Pencil flash sheet of an Egyptian cat head, jackal head, winged scarab and woman in a collar, set against a hieroglyph background.

Egyptian flash sheet with cat, jackal and scarab

Black and grey · Flash

A pencil sketch on tracing paper shows four Egyptian-themed designs: a cat head with a collar bearing an eye motif, a snarling jackal head with an ankh on its collar, a winged scarab beetle, and a woman in a headdress and broad collar. The whole sheet sits on a background of hieroglyphs, ankhs and eye symbols, drawn in light, even linework with soft shading. The drawings are in shades of grey and brown, with a pencil and sharpener visible at the top right.

Cat Wing Woman Headdress Ankh Eye of horus Collar

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lamp has burned down to a finger's width, and you still have the jackal's ears to finish. Hekaib, who taught you to hold a reed without shaking, has gone down to the river to argue with a boatman about cedar, and has left you alone with the sheet pinned to the workshop wall. Four heads and their borders of hieroglyphs, none of which may be disturbed. The cat is already done. You gave her the collar with the eye, the way he showed you, and she looked back with a patience that made you set the reed down for a moment.

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The scarab was harder. Its wings had to be feathered, each quill counted, so that when the mason copied the sheet onto the stone of the new chapel he would not have to guess. You had been told never to join the sun disc to the beetle, but you did it anyway, half asleep, and the disc sat on the beetle's head like a coin on a tongue. You rubbed it out with the heel of your hand, and the ochre smeared into the loop of the ankh beside it, so that the groove now carried a faint grey shadow you could not scrape away.

When Hekaib came back, smelling of river mud, he did not scold. He turned the sheet to the lamp and ran his thumb along the jackal's snarl. 'The god will know this one,' he said. 'Now look at the woman.' You had drawn her last, her plaited hair falling to the broad collar, her gaze fixed on something past the edge of the sheet that you could not see. He tapped the eye on her collar. 'Who taught you to make it so awake?' You shrugged. He smiled, took up the reed himself, and began to shade the lower lid.

That night you lay awake listening to the mason's mallet in the courtyard, and the thought settled in you that the eyes on the sheet would be watching the chapel floor long after the lamp and both of you had gone out.