Egyptian Timewave

Chapter 56

Carefully, with an eye on the floor, Abayomi steps into the burial chamber. Despite her excitement, the act of crossing the threshold fills her stomach with nervous buzzing. The burial chamber is small, mostly filled with the funeral shrine and the two smaller ones closer to the wall.

The walls are painted with familiar funeral scenes, surprisingly similar to those Abayomi knows are in Tutankhamen's tomb. The shrine here is significantly smaller though. Abayomi is hoping that it means there won't be shrines within shrines. Perhaps there will be two, it's big enough for that, if not big enough for the four Tutankhamen had.

Abayomi moves to walk around the shrine, careful to keep an eye out for any artifacts potentially lying on the floor. She doubts there will be any, this portion of the tomb didn't appear to have been broken into when the door was still up, but you can never be too sure. From what she can see, there aren't any.

She turns her attention back to the shrine, examining its sides. This outer shrine, if it isn't the only one, is decorated with symbols of protection and spells from the book of the dead, among other texts. Abayomi dips her head slightly towards Anippe's shrine, closing her eyes for the moment of respect.

She inhales carefully and turns away from the center shrine to look at the canopic shrine. It's golden and technically composed of two shrines, the outer one with hieroglyphic inscribed posts and goddesses standing guard, and the inner one. The inner one is made of alabaster presumably, it appears to be, and it's covering in scenes from Anippe's life.

Inside it, Abayomi knows her canopic jars are resting. Abayomi steps closer to examine the scenes, her eyes hungrily searching for any indication of how Anippe's life went. She exhales slowly, relieved when the scenes indicate that Anippe at least survived past Abayomi's time there, as it shows her older.

She moves towards the shrine for Anubis, but is stopped when her dad calls out. "Abayomi, are you done in there? Everyone wants to go in."

Her cheeks warm. Abayomi had forgotten that she was also supposed to be making sure everything was safe, which it is. She hurries out.

"Everything is fine, though it looks like five or less people would be the highest number to go in at a time and still be able to easily maneuver."

Fahim smiles at her. "Thanks Abayomi, how did it look in there? Anything in poor condition?"

"No, everything looked to be well preserved, but I wouldn't touch things until there is a second opinion."

He laughs. "Smart girl. Go on back to your work, I'll call you back when we start opening up the shrines."

~~~

Abayomi inhales shakily as she steps into the burial chamber once more to approach the now opened shrines. The lids are lying off to the side, carefully positioned so no one walks into them and causes any damage. Standing on the tips of her toes, Abayomi peers into the shrines from above. Like she had suspected before, there are two shrines.

With the second now visible, Abayomi notices the depictions of the process to enter the afterlife. In between the shrines lies a golden fan, something to honor a royal. If Abayomi needed any further convincing that this tomb belonged to Anippe, this is it. The sarcophagus also cements that truth, no other sarcophagus would be depicted with a familiar collar necklace.

Anippe's face is depicted into the sarcophagus' material, at peace and older than Abayomi ever knew her. She still looks young, at least in the perspective of modern times. From the sarcophagus' face, it looks like Anippe died in her early thirties. The question now is just how did she die? Disease, an accident, murder, childbirth?

There's no way to truly tell, though perhaps things will be more clear when the sarcophagus is opened and they are able to examine the remains. Swallowing in the face of seeing her friend's coffin, a fact that is now truly beginning to sink in, Abayomi steps back to let others slip into the room.
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Abayomi's got a lot to deal with right now, doesn't she?