The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips [101]
Thursday, 9 November, 1922
Journal: After losing three days to fever and sublimated, unnecessary worry, I awake early today, refreshed and ready to work. I feel absolutely tip-top. Set out food for Maggie and the Rameses.
Ahmed and the men are waiting, loyal and relieved to see me healthy at last. They have come every morning and left only after hours of waiting. Today their eagerness to work is palpable and infectious. They look at me with enthusiasm and respect.
I have the men continue their careful scraping of the cliff face abutting the rising path. Our progress is heartening, though progress without discovery can also be viewed as a shrinking field of prospect, but I do not indulge such thinking. I clear three more clefts. Not many remain, and more difficult work will be required, I fear.
Maggie and the toms take their supper with me in my dining room and spend the evening peering curiously at the gramophone.
Friday, 10 November, 1922
Journal: Distribute two dozen of CCF’s monogrammed cigars to the men as baksheesh. Tokens of my faith in my workers. It is often and boringly repeated that Carter “inspires loyalty in his men.” But “inspiring loyalty,” as I learnt in the Army, is a caveman’s trick. Anyone can do it with gifts or fear.
Today I acknowledge the need to begin planning for next steps. I send two of the men out into the flat basin of this section of valley, to mark with stakes a square, 100 yards out from the cliff wall and 100 yards long, centring on the site of Fragment C’s discovery. If it comes to excavating trenches, we will be ready. I ask Ahmed’s opinion how easily we could hire a team of 100 men and equip them all with digging tools. The timing is certainly possible, but the cost will require waiting for the Partnership to act. And the Partnership will need to be prepared for a full-team budget. With nothing to show yet, I am unwilling to go back to Lacau or to Winlock, but it is simply not feasible to tramp in a full excavation team unseen.
Saturday, 11 November, 1922
Book notes: Change the epigraph to 11 November, 1922! The 24th was too generous by a full thirteen days!
Journal: And today we were smiled upon. Just as I was about to change strategy, the world reveals itself to us in a new light, and we see more than anyone else has ever seen before. It is late at night now, and I write from my cot under the stars, outside the tomb of King Atum-hadu. I have sent Ahmed to cable CCF and feed the cats.
My heart still beats with the knowledge of our victory, the strenuous and delicious effort to taste every instant—where do I begin? I cast aside the moon and haul back to the sky the solar chariot and replay our day from its glorious dawn:
The morning was spent swinging in and out of two of my very last clefts. I was practically forced to crawl when atop the cliff wall so as not to be seen from the Valley below, now a hive of wasteful, aimless trenching. I had left Ahmed to secure the ropes above and had two men out in the basin beginning to poke at the soft ground, leaving the two other men still scouring with slow diligence the cliff wall alongside the path. My instincts were infallible.
After lunch I was halfway down to the third cleft of the day, sensing that my nearly complete inventory was doomed to futility. Worse, I had misjudged the length of rope I would need to reach the floor of the crack for which I was aiming, and I realised in frustration that I would need to climb to the top and buy longer rope for tomorrow to reach this last array of lowest ridges. I was halfway back up the cliff face, cursing my ill-preparedness, when I heard shouting from below, my idiots who had been told to keep quiet at all costs. At the same moment, two blisters opened up on my hands, making climbing viciously painful. I called up to Ahmed for assistance, with predictable results. I looked