The book is a police procedural set in Pharaoh’s Egypt. There are several krimis of this ilk but ‘The Eloquent Scribe’ has a twist in the tail, namely, that the odd couple of investigators includes a cat. It may sound contrived, well it is, but in this case it works.
Sitehuti is a junior scribe still learning his cartouches. A mishap precludes a senior scribe from attending to the dictation of a High Priest. Because he is a lazy sod, Sitehuti is sent in his place to get him off his backside. Reluctantly, he goes…into another world, one of riches, dazzling scents, blinding reflections from gold and silver and mirrored bronze, a stillness that is both solemn and eerie after the cacophony of the market place that Sitehuti is accustomed to hearing, and … cats. His sense are overwhelmed by the temple.
The scribe is seated in this group from a pyramid.
While the priests run the temple there is one very large, very leonine cat in attendance, one Nefer-Djenou-Bastet This sacred beast instantly takes a liking to Sitehuti, and this marks him out. It is an omen that sets tongues to wagging far and wide. Given this omen, Sitehutie becomes the scribe of choice for the highest of high priests in the innermost of inner sancta.
The Egyptian Mau cat.
That name Nefer-Djenou-Bastet is a mouthful and it quickly become Neffi.
When a messenger bearing a most secret letter disappears along with the letter, who better to find him and the letter than a man-child favoured by the gods, well, by Neffi the chief cat of the temple of Bastet? Indeed.
Sitehuti is none to sure about any of this but it beats smearing cartouches, pounding shells into ink, or scraping papyri clean for reuse, so he sets out. Slowly it dawns on him that he might have been chosen for mundane rather than divine reasons, (1) because he is an outsider and perhaps this was an inside job — so who can he trust and (2) as a lowly junior scribe he is expendable despite the favour of Neffi for who knows how long that favour will last. What Neffi gives, Neffi can take away.
What a colourful world it is in Memphis, the one in Egypt not Tennessee, and Thebes, the one in Egypt not Greece. There are Nubians, Syrians, Hittites, Caldeans, Gauvians, Babylonians, Ethiopians, and even a Phoenician or two among the Egyptians. Dancing girls, jugglers, strong men, freakish dwarfs, bear baiters, snake charmers, and…. did I mention dancing girls? Sitehuti is a normal young man.
The other pharaonic krimis I have read were, by comparison, laboured with stilted speech which I guess was meant to reflect the formalities of the time and place and packed with equally stiff social conventions which again I guess was to reflect this ancient and foreign world. They also made tedious reading.
This novel is much more salty. There are nicknames, slang, greasy food, dusty roads, sour wine, and grumbling in the ranks, with an incipient tax payers revolt against those priests who keep collecting tribute in the name of gods but those gods who never seem to deliver for the common people. The result is a lively journey.
It is a police procedural in that Sitehuti goes hither and thither asking questions and looking around gathering information, impressions, and even physical evidence while Neffi guards his back clawing off more than one thug and generally putting an aura about Sitehuti, who while grateful for the help, is not sure he likes being so special that the dancing girls venerate him at a distance rather than coming closer!
T. Lee Harris and friend
This is the first is a series with several other novels and short stories. By the way I cannot connect the title to anything in the story.
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