To the guards of the cemetery he was someone’s animated _ka_, a restless ‘soul’ seeking, perhaps, to identify his ruined tomb or to find and become reunited to the lost ‘souls’ of his wife and children. He was constantly on the lips of the public-storytellers as an ever-present example of the truth of one of the oldest and most familiar of Egyptian wondertales, the Adventures of Menti.
In point of fact, Unis was as much flesh and blood as anyone. Yet none, whether courtier, priest or peasant, could have guessed the reason of his tireless researches among the open shafts and ruined chapels of the older part of the great Theban cemetery.
However, the very fact that the Thebans were so frequently regaled with the story of Menti might well have given them a clue as to the true reason of Unis’ occupation in that haunted spot.
It seems that Menti’s “spirit” returned from enjoying a few hours among living men and reentered his mummy to find that the bodies of his wife and child were missing from their coffins. Menti at once compelled their restoration by means of his knowledge of the names, charms and talismans contained in the magic Book of Thoth.
Written, ’twas said, by the God Thoth himself, this wonder-working Book had once belonged to that Architect and Seer of old, Imhotep. It was a common saying in Unis’ day that the Great Step Pyramid west of white-walled Memphis, could never have been raised had it not been for the compelling incantations—recited in the prescribed attitude and with the proper tone of voice—by that now deified architect of the godkings of old, Imhotep.
Before the death of Imhotep, it was said that he had hidden the Magic Book behind the sarcophagus in which lay King Zozer, his master, deep within his stupendous pyramid. A thousand years later its hiding place had been revealed to Amenhotep, son of Hap, in a dream.
Amenhotep’s possession of the Book must have been a fact. How else could he have erected the colossal Temple to the “spirit” of the late Pharaoh; how otherwise could he have built the Temple at Kha-en-Mat, the beautiful Temple on the Island and the great colonnaded Temple of Amen, upon which, at the command of Pharaoh Akhten-aton, work had but recently been relinquished.