Free The Twelve Rooms of the Nile by Enid Shomer

determined to perch there before exploring the interior.
    “Paolo,” she said, pointing up to a stone platform, “do you think someone could help me climb up there?”
    The guide muttered to one of the crew and shouted back to her. “Brava, Signorella Nightingale. Why not?”
    The crewman preceded her, a coil of rope for her to grasp wound around his shoulder. He helped her from foothold to ledge to handhold, and within moments, she was sitting alongside Ramses. Later, she thought, she’d maneuver down to the great ruler’s lap, to seek firsthand succor at his glorious breast.
    She contemplated the two identical faces receding to her left in perfect alignment. The duplication was soothing. Here is Ramses, and here again, and again. By repeating that serene visage, the ancient sculptors had managed to convey the experience of time itself—of its passage—in a way that spoke not to death and decay but eternity.
    Ramses’s eyes were far too big, she noticed. Nothing was in strict proportion. Yet these anatomical distortions made the figures more expressive of pure spirit than any other relics she’d seen. It was difficult to imagine that men had built these grand and godly objects. Not beautiful, certainly not realistic in the way of art as she’d always understood it, this was a whole world for which she had no language, only what stirred in her heart.
    Above the four Osiridae—statues of Ramses in the guise of Osiris—a relief of yet another Ramses held a statuette in his hand. Was this an offering to or a gift from his divinity? And what did itsymbolize? From its central location, she adjudged it important. Another detail to look up in Herr Bunsen’s book.
    Selina and Charles were picnicking near the next Ramses, sharing a cup of local beer, when Flo climbed down and signaled her intention to enter the temple. Selina waved back, smiling, and lifted her cup in a toast. Flo was so grateful to the Bracebridges. They were more than loving family friends—angels, really. A year ago she had accompanied them to Italy and learned what easygoing companions they were. The first day in Rome she’d returned to the hotel expecting a reprimand for having spent the whole day lying on her back in the Sistine Chapel, but they hadn’t even missed her. No, their focus, too, was on books and art and politics—and on one another’s ailments—all of which left them delightfully permissive and absentminded.
    Because sand had blocked all but about three feet of the temple’s doorway, she had to crawl into the magnificence on all fours—properly humbling, she thought. Her guide followed at a discreet distance. As soon as she was snug inside, she’d send him back.
    Still on all fours, she found herself atop an interior sand ramp, this one the height of a double flight of stairs and illuminated by sunlight slanting through the impacted entrance. She scooted down on her bottom to the stone floor of a cavern suffused with twilight. Egypt was not only captivating, it was also glorious fun.
    Eight Osiridae stood against as many pillars, their arms crossed upon their chests, the crook and flail in either hand to signify dominion over living and departed souls.
    The trapped air, dim light, and thick mountain walls created a strange stillness and warmth, as if she had descended into the bowels of the earth. Near her foot, a scarab beetle careered over a tiny hillock of sand. The guide lighted her oil lamp and she continued into a second hall, and then a smaller chamber aglow with trickles of light from an invisible source high in the ceiling. Four more statues of Osiris supported the roof. Lowering herself against one of them, she shooed the guide away. When he hesitated, she shouted “Go back!”and was startled to hear the chamber echo her words in a diminishing chorus. He retreated to the opposite wall and knelt, head down, to give her the privacy she demanded. Clearly he had instructions not to leave her alone under any