "You, Mish?" said the guide. "I'm sure you feel perfectly at home in your father's museum, but kindly stay with the group."

  "Sorry."

  Mish and the guide rejoined the party, taking the light with them.

  In the dim glow of a distant strip of neon and also in the trickle of light shed by the nearby 'exit' sign, Karoy's tanned shoulders sank in despair. His ox-hide shield and bronze spear clumped on the wooden base.

  "The Lady Tiy is taken!" He spoke in a shocked whisper.

  "Yes. And see, the case is left open," said a spearman at the rear.

  "Is it possible?" Yes, it had to be true. With the change in atmosphere, Karoy could already feel his skin changing, ancient, tan paint on a white gesso undercoat, splitting and forming new hairline cracks, spreading like a fine net over his shoulders and his arms chest and legs. Outside was a perilous place where the enemy - time and humid air - waited to work their destruction.

  Would this happen to Tiy? How long could she survive away from the climate-controlled world of her display case? In his mind's painted eye he saw a memory of her floating in the spotlight again. Then he recalled the hand of the child shooting in to snatch her. Karoy felt a splinter go through his heart and this time it seemed to split his heart in two. With careless handling by the child, Tiy might simply crumble into a pile of dust. He pictured it happening, the oval face with its tilted eyes and the finely carved lips collapsing into sawdust and then blowing away in a puff of wind.

  "Someone will see that she has gone and will surely bring her back," a soldier consoled him.

  Just wait and time would eventually take care of everything. That's what he had always believed and it was tempting to believe it now. But time had not brought them closer. It had taken Tiy away, perhaps forever.

  Suddenly, after staying miraculously preserved for three thousand years, Tiy may only have hours left to survive, thought Karoy. His legs quaked so violently that a flake of paint shook loose and dropped off his knee.

  He looked down at the bare patch in his skin. He could see the white gesso undercoat. It made the situation seem even more urgent.

  "I must go after Lady Tiy and rescue her at once," he said.

  The model spearmen gasped in their ranks.

  "Does he know what he is saying?" a man whispered in the middle.

  "How will he survive outside?" said another on the flank.

  "How does he hope to bring her back?"

  "Karoy, do you think a spear and shield can protect you out there? What about the Nameless Ones of the nether region who creep up the stairs at night?" said a nervous spearman whose eyes were startled-wide.

  The nether region was the basement of the museum. They only ever spoke about it in whispers, a place of thick darkness where ugly, broken things lived. Karoy had heard these rumours. There were things downstairs that were neve
r meant to be seen, he had heard it whispered, nameless things that waited in the darkness to latch on to you and drag you down with them and keep you there forever, things like pieces of mummies, their heads, hands and feet, broken demon statues, ugly magical figurines, fragments of spells written on pottery shards, the shattered remains in stone, wood and clay of gods pharaohs, animals, biting snakes and stinging scorpions. It was also whispered that rats in their legions scuttled down there, creatures whose gnawing teeth were as fatal to the wooden spearmen as the jaws of wood-boring insects. 'The basement -an underworld whence none returns to tell us how they fare,' Karoy thought. He gulped. He knew the dangers.

  "I have delayed long enough," he said.

  His voice sounded choked as if sawdust filled his mouth.

  'I must make a rope and let myself down to the floor,' the acacia soldier decided.

  Nearby was a weavers' workshop where women worked at weaving flax into linen so they could make fine clothes for their tomb owner to wear in the afterlife. Karoy could use their thread to plait a rope and lower himself to the floor of the museum. He would go to the weavers and beg for their help.

  He set off, but a figure blocked his way. He stopped abruptly. This was an unlucky meeting. The one who had crossed his path was a magical figurine called Heka. Heka was a dark-wood girl with a face like a mask and rounded lioness ears sticking out through her mane. Most disturbing of all, she held a pair of twisted metal snake-wands, one in each hand. Heka was an Egyptian word that meant 'magic' and magic was the reason for her creation.

  "It seems your pretty Tiy may have cast a spell over someone else," Heka said.

  Word of the little girl's crime had spread rapidly through the display case, Karoy observed. Either that, or... Hold... why did she mention spells? Could she possibly have had something to do with the night's events? Heka never hid her jealousy of the lady Tiy. She would often say to him: "Why do you stare longingly at a useless, pretty doll, Karoy, when I have the power of magic?"