"Tanya Huff - Victoria Nelson - 03 - Blood Lines" - читать интересную книгу автора (Huff Tanya)

Dr. Shane frowned, then shook her head, deciding not to speak. After all, what could she say? That just
for a moment the Curator of the Department of Egyptology had neither sounded nor looked like himself?
Maybe he wasn't the only one not getting enough sleep.

Five hours and seven rolls of film later, the inner coffin lay on padded wooden supports, free of its
encasing stone for the first time in millennia.

"Well," Dr. Shane frowned down at the painted wood, "that's the damnedest thing I've ever seen."

The rest of the department nodded in agreement; except for Dr. Rax who fought not to step forward and
throw off the lid.

The coffin was anthropomorphic but only vaguely. There were no features either carved into or painted
on the wood, nor any symbols of Anubis or Osiris as might be expected. Instead, a mighty serpent coiled
its length around the coffin, its head, marked with the cartouche of Thoth, resting above the breast of the
mummy. At the head of the coffin was a representation of Setu, a minor god who stood guard in the
tenth hour of Tuat, the underworld, and used a javelin to help Ra slay his enemies. At the foot of the
coffin was a representation of Shemerthi, identical in all ways to the other guardian save that he used a
bow. Small snakes, coiled and watchful, filled in the spaces that the great serpent left bare.

In Egyptian mythology, serpents were the guardians of the underworld.

As a work of art, it was beautiful; the colors so rich and vibrant that the artist might have finished work
three hours instead of three millennia ago. As a window on history, the glass was cloudy at best.



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"If I have to hazard a guess," Dr. Shane said thoughtfully, "I'd say, based on the cartouche and the
workmanship, that this is Eighteenth Dynasty, not Sixteenth. In spite of the sarcophagus."

Dr. Rax had to agree with her even though he seemed incapable of forming a coherent observation of his
own.

It took them the rest of the day to photograph it, catalog it, and remove the seal of cedar gum that held
the lid tightly in place.

"Why this stuff hasn't dried to a nice, easily removable powder, I have no idea." Dr. Shane shook the
kinks out of one stiff leg, and then the other. This had been the second day she'd spent mostly on her
knees and, while it was a favored position of archaeologists, she'd never been a great believer in
crippling herself for science.

"It looks," she added slowly, her hand stretching out but not quite touching one of the small serpents,
"like something interred in this coffin was not supposed to get out."

One of the graduate students laughed, a high-pitched giggle quickly cut off.