The Seven Wonders

VIII

From Babylon, Antipater and I journeyed overland to Egypt, threading our way through rugged mountain passes and traversing sandy deserts. In my imagination I had assumed this corner of the world to be a trackless, unpopulated wilderness, but in truth it was quite the opposite. Our route, so Antipater informed me, had been laid out hundreds if not thousands of years ago by traders carrying goods between Egypt and Persia, some venturing as far as fabled India and Serica. We encountered many caravans going in both directions, transporting cargoes of ivory, incense, spices, precious stones, fabrics, and other commodities.

The accommodations along the way were well organized. At each stop we hired a new beast to carry us to the next-mostly mules and horses, but occasionally I was forced to ride a spiteful creature called a camel. At day’s end, there was always an inn waiting for us.

At last, at the ancient port of Gaza, we reached the sea, and reentered that part of the world where one may expect to hear Greek spoken, and even a bit of Latin. It was in Gaza that I first heard the alarming news of what was happening in Rome.

While Antipater and I had been off in Babylon, dreadful omens had been witnessed all over Italy. Mountains crashed together like Titans wrestling, sending shock waves that ruptured roads and caused buildings to collapse. The earth itself cracked open and spat flames into the sky. Domesticated animals turned feral; dogs behaved like wolves and even sheep turned vicious and attacked their owners. After so many awful omens, no one was surprised when war at last broke out between Rome and the subordinate cities of her restive Italian confederation. Now the entire peninsula was in tumult. Roman magistrates across Italy had been assassinated. In retaliation, and to quell the revolt, Rome’s armies had besieged and sacked rebellious cities and put entire regions to the torch.

Worried and homesick, I dispatched a letter to my father back in Rome, asking him to reassure me that he was well and to send his reply to a professional receiver of letters in Alexandria, the city that was to be our destination after we sailed up the Nile to see the Great Pyramid.

Antipater seemed to be far less agitated than I was by the news from Italy. Indeed, whenever a shopkeeper or a fellow traveler imparted the latest gossip about the situation in Rome, I thought I saw a fleeting smile on Antipater’s lips. He was a Greek, after all, proud of his heritage and, as I had learned in the course of our journey, suspicious and even disdainful of Roman power. Having now seen with my own eyes so many glorious achievements of Greek civilization, I understood the nostalgia felt by many Greeks for the days before Rome intruded on their world.

From Gaza, we journeyed due east along a flat, featureless stretch of sandy coast, until we came to that region of Egypt called the Delta, where the desert abruptly gives way to a land of lush greenery watered by the mouth of the Nile.

Before the Nile reaches the sea, it spreads out in many channels, like the fingers of a wide-open hand. On maps, this vast, watery region forms a triangular shape not unlike the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet, inverted: Δ. Thus it acquired its name: the Delta.

In the coastal town of Pelusium we booked passage on a boat to take us up the Nile and all the way to Memphis, which lies a few miles south of the apex of the Delta, and from which we would make an excursion to see the fabled pyramids.

The heat was stifling as we sailed upriver on the crowded boat, passing quaint villages and ancient temples. The rank smell of Delta mud filled my nostrils. I spotted crocodiles in the shallows, heard the call of the ibis and the bellow of hippopotami, and felt very far from my father and the war that was raging in Italy.

Long before Romulus founded Rome, even before the heroes of Homer sacked Troy, the civilization of Egypt was already ancient. Some of the monuments we passed on the riverbank were unimaginably old, and they looked it. Weathered granite slabs depicted animal-headed gods in stiff poses alongside images of the Egyptian kings of old, called pharaohs, who wore bizarre headdresses and wielded crooks and flails.

While I gazed at Egypt passing by, Antipater kept his head down and read about it. During our stay with his cousin Bitto in Halicarnassus, Antipater had arranged to have several scrolls of The Histories of Herodotus copied from her library, including the chapters that described Egypt and its people.

Along a quiet stretch of the river, we passed a little boy who stood atop the steep bank. I smiled and waved to him. The boy waved back, then hitched up his long, loose garments and relieved himself in the water below. The stream glittered under the bright sunlight and the boy made a game of aiming it this way and that. He grinned and looked quite proud of himself.

Antipater, poring over a scroll, never looked up.

“According to Herodotus,” he said, “no one has yet determined the source of the Nile. Those who travel as far as possible upriver, a journey of many months, eventually arrive in a region of vast swamps and impassable forests where the people are all sorcerers; they are also extremely short and as black as ebony, and speak a language incomprehensible to outsiders. Farther than that, no traveler has ever ventured and come back alive. Nor, according to Herodotus, can anyone adequately explain why the Nile, unlike all other rivers, is at it lowest in the spring, then floods at the time of the summer solstice.”

“The solstice is still a few days away,” I said. “I suppose that means we’re seeing the Nile at its lowest. Will it actually rise high enough to flood the banks on either side?”

Antipater looked up, shading his eyes from the bright sunlight. “Hopefully, Gordianus, we shall witness this famous phenomenon for ourselves. The river is said to rise so dramatically that the banks are flooded for hundreds of miles, irrigating a vast amount of cultivated land and creating the most fertile region on earth. The inundation should begin any day now.”

He returned his attention to the scroll in his lap. “Herodotus goes on to say that, just as the Nile is different from all other rivers, so the people who live along its banks follow customs contrary to other people. The women go to market and carry on trade, while the men stay at home and weave. There are no priestesses, only priests, and while holy men in other lands grow beards and wear their hair long, in Egypt they shave their heads-and every other part of their bodies, as well. The Egyptians write from right to left, not left to right. They knead dough with their feet and clay with their hands. They invented the peculiar practice called circumcision. And listen to this: the women make water standing up, while the men do so crouching down!”

I frowned. “I have to wonder if that’s completely accurate. If you’d bothered to look up, you’d have seen that little boy-”

“I assure you, Gordianus, no historian was ever more scrupulous than Herodotus. He traveled extensively in Egypt, saw everything, and consulted all the best authorities.”

“Yes, but didn’t Herodotus write that book over three hundred years ago? The information might be a bit out of date.”

“My dear boy, there’s a reason Herodotus remains our best authority on all matters pertaining to Egypt. No other writer can match his insight and attention to detail. Now, where was I? Ah, yes-on the subject of worship, Herodotus tells us that the Egyptians are the most religious of all people. They can trace their practices back many thousands of years. Since the Egyptians were the first race of mortals, they built the first temples. It was from Egypt that we Greeks received our first knowledge of the gods, though we know them by other names. Thus the Egyptian god Ammon is our Zeus, their Osiris is our Dionysus, Anubis is the same as Hermes, and so on.”

I frowned. “Isn’t Anubis the one who has the head of dog? Whereas Hermes-or Mercury, as we Romans call him-is a handsome youth; at least that’s how the statues in Greek and Roman temples always show him. How can Anubis and Hermes be the same god?”

“You touch upon a problem that has puzzled even the wisest philosophers. What are we to make of the fact that the Egyptians worship animals, and give animal characteristics to certain gods in their statues and pictures? Some believe their use of such imagery is purely symbolic. Thus, Anubis doesn’t really have a dog’s head, but is only shown that way because he acts as the loyal guardian of the other gods-their watchdog, so to speak.”

“I shouldn’t think any god would care to have himself depicted as a dog, no matter what the reasoning.”

“Ah, but that’s because you think like a Roman, Gordianus. You look for plain facts and practical solutions. And I think like a Greek; I delight in beauty and paradox. But the Egyptians have their own way of thinking, which often seems quite strange to us, even fantastical. Perhaps it’s because they care so little for this world, and so much for the next. They are obsessed with death. Their religion prescribes intricate rituals to safely guide their spirit, or ka, to the Land of the Dead. To achieve this, they must keep their mortal bodies intact. Whereas we cremate our dead, the Egyptians go to great lengths to preserve the corpses of their loved ones and to make them appear as lifelike as possible. The process is called mummification. Those who can afford to do so keep the mummies of their dead relatives in special rooms where they go to visit them, offer them food, and even dine with them, as if they were still alive.”

“You must be joking!” I said.

“Romans may wish to rule this world, Gordianus, but Egyptians are far more concerned with the Land of the Dead. We must keep that in mind when at last we see the largest tomb ever built, the Great Pyramid.”

The Great Pyramid! With anticipation we drew near the final destination of our journey. I had seen all six of the other Wonders now, and would be able to judge for myself whether the Great Pyramid was truly the most marvelous of them all, as many asserted. Could it possibly surpass the soaring height of the Mausoleum, or the splendor of the Temple of Artemis, or the ambition of the fallen Colossus? Everyone on earth had heard of the pyramids, even barbarians in the farthest reaches of Gaul and Scythia. Now I was about to see them.

* * *

The branch of the river on which we were traveling joined with others, growing wider and wider, until all the many branches converged into their common source, the great Nile itself. Suddenly-ahead of us and to the right, shimmering in the distance-I caught my first glimpse of the Great Pyramid. Beside me, Antipater gasped. He, too, was seeing the monument for the first time.

“Am I seeing double?” I whispered, for it seemed to me that I could see not one but two enormous pyramids.

“I think not,” said Antipater. “According to Herodotus, there are three major pyramids on the plateau west of the river. One of them is relatively small, but the other is very nearly as large as the Great Pyramid.”

“They must be enormous!” I said.

Some of the passengers on the boat joined us in gaping at the monuments, but others gave them only a glance. The boatmen, for whom the pyramids were an everyday sight, paid them no attention, even as they loomed ever larger to our right.

Then we passed the plateau and sailed on, and the pyramids receded behind us. A little later we arrived at the ancient capital of Egypt, Memphis.

The cities of Greece had been foreign to me, but also familiar, for Romans and Greeks worship the same gods and construct the same types of buildings. Babylon had been more exotic, but it was a city in decline, long past its glory. But Memphis-ah, Memphis! This city was truly like another world.

At first, nothing seemed familiar and I could hardly take in the strangeness of it all-the way the people dressed (I had no names for such garments), the things they ate (I recognized nothing, but the aromas were enticing), the tunes played in the public squares (which sounded like noise to me), the statues of the gods (animal heads, bizarre postures), the colorful picture-writing on the temple walls (beautiful but indecipherable). To be sure, Greek was spoken-by some. The common people spoke another, older language, the likes of which I had never heard before.

We found accommodations at an inn not far from the river, and were given a room on the upper floor. Antipater complained about the steep steps, but when I opened the shutters and raised my eyes above the nearby rooftops, I saw the Great Pyramid looming in the distance

Antipater joined me in gazing at the sight. “Wonderful!” he whispered.

“Shall we set out to see it at once?” I said eagerly.

“No, no!” said Antipater. “The day is far too hot, and the hour too late, and I need my rest.”

“Rest? All you did today was lie in the boat and read Herodotus!”

“How lucky you are to be nineteen, Gordianus. Someday you’ll understand how an old man can grow tired simply by drawing a day’s ration of breath. Leave the shutters open, but draw the curtains. It’s time for my nap.”

* * *

We did not go to see the pyramids that day, or the next, or even the next. Antipater insisted that we acquaint ourselves with the city of Memphis first. To be sure, it was a place of marvels, decorated with shrines, temples, ceremonial gates, colossal stone statues, and towering obelisks the likes of which I had never seen before, all constructed on an enormous scale. The strange architecture of the city exuded an air of mystery and great antiquity. It was easy to believe that mortals had been living and building in this spot since the beginning of time.

Memphis was no longer the capital of Egypt-the heir of Alexander the Great, Ptolemy, had chosen to move the royal administration to Alexandria-but its monuments were well kept, and the city was bustling and vibrant. I had thought that in Egypt we would arrive at the edge of the world, but Memphis seemed to be its center, the crossroads of all the earth. Among the people I saw every shade of hair color and complexion; I had never known that mortals came in so many hues. The city seemed at once impossibly ancient and incredibly alive.

We dined on tilapia and exotic fruits in the palm grove next to the Temple of Selene (who is also Aphrodite, according to Antipater). We observed the sacred Apis bull dozing in its luxurious enclosure; it seemed quite strange to me that a mere animal should be treated as a god. But the grandest of the temples was that of Serapis, the god most favored by the Ptolemy dynasty. To reach it, we traversed a broad ceremonial walkway lined on both sides by life-sized statues of a creature with the head of a man and the body of a lion. These, Antipater explained, were sphinxes.

“Like the sphinx that guarded the Greek city of Thebes and posed the famous riddle to Oedipus?” I asked. Antipater himself had taught me the story.

“I suppose. But if Oedipus truly met a sphinx, the creature must have come from Egypt. No Greek I know has ever seen a sphinx, but their images are all over Egypt. These statues look as if they’ve been here forever.”

The long walkway was exposed to a strong wind from the west, and drifts of sand, some quite high, had gathered around the bases of the statues. One of the sphinxes was buried up to its chin, so that sand covered the lower portion of its nemes headdress and its long, narrow beard. I paused to look at the sphinx’s enigmatic face, and recalled the famous riddle: What creature in the morning goes on four legs, at midday on two, and in the evening on three? Had Oedipus given the wrong reply, the sphinx would have strangled him, but he deduced the answer: Man, who first crawls on all fours, then strides on two feet, then walks with a cane.

At every turn we were accosted by men who offered to serve as guides to the local sites. Antipater eventually picked the one who struck him as the least unscrupulous, a fellow named Kemsa, and charged the man with arranging our transportation to the pyramids. Kemsa, who spoke passable Greek, advised us to wait a while longer, for soon a three-day festival to celebrate the summer solstice would claim the attention of all the locals and tourists in the city; during those three days we might be able to visit the pyramids in peace, without hordes of sightseers around us. The guide also insisted that we buy long white robes and linen headdresses, not unlike those worn by the sphinxes, saying that such garments would protect us from the desert heat.

At last, early on the appointed morning, dressed in our desert apparel, we set out to see the pyramids.

Kemsa supplied a camel for each of us-to my dismay, for I had yet to meet a camel that did not dislike me on sight. This beast was no different. Almost at once, he tried to bite me. The guide chastised the camel by striking him soundly on his enormous nose. After that the creature seemed content to turn his long neck, give me a baleful stare, and spit at me from time to time. Despite his sullen nature, the camel was an obedient mount, and we made steady progress.

First we took a road that followed the west bank of the Nile downriver for a few miles, then we took a sharp turn to the left and ascended to a dry, sandy plateau. We hardly needed the guide to show us the way, for at every moment the Great Pyramid was visible, looming ever larger as we drew closer. By the early light of morning it appeared pale pink in color, and as flat as if it were a drawing cut from a piece of papyrus; but as the sun rose, and the heat increased, the pyramid appeared white and began to shimmer. At times it seemed to levitate above the earth, and at other times it quivered so much that I thought it might miraculously disappear before our eyes, but the guide explained that these uncanny visions were merely illusions caused by the waves of heat rising from the sand.

Larger the pyramid loomed, and then larger still. I glanced at Antipater and saw that he was as astonished as I was. It was one thing to be told that the Great Pyramid is the largest object ever made by men, and another to actually see it. My imagination had been inadequate to prepare me for the awesome scale of what I beheld.

The plateau was crisscrossed with ceremonial roadways and dotted with temples, altars, and shrines, but because of the festival in Memphis there was not a person in sight. The solitude was uncanny. A part of me was glad we had waited for this day, to have the pyramids to ourselves. But I also felt slightly unsettled, that we three should be the only specks of humanity on that vast, sandy plain. My sense of perspective was undone; in vain I looked for some way to judge size and distance.

Only once was the Great Pyramid blocked from view, as we passed close by a very large sand dune that seemed out of place amid the surrounding temples. Once we passed the dune, the Great Pyramid reappeared and filled my whole range of vision, not only from side to side but up and down, for the structure was nearly as tall as it was wide. From a distance, the pyramid had appeared to be made from a single block of stone, so smooth was the surface. Closer up, I could see that it was actually faced with many different stones expertly fitted together, and that these stones were of many different colors and textures-pale violet and glossy blue, sea green and apple gold, some as opaque as marble and others as translucent as sunlight captured in a wave. At a distance all these various stones merged together and appeared scintillating white. I had expected the Great Pyramid to be immense, but I had not expected it to be so beautiful and so finely made, as fascinating to behold close up as it was at a distance.

Around the bottom of the pyramid, great drifts of sand had accumulated. We remained on our camels and began slowly to circle the base. The eastern face of the pyramid was dazzling in the full morning sunlight, the southern face ablaze with slanting rays, and the western face entirely in shadow. Looking up, I watched the sun surmount the tip of the pyramid, where it seemed to hover like a ball of flame on its point.

“Who built such a marvel?” I exclaimed. “And how was it done?”

Kemsa opened his mouth to answer, but Antipater was quicker. “According to Herodotus, the pharaoh Kheops employed a hundred thousand men just to build the roadway to transport the stones from Arabia. That labor alone took ten years; another twenty years were needed to build the pyramid itself. First the structure was built up in tiers, like steps, and then the tiers were fitted from the top down with enormous finishing stones lifted into place by a series of ingenious levers, then the whole surface was polished to a bright luster.”

“Is Kheops buried inside?” I asked.

“Herodotus states that Kheops was laid to rest in a chamber deep beneath the pyramid, a sort of subterranean island surrounded by water channeled underground from the Nile.”

As I tried to visualize such a bizarre funeral chamber, Kemsa loudly cleared his throat. “Actually,” he said, “the stones of the pyramids were not raised into place by cranes or levers, but pulled up huge ramps of earth built especially for the purpose.”

“Nonsense!” said Antipater. “Such ramps would have needed to be enormous, larger in volume than the pyramid itself. If such massive earthworks were ever constructed, why do we see no remains of them?” It was true that there were no huge mounds of earth anywhere on the plateau. There were sand dunes here and there, including the large one amid the temples we had passed on our way, but even that mound was minuscule in comparison to the Great Pyramid.

“Those who built up the ramps disposed of them when they were done,” said the guide. “The earth was carted to the Nile, which carried it downstream to create the many islands of the Delta. And since you ask if Kheops is buried inside, young Roman, I will tell you that he is not. The Pharaoh so abused his people when he forced them to build this enormous tomb, that when he died they refused to put him in the pyramid and buried him elsewhere. The pyramid is empty.”

“How could you possibly know such a thing?” said Antipater.

The guide smiled. “Did I not tell you that I, Kemsa, am the best of all the guides? I know what others do not. Follow me.”

Kemsa led us back to the south face of the pyramid, where he gave a sign that brought all three camels to a halt. I would have sat there indefinitely, gaping at the pyramid, had my camel not folded its knees and pitched forward, making clear its desire to be rid of me. As the creature turned its head and prepared to spit, I hurriedly dismounted. Antipater did likewise, though with more dignity.

“Shall we go inside?” said our guide.

“Is it possible to do so?” Antipater’s eyes grew wide.

“With Kemsa as your guide, all things are possible. Follow me!”

The face of the pyramid must once have been as smooth as glass-impossible to climb-but time had worn and pitted the stones, making it possible to clamber up by staying low and gaining purchase amid tiny cracks and fissures. I worried that Antipater would find the effort too strenuous, but, as he had done so often before on our journey, my old tutor displayed amazing dexterity and stamina for a man of his years. Antipater would complain of having to climb a few stairs to our room at the inn, but nothing could stop him from scrambling up the pyramid!

Perhaps two-thirds of the way to the top, Kemsa showed us a spot where a flat slab of stone could be lifted on a pivot. The hidden doorway was so expertly fitted that it was practically invisible. Antipater and I would never have found it on our own.

“Astonishing! Herodotus makes no mention of an entrance to the Great Pyramid,” said Antipater.

“No?” said Kemsa. “That’s because this fellow Herodotus did not have me for a guide. Watch your head!”

Kemsa held the door up while Antipater and I stepped inside. Using his shoulder to keep the door open, Kemsa produced three torches, one for each of us, and used a flint to ignite them. Once the torches were lit, he allowed the door to fall shut.

The narrow, steeply sloping shaft before us plunged into utter darkness. I noted with some relief that there was a rope that could be used to steady one’s descent.

“Do you wish to go on?” said Kemsa.

Antipater looked pale in the firelight. He swallowed hard. “I haven’t come this far to forego an opportunity that even Herodotus missed.” He held his torch in one hand and gripped the rope with the other. “Lead on!”

The guide went first. Antipater and I followed.

“But if there’s no tomb at the bottom, what is there to see?” I said. Even though I spoke quietly, my voice echoed up and down the shaft.

“To know that, you must see for yourself,” said Kemsa.

I suddenly felt uneasy. What if the pyramid was a tomb after all-not of kings but of common fools like myself, led to their death and waylaid by Egyptian bandits posing as guides? Would there be a chamber full of skeletons at the bottom, with my own soon to be added? What an irony, if the Great Pyramid should turn out to be the resting place not of Kheops, but of Gordianus of Rome!

I told myself there was nothing to fear; it was only the darkness, the weird echoes, and the cramped space of the descending shaft that unnerved me. Clutching our torches and the rope, we continued our slow, steady descent.

At last the surface became level. After passing through a short hallway we entered a chamber of considerable size. By the flickering torchlight I discerned a flat roof perhaps twenty feet above our heads. The walls appeared to be made of solid granite, finely fitted and polished but without any sort of decoration. The chamber was empty except for a massive sarcophagus hewn from a solid block of granite. The sarcophagus had no lid. Nor was there any decoration or carving on its surface.

“Can this be the sarcophagus of the great Kheops?” I whispered. Within such a fabulous monument, I had expected to see a burial chamber of great splendor.

“This is a burial chamber, yes, and that is a sarcophagus,” said Kemsa. “But as I told you, there is no Kheops. Go and see for yourself.”

Antipater and I stepped up to the sarcophagus and peered inside. My old tutor gasped. So did I.

Kemsa, who seemed to know everything about the pyramid, was wrong about the sarcophagus. It was not empty; there was a body in it. For a pharaoh, he was very plainly dressed, not in royal garments but in a long white robe and a simple nemes headdress not unlike the clothes I was wearing. The hands crossed over his chest and his clean-shaven face were those of a man of middle age, darkened by the sun and somewhat wrinkled, but for a man who had been dead for hundreds if not thousands of years, he was remarkably well preserved. I could even see a bit of stubble across his jaw. Antipater had told me that Egyptian mummification was a sophisticated process, but this specimen was extraordinary.

Seeing our stunned reaction, Kemsa raised an eyebrow and walked over to join us. When he saw the body in the sarcophagus, he stopped short. By the flickering light I saw his face turn ashen. His eyes grew wide and his jaw hung open. His amazement appeared so extreme, I thought he must be playacting-until he emitted a shriek and tumbled backward in a faint, dropping his torch on the floor.

While Antipater tended to him, I returned my attention to the body in the sarcophagus, and I saw what had made Kemsa shriek.

The mummy had opened its eyes.

The mummy blinked. Then, staring upward into the darkness, the mummy spoke in a hoarse whisper. “Am I still alive? Or am I dead? Where am I? The priest of Isis promised that a savior would come to me!”

My heart pounded in my chest. My head grew light. For a moment I feared that I, too, would faint. But as Antipater had pointed out, I was a Roman. Disconcerted I might be, even discombobulated, but at some level I knew there must be an explanation for what was happening. For one thing, the man in the sarcophagus spoke flawless Greek, with the local accent I had heard in Memphis. He was not Kheops.

Nor was he a mummy, I thought-then felt a quiver of doubt as he reached up and gripped my arm with a hand as cold as ice.

He stared up at me and hissed. “What is this place? And who are you?”

I swallowed hard. “My name is Gordianus. I’m a visitor from Rome. We’re inside the Great Pyramid.”

He released me, then covered his face and began to sob.

“And who are you?” I said, no longer fearful, for the man in the sarcophagus now appeared more pitiful than frightening. “And what are you doing here? And how long have you been lying in the dark?”

The man ceased to sob and gradually composed himself. He sat upright in the sarcophagus. His movements were stiff. His eyes were dull and his face was drained of all expression. He appeared so lifeless that for a moment, by the uncertain light, I wondered if he might be a mummy after all.

“If you would know the story of Djal, son of Rhutin,” he said, “help me out of this accursed stone box. Lead me out of the darkness and back to the sunlight, and I will tell you everything, young visitor from Rome.”

* * *

When we emerged from the shaft, the glare of the noonday sun was blinding. Kemsa, embarrassed by his fainting spell, cast baleful glances at the stranger, who seemed to be more dazzled by the sunlight than the rest of us. As I was to learn later, the man had been inside the pyramid, in total darkness, for no less than two days.

Kemsa extinguished the torches and made ready to descend, but Antipater held me back. “We find ourselves not far from the summit of the pyramid, Gordianus. Shall we ascend to the very top?”

“But the man from the sarcophagus-”

“What do we care about him?” said Antipater in a low voice. “Yes, he gave us all a fright, but so what? If some local lunatic wishes to spend his time lying in the empty sarcophagus of Kheops, I don’t see how that’s our concern. We find ourselves at the Great Pyramid at midday, Gordianus, with a chance to stand on the very summit at the hour when the pyramid casts no shadow.” He raised his voice and spoke to the guide. “Kemsa, help this fellow down, and give him some water. Gordianus and I will finish the ascent.”

Looking displeased, Kemsa nonetheless did as he was told, and the two men began to descend.

“But are you up for this, Teacher?” I said. “You’ve exerted yourself so much already today, and the sun is so hot-”

Even as I stated my doubts, Antipater started climbing.

Grumbling at Antipater’s willful nature, I followed. When I reached the top, panting for breath, my efforts were rewarded beyond my wildest expectations.

The tip of the Great Pyramid must originally have been capped in gold or some other precious metal, to judge by the remnants of pins and clamps that had fixed the metal to the rough-hewn stone beneath. That splendor was no longer to be seen-someone had looted the metal long ago-but the view was spectacular, and like no other on earth. As I slowly turned from north to south, I saw the vast green Delta, the sprawling city of Memphis, the sinuous Nile vanishing into the distance, and the rugged mountains of Arabia beyond. Below us, the various temples and shrines on the plateau looked like models built by an architect; among them I noticed again the large, incongruous sand dune we had passed on our way. To the southeast, I gazed upon the Great Pyramid’s rival; its peak was clearly below our level, but it was still enormous. Turning to the west, I beheld the fearful beauty of the Libyan wilderness, a trackless waste of jagged mountains and gorges.

I had thought no view could match those from the Mausoleum in Halicarnassus or the ziggurat in Babylon, but to stand atop the Great Pyramid is truly to look down upon the world as the gods must see it.

The desert wind whistled in my ears and dried the sweat from my brow. For a long time Antipater and I crouched in that timeless spot, taking in the view. Eventually, gazing down at the foot of the pyramid, I saw our guide and the stranger from the sarcophagus, sitting in the shade cast by the camels and sipping water from one of the skins the guide had brought.

“I’m thirsty,” I said.

The climb down was trickier than the climb up. We proceeded with caution, taking our time. At any moment, I feared that Antipater might lose his grip and take a tumble-but it was I who made a careless move near the bottom and found myself sliding out of control down the last fifty feet, landing in a pile of sand at the bottom, unharmed but quite embarrassed.

Kemsa allowed me only sips of water, saying it was dangerous to swallow too much, too quickly. To take our midday meal, he suggested we retire to a nearby temple. With the stranger mounted behind Kemsa, we rode our camels to the smallest of the three pyramids. Beyond it, we came upon three much smaller tombs, also pyramidal in shape but built in steps, which I had not noticed before.

“How many pyramids are there in Egypt?” I said.

“There are many, many pyramids,” said Kemsa, “hundreds of them, not only here on the plateau, but all along the Nile. Most are very small in comparison to the Great Pyramid.”

Before one of these minor pyramids stood a small but beautiful temple dedicated to Isis. Brightly painted columns shaped like stalks of papyrus flanked the entrance. Normally there would have been worshippers in attendance, Kemsa explained, but on this day everyone was at the festival in Memphis. Sitting on the steps of the temple in the shade, we took our meal of flatbread, wild celery, and pomegranates.

Reluctantly, the man from the pyramid accepted a bit of our food.

Antipater paid him little attention, but I was curious. “You say your name is Djal?”

The man nodded.

“How long were you in there?”

Djal frowned. “I have no way of knowing. I entered on the seventh day of the month of Payni-”

“But that’s two days ago!” said Kemsa, giving him a dubious look.

“You’ve been in there all this time?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Did you have any light?”

“I had a torch when I entered. But it soon burned out.”

“Did you have food or water?”

“None.”

“What did you do?”

“I lay in the sarcophagus, as the priest-a priest from this very temple-instructed me to do, and I awaited the coming of the one who would save me. I thought perhaps Anubis would appear with a message from the gods, or one of my ancestors from the Land of the Dead-maybe even the ka of my poor father! But no one came. I lay in the darkness, waiting, sometimes awake, sometimes asleep, until finally I could not tell if I woke or slept, or even if I was still alive. And no one came. Oh, what a fool I’ve been!” He began to weep again-or rather, to go through the motions of weeping, for I think there was not enough moisture in him to produce tears.

“You promised to tell us your story,” I said quietly, thinking to calm him.

He nibbled a bit of bread and took a few sips of water. “Very well. I am Djal, son of Rhutin. I have lived in Memphis all my life, as did my ancestors before me, going back many generations, even to the days before the Ptolemies ruled Egypt. The prosperity of my family has varied from generation to generation, but always each son has taken care to see that his father was given the proper rites when he died, and was mummified according to the standards of the first class, never the second or third.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

Our guide cleared his throat. “Allow me to explain. There are three categories of mummification. First class is very expensive, second class much less so, and third class is very cheap, only for the poor. When a man dies, the embalmers present the family with a price list of every item required for the funeral, and the family decides what it can afford.”

“And this includes mummification?”

“Yes.” Kemsa shrugged. “This is something all Egyptians know.”

“But I don’t. Tell me more.”

“A great many skilled artisans are involved in the process. One man examines the body and inscribes marks to indicate where the cuts should be made. Another man uses an obsidian blade to make the incisions. Then the embalmers reach inside and remove all the internal organs. Those that are vital, like the heart and kidneys, they wash in palm wine and spices and place in sealed jars. Those organs that are good for nothing, they dispose of. The brain is the hardest thing to get rid of; the embalmers must insert slender iron hooks and tweezers into the nostrils to pull out all the useless bits of gray matter. The cavities in the body are then filled with myrrh and cinnamon and frankincense and other spices known only to the embalmers, and then the incisions are sewn up and the body is packed in saltpeter. After seventy days, the body is washed and wrapped in long strips of the finest linen, and the mummification is complete. This is the first-class method, which everyone desires, and the result is a body flawlessly preserved, with the hair and eyebrows and even the eyelashes perfectly intact, so that the dead man appears merely to sleep.”

“Remarkable!” I said. “And the second method of mummification?”

Kemsa raised an eyebrow. “Those who cannot afford the best must settle for the middle way. No cuts are made and no organs are removed. Instead, the embalmers fill large syringes with cedar oil and inject the fluid through the dead man’s anus and mouth and then plug him up, so the fluid cannot run out. The body is packed in saltpeter for the prescribed number of days, then the plugs are removed and the fluid is drained out of him from both ends. The cedar oil dissolves the internal organs, you see, and the saltpeter desiccates the flesh, so that what remains is mostly hide and bones, but such a mummy is protected from corruption and bears some resemblance to the original, living body. Still, such a mummy is not suitable for display, even to family members. Would you care for more pomegranates?”

I shook my head, feeling slightly queasy. “And the third way?”

Kemsa shuddered. “Let us not speak of it. As I said, it is only for the desperately poor who can afford no better, and I do not think you would like me to describe the results.”

I nodded. “If a body is mummified in the best way, what then becomes of it?”

“The mummy is returned to the family, and placed inside a wooden case inscribed with the formulas needed to reach the Land of the Dead. Some cases are very ornate, but others are less so, depending on how much the family spends-”

“For our fathers, the sons of my family never purchased less than the very best of mummy cases!” cried Djal suddenly. Then he lowered his face and was silent again.

“So the mummy is put in a case,” I said, “and then what becomes of it?”

“After the funeral rites,” said Kemsa, “the mummy is taken to the family vault and leaned against the wall, upright in his case, so that when his descendants visit they may gaze upon him face to face. If the family is too poor to purchase a vault in a consecrated area, they may add a room to their house, and keep their ancestors there. Some people actually prefer such a room to a cemetery vault, for it makes it convenient for them to converse with their ancestors every day.”

I considered this. “If a man’s spirit moves on to the Land of the Dead, of what use is his mummy?”

Kemsa looked at me as if I were a simpleton. Djal wailed and buried his face in his hands.

Kemsa explained. “After death, the ka is freed from the body and seeks to find its way through many perils to the Land of the Dead. But for the ka to survive, it is essential that the earthly body be preserved from decay and supplied with all the everyday needs of life. The ka is not immortal; if the mummy perishes, the ka, too, will perish. That is why the mummy must be preserved and protected. That is why a man’s descendant must give regular offerings to his mummy-so that his ka may continue to thrive in the next world.”

“Oh, what have I done!” cried Djal, throwing back his head and beating his fists against his chest. “What have I done?”

“What has he done?” I whispered to our guide.

Kemsa drew back his shoulder and looked sidelong at the wretched man. “I think I know. You bartered the mummy of an ancestor, didn’t you?”

Djal shuddered and stiffened. “Yes! For a handful of silver, I gave away the mummy of my father!”

“What is he talking about?” I said.

“This man is the lowest of the low,” declared Kemsa. “He has used the mummy of his father as collateral.”

Antipater’s eyebrows shot up. “Herodotus writes of such a practice. If a man finds himself in dire straits, he may use the mummy of a family member to obtain a loan. So this practice still exists?”

“Only among those who have no respect for the dead,” declared Kemsa, who spat on the ground.

“I was desperate,” whispered Djal. “The floods came late two years in a row; twice my crops were ruined. All I had left I invested in a caravan to bring incense from Arabia. Then my wife and little daughter both fell ill. I needed money to pay the physicians. And so-”

“You gave up the mummy of your father in return for a loan?” I said.

Djal nodded. “There is a man in Memphis named Mhotep who specializes in such loans. A greedy, wicked man-”

“No man is more wicked than he who abandons the mummy of his father!” declared Kemsa.

Djal raised his chin defiantly. “I had every expectation that I would be able to repay the loan. But then the caravan was lost in a sandstorm, and with it the last of my fortune. All the money Mhotep lent me I had already spent, on physicians. My daughter recovered, but my wife is still ill. The repayment of the loan will fall due at the commencement of the annual inundation, which will happen any day now, and I have nothing to give to Mhotep.”

“Sell your house,” said Kemsa.

“And put my wife on the street? She would surely die.”

“You first duty is to your father. I’ve heard of this Mhotep. Do you know how he treats the mummies he collects as collateral? As long as there is a chance of repayment, he keeps them in a sealed room, crowded together and starved of offerings but safe from the elements. But if a debtor defaults, the mummy is never seen again. They say Mhotep dumps them in a ravine in the Libyan mountains, where insects and lizards and jackals feast on the remains, and whatever is left is turned to dust by the sun, then scattered by the wind-”

“Stop!” Djal clutched his face and shuddered.

“Tell them what happens to a man who gives up a mummy for a loan and never redeems it,” said Kemsa. “You cannot speak? Then I will tell them. If this wretched fellow should die without recovering the mummy of his father, the law forbids that he should be mummified, even by the standards of the third class. Nor can he be given funeral rites. His body will rot. His ka will perish forever.”

“Oh, what have I done?” cried Djal. “What a fool I am!”

“But you spoke of someone coming to save you,” I said. “That was why you were in the pyramid, wasn’t it?”

“When I saw the hopelessness of my situation, I went to the priesthoods of all the temples in Memphis, begging for their help. Only the priests of Isis showed any interest in my plight. They disapprove of men like Mhotep and would drive them from the city if they could. They called upon Mhotep and appealed to him to be merciful. At first he refused, but the priests were persistent, and at last Mhotep told them: ‘Let this man Djal answer the second riddle of the sphinx, and I will return the mummy to him!’ He said it with a smirk, of course, because no one yet has been able to answer the riddle.”

“A second riddle of the sphinx?” I said. “Just the other day, seeing the sphinxes outside the Temple of Serapis, Antipater and I recalled the famous riddle that was posed to Oedipus. But I’ve never heard of a second riddle.”

“Nor have I,” said Antipater.

“No?” said Kemsa. “Everyone in Memphis knows it. Mothers tease their children with it, for no one can solve it. It goes like this: I am seen by all who pass, but no one sees me. I posed a riddle that everyone knows, but no one knows me. I look toward the Nile, but I turn my back upon the pyramids.”

Antipater snorted. “Like most riddles, I suppose there’s an obvious solution, but it sounds like nonsense. How could a thing be seen by everyone, yet be invisible?”

“You were unable to solve it?” I said.

“How could I possibly do what no one else has been able to do?” said Djal. “The riddle mentions the pyramids, so finally, in desperation, I came here, to the Temple of Isis that stands in the shadow of the pyramids. I prostrated myself in the sanctuary and prayed to the goddess to show me the answer. One of the priests overheard me. I explained my situation. He prayed with me, and told me that Isis had shown him a solution. I was to enter the Great Pyramid, lie in the empty sarcophagus I would find inside, and await the coming of the one who would show me the answer to the riddle. It seemed a mad thing to do, but what choice did I have? As night fell, when no one was watching, the priest showed me the entrance to the pyramid, and lit a torch to light my way. I descended the passage alone. I found the sarcophagus. I lay inside it, like a dead man. When the torch burned out, I was in darkness. But I trusted Isis, and prayed incessantly, and awaited the coming of the one with the answer. But alas, no divine visitor ever came! Only … you.”

Djal cocked his head and gave me a strange look. I thought nothing of it, until I saw that Antipater and Kemsa were also looking at me in a curious way. And so, I suddenly realized, was a tall, imposing figure who suddenly loomed behind us in the doorway of the temple.

The newcomer was dressed in a long linen gown with splendid embroidery. The garment fitted tightly across his chest but below his midsection it hung in loose pleats to his feet. His head was completely shaved. His staring eyes were outlined with kohl.

“Priest of Isis!” cried Djal, prostrating himself on the steps. “I did as you commanded me, but Isis never came. Nor did Anubis. Nor did any god or messenger, only this young man-a Roman who calls himself Gordianus.”

The priest continued to stare at me. “How curious, that Isis should have sent a mortal to do her bidding-and a Roman, at that!”

I cleared my throat. “No one sent me. Zoticus and I are travelers. We came to Egypt to see the Great Pyramid, because it’s one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It was only by chance that we came on this day, and that we found a guide who knows how to enter the pyramid, and that this poor fellow happened to be inside.”

“Only by chance, you say?” The priest pursed his lips. “What sort of man are you, Roman?”

“A man who solves riddles!” declared Antipater, rising to his feet. He gazed at me as if he were seeing me for the first time.

I shrugged, feeling thoroughly disconcerted by the way they all stared at me. “To be sure, on our journey, I have had occasion to use my powers of deduction-”

“On occasion?” said Antipater. “You do so invariably, I would say. Think about it, Gordianus. First in Ephesus, when that girl was shut up in the cave, and then in Halicarnassus, when the widows-”

“There’s no need to recite our whole itinerary!” I snapped.

“But don’t you see, Gordianus? You are a solver of riddles-like your father. I’ve seen you do it time and again. It would seem that you possess a special ability, a power, that others do not. Such gifts come from the gods. And here we find ourselves at the consummation of our journey, at the first and greatest of the Wonders, and what should appear but a riddle-awaiting you to solve it.”

“But Teacher, I don’t know the answer. I heard the riddle just now, and I have no idea what it means.”

“Are you sure? Think, Gordianus!”

I mumbled to myself, reciting the bits I could recall. “Seen by all who pass … no one sees me … a riddle that everyone knows, but no one knows me … I sit among the pyramids…” I shook my head. “It means nothing to me.”

“But you are the one sent by Isis,” said the priest. “Come, let us pray to her, at once!”

We followed the priest inside. The walls of the sanctuary were covered with hieroglyphics recounting the story of Isis, the great Egyptian goddess of magic and fertility, sister-wife of Osiris and mother of Horus. The images dazzled me, though at the time I knew little of her story-how she gathered the scattered remains of Osiris after he was slain by the evil Set and oversaw the miracle of his rebirth.

Dominating the sanctuary was a statue of the goddess. On her head she wore a crown made of two curving horns that held between them a golden solar disk. Between her breasts, suspended from a necklace, was the sacred object called the Isis Knot, shaped like an ankh but with the arms turned down; as I would later learn, it was a symbol of her monthly flow, which in some divine way was connected with the annual inundation of the Nile. One hand was raised to touch one breast; the other held a breast-shaped vessel for the collection of her sacred milk. Her broad face was beautiful and serene, radiating wisdom.

“The goddess will tell me what must be done,” declared the priest. “Then you will do as Isis prescribes, and the answer to the riddle will come to you. I am sure of it.” He turned to the statue and raised his arms. “O Isis, universal mother, mistress of the elements, primordial child of time, sovereign of all things divine, queen of the living, queen of the dead, queen of the immortals, singular and utmost manifestation of all gods and goddesses, known by many names in many places, we call upon you!”

I shivered and felt slightly faint. What sort of test or labor might Isis demand of me?

I had a feeling I was not going to like the answer.

* * *

“Gordianus of Rome, you fool!” I whispered. “How did you ever get yourself into such a predicament?”

There was no one but myself to hear the words. Lit by the last flickering light of my torch, the granite walls surrounding me made no answer.

As the sun had begun to set behind the Libyan mountains, I had climbed once again to the hidden doorway of the Great Pyramid, accompanied only by the priest of Isis. Antipater, Djal, and Kemsa watched from below as the priest lifted the stone panel and lit a torch for me. Then, holding the torch in one hand and clutching the rope in the other, for the second time that day I descended into the heart of the pyramid. Above me, the priest let the panel fall shut.

Alone, I reached the burial chamber.

For as long as the torch burned strongly, I simply stood there, staring at the sarcophagus. Then the torch began to sputter, and I thought to myself: if I am to lie in the empty sarcophagus of Kheops, as Isis prescribed, now is the time to do it. Once the torch went out, I would surely become disoriented and lose all sense of direction. I might also lose my nerve completely, and go scrambling back up the narrow passage, desperate to escape from the bowels of the pyramid.

Isis had directed Djal to seek a solution to his problem by lying in the sarcophagus. According to her priest, she had directed me to do the same thing, promising that an answer to the riddle would come to me. It seemed to me that this Egyptian goddess was singularly lacking in imagination, to prescribe the same ordeal to two suppliants in a row.

When the priest made this announcement, I immediately protested-the very idea was madness-and looked to Antipater to back me up. But my old tutor had done the opposite. He seemed convinced that everything the priest said must be true, and that I was indeed the emissary promised by Isis.

“Everything that’s happened since we left Rome has been leading to this moment,” he declared. “You must do this, Gordianus. It is your destiny.”

Antipater’s certainty left me speechless. The priest nodded gravely. Djal fell to his knees and looked up at me imploringly. I looked to Kemsa, hoping he might tell me that Djal deserved his fate, but instead he embraced me, as one might a valiant warrior about to leave on a perilous mission, and wiped tears from his eyes.

“And to think, it was I, humble Kemsa, who led you to your destiny!”

They were all determined that I should do as the goddess desired. In truth, some part of me was flattered by their confidence, and intrigued by the challenge. But once inside the pyramid, that part of me began to dwindle and fade, rather like the flame of the dying torch.

“Madness!” I whispered as I climbed inside the sarcophagus and stretched out full-length. The rough-hewn granite felt cold to the touch. I clutched the stump of the torch and stared at the last dying embers until the orange glow faded to utter blackness. I cast the stump away and folded my hands over my chest.

“Now what?” I said aloud.

No answer came, only silence.

I shut my eyes, then opened them. It made no difference. I was surrounded by infinite blackness. I blinked and suddenly found myself confused: were my eyes open or shut? I had to reach up to touch my eyelids to be sure.

As complete as the darkness was the silence. I found myself making small noises, snapping my fingers or clicking my teeth, simply to reassure myself that I had not gone deaf.

Eventually the utter lack of sight and sound, unnerving at first, began to have a sedative effect. I closed my eyes and lay perfectly still. It had been a long, hot, tiring day. Did I doze, or only imagine that I did so? I seemed to enter a state of consciousness I had never experienced before, neither asleep nor awake.

A succession of images and ideas passed through my mind. As one thought faded, leaving only a dim impression, another took its place. Where was I? What time was it? I reminded myself that it was night, and I was inside the Great Pyramid, but these demarcations lost all meaning. I sensed that I had arrived at a place and a moment that were at the very center of time and space, outside the ordinary realm of mortal experience.

The second riddle of the Sphinx resounded in my thoughts: I am seen by all who pass, but no one sees me. I posed a riddle that everyone knows, but no one knows me. I look toward the Nile, but I turn my back upon the pyramids.

I found myself thinking of the rows of sphinxes we had seen on the approach to the Temple of Serapis, some of them nearly buried by wind-blown sand. As if I were a bird with wings, I seemed to rise in the air and look down upon the young Roman and his old Greek tutor as they talked about Oedipus and the riddle he had solved, and then I flew northward, following the course of the Nile until I came to the plateau and landed atop the Great Pyramid, and looked down on the temples and roadways-and the large, incongruous sand dune among them.

This vision faded and I sat upright in the sarcophagus. There were no longer any walls around me. I was surrounded by a sort of membrane, smooth and featureless and faintly glowing, rather as I imagine the inside of an egg might look to an unborn chick, if an egg could be made of twilight.

Suddenly I sensed I was no longer alone, and turned my head to see a dog-headed figure that stood upright on two legs. Slowly he walked toward me. His face was black on one side, golden on the other. In one hand he carried a herald’s wand, and in the other, a green palm branch.

“Anubis?” I whispered.

“You know me better as Mercury.” His long snout never moved, yet somehow he spoke.

“You’ve come!” I said, hardly able to believe it. “The priest said such a thing would happen, and here you are! Will you help me solve the riddle?”

“You do not need my help, Gordianus. You already know the answer.”

He was right. I did know the answer. “You have no message for me, then?”

“I visit you not as a messenger, but as a herald, to announce her coming.”

“Who? Who is coming?”

Anubis fell silent, and then began to fade, as thoughts fade. Traces of his presence lingered on my eyes, even when I shut them. When I opened my eyes again, Isis stood before me.

I knew it was Isis by the crown she wore, with its curving horns and the golden disk between them, and by the Isis Knot between her breasts. Her linen gown was the color of blood. Her skin was golden brown, the color of honey. Her eyes glittered like sparks of sunlight on the Nile. She was unspeakably beautiful.

I had seen many images of gods and goddesses in the nineteen years I had been on earth, but never had I beheld a goddess face-to-face. I felt many things at once. I was fearful yet calm, awestruck yet strangely sure of myself. The unearthly allure of the goddess inspired in me a passion that was equally unearthly, unlike anything I had felt before.

The cold granite sarcophagus melted away. In its place I rested upon an infinite expanse of something soft and warm and pliant, almost like the pelt of a living, breathing animal, if such a pelt could cover the whole earth. Isis removed her crown and hitched it to a star in the twilight sky above her. Her red gown rippled as it fell to her ankles. She reclined beside me.

In Ephesus I had known my first woman; in Rhodes, my first man. In Halicarnassus, Bitto had instructed me in the arts of love, and in Babylon I had coupled with a priestess of Ishtar. But I had never been with a goddess before.

No words could describe the bliss of that union; nor shall I attempt to do so. There is a phrase used by Herodotus when he skirts a sacred matter about which his informants require his silence: I know a thing, but it would not be seemly for me to tell.

I shall say this much and no more: in a place and a moment outside of time and space, Isis and I became one. Perhaps it never happened. Perhaps it is happening still.

* * *

Little by little, I returned to this earthly realm, until at last I felt again the hard granite beneath me and felt its coldness around me. I heard the beating of my heart. I blinked and opened my eyes and saw darkness-not the darkness of dreams or the netherworld, but a common, earthly darkness, the mere absence of light, which was nothing to fear.

I sat up. If I had left my body at some point, there was no doubt that I had returned to it. My legs were sore from climbing, my shoulders and neck were stiff from lying on hard stone, and my backside ached from riding a camel.

How much time had passed? An hour, a day, a month? I had no way of knowing. For all I knew, I had died and come back to life.

Blindly, I navigated the chamber, feeling my way along the walls until I found the opening of the shaft. Steadying myself by the rope, proceeding cautiously so as not to bump my head, I slowly made my way up.

When I pushed open the stone panel, I was puzzled, for it seemed to me that the soft light was just the same as when I descended. Had I been inside the pyramid for mere minutes?

But then, from the glow that lit the Libyan mountains, I realized that the hour was dawn, not dusk. Far below I saw the camels sitting with their limbs tucked under them, their heads nodding in sleep. Huddled under blankets, also fast asleep, were Antipater and the others, including the priest of Isis, whose shaved head shone by the first ruddy light of the rising sun.

I made no sound to wake them. Instead I turned around and ascended as quickly as I could to the top of the pyramid. How many men can say they have witnessed a sunrise from the summit of the Great Pyramid? That moment, experienced alone-although in some way I felt that Isis was still with me-I will remember all my life.

But I had another, more practical reason for the climb. I wanted to look down again at the large sand dune among the temples, to be sure that the shape was as I remembered it. It was. I could almost see the thing hidden inside it, as if the breath of a god had blown away the masses of sand. Its back was turned to the pyramids and it faced the Nile, just as the riddle said. It was seen by all who passed-who could fail to notice a sand dune big enough to block one’s view of the pyramid? And yet it was unseen-for no one realized what was hidden under the sand. Its riddle was known to all, for everyone knows the riddle of the sphinx. And yet this sphinx was known to no one.

For how many generations had this monument, surely larger than any other sphinx in Egypt, been buried beneath the sand? Long enough that no one living even knew that it existed. The people of Egypt had forgotten that among the temples and shrines on the plateau, set there like a sentinel to guard the pyramids, crouched a giant sphinx, now entirely covered by sand. And yet some memory of this marvel had persisted in the form of a riddle that no one could answer.

Now that I had solved the riddle, the shape of the sphinx within the dune was unmistakable, and surely would be so to anyone gazing down on it from the Great Pyramid. There I could see the outline of the haunches, and there the protruding forepaws, and there, at the highest point, the proud head, which no doubt was covered by a nemes headdress. As Antipater had remarked, the solution to a riddle invariably seems obvious once you know the answer.

From far below, I heard a faint cry. I looked down to see that my companions were stirring. Djal had risen to his feet and was staring up at me. Even from such a great distance, I could see the plaintive expression on his face.

I took in the view one final time, then made my way down to give him the good news.

* * *

Later that day, while the plateau was still deserted due to the festival in Memphis, the priest of Isis summoned a team of laborers to excavate the highest point of the sand dune concealing the sphinx.

All day they dug. At last their wooden shovels struck something made of stone. They kept digging until very late in the afternoon, by which time the very top of the sphinx’s head had been uncovered. The gigantic nemes headdress appeared to have once been surmounted by some ceremonial object, long since broken off or worn away by time; to the priest of Isis, the stone remnant suggested a rearing cobra, such as is often seen on the headdresses of sphinxes.

As the sun began to graze the jagged crest of the Libyan mountains, the priest ordered the workers to begin covering what they had uncovered. “Work all night if you must,” he told them, “but don’t stop until not a trace of your day’s labor remains.”

“But surely these men should keep digging!” I protested. “Why must they undo their work? Don’t you want to see the whole thing? Granted, a full excavation will require many, many days-”

“What the gods have seen fit to conceal, I would not presume to uncover without first consulting my fellow priests and seeking to know the will of Isis in this matter. I allowed just enough digging to be sure that the second riddle of the sphinx had indeed been solved. All who have seen must be sworn to secrecy. That includes you.” He cast a sidelong glance at our guide. “And you as well, young Roman.”

“But surely the will of Isis is already known in this matter,” I said. “Was it not by her guidance that I found the solution? She even-” I bit my tongue and said no more. They had pressed me for details of my experience inside the pyramid, and I had revealed all I could put into words-except any mention of the intimacy I had shared with the goddess. That experience was too special to share, and beyond words-and it seemed to me that any mortal who dallies with a deity had best be discreet.

The priest would not be swayed. He invited us all to spend the night in comfort at his quarters in the Temple of Isis, and we left the workers to their labor. For now, the sphinx among the pyramids would remain a secret.

“Tomorrow I shall go to Memphis,” said the priest. “I will convince Mhotep that the riddle was solved and command him to return the mummy.”

“How will you persuade him?”

“Leave that to me. Your satisfaction in this matter, Gordianus, must be the role you played in the salvation of Djal.”

“I have already received my satisfaction,” I said, thinking of my wondrous experience with the goddess.

“How so?” asked the priest. The others pricked up their ears.

“That must be a riddle to which none of you will ever know the answer.”

* * *

“An upstairs room! Why were we given an upstairs room?” wailed Antipater, clutching the railing and descending one step at a time. For days after our trip to see the pyramids he had been so stiff and sore he could hardly move, and had languished in his bed at the inn. On this day he had at last consented to stir, for we had received a very special invitation.

As we crossed the city, the exercise seemed to do him good, despite his moaning and groaning. The exotic sights and sounds stimulated us both. Our route took us past the roadway to the Temple of Serapis, and we paused to look at the long rows of sphinxes.

“Teacher,” I said, “can you imagine such a sphinx expanded to the enormous scale of the monument that remains hidden on the plateau? If it were uncovered, men would call it the Great Sphinx, and would come from all over the world to marvel at the size of it. And if it were as beautiful as these smaller sphinxes, it would surely deserve a place among the Seven Wonders of the World. Why is it not on the list already?”

“Because, even very long ago, when the list of Seven Wonders was made, no one knew it existed. It must have been covered by that sand since at least the time of Herodotus, who makes no mention of it, and surely would have, had he seen it. But I suspect, Gordianus, that within your lifetime the Great Sphinx, as you call it, will be rediscovered. That priest of Isis will do his best to keep word from getting out, but one of those workers will talk, the news will spread, and sooner or later curiosity will get the better of even the most reactionary priests. Perhaps King Ptolemy himself will order the Great Sphinx to be excavated.”

“More likely it will be some ambitious Roman governor, after we’ve conquered Egypt,” I muttered.

“What’s that?”

“Never mind.”

With the happy thought that someday I might return to Egypt and behold the Great Sphinx, we resumed our journey to the house of Djal.

The dwelling itself was modest, but it had a marvelous location, built on a bit of high ground beside the Nile. A little girl-the daughter of Djal-greeted us at the door and led us to a terraced garden with a view of fishing boats on the river and farmlands on the opposite bank. Djal sat watching the river. When he saw us he jumped up and hugged us both. Antipater groaned at being squeezed so hard.

“What is that wonderful smell?” I said.

“The meal of thanksgiving that my wife has cooked for us.”

“Your wife? I thought-”

“She was ill, yes, but now she is much better. We are all better, since the return of the mummy. Come and see!”

He led us to the room where the meal would be served. At the head of the table, leaning upright against a wall, was a tall wooden case with a mummy inside.

“Father, this is Gordianus of Rome, the man who saved you. Gordianus, this is my father.”

I had never seen a mummy before. Nor had I ever been formally introduced to a dead man. In the world’s oldest land, I was having many new experiences.

I stepped closer to the mummy and made a small bow. As far as I could tell, the old fellow looked none the worse for his time in captivity. His linen wrappings were unsoiled, and his face was remarkably well preserved-so much so that I half-expected him to blink and open his eyes. Anything seemed possible in Egypt.

Djal’s daughter came running into the room. “Father! Father! Come and see!”

We followed her back to the garden. The face of the Nile had changed. Where before it had been as still and flat as a mirror, now a series of ripples extended across the whole width. Out on the boats, which bobbed slightly in the tide, fishermen waved their arms and cheered. Across the water, the fields were suddenly filled with farmers hurrying this way and that. Various contraptions with wheels and paddles were set in motion. The irrigation channels that crisscrossed the fields, which before had been dry, now glistened with moisture.

“The inundation has begun,” whispered Djal. “And my father is home!” He dropped to his knees, covered his face, and wept with joy.

“Come see!” cried the little girl. She took my hand and led me down a path toward the river. Antipater followed, groaning. On the muddy bank we took off our shoes and stepped into the Nile. Looking down, I saw the green water turn brown as it steadily rose, covering first my feet and then my ankles.

From all up and down the river I heard cries of thanksgiving. Again and again the name of Isis was invoked. I stared at the sun-dappled water. For just an instant, amid the ripples and sparkles of light, I caught a glimpse of Isis smiling back at me.