The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips [14]
Which reminds me. I’ll send you what I’ve written so far, so as not to delay your progress speaking to publishers. I will, while awaiting your reply by Air Mail, continue to transcribe my notes and letters.
I am your humble correspondent,
Harold Ferrell,
Private enquiries (retired)
Tuesday, 10 October, 1922. Hotel of the Sphinx, Cairo
Journal: Arrival in Cairo via rail from Alexandria. Set to work immediately. Have scheduled five days in Cairo for logistics and background writing prior to heading south to site.
Book notes: To begin at its proper beginning, the completed book must have a frontispiece, protected by a transparent onion-skin overlay. Frontispiece: “The Royal Cartouche of King Atum-hadu, final king of Egypt’s Middle Kingdom, XIIIth Dynasty, 1660–1630 B.C.” Assume only scholarly readership? No—clarify for general readers that a cartouche is the royal seal, one of the king’s five names (the Son of Ra name) written in hieroglyphs and enclosed in an oval.
Epigraph after the frontispiece:
“It is the intelligence and resolution of man in overcoming physical difficulty which are to be the source of our pleasure and subject of our praise.” John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice
Or: “Although we have not yet discovered the tomb of Atum-hadu, we can be fairly certain it is within our reach.” Ralph M. Trilipush, Desire and Deceit in Ancient Egypt (Collins Amorous Literature, 1920; new edition from Harvard University Press projected for 1923)
Or: “Ralph Trilipush will never convince anyone with a brain that King Atum-hadu ever existed, let alone wrote the so-called Atum-haduan Admonitions.” Prof. Lars-Philip Thürm, in the Journal of Egyptological Studies, 1921. This epigraph would have an amusing effect when placed next to a photograph of me standing in front of the tomb of King Atum-hadu, holding a complete papyrus of his Admonitions.
Or: perhaps an excerpt from the Admonitions, from the profound mind and naughty reed brush of King Atum-hadu himself. For example, the first line of Quatrain 30 (found in Fragments B & C only): “Atum-hadu smiles upon his brother.” Actually, a bit misleading as to its original context, as the complete Quatrain 30 describes the discovery of an impostor claiming kinship to the king:
Atum-hadu smiles upon his brother,
Overjoyed to meet another fallen from the same mother!
Until he learns the claim is but a lie,
And now with fire and asps the liar will die.
—(From Desire and Deceit in Ancient Egypt, Collins Amorous Literature, 1920; new edition by Harvard University Press projected for 1923)
No, better still, to begin this adventure at its proper beginning, let us open the book with a tantalising glimpse of the discovery to come, and offer as epigraph a thrilling episode not too far off in the future, an excerpt of events described in the book itself. We shall extract a triumphant moment and place it at the front, a shocking jewel in the crown, a zesty appetiser to tickle the reader’s tongue for the vast feast to come and to prepare his digestion, lining his stomach for riches for which his dull daily fare has not prepared him. We shall tentatively use the events of—to make a conservative guess and present myself on that date with a nice birthday gift—24 November, six and a half weeks from now, neither too optimistic nor too stodgy, something like: “page ii: 24 November, 1922. At the Deir el Bahari site. I cleared away the loose rocks and descended to my knees, and began slowly—painstakingly slowly, despite my pounding heart—to widen the hole in the millennia-old heaped rubble. The light shook in the hands of the irrationally frightened Abdullah. ‘It’s all right, man. Just give me the torch,’ I whispered, and held my eye to the narrow aperture. ‘Yes, yes . . .’ ‘Please, what does His Lordship see?’ ‘Immortality, Abdullah, I see immortality.’