Channeling Cleopatra by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough Page B

inside herself was going all the
way to the penthouse.
    More of the jar's curve emerged from her
patient digging. She kept expecting to find a jagged edge where the
vessel had been broken but encountered only the deliberate
indentations of its carving on an otherwise smooth and un-marred
surface. She was panting and sweating as she worked, trying to keep
herself calm and her pace steady. Most of all, she was trying not
to hope that this would be what she thought it was. If it was,
surely it would be empty after all it had been through. But from
the feel of the outside of it, somehow she couldn't believe that.
Her hand worked downward and inward, toward the mouth of the jar.
Her fingers encountered, instead of space, another shape.
    She had her toes hooked over the far edge of
the scaffolding, and now she unhooked them and scrabbled forward,
so that from the waist down, she was bending over the scaffolding
until the topknot of her long brown hair brushed the sea floor.
Removing a pen flashlight from another pocket in her cargo pants,
she stuck it between her teeth and kept working, though the sweat
ran into her eyes and plastered her T-shirt to her.
    Alternately brushing and working the object
free, she finally made out the shape of the carved lid. It was in
the shape of a dog, Duamutef, one of the guardians of the dead, as
she had deduced from groping its shape. That made it exactly what
she thought it would be, hoped it would be. A canopic jar. Still
apparently sealed. Still apparently a very useful as well as a very
important find, being the first evidence of human remains in this
area, especially human remains mummified in the ancient Egyptian
fashion, which was by no means the preferred funeral style
throughout the latter part of Alexandria's history. A jar of
alabaster, of this quality, could only belong to someone of
nobility, even royalty.
    She had been working with such concentration
she hadn't noticed the crowd gathering around her until she pulled
the jar free. She would be paying for this heroic straining of her
back for years to come with visits to her chiropractor. She hauled
the jar up to the scaffolding and had to swat sandals and tennis
shoes aside to put it down while she twisted around to a sitting
position again.
    The excited babble of voices was drowned out
by the ringing in her ears.
    Dr. Yussuf, the scientist in charge of this
particular section of the harbor, leaned forward with hands
outstretched for the jar, but she swatted at him with the rubber
glove she'd just removed. She had been pleased that he had
condescended to allow her to do grunt work on his section of the
dig, but now was the time to pull rank, with all of the privileges
thereof.
    "Ah ah ah," she said. "Off limits! Nucore,
meaning me in this instance, gets first crack at any possible human
remains and this," she said, patting her find in a proprietary way
her father referred to as "putting one paw on it and growling."
"This is definitely a canopic jar, and as such it would definitely
hold human remains."
    "Perhaps," Yussuf said, kneeling to inspect
what was visible of the inscription on the jar but keeping out of
range of her glove. "But you have not the experience to judge,
Leda. It is most likely a false canopic jar, though of very fine
workmanship. It is very close to the surface to be from the more
ancient times when such jars were used in the way you're thinking
of them. In later periods, the viscera were wrapped and returned to
the body cavity and the jars, such as this one may be, were merely
carved to resemble those which once held viscera. They were used
strictly for ceremonial purposes."
    "Ceremonial purposes, for sure. I never
thought otherwise. But most of the funerals of the well-to-do were
highly ceremonial. And there were always cults of holdout
traditionalist priests who liked to do things the old-fashioned
way. Maybe some of those guys did the mummification of this
person."
    "Yes, and maybe it fell off a British ship
when