The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips [103]
Who will peer after me into this gold-reflecting murk? What poets, scribes, tourists? Let the schoolboys practise Atum-hadu’s pretty cartouche on their drawing tablets, and begin the school day in compulsory recitation of our king’s inspirational Quatrain 7 (Fragment C only):
When we triumph over our enemies or fate, we call for a dozen girls
Who come to us in haste, and Atum-hadu’s robe unfurls.
And they dance and bare themselves for us, their breasts so high
That Atum-hadu’s hooded cobra leaps as if to fly.
While I would happily celebrate with my king tonight in his preferred manner, I cannot, as my queen-to-be awaits me in her pure beauty far away, and my jealous mistress, Science, demands that I recline on this service cot, under sheets emblazoned with cobra, vulture, and sphinx, and guard my discovery from the bandits and jealous peers certain to arrive when word escapes, as it surely will, or I do not know the modern Egyptian labourer’s natural threshold of discretion. But when they come, they will find me with my service Webley (for bandits) or a smiling silence (for Carter). Ah, that will be tasty. The Carter way is not the only way; my hale and hearty nature served ten thousand times as well as his hauteur.
I have got ahead of the story. Time, as I said, will play its tricks.
So, the first glimpse by the men was thus:
(FIG. A: VIEW OF ATUM-HADU TOMB DOOR A AS FIRST SEEN BY ANONYMOUS WORKMAN, 11 NOVEMBER, 1922, AS WORK SONGS ARE REPLACED WITH A SUDDEN, HAUNTING, AND BEAUTIFUL SILENCE)
The covering earth was at some places a foot thick or more, often rock hard. But at the end of several hours of chiselling, brushing, and sifting, we had a door, approximately five and a half feet high and three feet across (must send Ahmed to buy a ruler). It was found approximately two-thirds above the level of the cliffside path, and one-third below it. After spadework, we had revealed:
(FIG. B: RALPH M. TRILIPUSH NEXT TOATUM-HADU TOMB DOOR A, 11 NOVEMBER, 1922)
Must arrange for photographic equipment after the wire.
The portal is absolutely intact, absolutely unpenetrated. No robbers ever broke through it and no later authorities ever replaced an inch of it. It has not been seen in 3500 years. Further and significantly, it was not “sealed.” That is to say, there were no impressions on the stone door of any royal cartouches or symbols, no marking of any kind implying the presence of a professional tomb guardian. This would be somewhat strange in times of peace, but given what we know of Atum-hadu’s last days, the door’s pristine purity is further evidence of its identity. Whoever closed this door had been instructed not to mark its exterior with anything to identify its occupant (thus identifying him to me, with unmistakable clarity).
Of course, if (as I am absolutely certain) I write tonight outside the tomb of Atum-hadu, he was laid to rest at the end of the XIIIth Dynasty, at the end of all culture, religion, life, Egypt, hope, time. For though a mere hundred years later, the XVIIIth Dynasty would rise from the XIIIth’s ashes and restore Egypt in a glossy, refurbished glory (a bourgeois restoration, the kitsch New Kingdom, imitative, luxurious but false, the prancing ground of pudgy-bellied androgynes and the research pool of