The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips [107]
I stand and write in what I am for now forced to call “the Empty Chamber” of the tomb of Atum-hadu. A map would appear thus:
(FIG. C: THE EMPTY CHAMBER)
Despite my explicit orders, I found Ahmed stepping into the Empty Chamber. “Out!” I cried. “This space cannot tolerate amateurs.” He did not move or acknowledge me, just swept his torch around the walls, and I watched misinterpretations infect his tiny mind. He sighed and stalked out. What difference can it make to him? He is paid for his time, surely the slower the better for salaried men. “Send the men home for the day,” I called after him. “You and four men at first light tomorrow.” For I needed the rest of today to consider and to perform careful analysis of this room.
Now it is nightfall. I do not judge Ahmed’s reaction with harshness. I, too, might despair and write the word disappointment rather than success here, were I not better informed. Now, observe: it is precisely Ahmed’s ignorance and childishly predictable frustration that are the key issues here, the best defence that the architect of Atum-hadu’s tomb could conceive. By the flickering lamplight here in the Empty Chamber, I lay on my cot and I understand precisely what such a room means. Imagine a tomb-robber in ancient days. Though we know now that there never were robbers in this tomb, definitively none, the architects did have to plan for them. So, imagine the architect preparing for the thief. For the thief, imagine a man like Ahmed, who has with some scoundrelly mates exerted vast effort to get past the massive door they found by chance or guile. At last, skulking around so as not to be seen by whatever authorities took an interest at the time, they stumble into the transit point of the final Lord of the Nile and they find in the form of this empty room a smiling apology: “Nothing to be found here, old chum, off you go to plunder elsewhere.” For none but a keen-eyed soul mate will notice the faint outline at the back wall, nothing less than another door, nearly invisible by clear intention but indubitably there. And even R. M. Trilipush, the king’s rightful discoverer, did not notice it until nearly 8.00 P.M., his men having gone, and his own spirits a little troubled.
(FIG. D: THE EMPTY CHAMBER, CORRECTED)
A gentle chiselling and dusting, a few hammered wedges, and there is no question about it at all. Tomorrow we proceed deeper into this remarkable labyrinth laid out for us by our lord Atum-hadu, this puzzle which is also in its turn a solution to the different puzzle presented to the king himself, the most brilliant solution to the most horrifically complex Tomb Paradox in the history of this extraordinary land.
Consider Quatrain 78 (ABC, from Desire and Deceit in Ancient Egypt, Harvard University Press, 1923):
No falcon will spy on us, no saluki hound renowned for sight
Will see as I take Isis roughly, her mouth and her rear.
When Ma’at’s wet kiss is to my left and Sekhmet’s breast to my right
Mortal enemies, thieves, traitors will all wander above us, blind in a desert sere.
As pretty a synopsis of both the Tomb Paradox and the delights of the underworld as one could hope to find. And for any ancient lucky enough to find Atum-hadu’s entry, inside it there was only a discouraging room, apparently already plundered. Let us form an hypothesis as to how the Tomb Paradox could be honoured here: we can imagine that Atum-hadu arranged that the man who would seal the second, inside door (Door B) would be killed by the man who later sealed Door A, who in turn was marked for subsequent murder by a third man, who knew nothing of the tomb location at all, or of the purpose behind his lethal contract. Atum-hadu’s death is followed by two others, unrelated, inexplicable even to their perpetrators and hardly noticed at all in the permanent nightfall which had overtaken Egypt by the end.
Tomorrow, we penetrate our king’s tomb, interrupt his avid intercourse with his eternal