The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips [140]
For now, I expect it will take me several days at least to complete a full copy and translation of the hieroglyphs, and make descriptive notes of the paintings. After the chamber is fully catalogued, I will invite Lord Carnarvon to examine our discoveries to date before proceeding through Door C, the so-called Great Portal, and into the tomb’s likely treasury, sepulchre, and other chambers. Or perhaps Carnarvon and I shall continue excavations in other locations instead, if in the end we find this tomb unoccupied, with only the History Chamber to identify it (as if such a find alone were not remarkable enough).
(FIG. H: CHAMBER 6, THE HISTORY CHAMBER, OPENED 23.11.22, SHOWING THE PLACEMENT OF THE ILLUSTRATIONS AND TEXTS)
Each of the twelve pillars depicts one key event from each year of Atum-hadu’s twelve-year reign, a span concretely determined now, thanks to these twelve pillars, and likely having occurred 1642–1630 B.C. More comprehensive than the pillars, each of the twelve wall panels tells, with text and image, a portion of the life of Atum-hadu, from his conception through his reign to the end of his earthly life.
WALL PANEL A: “THE BIRTH OF ATUM-HADU,FINAL KING OF THE BLACK LAND”
Hieroglyphic Text: The great king’s titulary has been composed and will forever be Horus—Son of Osiris and Seth; He of the Two Ladies—Restorer of the Lost Kingdom; Horus of Gold—Ma’at’s Ferocious Lover; He of the Sedge and Bee—Hand of a Scribe, Victorious Bull, Fish of a God; Son of Ra—Atum-Is-Aroused. But the king was born with his name hidden.
He is born far from the capital, near the waters. [His] mother is chosen for her especial grace and beauty and intelligence to receive the seed of Seth [god of confusion and disorder—RMT]. The summer at its zenith, Seth disguised himself as a fisherman and lay with this woman. At the moment he delivered his seed, Seth revealed his truth, and the woman saw his donkey head and was frightened. Seth departed, and she would kill the life in her womb. Seth stayed her hand. Seth made her fingers like an animal’s paw. Seth took from the ungrateful her beauty, and she became dull and her name is everywhere forgotten.
The woman washed clothes and drank beer. She was heavy with child by as many men as stars in a sky. Her first son asked her who his father was. She pointed to a fisherman who resembled Seth when he had disguised himself. “This son of a whore’s vulva is the father of you.” The fisherman said no, she had copulated with a donkey and her children were all donkey-children.
Seth saw the boy grow strong and visited him. Seth explained all, and the boy understood. The boy was made not by people but by gods and himself. He created himself. The god whom he most resembled was not Seth but Atum, the great creator of everything, at the moment when the god strained towards creation. He named himself Atum-Is-Aroused, and Seth came to Atum-Is-Aroused and praised him. With a blinding flash of the sundisk, Seth made the boy forget his false birth name all at once and forever.
At this time, the priest of the temple of Amen was jealous. The priest’s hungers ruled him, and he often skewered the boy like a veal to be sacrificed, and the boy was forced to burn brightly and the boy vowed that the priest would see his own heart beat in a fire fuelled by camel dung while Atum-Is-Aroused would lay with the priest’s sisters and nieces before the priest’s bleeding eyes.
Illustration: Extraordinary illustrations: here we see Seth copulating with a beautiful woman under a midsummer sun, his head in midtransformation—half-donkey, half-man—the very instant of impregnating Atum-hadu’s mother. And here we see her with a golden child in her transparent belly. Here we see her attempt to beat her belly with fists, and Seth’s punishment for