Read Online Ramose and the Tomb Robbers by Carole Wilkinson - Free Book Online

had faked his death. It was the strong resinous smell of juniper oil and frankincense. He held up the lamp. Inside the coffin was the pharaoh’s mummy. A gilded mask stared up at him with blank eyes. The pharaoh’s face had a strong nose and a mouth that was almost smiling. He’d always imagined mummies bound in soft white linen strips, but the bandages on the mummy in front of him were brown with age and stiff with the oils, long since dried up, that the priests had poured onto it during the burial ritual.
    “Are there jewels? Is there gold?”
    “Yes.”
    Ramose’s lamplight reflected on a magnificent gold collar draped around the neck of the mummy and a gold crown on its head. The collar was made of hundreds, maybe thousands of beads of turquoise, carnelian, lapis lazuli and gold.
    Ramose hesitated for a moment. Would he suffer the fate of a tomb robber if he was caught? And what about in the afterlife? Would Osiris understand that he’d had no choice? He pulled the collar from the mummy. The beautiful pattern disintegrated and the beads cascaded into the bottom of the coffin.
    “What’s going on in there?”
    “The threads stringing the beads are rotten. Give me a bag.”
    Ramose scooped up beads by the handful and put them into the bag that Intef handed him. The threads of the armbands broke as well. He scooped those beads into the bag with the others. Then he took off the crown. It was solid gold with a snake’s head inlaid with turquoise rearing from the front as if to attack anyone who dared harm the pharaoh. Intef thrust a sharpened flint through the hole.
    “Cut open the bandages. There’ll be amulets wrapped inside.”
    Ramose didn’t argue. He slit the bandages binding the mummy down the front and peeled them back. Sure enough there were exquisite amulets made of gold and precious stones. There was a heart scarab of lapis lazuli, similar to his own.
    “Check the hands as well. There should be rings.”
    Ramose slit open the linen strips binding the hands to get to the dead pharaoh’s fingers. The skin was like dried-out leather. The fingers were like black claws. Each one had at least one ring on it. As Ramose hurried to get the jewels, one of the fingers broke off in his hand. Until then, Ramose hadn’t had time to think about his fear of enclosed spaces. Touching the actual withered flesh of the dead pharaoh made his stomach lurch and his heart pound. He was suddenly aware that he was inside a stone tomb, straddling a dead man. Above him was a mountain of stone and mud bricks. The fumes of the embalming resins were making his head spin. He threw the bag out of the hole and scrambled to get out of the sarcophagus.
    “What’s the rush all of a sudden?”
    “Got to get outside.”
    Intef grabbed him by the arm and took the lamp from him, setting it down safely on the lid of the sarcophagus. “You’re not going anywhere yet.”
    Ramose tried to struggle out of Intef’s grasp. “I can’t breathe. I need air. Fresh air. I have to get out.”
    Intef slapped him hard on the face with the back of his hand. “We’re not leaving until we’ve gone through these chests.”
    Intef opened all the chests one by one and took out everything of value.
    Ramose’s breathing slowed. He wouldn’t get out of the pyramid if he panicked. If Intef hadn’t slapped him, he might have gone charging up the passage, fallen down the shaft and drowned in the celestial waters, or taken a wrong turn and ended up back in the poisonous yellow powder.
    “Now get up to the upper chamber and I’ll hand this all to you.”
    It was a slow business, but at the sight of the treasure Intef’s impatience had completely disappeared. He handed the items one by one to Ramose, up through the hole in the ceiling of the burial chamber. Ramose, in the darkness of the upper chamber, had no choice but to do as he was told.
    “We’ll need something to make a bridge across the gap as well.” Intef looked around the chamber. There was