The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips [116]
I have clearly left them alone too long, counted at least on their ability to follow orders if not respect the precision and passion of my work. My disciplinary financial penalties were understood at last. I distributed their pay accordingly reduced. Now I noticed the injured man has never returned. And Ahmed was a silent, glowering beast.
Only then did I hobble over and examine the damage they had done to my Door C. My own fault. I should never have left them on guard so long near the hypnotising wealth hidden behind this last foot of rock. The loss of the inscription on Door C is nothing less than tragic, and the Antiquities Service will be right to chastise me for not having brought in an Inspector, though I can hardly do so now, with the evidence that this is Atum-hadu’s tomb again lying in a fine dust at my feet. I should have marked down the inscription back on the 17th, but my injury prevented me at the time. How could I have known this would have happened? I should have known. Now I must re-create the inscription from memory:
ATUM-HADU, LAST KING OF THE BLACK LAND, AUTHOR OF THE GLORIOUS ADMONITIONS, SAILS TO THE UNDERWORLD, ACCOMPANIED ONLY BY THE WEALTH OF HIS MUCH-RAPED LAND.
I explain to the men that their brutality has delayed our discovery, not hastened it, and that the mountains of gold on the other side of this door must now wait, as I cannot risk opening Door C without first stabilising the fissures caused by their savage pounding, or I will lose the artwork I am sure to find on the door’s opposite side. Which means plastering will be necessary. (This will also give me the curatorial opportunity of reinscribing onto the restored door a facsimile of the hieroglyphs lost to the idiot hammers, simply to give a sense of the original inscription’s size and placement.) I send two men for plaster, water, trowels; Ahmed to Carter’s site to see how he is now filling his days; and a third man to Winlock’s end of Deir el Bahari. Reports of inaction there will be useful for renegotiating a concession.
The report from Winlock’s camp: nothing of interest, random digging, brushing things they have had out of the ground since last year. At Carter’s camp, they are clearing land desperately to the south and west, digging feverishly in search of their buried reputations, though Carter himself has fled to Cairo. Six hours later, they are definitively idiots: the plaster is all wrong. Despite hours of different mixtures trying to make do with what they brought me, all I do is splash Door C with white water. Send them back to town for proper plaster.
It is early evening before I get another try. Fill the main fissures and allow it to dry, which it does. Slowly.
Tuesday, 21 November, 1922
This morning I find that the first coat of plaster dried well in the door’s fissures, but also in the bucket. When my men finally deign to appear, I send them back to town for more plaster and a new bucket. It is evening before they arrive, this time without water, which one of them finally brings after nightfall, nearly ten o’clock. Time is haemorrhaging and probably my support in Boston as well. I am tempted to sleep in Villa Trilipush tonight, but the foot is on fire and I no longer trust these hammering apes to be left on guard.
Margaret: You will ignore Ferrell and keep your father on track, won’t you? You already are, I am sure. You are my protectress and inspiration, as I stare at your photograph by lamplight and desert starlight outside His Majesty’s tomb. I can see you across a desert continent and a sea as you prepare for bed high above the moon-frosted snow of the Garden.
In this photo, the light was behind you, making you a silhouette against white, a near perfect profile, bending forward to look at something on the table (if I recall, it was the necklace with the cameo I gave you), and your beauty reproduces itself in the smallest