Theft of an Idol by Dana Stabenow

Author:Dana Stabenow [Stabenow, Dana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781800249806
Publisher: Head of Zeus

10

Compared to Alexandria, Memphis was a small city whose primary income derived from the many temples devoted to the gods and goddesses of the pharaonic past. It had three distinct neighborhoods. First and foremost, of course, were the temples, which occupied the riverfront. Every one, large and small, had its own dock so its followers would not have their feet and presumably souls tainted by having to land at some other god’s dock. There was always a stretch of farmland between one temple and the next, Tetisheri suspected less to separate the influence of one god over another’s following than to raise more food and pay more taxes on it. It made for an elongated community.

Behind the temples came the mansions where the business of the temples took place, where overseers reported on annual crop yields and resulting tithes and inquired as to the projected rise of the Nile that year. Behind them was the usual jumble of housing where the artisans, craftsmen and women, servants, and slaves lived. Also known as the people who did all the work.

Scattered throughout were neighborhood markets where the real life of the city carried forward as it did everywhere else, but it was the temples one saw first in this ancient capital of the pharaohs. Even though the city, and for that matter the deities themselves, had been falling into a steady, inexorable decline since the first Ptolemy over three hundred years before, it was still a testament to the magnificent abilities of the builders of the old dynasties. It was an homage as well as to the unending supply of slave labor captured in battles from Nubia to Parthia, but then Tetisheri could be on occasion a cynic of the deepest dye and therefore not as fervent in her adoration of her forebears as others she could name.

She was looking at a perfect example of that now.

The hypostyle of the Temple of Ptah had columns twice the height and girth of the columns of the Temple of Seshat. These columns were formed into the figures of pharaohs from Menes to Thutmose III, Hatshepsut being notably absent. To a man they looked mighty and majestic and very, very masculine, down to the distinct bulge in their pleated kilts, just in case there was any doubt. The building itself was aggressively square and solid, faced with an uncompromising gray granite. The pylon was tall and thick and painted with scenes of battles and captured enemies and unending lines of tribute in the form of food, slaves, and the usual precious metals and precious stones. Even now there were novices on scaffolding renewing the colors, lest an approaching supplicant not be blinded by them from first setting foot on shore.

The courtyard was open to the sky and surrounded by more columns decorated with paintings of pharaohs making offerings to all the gods and goddesses, but primarily Ptah. Ptah himself looked everywhere as if he had been drawn or even stamped from a template, mummified except

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