The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips [110]
Journal: Afternoon. With more hours of labour, the door has slid slightly out towards us, creeping a grain of sand at a time, and by early afternoon, I am able to peer through a crack: gold, no question, practically my own startled eye reflected back at me. Give the men a short rest to prepare for the final heave. “Why not a sledgehammer?” asks Ahmed in English, and I am astounded to see he is serious. It is incredible to me how little these people understand what we are trying to do for them. I begin to explain the foundations of archaeology, but I must preserve my strength and I can see he is not terribly interested.
Thursday, Friday, Saturday, 16, 17, 18 November, written Saturday, 18 November, 1922
Journal: Victories and temporary, minor setbacks. Excruciating pain.
On the 16th, another hour of heavy work with crowbars and ropes resulted in a pyrrhic victory: we had achieved the position described above, and Ahmed was a stern and helpful foreman; he saw a certain sureness in my face, and I had his attention now. After the break, we set to our work with a fury. I drove us too hard, I see now, my own fault. Two men on each side of the door, throwing their full strength against the bars, and Ahmed and I in the front with ropes, pulling until our gloves were as hot as fire—and then, to my shame, it happened: first it was a sound, a horrible sound, the rush of events overtaking scientific control. To a superstitious ear (as some of those in the chamber certainly were), a booming cry from the past accompanied by a rush of hot air (perhaps they thought it was Atum-hadu’s angry breath upon us) and the shouts in English of my frustration, and then the shattering of the massive door as it pitched forward and burst against the hard floor, a million grey marbles skittering in all directions like shrapnel, then the screaming—of one of the men, cut very slightly over the eye by flung stone—and only then the pain, the excruciating pain as I realised my own foot was inside the perimeter where the door had crashed and exploded. Hobbling, bleeding, the toes crushed, the side of my boot burst, so be it and no matter—I was into the next chamber in a flash, my electric torch lighting a path here, there, up and down each wall, invading each corner as the electric pain from my foot flashed behind my eyes.
The curses in Arabic were extreme, those that I could understand, and I thought at first they must be coming from the wounded man, but they were falling from the mouth of Ahmed, cursing fate and the West and Egypt (for in his blindness, he saw only another empty room). His greed for gold feeds his frustrations; he lacks the temperament for science. What Carter and Marlowe and I share is simply not an Egyptian trait.
I ordered Ahmed and two others to take the injured man back to town to see to his wound, and to return in twenty-four hours, and I kept one man with me for the painstaking work ahead and to assist with my own injuries.
My man pulled off my boot, and I nearly bit through my cheek at the pain. Some of the hotel’s sheets and the water were sacrificed to washing and wrapping my hideous, bloodied foot. By late in the afternoon on the 16th, I was finally able to hobble about and place lanterns in the new second chamber. Unfortunate Door B is a particularly terrible loss considering its inscription, which read in excellent hieroglyphs:
ATUM-HADU, LORD OF THE NILE, SPITS UPON HIS PURSUERS,
WHO TOO LATE DISTURB HIM, AND WHO WILL PAY A HORRIBLE
PRICE FOR THE INTRUSION.
The inscription was a splendid proof, should there remain anyone at this late date who questions our premises or accomplishments. I hope we will be able to reconstruct it from the pieces of the shattered door, but I fear it is lost. I blame myself, and the fools at the