The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips [153]
Illustration: A soldier attacks a man and a woman while Atum-hadu (laughing? crying?) escapes to join the army of Djedneferre Dudimose.
Saturday, 9 December, 1922
J: Cats. P: nothing. B: closed.
PILLAR TWO, TEXT: ATUM-HADU ENTERS THE COURT OFDJEDNEFERRE DUDIMOSE AND IS RECEIVED WARMLY.
Illustration: Atum-hadu receives a particular form of tribute from the kneeling wife of Djedneferre Dudimose and other kneeling female members of the court while a long-lashed giraffe gazes on, masticating at the sight, and Atum-hadu himself looks skyward and watches acrobats fly, throwing each other high above the palace floor.
PILLAR THREE, TEXT: ATUM’S WARRIOR DESTROYS THE KING’S ENEMIES.
Illustration: Atum-hadu, in the form of a man-headed lion, tramples the enemies of Egypt, who fall in a hail of arrows. High above, Horus, Atum, Ra, Isis, Osiris, Seth, Montu, Hathor, and Ma’at look down with marked approval.
PILLAR FOUR, TEXT: ATUM-HADU BECOMES KING AND POET BOTH.
Illustration: Still standing on the bodies of the treacherous ministers of Djedneferre Dudimose, Atum-hadu instructs his court. He gently rests one hand on the head of the late king, and in his other he holds a sheet of papyrus. One can just make out the hieroglyphic writing on that papyrus in an extraordinary touch of uncommon verisimilitude and detail in Egyptian art. It is nothing less than Quatrain 1. The detail of the tiny black hieroglyphs on the tan sheet of papyrus must have taken the artist hours to perfect. Considering the conditions in which he was likely working (smoke, heat, hunger, poverty, approaching enemies), his accomplishment is nothing less than genius.
J: C. P: still nothing.
Sunday, 10 December, 1922
J: Cats, bank, post. Nothing.
PILLAR FIVE, TEXT: DAYS OF PEACE AND PLEASURE IN ATUM-HADU’S COURT.
Illustration: This pillar is worth a moment’s analysis. It was probably only natural that Atum-hadu’s court was prey to nostalgic impulses, the mad desire to peer over one’s shoulder for a golden age. At a time of encroaching darkness and a pervasive sense of doom, such an instinct was probably stronger still. That said, it is clear that Atum-hadu (even as his scribes were engaged in the previous king’s nostalgic preservation project) was dedicated to making his era a golden age in itself and his court the centre of a reborn Egypt. His was a simultaneous anti-nostalgic project, particularly difficult in times of defeat and despair. But to this end, this pillar shows his court as he must have wished it to be recalled at its peak of glory. Musicians in tunics decorated with multi-coloured lozenges perform while a woman leads several dogs in a parade of tricks. Celebrants of the cult of Atum abound, in a vast array of mathematical combinations, from rows of solitary worshippers to complex pyramidal arrangements requiring multitudes. Men are tied down with symbolic chains woven of peacock feathers, and they are lashed by nude women and, at the centre of all this activity, the unmistakable king himself, nude, surrounded by adoring crowds of gentle, long-fingered beauties with sleepy eyes.
PILLAR SIX, TEXT: THE FALSE FATHERS.
Illustration: This curious pillar with its inexplicable title depicts a series of executions and tortures, all overseen by Atum-hadu, whose expression is one of stern necessity. A soldier is fed to a crocodile. A priest is skewered and roasted alive (see Wall Panel D). A young working man (attacked in Pillar One) is here pursued by a crowd of what appear to be armed children, while a donkey mounts the woman shown with him on Pillar One.
J: Post, bank—nothing. Cats. Maggie is so funny! She knows
which route I take now to bring her food, and she leads the Rameses to meet me there, so I need not approach the villa at all. She likes her fish, we learn tonight, a little Nile perch, while the toms stick to milk and scraps of meat. I would love to have the three of them across the river with me, but it would hardly be fair, to them or to the delicate work I am uncovering.
Mr.