Temples, Tombs & Hieroglyphs_ A Popular History of Ancient Egypt - Barbara Mertz [35]
A number of sweating workmen had cause to curse the tomb robbers as they hauled the queen’s remaining funerary equipment to the new tomb. Hemiun had chosen a good spot, right beside the passage leading from the king’s funerary temple to the still unfinished pyramid at Giza. In months to come the hidden entrance would be trampled over by hundreds of feet.
So, late one night, the king was summoned to approve the vigilance and wisdom of his vizier. Borne high in a gold-inlaid litter upon the brawny arms of slaves, Khufu was carried along the road from Memphis up to the plateau on which his pyramid was being built. By the flickering light of torches he saw the shaft going down into the heart of the rock. If he had entertained any pious hopes of laying a funeral wreath on the maternal bier, he dismissed them at that moment. “How far down does this go?” he demanded. Hemiun did not conceal his pride. A hundred feet below the surface lay the tomb chamber—infinitely more secure than the old tomb, and all accomplished in so short a time!
Khufu nodded gravely. Darkness welled up in the shaft only a few feet below the surface. He could not see the glitter of the golden hieroglyphs upon the stately chair and bed, the gift of his father, Snefru, to Hetepheres, nor could he catch so much as a glimmer of the white sarcophagus. But he knew they were there; it never entered his head that they were not. Again he nodded, pleased and impressed. He must plan a suitable reward for his enterprising vizier.
The king watched as the shaft was filled with stone, and plaster tinted to match the rock of the plateau was spread over the opening. When all was done the king went home to bed; a group of slaves went to the mines of Sinai, or to a farther place; and the vizier probably betook himself to a quiet corner of his villa where he could collapse and get drunk.
The Egyptians did get drunk. They brewed more kinds of beer than anyone up to, if not including, the Bavarians, and when time and finances permitted the excess they drank more of it than was good for them. It is, of course, a flight of fancy to imply that Hemiun celebrated the success of his colossal trick in this fashion, though we would not blame him if he did. However, Hemiun’s fine portrait statue is not that of a man who yielded to weakness very often; gazing at the imperious, rather ugly, face, we find ourselves thinking that if any man could have carried off such a risk, this one could have. The stately vizier succeeded beyond his fondest hopes, for the tomb of Queen Hetepheres survived the centuries in safety. Not until A.D. 1925 did any living man dream that such a tomb existed.
The Giza expedition of Harvard University had been working at that site for some years when the leg of a photographer’s tripod chipped the plaster covering the tomb and told the excavators that the seemingly solid rock was not what it looked to be. When the shaft was uncovered and the big stone blocks that filled it were seen to be undisturbed, the hopes of the staff of the expedition began to rise. At last the shaft was cleared and the men could descend, rather perilously, to the burial chamber. The sarcophagus was there, its massive lid still in place. This was a significant point, for when tomb robbers went to the trouble of removing one of these lids, whose weight is calculated in tons, they did not bother to put it back when they were through.
At this high moment of anticipation the shaft had to be refilled, for George Reisner, the head of the expedition, was in the United States. Reisner was one of America’s finest archaeologists. The accuracy and detail of his excavation reports set new standards for the profession; his work at Giza and in the Sudan produced definitive information on large areas of Egyptian history and archaeology. Much of Reisner’s later work was carried on under the threat of eventual blindness. Several operations for cataracts proved unsuccessful, but Reisner never stopped working on his magnum opus, a study of the architectural development of the Egyptian tomb, which is