The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips [119]
The rage I felt is difficult to describe here. I have nothing in my life to compare it to. Even as I write now, hours later, my eyes fill with tears, my pen shakes. I can only ask myself, and not without scorn, Why was I surprised? When in my life have people not proven themselves to be precisely like this? No one can be trusted, except those rare ones we love, the wives and fathers.
The betrayal of me, of science, of their own heritage, of Ahmed, the man who had honoured them with this work! He stood next to me, shaking his head, and his anger was plain. For observe: I cannot say what information had been pounded to dust. I cannot say what small treasures were lifted off the floor and wound in the criminals’ head wraps or in their gowns as they left, protesting too loudly in clear Arabic that they had found “nothing.” When the time comes, I see now, I will have no choice but to tell the Antiquities Inspector that there never were Doors D, E, and F. My hands are tied. Their crime has forced me.
I sent Ahmed away, though the loyal man wished to stay by my side, explore the damage and the new rooms right with me. But his orders were clear: fire those men, hire honest replacements who will be paid at the end of every three weeks, rather than weekly. Off he went, muttering in our shared dismay.
I turned back to my tomb, howling at her violation, but still a triumph. The three “Royal Storage Chambers”—identical, symmetrical, of the most brilliant design in their simplicity and solidity, their elegant proportions and mystical purity—were undoubtedly designed to hold paraphernalia specifically necessary for the king’s voyage to the underworld. And, with no question at all, the three chambers held, in this order: food (long since decomposed); incense (lit at the time of burial and now vaporised, though the 3500-year-old, sealed-in smell of it was still faintly but unmistakably present and astoundingly like one of Margaret’s perfumes, the one in the little beaded carafe shaped like an ancient amphora); and gold coins or small jewellery, something shiny, of medium value, but just small enough to be grabbed by donkey-thieving ingrates whose names I do not even know.
But, ah! The Pillar Chamber! Here Atum-hadu has left us an enigma to tickle us a bit longer before all is revealed behind Door G (which the vandals apparently did not see in their dust clouds, too eager to stomp off with their burgled baubles and showy protests of disappointment).
I have just spent several hours of the afternoon and evening thirstily measuring and conducting an inch-by-inch survey of each and every surface of the Pillar Chamber. The Pillar Chamber is approximately twenty-five feet long and contains twelve identical floor-to-ceiling stone pillars, round, brilliantly white and unmarked, their perfect cylindrical shape a mathematical accomplishment of such internal significance that any further ornamentation to the room would have been vulgar or perhaps even counterproductive to Atum-hadu’s pious requirements. The spacing of the pillars is regular, four rows of three—each pillar is about twelve feet in circumference—never very good at maths—so that means about three feet in diameter—their placement makes it difficult to walk across the room quickly, so any ancient tomb-robber would have had difficulty making a speedy entrance or escape—their proportions are almost certainly mathematically precise and significant, and if one takes the proportion of the total space in the room, as in 25 × 15 feet = 375 square feet, of which 12 pillars × pr2 where r = 1.5
1.5
1.5
75
150
2.25
3.14
900
2250
67500
7.0650
12
141300
706500
84.7800
so then 84.78 square feet of the room are pillars, meaning a proportion of 84.78/375, or precisely the proportion used in— There were, of course, twelve dynasties preceding Atum-hadu’s own, so the pillars represent without question the twelve previous dynasties, which he viewed himself as protecting, symbolically, in his burial—zodiacally, the placement of the pillars represents the placement astronomically