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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2001
Copyright © Michael Pearce 2001
Michael Pearce asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008259334
Ebook Edition © APRIL 2017 ISBN: 9780007401338
Version: 2017-08-30
‘Pearce writes with a delicious wit and a firm sense of background’
The Times
‘Pearce … takes apart ancient history and reassembles it with beguiling wit and colour’
Sunday Times
‘Irresistible fun’
Time Out
‘The Mamur Zapt’s sly, irreverent humour continues to refresh the parts others seldom reach’
Observer
Contents
Over towards the Nile the light shimmered and seemed to fall apart, and then it came together again and presented a beautifully clear picture of the river, with palms shifting gently in the river breeze, a pigeon tower, and children playing around a water buffalo in the shallows; so clear that you could make out every detail.
Only it was not a true picture, at least, not of this part of the river. The Nile bent away at this point and where the mirage was, was just scrub and desert.
The desert was playing tricks here, too, inland a quarter of a mile. Heat spirals danced away across the sand and dust devils chased among the graves, where galabeahed men stood silently, watching him.
‘You’re not a pet man, though, are you?’ said McPhee.
‘No.’
‘I’m dogs, myself.’
Only it was cats here; dozens and dozens, hundreds and hundreds of them. They lay in open circular pits, uncovered by the archaeologists and then abandoned. Each pit was about eight feet in diameter and five or six feet deep. The cats lay on ledges around the sides, except that when space had run out they had been piled carefully on top of each other in the middle. Each cat had been tenderly mummified, the body treated first and then swathed in yards and yards of linen bandages. The pits stretched out towards the horizon.
‘They weren’t really pets, though, were they?’ said Owen.
‘Someone must have loved them, to lavish such attention on them.’
‘But didn’t you say –?’
‘There are lots of inscriptions to the cat goddess round here, it is true,’ McPhee conceded.
‘So