Trial of Anubis

٤: ZIARA

      Ziara Massit had lost count of the amount of internet data she'd chewed up by simply staring at her inbox trying to type up a reply to the curator of the Luxor Museum.

      "You're not going to find the tomb of Imhotep by staring at your email," her father, Harry Massit chimed in from the loungeroom. "Give up, if Zahi Hawass can't find the tomb of Imhotep, neither can you. If you spent as much time investing in my projects we would be swimming in wealth by now." 

      "Our projects," Ziara hissed beneath her breath. "Selfith c*nt." 

      Once Ziara heard her bedroom door shut, she banged her forehead against the keyboard out of sheer frustration, causing the keys to rattle slightly. It was exasperating to be the daughter of a man whose ego was up his arse. Every idea she wanted to pursue, Harry would snap it up and pass it off as his own if he felt there was substance. Every recent success had been her work combined with her father's PR moves. 

      She'd reached her breaking point the last few months, feeling the pressure of her father's shadow loom over her future. The thought of abandoning Egyptology was more than tempting, but somehow Ziara had an internal struggle with letting her countries past go and fixated on a whim. 

      Of the non-royal population of Ancient Egypt, Imhotep was the most known. He was one of the world's greatest architects, since he designed the step-pyramid for Pharaoh Djoser. Imhotep, who's name meant 'the one that comes in peace' existed as a mythological figure in the minds of most scholars until the end of the nineteenth century when it was established that he was a real historical person―and Ziara was going to find his tomb, though her father insisted that a man like Imhotep would have made his burial place unknown to almost everyone, and certainly wouldn't hide it in plain sight.

      Ziara knew that, and she also knew the odds that if Imhotep's corpse had been stumbled upon in the mummy craze of the 20's, that there was a sure 75% chance that his mummy was ground up in some fake herbal remedy to clear up genital warts or to make men better in bed. However the remaining 25% was her hopes and sheer determination that Imhotep's tomb hadn't been discovered.

      Ziara had great respect for Imhotep. He was the world's first named architect who built the first pyramid in Egypt and is recognised in some texts as the first doctor, priest, scribe, poet, astrologer and a chief minister―though, his role remained unclear even in Djoser's rein in the Third Dynasty. Her father, on the other hand, thought Imhotep was a figurative character, surrounded by the Universal movie franchise of The Mummy.

       Through relentless research, she found that Imhotep could've lived under as many as four Pharaoh's. An inscription on a nameless Pharaoh's statue of the Third Dynasty gave Imhotep's title as 'chancellor of the king of Lower Egypt', 'first one under the king', 'administrator of the great mansion', 'hereditary noble' and the 'High Priest of Heliopolis'.

      She pushed her wheely-chair back from the laptop and rubbed her face with her hands. She yawned and looked back at the article in her large textbooks regarding Djoser. A passage caught her eye and Ziara scooted forward towards her desk again.

      She'd always held the suspicion that Imhotep would bury himself close to the step-pyramid to be close to his most renound employer, almost like the solar barge fragments found in hollow pits at the Giza Plateaux by the pyramid of Cheops. She'd overlooked the Necropolis explanation at Saqqara, where hundreds of undiscovered tombs of unknown nobility lay waiting to be dug up. Not only was there a high chance of one of the bodies being that of Imhotep the Necropolis held great significance to Imhotep, it was built as a mausoleum by Djoser.

      From the Necropolis, it changed the shape of the common mustaba tombs, where brick was finally replaced by stone. Fourteen false stone doors in the enclosure wall were built from fine-grain limestone, and the monumental entrance consisted of a corridor flanked my lots-style columns. The entry path leads to a plaza of the Courtyard of Jubilee. The sides are occupied by podiums of the thrones of Pharaoh to the east and west.