He Shall Thunder in the Sky - Elizabeth Peters [26]
Tourists who visit Giza today cannot possibly imagine what a splendid sight it was four thousand years ago: the sides of the pyramids covered with a smooth coating of white limestone, their summits crowned with gold, their temples bright with painted columns; the mighty Sphinx with his nose and beard intact and his headcloth striped in red and gold; and, surrounding each pyramid, rank upon rank of low structures whose sides also gleamed with the soft luster of limestone. They were the tombs of princes and officials of the royal house, furnished with chapels and statues and funerary equipment that would nourish the soul of the man or woman whose body lay in the burial chamber, at the bottom of a deep shaft cut through the superstructure.
One could only hope that immortality did not depend on the survival of the objects that had filled these tombs, or on the physical remains of their owners. Gone, all gone, alas, centuries before—the ornaments and jars of oil and boxes of fine linen into the hoards of tomb robbers, the bodies of the dead ripped apart in the search for valuables. Over the millennia, later tombs had been added, around and beside and sometimes on top of the Old Kingdom monuments, and the entire area had been buried by drifted sand; roofing stones had fallen, and walls had collapsed. Making sense of the resultant jumble was not at all easy, even for an experienced excavator, and before he could begin to do so he had to remove the accumulated debris of centuries, some of it several meters deep.
Junker had located the walls of the tomb the previous year, but the sand had drifted over it again. Emerson had caused the soil to be removed to the top of the walls, and the men had begun clearing the interior. Some excavators simply discarded this fill without examining it, but that was not Emerson’s way. After discovering that the interior walls were covered with remarkably well-preserved painted reliefs, he had insisted on erecting a temporary roof over the chamber. Rainstorms are not unknown in Cairo, and even blowing sand could damage the fragile paint.
I guided my steed past the carriages and camels and cabs and throngs of tourists toward the site where we were working, but I could not resist casting frequent glances at the towering slopes of the Great Pyramid. I am particularly attracted to pyramids. It was delightful to be working in such proximity to the mightiest of them all and know that, for the time being and in a limited sense, it was mine! I had no great hope of exploring it in the immediate future, however. Emerson meant to concentrate on the private tombs. Anyhow, the pyramid was a major tourist attraction, and it would have been difficult to work there in peace. Our own excavations were so close to the south side, we were always having to shoo wandering visitors away.
From Manuscript H
Every time Ramses entered the tomb he felt a pang of sympathy for the German archaeologist who had been forced to leave it. Removing the fill and erecting the shelter had taken a long time, but the first chamber of what appeared to be a large complex tomb had now been emptied, and he had begun copying the reliefs. The painted carvings along the west wall showed the prince Sekhemankhor and his wife Hatnub seated before an offering table loaded with foodstuffs and flowers. The inscriptions identified the pair, but so far they had not found a reference to the king whose son Sekhemankhor claimed to be.
Ramses was working alone that afternoon, inspecting the wall to ascertain how much of the relief had been damaged and whether restoration was possible. His thoughts were not the best of company these days, so when Selim came looking for him his response was ungracious.
“Well? What do you want?”
“It is an emergency,” said Selim. He often spoke English with Ramses, trying to improve his command of the language, and his voice lingered