The Pyramid

II. Start of Works

NEWS of the pyramid’s construction spread with amazing speed, for which two explanations were offered: the people’s joy after long waiting for such tidings; or, on the contrary, the dismay felt when a much-feared misfortune that people hoped never to see happen finally rises over the horizon.

Ahead of its announcement by public criers, the news had already reached the thirty-eight different provinces of the kingdom, had spread everywhere, like sand blown by yesterday’s wind of disquiet.

“The Pharaoh Cheops, our sun, has decided to grant the people of Egypt a grandiose and sacred mission, the most majestic of all buildings and the most sacred of all tasks, the construction of his pyramid.”

The drum rolls echoed from village to village, and even before the voices of the heralds had died away, provincial dignitaries put their heads together to deliberate on steps to be taken on their own initiative before instructions reached them from the capital Their faces seemed lit with joy as they left the square for their homes, repeating, At last, as we had foreseen, the great day has come! From that day on there was something new in their stride, in their gestures, in the way they held their heads. A kind of hidden exultation tended to contract their muscles and to tighten their fists, The pyramid entered their existence so readily that in barely a few days they began to mutter. How the devil did we manage without it up to now?

Meanwhile, without waiting for the arrival of directives from the center, they acted as their predecessors had acted for all previous pyramids: they stifled the voices of the malcontents. The mere idea that thousands of people, instead of rejoicing at the news, could wail despairingly, “Woe! Another round!” put them beside themselves with anger.

“Did you think you were going get away with it? Did you believe that everything had changed, that there would be no more pyramids and that you could live as you liked? Well now, you see how things are! So bow your heads, and grouse to your heart’s content!”

In the capital the situation had become perceptibly more tense. Not only the mien and bearing of the functionaries but the buildings themselves seemed to have grown stiffen Coaches shuttled between the White House, as the Finance Building was called, and the Pharaoh’s palace, between the palace and the building that was said to house the secret service, and even to unknown destinations, toward the desert.

Architects in the leading group directed by Hemiunu worked overtime. The plan seemed ever more complex to them, and each of them imagined that, when he finally managed to comprehend it in its entirety, his brain would burst from the pressure. What contributed above all to the mental torture was that everything hung together, A minor correction to the height or the base dimension led to an infinite number of other changes. Items that were apparently distinct from the overall plan — the decoy galleries, the air vents, the sliding doors that gave onto nothing, the secret entrances that unfortunately led to blank walls, the false escape routes, the pressure on the gallery that led to the funereal chamber, the gradient, the sinkholes, the axis, the number of stones, the horror of the center, not one of these things could be conceived in isolation. The famous phrase of the father of the pyramids, Imhotep, “The Pyramid is One” (Hemiunu had reminded them of it at their first meeting), remained lodged in their minds like a driven wedge.

Each time they recalled it, Imhotep’s pronouncement seemed ever more appropriate, but instead of feeling relief, they were ever more dejected. It was a truth that bared itself progressively day by day, revealing itself, in all its blinding obviousness, as a curse falling upon them.

The pyramid could only be what it was, that is to say, total. If one corner were imperfect, it would crack or begin to subside somewhere else. So, whether in suffering or in joy, you could only dwell in it by becoming part of the whole.

They now felt that the pyramid had broken free of their calculations. When they first heard it described as “divine,” they had difficulty in hiding their smiles. However, they were now convinced that it concealed some other mystery. They were obsessed with the worry that the mystery might be “the secret of the center,” they lost sleep over it, they wore a gloomy countenance, but, in their heart of hearts, they took pride in the extreme complication of their fate, until, one day, something unheard of occurred: though the pyramid only existed on papyrus and not a single stone had been cut for it nor even the quarries selected, yet the Theban whip factories, without waiting for orders from the State, had already doubled their rate of production!

As chariots heavily laden with their heaps of whips slowly approached the gates of Memphis, people expected the factory owners to be punished for spreading panic. But not a bit: as people soon learned, the owners received not a punishment but a letter from the highest authorities congratulating them on their foresight and their understanding of current needs.

The architects in the leading group grew even more downcast. The idea that the pyramid could have been conceived outside of their circle, and even before their drawings were complete, was a terrible blow.

Meanwhile, foreign ambassadors, feigning indifference, had communicated the news to their capitals, each in his own way. They changed their ciphers each season, so that the spies disguised as customs officials found it hard to discern whether the vases full of garlic, the stuffed sparrow hawks, or the singlets embroidered with forks and tridents that the Phoenician ambassador was allegedly sending to his mistress in Byblos were effectively vases, garlic bulbs, and women’s underwear, or just the puzzle pieces of some coded report.

Only one of the ambassadors, the emissary from the land of the Canaanites, continued to send his messages in the ancient manner, in signs carved on stone tablets. The others, and especially those from Crete and Libya, and more recently the Trojan ambassador, used ever more diabolical devices. The envoys from the Greek and Illyrian peoples who had just settled in large numbers in the Pelasgian lands were still too backward to have a clear idea of what a report, not to mention a secret report, should be; they found all these devices bewildering, had a permanent headache from them, and sighed. What misfortune it is to be so ignorant!

The one most hated by the secret police was, as always, the Sumerian ambassador Suppiluliuma. Not long before, a system of evil signs had been discovered in his country that was called “writing.” Almost indistinguishable lines and dots were traced on clay tablets, looking like the marks of crows’ feet; apparently these lines and dots had the power to mummify the thoughts of men, just as bodies could be embalmed, And as if that were not quite enough, these tablets were baked in ovens and then sent from one to another as messages. You can imagine what happens in their capital, the Egyptian ambassador gloated when home on leave. All day long chariots full of clay tablets trundle around from one office to another. A letter or a report takes two or three chariots. Street porters unload them, and when perchance a tablet is broken, then there’s a riot! Then other men carry the message to the minister’s office. A whole half-day of unloading in dust and muddle. Upon my word, the country is off its rockers!

The things that could be heard said in the Foreign Ministry reached such a pitch that Cheops himself had to rebuke his officials. Instead of grinning at their neighbors, they would be better employed deciphering the meanings of these signs.

From that day on a policeman was on duty outside the Sumerian embassy. Barely did the spy see wisps of smoke rising above the building than he ran to give the alarm: A report! Among the secret policemen there was no doubt that the message had something to do with the pyramid; but when they thought that these devilish signs had nothing to do with sacrosanct Egyptian hieroglyphs, then their exasperation stuck in their gullets. The Canaanite ambassador, on the other hand, deserved to be kissed on the forehead. He was a bit of a plodder, to be sure, like all those desert people, but he did not lower himself to such madness. He hammered on stone, bang-bang, like an idiot, all week long, he could be heard as far away as the Foreign Ministry, but he did not demean himself with garlic, women’s panties, or oven-baked clay.

It was henceforth obvious that news of the pyramid’s construction had spread faster than could easily be imagined, not only throughout the two Egypts but also in neighboring lands. The event was judged to be of universal importance, and the first reports from Egyptian plenipotentiaries revealed that the information had everywhere caused great excitement, Cheops himself read and reread these messages many times over. What had surprised him at first, namely the approval of the pyramid plan by Egypt’s very enemies, now seemed, after the explanations given him by Hemiunu and especially by Djedi the magician, perfectly logical. To be sure, Egypt was disliked, and the weakening of the State would be welcomed; nonetheless, an Egypt without pyramids, an apyramidal kingdom (as Egypt’s enemies called it among themselves) would have struck them, at all events, as even more redoubtable. They feared that a slackening of the State, possibly followed by a rebellion might have repercussions for them, as had occurred seventy years earlier, when, before they could rejoice at the weakening of the Pharaoh, the hurricane that had swept their neighbor away had almost carried them off as well.

The magician was of the view that, instead of subscribing to the arguments of the senile functionaries in the Foreign Ministry, Cheops should cease to disparage the canals of Mesopotamia, Despite being made of water and not at all imposing, he insisted, they were of the same essence as Egyptian stone. Digging them required no less suffering than the building of solid monuments. The exhaustion and stupor that they engendered were of the same order.

Other reports revealed that everywhere in Egypt people were talking only of the pyramid and that each individual and each event was systematically thought of in its relation to the great work. Some women remained indifferent to these rumors, believing they were not concerned, until one fine morning they discovered that their husband, their lover, or all their children of school age bar none had to leave for the Abusir quarries — and then you heard tears, or shouts of joy.

It was becoming ever clearer that the claim that it would take a good ten years to build the roads needed for the construction of the pyramid had a double meaning. In fact, the construction of the access routes, above and beyond the actual work, also involved preparing people for the great work, eliminating all their uncertainties, and, above all, bringing them to renounce their previous way of life. And it would be just as hard to arouse enthusiasm and to overcome lassitude, slander, and sabotage.

All were now quite convinced that despite the absence of any trace of the dust that normally accompanies building work, the pyramid had germinated and already grown strong roots. As elusive as a chimera, its premature ghost stalked the land and weighed on the spirit as oppressively as any block of masonry. The pyramid had sent its ghost as a sign, as did all great events, and there were many who impatiently awaited the start of the works in order to escape from this nightmarish apparition.

The leading group of architects now knew that thousands of people who had never drawn the merest sketch were thinking of the pyramid in the same feverish state as they were. After supper, at friends’ houses, they no longer felt quite so proud, nor were they as much the center of everyone’s attention as they had been, “What’s the pressure of masonry you keep on about?” a young painter asked one day of one of the architects, at a little birthday reception, “If you knew what pressure I feel in my stomach. . A thousand times harder to bear than the one you alluded to. .” “But it’s the same one!” someone else interjected, “Don’t you understand? It’s the same weight!”

As if to trace out the pyramid’s invisible plumb lines, inspectors had set off for the four corners of Egypt, Quarries had to be selected before routes could be laid down for the stone to reach the construction site. Fast horse-drawn coaches left Memphis before dawn. Some traveled toward the old seams of Saqqara and Abusir, others to the Sinai desert, where basalt and malachite were to be found. But most of them hastened toward the south, where the most famous quarries were situated. They stopped at Illak and El Bersheh, carried on along the royal road toward Harnoub and Karnak, branched east in the direction of Thebes and Hermonthis, wheeled back toward the west to get to Luxor, then went on down like the wind, skirting Aswan, and, white with dust, rushed headlong, as if’ they were seeking the world’s end, far, far away, to Gebel Barkal, and farther still, toward the banks of the fifth cataract, to the hamlet that was reputed to be the gateway of hell.

Cheops’s orders were categorical: nothing was to be spared for his pyramid, and the stones and basalt were to be brought, if necessary, from the farthest regions.

Day by day the quarry map acquired a great variety of new symbols. All quarries were marked on it: old ones sung by poets in hymns comparing them to mothers, but now barren; disused ones that could be reopened; undug ones that still aroused the inspectors’ imagination. In conversation, and sometimes in their notes and on their maps, they designated these different sites with words and expressions of a feminine kind. As their tours of duty lengthened, so their longing for the body of a woman and the intensity of their desires increased. It was sometimes even reflected in their reports: a quarry would be described as fertile, chubby, well-rounded — or, on the contrary, as sterile, or as having aborted twice already. To such an extent that, had they not first been corrected by the eunuch Toutou, Cheops might have concluded that the reports came to him not from a squad of inspectors but direct from the fleshpots of Luxor.

Cheops kept a close eye on the progress of the operation. Once a week he would visit the room in the palace that had been set aside for the main architects. On the walls there were dozens of papyri bearing all sorts of signs, arrows, and calculations that Hemiunu explained to him in a whisper. The Pharaoh did not breathe a word; everyone had the impression that he was in a hurry for one thing only: to leave.

On one occasion, however, on the day when the model was first exhibited, he did stay a little longer. His eyes filled with a cold gleam. This smooth object of soft limestone presented its white silhouette, while the pyramid itself was still scattered and disseminated throughout Egypt. It was yet but a breath, a ghost, a black haze that would expand to infinite size like the death-rattle of a djinn. Would they manage to contain it, or would it, like a vapor, escape their grasp?

Cheops had a headache. He was worried. Something kept on slipping his mind, returning, then evaporating once more. He could not grasp the exact relationship of that stubby piece of chalk to the pyramid that only existed in anyone’s mind in the state of a vapor, and especially with the third pyramid, the real one, the one that remained to be built. Sometimes the first seemed to him to be sliding between the other two, sometimes it seemed to be darting around in front and behind them like a dybbuk.

Hemiunu went on talking to him. He explained why he had chosen a slope of fifty-two degrees rather than one of forty-five. He invoked the legendary name of Imhotep, the first pyramid builder, provided information about the new pyramid’s orientation, which had been fixed by the position of the stars, but Cheops’s mind was elsewhere. He got a better grip on himself when the High Priest used a piece of a plank to show on the model how the stones would be raised. “That’s just what I wanted to ask,” said Cheops. “At such heights…” “No problem, Majesty,” the architect replied. “You see this wooden scaffolding? We shall build four like that, one for each slope. The stones and the granite blocks that serve to obstruct the entrances will all be hauled up the ramp by means of ropes.”

He propped the piece of wood against the model It would lean on the pyramid, like that, there you are. On the lower steps the gradient of the ramp would be very gentle. Then as the height increased the slope would get steeper, which would make it harder to raise the stones. To keep it manageable, in other words to keep the angle of slope at less than twelve degrees, the ramp would be progressively extended in length. That’s how, like this…

The architect removed the first ramp and put a second, longer one in place. “You see. Majesty, this one reaches the pyramid at mid-height, but the gradient is just about the same.” Cheops nodded his head to indicate that he had understood, “And so we shall go on, to the summit,” the architect continued, moving into place a third and much longer piece of wood. “Now the pyramid looks like a comet,” Cheops said, and for the first time he smiled.

Hemiunu sighed with relief. “And what’s that arrow, there?” the Pharaoh asked, pointing the rod he held in his hand toward a sign.

For a short interval the architect held his tongue.

“That is the gallery that leads to the funeral chamber, Majesty,” he replied without looking at Cheops.

The Pharaoh touched the sign with the tip of his rod.

“And where is the chamber itself?”

“It has not been included in the model, Majesty. It has no place in it, because it is situated outside of the pyramid. It is buried underground. One hundred feet deep, maybe more… At a point where the weight of the pyramid is no longer felt…”

Cheops’s eyes wandered for a moment to the abyss where they planned to place his coffin. He recalled a dream he had had a few days before. He had seen his own mummy floating in the void like the body of a drowned man.

“That is how the great Zoser and the unforgettable Seneferu, your father, were placed,” said Hemiunu, lowering his voice.

Cheops did not reply. He hardly felt at his ease, but made an effort not to let it show. Only the rod in his hand trembled.

“Such matters are your business,” he blurted out in the end, and then turned on his heels. His last words: “Start your work,” which he uttered once he had crossed the threshold and without turning his head, reached the architects as if enveloped in an echo: Sta-start you-your wo-work!

Those left behind kept quiet for a moment, like the followers of a sect who had seen some miracle. Approval had finally been granted. The model, the seed of the future pyramid, which only yesterday they had handled and treated without ceremony, now seemed untouchable. Its cold chalky lightness seemed to needle them, and not just them, but the whole world.

The access roads were built according to the rules, that is to say simultaneously from different points in the kingdom. All trace of the old routes leading to the previous pyramids had disappeared a long time ago. Here and there, you could make out barely a few remnants, the scars of wounds healed years before. But even if they had survived they would not have been easy to use for the new pyramid. Each one had its own routes, which depended in some cases on the state of the old quarries and on the new quarries that had to be opened, on the kind of granite used (whether it was Aswan or Harnoub stone), on the choice of alabaster or basalt for interior decoration or for the summit, called the pyramidion, as well as on the material from which the sarcophagus would be carved — hard rock, red granite, or basalt The other materials that would be brought to the site ready-made — the granite buffers for blocking the entrances, the pedestals and plaques that would bear the inscriptions — could of course be conveyed along the old roads, but sometimes also needed new ones. Everything depended on the place where they were manufactured.

All that no doubt made up the most precious and elaborate part of the project, but the main thing was’the stones. Dozens of high officials in charge of works lost sleep over their extraction and haulage. As if it was not enough to have to devote most of their energies to these myriad nameless lumps, they were obliged in addition to spend days and nights on drafts and endless calculations of all kinds.

It was not just a matter of determining the exact number of stones needed, nor the average number of man-hours required for the extraction and loading of each block. After loading came haulage, and that was where everything went awry. Since it was indispensable to use the Nile for moving masonry and other materials, all their plans had to take account of the water level and of the possibility of spates. In earlier times, for reasons of security, people had tried to do without the Nile, but calculations had shown that recourse to other means of movement would have doubled, not to say tripled, the length of the journeys, so that (keep your voice down!) the Pharaoh risked dying before his pyramid was finished.

In this as in all else, the Nile turned out to be irreplaceable, However, it was not at all easy to predict exactly how far rafts laden with stone or granite could travel in this or that season. You had to consider all the possibilities, especially when planning long journeys beginning as far away as Elephantine, or even further from Dogola or Gebel Barkal.

Deep in their calculations, the high officials and the shippers entrusted with the transportation of building materials considered justifiably that the main responsibility for the pyramid lay with them; and if someone had pointed out to them that at the same time other guilds were also losing sleep over the plans for the pyramid — for example, the architects, who had not yet solved some of the problems, such as the pyramid’s gradient and its orientation with respect to the stars, or the team in charge of interior arrangements, or the team of sculptors — they would certainly have retorted sourly, but those are just girlish tasks, hair-splitting fancy-work! The pyramid is where dust gets under your skin, where heat and death bear down on you at every step. But the architects themselves would have snarled at the shippers in the same way, especially those who pored over their drawings of the galleries, doors, and secret passages, or busied themselves with the mysterious inner chambers, forgetting entirely that at the same time the haulers were covering half of Egypt with dust: a common porter’s job!

Perhaps the very nature of each guild’s task led it to think that it was the main one. That was the case for the architects, for instance, who strove to fix the right orientation for the pyramid, and for whom the local expression “to make night into a new day” had much more than a symbolic meaning. In practice, they did a good part of their work at nighty when they would go to the plateau on which the pyramid was to be built, not without casting rather disdainful glances on the trench-digging team. Although it had been decided irrevocably that in order to avoid all possibility of error the monument would be oriented in relation to a fixed star, a star from the Great Bear (but absolutely not the polestar), they continued to go almost every evening to the site at the hour when the workmen were laying down their tools, Ah, the workers thought, to have business with the stars, that’s what you call keeping your hands clean! Those chaps don’t know what calumny and betrayal are! But just try getting this right (and they stamped the ground with their heels) at the final inspection. You can be just a couple of fingers higher or lower than the level prescribed, and your head’s on the block!

As for risking your life for the slightest error, there was another group that had even more reason to fear it: the team working on the interior arrangements of the pyramid, particularly the secret entrances and exits, the device for hermetically sealing the funeral chamber, and the false entrances intended to mislead grave robbers. Ever since the time of the first pyramids, no one was unaware that the members of this group would not grow long in the tooth. All sorts of pretexts were found for convicting and suppressing them, but the real reason for such measures was well known: to bury the secrets with their inventors.

The mystery surrounding the work done by the men belonging to the magician Moremheb in collaboration with the astrologers was even thicken They dealt with something that no one knew, perhaps not even they, if you asked them point-blank, and, what was more, something that no one could even imagine. Rumor had it that it was to do with numbers that, taken together with the pyramid’s orientation, celestial signs, and other temporal coordinates, could reveal the secret and incommunicable message that the pyramid would contain until the end of time.

The only team that seemed to be working without danger was the one concerned with the little pyramid, the satellite pyramid, for the Pharaoh’s kâ, that is to say, his double. Without a coffin or funeral chamber, it required no secret entrances or exits, so that its construction team, unburdened by mysteries, could work without worry. But things were like that only at the beginning. The satellite team soon discovered that the jealousy it engendered was just as harmful, if not even more dangerous, than the menace that secrets carried with them; and so little by little those workers too became just as grumpy as the others.

It goes without saying that those who wore the gloomiest countenance were the members of the central group led by Hemiunu. Messengers came and went night and day through the great vermilion-painted gates. Those arriving were covered in dust, but those leaving were darker still. Every day something new happened, and a good half of what happened had some connection with the pyramid. Its shape was embroidered on young people’s clothes, old men clipped their beards to pyramid points, and who knows how far things would have gone — had the whores of Luxor not taken them just too far by decorating their underwear with a triangle that suggested, even more than a pyramid, the delta of their pubic hair.

They were arrested one evening and taken to the police station, shouting: “Long live the pyramid! Long live whores!” Meanwhile their pimps, together with hoodlums from the rough quarters, put the commotion to use by ransacking the town center stalls.

Such facts were talked about in bars; in private homes, after dinner, they were fearfully deplored. There was talk of numerous functionaries being sent to the remoter regions. According to some rumors, it was not just people being sent to work in the quarries and basalt mines: undesirables were being removed from the city. Pure and simple deportation, people muttered, but, obviously, no one dared to call a spade a spade.

Conversation then turned again to the quarries in the south of the country, to the latest speech by the Treasury vizier, who had mentioned four times over the words “sacrifices” and “economic constraints,” before coming back to the duration of the works, which would be longer than expected. At least fifteen years… “God, but that’s almost a whole existence! And you mean to say they haven’t yet begun?”

Indeed, the pyramid gave no sign of life. It seemed that the more people talked of it, the further it receded. The time came when people thought that the monument would not be built at all and that everything connected with it was just hot air and empty rumor.

At other times it was as if the pyramid was planted in the ground and no one knew when it would germinate. The torment it caused was so great that people were tempted to think that the earth itself was in pain, that it would not stop moaning, and risked being shattered by some tremor if it did not give birth to the pyramid at its term.