Murder in the Place of Anubis

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There were seven bodies ready to be taken out of the natron, and the priest Raneb was anxious to see that His customer was the first to be bandaged. The widower of Lady Shapu had given Raneb a bronze vase to ensure that his wife's embalming was perfect. Raneb knew how careless the bandagers became after wrapping the dead with resin-soaked linen all day. Lady Shapu was going to be first.

Marshaling his flock of water carriers, fire stokers, bandagers, and unguent mixers, Raneb bustled along an avenue formed by mountains of natron, the salt used to dry a corpse. In the distance priests and laborers made their way to the shelters where new bodies awaited sweetening in a wash of natron and water.

As Raneb entered the drying shed, he consulted a sheet of papyrus containing a list of the dead, their dates of lustration and drying, and the name of the lector priest in charge of each. Before him lay a double row of alabaster embalming tables heaped with natron. The surface of each table was concave to allow the fluids that drained from a corpse to collect in funnels that emptied into stone bowls at either end of the table.

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